Gospel of Jealousy

Abstract This essay argues for a more substantive account of the God whose “name is Jealous” (Exod. 34:14), over and against both cultural resistance and theological ambivalence to jealousy as a positive feature of the divine-human relationship. Attention to Reformed priorities in a responsible reading of scripture is followed by a theology of the proper context, focus, and goal of jealousy itself. The results are twofold: a biblical proposal for this affection as a form of God’s redeeming holiness and, by extension, validation of our own jealousy as protest against multiple forms of bad faith.