(avg. read time: 5–10 mins.)
One of the joys I get out of having this Substack is that it gives me an impetus to finally write on subjects I have wanted to explore for years, but just never had or made the time for. That is the case with this two-parter. Many years ago, I thought of a question about why God works through testimony so often in Scripture, throughout Church history, and today. It is a question I only had vague impressions of how to respond to. It is still not something for which I have ideas as well worked out as I do with subjects more directly related to my areas of expertise. Still, in this short series I would like to outline the trajectories of my thinking on this subject.
Anyone who has spent significant time perusing articles, comment sections, forums, and so on in the arena of apologetics and counter-apologetics among Christians and atheists will surely have heard at some point questions/objections about why God does not reveal himself in more obvious ways. Sometimes, imaginative scenarios are concocted for how God could have gotten a point across better than the Bible claims he did, which is a tacit argument against the plausibility of what the Bible claims about God, and thus against the idea that such a God could be real. My purpose here is not respond to these scenarios or to associated arguments, which have invariably had holes in their logic that others have pointed out, nor am I focused here on the general “problem of divine hiddenness.” I find varying degrees of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in how the problem is addressed elsewhere, but as with the problem of evil, no matter how strong the logical force of the responses are (and some can be quite strong), the fact remains that so many “why” questions associated with these problems are not finally answerable from our perspective within the ongoing story of history. To attempt to proffer some complete, ultimate resolution stated as an answer to a question or argument invariably relies on engaging in ad hoc theology at some point if one is not content with trusting God and resigning to mystery until the day when all will be revealed. That is, the solution to these problems and the impressions they make on us beyond the bounds of logic is ultimately not logical (as in something to be reasoned towards), but eschatological.
Rather, I would like to address this issue from the other side, not from the perspective of addressing why God’s revelation is not more “obvious,” more “prevalent,” or more “pervasive,” or so on, but from the perspective of addressing why God would work as the Bible says he does. Obviously, the Bible shows God at work in revelation outside of human testimony. But my interest is why God uses human testimony at all and why he does so in so many contexts in Scripture. I will not be doing what I have done in the past and attempt something of a comprehensive tracing of these things in Scripture. Instead, I am going to be looking at two factors I can discern that may relate to why God works through testimony: the power of story and the importance of building trusting relationships.
The Power of Story
As I have discussed elsewhere, humans are made for telling and processing stories. Our brains are designed that way. Different people experience different effects from various stories. Some methods in telling stories will appeal more to some people than to others. People will gravitate to certain aspects of stories more than they will others. But in the end, telling and hearing stories are characteristically human activities. Every living culture has them, as far as can be told. And every culture that has left sufficient evidence behind has left some mark of storytelling. Stories unite and divide people along various axes of events, characterization, and messages. They provide us with frameworks by which we process, assimilate, analogize, differentiate, and in other ways relate information about the world and the events and people/characters within it.
Many of the crucial functions of story are exemplified in testimonies. A testimony is, after all, an account or story attesting—whether in affirmation or denial—to the truth claims of a story that is/has been told. It is a story in itself and a connecting story linking the testimonial story to another story or stories or, sometimes, to an even larger story. Several biblical texts illustrate these aspects of testimonies and how they resonate with people through the power of story, but I will only look at cases pulled from two books: Pss 105–107 and the gospel proclamations citing eyewitness testimony in Acts.
The trio of Pss 105–107, which bridges the end of Book 4 and the beginning of Book 5 of the Psalms, is the densest collection of texts focused on the theme of testimony in the OT. The opening exhortations in Ps 105 involve praising God by making known his works, by testifying of what he has done. And, indeed, the psalm as a whole consists of testimony of the history of God’s works for Israel from the time of the patriarchs through to the exodus. We will go over this text in more detail another time, but what needs to be noted for our purposes now is that all of these stories are referenced in testimony of what God has done. But each reference is only a summary of events that are part of larger stories. We thus have an extended synopsis that reminds Israel of the much larger story of God and God’s people that they are a part of. Wherever they are in history, it must be set in that context.
As a contrast, Ps 106 likewise summarizes a much larger story of Israel, but does so from a different angle. This text focuses on Israel’s recurring problem of sin, which is still intertwined with God’s gracious works of deliverance, even as it is intertwined with anger at that sin which denies that he is God. These two realities are presented in obvious tension, as it would obviously be ideal for Israel to live properly in response to God’s blessings, and God would indeed be a thousand times justified in leaving Israel to their own destruction wrought by their own rebellion. But it is God’s reconciling will, his determination to forgive and to show mercy that allows Israel to continue as it has, for these things limit the scope of his just anger at what Israel has done, even though they continue to take the opportunities they are given to respond with sin, rather than with faithfulness. Israel’s synopsized story thus serves as a series of testimonies against Israel and for God, a series of testimonies that reminds Israel that it is God who defines them as a people by his will, by his action, by his love. For if it was up to Israel to define themselves, their history testifies where that self-definition leads.
As the previous texts summarize the history of Israel from different points and different angles, Ps 107 lists many events as testimonies that are not specifically synopsizing narratives we see in Scripture, but which serve more generally as characterizing what God does for God’s people up to the present day. Many testimonies of much variety are summed up as to how God saves his people in all these different circumstances. These testimonies thus establish a continuity with the larger story of Israel and God as a whole, even as they attest more generally to who God is and what God has done. These testimonies are affirmations of being among the people that God does these things for, of worshiping the God who does these things, and of the continuity of God’s involvement with God’s people from the origins of Israel to now. In these various ways, the stories of all three psalms provide an integrative worldview framework that orients worshipers to their past, present, and future, as well as to their world, to their people, to their history, and to the God who holds them all together.
As I have written about the gospel proclamations in Acts on multiple occasions now (and I have something else planned for returning to them another time), I will not spend a great deal of space on them here. But it is interesting to note the role of apostolic testimony. It is as witnesses that Jesus commissions his disciples in Acts 1:8 and it is as witnesses that the apostles conceive of their mission and of the one who will replace Judas among the Twelve (1:22). The latter case makes clear that the testimony concerns both Jesus’s life and particularly his resurrection. It is also the purpose Paul is given as a witness to the resurrected Jesus, as Paul recounts the story and links it to the larger story he has been proclaiming in 26:16–18.
When we get to the first actual instance of that testimony in evangelism, we see that even more is entailed. Peter does invoke his and the others’ testimony that God raised Jesus from the dead (2:32), but that eyewitness testimony forms only one connecting story in a chain of them, although it is a crucial one. After all, throughout 2:14–36 Peter connects the story he attests to with the grand story of Scripture, particularly in terms of long-expected hopes of Israel being fulfilled, the story of Jesus (whom God attested to by his power in his ministry), the story of recent events, and the eschatological story of God’s kingdom, as Peter’s proclamation concludes with the declaration of Jesus’s Lordship and vindication as Messiah at God’s right hand. The testimony of Scripture combines with the apostolic testimony in affirming that these gospel events have happened and that they explain what is taking place in terms of eschatological hope coming to be (though not yet consummated). It is that apostolic testimony that most directly links these events to the present by the proclamation of Peter and the other apostles.
We see these connections and functions at multiple other points in the Acts narrative. Although the structure is quite different, when Peter proclaims the gospel at Solomon’s Porch, he once again explains how the man is healed by appeal to the story of Jesus, the story of Scripture, and the story of eschatological hope, while linking these things to the present through the apostolic testimony of Jesus’s resurrection after his crucifixion (3:12–16). The larger story is again invoked when Peter and the apostles are brought before the Jewish leaders, and they reiterate their testimony of what God has done and what God says through the Holy Spirit who testifies in and through them (5:30–32). And thus the testimony is reiterated again as the gospel spreads and its consequences are tied most concretely to the present by the apostolic testimony confirming the story of the gospel (10:39–42; 13:26–33).
We thus see how crucial testimonies are to narrative framing, whether they are testimonies transmitted across generations or ones that are more immediately recent. These texts show that humans not only tell stories in testimonies, but also seek to relate those stories (or seeking how those stories relate) to larger stories as they seek to contextualize and make sense of events and actions of “characters” in a story. It is precisely this combination of narrating stories and providing narrative framework that is crucial to the messages proclaimed, that resonates with humans, and that is missing from the imaginative scenarios of how God could do a “better job” of revealing himself. Grandiose events and displays of power may leave quite an impression, but if a narrative framework is not provided, along with a connecting story like a testimony, then humans will supply their own that they perceive fits best with their own context in which they live, move, and have their being. Testimonies, as narratives, are crucial for humans as narrative-driven creatures. This is not the only reason why they are important and a good means through which God can work, but it is an important one.