God as Creator
To the extent that there is a literal affirmation in ancient Israel’s creation myths, it is simply this: God is the source of everything that is. As one of my seminary professors said several decades ago, “The only literal statement in Genesis 1 is ‘God created the heavens and the earth.’ ”
Genesis speaks of creation as having happened “in the beginning.” In subsequent Christian thought, there are two quite different ways of understanding this statement. The first sees creation as “historical origination.” Namely, at a particular moment in the past, at the beginning of time, God created. The second sees the notion of creation as pointing to a relation of “ontological dependence.” This perhaps unfamiliar phrase means that God is the source of everything that is in every moment of time.28 For this view, affirming that God is creator is not primarily a statement about origination in the remote past; rather, it is a statement about the present dependence of the universe upon God. If God ceased to vibrate the universe (and us) into existence, it (and we) would cease to exist. In traditional Christian language, God as creator is also the sustainer of everything that is.
The latter way of thinking about creation seems more important. From a scientific point of view, we do not know whether there was a time when there was “nothing.” The contemporary “big-bang theory” of the universe’s origin, which speaks of a moment roughly fifteen billion years ago when the present universe began, is quite compatible with thinking of creation as historical origination. Indeed, some have seen the primordial “cosmic flash” of the big-bang theory as strikingly similar to the first act of creation on the first day of the Genesis story: “Let there be light.” Twenty years ago, a scientist wryly observed about the big-bang theory:
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.29
But it is also possible that there were universes before the present one. Indeed, it is possible that there have always been universes. Seeing the statement “God is the creator” as a claim about ontological dependence means that Christians and Christian theology can be religiously indifferent to the question of whether the universe had a beginning. To say “God is creator” affirms a relationship and process that continues into the present. It need not refer to a specific event at a particular time in the distant past.
This way of thinking about God as creator is compatible not only with the big-bang theory but also with whatever scientific theory might (and almost certainly will) replace it. Indeed, thinking about creation this way means that the affirmation of God as “maker of heaven and earth” is compatible with any scientific account of the universe’s origins. At the level of ultimate origins, there need be no conflict between Genesis and science. The two do not directly compete.
The God-World Relationship
Just as there are two ways of thinking about creation, so there are two models for thinking about the God-world relationship—that is, the relation of God as creator to the universe.30 The first is known as a “production” model. Namely, like an artisan or artist, God makes the universe as something separate from God’s self. Once created, the universe exists separate from God, just as a house or a painting exists separate from the builder or artist who produced it. This model is associated with a particular concept of God. Known as “supernatural theism,” this way of thinking about God conceptualizes God as “another being” separate from the universe.
The second way of thinking about the God-world relation has been called a “procreative” or “emanationist” model: God brings forth the universe from God’s being. Because the universe comes out of God’s being, it is in some sense “God-stuff.” This model does not identify the universe with God, for God is more than the universe; rather, it sees the universe as being “of God” and “in God.” (In other words, the model is panentheistic.)31 To quote a passage from the New Testament, God is “the one in whom we [and everything] live and move and have our being.”32
The differences between these two models for thinking about the God-world relation matter. The production model suggests that the universe is separate from God and that creation happened in some past moment. The procreative model affirms the presence of God within and beyond the universe and fits the notion that creation is an ongoing process, not simply a past event. Finally, whereas the production model and its association with supernatural theism emphasize God’s separation from the world, the latter model leads to a much more intimate sense of the closeness of God to the world—indeed, of the presence of God in the world.
Obviously, the Genesis stories speak of creation using a production model. In Genesis 1, God speaks and the universe comes into being. In Genesis 2, God is like an artisan molding adham out of earth, like a gardener planting a garden, and so forth. In short, God is portrayed as creating a universe separate from God.
But because this is the language of myth and metaphor, the way we think about the creation stories need not be confined to a semiliteral reading. To cite an analogy, the Bible often speaks of God as a person-like being; this is the natural language of worship and devotion. But that does not mean we must think of God as a person-like being. In any case, whether our thoughts of creation follow a production model or a procreative model, the central truth-claim of the myth remains: God is the source of everything.
The Nature of Reality
Central to Genesis 1 is the refrain repeated after each day of creation: “And God saw that it was good.” The pronouncement covers everything that exists. To use a Latin phrase from medieval theology, Esse qua esse bonum est, or “Being as being is good.” This does not mean that everything that happens is good. But whatever exists is good.
The creation story is thus strikingly world-affirming. Indeed, the Jewish tradition as a whole has consistently been world-affirming, in spite of the horrendous sufferings that Jews have experienced. The affirmation is also central to Christian the-ology, although popular Christianity, with its emphasis on the afterlife, has sometimes seen the world (especially “the flesh”) as highly problematic, something to keep at a distance, a place to get through on the way to one’s heavenly home. But against all world-denying theologies and philosophies, Genesis affirms the world as the good creation of the good God. All that is is good.
Human Nature
Ancient Israel’s stories of creation affirm two things about us. We are the climax of creation, created in the image of God and given dominion over the earth. Yet we are also “dust-creatures,” people made of earth. As dust-creatures, we are finite and mortal. “You are dust, and to dust you will return” are the final words spoken by God to Adam in paradise.33
We do not know what ancient Israel meant by affirming that we are created “in the image of God.” Perhaps the claim simply reflects the fact that the Genesis stories of creation are anthropocentric; that is, they are told from a human point of view and are human-centered, highlighting humans as the climax of creation. The stories are also theocentric, of course—that is, centered in God—but the divine creation they describe leads up to us: we are God’s culminating act of creation. Thus whatever created “in the image of God” means, it is clear that ancient Israel thought there was something special about us.
The paradoxical juxtaposition of our special status and our smallness in relation to the universe is expressed in the familiar words of one of the creation psalms. In the first half of Psalm 8, the author addresses God and reflects on our insignificance:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established:
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Then the author affirms:
Yet you have made them a little lower than the a
ngels,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hand;
you have put all things under their feet.
The assessment is realistic. We are small, we are finite, we are mortal. And yet there is something different about us.
Though we have learned in the last half-century not to speak of an absolute difference between us and the nonhuman animals, we do have greater consciousness than any species we know of. In us, the universe has become conscious of itself. And to a degree that ancient Israel did not dream of, we have become dominant, with very mixed consequences for the earth and ourselves.34 Yet we are creatures of dust, fated to return to dust. Moreover, according to Genesis, we are not simply mortal, but “fallen.”
The Character of Human Existence
The term “the fall” does not occur in the Genesis story of creation. As a description of the events surrounding Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise, it is largely a Christian label; Jews typically do not speak of “the fall.”
Within the Christian tradition, “the fall” has commonly been understood to mean “the fall into sin.” It has also been associated with the notion of “original sin,” which is not simply the first sin, but a sinfulness that is transmitted to every individual in every generation. This latter notion, which goes far beyond what the Bible says, is usually attributed to the brilliant but troubled theologian Augustine around 400 CE. So as we hear and read this story again, we should try to free ourselves of specifically Christian associations of “the fall.”
Though the term “the fall” does not occur in the story itself, the story of Adam and Eve’s accepting the temptation offered by the snake points to something having gone wrong. The consequences are vivid, evocative, and thorough. Adam and Eve find themselves living east of Eden in a world that must endure toil and sweat for one’s bread and pain and suffering in childbirth. They are banished from paradise forever. The rest of the stories in the first eleven chapters of Genesis describe the deepening consequences. In the next generation, murder: Adam and Eve’s son Cain kills his brother Abel. The violence deepens, until even the boundaries of the cosmos are violated: “the sons of God” are mating with “the daughters of men,” with monstrous consequences. Things are so out of control that God sends a flood to destroy all life except for those on Noah’s ark, so that creation can be renewed. But soon thereafter, the cycle begins again in the story of the tower of Babel: humans try to build a tower that reaches into the heavens. But God overturns their effort and humankind is fragmented into its “babble” of different languages.
Clearly the Hebrew storyteller is saying that something has gone wrong. Life began in paradise but is now lived outside the garden, in an exile of hard labor, suffering, pain, violence, and fragmentation. Though the world is beautiful, something is not right; we do live in a world of suffering and pain.
But what went wrong? What action, desire or deed, led to such pervasive consequences? The language of the storyteller is evocative, not precise. It does not clearly point to a particular reading. Thus, over the centuries, a variety of understandings of “what went wrong” have emerged. Each leads to a somewhat different understanding of “sin”—that primal act that plunged human beings into a world of suffering—and each expresses nuances of “what went wrong.”
The Primal Act as Disobedience The first understanding is the simplest, though not necessarily the most perceptive. The act responsible for Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden was disobedience. God gave them a command, they disobeyed it, and that was that. The emphasis is on the disobedience itself, not on what the act of disobedience was. For this view in its most elementary form, it would have made no difference if God’s prohibition had been, “Please don’t eat the daisies.” This view typically leads to seeing sin in general as a matter of disobedience: God gives us commands and rules and laws, and we break them. The human problem is disobeying God the law-giver.
The Primal Act as Hubris A second understanding agrees that disobedience was involved but emphasizes what the act of disobedience involved. In particular, it focuses on the first half of the serpent’s temptation: “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The desire is to become Godlike, to tower above who we are, to be the center of creation. In the Christian theological tradition, this is known as hubris, a Greek word commonly translated “pride.”
But in this context it means more than the everyday meaning of the word “pride,” as in the sentence, “I was proud of myself when I did that.” Hubris means exceeding one’s proper limits; it means giving to one’s self the place that belongs to God alone; it means making one’s self the center. Hubris can take many forms, ranging from a world-conquering arrogance to a self-preoccupied malaise. What these forms have in common is a life centered in the self and its concerns. Sin—the human problem—is thus hubris understood as self-centeredness.
The Primal Act as Sloth A third understanding is almost the opposite of the pride discussed above. The word “sloth” does not mean “laziness” in this context. Rather, it means “leaving it to the snake”—letting something else author one’s existence. It means uncritically accepting somebody else’s ideas about how to live one’s life. In this view, sin—the human problem—is heteronomy: living the agenda of others.35
The Primal Act as the Birth of Consciousness A fourth understanding also focuses on what the primal act was, but it emphasizes the second half of the serpent’s temptation: “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” “Knowing good and evil” is understood broadly to mean having knowledge of opposites, a capability that is intrinsic to the birth of consciousness. Consciousness involves distinguishing one thing from another; above all, it involves the self-world distinction, the awareness that the world is “other” than one’s self.
The birth of consciousness is something we all experience; all of us become aware of the self-world distinction very early in life. Thus we cannot avoid the primal act. Indeed, this understanding emphasizes not the disobedience and sinfulness of “the fall,” but its inevitability. All of us begin life in the womb with an experiential sense of undifferentiated unity; we begin in paradise. But the very process of growing up and the birth of consciousness that is intrinsic to it propels us into a world of division, anxiety, and suffering. Living “east of Eden” is intrinsic to the experience of being human. We all go through “the fall” and live in a state of exile and estrangement; it cannot be avoided.36
These various understandings can also be combined. For example, the birth of consciousness typically leads to hubris, understood as being centered in one’s self. Moreover, centering in one’s self intensifies the sense of separation from the world, deepening the experience of exile. The process of socialization leads to sloth understood as heteronomy: we internalize and live in accord with the agendas of others, including parents, culture, and religion.
As already mentioned, it is impossible to say that the Hebrew storyteller intended one of these more than the other, or intended any or all of these. But the creation stories are an example par excellence of a religious classic: they are stories that have a surplus of meanings.
Moreover, whatever the storyteller’s sense of what went wrong in paradise, the story’s picture of the consequences is persuasive and compelling. Most of us most of the time live “east of Eden.” What this means is vividly portrayed in the painting The Expulsion of Adam and Eve by the fifteenth-century Italian artist Masaccio. As the first couple is driven out of Eden, Adam’s head is down, both hands covering his eyes; Eve’s face is upturned, but her mouth is open in a howl of pain, her features full of grief and sorrow. At least some of the time, life outside of Eden is like that.
The Creation Stories and Postcritical Naivete
Given the richness of meaning that a historical-metaphorical reading of Genesis reveals, the creation stories strike me as profoundly true. Critical thinking leads to an understanding of why the details of Genesis ar
e as they are and also makes clear that their truth is not to be understood in literal, factual terms. Rather, their truth is expressed in the nonconceptual language of myth and metaphor, and no particular reading can exhaust their meanings.
But I can hear the truth of their central claims. “This”—the universe and we—is not self-caused, but grounded in the sacred. “This” is utterly remarkable and wondrous, a Mystery beyond words that evokes wonder, awe, and praise. We begin our lives “in paradise,” but we all experience expulsion into a world of exile, anxiety, self-preoccupation, bondage, and conflict. And yes, also a world of goodness and beauty: it is the creation of God. But it is a world in which something is awry.
The rest of the Bible is to a large extent the story (and stories) of this state of affairs: the human predicament and its solution. Our lives east of Eden are marked by exile, and we need to return and reconnect; by bondage, and we need liberation; by blindness and deafness, and we need to see and hear again; by fragmentation, and we need wholeness; by violence and conflict, and we need to learn justice and peace; by self- and other-centeredness, and we need to center in God. Such are the central claims of Israel’s stories of human beginnings.
Reading the Bible again for the First Time Page 8
