Transactonal Theology

A reflection on Jephthah’s Folly

Jdg 11:29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon.

Jdg 11:30 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,

Jdg 11:31 Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD'S, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

Jephtah’s vow is as relevant today as it was in the Old Testament. Jephtah’s vow reflects three things about him. 1. His Lack of Faith 2. His Pagan Environment 3. His Transactional Understanding of God.

Jephtah’s lack of faith is shown by his doubt about God’s granting him victory against the Ammonites. The fact that he made a vow to God offering whatsoever comes out of his house showed the religious practice prevalent in his time. There are two different views about the conclusion of Jephthah’s vow. The first view is that her daughter was offered as a burnt offering to God, and the second view is that she was consecrated as a “virgin” servant of the Lord. There is even a view connecting and relating the act of the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter to Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphegenia to the Goddess Artemis.

The conclusion of Jephthah’s vow is not as important as his motivation for making that vow (dark vow, as one biblical scholar say).

Jephthah’s action, despite having the spirit of the Lord, and despite understanding God’s clear and emphatic ban against human sacrifices (Lev 18:21) showed not only his lack of faith but it also showed one misconception about God that is very prevalent today—the thinking that anyone can exert or to use a stronger term can negotiate with God by offering something that is very important to them. This is a pagan logic. But Jephthah fell into the same thinking as his pagan neighbors. He forgot or maybe doubted that God is the sovereign God “the Iam” even though he is learned about the patriarchs and the prophets’ earlier teaching about God and his sovereignty. His thinking was clouded by the taste of victory that he was willing to sacrifice his only daughter—an unnecessary sacrifice that God does not require of him. The consequence of this action is the death of his daughter, if she is really sacrificed, or the death of his bloodline, if she was really consecrated to remain forever a virgin in the service of the Lord.

Jephthah’s case is very much alive and is in fact reflected in the theologies espoused by preachers today—the claim that God can be manipulated or swayed to act in one’s through the merit of one’s action like anatomical prayers, fastings, etc. There’s nothing wrong with these practices, in fact they are encouraged in the Bible (Mat 7:7) (Act 14:23) the problem is when preachers make prayers and fasting a sovereign act that can be used to manipulate or even to transact with God to grant their petitions. The sad case is these petitions usually centered on the monetary success. The thinking is that the welfare of the church is tied to the monetary capabilities of its members! Thus the power of prayers is debased and rendered transactional.

Praying is the most misunderstood and even the most abused aspect of the spiritual life. It is considered as a panacea. It must be understood that praying is not limited to the ask, seek, knock aspect. Praying is not praising nor is it worship. Praying is not limited to the spoken communication with God. It is the bulk, the whole of the spiritual life. It is holistic, act and talk—communicating verbally and nonverbally. In short, prayers are not meant to replace what can be done with action and action is not meant to be done without prayers nor is prayers to be judged by its length and emotion or the pretense of emotion to be efficacious.

Prayers not only reflect spirituality but it also reflects a person’s mindset, a person’s conception of what God is to them. Thus a person that prays a lot about monetary success can be safely assumed as having a very unhealthy conception of the nature and sovereignty of God, and the kind of relationship they have with Him.

Jephthah’s folly should have been a very clear illustration about the consequence of the wrong conception of God but instead it had become the theological foundation of the transactional theologian--the belief that God can be swayed, His prerogatives can be claimed. The belief that man’s “religiosity” is a currency with God—a reversion of Christian theology to pagan theology.