The Quest for God and Human Identity [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 47-55]

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J. M. LOCHMAN
"computer God," "Dieu machine," He is, on the contrary, the living Spirit,
humanity's personal counterpart, our covenant partner who is free in His
grace and mercy towards us.
What is attested in the Bible, therefore, is not so much the concept
of God but rather the name of God. The name of this God is Yahweh,
the Lord, and the not obvious, not self-evident character of this biblical
God is very impressively reflected in the explanation given of the divine
name: I AM WHO I AM (Ex. 3, 14) or, close to the original Hebrew: I WILL
BE WHO I WILL BE. The God who speaks here is not a God of necessity
but rather the God of Freedom.
In his major work entitled "God as Mystery of the World," published
in 1977, Eberhard Junget, a Protestant theologian who has devoted himself particularly to the contemporary question of God in the light of the
changes in the intellectual and cultural climate of modern times, formulates
his conclusion in the lapidary thesis: God is not necessary. "God is more
than necessary."5 I find this opalescent formula helpful.
God is not necessary: We say goodbye here to the obvious, self evident
God; to the God who is built into our dominant world view from the outset,
forms part and parcel of it; to the proofs of God's existence if these proofs
are regarded as more than faith's intelligent attempts to understand and
explain itself, i.e. to the extent that these proofs seek to enforce recognition of God, to demonstrate by a Herculean intellectual effort the necessity
of His existence.
But we also say goodbye here-and this is an essential, practical, cultural and socio-political consequence-to the obligatory, compulsory God,
whom believers have no hesitation in imposing on their fellow human
beings, over-riding their minds and consciences and even threatening sanctions in case of nonconformity. We must say goodbye to such a God-and
do so not simply under the pressures of a new historical era but because
we are led to do so by fresh reflection on the source of our faith. For such
a God is not the God of faith. The God of faith is different-He is not necessary.
God is more than necessary. Freedom is the counterpoint and correlate
of necessity. It seems to me most significant, in fact, that the "Sitz im
Leben" (life setting) of the disclosure, the revelation of the biblical name
of God is the account of the liberation of the people of God, in the Old
Testament, for example, the context of the history of the Exodus, the
event in which Israel experiences its deliverance from bondage. In the
New Testament, the fundamental context is the Easter story of Jesus.
One of the most pregnant "definitions" of God is found in Paul's letter
to the Romans (4, 24): He is the God "who raised Jesus from the dead."
In other words, here again God's name is proclaimed in the context of
the supreme human need for freedom, namely, freedom in respect of our
last enemy, temporal and eternal death. "In the Bible, God is... centrally