Word & Deed on the Plane of Time

Genesis, Genesis 18

Post last updated on July 18, 2024

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Genesis 18 serves as an unexpected affirmation that the character of God and men is revealed and understood in time. This fact, however, is evident enough from the Bible’s very beginnings—scenes in Genesis that confirm the relation between word and deed. Of course, we cannot confine words and deeds to time alone: these possess expressions that also belong to eternity; but we can say that there is no time without them both. This manifestly appears to us from the vantage point of the creation, when the LORD made both heaven and earth by speaking them into existence. It is in such a kind of creation that God has demonstrated his singular authority and power. It is also in such an act that time finds its beginning.

Even so, God is not the only one who speaks. This is a faculty that he has also given to men, testifying to the unique relationship that God founded between himself and them. That said, our words share a different effect and significance than do God’s. His words may become the means of creation; ours unavoidably rest in the rhythms of reflection—description and confession. A man is first reflective and only later creative, and then only in a qualified way. He sensibly borrows materials for whatever work he tends to call his own; but insofar as a man must borrow materials for his creations and inspiration for his ideas, he is not truly a creator. Even fantasies are derived from realities: none but God creates where nothing existed before.¹Connected to this is the way that man is related to his works in a way that is less and different that God is to his. Andrew Davison writes that “we can helpfully contrast two kinds of relation between a maker and something made. In most mundane acts of making, the cause is responsible for the ‘becoming’ of what is made, but not for its continued ‘being’: as, for instance, a building does not depend on the builder after it is made nor the food on the cook. In contrast, we might consider a sunbeam and the sun. The instant that the sun is occluded, the sunbeam vanishes. On the standard view of Christian theology, creation is like the sunbeam, not like the house or the bowl of soup. God is responsible for creation’s being as well as for its initial ‘becoming’. …Creation is less like a material artefact, perhaps, than a song, since the song lasts while the singer continues to sing. These ideas show the proximity of the doctrine of creation to the doctrine of providence. God provides for things not only in some particular way, for instance by protecting them from this or that danger, but also in providing things at their very core, in that he continually provides things with their being.” See Andrew Davison, Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphsyics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 27.

To this point, even the most imaginative efforts of poets succeed only in and upon reflection of a world that already exists. This is almost certainly because of the way that symbols work in our own minds. They obtain usefulness because they are, in fact, already understood. The abstract idea stands upon its concrete predecessor, and concrete ideas are invariably rooted in creation and its entailments. Whether the world is loved or hated, whether its precepts are received or rejected, its existing facts become the substantive catalogue that stands prior to conjecture. A man’s words cannot avoid their origin in his reflection; they are effected and uttered in a world and by a wisdom that precedes them. Accordingly, even a man’s fictions are delivered to us in the forms of his faith.

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Existing relations, then, help us to understand and confirm various distinctions. We may also, then, consider the identity of man according to the character and content of his words, particularly because his ability to speak has been granted by a God who speaks. If both God and men possess the capacity of speech—and if their speech also possesses different powers, their speech will also demonstrate their distinct character, whatever correspondences it also proves. The questions are, therefore, predictable: What does a man’s speech tell us about his nature? How does a man’s speech confirm his identity as a creature but also deny his deity? Is there something that all men must say, even as there are some things he may not? And, if so, are these necessities by virtue of his being? And is his being determinative upon his doing? Yes, and this is all discerned in the connection between word and deed. The LORD demonstrates his singular character by his own words and deeds, and man then proves his rightful place by a different and necessary use of these same powers. Accordingly, the idea of the image of God is refined for us: man possesses a likeness to God, but he is in no way God. A man may and will speak, and this is among his characteristics that testify to his likeness to God; but some occasions will prove that he must speak, and speak differently than his maker. A difference is, therefore, discovered. Genesis 18 illustrates this, so that a desert in Canaan restates a fact of creation.

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The narrative of Genesis 18 begins as three men visit Abraham and Sarah in Mamre. The couple has pitched their tent there and receive three men as guests. The first part of the chapter (verses 1-15) records their initial conversation; the second portion (verses 16-33) tells how the same three men rise from their meal with Abraham and then look pensively toward Sodom. One of the men, soon confirmed as an appearance of the LORD (Genesis 18:17), speaks to Abraham of the judgement that he intends to bring upon the city. We only need highlight the facts of chapter 18 to understand how its two sections can be related together. Speech, but also its posture, serves to confirm the identity of the several characters. My point is that the speeches of God and men inevitably reflect their different natures.

For this reason, the LORD’s initial silence is striking, and even eerie. His quiet is apparent enough to become (if I may say) overheard. He enters the scene as a man, but his silence conveys prerogative and, accordingly, becomes a kind of communication. His restraint is measured against Abraham’s frantic pace, who rushes to perform the duties of a host. Abraham speaks and serves the LORD, who may, in fact, refrain from talk and be served. The difference in the men is hereby confirmed: the great Abraham is servant to a visiting lord. Their identities are reflected in their words and deeds.

When the LORD finally breaks his silence, his manner of doing so is also revealing: He announces his own faithfulness. He tells Sarah what he will soon do by recalling what he has already spoken on a previous occasion. “I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life” (Genesis 18:10). This means that Genesis 18 is but the inevitable sequel to God’s earlier promise, already established in a covenant with Abraham. The promise was originally contained in words; later it was corroborated with a deed—the LORD himself accomplishing the covenant ceremony that confirmed the pledge (Genesis 12:7, 15:1-18). It is unsurprising, then, that this initial installment of God’s promise is announced in such a way. God’s own word precedes, predicts, and prescribes his deed—the fulfillment of a spoken promise. Only God can speak this way, joining pledge to a miraculous provision of life.

And yet—the tent contained an audience. All that follows reminds us that God’s promises to men also carry man’s moral obligation to hear and believe them. This, then, is descriptive of men—that he must hear and reflect upon whatever is spoken to him; and it is, therefore, significant that when God first speaks in Genesis 18, Sarah subsequently laughs. Her laughter is unfitting of man and, therefore, rebuked. Faith (we are accordingly reminded) remains a person’s reasonable and expected response to God’s own word. But it is quite more than this: A man’s faith is eventually revealed by his own words and deeds. Sarah laughs at the Lord’s proclamation, but it is Abraham that must answer for her doubt. The question is put to him, “Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old?” (Genesis 18:13). This digression is likely because Sarah is not the first in this family to clothe disbelief in surprise. Turn a few pages backward, and one reads of Abraham’s own laughter, how that he had fallen on his face and laughed at the consideration of God’s promise. Evidently, words—even when whispered in the heart of unbelief—find outward expression in a deed.

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Rising from their meal with Abraham, the three men walk to some nearby place where they may oversee Sodom. The LORD wonders aloud: Will he hide from Abraham what he intends to do? (Genesis 18:17) He will not, and we are hereby reminded of the privileges afforded to man in revelation. By disclosing his mind, the LORD welcomes Abraham to consider the expression of his will. God records his mind in words, and those words explain and predict God’s deeds. It is an unsurprising but still wonderful connection: the LORD first intends to visit Sodom and then shares the same with Abraham. The LORD will see whether the cries from Sodom reflect the rumor of their deeds. Apparently, Abraham is already decided on this query, and so he asks, “Will thou also destroy the righteous and the wicked?” (Genesis 18:23). The LORD assures Abraham with a final word of his own, “I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.”

But the point, here, is not to highlight the conditions of Sodom’s eventual destruction; it is to only notice that God extended a promise that he was both willing and able to keep. There are no surprises in his deeds, nor is there any presumption in his word. Their predictable forms and expressions find their explanation in the very character that God possesses. His freedom and power to judge that city is contained and predicted in his very being. In this way, too, chapter 18 confirms the association between God’s singular being and his several acts. Abraham, also, confirms his own station, and that by a confession of sorts. He solicits the Lord for mercy; and yet, the form of the question admits no doubt: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25).

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Accordingly, the reader is directed to a difference between the Creator and man, and that difference is confirmed in the arc between word and deed—being. In the tent, God returns to Sarah the time of life, while on some sallow hill in Canaan, the LORD reserves the right of judgement. God alone possesses the power of creation; he reserves the right to destroy. The LORD enters Abraham’s tent to announce life; but he also walks with Abraham to disclose the circumstances of death. These powers ultimately belong only to God. We find no full degree of freedom in men. Abraham and Sarah, instead, possess different prerogatives, which are attached to them as persons. Sarah is made to stop laughing and Abraham ceases from his supplications—all evident and observed once the LORD begins to speak.

To put it another way, Abraham and Sarah possess different privileges than their maker, and those are related to their station. Both within the tent and from the plain overlooking Sodom, Sarah and Abraham are brought to silence. “Both noise and total silence,” writes Josef Pieper, “destroy all possibility of mutual understanding.”²Josef Pieper, Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation, trans. Lothar Karauth (San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 1988), 55. The chapter begins with the silence of God, but that yields to the kind of creative speech that can properly belong only to him: He will return to Sarah the time of life. But the elderly couple? They must learn to say less—or perhaps speak differently, and that in agreement to what God has spoken. There is no silent faith for man, just as there is no such thing as a quiet creation.

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Man’s position is lofty and unique among God’s creatures, but it is still immeasurably less than that of his Creator. A man may speak, but his identity as a creature also and ultimately means that he must speak in a particular way, with words consistent with his own station. This is relevant to the question as it was originally posed, whether there is anything that a man must say and do, because he is a man. Indeed, his singular situation in creation extends his privileges unto obligation. Man is a moral being, made in God’s image; therefore, he enjoys both the privilege and obligations of reflection—of hearing as the prerequisite element that then prescribes his words and deeds. In this fact lies that something which he eventually must say.

Accordingly, Romans 10:9 finds an association with what Paul writes to the church in Philippi. The Romans passage attaches the promise of eternal life to all who believe, characterized by an interior trust in the heart, but marked with a confession of the mouth. Paul’s letter to the Philippian church reconsiders the timing and condition to include unbelieving men, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11). On the day described there, even unbelievers are finally made to agree with their maker by a word. Because unbelieving man possesses some vestige of God’s image, he must also say and do what is most consistent with his identity as God’s creature: he will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. In this way, creation’s order is ultimately reconfirmed in the faculty of our speech.