Session 6 Transcript: Creation - PDF

Session 6 Transcript: Creaton The Christan doctrine of creaton was forged in the fres of debate. It was hammered into a form that made it distnctve from other accounts of creaton so it takes on the unique shape it does in clear oppositon to other competng views of God and the world. to begin with i...

Session 6 Transcript: Creaton The Christan doctrine of creaton was forged in the fres of debate. It was hammered into a form that made it distnctve from other accounts of creaton so it takes on the unique shape it does in clear oppositon to other competng views of God and the world. to begin with it's ofen been pointed out that the Old Testament texts about creaton, on which Christan doctrine is built, are markedly diferent to the mythological stories common at the tme. For example, the Babylonian myth of creaton is full of confict and strife whereas in the Genesis account there is no competton to speak of. 'The most signifcant creaton text writen in Akkadian gets its name from its frst words 'when on high' which in Akkadian is 'Enuma Elish'. Even though creaton is an essental element of the myth, the ultmate purpose of the compositon was to proclaim the exultaton of the God Marduk to the head of the pantheon' (Longman III). It climaxes in the batle between Marduk on the opposing God Tiamat: 'the batle between Marduk and Tiamat is vividly described. At the climax of the confict Marduk lets loose a wind that distended her body, shootng an arrow into her mouth that tore her belly and extnguished her life. Marduk then turned his atenton to the body of Tiamat which he split into two parts “like a fsh for drying”. With one half he fashions the heavens and the other the earth. Using the heavenly bodies, Marduk also ordered tme. (Longman III). 'In the Genesis account things could hardly be more diferent. There is no sign of batle or struggle in its account of creaton, God says it and it is done. There is no temporal interval let alone struggle between the speaking of God's word and its executon God speaks and it's accomplished. In this respect the Hebrew creaton story here contrasts with other ancient near eastern creaton myths that depict the making of God's world as a struggle between rival forces. By contrast to the powerful image of struggle, creaton in Genesis one is a serene and efortless happening that bears testament is the goodness and majesty of God.' (Furgusson 2014). 'The Genesis story gave classical expression for ages to come to this unrestricted nature of God's 1 power in creaton. It did so by focusing on the divine word of command as the only basis of the existence of creatures..... It is clear that creaton in this view did not need to include a batle with chaos as it did the Babylonian epic... the efortless nature of the simple command illustrates the unrestricted nature of the power at the disposal of the Creator' (Pannenberg). Another contrast is the fact that creaton is highly valued. It is not made from the remains of a corpse as is the case in the Babylonian epic. In Genesis 1 it's proclaimed repeatedly as good. 'The creaton narratves of scripture do not allow for denigraton of the material world or a dualism that depicts the world as a batlefeld between rival cosmic powers. Even while it is arena of decay, sufering and sin, this world remains God's good creaton. It's goodness this is not limited to some past golden age in Eden. Even in a postlapsarian setng, the Psalms stll testfy to the beauty and providental ordering of the cosmos' (Fergusson 2024). In the Babylonian account of creaton we clearly have a mythology where the gods are very much part of the cosmic order but the biblical account is quite diferent. Here God is over and above the world. 'One thing that stands out in all the ancient near eastern comparatve material is that the gods are part of the creaton, even the high gods …. In Genesis 1 God is not located within nature as part of it but is the external cause of its existence, its functons and its purposes. He is the only God. He created it all and stands outside of it looking in' (Averbeck 2013). 'The basic idea of Israelite religion is that God is supreme overall - there is no realm above or beside him to limit his absolute sovereignty. He is uterly distnct from, and other than, the world; he is subject to no laws, no compulsions or powers that transcended him. He is in short, non- mythological. This is the essence of Israelite religion and that which sets it apart from all forms of paganism...' (Kaufmann in Mobely). The biblical account of creaton may at the frst read like classical mythology, but in a number of important ways it is in vivid contrast classical mythology for in the biblical account God is not a mythical being who cannot be trusted. He's not fckle but is true to his word. The Philsophical Context Christanity did not only seek to distance itself from mythology, it also had concerns about philosophy. At the tme Christanity was defning its beliefs, the dominant philosophy of the age 2 had originated in Greece one can see the development of Greek philosophy as itself and move away from mythology, in fact a critque of a mythological world view. '…. philosophy was born at least in part as an atempt to overcome mythology. The desire of the early philosophers was to discover the unifying truth of the cosmos and thereby dispel the belief that life is capricious that stood at the heart of the mythological stories of the gods that were widely propagated among ancient peoples. Viewed from this perspectve we might even describe philosophy as the intellectual critque of myth (Grenz 2005). In many ways Christanity saw this former Greek philosophy as an ally for like Christanity philosophy became critcal of paganism with its numerous dietes. For like Christanity that had inherited the monotheism of the Old Testament, Greek philosophy tend to believe there was only one divine reality. But the problem is that in one important respect Greek philosophy had moved several steps further away from mythology than had the biblical traditon. For example the philosophical view of what governed the cosmos became less than personal. If what they rejected was the mythology of many gods, the conclusion they came to was that the cosmos was founded on an impersonal principle rather than the will of a God. 'Whereas religion had tended to think of ultmate reality as personal in nature, even if somewhat fckle, philosophy posited a belief in something impersonal above and hence more real than the personal gods. Greek philosophy did not reject religion but it did seek to purify it by submitng it to the constraints of an abstract and impersonal noton of ultmate reality in this way they critqued the older mythology and sought to rid the concepton of anthropomorphism (Sanders). If philosophy, as we have seen, has distanced itself from mythology in such fundamental terms, how would Christanity and its scriptures be understood in this context? One way to approach this queston is to imagine that you're an educated citzen of Alexandria. You've been told the mythological stories as a child from Homer to Hesiod, but as you grow up you have come to accept the philosophical critque of mythology that we have looked at. In fact you've come to admire philosophers like Plato, who see behind the world of change and decay a changeless reality of divine impersonal principles that gives structure to the world. And from this advanced philosophical perspectve, you now see mythology's and their stories the interacton between gods and men as rather primitve. You are proud of the fact that you've gained an important post in the great library of Alexandria and your job now is to categorise the material as it comes into the 3 library. The two major categories in the library are philosophy and mythology. But one day the Christan scriptures come across your desk. The queston is under what category would you fle them? Are they mythology or are they philosophy? Now this is the positon that so many educated people are in when they initally hear about Christanity in the frst few centuries of the Church. Mythology or Philosophy? This problem of what to make of the Christan message and its scriptures are expressed partcularly well by one scholar of the early church 'One doctrinal element in the Pagan atack was the claim that Christans taught absurd myths.... the tales of Homer had gradually been allegorized and spiritualized …. this process of refnement and spiritualizaton in which Socrates and others had been martyred for their critcism of the mythological picture of the gods had largely accomplished its purpose by the tme of the confict between Pagan thought and Christan doctrine. And just when the leaders of Pagan thought had emancipated their picture of the divine from the crude anthropomorphisms of the mythological traditon, the Christans came on the scene with a message about one who is called son of God. Therefore they made fun of such biblical narratves as those dealing with virgin birth and the resurrecton' (Pelikan). In fact one could argue that for the critcal onlooker the biblical picture of God and the world can be seen as perched precariously between mythology and philosophy and consequently could easily be pulled in one directon or the other, being understood in philosophical or mythological terms. But for the Church, going one way or the other might be seen as deeply problematc. On the one side it is rejected polytheistc mythology where the gods were no more trustworthy than humanity, but on the other it was not comfortable seeing the divine as litle more than an impersonal principle behind the cosmos. It is easy to think of this in terms of just an ancient debate. But when discussing how early church theologians have rejected the mythological interpretaton of the Old Testament and insistng that references to God's body were not to be taken literally but metaphorically or fguratvely, one member of the congregaton I was talking with was literally outraged, saying that they'd never heard such radical things from the church before! When the Old Testament talks about Gd bearing the holy arm, they were wanted to take that literally in the sense that God had a body. But when following John 14 and suggestng to them that God is spirit they were clearly not comfortable. It seemed in saying God spirit, we reduced God to litle more than an impersonal substance and we were straying too far in the other directon, that of philosophy. It seems therefore that the queston is stll with us but rather than 4 going one way or the other in terms of mythology or philosophy, it is common to see the early church as bringing those two together. 'Israel worshipped a God who could grow angry, who changed his mind, a God involved in history who cared so much about one group of people that their apostasies drove him to fts of impatence. The great philosophers of Greece spoke of an unchanging divine principle far removed from our world without emotons, unafected by anything beyond himself. Improbably enough, Christan theology came to identfy these two as the same God. This may be the single most remarkable thing to have happened in western intellectual history. Some have dismissed it all as a terrible mistake, but the intellectual fertlity that resulted makes that hard to do this seems to be another tme and the go shake when thinking about calling the word not only do' (Placher). Poles Apart (minutes into video 13:27) But there seems to be another tghtrope to negotate when thinking about God and the world. Not only do Christans' notons of God in the world have to fnd a place between mythology and philosophy, it also seeks to avoid the two philosophical extremes that of dualism and monism. Dualism suggests that there is more than one power at work in the world, there is a second power apart from God that has to be taken into account and on this understanding the other principle is not only opposite but equal. In other words, it is also uncreated and with the same potency as its opposite. Moving to the other extreme, Monism or pantheism makes God and the world synonomous. Here, God and the world are one, there is no clear divide between them. Some people express this by talking about God being the soul of the world, or its spiritual aspect. So God and the world here have a necessary connecton, but God does not need to create for the world is part of God. Interestngly Christanity saw in the most infuental philosophy of the day a tendency to go in both directons; it saw in a key text by Plato the danger of dualism and in a developed former of Platonism known as near-Platonism the danger of monism. So again, as Christanity developed it found itself on a philosophical divide between dualism and monism - God was the only power at work but was also distnct from what was made. 5 The inital danger was not clearly perceived at frst. The text from Plato that was so infuental in the early church and was the only original document by Plato that survived in the West into the Middle Ages and the tales of creaton is called the Timaeus. The creator in the text is known as the demiurge or Crafsman. Its job is to model the world on the basis of high principles. The element he uses in the modelling seems already to be there. This is not creaton as we come to understand it, it is rather than modelling of something pre-existent. The material of course could be resistant to the creator or modeller, it might not always conform to the creator's will and its resistance might be part of the reason why creaton is problematc and falls short of the ideal. Justn Martyr, 2nd Century (tme into video 16:26) The frst followers of Christ who wanted to engage with the intellectual culture for the day seemed to accept this view of creaton and clearly did not see anything that problematc in it so Justn Martyr, one of the frst theologians of the church, was keen to point out that the Christan faith ofen mirrored the best of philosophy. He does this by focusing on Plato's account of creaton in the Timeaus. He suggests in fact that the similarity between Plato and the biblical faith is explained by the fact that Plato must have copied Moses: 'For while we say that all things have been produced and arranged into a world by God, we shall seem to uter the doctrine of Plato … and that you may learn that it was from our teachers – we mean that account given through the prophets - that Plato borrowed his statement that God having altered mater which was shapeless made the world signifying how and from what material God frst made the world and the whole world was made out of the substance spoken of before by Plato' (Justn Martyr). But eventually Plato's account was seen as too close to dualism. In dualism there is another reality that was not God's creaton, something that can limit and constrain God. Therefore the suggeston in Plato that there is an everlastng substance that resists God's creaton can sound just too much like dualism. 'In truth however, this teaching leads to the result that the creature does not depend on God alone but on other powers so it cannot ratonally put full trust in God alone for the overcoming of evil in the world. The unique character of the biblical concept of God's creatve acton rules out then any dualistc view of the origin of the world. The world is not the result of any working of God with another principle as in the descripton of the world's origin in Plato's Timaeus as the shaping of a formless mater by a demiurge'. (Pannenberg). 6 Ex Nihilo (point in video 18:33) Because of this, Christan theology began to afrm something quite distnctve that God creates out of nothing in other words he does not use any pre-existng material, that even the material he uses to form the world is not everlastng but is something he has created. 'Creaton out of nothing: in the Fathers this phrase was simply meant to reject any correlaton of God's creatve acton with the principle distnct from God' (Pannenberg). We frst see this clearly in a litle known Church Father, Theophilus of Antoch (2 nd Century). 'Unlike Justn who saw no problem in afrming creaton from pre-existng mater, Theophilus argues that God's absolute sovereignty forbids that suppositon that mater existed eternally alongside God. It follows that God creates the world not from an unformed mater but from nothing' (McFarland 2009). 'Now Plato and his school confessed that God is uncreated, Father, and maker of all things, but then they argue that God and mater are both uncreated, and they say that mater is covered turn with God. But if God is uncreated, and mater is uncreated, God is (according to the Platonists) not the maker of all things, nor (as far as they teach) is God's monarchy maintained' (Theophilus to Autolyus). The most infuental voice that proclaimed this in the early church is that of Irenaeus of Lyon (140- 202). 'For Irenaeus, everything is created by the word of God. Since God does not require raw material on which to work, the substance of creaton is not supplied in advance. In this way the power of God is manifest. Accordingly, creaton out of nothing is stressed over and against Plato (Fergusson, 2014). 'Irenaeus infuses the ex nihilo formula with its decisive and unambiguous clarity. Now it will stand as a fundamental tenant of Christan theology' (Keller, 2007). Theophilus of Antoch and Irenaeus of Lyon played a decisive role in establishing the doctrine of creaton out of nothing. Theophilus in partcular expressly opposed the Platonic idea of mater that was uncreated as God. He argued that the greatness of God and his creatve act may be seen only if he does not bring forth out of existng mater like human artsts but brings forth out of nothing whatever he wills. Irenaeus too emphasised that of his own free will God brought forth all things including mater' (Pannenberg). 7 As we will see doctrines of creaton also have implicatons for salvaton. If, to keep order God has to wrestle with another power how can God promise full salvaton? 'In truth however, this teaching leads to the result that the creature does not depend on God alone but other powers so that it cannot ratonally put full trust in God alone for the overcoming of evil in the world' The unique character of the biblical concept of God's creatve acton rules out then any dualistc view of the origin of the world world is not the result of any working of God with another principle as in the descripton of the world's origins in Plato's Timaeus as the shaping of formless mater by a demiurge' (Pannenberg). So it became clear to the Church the most infuental philosophical text on creaton was not adequate and may suggest a dualism that does not take God's sovereignty seriously. But the dominant philosophy of the tme, strangely, may have suggested the opposite to dualism, it may have suggested a form of monism. Platonism, the dominant philosophy of the tme was not a statc philosophy but developed over tme. Where the early church originally encountered what has become known as middle Platonism, by the end of the 2nd century we see the emergence of what has generally been referred to as Neoplatonism and from it, Neoplatonism, the model of creaton has signifcantly changed, has become, as you might say, more sophistcated. As we have seen in oppositon to mythology the philosophy of the tme had seen the divine less and less in personal terms and more as an everlastng principle that the world is modelled on. But in making God less less personal they are faced with a major problem: how can an impersonal philosophical principle create? When we think of creaton we think of a person making a decision, but something impersonal cannot do that. Emanaton (tme on video 23:26) The answer was the idea of emanaton. emanaton is a process that naturally happens. For example, the sun by its very nature emanates heat and light; the sun does not wake up one morning and decide not to shine, it happens automatcally, it's part of what it is. When you trace a river back to its source you normally come across a spring. The spring naturally overfows creatng the stream - it emanates the water. 'Plotnus …. taught that the One serves as an eternal source of all that is …. Yet he added that the One does not create the cosmos, for creaton implies actvity, which in turn entails change. According to his cosmology, all that is fows or emanates from the One in a similar manner to the way that light emanates from the sun. Consequently, everything manifest the One' (Grenz). 8 The major concern with idea of emanaton is that we may be heading towards monism or pantheism for does not emanaton suggest that the source and what is emanatng is of the same nature or substance? The stream of course is of the same nature as the spring – they are both water and the sun and its rays are of the same nature. So if emanaton is adopted the Creator and the creaton are of the same nature which sounds like monism; so the idea of creaton out of nothing also rejects emanaton. Cosmic Piety (tme in video 25:08) You might not think that the doctrine creaton is likely to afect one's approach to salvaton but in this case it really does. See, if there is an emanaton from the divine fowing down to us then what's to stop us following it back to the God? See, if one believes in emanaton we are naturally already connected to God and we just need to follow the path of emanaton back home. So emanaton is at the heart of a cosmic piety which says we have by nature come from God and are already connected to God. But the idea of creaton rather than emanaton suggests that this is not the case; we are creatures and have no necessary connecton with God. 'The noton of an absolute diference between God and creaton cuts at the root of one of the convictons of what has been called the cosmic piety of late antquity which drew on both Platonic and Stoic notons. Both these strains of philosophical thought envisage a world of gods and men - immortals and mortals - in which, though there is a diference, it was not absolute in all sorts of ways the boundary between the divine and the human was porous - it could be breached. The realm of the gods was what humans could aspire to' (Louth). Creaton & Feminist Theology (tme in video 26:33) In recent years, the most impressive and imaginatve theological analysis of creaton out of nothing comes from the feminist theologian Catherine Keller in a brilliant book 'The Face of the Deep'. One of Keller's major concerns throughout the book is that creaton out of nothing seems to be an expression of sheer power, in fact sheer masculine power, and is at the root of an oppressive theology and practse within the Church. 'In her passionately writen “The Face of the Deep” Keller atacks the 'dominology' of classical theism – a God of unconditonal dominance. Creaton X nihilo is implicated throughout, for a God who creates all dominates all' (Soskice Janet). “The Father needs nothing but his own logos to create. This is a rhetoric of sheer power. I hope I am elucidatng how a specifc cluster of signifers - of masculine supremacy, of female abjecton 9 and of unilateral dominaton - form the metonymic links of the new doctrine …. In this orthodoxy... “creaton ex nihilo is a necessary fundamental prepositon” Thus Christan orthodoxy originates in a symbolic misogyny …' (Keller). Keller also argues than in developing a theology of masculine power, theological orthodoxy has suppressed any alternatve suggeston, even within the biblical text itself. For example she demonstrates again and again that the second verse of Genesis has been misread in order not confict with orthodoxy: “Right there in the beginning, right at the mythic foundaton of the western world, there where we expect to hear the Word assert its original omnipotence - was installed a peculiar gap, a churning, complicatng darkness was wedged right between the two verses which everyone knows, with indelible certainty: between 'in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth' and 'God said let there be light' (Keller). This is a text that plainly talks about a watery chaos as the original creaton, and not creaton out of nothing. She critcises the way that classical theologians gloss over the Genesis account of the original watery chaos supposing a masculine idea of God as a hierarchical monarch and suppressing and eliminatng the chaotc feminine. This narratve of omnipotent origins vaporises any residual female thinking. 10