God Came In The Flesh: More quotes by Will Willimon
In these quotes, Willimon addresses theologizing about God and he attacks abstract theology rather heavily. While I don’t agree with him that the attributes of God are merely abstractions not found in Scripture, I think he is right to point us back to Jesus. What does it mean to serve a crucified but risen Lord? What does it mean that God showed His love by serving and dying on our behalf? As Mark 10:45 says, “For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
“These abstraction and generalizations we have found unhelpful. It occurred to me that the minute you start abstracting and come up with ‘all-powerful’–that is probably a better commentary on us and our need than on the God who meets us in Jesus Christ because I define all-powerful as being able to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and the way I want to do it. In other words, when I talk about God I tend to talk about the way God would be if I were God and that’s all-powerful. What do you with a God that defines all-powerful as being powerful enough to do on a cross as a victim of capital punishment? That’s a re-definition of power, isn’t it?”
“I’m uncomfortable with you talking about ambiguity…as long as ambiguity is not an excuse for me not to worship [God]… There is no ambiguity that God came in the flesh as a Jew from Nazareth who lived briefly and died violently and rose unexpectedly.”
