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?
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 3
• The ShadowPath of YHWH’s Open Story — Part 2

Trinitarian theology is just about as interesting to me as sacramental theology. And I’ve been noticing of late how the Trinitarian lens through which I see the world has shaped me for missional life.

For example, God’s inner life, God’s relationship with the world, and God’s role as the source of all our understanding of who God is are threads woven together by God’s own producing of God’s self.  God is eternal and thus time is always present-tense from God’s perspective.  There can be no ordering of events in specified orders–”whether temporal, logical, or otherwise.”[1] To maintain a trinitarian grammar, there can be no producing without a producer and a product.  As David Cunningham states God’s activity of producing: “God produces God . . . God produces the world . . . God produces our knowledge of God.”[2]

In God’s producing of God, there is not mere self-duplication.  God gives over God’s self to an Other, so that there might be an Other.  Cunningham uses the example–a vestigium, perhaps–of pregnancy to illustrate this internal self-differentiation.  The Father, as Source, produces the Son, as Wellspring, and the Spirit, as Living Water.  Yet, verbal forms of these processions would be even more accurate, though more abstract.  Because, the differentiation within the Godhead is relational; the processions consist of relations constantly relating within each other.

God produces the world as gift.  And God awaits the return of this gift with our ‘Yes.’  God enables us to sustain this ‘Yes,’ as God continues to create, redeem, and sanctify the world.

God produces our knowledge of God.  No authentic understanding of God is possible outside of the “communally-normed reading of the biblical narratives that is made possible by the Spirit-filled Church.”[3] The vestigia trinitatis are supplementary to intimate corporate knowing of God.  God has already revealed all of God’s self.  God now continues to illuminate our hearts and minds to his truth and revelation.

It’s this understanding of God’s producing of reality that paves the way for incarnational living.

[2] Ibid., 58.

[3] Ibid., 83.

Related Posts:

• “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on”
• On Reading the Hebrew Scripture — Part 1
• The ShadowPath of YHWH’s Open Story — Part 2
• On Reading the Hebrew Scripture — Part 2
• Lessons from Tea

I’ve waited with anticipation for Weezer to captivate me like they did with their debut album: Weezer (Blue Album).  And now, finally, it has happened.  The latest self-titled offering has grabbed me and isn’t letting go.

Though there were glimpses of Rivers Cuomo’s brilliance on Pinkerton and Weezer (Green Album), this is the first album since their debut which gets a full play for me.

There is a coming-of-age in this album.  Musically and lyrically.  Being only a pedestrian bass player and a sometimes drummer, I’ll keep my comments mostly to the lyrics.

The first radio single “Pork and Beans” has several layers.  Cuomo’s songwriting has simplified in one sense and matured in another.  Though initially dealing with the cult of cool, the song becomes a battle cry for those with eclectic taste:

“I’ll eat my candy with the pork and beans …”

After so many years of so-so albums (receiving commercial and fan criticism), it’s as if the band has settled on the idea that they shouldn’t be about others’ expectations.  Instead, they are opting for what is inspired.  And this album mostly is inspired.

“The Greatest Man that Ever Lived” is a fun and satirical romp through this very journey of trying (but failing) to please:

“After the havoc that I’m gonna wreak
No more words will critics have to speak
I’ve got the answers to the tangled knot
Sleep tight in your cot.

Oh baby,
I’ve been told I’m goin’ crazy.
Oh baby,
But I can’t be held down.
Oh baby,
Somehow I’m keeping it steady.
Oh baby,
I’m tearin up this town.”

And then the quintessential statement:

“I am the greatest man that ever lived
I was born to give and give and give.”

Now, I don’t think Rivers Cuomo is trying to lay claim to what can only belong to Jesus of Nazareth (or, who knows … maybe he is).  But, he understands that the gifts (of music) are his to give.  He’s not responsible for how the gift is received.

There’s a very deep theological statement there.  God gives all good things we need to follow and worship Christ.  It’s up to us to make that gift of grace responsible.  That is to say, it’s up to us to respond to the gift(s).

A reflection on years past weaves throughout the whole of this album.  On “Everybody Get Dangerous” we hear the confession:

“Hockey games on frozen ponds
No safety pads were ever put on
Drivin’ home on country roads
Sixty-five in a twenty-five zone
In my parents Tercel
How did we survive so well
Throw the keys and the wheel locked up
I almost killed every one us”

And the reflection poses a problem for the band, now responsible for their own children:

“What will we say when our kids come to us
And ask, with a smile on their face,
‘Hey Dad, my friend’s got some new ninja swords!
Is it cool if we slash up his place?’”

Oh, if only my 3-year old, Eliot, would only ask before embarking on his paths of destruction!  But the progression from college kid to father is evident.  The Weezer journey has paralleled my own.  Their first album in large part set the parameters for my college experience.

The Bonus version of the album has some very nice additions.  “The Spider” delves into a bit of existential angst with a twist:

“Cuz I’m in pain just like the spider
In the drain, I am a fighter
But I can’t win I’ve got to lose
Give me strength to see me through
And ease the pain that I must feel
As my bones break and I taste the steel
As I go down …the drain…
I’m insane”

The twist comes in the next song, “King:”

“You see I own this town. You best not come around.
If you wanna get by, then cool it down.
If you wanna start something, know one thing: I’m king.
If you wanna mess around like that, that’s just how it is.
If you wanna get by, then mind your biz.
If you wanna start something, know one thing: I’m king.”

Cuomo knows he’s only king in his own mind.  But aren’t we all?  It takes a daily effort of yielding to rely on something outside ourselves (in my case, Christ).

Perhaps, I should have titled this post “A Brief Look at the New Weezer Album and How I See Things That Went Into Writing the Songs Through My Theological Lens.”  But that’s a wordy title, don’t you think?

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
Are you a Weezer fan?  What’s your take on their new album?

——

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

• Ash Wednesday Prayer
• The Mysterious Presence
• Covenant: A Promise to Serve
• Monday Morning Look Ahead
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 2

To engage in particularity dependent on authority derived outside one’s self is a task that truly requires an emptying of hubris when approaching the subject of God.

If there is significance in what is to be an ecclesiological endeavor, then the virtue of patience will enable what Robert Jenson calls “waiting . . . the most creative of activities.”

This waiting however is not static, but rather involves practicing the formation of developing the faith. Such practice–if we are to hold the scriptural tenor as worth its stuff–is predicated on a communal setting and participation.

Communal participation in the theological task constitutes disciplined reflection on the forms of life, while acknowledging that all life is contained within the life of the very God who gifts it and makes the theological task possible. To be participatory–to practice this risky work of theology–must necessarily be prayer.  All honest theology is an address to God at his invitation.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
Do you see theology as prayer?  Why or why not?

——

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

• Ash Wednesday Prayer
• The Mysterious Presence
• God Producing God
• On Reading the Hebrew Scripture — Part 1
• Daily Prayer: Monday, January 7, 2008

What then are the responses to exile that speak into the church today? Where do appropriate responses begin?

The acknowledgement of exile must begin with local church leaders. The local church exists as a remnant as it were; the good figs that can be the conduits for the future of God’s will. The local church desperately needs to end denial and cover-up of the exilic situation. Stark awareness of the parallels between Biblical exile and the contemporary church must be accepted.

The local church, allowing for brokenness as reality, will find pain and hardship. Yet, out of this pain will flow grief. Local leaders must allow their congregations to grieve the loss of old ideologies and deluded notions of security. From grief grows the possibility for newness.

Hope in the midst of seeming hopelessness can be found again in God alone. The holiness of our holy God has proven time after time to be the wellspring of hope fulfilled. A true perspective of our heritage of faith in light of God’s holiness clearly shows that authentic faith is in direct opposition to the dominant values and perspectives of contemporary US American culture that by-pass grief, holiness, and memory in favor of the fleeting present.

The Christian community living in exile in US America must investigate the lessons from our past. Delving into the former traditions, retelling the working of a holy God in our community, leads to a new narration incorporating the memory of tradition and heritage in faith. Such a re-narration opens the way for new possibility.

What forms this new possibility will take, who can say? The Biblical perspective of exile teaches the contemporary Christian community that God alone works out something new.

With the prospect of such hope and possibility, the church can return to the business of simply being the church–being the people of God. The church is in the empire and cannot separate itself. Nor can it assimilate into the empire without losing theological identity. The community of faith must re-tradition itself to being the people of God while living in the empire. This learning process will evolve as the church moves through grief to hope and possibility.

The church can re-establish its own identity, its own culture, in the midst of an opposing system. The church, by simply being people of God, will become a social and spiritual voice. The voice may not be accepted by the world, nor even considered authoritative by the majority, but the voice must be heard. The leaders of the Us American church must speak the words of God into their communities of faith so that the church in turn can speak the words of God into the dominant cultural perspectives. Absolute devotion to God’s holiness as our only source of life becomes the method for re-narrating our present while remembering our past and looking creatively toward a future dreamed by God.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
What other possibilities do you see?

——

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

• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 4
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 5
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 3
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 2
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile 1

In Part 4 of this post I considered the US American Church and its exilic condition.  Today, I’ll look at the second and third arenas of exile I’m considering: the Wesleyan-Holiness movement and the local church.

The Wesleyan-Holiness movement as a segment of the US American church also finds itself in exile today. The paradox of extremes–life by law and life by grace–continue to grow further from each other. Consequently, there exists a confused and muddled array of choices for responding to exile. From isolating the Christian community, to rubber-stamping every individual’s idea of spirituality as personal truth, the responses work against the acceptance of exile and only serve a further detriment to the faith community.

The local church is not exempt from exile. For a church (building and people) to be wanted in its particular neighborhood today is an exception and not the norm. Church members have dispersed to the suburbs and neighboring communities. They only find themselves assembled a couple of times a week, while the rest of their time is spent assimilating into the empire. In my tribe, there is no cogent form of worship, community, spiritual experience, ministry, or discipleship nationally. One can travel the country visiting one Nazarene church in each of the forty-eight continental states and find forty-eight widely varied church experiences that appear to have no common thread. So we see that the local church can even be in exile from its own doctrinal movement.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How do you experience exile in your local faith community?

——

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

• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 4
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Conclusion
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile 1
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 2
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 3

This promises to be a worthwhile theo-blogging endeavor.  Check it out.

——

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

• Balthasar’s Creational Aesthetics & My Response
• Help Me Blog: Suggest Something!
• Theology as Prayer
• Covenant: A Promise to Serve
• God Producing God

To apply the paradigm of exile verbatim to current Christianity is nigh on impossible, nor is it very useful. The diversity of cultures around the globe, combined with the many different forms of empires in which Christianity functions, render a blanket application irrelevant. However, looking at the Christian church today at three levels affords possibilities for learning from exile and implementing appropriate responses: the US American church in general; the Wesleyan-holiness movement (the trajectory of my tribe); and the local church body.

I’ll consider the first of these in this post.

Serious believers that make up the US American church form a community of aliens in our own culture. The church in US America has experienced a loss of certainty, dominance, and legitimacy. Yet, this reality has not been entirely accepted nor recognized by the whole church community. The US American church has become so intertwined with the dominant values of our culture that free action is difficult. Exile is not merely a paradigm, but a radically sobering diagnosis for the present reality of Christianity. The bottom line is that the present reality for Christianity in US America is exile, even if there is not much awareness of the exilic circumstance.

For those of the Church who have become aware of the current exile, two responses have presented themselves as viable options being proffered by conservative thinking and liberal thinking. The conservative line of thought looks to utilize the power of the empire to justify contemporary power tactics in establishing a moral culture. The liberal line of thought looks toward exodus from the empire and condemnation of the state to establish a separate, exclusive moral culture. Neither of these responses to the exilic condition are appropriate, beneficial, or Christian.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
Do you agree that the US American Church is in exile?  Why or why not?

——

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

• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Conclusion
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 5
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 2
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile 1
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 3

But this seems to be a false–or at the least, superficial–dichotomy. If we are examining life within the Triune God, displayed as God with us in the life of Christ, and continuing in the Church, then a fully trinitarian account of power and authority must not ignore the role of the Spirit as a relationship of perpetual disturber and innovator.

God the Holy Spirit is always opening up new possibilities. This even takes place through the power of suffering; a power that is able to change events. Non-violent actions are not synonymous with non-forceful actions. The Spirit is always disturbing our status quo. For newness to come, we must be stripped–sometimes forcefully (violently?)–of the old.

When the Triune God acts, when God directly participates with his creation to create and re-create newness, it is a violent act from the perspective of the created. God’s triunity is maintained when God’s authorship is displayed in opening up spaces within the divine dance for new participants. This is how God swallowed death into himself.

This does not give the Christian license to act violently. But it does mean that all Christ-followers must not squelch their roles as prophets in the biblical idiom. Prophets speak newness into existence, sometimes tearing down and destroying the old. Also, the church must continue to defend the defenseless, most often from the ‘nation-states.’

How can this be done without appearing forceful to the nation-state? Violence must be carefully defined. When God acts to create newness, God does not act violently from God’s perspective. It is God’s love that is in action, to create, redeem, sanctify: to reconcile.

This same love must be in us as we participate in the community of divine love that brings newness.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How do you see the Triune God informing coercion and persuasion?

——

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

• Trinity and the “Other”
• God Producing God
• On Reading the Hebrew Scripture — Part 2
• A Little Cheek Turning
• What Is a Minister? – Part 1

Grief gives way to a response of hope. The grief of the prophet Ezekiel goes so far as to find hope in the “good figs” now in exile. There is hope in a new future, now that the past has been relinquished.

Though God has walked away he cannot stay away. For the sake of his holiness and out of divine love and mercy he will return to his people and transform them into something altogether new. The language of hope in something new is riddled with language of the old. Yet there is a re-narrating of the old traditions, making sense of the exilic condition. In light of this re-narrating, God is seen for who he truly is: a God that is sovereign, a God that is still God.

Hope is found in the very person of God, whose divine love wills something new for his people. There is hope in the wake of relinquished control. The people can no longer depend on their inadequate abilities and incomplete understanding. Hope is found in the person of God alone: he is capable of transcribing an all-new understanding on the inner person of his people.

Looking toward a homecoming then becomes the metaphor for receiving God’s will. Homecoming can only follow where relinquishment has yielded acceptance of exile. The language of homecoming applies faith to hope and anticipates a social reality that does not yet exist.

Second Isaiah’s narrative aims at a new relational, covenantal reality. The people can operate in a new reality after they see afresh their cultural-spiritual circumstance. The people are guided to look beyond what is available to what might be possible now that the old standard has died. The freedom, power, and sovereignty of Yahweh make possible precisely that which appears impossible.

By remembering the triumphs of God in the past and re-narrating these in the contemporary reality, the people can look into the face of the impossible and call it possible; they can return to a new home.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
What does the practice of remembering look like in your social reality?

——

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

• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 2
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Conclusion
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 4
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile 1
• A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 5