Where Do We Go From Here

34 Similarly, Gamaliel’s theology is in fact profoundly problematic. If this actually means that whatever happens is God’s will understood in retrospect, then this creates insurmountable problems when bad things happen. Evoking “it’s all in the mystery of God” for those times when it doesn’t make sense hardly seems like a coherent account of God’s action in the world, and sounds more like fatalism than responsible engagement and participation in God’s world. Abraham Kuyper articulates this problem most acutely: It is not true that God the Lord destroys forthwith that which is not from Him and crowns with success every endeavour of all His believers…. How is it that Gamaliel’s advice, so profoundly untrue, is repeated again and again in life? Could it not be just as well the other way around, that to have no success suggests virtue? … Oppressed, downtrodden, molested— can these not be signs that you are walking on the way of God? 1 Even the text itself raises questions about Gamaliel’s advice, for the two exemplars he offers both ended with the dispersion and scattering of the followers (vv 36-37). So perhaps his appeal convinced his colleagues because they read “between the lines”? What then does this mean for us, reading this text in the twenty-first century, and for our mission? In a way, this text reminds me of Job’s friends. If you study what they said, it is hard to find anything ostensibly wrong in what they said, yet God says they spoke wrongly. The common problem is the idea that what is true of a particular situation is then thought to apply to all situations. Yes, there are times when obeying God means opposing empire. Yes, there are times when each of us say, “This came about because God willed it”. But these statements don’t apply to all situations at all times. Each context, each culture, each moment requires discernment, faith, trust, possibility. This makes our journey of faith much more challenging, but also much more interesting and open-ended. So really challenging Scriptures like Paul and Gamaliel (texts that scholars to this day have wildly different opinions about!) are good to read, they are important to read, because life is really challenging, mission is really challenging, discerning God’s will is really, really challenging. 1 . Revisie der revisie-legende (1879); English translation in G.C. Berkouwer. The Providence of God  (Studies in Dogmatics; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952). pages. 173-74.