Ch 2 The Intrusive Gospel of God's Face

Being introduced to the gospel affects Christians in various ways. When I asked God for good news for my life, it was neither a pleasant experience nor an emotional one. I addressed the existing reality in my life and just honestly requested his response—nothing less, and as I experienced, much more than I expected; this more keeps requiring my adjustment, that is, transformation and not just reformation. Yet, for some Christians, ‘much more than expected’ is more than wanted or, at least, more than a willingness to receive. This quandary is an issue that anyone receiving the gospel encounters, whether consciously or not. And the gospel we eventually embrace in fact could be an alternative reality to the truth and thus depth of the whole gospel.

The effects of good news are more than pleasing to hear and comforting to receive. Good news (i.e. not composed with alternative facts) can be profound, penetrating, provocative, encompassing and integrating for our life. Though I never articulated it initially, this kind of effect was the good news I wanted from God. Little did I know at the time that the gospel must be received in its depth in order to experience its full significance. Of course, variations of the gospel substitute with less depth, which may be more palatable (cf. Jn 6:52,60) but not whole. In a time when what is proclaimed as good news has suffered a credibility problem, it is critical for Christians to make distinctions of variable gospels of anything less and any substitutes, as well as essential for Christians to distinguish the whole gospel. These distinctions are critical to make integrally in our theology and practice, since the gospel we use will be the disciples and discipleship we, the church and the world get.

The gospel proclaims the extent and depth of God’s relational response of grace to human life. When this is understood and received, faith alone is the compatible relational response (the relational significance of sola fide) that is congruent with God’s relational response of grace (the nonnegotiable relational significance of sola gratia). This compatibility and congruity are contingent then on nothing less than and no substitutes for the whole gospel.

The urgency then for all Christians is the importance of understanding: How does the gospel’s depth in reality unfold and what is its full significance?

This whole understanding (synesis from syniemi) will emerge when we meet the hermeneutic challenge that requires our involvement to “Be still” by ceasing our human efforts to explain, and “Pay attention to what you hear from the Word” (Mk 4:24). From Jesus’ paradigm of reality, the following discussion unfolds according to this measure:

4. The Jesus we use will be the disciples we are and the discipleship we practice.

The Improbable Theological Trajectory and Intrusive Relational Path of the Gospel

The gospel centers on the truth of God’s accessibility, the truth of which certainly has been debated among humans since the beginning of history. Yet, whatever explanations and conclusions have been proposed, the truth of God’s presence and the fact of God’s involvement are either an experiential reality, or some alternative reality based on inadequate assumptions (e.g. composing virtual reality) or based on alternative facts (or interpretations) to compose an augmented/enhanced reality without relational significance. If the alternative reality of God’s presence and involvement is sufficient for us, then, for our clarification, that is not the gospel of God’s face staring at our face deeply, with a penetrating and provoking focus that is encompassing and integrating of life.

Therefore, on the one hand, the experiential reality of God’s presence and involvement is the inescapable gospel of God’s face staring into our face. On the other hand, the gospel of God’s face is still either deniable (e.g. by those not wanting more and substituting fragmentary or fake news) or avoidable (e.g. by those not willing to address more and standing behind alternative facts)—effectively denying and/or avoiding the depth of God’s presence and involvement unfolding with God’s face, who composes the truth of the whole gospel. Consequently, as prominently existing today if not prevailing, fragmentary-fake news has compromised the integrity of this truth, and alternative facts have redefined the reality of this fact—all of which have emerged from our diverse interpretations to compose our diverse theology and practice.

Based on the experiential reality of the accessibility of God’s presence and involvement, the truth of the whole gospel provides the full, complete profile of God’s face (paneh). God’s face is deeply penetrating, provoking, encompassing and integrating, because the gospel unfolds the face of God that is integrally distinguished above just an oblique profile and beyond merely an opaque profile. If our gospel does not define the full profile of God’s face, we cannot claim or proclaim the whole gospel. Is this perplexing, deflating or stirring?

Let’s reexamine the gospel—not necessarily as you have heard or seen it but as communicated by God’s relational terms. Communication in God’s relational terms, however, is in contrast to what is common in the human context and thus often in tension with human terms. Does this sound like good news to you?

The accessibility of God originates from God’s context, which is distinguished from the human context. What distinguishes the context of the Christian God is that God is holy (qadash, signifying uncommon, Lev 10:3; 2 Chr 30:27; Ps 22:3), and therefore separated from all that is common in the human context. This insurmountable separation can be understood as the holy partition that is inaccessible to anyone or anything common (cf. Ex 3:5). Thus, it is imperative that “you are to distinguish between the uncommon and the common” (Lev 10:10), in order for the whole gospel to be integrally received and responded to in its depth.

The distinction of uncommon is not a theological concept with limited practical application. Nor is uncommon a theological nuance with little significance other than perhaps the practice of what is ‘theologically correct’ (t.c., the counterpart to p.c., politically correct). Uncommon integrally distinguishes (1) the ontology of God (the whole who and what) from all other ontology common to the human context, and (2) the function of God (the whole how) from all other human function common in the human context. The good news is the experiential truth and reality that human ontology and function can be transformed from the limits and constraints of the common and be distinguished in the image and likeness of God’s uncommon ontology and function. Without the uncommon whole of who, what and how of God, our ontology and function can only be common, defined and determined by the common’s limits and constraints—to be discussed further throughout this study.

From the holy partition, the theological trajectory of God’s face penetrated the common sphere of the human context. In a distinct way this uncommon source of God’s relational response of grace created an epistemological problem for the common, because God’s face emerges from beyond the inviolable limits of the common’s epistemic field (source of knowledge and truth). Consequently, the constraints of the common context make God’s trajectory into the human context improbable, if not impossible as some attest by their faith. Improbability, however, must not be confused with impossibility but profoundly points to the extent of the gospel. That is, God’s face is distinguished beyond merely a deistic God and often more deeply significant than the God of theism—at least as commonly profiled, even with sola scriptura and by sola gratia. The experiential truth and objective fact of the gospel—beyond the limits of objective truth—is this reality:

In God’s relational response of grace vulnerably enacted from the holy partition, nothing less than the face of God’s improbable theological trajectory invades the human context and provocatively encounters humans by an intrusive relational path of no substitutes for the whole and uncommon God.

Therefore, the face of God we use in our theology is the presence and involvement of God we get. Depending on the measure used, this may not be good news after all.

The reality of face-to-face encounters is the primary means by which the whole and uncommon God’s presence (paneh) is involved, and the full profile of God’s face is experienced (cf. Num 14:14; Dt 5:4). Only nothing less and no substitutes for the gospel, therefore, distinguish the improbable theological trajectory (from common accounts of God’s presence) and the intrusive relational path (from less threatening accounts of God’s involvement) of the uncommon and whole profile of God’s face. And, as reflected in prevailing composition, anything less and any substitutes no longer compose the truth of the whole gospel but merely ‘thinner and lighter’ news.

The intrusive, penetrating, provoking news of God’s presence and involvement is good news for some but bad news for many. The invasion of God’s face stares directly into our face for the face-to-face challenge of our view of the world; yet, further and deeper, face to face challenges more than the ideology of our worldview. God’s improbable presence challenges the core of how we see reality itself—penetrating behind our virtual realities and deeper than our alternative realities. And encompassing more than our general view of all reality itself, the intrusive face-to-face involvement of God’s face confronts the depth (even deeper than core beliefs) of how we see our own person: the everyday reality of who, what and how we are as persons from our inner depth to our outer self—that is, our whole person whose full profile is often obscure or hidden even from our own self. In the gospel of this “forgiving God,” forgiving (nasa, Ps 99:8) means to lift up another’s face, which has the only purpose of direct face-to-face relationship together without guilt or shame. This is the primacy of relationship that composes the gospel only face to face, which is problematic for those primarily focused on other areas of the gospel (e.g. doctrine and related issues occupying the academy).

As an available option, of course, many don’t want to be vulnerable to their own person, and thus they find God’s face too threatening to encounter at true face value and to be involved with face to face. For them, they commonly either reject the gospel (e.g. as fake news) or revise the good news with alternative facts or interpretations in order to reduce the gospel of the intrusive face of God—especially with subtle revisions that appear reasonable and/or justified. Either way the whole gospel is not received or responded to; even God’s forgiveness (in nasa) cannot be received without th primacy of response face to face. Christians of whatever variation need to be aware of this volitional option and to give account of the extent and depth of their gospel. How comprehensive and therefore intrusive is your gospel?

The covenant relationship of love—as constituted only by the whole and uncommon God’s relational response of grace (Dt 7:7-9)—unfolded always and developed solely (sola gratia?) by the direct involvement of God’s “own presence” (paneh, face, Dt 4:37). God’s very own presence should not be simply assumed as normal, because God’s uncommon presence in the human context is improbable and for rationally-based humans is unimaginable. Within these human limits and constraints, the involvement of God’s face had to be intrusive in order for the whole and uncommon God to be known and understood. On this relational basis alone and for only this relational purpose and outcome—the sole relational significance of sola gratia—the gospel distinguishes the depth of the covenant relationship of love in its primacy of face-to-face relationship together. All Christians—especially those influenced by the gospel shaped from the Reformation—need to understand and face the truth that the new covenant embodied by Jesus (Lk 22:20, which was too threatening for some disciples, Jn 6:60,66) was not the inauguration of a different covenant but rather the deepest extension of the covenant of love. Therefore, we are challenged, if not confronted, directly to our face to embrace the covenant relationship of love in the primacy of face-to-face reciprocal relationship together.

The face-to-face significance constituting the primacy of covenant relationship emerged with Moses. At a vital point in his following God’s lead—in contrast to God’s intrusion earlier (Ex 3:6)—Moses openly asked the LORD for deeper connection “so that I may know you”; this was the ongoing connection in reciprocal relationship together (Ex 33:12-23). In one sense, Moses didn’t know fully what he was asking. This was understandable since he was focused on the whole and holy God, who is distinguished (pala, as in Job 42:3) beyond comparison in the human context and thus beyond human terms and experience (as Job learned, 42:4-5). Nevertheless, because of God’s relational involvement of love, the depth of God’s presence (paneh, face) continued to unfold in reciprocal relationship with Moses:

“My paneh will go with you” (Ex 33:14); “Thus the LORD communicated directly to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Ex 33:11, cf. Num 12:6-8)—the intimate connection that was too threatening for others (Dt 5:4-5)—therefore, Moses was vulnerable in relationship together with the involvement of his whole person, “whom the LORD knew face to face” (Dt 34:10).

This relational process is the relational basis, relational purpose and relational outcome composing the whole gospel that distinguishes its primacy both in nothing less than relationship together and in no substitutes for face-to-face involvement. Past and present, God’s love is enacted exclusively in the context of relationship and is involved inclusively in the process of face-to-face relationship: “The whole and uncommon God loved you…with his own presence…and communicated with you face to face” (Dt 4:37; 5:4). When the uncommon God became accessible and is further accessed by this relational context and process, the whole of who, what and how God is in ontology and function emerged and unfolds. No other God has been vulnerably accessible to us, even if bearing the same name. Therefore, only the experiential truth of this relational context and process define the gospel and thereby integrally determine the relational reality of our response of faith and involvement in reciprocal relationship together. Until all this is put together in our understanding (syniemi) to know the full profile of God’s face (cf. Jn 14:9), there is an immeasurable amount at stake: the whole of who, what and how God is, as well as the whole of who, what and how we are, and what unites us together.

The experiential truth of God’s face and the vulnerable reality of God’s presence and involvement compose the good news only in the integral primacy of not just relationship but face-to-face relationship together. If the reality of our gospel does not involve us in the primacy of face-to-face relationship together, we have claimed an alternative reality—even if augmented and enhanced. Therefore, the face of God we use in our practice is the presence and involvement of God we get in our experience.

Whether we’ve been a Christian for a long time or are a new Christian, understanding what constitutes being a disciple of Jesus and what’s involved in discipleship is not conceptual knowledge of basic information. The common thinking that ‘the more we know the more mature Christian we are’ is not a measure of significance in God’s terms. Rather we are addressing an ongoing journey composed by a relational process that requires us to deal with the vulnerable presence and intrusive involvement of the whole and uncommon God.

At whatever stage of our Christian life, the option is always available to us to avoid or keep our distance from God’s intrusive face. The main issue here is not an outright rejection of God but the unavoidable issue of who defines the relationship and thus how our relationship is ongoingly determined—the primary issue in all relationships. The terms, however, for relationship together with God are neither optional nor negotiable to human terms (even as mature persons of faith). Thus, on the one hand, just as the face-to-face involvement of God’s face confronts the depth of how we see our own person; on the other hand, how we present our face and how we involve our person expose issues shaped by human terms—terms which we commonly use to define our person and determine our relationships. These are the everyday terms we subtly use in relationship with God. Consider the subtle terms established in their surrounding context that declared followers of Jesus interjected to determine their discipleship (see Lk 9:57-62); consider also the implications of Peter’s bold commitment to follow Jesus with his entire life (Jn 13:37) after he rejected the intimate relational response of Jesus to vulnerably wash his feet.

Who defines the relationship with God and how this relationship is determined remain an open question that must be answered neither in ideal terms nor even in theological terms. For example, as seen in Peter, what do we do in our discipleship when we are faced with Jesus’ actions or words that are contrary to our basic practices personally, socioculturally and religiously? The simple, unembellished or unenhanced reality is that we ongoingly seek even inadvertently to renegotiate God’s relational terms with our reduced terms. Moreover, our everyday terms are also becoming programmed in our brains by modern technology, for example, in a dependence on our mobile phones for social media connections to define our persons and determine our relationships. Our terms aren’t always apparent to us, yet their influence is evident when our terms are threatened or lovingly challenged to change. The extent of our resistance to changing (literally turning around) to God’s relational terms will remain in effect in one way or another, until we are redeemed from our defining terms and transformed to wholeness in our person and relationships.

The issues of our person and relationships are unavoidable in the human context and indispensable for all human life. Therefore, the presence and involvement of God we experience is the gospel we claim in our theology.

This brings us to the pivotal point in the gospel, the transition of which will determine the persons and relationships we get.

Persons of faith have renegotiated God’s relational terms for reciprocal relationship together from the beginning (e.g. Gen 3:6; Dt 10:16; Jer 4:4; Mk 7:6-8, cf. Rom 2:28-29; Heb 10:5-10). This reflects the common nature of how we live as persons and engage in relationships; we simply shape things on our terms and subject God to our shaping in both our theology and practice. In other words, we give priority (read primacy) to our terms while subtly rendering God’s terms for persons and relationships secondary (as Peter demonstrated earlier). Yet, the key in this relational process is less about blatant disobedience and more about redefining who, what and how we are in relationship with God.

This deeper issue gets to the heart of our theology and practice by focusing on our anthropology: the basis for how we define persons and determine relationships, which underlies all matters of human life. Penetrating to the heart of our life is why God’s face confronts our face in the depth of how we see our own person daily (even moment to moment). This everyday reality is critical for how we live with our self, with others, and thus with God. Alternative and virtual realities have shaped our anthropology in pervasive and subtle ways; and this has significantly influenced the theological anthropology defining our ontology and determining our function in reduced and fragmentary terms less than whole.[1] Consequently, the face of God pursues us in depth to get to the heart of our person and relationships: “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9) and “What are you doing here?” (1 Kgs 19: 9,13)

Therefore, the presence and involvement of God’s face we experience in relationship together is the gospel we claim in our theology and receive in our practice.

God’s relational terms emerged at creation (Gen 1:26-30) and in the primordial garden (Gen 2:15,18) to constitute human persons and relationships together in unchanging, unalterable, immutable wholeness. These persons were defined and their relationship was determined in invariable wholeness from the inner depth to their outer composition, which established them together in distinct consciousness of their whole person (person-consciousness, Gen 2:25). Unlike chameleons changing according to their surrounding context, whole persons and relationships are integrated from inner out according to the qualitative image of the uncommon God and the relational likeness of the whole of God—the whole-ly God, the Trinity. Therefore, the created wholeness of persons and relationships is irreversible—that is, unless they shift to human terms and thereby reconfigure their person and relationships from the outer in (demonstrated in Gen 3:6-7). The shift included going from person-consciousness from outer in to an outer-in focus on their self, thus establishing the self-consciousness prevailing in the human context (including churches) that so preoccupies persons and relationships. This shift shapes persons and relationships to the subtle influences of the surrounding human context and thus to the captivating influence of reductionism and its counter-relational workings.

The experiential truth of the uncommon God’s qualitative image and the relational reality of the Trinity’s relational likeness are not subject to human terms and shaping. Yet, God is ongoingly subjected to our subtle shifts to our terms, all of which reconfigure our persons and relationships with a theological anthropology of reduced ontology and function contrary to the image and likeness of God’s whole ontology and function. In other words, common in our faith and practice are prominent illusions about our person (e.g. as saved sinners, in our spirituality and our righteousness) and simulations in our relationships (e.g. in our church fellowship, our service and our worship). Underlying such illusions and simulations is a theological anthropology that defines our person based primarily on the quantitative terms of what we do; and this invariably has shifted our focus to outer in and the inevitable comparative process with what others do (as the disciples engaged, Lk 9:46; 22:24)—all of which determine how we engage in relationships based on secondary matter, even with God. What this exposes further and deeper is our need for the integrating effects of the gospel of God’s face, who urgently wants our response to “Where are you?” and “What are you doing here?”

The pivotal issue of either integrating or reconfiguring our person will define the extent of our person and determine the depth of our relationships that compose who, what and how we are in everyday life. This inner-out or outer-in composition implies what makes up the image and likeness of God, the reflection of which then validly or invalidly signifies who, what and how God is. Indeed, an immeasurable amount is at stake here, with which we gamble by any shifts to our terms. God, however, is unwilling to allow the shaping of human terms to reduce or fragment the whole ontology and function of God and of God’s image and likeness. Moreover, though we willfully compromise the created integrity of our person and relationships, the nature of who and what God is doesn’t allow God to change the integrity of whole ontology and function, or God would no longer be God. Nor can we be the image and likeness of God in anything less and any substitutes, even though we make that assumption.

Therefore, the face of God is always pursuing, intruding and provoking the depth of our person from inner out in order to encompass and integrate our whole person—the gospel of God’s deliverance and salvation (i.e. transformation) to wholeness. In this vulnerable relational process the heart is primary and all our other functions are secondary, regardless of what priority we may give them. Here again, the underlying issue of our theological anthropology is defining for us: The theological anthropology we use will be the persons and relationships we get.

The responsibility of theological anthropology is to be theological—that is, not physical, social or philosophical—and thus not to shape its theology anthropologically, which is more complicated than appears. This responsibility cannot be fulfilled as long as our epistemic field is restricted to the limits of the human context, and also by its constraints. To go further than these limits and get beyond its constraints, we can again learn from Job’s experience. In his frustration or cynicism, and perhaps despair, Job initially raised this question (from an opposite approach made in worship, Ps 8:4; 144:3): : “What are human beings that you make such a big deal (gadal) of them, that you even set your heart (leb) on them and are involved (paqad) with them every day…all the time?” (Job 7:17-18) What provoked Job’s question specifically involved his own person in God’s context.

First, Job experienced being the object of Satan’s reductionism that defined his person by what he had and did (Job 1:10-11); but Job would not let his person be defined in those reduced terms (1:20-22). Then, Job’s focus on his person shifted from inner out (2:3) to outer in (2:4-5). When he also made the outer in primary, he was conflicted in person-consciousness (whole person focused) and became self-conscious (centered on his outer-in self) in his context with God (e.g. 10:1; 27:2). What unfolded is critical to the process of theological anthropology and basic to what and who constitute the person in God’s context.

To answer his question about the person in God’s context, Job narrowed his epistemic field (e.g. 23:3, 8-9) in order to explain his person (but limited to outer in), and why this was happening to his person in God’s context. What Job experienced was a struggle common to all persons in God’s context: the vacillation between inner out and outer in (19:26-27)—also between person-consciousness and self-consciousness; and the confusion that preoccupation in the outer in creates (19:19; 27:2; 29:2-5). In the midst of this struggle, Job’s will still focused on the primacy of relationship with God (2:9-10; 13:15), even though his person-consciousness waned. His main focus on relationship was the key that allowed him to receive feedback to his answers—answers which begged the question from God (38:2)—in order to engage the relational epistemic process with God for the heuristic function to know and understand his (including our) whole person in God’s context. The relational outcome is theological anthropology rather than theology shaped anthropologically.

In God’s response to Job (38-41), God takes Job’s epistemic field beyond the human context to establish the person in God’s context, that is, the complete context necessary to compose the narrative for human being in whole ontology and being human in whole function (as in 38:36). Therefore, in Job’s assumptions about the person in God’s context, he realized his speculation was based on a narrow epistemic field and its hermeneutic limits (40:5), which merely reflect the limits and constraints of the human context. In distinct humility, he received God’s direct relational response in this relational epistemic process (42:4-5); and God’s intrusive response provided Job with the epistemological clarification and hermeneutic correction needed for whole knowledge and understanding contrary to his fragmentary knowledge and understanding (42:3). This relational outcome can only be experienced in the primacy of relationship with God in epistemic humility.

For our edification and humility, Job learned the following in being apart from God’s relational context and relational epistemic process:

Anything less than and any substitutes for the whole signify theological anthropology discourse that “obscures (hashak) God’s plan and purpose (‘esah) for the human person with words without whole knowledge and understanding” (da’at, 38:2); this is the reductionist result of attempting “to explain (nāgad) the person in God’s context I did not understand, the person too distinguished (pala) for me to know from a limited epistemic field and narrow interpretive lens” (42:3).

The heuristic process (the journey of human discovery) does not and cannot go beyond its epistemic field. So, for example, both science and theology cannot explain, define and determine the human person any further than the knowledge available to them in their epistemology—though obviously this hasn’t stopped speculative discourse from speaking about and even for God (sound familiar?). As we deliberate on the person in God’s context, we need to learn from Job. He experienced ontological struggle when he focused on his outer in, which led to relational difficulty in reciprocal relationship with God. On the one hand, Job shared his feelings openly with God but then, on the other hand, he spoke for God on his own terms; and the latter involved both an epistemological and hermeneutical problem. The ontological, relational, epistemological and hermeneutical issues are critical for our knowledge and understanding of the whole person distinguished in God’ context.

The person in God’s context is distinguished (pala) just in the epistemic field of the whole and uncommon (whole-ly) God’s relational context, while integrally engaged in the relational epistemic process of God’s communicative action (the relational Word from God, not referential). As noted earlier, pala signifies to separate, to be wonderful, that is to say, to distinguish beyond what exists in the human context and cannot be defined by its comparative terms, or the person is no longer distinguished. Thus, this person can be distinguished only by whole ontology and function uniquely constituted by God, the Creator, the distinguishing nature (no less than pala) of which was beyond Job’s knowledge and understanding (42:3). God pointed Job back to the unique constitution of the person from inner out, who has whole knowledge (hokmah) in the ‘inner’ (tuhot) person and whole understanding (biynah) also in the ‘inner’ (sekwiy, Job 38:36). The ‘inner’ (meaning of Heb tuhot and sekwiy is uncertain) has no certainty in referential language because it signifies a relational term that cannot be known and understood in referential terms. The ‘inner’ that God points Job back to was in the beginning: the whole ontology and function uniquely constituted by God that distinguishes human persons beyond comparison in the qualitative image and relational likeness of God’s wholeness (Gen 1:26-27).

Evolutionary biology highlights the development of the physical body, including the brain, for Homo sapiens—that is, the bodily development of human antecedents in physical form. While I affirm this physical development, science cannot assume that this physical body developed into the human person. Even with the development of the brain for higher level function unique to humans, the evolution process can only account at best for humans from the outer in. There is a limited quality within the quantitative structure of outer in that neuroscientist Antonio Damasio identified in the evolutionary development of the organism’s interior.[2] This does not distinguish the whole person but only defines a fragmentary person without the significance of being whole from inner out. So, then, what is the ‘inner’ of the person and how do we account for it with the human body to integrally constitute the whole person from inner out?

We cannot limit the dynamic process of creation, either by the limits of our epistemic field or by the constraints of a biased hermeneutic lens, which applies to both science and theology in the realms of physics and metaphysics. In the creation narrative, the person is distinguished by the direct creative action of the Creator and not indirectly through an evolutionary process that strains for continuity and lacks significant purpose and meaning. At a specified, yet unknown, point in the creation process, the Creator explicitly acted on the developed physical body (the quantitative outer) to constitute the innermost (“breath of life,” neshamah hay) with the qualitative inner (“living being,” nephesh, Gen 2:7). The wonderful (pala) relational outcome was the whole person from inner out (the inseparably integrated qualitative and quantitative) distinguished irreducibly in the image and likeness of the Creator (Gen 1:26-27), yet whose integrity has been consistently compromised in our theology and practice.

The qualitative inner of nephesh is problematic for the person in either of two ways. Either nephesh is reduced when primacy is given to the quantitative and thus the outer; all animals have nephesh but without the qualitative inner that distinguishes only the person (Gen 1:30). Or, nephesh is problematic when it is fragmented from the body, for example, as the soul, the substance of which does not distinguish the whole person even though it identifies the qualitative uniqueness of humans. The referential language composing the soul does not get to the depth of the qualitative inner of the person in God’s context (cf. Job in Job 10:1; 27:2), because the inner was constituted by God in relational terms for whole ontology and function. The ancient poet even refers to nephesh as soul but further illuminates qereb as “all that is within me” (Ps 103:1), as “all my innermost being” (NIV) to signify the center, interior, the heart of a person’s whole being (cf. human ruah and qereb in Zec 12:1). This distinction gets us to the depth of the qualitative inner that rendering nephesh as soul does not. The reduction or fragmentation of nephesh is critical to whether the person in God’s context is whole-ly (integrally whole and holy/uncommon) distinguished or merely referenced in some uniqueness.

The qualitative inner of the person can be considered as the inner person. This identity implies an outer person, which certainly would employ a dualism if inner and outer are perceived as separate substances as in some frameworks of Greek philosophy (material and immaterial, physical and spiritual). In Hebrew thinking, the inner (center) and outer (peripheral) aspects of the person function together dynamically to define the whole person and to constitute the integral person’s whole ontology and function (cf. Rom 2:28-29). One functional aspect would not be seen apart from the other; nor would either be neglected, at least in theory, but which was problematic throughout Israel’s history as the people in God’s context (e.g. Dt 10:16; Isa 29:13).

In Hebrew terminology of the OT, the nephesh that God implanted of the whole of God into the human person is signified in ongoing function by the heart (leb). The function of the qualitative heart is critical for the whole person and holding together the person in the innermost. The biblical proverbs speak of the heart in the following terms:

The heart is identified as “the wellspring” (starting point, tosa’ot) of the ongoing function of the human person (Prov 4:23); using the analogy to a mirror, the heart also functions as what gives definition to the person (Prov 27:19); and, when not reduced or fragmented (“at peace,” i.e. wholeness), as giving life to “the body” (basar, referring to the outer aspect of the person, Prov 14:30, NIV), which describes the heart’s integrating function for the whole person (inner and outer together).

Without the function of the heart, the whole person from inner out created by God is reduced to function from outer in, distant or separated from the heart. This functional condition was ongoingly critiqued by God and responded to for the inner-out change necessary to be whole (e.g. Gen 6:5-6; Dt 10:16; 30:6; 1 Sam 16:7; Isa 29:13; Jer 12:2; Eze 11:19; 18:31; 33:31; Joel 2:12-13). Later in the strategic shift of God’s relational response to our human condition, Jesus made unmistakable that the openness of the heart (“in spirit and truth”) is what the Father requires and seeks in reciprocal relationship together (Jn 4:23-24).

The integrating function of the heart is irreplaceable. The mind may be able to provide quantitative unity (e.g. by identifying the association of parts) for the human person, as quantified in the brain by neuroscience. However, while this may be necessary and useful at times, it is never sufficient by itself to distinguish the whole person, nor adequate to experience the relationships necessary to be whole. Our heart must always remain primary in defining our person and must not be merely assumed in our theology and practice or taken for granted in our focus.

The priority of the inner person over the outer is illustrated in the selection of Saul’s replacement as king. When God sent Samuel to Jesse’s household to anoint one of his sons chosen to be king (1 Sam 16:1-13), Samuel thought for sure that Eliab was the chosen one. Yet, God clarified that Samuel based his conclusion on what he perceived of Eliab’s person through the lens of a reductionist framework using an outer-in approach (v. 7, “appearance,” mar’eh, signifying outward appearance). Samuel had shifted to an outer-in approach in contrast to God who “looks at the heart” using an inner-out focus of personness. By returning to God’s perceptual framework, Samuel was able to perceive the deeper qualitative significance of the whole person from the inner out, thus understanding the significance of David’s outer features (‘ayin and tob) reflecting his inner person (v. 12). In contrast, the priority of the outer over the inner is illustrated in a subtle experience of Ezekiel, where his performance and reputation became the focus over the significance of his message (Eze 33:30-32)—an illusion that continues today, for example, where the medium becomes the message. His “audience” demonstrated a higher level function that is misleading, particularly when enhanced by intelligence and education (cf. Lk 10:21).

The qualitative significance of the heart is not composed in referential language and terms but only distinguishes the person in relational terms that God “breathed” into human persons. Nephesh may be rendered “soul” but its functional significance is the heart (Dt 30:6; Rom 2:28-29). From the beginning, the heart and not the soul defined and determined the qualitative innermost of the person in God’s context; the soul’s prominence unfolded much later from the influence of philosophical thought, shaped by referential terms. The heart’s significance only begins to define the image of God, yet the heart’s function identifies why the heart is so vital to the person integrally in the image and likeness of whole-ly God. God’s creative action, design and purpose emerge only in relational language, the relational terms of which are not for unilateral relationship but reciprocal relationship together. Therefore, the whole-ly God’s desires are to be vulnerably involved with the whole person in the primacy of relationship—intimate relationship together. Since the function of the heart integrally constitutes the whole person, God does not have the whole person for relationship until it involves the heart (Dt 10:14-16; Ps 95:7-11).

This may bring up a question that would be helpful to address. If God constituted the physical body with the qualitative inner to distinguish the human person from all other animals, how does relatedness further distinguish human persons since most animal life subsists in relatedness also? Not only does the qualitative distinguish the human person from inner out with the quantitative according to the image of God, but at this intersection of God’s creative action, relationship was now also constituted as never before (as in “not good to be apart,” Gen 2:18)—conjointly and inseparably with the qualitative—to fully distinguish the human person as whole according to both the qualitative image of the uncommon God and the relational likeness of the whole of God (namely the whole-ly God’s relational ontology and function as the Trinity). The primordial garden illuminates the integral dynamic of the qualitative and relational in its wholeness, as well as its reduction—the convergence of the physical, psychological, the relational, the social and the cultural, which together go into defining and determining both the human person and subsequent human condition. Paying attention to only one (or some) of the above gives us a fragmentary or incomplete understanding of what it is to be human. The creation narrative provides us with not a detailed (much less scientific) account of humans but the integrated perspective (framework and lens) necessary to define and determine the whole person, as well as the underlying reductionism of the human condition. Therefore, these contexts, expanding parameters, limits and constraints are crucial for theological anthropology to distinguish what and who only can be the whole person in God’s context.

God acts only in relational terms and communicates only in relational language. Any person focused outer in does not make relational connection with God (as Job struggled, Job 23:3,8-9), and thus is unable to know and understand God merely by referential language, no matter the quantity of referential information about God (as the theological academy labors today). In reality, any such knowledge and understanding about God is simply self-referencing, whereby theological discourse becomes speaking for God from the cognitive level of the mind rather than receiving God’s relational communication and expressing this relational knowledge and understanding of God from the depth level of the heart.

The human heart is irreplaceable to define and determine the wholeness of persons and relationships from inner out. Without the qualitative function of the heart to integrate the whole person, the only alternatives for persons are ontological simulations and functional illusions shaped by reductionism, as observed in the human context with all their variations. For example, this reduces persons from their essential reality in likeness of the personal Trinity to a virtual-augmented reality, which is the prevailing identity of persons being defined by the Internet—notably determined by their function in social media. The heart’s significance unfolds in relational terms for the relational outcome that we need to understand more deeply in the divine narrative composing the narrative of human being and being human: The face of the whole and uncommon God ongoingly pursues, solely in relational terms, the heart and wants our heart (as in 1 Sam 16:7; Prov 21:2; Jer 17:10; Lk 16:15; Rom 8:27; Rev 2:23); that is, God pursues only the whole person for vulnerable involvement in integral reciprocal relationship together in the integrity of the person’s created likeness. The innermost person signified by heart function has the most significance to God and, though never separated from or at the neglect of the outer, always needs to have greater priority of importance for the person’s definition and function to be distinguished in God’s context.

This is the pivotal point in the gospel composed by the intrusive face of whole-ly God’s presence and involvement, who responds for nothing less and no substitutes but the whole ontology and function of persons and relationships. Therefore, the gospel we claim and receive defines the person we are and determines the relationships we get. Yet, intruding further to complete this outcome is the presence and involvement of the embodied Word: First, the gospel we use will be the Jesus we get; and then the Jesus we use in both our theology and practice will be the persons and relationships we get.

The reality of God facing us is that, on the one hand, the theology we use is the practice we get, nothing more. On the other hand, many Christians don’t even practice their own theology; thus, their theology could be orthodox but their practice would then be unorthodox or heterodox rather than orthopraxy—which includes the practice just to be theologically correct (t.c.). In no other area of our faith is this more evident than in relation to Jesus, and this obviously then has far-reaching consequences for the disciples we get. This urgently raises a further question to add to God’s two penetrating questions above; in his relational disappointment Jesus asks the confronting question that is crucial for all his disciples: “Don’t you know me—even after I have vulnerably shared my whole person with you such a long time?” (Jn 14:9, NIV)

Yes, therefore, the Jesus we know is at most the Jesus we follow—nothing more in our theology and practice, though our practice can certainly be anything less and any substitute.

Most Christologies include the Word’s improbable theological trajectory but do not embrace Jesus’ intrusive relational path. This is problematic for theology and practice and leads to the diverse disciples and discipleship we, the church and the world get.

The evangelist in the Gospel of John provided a theological overview of the Word’s improbable trajectory and intrusive relational path. In and from the beginning, the Word’s ontology was nothing less than God—neither coming into being later as God and thus a subordinate deity to the Father (e.g. as proposed by Origen), nor only appearing to be divine but merely human (e.g. as Arius presumed). As God, the Word also functioned as Creator, whose ontology constituted human persons in his image and likeness (Jn 1:1-4); and the embodied Word also enacted the whole function of God’s image and likeness for human persons to understand its full significance (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). Yet, even though the face of God vulnerably turned to shine on his own people “in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6), “his own people did not accept him” (Jn 1:11) or receive his relational response of grace “to give new relationship together in wholeness” (as promised in God’s blessing, Num 6:26).

Since the gospel we accept is the Jesus we get, we have to examine if the above narrative has also been consequential for the Jesus in our theology and practice. To amplify the issues at stake here, the evangelist reorders the chronology of events by inserting Jesus’ cleansing of the temple near the beginning of John’s Gospel (2:13-17, not during Holy Week, Mk 11:15-17). The relational context and process of God’s house (family dwelling) had been reduced and fragmented; and persons and relationships no longer functioned in wholeness in order to communicate with God (“house of prayer for all the nations”) in reciprocal relationship together. Therefore, Jesus forcefully intruded (invaded) their human relational condition to provoke the change necessary “to give new relationship together in wholeness.” Hmmm, would Jesus take similar action with churches today?

What Jesus enacted was his vulnerable involvement in his relational response of love to our human condition, which unfolds by necessity against reductionism and its counter-relational workings—and thus unavoidably in all human contexts. Such response unfolds only on Jesus’ intrusive relational path and cannot be minimized or ignored. This is the gospel that Simeon forecasted would unfold (Lk 2:34-35), and that Jesus fulfilled beyond most of our expectations (Lk 12:49-53; Mt 10:34-36). The depth of this gospel is difficult for most Christians to accept, choosing rather to simply ignore God’s relational terms or to revise them with alternative facts. For example, the common Christian focus on Jesus’ love is to idealize it and make the good news of God’s love primarily pleasant and pleasing to hear. Indeed, the gospel we use is the Jesus we get.

For Jesus’ whole person, however, the defining issue is only and always about whole ontology and function: First, involving the integrity of his whole ontology and function enacted in the human context; and second, in relational response of love to our human condition, to intrude, penetrate, provoke, encompass and integrate the ontology and function of persons and relationships in order to transform their ontology and function to wholeness in the image and likeness of God—the uncommon distinguished above the common and prevailing over it.

The involvement of his whole ontology and function was enacted, for example, when he approached Jerusalem on the first day of Holy Week: “he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you had only recognized on this day the terms that make for wholeness’” (Lk 19:41-42)—intensifying what needs to be integrated with the primacy in Luke 13:34 for whole understanding of Jesus. The enactment of his whole ontology and function was fulfilled ultimately later that week, culminating painfully in “My God, my God, why have you forsaken met?” (Mt 27:46). There is certainly ontological mystery here about what happened to Jesus’ whole ontology. But this was the unavoidable relational repercussion of Jesus’ whole function, whose enactment clearly illuminates the deepest relational involvement of his whole ontology and function that his person vulnerably sacrificed in his relational response of love to our human condition. Nothing less and no substitutes for his ontology and function could fulfill the involvement necessary to complete this relational response of love. Anything less and any substitutes for Jesus’ ontology and function would have been insufficient to deconstruct the holy partition and remove the veil for face-to-face relationship together with God—just as the Hebrews manifesto integrated about Jesus the high priest for us to follow.

Earlier Jesus’ intrusive relational response of love also was demonstrated, for example, when he jolted the religious status quo represented by Nicodemus, by giving primacy to whole ontology and function and the significance of whole theology and practice (Jn 3:1-16). Unlike many of his cohorts, therefore, Nicodemus learned: The presence and involvement of God’s face in relational response of love that we experience is the gospel we claim in our theology and receive in our practice; and the gospel we embrace in whole theology and practice is the whole ontology and function of Jesus we experience in reciprocal relationship together. This is not a formulaic faith for us to conform to (as in the Rule of Faith) but the relationship of faith distinguishing the relational process that requires the vulnerable involvement of the whole person, both Jesus’ and ours.

The intrusive relational path of Jesus’ whole person further unfolds in John’s Gospel. Integrated both with his invasion of the structure, system and institution of religious tradition, and with his provocation of the religious status quo, Jesus also unashamedly (significant in an honor-shame context) intruded on the prevailing sociocultural norms, in order to penetrate to the heart of human ontology and function with the vulnerable disclosure of God’s strategic shift in relational response to our condition (Jn 4:4-26, to be discussed later). From this strategic shift will also unfold integrally the tactical and functional shifts of Jesus’ increasingly intrusive relational path to compose the gospel of God’s whole and uncommon face, present and involved in the primacy of reciprocal relationship together on the sole relational basis (sola gratia) of whole ontology and function. Jesus’ nonnegotiable intrusive relational path involved nothing less and no substitutes.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly because it is predictable in this age of reductionism, whole ontology and function become blurred in diverse Christologies. This diverse condition has created a theological fog engulfing Jesus’ whole person—notably his intrusive relational path. Consequently, whole ontology and function have also become ambiguous, which reflects the hermeneutic door opening wide to the subtlety of human shaping of both Jesus’ person and our persons, thus as well as shaping our relationship together. The relational consequence is that many Christians live, likely unknowingly, their faith on a different relational path than Jesus, whereby whom they follow subtly diverges from the full profile of the intrusive face of Jesus’ whole person. Simply stated about our diverse condition: The truth and reality of the whole and uncommon God are fragmented and commonized, transposing our persons and relationships to epistemological illusions of the truth and ontological simulations of reality. Given our diverse condition, then, in relation to the truth of the whole gospel existing in Christian faith today, it is not unreasonable to ask: Has much of Christian faith essentially entered a post-truth period, in which theology and practice are composing what can be effectively considered a digital Christianity that is ‘thinner and lighter’?

It predictably follows, therefore, the Jesus we use will define the persons we are and determine the relationships we get, and thereby will be the disciples we are and the discipleship we practice.

Jesus fully understands what’s at stake here, and what we are all up against ongoingly in the prominent presence yet subtle influence of reductionism and its counter-relational workings in our lives and churches. On Jesus’ intrusive relational path, he makes no assumptions about our condition—“no one can see…God without being born anew in whole ontology and function”—and, as Simeon predicted, “the inner thoughts of many will be revealed, and a sword will pierce your own heart too.”

Jesus was particularly blunt directly with his disciples. In his definitive manifesto on discipleship (the Sermon on the Mount, Mt 5-7), Jesus emphatically declared: “For I tell you without apology, unless your righteousness [i.e. who, what and how you are] exceeds that of the religious reductionists, you will never participate in my family” (5:20). Just as he later magnified this reality with Peter at his footwashing (Jn 13:8), we should not, must not, cannot be comfortable, complacent or complicit with reduced ontology and function, and expect to be the disciples who “follow me in my whole ontology and function” with nothing less and no substitutes for our whole ontology and function. This is the depth of intrusive involvement that Jesus continually had to make with Peter in order to convict him of the relational imperative to be the whole of Jesus’ disciple in the primacy of whole discipleship (Jn 21:19,22).

In other words—only relational words and not referential—when we claim the whole gospel, receiving the intrusive Jesus’ whole ontology and function is neither optional nor selectively partial and negotiable. By being intrusive, Jesus’ whole person is not obscure, ambiguous or in doubt as to who, what and how he is. When Jesus forcefully cleared out God’s house of reductionism, his whole person was clearly displayed to distinguish who, what and how he was. The only question raised at that time was about the basis for his intrusive action (Jn 2:18). The question for us is whether we will receive the irreducible ontology and function of Jesus’ whole person—no matter how intrusive and threatening—in order to determine the “me” we will follow in reciprocal relationship together, and on this relational basis alone (the whole significance of sola gratia and sola fide), be in our ontology and function the disciples of whole theology and practice.

Again, therefore, the whole ontology and function of Jesus’ person we receive and thereby know in the primacy of relationship together is the Jesus we follow with the whole ontology and function of our person in the depth of involvement in ongoing reciprocal relationship.

Furthermore, what keeps unfolding with Jesus (not to be confused with process theology)—which further composes the whole gospel needing to be claimed and received—is the immeasurable depth of involvement of his relational response of love to our inescapable condition (a condition even in our churches). Nothing less and no substitutes define the ontology of Jesus’ person and determine his function; and this experiential truth and relational reality integrally constitute his presence and involvement in the Trinity and the Trinity’s presence and involvement in reciprocal relationship together with us—the experiential truth and relational reality of the whole gospel.

Therefore, the whole of Jesus’ person unfolding whom we receive further and deeper is the intrusive gospel of the vulnerable presence and intimate involvement of the whole and uncommon God’s face. The full profile of whole-ly God is the Trinity, whose persons together as One we embrace with our whole persons in the qualitative image of the Trinity in our reciprocal relationships together in the relational likeness of the Trinity—just as Jesus prayed to constitute his family (Jn 17:20-23). These are the persons and their relationships called and following in their transformation to wholeness—with nothing less and no substitutes in their theology and practice, even if reformed or renewed.

[1] For an expanded discussion on the basic issue of theological anthropology, see my study The Person in Complete Context: The Whole of Theological Anthropology Distinguished (Theological Anthropology Study, 2014). Online at http://www.4X12.org.

[2] Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010).