In all ages of history, men and women have related memories of moments when they had perceived, with particular intensity, the presence of their gods. The literature of spirituality, be it Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, abounds in stories of divine appearances … For more than a thousand years, the religion of Israel was dominated by the experience, the memory, or the hope of divine presence.[1] Samuel Terrien
A religion which does not affirm that God is hidden is not true. Vere tu es Deus absconditus! Blaise Pascal
Two things are obvious: God is not readily available and present and true religion presumes we can know and encounter God personally. It is this elusive nature of God and pursuit of his presence which is thematic in the Hebrew Scriptures and which culminates in the picture of Emmanuel, or “God with us,” in Matthew. To fully understand this presence, it may be necessary to work out the implication of absence and what his presence resolves (developed below). It is not as if God’s absence and presence are a side note to human concern, but rightly understood this gets at the deep-rooted problem, the definition of the human condition and its resolution taken up in the Bible.
Divine Presence as the Subject of Scripture
As Samuel Terrien claims, “The reality of the presence of God stands at the center of biblical faith.”[2] However, his argument throughout, in dealing with the Old Testament is that this presence is always elusive. As Isaiah states, “Truly, You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Savior!” (Is 45:15). It is not that God has “absconded” (as Pascal describes) but he “hides himself,” and this hiddenness and pursuit of presence are central to all things human. The presence, or the awareness of the possibility, defines the cult of Israel in its depictions of ancient theophanies, in Moses encounter on Sinai, in the workings of the sacrifices and temple, and in the poetic vision and hope of Psalms and the prophets. It is this presence which defines the Church and which is the continued theme of the New Testament, giving man his purpose in this world. Thus, the name given to Joseph to describe Jesus, is the fulfillment of this central biblical motif and the resolution to the central human concern.
Terrien modestly claims, “A genuinely ‘biblical’ theology may arise from a study of the Hebraic theology of presence.”[3] The tendency to set up a contrast between Old and New Testament, or to focus on law and grace, or to see the Hebrew Scriptures mainly as a repository of prophecy, fails in missing the centrality of focus on divine presence, which precedes the birth of Judaism and its temple cult (all of which Paul describes as intermediate). As expressed by Moses, the primary concern was whether or not God would be present in the Exodus. “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. For how then can it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not by Your going with us, so that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth?” (Ex 33:15–16). God assures Moses he would be present with them: “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest” (Ex 33:14).
Jesus claims to provide the fulfillment of the promised rest in God’s presence, not provided in the tabernacle, temple, or sabbath of Moses.
Emmanuel as Completion of the Temple’s Purpose
To understand Matthew’s use of Emmanuel, it is important to tie it to his picture of Jesus as the recapitulation of the Temple, which was the symbolic locus of divine presence (see here and here). God was manifest in the Garden, but with sin, the first couple hid from his presence (Gen 3:8), then God promised he would once again tabernacle with man: “Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them” (Ex 25:8). This dwelling was symbolic or partial, pointing to a future reality. Jesus proclaims himself “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mt 12:8) and explains “that something greater than the temple is here” (Mt 12:6) and that he fulfills the role of the Temple in providing the promised rest (Mt 11:28–29).
The name Emmanuel encapsulates the meaning pictured in John: “And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). Emmanuel, the one who dwells among us, is the true tabernacle of God’s presence. The incarnate Word accomplishes what no mere human word could, just as Emmanuel completes the promise of the temple. Jesus provides a localized presence of God through a relational or personal presence. He is present in the incarnation as a divine-human person, in his healing and teaching ministry, in his shaping of a new realization of the God-human relationship, and then in sealing this relationship in resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Here is the answer to the characteristic Jewish prayer and blessing, “God be with you,” previously limited by time and circumstance. The elusive presence, perceived as limited, symbolic, discontinuous, yet continually sought, is directly addressed in Jesus as the locus of God’s presence.
Christ as the incarnation of the divine presence, not only renders the temple cult, its sacrifices, and its priesthood obsolete, but he opens the possibility of divine presence to all and sets it on a new foundation. Stephen’s explanation of the significance of Jesus, given right before they stone him, points out the symbolic nature of the temple as compared to the reality of Christ (see Stephen’s quotation of Isaiah in Acts 7:49f). Paul and Peter both explain that Christian believers, having put on Christ are the true temple, the “living stones” of the church/temple (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16; I Pet 2:5). The writer of Hebrews pictures the body of Christ as the true temple which is now completely open and accessible (10:19-22).
Matthew’s Gospel declares “God with us” as a continual possibility: “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst” (Mt 18:20). The relationship between believers, like that with Christ, is not focused on ritual objects but on living persons and relationship, which are bound together in his body. The final words of Matthew contain the promise “lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt 28:18). This is a promise to the disciples but including all nations as potential disciples who can participate in the Trinity through baptism.
The risen Christ bestows his presence both with absolute authority (all authority in heaven and earth) and with universal significance (for all the nations). It is not that the disciples take on this same authority, but their authority depends upon his continued presence. It is no longer simply Jesus’ physical presence, as in his time spent with them prior to the resurrection. The promise is not to continue to pull them from the water when they are drowning, or to provide food when they are hungry, or to find a cure for their ailments, but the point is they have taken on his presence, shown in these signs and opened to all in the resurrection. As David Kupp puts it, “resurrection is not merely demonstrative of God’s authority and a vindication of his Messiah, but empowers Jesus to promise unreservedly his perpetual, efficacious presence with his disciples in their long-unfulfilled commission of Mt 10, now become universal.”[4] No longer are they restricted to going to Jews, and no longer is the commission limited in its geographical, chronological, or spiritual scope.
“The shift of ‘his people’ from Israel’s leadership is a shift In God’s presence, both in terms of its new definition in the risen Jesus, and in terms of its new recipients” – his church is inclusive of all nations.[5] He is present in perpetuity and without any physical boundaries, so that every reader of Matthew has the promise of his presence and is called to spread the good news about Emmanuel. But this call still bears the humility which Jesus demonstrated and taught. This is not an overwhelming or overpowering presence, but looks to the cross, to suffering, and to word of mouth of vessels of clay. It still presumes “the least” will be the bearers of this message and its recipients.
Understanding the Centrality of Presence in its Absence in Derrida
One way of recognizing the significance of the theme of divine presence is in descriptions of the impact of absence. The field where lost presence (absence) has been most widely recognized and explored is not in theology or even in psychology, but in modern (or postmodern) philosophy. Jacques Derrida sums up the human struggle, whether in philosophy, psychology, or religion as the pursuit of presence. This lost presence, as understood by Derrida, puts humanity in pursuit of “self-presence” or the pursuit of being, which in philosophy is the metaphysical project of establishing being in thought. As he introduces his project in Of Grammatology, “desire had wished to wrest from the play of language” due to its “limitlessness” the seemingly proffered “infinite signified which seemed to exceed it.”[6] Language seemed to offer up God through its limitless and presumed infinite capacity, but it turns out we are “brought back to its . . . finitude at the very moment when its limits seem to disappear.”[7] As with René Descartes, in Derrida’s telling, the attempt in philosophy is one long grasping after being (the divine Being) in thinking and knowing. The presumption is that “God is the name and the element of that which makes possible an absolutely pure and absolutely self-present self-knowledge.”[8] Realizing or grasping one’s self-presence, or knowing the self, according to Derrida, is equated with knowing God. “The logos can be infinite and self-present, it can be produced as auto-affection, only through the voice: an order of the signifier by which the subject takes from itself into itself, does not borrow outside of itself the signifier that it emits and that affects it at the same time.”[9] The interior human voice is presumed to contain the essence of presence to self (equated with divine presence).
Meaning arises in the medium of signs through what Derrida calls différance, in that the play of the differences (soul/ body, good/ evil, inside/ outside, memory/ forgetfulness, speech/ writing, etc.) playing off of one another as a point of comparison, is the resource of the dialectics of meaning. That is the signs produce the illusion of substance and presence, when they are merely “the play of signs.” Heidegger may have been correct that we “dwell in the house of language” but Derrida’s point is the house is empty, though it may seem to have endless rooms. He describes the human pursuit as the impetus of desire behind language, in which speech might be reified into presence through its property of repetitiveness or iterability. Speech provides for the compulsion to repeat, which he recognized was Freud’s diagnosis of the core of the human disease. Derrida’s description of the pursuit of presence provides a philosophical parallel to the biblical description in which there is a basic confusion between the word of man and the Word of God and between human interiority and the divine self-presence.
Understanding the Centrality of Presence in its Absence in Scripture
Perhaps we can name and understand the significance of God’s presence most clearly through the experience of its loss, as we are familiar with this condition. At least this is the initial approach of the Hebrew Scriptures. The significance of the presence of God, represented in the Garden with the tree of life, is mainly explained in the result of its absence. The shame of the first couple, the murder of Abel by Cain, the rise of the murderous generation of Noah through Lamech, and then the pursuit of God’s presence through the Tower of Babel, and then the proliferation of idolatry and murderous religion, is a story of the pursuit of lost presence. God’s presence fills in the lack of existence, the feeling of absence and shame, or the experience of not being enough, or of being inadequate. The array of negative human emotions from shame, envy, jealousy, rivalry, and then their outworking in human pride, tribalism, nationalism, war and violence, might all be described as pursuit of a lost presence. The Bible, in its story of lost presence, provides explanation of the psychology of what it feels like to fall apart, and how it is that we become self-antagonistic, or split within ourselves, so that masochism may explain the murderous rage expressed in human sadism.
When we look into recent examples of murder in Australia at Bondi Beach, at Brown University, and in the Reiner family, we can search long and hard for an explanation. There is no logic that can explain the taking of life. Neither is there logical explanation for basic human emotions such as jealousy and shame, but we recognize the condition and can trace it and realize the need for a cure.
Conclusion: Presence and Absence As the Central to Life and the Bible
Derrida’s deeply Hebraic insight serves as one way of summing up the major theme of the Bible, which reaches its climax in the child named Emmanuel, “God with us.” The significance of the truth of the name may escape us if we do not recognize, how it is that lost presence can serve as the definition of the human predicament, and how it is the promise of God’s presence is the major biblical theme fulfilled in Christ. The kenotic love of God poured out in Christ describes the realization of presence, in relationship with self, God, and others. That is the human story can be told as one of lost presence and its pursuit, and then its fulfillment in Emmanuel.
[1] Samuel Terrien, The Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology (Religious Perspectives 26. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978) 63. As David Kupp points out, “A number of scholars have made the claim that the Judea-Christian biblical record as a whole is more accurately characterized as an account of the presence of God, acting in the midst and on behalf of the people of God, rather than the oft-cited theme of covenant.” David Kupp, Matthew’s Emmanuel Messiah: a paradigm of presence for god’s people (Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/6174/) 2.
[2] Terrien, xxvii.
[3] Terrien, 5.
[4] Kupp, 113.
[5] Kupp, 114.
[6] Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997) 6.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid, 98.
[9] Ibid.