Human motivation – a biblical theology?

concludes on this issue: ‘Both God and man have the capacity to long deeply.’99 Crabb’s language indicates that, for him, communicable capacities define ‘image of God’ and that these attributes are regarded as analogous not identical.

An individual’s volitional response to their constitutional longings is at the centre of Hughes’ and Crabb’s models. This helpfully guards against a deterministic approach to human functioning, and in so doing promotes particularity and an emphasis on moral responsibility as to how we each try and meet our deep needs.

Hughes’ and Crabb’s understanding of human longings emerge from two biblical concepts: ‘innermost being’ and ‘our soul’s deepest thirst’, both of which are found, among other places in Scripture, in John 7:37–38. Given the importance of these concepts to both models, the passage will be quoted in full:

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’

There is some dispute on linguistic grounds as to precisely what Jesus is saying about the water symbolism. In the New American Standard Bible translation, from which Crabb quotes, the term ‘innermost being’ is used instead of ‘within’ (NIV). The King James rendering is more literal: ‘belly’. The Greek word is koilia whose basic and general meaning is a cavity or hollow. In the New Testament, koilia is used to refer literally to the stomach (Matt. 12:40; Rev. 10:9–10); the womb (Luke 1:41–2; 2:21; 11:21; Acts 3:2); and uniquely according to Verbrugge, to the inner person (John 7:38). Adams gives great anthropological weight to the ‘inner person’, which he believes is best summed up biblically by the word ‘heart’. He understands its major thrust throughout Scripture as denoting: ‘the entire inner life... the most far-reaching and most dynamic concept of the non-material (or spiritual side of) man’.100 Crabb concurs with Verbrugge in saying that koilia

means literally a stomach, or metaphorically (as in John 7:38) a void, which everyone possesses at the core of their being, which longs to be filled. BeasleyMurray regards the koilia teaching of Christ as applying beyond Christ’s immediate audience, having relevance to God’s past and future saving acts. In this light there is a warrant for using koilia as a paradigm image. Lincoln clearly makes broad links of a similar kind. Drawing all these connections together, he summarises John’s citation as implying that ‘Jesus is now the rock from whose words come the waters of new life, the waters of the Spirit, the agent of new birth’101 (cf. John 3:5–6,8; also John 1:12–13). The imagery of John 7:38 used by Jesus is found in various Old Testament passages and depicts human need and God’s provision for it in similar ways. Crabb and Hughes cite a number of such passages as clear evidence that people may be characterised as needy, dependent beings, requiring something essential, ie living water, which they do not intrinsically possess, and which only God can provide in a sustained and sufficient manner. Commenting on similar Old and New Testament passages, Schnackenburg and Brown convey the vital importance of water imagery within a biblical world-view. Citing Grelot, Schnackenburg regards the water imagery at Tabernacles as connecting to both ‘end times’ life and that of Israel’s past desert wanderings, where the rock gushed forth with life-saving water. Schnackenburg concludes:

In thinking of this kind, the image of the drawing and outpouring of the water would awaken many associations and call various texts to mind, all within the perspective of the hope of salvation. We may, then, explain the condensed ‘saying of Scripture’ in John 7:38 as a construction of the evangelist intended to express, in one sentence, all these typological ideas.102

Hughes’ and Crabb’s central usage of this passage clearly has scholarly support in denoting a profound human state. Brown outlines how the Hebrew word nefes (translated either soul or spirit) was seen as the centre of thirst: it originally seemed to mean ‘throat’. With this background, we can make a case from Scripture for regarding humanity as needy, with specific longings which are portrayed in embodied form – the throat is thirsty, the belly needs filling.

The two central concepts from which Hughes and Crabb build their models – inner being, and our soul’s thirst – converge in John 7:38.

Both Crabb and Hughes use the above concepts as central ideas for understanding human motivation. This core motivation is clearly articulated in relational terms, with primary importance given to our relationship with God. Relational longings (thirsts) are essential aspects of human nature are found throughout Scripture in, for example the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; the psalms; the Gospels; and lastly within the canon in the book of Revelation. This last usage represents a call from God to anyone and everyone to come and drink. Its appeal rests on an individual’s awareness of their thirst (longings). Whilst too much could be read into the position of a text, it is not mere coincidence that the last invitation of God to humankind within the canon of Scripture embraces imagery of thirst and water. If Aune is correct, this invitation echoes that of Revelation 21:6b, whose context is eternal, ie in view of everything (God the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End). Given the imprecise nature of metaphor, Thiselton notes that it is always possible to overplay any image. However, in the light of Aune and that cited above, there is reasonable ground not to marginalise this imagery and the truth to which it pertains regarding core issues, literally at the ‘heart’ of anthropology.

The next two sections will outline a brief history of a theological tradition emphasising inwardness. Starting with Augustine, and re-emerging during the Reformation, it forms a lineage of which the Waverley Model is a part. Baxter and Scougal’s theological anthropologies will also be briefly sketched as they represent figures that have had significant influence upon the pastoral thinking and practice of later churches. Whilst the previous section regarding koilia has been functioning as a means of validating the term’s significance as a biblical concept of motivation, the texts themselves do not articulate what constitutes ‘thirst’. Therefore they cannot be used to verify the Waverley Model’s assertion that ‘thirst’ comprises longings for security, self-worth and significance. This argument has been made already, upon different grounds (see previous section ‘Hughes’ and Crabb’s Relationality’).