God Has Something to Prove: Vindication in Biblical Theology

Abstract

God has something to prove to humans, but they typically overlook this. They often ask what they can prove about God, but they rarely ask what God aims to prove to or about them. This striking omission calls for correction, for the sake of responsible inquiry about God. The correction offered here will explain that the answer to the question of what God aims to prove determines the answer to the question of what humans are able to prove about God. The needed correction will arise in the light of a recurring but underappreciated biblical theme about what God proves, or vindicates, in the presence of human distrust, avoidance, and alienation toward God. God aims to prove that God alone is perfectly righteous but nonetheless can justify initially resistant people who cooperate in a re-creative process. The process is that of making them worthy of God and God's good news of unmerited divine approval for humans. This perspective has been widely neglected by theologians, biblical interpreters, and philosophers of religion. Restoring attention to it will help to make some sense of God's ways in the world, thereby adding credibility to those ways and to faith in God. (The article uses the term “proof” in a familiar sense of “confirmation,” in a way that does not require the kind of deductive inference found in mathematical or logical proof.)