The Vital Villain
Adversity and Triumph for the Glory of the Story
by Jonathan E Thomas

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For this reason I raised you up, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. - Romans 9:17 Thus Yahweh, the God of the ancient Israelites, was said to have sent a message to Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, who held the nation of Israel under bondage. In deliberately hardening Pharaoh's heart and turning him into the ultimate arch-enemy of Moses and Aaron in the now world-famous narrative of the Exodus from Egypt, Yahweh created for His newly liberated people the most historic and awe-inspiring of contrasts. Little did Pharaoh know that, in his refusal to bow the knee to Yahweh, he would serve the purposes of the Divine in the most glorious and triumphant of high-wire spectacles. As all great story-tellers know, there is no compelling narrative without a great villain. Thus Yahweh—this most jealous of all gods—set apart Pharaoh, the ultimate nemesis, to serve as an unwitting agent in establishing the basis of faith for billions of people for thousands of years to come. And St. Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome over a millennia later, would appeal to this principle of the Divine utilizing the “vital villain”, reasoning that, in the same way that Pharaoh was used in the establishing of a new people set apart, so also St Paul’s own countrymen—those Pharisees who had “lost the plot” of the historic spiritual essence of their own faith—would also serve as unwitting agents in the continued glory of the story.

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Jonathan Thomas is a biblical scholar, theologian and philosopher. He hopes that readers—believers, skeptics, and otherwise—will see the story of the Bible with fresh eyes in an informed, yet easy-to-understand way, gaining a greater reverence for the scripture’s both subtle and grandiose message. Thomas lives in and writes from Saskatoon, SK, with his faithful border collie.

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Jonathan E Thomas