Let us refer once again to the parable of the prodigal son that is the exemplary illustration of the absolute paradox of a God who is essentially and unconditionally self-emptying (Luke 15:11-32). In doing so, we will interpret this parable via the theological context of our journey into discovering God’s self-disclosure throughout the oikonomia of finitude. According to this Biblically rooted theological paradigm of the infinite-finite dialogue as it revolves around the realization of the God-relationship, it can be said that the prodigal son’s father is glorified as being one who unconditionally and faithfully remained one who is Love no matter what the conclusion turned out to be regarding how the prodigal’s son carried out his part in this covenantal illustration ultimately. The Father would have been glorified both if the son returned, which would have evoked the delight of the father conveyed by Him rejoicing, and if the son did not return, which would have evoked sorrow in father conveyed by Him grieving. The reasoning of man would deny this conjecture, yet this is a tainted reasoning of a finite entity who is not love, as such he or she calculates the degree of being being glorified in a relationship based on the outcome not on the disposition of the loving one in this relationship. In relation to the story of Hosea and his relationship with his wife, the exceptionally reasonable people would have certainly scoffed at Hosea for repeatedly taking back his unfaithful wife who turned to prostitution time and time again, even when He bought her back and had more than proven his faithfulness, commitment, loyalty, and devotion to her. They would have condemned him as one whose glory was being ruined by his lovesick blindness that from their perspective should be pitied rather than held up as an exemplary form of agape.
Likewise the nations around Judah would have reasonably scoffed at the wounded heart of God as they unknowingly executed the judgment of God’s wrath in disciplining His beloved people, which was wrath that was fueled by righteous indignation mixed with sorrowful grief yet remain a wrath that never got the best of God to the point of compromising His disposition of agape in His relationship with them (Hos. 11:8-9). God executed such judgment against His beloved in response to a prolonged period of repeated misdemeanors and adulteries, and consequently since the beloved remained unfaithful in spite of the longsuffering patience of God, discipline became the only recourse for the loving father (Job 5:17-18; Ps. 119:75; Is. 46:27-28; Jer. 31:18-22; Lam. 3:28-33; Hos. 7:11-16, 10:9-10; Rev. 3:19-20). Just as many of these passages convey, this discipline that the Loving One enacts upon the beloved, which in this particular case entailed the beloved being exiled at the hands of her enemies, is intended by God to result in the beloved eventually finding an occasion for repentance that would simultaneously open up the occasion for the beloved be reconciled to her covenant with her Husband that would give her another undeserved opportunity to prove her committed faithfulness to Him. This is why Israel is depicted as the beloved in the book of Ezekiel and their covenant with God was depicted as a marriage covenant with its concrete illustration in the marriage of Hosea and the prostitute (Ezekiel 16, Hosea).
The prodigal son’s father, however, just like Hosea in relation to his marriage covenant, remained unconditionally faithful to his end of the paternal covenant. Hence both became absurd fools in the eyes of the reasonableness of this world, who viewed such an act of letting themselves be taken advantage of and walked all over due to their absurd unconditional faithfulness that did not fade when the faithfulness of the other faded.
Both of these narratives are exemplary illustrations of the narrative of temporality and the infinite-finite dialogue as it corresponds to this part of the Narrative of Finitude. Both of these illustrations are also ideal for depicting God in relation to His covenant with Israel, since we have already witnessed how He ever remained true to his unconditional commitment to maintain a loving disposition towards the people who He called both his bride and his child. However, it is not in His correspondence with the Israelites that He faithfully maintains the disposition of agape, and this has been best portrayed by the following testimony of His cry to the Israelites who were on the wide path of destruction: “Throw away all your sins you have committed and fashion yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why should you die, O house of Israel? For I take no delight in the death of anyone, declares the sovereign Lord. Repent and live!” (Ez. 18:31-32). The voice of the New Testament portion of our guide reveals how such a disposition of agape is impartially and universally maintained by God in relation to each individual, Jew and Gentile, elect and un-elect alike, for it testifies that “God is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (II Pt. 3:9). In all these situations of covenantal misdemeanors and unfaithfulness, the loving disposition of the father, Hosea, and God ever remained manifested in an unconditionally firm resolve for making right that remained unshaken in spite of the duration and severity of the beloved’s unfaithfulness.
In view of such illustrations contextually revealing the righteousness of God, the righteousness of God is not just made manifest as He holds the beloved accountable to and call the beloved to live according to the standard of oughtness that He has established over His covenant with mankind, but is also made manifest by His desire, initiative, and work in making the beloved righteous, especially in the act of making right what the beloved has made crooked. Thus, our God’s wrath is not just a wrath set against the sins of unfaithfulness that steal the beloved away from Him with the intent of killing and ruining the beloved for all eternity, but it is also a wrath set against all that which presents itself as an obstacle set against His endeavors to make right the covenant that has been broken by wooing, disciplining, redeeming, and sanctifying the beloved back to covenantal faithfulness[1]. God ever remains faithful to His desire to make right the gone-wrongness of the human race as well as the world on account of the fall. Such an aspect of His righteous is necessarily present, because this righteousness corresponds to One who is Light. Light not only innately strives to cuts through the darkness by exposing it and eradicating it, but light also innately strives to illuminate that which has become overcome by darkness (Is. 9:1; 42:16, 58:10, 59:9; Ps. 18:28; Matt. 8:12; Jn. 3:19-21, 8:12, 12:35-36; I Cor. 4:5; Col. 1:13; I Pt. 2:9). He is the one who continually calls all people “out of darkness and into his marvelous light” by extending ‘His’ hand of grace into the darkness via ‘His’ contextualized Word and Breath (I Pt. 2:9; Jn. 1:4-5, 1:9-11).
Now this loving disposition of God in relation to His participation in the infinite-finite dialogue, means that He faithfully desires to make right and make illumined, also seeking to make sanctified in order that one become made right and made illumined. Therefore, God’s disposition of agape is one that is inherently disposed towards rectification holds even at the point at which the beloved’s choice to not be sanctified was finalized and the loving one was left with the only choice of coming to terms with this in grief and in sorrowfully allowing its necessary repercussions to ensue. In view of such permanent repercussions God contextually manifests jealous indignation that is mixed with sorrowful grief. This truth corresponding to God’s part in the infinite-finite dialogue is made manifest in the books of Ezekiel and Hosea testifies that the Loving One even until the end ever remained true to the covenant, as well as always sought out its reconciliation by non-forcibly endeavoring to make straight the crookedness of the beloved. Consequently, our grieving God receives honor and glory in His grief, as is the contextual manifestation of ‘Him’ being Love and Light that glorifies Him as the unconditionally loving one whose absolute faithfulness to making right is immutable. In relation to the infinite-finite dialogue, this glory of God is in part made manifest by the Infinitely Existing One’s participation in this dialogue ever making manifest that ‘He’ is one who is Love and Light absolutely (Agape-Phosnoumenos), for in the unfolding of this infinite-finite dialogue, He remained ever faithful and true to who He is even in spite of the unfaithfulness and untruth of the finite ones.
[1] This is ideally revealed by Jesus Christ’s righteous indignation against the religious leaders, who thought they had made themselves right, that were used by their father the Evil One to be obstacles to his ministry to those who knew they were sick and needed the remedy He came to bring.
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