To God be the Glory FOREVER, AMEN AND AMEN! ! !

Before we tackle the main issues here, we need to discuss the biblical use of anthropomorphisms--the use of analogies from human experience to describe God. The Bible speaks about God's nature, work and purposes in terms analogous to what we know and experience as human beings. This is by necessity. God's absolute nature is not open to finite creatures. We can only approximate what God is like by comparing him to us. Indeed, the Incarnation, God's coming into our midst in the Word become flesh (Jn 1:14), gives legitimacy and authority to anthropomorphic speech about God.

In traditional theological language, this necessary and legitimate use of anthropomorphisms has been recognized, but it also has its limitations. Thus, while knowledge and power are aspects of human experience, God is said to possess these in an absolute, infinite sense: he is omniscient (all-knowing) and omnipotent (all-powerful). Generally, those aspects of human nature and experience which we have identified as the highest and the best have been ascribed to God. We see God as the one who is or possesses truth, grace, beauty, love, righteousness, faithfulness in their most complete or absolute forms. But a corollary of this way of speaking about God is the resistance to ascribe to God human attributes or feelings which we perceive as negative: hate, anger, a vindictive spirit, ugliness and so forth. Wrath is clearly one of these.

There is some biblical warrant for this resistance. For example, in Hosea 11, the reason for God's refusal to give up on Israel--though it clearly deserved destruction on the basis of human standards of justice--is the fact that "I am God and not man" (Hos 11:9). However, the major reason for our difficulty in accepting such negative human attributes for God is an idealistic, romantic notion of God, born from philosophical speculation. The Bible does not have such a notion of God, for it takes both God and the world more seriously than abstract philosophical speculation.

The Lord of the Bible enters into relationship with his creation in Jesus of Nazareth, in whom "all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (Col 1:19 RSV). It is this Jesus who is, at the same time, in all respects like us (Heb 2:17). The Bible also takes the relationship between Creator and creation with utmost seriousness. Because the creation is God's, it is responsible to God. Within such a relationship of accountability, romantic, idealistic, sentimental concepts of God are out of place. Against this larger background the concept of God's wrath must be understood.

It is instructive that Paul speaks of the revelation of God's wrath within the context of a theology of creation. The biblical story of creation and alienation contained in the opening chapters of Genesis clearly forms the backdrop of Romans 1:18-23. Romans 1:21-22 especially is a poignant reminder of the refusal of humankind (Adam) to live as creature in relationship with God and instead to grasp for likeness with God (see Gen 3:1-7).

In the Genesis narrative, the temptation is to deny our creatureliness, our limitations, our dependence on the Creator in order to become "like God" (Gen 3:5). The result of that denial is that we become debased, less than authentically human. According to the narrative of Genesis 3--11, the denial of dependence on and accountability to God results in a wide variety of distortions within various spheres of human community. Paul, in Romans 1:25, sums up this situation with these words: "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator." It is within this assessment of God's purposes for creation and its refusal to be accountable within those purposes that the idea of God's wrath needs to be heard.

Paul speaks of the wrath of God in two ways. Mostly, the expression refers to a future event in which God's judgment is executed on the world's sinfulness (Rom 2:5, 8; 5:9; Eph 5:6; 1 Thess 1:10; 5:9). In these contexts, God's wrath (or its synonym, God's judgment) is clearly perceived as an activity of God, his decided action against sin. It is important to note here that wrath is God's personal response to sin, though unlike that of the various divinities of Greco-Roman religions and myths, God's wrath is never capricious, vindictive or malicious.

In Romans 1:18 Paul does not say that God's wrath will be revealed at the last day (that is, judgment day) but rather, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven" now. It is not only the divine response to the creation's unfaithfulness in the future judgment; it is already a present reality. This sense of a present manifestation of God's wrath is confirmed in several other passages from Paul (Rom 3:5; 4:15; 9:22; 1 Thess 2:16), as well as in other New Testament writings (see Jn 3:36).

As the passage which follows shows, the present manifestation of God's wrath is indirect rather than direct; it is an expression of God's permissive will, not God's active will. God is not depicted here as doing something in response to human sin. In some sense, God's wrath is built into the very structure of created reality. In rejecting God's structure and establishing our own, in violating God's intention for the creation and substituting our own intentions, we cause our own disintegration.

The human condition, which Paul describes in Romans 1:18-32, is not something caused by God. The phrase "revealed from heaven" (where "heaven" is a typical Jewish substitute word for "God") does not depict some kind of divine intervention, but rather the inevitability of human debasement which results when God's will, built into the created order, is violated. Since the created order has its origin in God, Paul can say that the wrath of God is now (constantly) being revealed "from heaven." It is revealed in the fact that the rejection of God's truth (Rom 1:18-20), that is, the truth about God's nature and will, leads to futile thinking (Rom 1:21-22), idolatry (Rom 1:23), perversion of God-intended sexuality (Rom 1:24-27) and relational-moral brokenness (Rom 1:28-32).

The expression "God gave them over" (or "handed them over"), which appears three times in this passage (Rom 1:24, 26, 28), supports the idea that the sinful perversion of human existence, though resulting from human decisions, is to be understood ultimately as God's punishment which we, in freedom, bring upon ourselves.

In light of these reflections, the common notion that God punishes or blesses in direct proportion to our sinful or good deeds cannot be maintained. God's relationship with us is not on a reciprocal basis. God's radical, unconditional love has been demonstrated in that, while we were sinners, Christ died for us. God loves us with an everlasting love. But the rejection of that love separates us from its life-giving power. The result is disintegration and death. Against such a perverted creation, God's wrath is revealed.