Liberating the Will of Australia. Geoffrey Burn

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СКАЧАТЬ that he addresses the people collectively as the “House of Israel” (18:25, 29, 30, 31)65 and there are other uses of the plural form of address in the same chapter (18:2, 3, 19, 32);66 although the legal examples that Ezekiel uses are about individuals from different generations, Ezekiel is speaking to the community as a whole. That is, when Ezekiel uses the legal metaphor to speak of the relationship between God and people, the individuality is about generations, not about persons.

      The people claim to be in the third category: their fathers have sinned, and they are innocent (18:14–18). Ezekiel, however, says that the present generation is sinful; they are suffering the punishment of God for their own sin, for God only punishes the guilty.67 Of course, Ezekiel must show that the present generation really is guilty, which he does do, as was shown above. In a cheeky move, Ezekiel uses a generational parable back against the people when he says, “See, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you, ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ You are the daughter of your mother . . .” (16:44–45). That is, there is a generational proverb which is true of the people, and it is that they are continuing to behave like those who were before them.

      In summary, in the initial encounter of Ezekiel with God, God pronounces the guilt of the present generation. Ezekiel consistently makes the important point that they are not only sinning, but also sinning in the same way as previous generations. God sees Israel as a corporate entity, with a continuity of existence through time that is more extensive than any particular generation, and which has a consistent history of sin; moreover, the present generation is continuing to sin in the same way as its forebears. That is, Ezekiel was prophesying to a nation whose actions showed that their will had been bound by their past and present actions.

      Because the sins of the people are so obvious to the reader of Ezekiel, it is easy to assume that they were equally obvious to those living at the time. What if, however, the belief that they were being unfairly treated (18:25, 29) because of the sins of their ancestors (18:2) was genuine? That is, what if they could not see that the way that they were living was a deep anathema to God? What if they weren’t just being obdurate but rather genuinely could not see that there were any problems (12:2–3)? If this is the case, then we see that the bound will of Israel has blinded it to being able to see what is good.

      This reading of Ezekiel should make us wary about any assertions that a line can simply be drawn under the past, claiming that it was the previous generations who did wrong, for subsequent generations, it seems, may continue to sin in the same way as past generations. In fact, the statistics and stories of continuing disadvantage of the First Peoples in Australia would, I suggest, mean that Australia is in a similar position to the people who were being addressed by Ezekiel.

      Ezekiel goes further than his interlocutors and speaks of the dynamics of God’s relationship with people: it is possible both for righteous people to fall out of favor with God by their sin and also for sinful people to come back into favor through repentance (18:19–29). That is, there is no accounting, where the good is weighed against the bad, but it is the current relationship that matters. This heightens the sense of the responsibility of the present generation, because they could have repented and averted the present disaster, but they did not. However, this is also a passage of hope: the people could be fatally deflated because they are the generation which is being punished after a long period of God’s forbearance (see ch. 20), but Ezekiel promises the possibility of redemption if the people do repent. God desires that the people repent (18:23, 32).68 Ezekiel finishes his argument in chapter 18 with the call to corporate repentance: “the final words of the chapter (vv. 30b–32) focus on the challenge to repentance. ‘Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’ (v. 31); ‘Turn and live’ (v. 32). These words make explicit the challenge to repentance which is clearly implied in vv. 21–24 and 26–28.”69

      Note that “the call to repentance is addressed to the community as a whole, and it is the restoration of the whole people of God for which Ezekiel presses.”70 Even more than that, Ezekiel has a vision of the restoration of the nation (e.g., chs. 36 and 37); God’s generosity goes beyond the dynamics of the responsibility of repentance.

      Ezekiel says that the problems of the past that are continuing into the present can be addressed by the repentance of the nation. In doing so, the present generation can do more than repent of its own sins; it is breaking the pattern of bound willing that has been inherited from the past. The nature of repentance will be explored further in the Second Movement, Loosing. In particular, we will look at what must be done in Australia to repent of the present continuation of the sins of the past. But before we can do that, we need to understand the way in which Australia’s will has become bound, which is the purpose of the next section.

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