…when we are in different surroundings, or

…when we get back on our feet, or

…when I start (and hopefully complete) my PhD work, or

…when, when, when

Each time that sense of longing for a different future arises, the Spirit has a way of directing me back to the present.  And I’m blessed to remember (again) that God’s goodness is not out there somewhere, but right here, right now.

A passage of Scripture I’ve been meditating on daily this month will be a lifelong touchstone for remembering God’s goodness.

I’d like to share it with you.

“If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people’s sins,

If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,

Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.

I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—firm muscles, strong bones.

You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry.

You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past.

You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.”

–YHWH, The LORD our God as rendered in Isaiah 58.9-12

The goodness described here is a very specific goodness, from a very specific God, in a specific context.  This specificty requires my response and involvement; and the involvement of my family and community.  This specificity graces me with light and thanks.

–

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

• Relational Giving
• Covenant: A Promise to Serve
• “Why Bother?”
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WARNING:  Theological content straight ahead …

This is Part 2 of an ongoing post.  Read Part 1 here.

There are three seemingly simple, yet particularly interesting, characteristics of God’s creative revelation–all introduced in the first three verses of Genesis–that fuel the imagination concerning the context of the “source and foundation of the meaning discerned within Israel’s history.”[1] The introductory phrase, the tohu webohu –the emptiness, shapelessness–and God’s first creative acts of speaking things into existence are remarkable and distinctive features of this narrative that creates meaning for all existence.  We will take a systems approach with these three aspects: looking at the whole and then moving to the parts.

The widely held translation of the opening phrase of Genesis–”In the beginning, God created”–along with a largely superficial understanding of the “formless void” of verse 1 and that we are told God created the heavens in the earth in verse 1 has yielded the theological concept creatio ex nihilo, that is the doctrine that states the world was created out of nothing.  A close reading of the text casts doubt on this doctrine.  In fact, it is unlikely such an idea occurs anywhere in the Old Testament.[2]

The challenge is: how could God create out of nothing if something–the “formless void”–was there?   The ‘nothing’ might be a void or chaos.  If a void, this would have affinities with theologies that emphasize grace, but “have the indirect effect of denying the moral and interactive character of God’s grace.”[3] Such theologies would rather have the nothingness be chaos, and attempts to find distinct and striking parallels between the Genesis creation story and the Enuma Elish.[4] The Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation epic, bears similarities in Near Eastern language and comprehension–i.e., Tiamat (sea) and tehom (the deep)–to the Genesis account, but these similarities are suggestive of a Near Eastern cultural understanding of the world and not of an account that is quite close to the Enuma elish.

The opening chapters of the Hebrew Bible evidence a difference in philosophy of language.  We see a juxtaposition of culturally scientific language and poetically expressive language, or what has been called mythopoeic language.  It is with this expressive language of mystery that the poet of Genesis tells a story of the Creator-God who does not struggle with the pre-existent chaos.  Rather, his ordering of the heavens and the earth–of reality–is done at first with words.  God speaks, and it is.  The chaos is ordered.

For the Hebrew people, a narrative of the first things would include elements of the present and the future, laced with the understanding of what life is like at present and musings on what humanity will do with this life.  Always in the forefront of Hebraic thought would be the participation of God in the people’s doing of life.

This yields a beautiful coherency that is absurdly interrupted by any traditional understanding of creation ex nihilo.  Chaos exists; it simply is.  As it was at the first, so it is now.  Something of present life for the poet is reflected back into the Genesis account.

The nothingness of the tohu webohu is not the only substantive that is, however.  There is something behind the nothing.  That something speaks light into the darkness of the nothingness.  That something speaks separation of the chaos and orders the chaotic waters.  That something speaks stable dry land into existence, and life to cover the land, and varying lights for seasons, and living beings to be co-participants in the creation process within the created order.  Then God finally creates his own image–one of diversity within unity–as minister to this created order: a risky venture indeed.  The entire unfolding of this creation narrative, though bearing some affinities to other Near Eastern creation accounts, is marked with newness and imagination.

The idea of newness can be further illuminated by a closer reading of the opening line in Genesis:

With first things God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen. 1.1 orig. trans.)

Unlike Marduk who must struggle with Tiamat–and that only after many lesser gods have battled and failed miserably against her– the Creator-God of Genesis simply speaks the nothingness into order.  There is no epic struggle, nor is there any weakening of the chaos from lesser Gods.  This is indeed a ‘first thing;’ a first of many acts this God performs that are new.  The prophet of 2 Isaiah notices this pattern of newness in YHWH God:

As of now, I announce to you new things,

Well-guarded secrets you did not now.

Only now are they created, and not of old;

Before today you had not heard of them.

(Isaiah 48.6b-7a)

Likewise the prophet of tearing down and building up wildly–and truthfully–imagined when declaring to the harlot Israel whom God had just declared a virgin anew:

How long will you waver, O faithless daughter?  For the LORD has created a new thing on the earth: a virgin births a man.  (Jeremiah 31.22 orig. trans.)

In this creation, God has not annihilated the primordial chaos.  Rather he has transformed it.  Out of nothing, something emerges.  This word-fulfilling action is worthy of Israel’s praise.  This is why YHWH’s historical deeds are regarded as creative acts. YHWH creates a people out of slavery and out of exile.

The coherency of thought that has its genesis in Genesis ties together the often segregated theological categories of creation, redemption, and transformation.  Violence of a categorical kind must occur to some degree in order to grasp the nuance of these activities of our God who is always ‘beyond.’  Yet, there flows a river of cogency that washes away our conceptions of sterile classification when we see this Creator-God YHWH ever moving those who respond to his grace from creation to new creation.  This fluency melts the dividing lines of the God who creates from the God who redeems from the God who transforms.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), xxvii.

[4] Here, the Genesis creation story referred to is that of Genesis 1.1-2.3.  Though some scholars understand the opening chapters of Genesis to be comprised of separate creation stories, I find them to be one coherent creation story, expounding or showing us new angles of only one account.

[5] The preposition bĕ is just this: a porous Hebrew preposition.  Scholarship takes the translation of bĕ to be determined by grammatical context.  Since it could be translated “with, to, in, about” or as a number of other prepositional possibilities, strict adherence to “in” is unnecessary and misleading.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
What’s your take on creation ex nihilo?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

• On Reading the Hebrew Scripture — Part 1
• Authority and Power through a Trinitarian Lens
• To Cry Out OR To Trust?
• The ShadowPath of YHWH’s Open Story — Part 2
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A comprehensive Old Testament theology will include and be influenced by several prevailing methods.  My own proposal for reading the Old Testament would have as its locus a theology of imagination and incorporate perspectives of (at least) creation, canon, tradition/recital, narrative, linguistic, and history.

My own inclusion of this last category is intriguing.  Historical-critical perspectives that dissolve the normative claims of the biblical text have rarely held my interest.  The questions “What happened?” and “When was the text written?” as isolated inquiries proffer little illuminative potential.  The dissolution of this phase of Old Testament scholarship is testament to a greater disinterest with the approach.  Yet, I have discovered a certain validity to events that are in some sense formative to Christian faith.  So long as the events are assessed intertextually–i.e., canonically–and are rehearsed as traditioning and re-traditioning confessions in the life of the community, they become powerful witness to formation of present and future believers.

The Old Testament has been, and is being read, in several major ways.[1] First, theology as event has been a predominant trajectory for Old Testament study during the past century.  Faith is born from God’s acts and the event roots the believing community in the past.

Second, theology as tradition engenders a faith born from the gathered community and its practices.  This enables the ekklesia to form an environment for the question “Why do we do this?” to be asked.  We then respond with the stories that speak formatively in the faith.

Third, looking for God’s economy within the Old Testament cannon is fueled by several voices–most prominently Deuteronomy and Proverbs.  This involves blessing and curse, insiders and outsiders, and themes of social justice.  Relationship here is formative.  Blessing is life, and curse is a form of judgment wherein death is the point of revelation.  Alternately, blessing may simply be the gift of life, or the ability to recognize the persistent presence of God in life.

As for the perplexing problem in the Hebrew canon of social justice, the monarchical view keeps the rich being rich and the poor being poor as long as all the people’s basic needs are being met.  The same people are always caring for the poor, and keeping them poor.  In some sense then, the laws were given to privileged people.  This also incorporates Jubilee thought that yields a giving away of power and richness so that there is a cycle of need and gift.  The New Testament answer to this is that the king must die.

For the Christian community, these three trajectories lead to Christ’s effective killing of the monarchy as it has always been understood: exaltation only comes on a cross.  Jeremiah, the forerunner of Christ in this trajectory, was the ultimate deconstructionist.  By the 8^th and 7^th centuries BC, Yahwehism had become the religion of the people behind the wall of the city.  When you live behind the wall you are unable to really see how the church is prone to become and be.

Fourth, canonical theology gives due weight to every canonical voice.  Each text dialogues with each other text resulting in an intra-textual dialogue.  Texts cannot be isolated.  Indeed, this is the point of theology: dialogue which becomes God-talk.  Functionally, the church goes to scripture for dialogue partners, and from this dialogue emerges the point of revelation.

Springing from, and closely connected to, canonical theology are metaphorical, narrative, and imaginative theology.  These three trajectories hold a unique interplay of thought.  The notion of the word–dabar–yields an imaging of the Word.

Finally, creation theology is quite able to incorporate and blend the previous approaches while introducing fresh nuance and perspective.  We are still living in God’s story of creation and participating with God in creation–we are co-creators.  What if the entire Old Testament–and Bible–is the story of creation?  God’s concern is not just with the particular, but extends to the universal: God desires to reconcile all of creation–not just humanity.  To create means to make room for the other.  God is sharing creation with others.  Thus, co-creators open up to share creation with others.  God has taken great risk and made himself vulnerable in doing this.

Any thorough Old Testament reading will account for the various Old Testament canons.  Particularly, the narrative flow of the canons is informative when dealing with Old Testament.  Hebrew Scripture moves from Torah, to Prophets, to Writings.  The final movement of this triptych is a journey of creation to new creation with emphasis on sapiential literature and a re-historicizing for Israel and all of creation.

The Protestant Old Testament Canon, which is identical in content to Hebrew Scripture, reorders the format thus concluding with the twelve minor prophets.  These prophets–in the Jewish Canon filling one scroll and thus contained within one book entitled The Twelve–point toward a newness, are ripe with a theology of hope, and are consistent with the move from creation to new creation.

The overarching narrative in both canons is of a creator-God who creates order out of chaos, shapes life out of the dust of the earth, and then engages with that creation still having dirt on his hands working toward God’s own creative purpose in surprising, dynamic, and relational ways.

To view the whole of Old Testament narrative through this lens will eschew placing primacy on salvation history synthesized from the pens of the Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly writers at the expense of the soulful stories such as, for instance, those told in the Megilloth.  Indeed, to conclude that the entire Tanakh and Christian Old Testament are concerned with God’s creative activity through a particular people with the whole of creation will draw the believing community’s attention now sometimes to the major works comprising the Pentateuch, now sometimes to the often-perceived obscure works in the Ketuvim.

To say that God has created, has interacted with his creation, and is continuing to interact with that creation supposes that history, in some sense, is significant.  So Genesis is the obvious starting point for theological reflection.  Life is not imposed on the created order, nor inherent in the chaos as it stood.  Rather, life was and is given as gift, and the gifting is contingent on the interplay of two wills: God’s and creation’s (particularly, humanity’s).

Interpretation of Old Testament begins then with following this creator-God’s interplay with creation: the relationship of the two wills and the dance of giving, receiving, and returning life.  This hermeneutic will allow for the dialogue of canonical voices to be heard, explored, and interpreted.  Study will examine even the styles of reporting God’s activity in creation, the rehearsals of worship, the agony and joy of divine-human struggle, and so forth.

For example, what causes salvation history to be told in the fashion of 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings then re-traditioned in the telling of 1 & 2 Chronicles?  How does the drama that unfolds in Song of Songs–much like a Greek play from antiquity, with lead characters, chorus, and all–illuminate the relationship of creator, co-creators, and creation?

When dealing with the biblical text, meaning emerges as something other than fact-based deductions defined by contemporary standards.  There is something of mystery with equal part poetry.

Nor is meaning gleaned in isolation.

Any cursory study of the pre- or post-exilic Hebraic people yields an atmosphere of communal worship, indeed community life.  This side of the text, meaning holistically arises in communal diachronic reading, speaking, and interpretation.  What is being described is a process of the imagination.  It is the imagination that is the touchstone for meaning; the matter that is ordered into coherent meaning.

Part 2 to follow …

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
What is your hermeneutical lens for reading the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament)?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

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Almost everyday of the year I read a psalm.  Sometimes I read the same one over and over.  I’ve been particularly interested in a certain set of the Hebrew Psalter.  Bear with me  …

Why Psalm 1 (and 2)?

Though there is wide consensus in recent research on the Hebrew Psalter that Psalm 1 was placed as an introduction to the collection, little study investigates linguistic cues that link Psalm 1–and possibly Psalm 2–thematically with the remainder of the Psalter in order to define with any specificity why Psalm 1 is selected as the shaping psalm.[1]

Of a general nature, it is widely suggested that Psalm 1 has two main emphases intended to direct the understanding of subsequent psalms: the centrality of torah and the primacy of the righteous over against the wicked.  In the traditional understanding, torah has come to be associated with various commands stemming from the Deuteronomic history, the Levitical codes, and so forth.  The plight of the righteous versus that of the wicked has been determined in stark either/or worldview terms that propose a dichotomy of ‘two ways.’

However, there is more richness to the depth of torah, and more complex tones to the plight of humanity, than such general observations set forward.  Linguistic concepts of torah, ‘the way,’ and ‘refuge,’ give rise to a hermeneutical lens for the Psalter that is equally shaped by Psalms 1 and 2 as a launching pad for the scriptural hymnbook.

Likewise, in microcosm, this interpretive shape can be examined specifically in the Korahite Psalms (42-49; 84-85; 87-88).  What unfolds may not necessarily be two ways, but one way that allows for much movement in the God who makes room in his life for angry prayer, glorious doxology, and plenty more in between.

Part 2 to follow …

Jerome F.D. Creach, “Like a Tree Planted by the Temple Stream: The Portrait of the Righteous in Psalm 1:3,” in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly (Jan 1999), 35.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How do you think Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 are linked?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

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Psalm 102:1-12
God, listen! Listen to my prayer, listen to the pain in my cries.
Don’t turn your back on me
just when I need you so desperately.
Pay attention! This is a cry for help!
And hurry—this can’t wait!

I’m wasting away to nothing,
I’m burning up with fever.
I’m a ghost of my former self,
half-consumed already by terminal illness.
My jaws ache from gritting my teeth;
I’m nothing but skin and bones.
I’m like a buzzard in the desert,
a crow perched on the rubble.
Insomniac, I twitter away,
mournful as a sparrow in the gutter.
All day long my enemies taunt me,
while others just curse.
They bring in meals—casseroles of ashes!
I draw drink from a barrel of my tears.
And all because of your furious anger;
you swept me up and threw me out.
There’s nothing left of me—
a withered weed, swept clean from the path.

Yet you, God, are sovereign still,
always and ever sovereign.
You’ll get up from your throne and help Zion—
it’s time for compassionate help.
Oh, how your servants love this city’s rubble
and weep with compassion over its dust!
The godless nations will sit up and take notice
—see your glory, worship your name—
When God rebuilds Zion,
when he shows up in all his glory,
When he attends to the prayer of the wretched.
He won’t dismiss their prayer.

I wonder what it is like to think of all good things you receive as “ash.” I wonder who might be twittering away today. I wonder what it is like to feel like God’s furious anger is directed squarely at you. I wonder what it feels like to be a withered weed. I wonder what God will do with me when I have the sign of the cross in ashes on my forehead tonight. I wonder what it will be like to say to each person tonight, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn from your sins and be faithful to Christ.” I wonder how God will help me turn from my own sins.
SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
What are you wondering about today?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

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While the instructions in Leviticus may be law in a formal sense, what is actually portrayed is a gracious offer of forgiveness from God. Listen to God’s promise throughout this text: “Your sins will be forgiven!�? (Leviticus 16.6-16). We are created by a God who freely grants forgiveness to the believer in and through sacrifice. God is freely at work in the sacrifice and is freely accepting the sacrifice as a means of grace. The sacrifice is sacramental in that it is a tangible means in and through which God acts in a saving way to forgive. We do not attempt to appease an angry God. Rather, the object of this purification is sin; it is never God. Remember, “Your sins will be forgiven!�? And the reality of Christ is that the sacrifice has now been offered by God himself in Jesus of Nazareth. The one who promises forgiveness is so gracious that he even provides the sacrifice. We then are offered the chance to engage with this forgiveness by offering our lives as a living sacrifice.

Notice that within this ancient ritual sin is not simply to be understood in individual terms. Sin is a reality that has a corporate dimension. The goat (and so Christ) is not a substitute, but a symbolic vehicle for recognizing that God has forgiven our sins. So often we claim Christ’s atonement for “me:�? “I was saved . . . Christ died for me�? and so on. Yet what if we–Christ’s Church–fully realized the vast nature of sin? Can we believe that sacrifice has been made on behalf of our sins of abortion, war, racism, genocide, oppression, and neglect of the poor? Can we join in such confession? We must. For where there is this confession there is : “All your sins are forgiven.�?

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I think that only a Biblical foundationalist could adhere to this idea.  The foundationalist after all will embrace the dead faith of the living far easier than the living faith of the dead.  The foundationalist will scrutinize scripture for the plain sense of the Word, but will instead strip the complexity of scripture in a synchronistic approach.  A view of life (and faith) that accounts for “both/and” could certainly be proof-texted to death by the foundationalist.

Yet, I find our spiritual ancestors embraced:

• a creating God who occasionally condoned evil;
• a vengeful God who was also a loving God;
• a fully divine God and a fully human God;
• a Church that embraces diversity within unity (a reflection of the Triune God, by the way);
• and a gospel that speaks through a certain people and yet to and through the world.

Amazingly, I discover these things in Scripture.  In fact, a cannonical-narrative view of scripture (which is holistic, healthy, mysterious, tangible, knowable, and livable all at once) yields postmodernism.  And — like the good postmodern I am — I acknowledge and embrace the fact that our world is populated with a mix of different learning styles that cover the spectrum of modernism to postmodernism.  It even appears that each learning style is helpful to the Church in America as we try to discover who God wants us to be right now and tomorrow.

I can think of no world view more Biblical than postmodernism.

Incidentally, I’m reading Beyond Foundationalism right now, so who knows how I would lay out this apologia in a few weeks.Related Posts:

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The Holy Spirit functions in the life of the Church by always pointing to the Son. The Son, throughout scripture, is continually pointing to the Father. (“Father” is simply who this God is in relation to the Son in the Gospel of John. God has many names and characters, this is the one used here). And notice what John – ever the thoughtful observer – is showing us (in John 8:50): the Father is always drawing attention to the Son through the Spirit. We have a beautiful picture of the Divine Identity always disowning self and drawing attention to the “other.�? The Father does not seek the Father’s glory. The Son does not seek the Son’s glory. The Spirit does not seek the Spirit’s glory. Each is continually seeking the glory of the other. In John’s first letter, he eloquently evidences this cyclical pattern of life within the Triune God: “There are three that testify: the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood, and these Three are One�? (1 John 5.7-8).

The scandal of the cross can only be accepted as an action of the Triune God. It is an action of self-denial in preference for others to which every believer is called. God’s love for the “other�? within God’s own life flows outward to us. We in turn must disown ourselves and love the “other.�? This might be loving our neighbor, not so much as we love ourselves, but as we would rather love ourselves. In an individualistic, selfish American society such a way of life will indeed be scandalous.

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But then they deliver the message to Pharoah: “Let my people go …”. Pharoah doesn’t. Instead he makes the people’s work more difficult. Those same people who had believed and worshiped come to Moses and Aaron complaining: “The LORD look upon you and judge you!” The same Moses and Aaron — who were told Pharoah’s heart would be hardened, after all — complain to the LORD: “You have done nothing at all to deliver your people!”

I can relate to Moses and Aaron at this difficult time. Transitioning a local church culture is hard, lonely, and often aggravating work. I’ve seen the signs and had assurance from God that this direction is the LORD’s leading and doing. The people rejoiced at the outset. But the time as of late is one where (some) of the people complain to me: “What’s going on? What are you doing? The LORD look upon you and judge you. We were happier with our bricks and work the way it all used to be. What’s important to us is furniture arrangement not transforming freedom!” (okay that one’s a bit exagerrated).

Yet, I know God wants to deliver us to a new future: where not-yet believers become Christ-followers; where we engage in connecting to our community in Spirit-inspired ways; where our lives are changed, transformed into God’s reality more every day. But I ask God: “What’s going on? What are you going to do? What have you done so far?”

After Moses complains to God, the LORD’s answer is interesting. The LORD outlines what he has done in the past for those who served him: the promises the LORD has kept; the faithfulness of the LORD. Then in the last part of Exodus chapter 6 there is a curious (and long) genealogy that ends with Moses and Aaron. It’s as if the LORD is saying: “Look at all these I’ve worked through. Look what I’ve done in and through and with them. You are part of their line, Moses and Aaron. Don’t you think I can do something even more amazing in and through and with you?”

And the LORD did. Thanks for reminding me of my spiritual heritage, God.

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My next thought was, “LORD, is it time for me to go?!” I waited … nothing happened … I got my water, came back to the doors … nothing happened … I inhaled deeply and watched the birds.

Then one of my favorite poems came to mind: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens. The world of imagination and the way it relates to different surroundings began to run away with my mind. The poem ends with the blackbird (i.e., imaginatiom) motionless and paralysed.

Finally, Jesus’ parable from Mark 4:1-20 came to mind. The birds ate the seed that fell on the bad soil. These three metaphors converged into a thought more frightening then my impending mortality. The church, this church, GCC, the one I serve as pastor, could be bad soil! Have long-time Christians become so comfortable that they don’t even realize when seed is scattered on them? Do they let the birds eat it up (and simultaneously carry off their souls)? Do they live a paralyzed life?

Immediately, I prayed the prayer of the gardener to the landowner: “let me fertilize this ground a little while longer before you raze it over and count it lost.” I realize the good soil is the not-yet believers we cross paths with everyday. The majority of my energy and time goes to them. I’m also doing some fertilizing. And, as I did yesterday, when I see the crows and blackbirds creeping in I’m running out the door shouting and hollering and scaring them off: “Get out of here! We choose life over death! We will be good soil! I will not let this church’s mission — the Light of the World sown into everyone’s lives — be eaten away!”

I’m sure if some neighbors saw me they thought I was crazy … “What’s that insane pastor doin’ over there?! … I didn’t know they were charismatic! … Hey, is that a rain-dance?” Or maybe they saw the passion of a shepherd who will dutifully tend the 99 but will deliberately leave the 99 to pursue the lost 1.Related Posts:

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