Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 83 No. 3, 2013.
Review article
Power in Infirmity: The Main Characteristics of Faith in God Who Saves in The Old Testament
Božo Lujić
orcid.org/0000-0003-4645-406X
; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The Old Testament's concept of faith is wide, nuanced, concrete, and rich in meaning. Faith is not independent and impersonal, but related to the concept of God who stands in a special relationship towards the human being, the people, the nature, and the history. That relationship is marked by God's positive attitude, which is conceptualised theologically as God's action that liberates, redeems, and saves. The paradigm of God the saviour consists of three dimensions: God who liberates the people from the Egyptian bondage, God who leads the people through the desert, and God who leads the people into the promised land.
This article discusses a number of units that are mutually related by the main paradigm of faith in God the saviour and, therefore, they enter the structure: 1) Leading the people out of Egypt, 2) faith in God who sees, hears, and knows the human misery, 3) small historical credo: faith in God the saviour, 4) confession of faith in the form of hymn, 5) faith in God who saves even from death, 6) a broad Biblical definition of faith. The article shows that faith is not an independent entity, but instead it has characteristics of a personal and relational entity, which it gains from its relationship to God: God has faith in the human being and the human being should have faith in God.
In the centre of God's saving activity one finds the verbs to liberate, to lead out, to redeem, to take out, to lead, to lead in, and to save. Only the eye of faith can recognise God's liberating action as salvation. Faith in the Biblical sense warns again and again that every boundary has its own boundary, even the boundary of death. In that sense, taking the perspective of Abraham's faith the author of the Epistle to Hebrews wrote: »Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see« (Heb 11:1). Isaiah would say: If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all (Is 7:9b). On the one hand, faith is the basis of existence while, on the other hand, it is a guiding and motivational power that opens new ways and possibilities even in a situation of a historical infirmity.
Keywords
faith; God the Saviour; salvation; to liberate; to lead out; to lead; to lead in; to redeem; small historical credo; to gift
Hrčak ID:
109817
URI
Publication date:
25.10.2013.
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