(Ir)religiosity

This is part three in an ongoing series on systematic (de)constructive theology. See part one for a longer introduction and please keep in mind that the following is provisional, unfinished, and ad hoc. In other words, it is truly theology not a dogmatics. I look forward to the dialogue.

In the beginning God began creating not out of nothing but out of something, ordering the already present chaos, and sparking a process of creativity that continues to the present and into the future, a process in which all of creation is participating. God’s providence, far from being tainted with power and intervention is a statement about present reality, a statement that rings from the powerless cry of Jesus on the cross into the future against suffering, injustice and oppression.

In keeping with our quasi-panentheistic notion of God with a certain postmodern flavoring, it should come as no surprise that creation and providence will be treated and reified in stark contrast to more modern and traditional theologies.  To being with, we should note that any concept of God which makes its home outside of Western metaphysics, understanding God as that signification, that event which is wholly otherwise than being will surely be incompatible with the long-standing doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.  In this first place, one can argue, quite convincingly in fact, that the doctrine is itself unbiblical.  As John Caputo¹ and Catherine Keller² have observed Genesis does not state that God created the cosmos from nothing, it simply states that “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep” (Gen. 1:1).³ To but it bluntly, ‘in the beginning’ “things had already begun,” in some sense, and God simply brought things to life, indeed “[brought] being to life.”⁴ According to this creation narrative, God’s action is more like ordering some already existing chaos than it is creating matter from nothing.  On this reading “creation is not a movement from non-being to being…but from being to beyond being”⁵ in which God, Elohim in the Hebrew text, far from an arrogant display of power and omnipotence simply brings order to that which was already there, bringing life to the being that is already present.  Odds are the Hebrew writers who penned this beautiful mythopoetic narrative had no problems with this messy, risky view of creation.  The problem, as Caputo points out, is when Greek metaphysics re-appropriated the story:

Metaphysical theology has turned this Hebrew narrative into the tale of a pure, simple, clean act of power carried out on high by a timeless and supersensible being, a very Hellenic story that also goes along with a top-down social structure of imperial power flowing down from on high.  There is order and majesty here no doubt, but the story is, upon closer reading, “must messier,” as Keller says, more complicated—not creatio ex nihilo but “creatio ex profundis,” not a single clean power acting ex nihilo, but a concert of forces, one active and formative and the other more open-ended, free-floating, fluid, and unformed.  A poetics of creation from primal, untamed, unwieldy, water elements, as wily as the wind and as slippery as water, elements that tend to resist fixed order.⁶ Read the rest of this entry »

1. Caputo, The Weakness of God, passim. [↩]
2. Catherine Keller, The Face of the Deep:  A Theology of Becoming (New York, New York:  Routledge, 2003), passim. [↩]
3. All biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted. [↩]
4. Caputo, 58. [↩]
5. Ibid., 58-59. [↩]
6. Ibid., 59. [↩]

There has been a recent surge in publication of various “special-interest” bibles.  For the comic book and graphic novel geeks there is the Manga Bible, for the hipsters the Bible Illuminated, and for the Methodists the Wesley Bible. Don’t fit into one of those groups?  No problem. There’s always the all-purpose People’s Bible

It just not cool anymore to have plain Jane NRSV or NIV.

The Green Bible is another of these new, hip bibles.  I have mixed feelings about it.  Now, to be sure, all of these new bibles can be useful.  Each of them takes seriously the need to speak in contemporary language with contemporary images and metaphors.  The Green Bible goes a step further, understanding the need, if we are to be faithful bearers of the good news, of taking seriously contemporary problems and providing alternatives.  Many Christian, especially younger ones, are tired of the old ways of “doing” church and “living” theology.  They wonder if their bible has anything serious to say about contemporary issues and if their God cares about what is happening in the world.  And these new bibles communicate that much more effectively than King Jimmy.

According to its website, “The Green Bible will equip and encourage people to see God’s vision for creation and help them engage in the work of healing and sustaining it.”  Which is wonderful; that is indeed part of our task — to understand and take seriously God’s dream for the entire world, the entire cosmos even, and participate in the actualization of that dream in our own peculiar way and in our own particular contexts.  That is good.  That is important  I get that. Read the rest of this entry »