7 min. to read.
How far would you be willing to go to ensure that the folks you hate don’t receive God’s mercy?
That’s the question that lies at the heart of the Jonah story. Most people think the whale1dag gadol in Hebrew. Literally “big fish.”is the point, but that’s a distraction. Let’s briefly recall the story. And then I’ll share a fascinating connection with a different preacher a millennium later.
God called Jonah to go and preach a Divine warning to the city-state of Nineveh. Jonah didn’t want to go. Not because he was an introvert who hated public speaking. Nope. He was reticent because he hated the Ninevites. They were the enemy of his people. They were known across the land for their brutality and wickedness. They were the kinds of people that others whispered about: “They are animals! Entirely evil! There’s no use reasoning with them.”
Now, you might think that Jonah would be thrilled to be the Divinely-ordained messenger to deliver a message of God’s impending wrath to the folks he hated most. Likely, he and others had prayed, “God, please wipe these terrible people out. They bring nothing but destruction! Save us from them. Protect our way of life — by wiping them off the map.” But Jonah did not want this job. He felt so strongly about it that he skipped town to travel to the furthest point in the opposite direction he could imagine, hoping to avoid God’s call. That’s how he got on a ship, ended up thrown overboard and swallowed by a passing sea monster.
So, why didn’t Jonah want to do this job? He tells us in his argument with God at the end of the book: “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.”2Jonah 4:1-3. In fact, Jonah told God he’d rather die than see Nineveh saved! Jonah spells it out. “I did not want to go, because I knew you were just going to forgive and have mercy.”
Jonah’s whole tantrum, his whole international sea-faring fugitive escapade, all of it, was because of a very human motivation: We cling to God’s judgment and wrath because we want it to apply to those we think deserve punishment. We want our enemies to suffer. We want the people who hurt us to hurt. We want there to be payback, and because payback is all too rare in this life, we want the payback to extend into eternity.3Let that idea roll around in your head for a while, and you’ll begin to see the outline of many of the toxic doctrines the church has held onto. But that’s a conversation for another day.
Fast Forward Fifteen Hundred Years.
In my recent Master’s program, I met another ancient preacher with ties to Nineveh. He lived in the 8th century CE. Depending on where you come across him, he’s called Isaac the Syrian or Saint Isaac of Nineveh. He was born in Beth Qatraye, modern-day Qatar. Eventually, he became the leader of the Christian community in… Nineveh. Yea. The same one Jonah didn’t want to visit more than a millennium prior.
Isaac is a notable Christian theologian for many reasons, but one of those is that he is one of the most articulate voices in ancient Christian thought for a way of thinking about God’s judgment that ultimately came to be called apokatastasis. That Greek word means restoration. These days, this view of God’s ultimate judgment is often called “the restoration of all things.” This is similar in some ways to the modern theology of Universalism, but it’s different in other important ways. In practical terms, apokatastasis teaches that while judgment and consequences for sin are real, ultimately, God’s love triumphs over all evil, including that within the hearts of individuals. In the final measure, all things will be restored to a full, right, and life-giving orientation toward God. In his own words:
What profundity of richness, what mind and exalted wisdom is God’s! What compassionate kindness and abundant goodness belongs to the Creator! . . . In love did He bring the world into existence; in love does He guide it during this its temporal existence; in love is He going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of Him who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised. And since in the New World the Creator’s love rules over all rational nature, the wonder at His mysteries that will be revealed then will captivate to itself the intellect of all rational beings whom He has created so that they might have delight in Him, whether they be evil or whether they be just.4Isaac of Nineveh: The Second Part, Chapters 4-41 (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium), 38:1-2
This way of thinking about God challenges some of the stories my religious heritage handed me. I was taught a God who was certainly loving, but that love had limits. In fact, I was taught that those limits were what made it love. If God was too loving, it might be seen as soft. That could make room for bad behavior. And it certainly wouldn’t be just, considering all the mean, hurtful, and even wicked people who never got what was coming to them! What was most important about God was God’s glory, or God’s holiness, or even God’s might.
Contrasting with that, Isaac, like many of the early theologians of the church, was clear that love was God’s central and defining attribute. Whatever these thinkers were going to make of judgment, wrath, or God’s eternal plan would have to be governed by love. A little later in the same sermon I quoted above, Issac said, “Among all his actions, there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love, and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and the end of his dealings with us”5The Second Part, Chapters 4-41, 39.22.
Seeing God in this way raises issues. How do we understand prayer, and particularly unanswered prayer? How do we make sense of the idea that God is present and yet has allowed so many horrible things to happen to so many? And what about final judgment and justice? But those questions are not to be feared. The way through is not to revert to the idea that God’s patience has run out, and now God’s posture toward humanity is vengeance. George MacDonald’s intuition is worth reflecting on. If God is infinite, are we to believe that of all God’s attributes, only mercy is finite?
The Nineveh Connection
Whether apokatastasis aligns with scripture is worth exploring, but that’s beyond the scope of this essay. For today, I wanted to share with one interesting quirk of history I find fascinating.
Nineveh was where the wideness of God’s mercy confronted Jonah, and he discovered that he hated it. He hated the depths of God’s grace because he knew intuitively that it must also extend to his enemies. And frankly, he’d rather watch his enemies burn than celebrate their restoration.
Fifteen hundred years later, in that same city, Isaac preached the unending, universal, healing love of God. Perhaps Isaac was preaching the sermon Jonah was meant to preach. I wonder if meditating on the book of Jonah contributed to Isaac’s understanding of the power and reach of God’s love. It certainly can do that for us!
- 1dag gadol in Hebrew. Literally “big fish.”
- 2Jonah 4:1-3. In fact, Jonah told God he’d rather die than see Nineveh saved!
- 3Let that idea roll around in your head for a while, and you’ll begin to see the outline of many of the toxic doctrines the church has held onto. But that’s a conversation for another day.
- 4Isaac of Nineveh: The Second Part, Chapters 4-41 (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium), 38:1-2
- 5The Second Part, Chapters 4-41, 39.22.