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{"id":16030,"date":"2014-05-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=978"},"modified":"2014-05-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T00:00:00","slug":"potter-clay-and-divine-repentance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/05\/potter-clay-and-divine-repentance\/","title":{"rendered":"Potter, Clay, and Divine Repentance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

In a subtle discussion of divine repentance, R.W.L. Moberly (Old Testament Theology<\/a>, 122-3) offers this complex reading of Jeremiah 18:1-10.<\/p>\n

Rather than a contradiction, he suggests that it offers a \u201cstriking paradox.\u201d The imagery \u201cstrongly emphasizes divine power,\u201d yet at the same time \u201cwe have a strong statement of divine responsiveness to human attitude and action.\u201d God is free, \u201cin effect entirely unconstrained in terms of the potter imagery,\u201d yet He \u201ccommits Himself to responsive action.\u201d God doesn\u2019t cease to be free, but His freedom is \u201cmoral and relational: it takes into account the responsiveness, or lack of it, that humans display. Divine power is exercised not arbitrarily, but responsibly and responsively, interacting with the moral, or immoral, actions of human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, he suggests, this responsiveness is built into the potter-clay analogy: \u201cpeople skilled in a craft are regularly highly sensitive and thus responsive to the nature and texture of the material with which they work.\u201d Being clay doesn\u2019t mean that we human beings are \u201chelpless objects dependently solely on the decisions of the potter, but rather as able to make some difference to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

In sum, \u201cto say that God repents implies that God\u2019s relationship with humanity in general, and with Israel in particular, is a genuine and responsive relationship, in which what people do and how they relate to God matters <\/em>to God\u201d (129).<\/p>\n

Moberly finds a similar complexity in Paul\u2019s use of the potter-clay imagery. On the one hand, Paul uses \u201cthe image of the divine potter . . . solely to express divine power,\u201d yet his strongly predestinarian claims in Romans 9 should be held together with his emphasis on God\u2019s responsiveness to human repentance found in chapter 11 (141-2). As in Jeremiah 18, Paul speaks of God\u2019s sovereignty and of God\u2019s responsiveness; neither Jeremiah nor Paul \u201cseparate the two nor play them off against each other\u201d (142).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"