CHAPTER ONE
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Our story will take many bizarre and unexpected turns before we are through, but each one of them will be a simple unpacking of the profound statement above.
How are we to understand God and his creation?
Human history is the record of how that question has been answered and of the consequences of each proposal. Understanding both God and his creation truthfully is the point of our story; it will take the entire story to do so. But here, at the beginning, we can see the whole picture being “roughed in” on the artist’s canvas.
Listen to the nomad’s story:
“Our God called all that is into existence- things in heaven and earth and under the earth. He fashioned each over the space of six days; calling things as they were to be, and behold- they were as he spoke them. At the end of each day, he took his handiwork into his hands and turned it and examined it and declared that he was pleased with what he had fashioned. Then he rested from his work and enjoyed the things that he had made.”
That’s not the official version, of course. You can find that in the book of Genesis- chapters one and two. But it is a fair summary: something you might have heard coming from inside the tent as a conscientious father, though in a hurry to get back to the campfire, granted his daughter’s request for a bedtime story.
If you happened to be outside of the Babylonian tent, you would have heard another summary- one distilled from the opposing tale we heard earlier. The differences are significant.
The story as told by God’s people begins in Peace. It will take the full revelation of God in Christ to fully appreciate the ecstatic, festive and communal nature of that eternal Shalom of God, but even here in the earliest of verbal revelation we see the fact that before history’s beginning, there was peace.
Israel was alone in telling the story in this way. The nations around her described Chaos as the fountainhead of reality. Chaos lurked behind, above and below everything- seen and unseen. Reality began in chaos and one day it would end there, as well. In such a world the only path to order and security is a violent one. Gods and goddesses wrestled a short lived peace through force and overwhelming might. Creation itself was carved from the slain body of a conquered opponent. If divinity could not escape from bloodshed, then humanity should despair of such a dream.
The ancient world (and all those who place chaos as nature’s ultimate foundation) existed in a constant state of war. Reality is war and war, reality.
Good and evil, chaos and order, suffering and joy. Each is simply one part of the whole. Each will have its turn, and then the other will take its place. Each must be accepted. Neither has claim to humanity’s ultimate allegiance. For who can worship at the feet of chaos, destruction and death (although there have been the few who have tried)? And the champions of order, security and life are destined to be swallowed up by the hideous void; their temporary victory secured through a compromised use of the adversary’s weapons.
How different the world of our nomads. The image of a creator God, forming his handiwork in leisure, could not have been more opposed to the prevalent view. He speaks and all is as he commands. Like a child on Christmas morning, He is pleased at what he sees. He pushes back from his worktable, wipes his hands and then takes the day off to enjoy life.
Foundational to this vision was the distinction declared between Creator and Creation. This has always been the minority position. The god’s of surrounding nations (and those who were not so close, as well) were seen as a part of Nature. Clearly, according to message of our story the Lord God was Other than creation- not a part of it. He could not be identified with any single part, nor any sum of the parts of that which he had spoken into existence.
The Creator is infinite and eternal. Creation is finite and temporal. The Creator is original and independent. Creation is contingent.
Occasionally groups would arise who would maintain this distinction, but only at the cost of making the Infinite and Sovereign originator of all things absent and uninvolved.
Thousands of years after our story was first written down, a famous Roman outlined the options as he saw them. They hadn’t changed much. In his treatise On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero explained that one could side with the Stoics- declaring the divide to be present in all of creation. If you are looking for god, then you must only look within. Or, he pointed out that you could join the Epicureans- believing that this world is certainly not divine. There is divinity, but he, she, or it had left the scene long ago. The only thing left is to make oneself as comfortable as possible. Finally one could go the route of the Skeptics- acknowledging that the whole gods thing was more than you know, but counseling that we continue to show respect lest we cause to much turmoil. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it- even if the “it” was a scam. These options were viable before Cicero wrote; they are alive with us today.
People have always collided with each other. People have always acted selfishly (our story will tell us why in a bit). But for those who have rejected or have never heard our story, this is so out of principle. Reality is conflict. The “divine” standard, depending on the option you choose, is either man himself or a divinity that is unknown and absent… so that we are left with man himself.
Against those who would agree with the Stoics, the Christian story maintains the fundamental distinction between God and his Creation. This has been illustrated as in Fig. A. The being of God does not overlap with the being of creation. They are distinct. They may not be confused. The opposing view might be represented with a totem pole or a ladder. Divinity is just one end of a long pol
e of being. Theoretically, something might be able to climb up or down this scale of glory.
Against the Epicurean understanding of creator and creation we would say that though distinct from his Creation, God is not separate from his creation. He is daily and actively involved in preserving and governing his handiwork.
With the Skeptics we would question the reliability of our knowledge of gods who do not act in
history, but we would point to our God’s continual interaction with his people- not least in the gospel. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Take a moment to draw Figure A. It will come in handy later.
BOOK ONE
Preface / Intro / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5
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