There are some today who’d like to burn a wrath path through the Christian Church — those who believe in it can move to the right and those who don’t can move to the left as the path winds and wends its way. The question I want to ask in this series is multi-faceted and includes at least these sorts of questions:
Is the wrath of God as found in the Bible something that flows from God’s character or something that is simply the impersonal working out of consequences in history?
Does it flow from God’s love (God’s jealous love) or from God’s holiness?
Is wrath in the Bible to be connected to:
1. Evangelism? (evangelistic wrath)
2. History? (historical wrath as in judgments on the plane of history)
3. Eternal? (eternal, ontological wrath against sin)
Is the God of the Old Testament a God of wrath and the God of Jesus and the New Testament less of a God of wrath?
Do we examine “wrath” in its rhetorical function? That is, is it a way of motivating someone to do repent? Or is it a way of marking a boundary between God’s people and those who are not God’s people?
Do we examine “wrath” in its historical setting? Is it a way of speaking about what God has done in history and will do in history?
Why are some groups so obsessed with wrath and others so nervous about wrath?
Why are some groups so attracted to an evangelism that finds its potency and its bottom-line in hell/wrath?
Did Jesus or Paul evangelize with the threat of wrath?
Well, these are some questions. Do you have others about the biblical idea of wrath?