Thursday, September 22, 2005
re:creation reconsidered
Since posting re:creation I have been painfully aware of what a closed and incomplete story I've attempted to tell. In particular, I've noticed how far away it is from the biblical one and from one that I am happy to live.
In my reading N.T Wright made a few statements that I'd bring to attention:
"The real problem is that much modern reading of these texts has taken place within a tacitly Deist framework, in which one either believes (a) in an absent god and a closed space-time continuum or (b) in a normally absent god who occaisionally intervenes and acts in discontinuity with that space-time continuum. But that he was normally absent, allowing this world and his people to get on with things under their own steam -- if there were Jewish writers who believed this, I am unaware of them." (Wright, 298)And I admit that, although I think I avoided (a), my imagining fell firmly into category (b).
I think there is some validitiy in re:creation though...if the story stops at Gen 2:3 or 2:4. Pictured here is a distant god, supreme creator.
I left out the rest of the story though...Genesis 2:4- shows us how personal and involved this god is.
And reading Wright, Bruegemann and Gadamer made me realise how much of a story it is. It doesn't fit nicely into categories, but it makes great (meta-) narrative.
Tim's suggestion of the father metaphor makes a lot of sense in this context. Perhaps I prefer the feminist image of the mother as creator though. (Or is a personal 'it' even better?) One who creates through pain, is vulnerable to and with the creation, teaches and leads the creation without manipulative interference but helping out when needed.
So, the rest of the story -- for our consideration -- according to Wright:
Reality as we know it is the result of a creator god bringing into being a world that is other than himself. and yet which is full of his glory. It was always the intention of this god that creation should one day be flooded with his own life, in a way for which it was prepared from the beginning. As part of the means to this end, the creator brought into being a creature which, by bearing the creators image, would bring his wise and loving care to bear upon the creation. by a tragic irony, the creature in question has rebelled against this intention. But the creator has solved this problem in principle in an entirely appropriate way, and as a result is now moving the creation once more towards its originally intended goal. The implementation of this solution now involves the indwelling of this god within his human creatures and ultimately within the whole creation, transforming it into that for which it was made in the beginning." (Wright, 98)
COMPARE WITH:
"First, Christian theology tells a story, and seeks to tell it coherently...The story is about a creator and his creation, about humans made in this creators's image and given tasks to perform, about the rebellion of humans and the dissonance of creation at every level, and particularly about the creator's acting, through Israel and climactically Jesus, to rescue his creation from its ensuing plight. The story continues with the creator acting by his own spirit within the world to being it towards the restoration which is his intended goal for it." (Wright, 132)
Wright, N.T. The New Testament and the People of God. 5 vols. Vol. 1, Christian Origins and the Question of God. Guildford: Biddles Ltd., 1992.
