Blogging from Bridgeport

Twice now, I’ve found myself listening to Alister McGrath talking about Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion.  (You can download an interview here and a lecture here.)  This is all old stuff, I know.  It was old when Dawkins wrote the book.  I have almost entirely lost interest in the debate.

Besides, “Does God exist?” is a question that should be taken ’round back and shot.  Two out of the three words in it need major definition.  What do you mean by “God”?  How do you mean “exist”?  These are not self-evident.  Even worse is the question, “Is there a God?”  Where is “there”? 

According to the Bible, the question is not “Does God exist?” but “Which god will you worship as God?”  My friend Barry came to me yesterday asking about Psalm 82 (which is quoted by Jesus in John 10.)  In that Psalm, God is apparently talking to other “gods” (the Hebrew word is elohim) and judging them for their injustice, particularly their neglect of the “weak and the orphan . . . the lowly and the destitute.”  So the question is not, “Is there a God?”  There are certainly plenty of “gods.”  We humans are always worshipping something, even if it is ourselves.  The God that this Psalm extols however is on the side of the poor and needy.  This God demands justice, righteousness, and a fair shake for all.  

Dawkins says that this God is a delusion.  Those who believe in God have long been accused of simply projecting their own desires onto a fictional “God.”  But this is not a God I would have projected.  Certainly, I feel good about giving lip-service to this God.  After all, who would bad-mouth concepts like justice and righteousness?  But then this God calls me into a community where justice is practiced.  This God asks me to get off my butt and go love my neighbor.  This God requires me to share.  And this God is not afraid to judge me for not sharing. 

The awe I feel before this God makes a question like “Does God exist?” seem puny and insignificant.

I’m going to skip the beginning of Gen 2, even though it really is the whole point of Gen 1: that the Sabbath originated with God. Sabbath is such a rich theological idea, and we could go on at length about it, but not right now.

Gen 2:4b ff is traditionally (for Christians) viewed as the story of “The Fall.” Not that “fall” is ever used in the passage, nor even is the word “sin.” So what actually happens here that makes this a “fall”? Adam and Eve get kicked out of the paradise that God created them to live in. Augustine read this and found here an explanation for the problem of why evil exists. Human beings made the choice to disobey God, and nowall of their descendants are paying the price. It’s Adam and Eve’s fault. Here’s where this train of thought goes: Jesus Christ comes as the “new Adam” to set everything right. He is truly “the image of the invisible God,” and those who place their trust in him are being remade into his image. So the image of God that was somehow marred at the fall is being replaced in some human beings by the image of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. As Wesley wrote in his hymn: “Adam’s likeness now efface/Stamp thine image in its place/Second Adam from above/Re-create us in thy love.” That’s one way to look at it.

Except that nowhere in Gen 2-3 is the “image of God” mentioned, much less that it has been marred or disfigured. And later in Genesis, it is affirmed that, despite their rebellion, human beings are made in God’s image (Gen 9:6). Certainly, the heart of human beings is evil continually (Gen 6:5 and Gen 8:21), but there is never any mention in the Old Testament that the “image” is marred.

Also, this story does not work as an air-tight explanation for the problem of evil: where did the snake come from? Why did God give Adam and Eve such a dangerous thing as “free will”? (Or, if you are a Calvinist, why did God predestine them to disobey?) Why did God plant such “dangerous trees” in the garden? This predicament looks like God’s fault in the end. Such a reading of the story makes God the source of evil as well as good. Here’s where this train of thought leads: God, elsewhere in the Bible, is said to “make weal and create woe” all the same. We see what God did to Israel when they forsook the covenant. God has been blamed for misfortune in every age. I remember Ronald Goetz, writing for the Christian Century awhile back, wrote that God needed to pay for inflicting all this suffering on humanity, and that God did so through Jesus’ suffering on the cross. That’s another way to look at it.

A third way of examining the story is to ask different questions. First, let’s imagine that this is not a historical occurrence. Perhaps it’s more like a parable. On the surface, it seems to be about the quest for “knowledge of good and evil,” that is, the search for wisdom. Looking for wisdom is a major theme of the Bible, even if we often ignore it, because we neglect books like Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Anyway, here’s where this train of thought goes: In this story, human beings are given a shortcut to knowledge: eat the fruit and your eyes will be opened. But the shortcut has dire consequences, and it turns out that “fear of the Lord” would have been a better beginning of the quest for wisdom. The path to wisdom is a hard road, involving keeping God’s Torah, living in faithful community, and even, in a sense, taking up one’s cross for the good of others. Jesus, who is “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24), exemplifies this way preeminently, and those who follow him demonstrate that his wisdom is indeed of God (Luke 7:35). So we have yet another way to read the story.

And there are still other ways of reading it. I’m personally fond of Alexander Schmemann’s interpretation at the opening of his For the Life of the World, where he discusses the Lord’s Supper in the light of this story, declaring “You are what you eat.” Schmemann muses that Adam and Eve, like us, are hungry and try to satisfy their hunger with what is not of God. Later, Christ gives himself as bread for the world, so that we may feed on him at his table, and fill ourselves with what comes from God.

I’m sure you can find other ways of looking at the story. The ancient rabbis said of this literature: “Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it.” (Pirke Avot 5:25) The Torah is like a diamond, through which the light shines differently as one rotates it and gazes in its various facets. Sometimes I need to know that I have choices to make (the first interpretation), and sometimes I need to acknowledge that all things come from God (the second interpretation), and sometimes I need to rethink how I am pursuing wisdom (the third interpretation), and sometimes I need to consider what I am really hungry for. To be dogmatic about one of these interpretations is to close off other avenues for fruitful reflection, so I prefer to hold them all together and to keep my options open.

I read somewhere where Karl Barth wrote, “The first and basic act of theological work is prayer.”  So here is a prayer I wrote, inspired by Genesis 1.

When I read Genesis 1, I am impressed with three things:

1. God as the orderer of chaos.  I know orthodox Christian theology holds that God created everything from nothing (creation ex nihilo), and you can find that in Gen 1 (after all, where did the light come from?)  But there are “waters” present even before God starts his creative activity, and God spends some time separating them into heavens and waters below the heavens (similar words in Hebrew:  shamayim and mayim), then gathering them together to reveal the dry land.  God takes chaos (the memorable Hebrew phrase tohu vebohu in Gen 1:2 reminds me of the slang term “higgledy-piggledy”) and orders it to create an environment where life can flourish. 
2. After creating a habitable environment on days 1, 2, and 3 (complete with trees and plants for food), God further orders chaos by creating regents to rule over it in God’s stead.  On day 4, the sun and moon are set in the heavens to rule over day and night, keeping them separate.  God is clearly not going to do all the work alone.  Likewise, on day 6, human beings are created in God’s image, and again the sense is that these creatures will be God’s regents, God’s representatives, keeping the creation in order in God’s stead.  God seems happy to hand responsibility for creation care to humanity at the outset.  This idea comes up again in the next chapter when woman is created as the Adam’s ezer or “helper.”  Walter Brueggemann points out that the term (ezer) is often applied elsewhere in the Bible to God, but here God seems to say, “Let the woman be Adam’s helper.  I’m not going to do all the work!”  And so it is.
3. There’s a tremendous value judgement offered repeatedly in Genesis 1:  “and it was good.”  Against Gnostic heresy that would devalue the material world, Hebrew religion declares the world good.  This is so important, particularly for those of us in traditions that like to sing about how “this world is not my home.”  That may be true, but at the bottom of things, this world is still God’s creation, and as such it is still, deep down beneath all the mess we have made of it, good.  Let us therefore give thanks to the Lord, who is goodness itself, and whose creation is, as God says in Scripture, very good.

Let’s read Genesis together, shall we? The first question that comes to mind, before even opening the book is “Did this really happen?” Frankly, that question comes up not just when we read Genesis, but when we any story in the Bible. (When we read Revelation, we alter the question a tad: “Will this really happen?”) It’s the question of the historical accuracy of Scripture. And it’s a burning question, not just in the sense of being often asked, but also in the sense that those who dislike your answer might well burn you at the stake.

Scholars have been trying to answer this question for a long time. When they ask it of the gospels, it’s called “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” (This link will take you to one of the classic works on the subject.) Scholars examine what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John say about Jesus and, in light of everything else they know about 1st century Mediterranean culture and literature and other things, ask “Did he really do/say that?” I’m telling you this because I recently enjoyed this lecture by Dale Alison, one of my favorite New Testament scholars, and he laments that as a youth he never heard his pastor never mention it. I felt guilty, so now I’m telling you.

Alison then asks whether it is all that important that the gospels are historically accurate. He gives examples of gospel stories that don’t seem historical at all, yet tell us plenty about Jesus that rings true. For instance, the bit about Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert (Matthew 4). Perhaps we might doubt that he really fasted 40 days, or that he really had a conversation with the devil. Yet the character of Jesus in the story certainly fits with what we know of the real Jesus: he doesn’t do miracles to gain his own advantage, he doesn’t grasp at power, he trusts in God completely. You could say that the temptation story wasn’t historical, but that it is true.

We don’t require that Jesus’ parables be history. We certainly don’t ask if Psalm 23 is historical, or the Song of Songs. Why do we require that other parts of the Bible be history? Why couldn’t parts of Genesis be poetry? or legend? Some people think Genesis 1, with its refrain of “And God saw that it was good,” was originally a litany for use in worship. I read Genesis, and I find myself confronted with something more than mere historical data. Mere history does not move my heart to worship, but Genesis 1 does.

Alison made me a blog. How very exciting for all of us!