Creation and the
patriarchal histories Or thodox Chr istian Reflections on
The Book of Genesis by Patrick Henry Reardon
Ancient Faith Publishing Chesterton, Indiana
CREATION AND THE PATRIARCHAL HISTORIES: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Genesis © Copyright 2008 by Patrick Henry Reardon All Rights Reserved Published by
Ancient Faith Publishing P.O. Box 748 Chesterton, IN 46304
Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-1-888212-96-9
Copyright © 2008 by Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
With immense gratitude to Father Paul Suda, by whose anointing hands our family was received into the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, July 15, 1988, the Feast of St. Vladimir of Kiev, in the Millennium Year of the Kievan Mission.
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Contents Introduction ..........................................................................9 Genesis in the Gospel Proclamation 13 Creation & Literature 15 The Heavens Declare 19 Creation & the Torah 21 The Metaphysics of Moses 23 From Salvation to Creation 26 Creation and Christology 28 Part One Creation and Primeval History............................... 31 Genesis 1 31 Excursus: Creation Ex Nihilo 33 Genesis 2 36 Excursus: Faith and Natural Revelation 38 Genesis 3 41 Excursus: Lost and Cursed 43 Excursus: First & Second Birth 46 Genesis 4 49 Excursus: The Price of Faith 51 Genesis 5 54 Part TWO The Noah Cycle.......................................................................57 Genesis 6 57 Excursus: Noah & Moses 58 Genesis 7 60 Genesis 8 61 Genesis 9 62 Genesis 10 65 Genesis 11 65
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Part THREE The Abraham Cycle..............................................................67 Genesis 12 67 Excursus: Exodus in Genesis 68 Genesis 13 70 Genesis 14 71 Genesis 15 73 Genesis 16 74 Genesis 17 75 Genesis 18 77 Genesis 19 78 Excursus: Lot’s Lot 79 Excursus: Sodom & Egypt 82 Genesis 20 85 Genesis 21 85 Genesis 22 87 Excursus: Isaac, the Paschal Lamb, and Jesus 88 Genesis 23 90 Part FOUR The Isaac Cycle....................................................................... 93 Genesis 24 93 Genesis 25 95 Excursus: Jacob & Esau 96 Genesis 26 102 Excursus: Abimelech in Love 103 Genesis 27 106 Excursus: Esau, the Modern Man 108 Part FIVE The Jacob Cycle......................................................................111 Genesis 28 111 Genesis 29 112 Genesis 30 114 Genesis 31 115 Excursus: Jacob & Odysseus 116 Genesis 32 119 Copyright © 2008 by Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Genesis 33 Genesis 34 Genesis 35 Genesis 36
120 121 123 125
Part SIX The Joseph Cycle..................................................................129 Genesis 37 129 Excursus: Potiphar’s Wife 131 Genesis 38 134 Genesis 39 135 Genesis 40 136 Genesis 41 137 Genesis 42 139 Genesis 43 141 Genesis 44 142 Genesis 45 144 Genesis 46 145 Genesis 47 146 Genesis 48 147 Genesis 49 148 Genesis 50 149 Excursus: Providence, Christology, and the Resurrection 150 About the Author 157
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Introduction
Because Genesis is found at the beginning of the Bible, no one is to be blamed for starting his Bible-reading with Genesis. This is perfectly logical. Many of us Christians, nonetheless, knew a good deal of the content of Holy Scripture before we ever got around to reading Genesis. There is a logic in this case too, for the simple reason that many of us, perhaps most of us, were introduced to Jesus before we were introduced to the full biblical account of history. That is to say, we were familiar with the Gospels before we knew much about Genesis. Nonetheless, when we started reading the Bible in a systematic way, we generally started with Genesis, presuming that there must be some reason why this book is the first one found in Holy Scripture. The origins of the world and more especially of the human race occupy the opening pages of Genesis, which provide the theological suppositions, not only of the ensuing chapters, but of the biblical story as a whole. These suppositions are Creation, especially that of man in God’s image, the structure of time (prerequisite for historiography), man’s relationship to God, the entrance of sin into the world, and God’s selection of a specific line of revelation that will give structure to history. This history begins with the call and life of Abraham and continues in the stories of his offspring, in the cycles of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. By the end of Genesis, these offspring of Abraham have arrived in Egypt, and the Bible is ready to start Exodus. In short, Genesis is concerned with the origins of our race and the beginnings of salvation history. Much of the material in Genesis is arranged in a pattern of ten generations, indicated by the famous “begat” passages that have discouraged so many readers on their first time through the book. These Sample pages only. Purchase 9 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories generations (toledoth in Hebrew) begin already in 2:4: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created” (RSV). That is to say, God began the generations. The second occurrence of this formula is found in 5:1, which lists the early offspring of Adam. The third list is in 6:9–10, introducing the family history of Noah. His offspring are listed in 10:1, those of Shem in 11:10, and Terah in 11:27. This brings us to Abraham, the father of Isaac, whose progeny are listed in 25:19, and Ishmael, whose offspring are found in 25:12. Of Isaac’s two sons, Esau’s generations are noted in 36:19 and Jacob’s in 37:2. The Book of Genesis does not stand alone. It is the first of the “five books,” the Chumash, of the Mosaic Law, the Torah, or Pentateuch, “the five scrolls.” This means that its narrative in Genesis continues seamlessly in the story of Exodus, parted only by the physical necessity of being composed on a separate scroll. When Genesis is cited in the New Testament, therefore, the ascription usually refers to “the Law” or “Moses.” Indeed, the composition of Genesis, as well as of the Torah as a whole, is credited to Moses, a persuasion that testifies to the unity of the work. This traditional ascription of the work to Moses is found everywhere in Jewish and Christian literature. Was Moses in fact the author of the Book of Genesis? Surely not in the sense that Moses composed every last syllable of the Torah; even the strictest interpreter of this question recognizes that the account of the death of Moses in the last eight verses of Deuteronomy could hardly have come from Moses himself. Other verses also indicate a later hand, such as the comments that “the Canaanite was then in the land” (12:6), and “there was yet no king in Israel” (36:31). In addition to this internal evidence, there is also the biblical account of a discovery of “the Law of the Lord” in the Temple at Jerusalem during the time of King Josiah in the late seventh century bc. From very early times this document has been identified (by St. Jerome, for example), as a whole or in part, with the Book of Deuteronomy. If this identification is valid—and the original form of Deuteronomy had a separate history unfamiliar to those who discovered it in the late seventh century—this is strong evidence that the arrangement of “five books” is considerably later than Moses. Over the past several centuries various textual historians have Copyright © 2008 by 10Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction devised sundry theories, according to which the material in the Torah, including Genesis, came from various pre-existent literary sources preserved for centuries at the different shrines in the Holy Land. Those that espouse these theories call attention to the different names by which God is invoked in different parts of the Pentateuch, different names for the same people and places, and different styles of narrative and theology. The present writer is not much impressed by these theories. Variations of style and theology do exist in the Pentateuch, of course, including Genesis, but not, I think, with the consistency that justifies a recognition of different literary sources, certainly not sources that can be readily identified. After several centuries of these hypothetical theories with respect to the literary sources of the Pentateuch, we actually know precious little about them for sure. In particular, it seems to me, these theories have contributed almost nothing to a better exegesis of the Sacred Text. For this reason, the present writer will be content to regard Moses as the author of Genesis, this ascription being understood in a general sense that affirms the theological and literary unity of the Pentateuch. This unity I will be everywhere at pains to affirm and demonstrate. By speaking of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, however, I do not intend to discount the later editorial work of Ezra and others in the formation of the Sacred Text that has come down to us. This canonical text has been handed on to us by the apostolic churches chiefly in the Greek form, the Septuagint. This is the text of authority in the Church. This affirmation does not mean, however, that the Greek text necessarily represents an “original” text better than the traditional Hebrew manuscripts preserved by the Jews. Often enough it may, but that is not what we mean when we speak of the canonical authority of the Greek. In our affirmation of the Septuagint’s canonical authority, it is obvious that we Orthodox Christians do not limit divine revelation to an original text or “autograph” composed by the biblical author himself. We cannot logically affirm the canonicity of the Septuagint except by postulating the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the entire development of the biblical material throughout the centuries that link the prophets with the apostles. After all, no reasonable Christian will claim divine inspiration for Isaiah’s Greek Sample pages only. Purchase 11 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories translators and simultaneously deny that inspiration to Isaiah himself! Thus, in a given passage, we are not obliged to choose between the inherited Hebrew and Greek readings. It is quite legitimate to accept both, each of them representing a different stage in the development of the biblical tradition. This approach, which I think both reasonable and respectful, will be taken in the present book, where both the Christian and Jewish copies of Genesis are consulted. The question of the canonical status of the Septuagint in the Orthodox Church, moreover, prompts two other observations, which I hope will prove useful. First, the Septuagint’s canonicity is not absolute. It is rooted in the respect commonly shown for this version in the New Testament, but its historical application has been far from rigid. The tradition of the Christian biblical manuscripts shows, rather, a considerable diversity in textual selections. The most notable example, I suppose, is the Book of Daniel. After Origen, in his famous Hexapla, placed Theodotion’s translation of Daniel in a parallel column with that of the Septuagint, Christian copyists compared the two renderings and decided that they much preferred Theodotion! Thus, in spite of the traditional and venerable authority of the Septuagint in the Church, Theodotion’s translation of Daniel came to predominate among Christian manuscripts. For instance, his version was adopted as the Danielic text of the Byzantine liturgical lectionary. Similarly, Theodotion’s translation of Daniel, not the Septuagint’s, was the version translated into almost all the other ancient versions used by the Church: the Peshitta Syriac, both the Boharic and Sahidic Coptic, the Latin Vulgate, the Ethiopic, the Armenian, the Arabic, and the Slavonic. (The exceptions are the Syro-Hexaplar and the Vetus Latina, both translated from the Septuagint.) So great was the dominance of Theodotion in this respect that the ancient Septuagint version of Daniel almost disappeared from history, not a single copy of it being known until the discovery of the Chisianus Codex in 1772. These plain historical facts should preclude any rigid interpretation of the Septuagint’s canonical status. Second, when Holy Scripture is quoted in the present volume, the quotation will normally be taken from The Orthodox Study Bible, which is based on the Septuagint and was published during our editorial process. Sometimes exceptions are made, but these will always Copyright © 2008 by 12Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction be indicated. Likewise, for the sake of consistency, I will also refer to the biblical books by the names they bear in the Septuagint, which are preserved in The Orthodox Study Bible. Genesis in the Gospel Proclamation The Apostle Paul, treating the connection between the Torah and justification by faith, poses the following question to the Christians at Rome: “Do we then make void the law through faith?” And resoundingly he answers, “Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law” (Romans 3:31). Paul’s answer to the question is, I submit, pretty much unintelligible if we think of the “law” as a corpus of rules to be observed. How would the law, understood in that sense, be established by faith? The context in Romans, however, belies such an approach, because Paul immediately cites the Torah itself to explain what he means: “What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh?” (4:1). The “law” that Paul has in mind here in Romans is not a corpus of rules; it is, rather, the Torah in its integrity, including the historical narrative. Indeed, it is specifically to the narrative of the Torah that Paul directs our attention: “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness’” (4:3; Genesis 15:6). That is to say, Paul finds in Abraham himself an example, perhaps the example, of a man justified by faith. It is clear to Paul that the Torah itself proclaimed the doctrine of justification by faith (Romans 4:9; Galatians 3:6). In short, the Torah taught the same thing the Gospel teaches. There was no dichotomy between Law and Gospel on the matter of justification. Both taught the identical doctrine. For Paul, moreover, the Gospel is what provides the proper basis for understanding the Torah itself. The Gospel is the key to the Law, providing the correct understanding of that literature. Paul’s new interpretation of the Law differs from that which he had espoused before his conversion to Christ, and that difference is the Gospel. But what is true of the Torah is true also of the Prophets. For this reason, we see Paul going to the prophetic books of the Bible and finding there the same teaching that he proclaims in the Gospel—namely, Habakkuk’s declaration (2:4) that “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11). There is no canonical Sample pages only. Purchase 13 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories distinction here. Just as the Gospel is the key to the Torah, so it is the key to the Prophets. Likewise, what is true of the Torah and the Prophets is true also of that third part of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Writings, the Ketubim. Let us return to that same fourth chapter of Romans, where “David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works” (4:6). Paul goes on to quote the words of the Psalter: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, / And whose sins are covered; / Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin” (Romans 4:7–8; Psalms 32 [31]:1–2). Thus, Paul finds the proclamation of the Gospel in this third section of the Hebrew Scriptures, as well as in the Torah and the Prophets. In finding the Gospel message in all three sections of the Hebrew Bible, Paul’s thesis is identical with what we find in Luke, where the risen Jesus says to the Church, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me” (Luke 24:44). And then, writes Luke, “He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures” (24:45). It is important to see that this correct understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures is the context of the Great Commission to preach the Gospel to all nations, which follows immediately in the Lukan narrative (24:46–49). That is to say, the New Testament teaches that the proclamation of the Gospel is inseparable from the correct understanding of the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. The very beginning of the Gospel proclamation is “Thus it is written” (24:46). The Old Testament is not a body of writing extraneous to the Gospel. On the contrary, those Scriptures are integral parts of the Gospel. Without that Old Testament, the Gospel we Christians preach is not the genuine article. When we declare “that Christ died for our sins,” it is always “according to the Scriptures.” When we proclaim “that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day,” it is invariably “according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). We Christians hold that the pursuit of either Testament on its own, apart from the other, is theologically unwarranted. The Old Testament cannot be correctly understood in its fullness, we contend, Copyright © 2008 by 14Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction without the New Testament, nor can the New Testament be correctly understood apart from the Old. Both together form a single, theologically indivisible canon of divinely inspired literature. Thus, in the first Christian sermon recorded in Acts, Peter invokes “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” as the God of the Christian Gospel (3:13). Stephen, in his own presentation of the Gospel, begins by announcing that “the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham” and then runs through much of the history of the Old Testament, all the way to Solomon, before he so much as mentions the name of Jesus (7:2–59). We find this same appeal to the Old Testament in the Gospel as preached by Philip (8:32–33) and by Paul (13:15–37). If we turn these considerations to Genesis specifically, it is not difficult to see various ways in which the themes from this book are incorporated into the proclamation of the Gospel. For example, this incorporation is obvious with respect to Creation, a doctrine from Genesis everywhere incorporated into the Church’s message to the world (e.g., 2 Corinthians 4:6). Indeed, much of the opening section of the present book is devoted to a Christian understanding of Creation. This incorporation of Genesis into the Gospel is manifest likewise in the stories of Adam (Romans 5), Noah (1 Peter 3), Abraham (John 8, James 2, Romans 4, Hebrews 7), Jacob (Acts 7), and sundry others. It will be everywhere my intention, in the pages of this book, to read the Book of Genesis through the lens of the Christian Gospel. Creation & Literature Probably the most serious challenge that modern thought presents to the faithful reading of the Book of Genesis is the theory of random evolution, which logically discounts the theology of the opening accounts in the book. If it is the case that the existence of all things, including the human being, came from the blind juxtaposition of chemical components, then the world itself—to say nothing of the human being that lives in it—has no intrinsic meaning. It would not be true, on this hypothesis, that “the heavens declare the glory of God.” This is the reason that so much of the early part of this commentary will focus on the implications of the biblical doctrine of Creation. Sample pages only. Purchase 15 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories To counteract the baneful influence of the theory of random evolution, many apologists have elaborated a contrary theory more faithful to the actual facts provided by science: intelligent design. This perspective takes account of the irreducible complexities within nature that are mathematically impossible to explain by a process of random development. Indeed, those who espouse the theory of evolution, especially in the biological form of it bequeathed by Darwin, have in proving their theory a task far more difficult than that of someone who would attribute the faces on the side of Mount Rushmore to the weather conditions in South Dakota. What is missing in the theory of random evolution is the acceptance of the obvious: The world around us contains massive evidence of an effort to convey information. This intent to convey information was obvious to the ages of faith, which is the reason for the thesis popular back in those days: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” From Moses to the present day, believers have always insisted that the created world is a book chock full of divine revelation—a complex message from God, the very proclamation of His eternal Word. The world is, in short, a colossal piece of writing. This is the reason the construction of the world appears as the first component in God’s “second work” of literature—the Bible. For this reason, it seems proper to introduce the Book of Genesis by showing how the biblical doctrine of Creation is related to the world of literature and theology. These two fields become inseparable, obviously, in the Book of Genesis, which is the beginning of both biblical literature and biblical theology. It is significant, then, that the biblical story begins with genesis, a Greek word meaning “origin.” Accordingly, I will argue the thesis that the biblical doctrine of Creation is the presupposition of all biblical literature, not only in a material sense but also formally, meaning that the created world is God’s original exercise in grammar construction. We should start, I think, by examining the way in which the created structure of the universe forms the first “text,” the original grammata of the Christian faith. Just what do we mean when we say—with the whole Christian Tradition—that the world is “written” work? It is passing curious, and perhaps deeply significant, that writing began exactly where the story of Abraham began: at the southeast end of the Fertile Crescent. Our earliest examples of “writing” come Copyright © 2008 by 16Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction from near the end of the fourth millennium before Christ and were bequeathed to us by a race that historians, taking their cue from the traditional name of the place, chose to call Sumerians. All historical study of the Bible properly begins where script itself began, in that ancient region where the Tigris and Euphrates flow out to the Persian Gulf. Thus we say that Sumerian was our first written language, a language vastly older than Hebrew and the radical source of all literature. We begin our study of Genesis, then, with what we learn at Sumer. Now it is a most interesting feature of these Sumerian texts that, though we are sure they represent a written language, we cannot decipher the first several centuries of them. Only the Sumerian texts from some five or so centuries later are we able to read. The reason for this is very simple. From this later period, about the middle to the end of the third millennium bc, we happen to possess parallel texts written in a very ancient Semitic tongue, Akkadian, and we are able to use this latter language, much more firmly within the grasp of linguistic history, to make a reasonable reconstruction of later Sumerian vocabulary and grammar. Except for these Akkadian parallel texts, we would not be able to read Sumerian at all. There remain, nonetheless, those several earlier centuries of texts written in Sumerian that we are still unable to read. With respect to these writings there is one thing, however, about which we are not in doubt—namely, that these are truly writings. That is to say, they really are symbols that carry an encoded meaning. They are, therefore, intentional; they are contrived signs crafted by human hands at the service of human minds in order to communicate with other human minds. They say something, whatever it may be. They form what is called “text,� and it is a distinguishing feature of human beings that they can discern such a thing as a text, even when they are unable to read it. Whatever doubts, questions, or conjectures may be raised with regard to the meaning of these texts, it would be irresponsible to suppose that, because we are unable to decipher them, these graphic marks are without intentional meaning. To suppose that they are not texts, not writings, would fly in the face of the massive countervailing evidence. And exactly what is this evidence? Just how do we know that certain configurations on a clay tablet, or a series of markings on a Sample pages only. Purchase 17 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories rock or stick, or even a string of beads, forms a text, something to be read? How are we able to distinguish these lines and configurations from random scribbling or doodling? What is it about them that causes us to presume, and even insist, that they are intended to convey specific information? Likewise, why do we not take them to be simply artistic embellishments of some sort, similar to symmetrical patterns that appear at far more distant periods of human history? Exactly what quality is it that prompts us to separate, as entirely new and special, the human markings that we find at Sumer and say, “Here is something truly different”? Should we call that quality “intelligent design”? Well, perhaps, but I submit that this designation is really inadequate. After all, human beings produced very intelligent, highly crafted, graphic designs long before they began to write. And to this day we continue to produce mountains of intelligent designs that are not textual. Intelligent design does not necessarily convey information. If we were asked to explain exactly how a written text differs from these other designs, we might even say that writing shows, in fact, a certain lack of design, in the sense of not being perfectly regular and symmetrical. Pieces of writing are marked by a sort of disparity, if you will, such as we would expect to find in a key, say, as distinct from a proportioned and uniform pattern. To illustrate further: If I discover a sequence of graphic marks like /+0/+0/+0/+0 and so forth around the top of a vase, I am not likely to take this as an example of “text.” Such a series of symbols is simply too regular to convey specific “information” of the sort I would expect in a spoken sentence, and I readily suspect that, while such marks demonstrate an intelligent design, that design pertains to the realm of decorative art rather than that of writing. The latter contrivance, writing, though it certainly displays a structured form and consistency, is also characterized by a greater complexity, a subtle irregularity, and even a measure of unpredictability in its sequence; its various symbols do not fall into place with the serial recurrence of a perfectly metric pattern, but in certain periodic conjunctions, even elaborate configurations, appearing at intervals not dictated by concerns of symmetry. Most people know when they are looking at a piece of writing; they are able to distinguish it from Copyright © 2008 by 18Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction both random scribbles on the one hand and purely esthetic designs on the other. However, writing does have this quality in common with artistic design—that they are both recognized as “intentional,” as distinct from random or haphazard. Both writings and artistic patterns are crafted with some defined purpose in mind, much as one would construct a tool. Indeed, this analogy with tools is worth considering. Ancient history has left us many examples of tools and implements whose distinct purpose we can only guess at. We look at certain ancient stone contrivances and can be perfectly sure that they were handheld implements designed for a specific purpose, while the purpose itself remains a mystery to us. That is to say, even though we are not sure of their purpose, we are nonetheless sure that they had a purpose, and this is how we recognize them as tools. Such reflections demonstrate our ability to discern intelligibility even in things that remain unintelligible to us. We human beings can detect the presence of “mind” and the intent to convey “information” even in those instances when we are unable to decipher exactly what that information is or what that mind is trying to say. Human reason has an innate capacity, that is, for recognizing the presence of rationality. We are able to know when we are, in fact, dealing with a text. In short, when we study the world, we find a text. The world tells us of God. Indeed, if it doesn’t, we need not waste our time going to God’s “second volume,” which is Holy Scripture. The Heavens Declare “The heavens declare the glory of God,” wrote the psalmist, “ . . . Day to day utters speech, / And night to night reveals knowledge. . . . Their proclamation went forth into all the earth, / And their words to the end of the world” (Psalm 18:1–5). The Apostle Paul would cite these very words, originally describing the message of Creation, as illustrating the universality of the apostolic preaching (Romans 10:18). And did not the psalmist also compare the final dissolution of the heavens to the rolling up of a scroll? Armed with this biblical warrant, earlier Christians turned to the world with a distinctly exegetical interest. Examples of this interest are ubiquitous in Christian Latin literature. For instance, “These heavens,” said St. Augustine, “these books, are the works of God’s Sample pages only. Purchase 19 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories fingers,” and St. Gregory the Great likened “the considered appearance of Creation” (species considerata creaturae) to “a sort of reading for our mind” (quasi quaedam sit lectio menti nostrae). In the twelfth century, Alexander Neckam, the foster brother of Richard the Lionheart, remarked that “the world is inscribed with the pen of God; for anyone who understands it, it is a work of literature.” Similarly and slightly earlier, Rupert of Deutz had commented that, as the Word Himself is “the architect of the world, he also . . . composed . . . Holy Scripture,” and the Englishman, Herbert of Bosham, even called the work of Creation “a kind of corporeal and visible Gospel” (velut quoddam evangelium corporale et visibile). Likewise, both Hugh and Richard of St. Victor wrote, “The whole of this sensible world is like a book written by the finger of God.” Perhaps no one spoke more often on this subject, however, than John Scotus Erigena in the ninth century. Commenting, for example, on the prologue of John’s Gospel, he said that “the eternal light is proclaimed to the world in two ways, namely, Scripture and Creation.” These form the double ladder of the divine ascent; commenting on the same Gospel, Erigena says later, “The first step in climbing the heights of virtue is the letter of Holy Scripture and the appearance of visible things, so that, once the letter has been read and creation examined, they may ascend, by the steps of correct reason, to the spirit of the letter and the rationality of creation.” Erigena speaks of Creation and Holy Scripture as the two garments of Christ, a theme taken up three centuries later by Aelred of Rievaulx. According to this traditional Christian view, the rationality of the universe, the clearly intentional disposition of its parts in relation to one another and to the whole, especially its relationship to man, is the sustaining subtext of the human narrative and the foundational context of poetry. This is why Holy Scripture begins with the account of Creation. It not only happened first; it is God’s first “writing.” Within the traditions of the perennial philosophy and the Christian faith, there is no need for man to formulate human meaning fresh and out of whole cloth. He is expected to presume, as more or less obvious, that the universe is already possessed of a story line, that it is a rational and poetic place, in the sense of possessing a systematic coherence corresponding to the innate aspirations and essential Copyright © 2008 by 20Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction structure of the human mind. The world and the intellect, in other words, were made for one another. Moreover, according to this traditional Christian and classical view, it is this textual quality of the created world that justifies our going to it in pursuit of literary types. For a writer like Dante, for example, if the structure of the world already contains an elaborate message, a message both poetical and rational, Creation may itself be incorporated into man’s literary endeavor as an active component. He finds in the world a pre-existing truth to be explored further by narrative. Beyond mere context, that is to say, Creation provides also the structural types that give coherence to storytelling. This conviction is part of the Christian birthright. Creation & the Torah In one of those perceptive historical surveys that make his book so attractive, the son of Sirach meditates on the works of Creation, culminating in the human being, and continues with the gift of the Torah on Mount Sinai (Wisdom of Sirach 16:18—17:18). Passing rather quickly through the first five days of Creation (16:25–30), Sirach looks more closely at the sixth day and the special gifts by which the Lord graced the existence of man (17:1–10). He recalls that the human being was made in God’s image, which is expressed in his governance over other creatures. This dominion, in turn, is based on man’s unique ability to think rationally, to reflect critically on his own act of thought, and to give creative narrative shape to the contents of his memory and imagination: “He put the fear of man upon all flesh / And gave him dominion over wild animals and birds. / He gave mankind the ability to deliberate, / And a tongue, eyes and ears, and a heart to think with” (17:4–5). This construction of man’s being was, in fact, God’s first revelation to man’s reflective mind, whereby he was endowed with an innate moral sense: “He filled them with the skill of comprehension / And showed them good and evil. . . . He added knowledge to them / And gave them the law of life as a heritage” (17:6, 9). This revelation included also a rational impulse to regard Creation as the disclosure of divine truth and glory: “He set His eye upon their hearts / To show them the majesty of His works. / They Sample pages only. Purchase 21 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories will praise His holy name / So as to fully describe the majesty of His works” (17:7–8). To say that God set His eye on the human heart is to proclaim the deepest truth of man as a moral being. So, when a man truly discovers his heart, he uncovers it as something already known and accounted for by Someone Else. This is so true, indeed, that a man does not truly find his heart except as the object of the divine scrutiny. That is to say, man knows God through the personal discovery that God knows him. I suggest, moreover, that this sense of standing under the divine gaze is the precondition of faith, which is the primal, necessary channel of man’s communion with God. Thus, before going on to speak of God’s historical revelation on Mount Sinai, Sirach feels obliged to reflect on an essential condition that makes human history possible. Man’s history, after all, is not just another dimension of “natural history,” because the human being represents a radical discontinuity from all other creatures. This discontinuity is found in God’s endowment of the human soul with the specific capacity for history. Other things exist through the passage of time, but they don’t really have a history. Strictly speaking, it is only the human being that can have a history, because only the human being is qualified to reflect critically on the events that take place in time and to arrange those events in narrative form. Thus, and more specifically, Sirach cannot speak of God’s Selfrevelation in history until he establishes that principle, innate in man, by which God’s historical revelation can be recognized. That is to say, what God does in history cannot be known as revelation unless God first confers on the human heart an impulse toward narrative, a capacity to recall—to call back—in story form, an innate disposition to review the human experience in a structured account. In other words, there can be such a thing as human history because God first placed in the human soul the impulse towards historiography. Man can have a history only because God created him as a storyteller. This native impulse toward historiography, however, which is distinctively human, is a moral instinct. Storytelling is essentially an artistic effort to confer shape on the soul. And this, in turn, is essential to historical revelation. If history Copyright © 2008 by 22Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction cannot carry human meaning, then history certainly cannot bear the immense burden of divine revelation. Such is the continuity that Sirach perceives between the creation of man in Genesis and the gift of the Torah in Exodus. There is a narrative continuity between the two because they form one metaphysical and moral extension, a single divine revelation, in both nature and history. In short, there would be no point in the Bible’s recording every word that proceeded from the mouth of God unless there already existed in the world that rational, moral, storytelling creature that finds himself unable to live by bread alone. The Metaphysics of Moses Not so terribly long ago, the normal college survey course in the history of philosophy began with the pre-Socratics, went on to the classical period of Plato and Aristotle, maybe noticed the Stoics and the Neoplatonists, moved into early Christian philosophy (often enough reduced to St. Augustine), proceeded to the medieval Schoolmen, and came finally to the modern period. This last period, beginning roughly with Bacon and Hobbes, I suppose, took up about half of the textbook. Nowadays, however, when I have occasion to speak to college students, I learn that many contemporary survey courses on the history of philosophy do not include anybody between Plotinus (ad third century) and Descartes (first half of the seventeenth century). That is to say, more than a millennium of Western thought is simply eliminated. I live within walking distance of a university where this is the case. Obviously this new arrangement is designed to preserve the discipline of philosophy from “contamination” by “revealed religion,” specifically the Bible. That is to say, there is no room for Moses. Christians may not be disposed to complain about this, because we are not accustomed to thinking about Moses as a philosopher. Correctly so. On the other hand, there is simply no understanding the history of Western philosophy if we leave Moses out of the picture. The disadvantage of doing so can be measured in two respects, I believe, both of them historical. Sample pages only. Purchase 23 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories First, this new approach to the history of philosophy, leaving out everything revealed in the Bible, fails by the most elementary criterion of history. No historical study of any subject can simply skip a thousand years at will. Imagine a history of weapons that leaped over everything from the slingshot to intercontinental ballistic missiles. Suppose the writer of such a study argued, in defense of this method, that he didn’t want his study of weapons to be “contaminated” by considerations of the sword or the introduction of saltpeter. Sound likely? Neither is it feasible for some person’s biographer to decide he will skip ages 20 to 45 of that person’s life. Suppose Gerald Clarke, for instance, in his biography of Truman Capote, had written about Capote’s childhood up to about age 19 and then skipped the rest of his life up to the final ten years. We would scarcely know that Capote is mainly remembered as a writer. Would anyone agree that this was a useful biography? The idea is just as silly in the history of philosophy as it is in the life of Capote. History, after all, has to do with continuity, so a “history of philosophy” is not really a history if it is not continuous. You can’t skip the middle thousand years of 2500 years of history. And that middle millennium was dominated by what Gilson called “the metaphysics of Moses.” The second disadvantage also pertains to history, and it is this. During the “skipped” period in question, the era of Christian philosophy, it is arguable that philosophy itself was more directly tied to the formation of popular culture than at any other period of man’s time on this earth. After all, the average man on the street in classical Athens did not think along lines in the least like Plato (a fact Plato knew very well and sometimes grumbled about). Again, precious few people in the seventeenth century thought along lines like those of Descartes or Spinoza (for which circumstance may a merciful Providence be praised). During both its very early and very recent periods, that is to say, philosophy was largely the domain of the intellectual elites, not the common property of ordinary people. The very opposite was true during the period of Christian philosophy. Whatever else we may say about the metaphysics of Moses, it did provide a truly popular philosophy. For a millennium and Copyright © 2008 by 24Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction a half, every Christian in the world knew the basics of Christian philosophy. If we ask what these basics were—which were the most characteristic and most significant ideas the Christian Church added to the history of philosophy—the first two answers would have to be (if my shorthand is permitted) “Being” and “beings.” Christians learned about “Being” from Exodus 3 (“I Am Who Am”), and about “beings” from Genesis 1 (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”). First, Being. According to Christian philosophy, God is the eternal, personal, and necessary Being (He who, if He does exist, must exist). The God “whose being is to be” never entered the mind of classical philosophy. Neither Plato nor Aristotle identified God in these terms. Christian philosophy, however, “contaminated” by the Bible, derived this concept from Exodus 3:14—ego eimi ho on— “I Am He Who Is.” The simplest Christian, the believer least given to philosophical speculation, knew this. No elite education was required. This concept formed the basis of a whole new culture that utterly transformed the history of all who received the Christian Gospel. Second, beings. According to Christian philosophy, learned at the feet of Moses, God created from nothingness all other things that are. No thing, outside of God, has its existence except by God’s creating act. Classical pagan philosophy never dreamed of such a thing. Once again, however, Christian philosophy, still hopelessly “corrupted” by Holy Writ, knew this from the opening of Genesis: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” No advanced study was necessary to grasp this idea. The least educated Christian knew it. As soon as folks heard these two ideas for the first time, they suddenly thought to themselves, “Well, obviously. Now that you say it, Moses, it’s as clear as day. The ideas are perfectly coherent and compelling. Darn, I wonder why we never thought of it before” (I paraphrase St. Augustine, Confessions 11.3.5). These ideas, perfectly self-evident on being enunciated, were the foundation stones of Christian philosophy. In the early second century Hermas of Rome laid out the case succinctly: “Before all else believe that there exists only one God, who created and finished all things, and brought all things into being out of nothing” (The Shepherd, Mandata 1.1). Sample pages only. Purchase 25 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories From Salvation to Creation If one looks for the “assured results” of modern biblical studies (and, frankly, I think they are few), one of them seems to be a greater awareness that the theologians who wrote Holy Scripture began with the revelatory events of history, not the contemplation of nature. That is to say, the human authors of Holy Scripture approached Creation itself through the path of salvation history. They arrived at the knowledge of the Creator through their knowledge of the Lord of history. It was Exodus that led them to Genesis! In the words of a modern scholar of the Bible, Israel went “from the God who saves to the God who creates” (du Dieu qui sauve au Dieu qui crée—Trophime Mouiren). This historical progress of biblical revelation does not mean, surely, that God cannot be known through the study of created things. Indeed, Holy Scripture asserts exactly the opposite, declaring that God’s “invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead” (Romans 1:20; cf. Wisdom of Solomon 13:1–7). Moreover, this “natural” revelation of God in His created works is very much a presumption of biblical apologetics (cf. Isaiah 42:5; Acts 17:22–24). The essentially historical nature of divine revelation means, rather, that the biblical writers, even when they considered God as Creator, always identified that Creator as the Lord whom they first knew through His free and marvelous deeds of deliverance and covenant. It was the God of the holy ark who created all things, declared Hezekiah (Isaiah 37:16; 2 Kings 19:15). It was the “Redeemer” that gave form to the child in the womb (Isaiah 44:24). The Bible’s understanding of history is the key, therefore, to its understanding of Creation. Just as the Lord’s activity in history is free, redemptive, and covenantal, so is His act of creating. For this reason, biblical reflection on God’s created world regards Creation itself as the medium of salvation and covenant. The Bible, consequently, resists all effort to let Creation “stand on its own.” It never looks at the created world through the lens of a philosophical abstraction that dehistoricizes the particular into the general. Revelation never declines into mere philosophy. Creation is as much a unique, singular event as the parting of the Red Sea or the call of Jeremiah. Moses refuses to succumb to Aristotelianism. The Copyright © 2008 by 26Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction Bible’s view of Creation is as innocent of causal determinism as its view of history. Perhaps we may let Ben Sirach illustrate the point. “The sun gives light and looks down on everything,” he wrote, “And its work is full of the Lord’s glory. / The Lord did not enable His saints / To describe all His wonders, / Which the Lord Almighty established / That the universe might be established in His glory” (Wisdom of Sirach 42:16–17). God’s glory, that is to say, is not revealed through man’s abstract theories about Creation, but through the individual, concrete, created things themselves. Their very incomprehensibility, moreover, is revelatory. Indeed, says Sirach, even the saints are unable to recount all God’s marvelous works. Among those who have commented on this biblical passage over the centuries, I wonder if any demonstrated more insight than Thomas Aquinas, who invoked this text in Sirach to illustrate the difference between biblical faith and philosophical discipline. Both faith and philosophy cast their regard on the created world, St. Thomas admits, but they do so very differently. The philosopher looks at a created thing according to its generic and formal qualities (secundum quod huiusmodi), whereas the Christian faith looks at it, not in this abstract way, but rather “inasmuch as it represents the divine depth [divinam altitudinem] and is in some way ordered toward God Himself [in ipsum Deum quoquo modo ordinatur].” Like the historical progression of the Bible, which goes from history to the created world, the “believer” (fidelis) starts with God revealed in history, not with the study of the created world. This distinction is what separates the believer from the philosopher. The latter seeks the intrinsic causes of things (ex propriis rerum causis) in order to understand them, because understanding is the knowledge of things in their causes. The believer, on the contrary, starts with and proceeds from the First Cause in order to perceive created things as “divinely given, or as pertaining to the divine glory.” The philosopher commences with the world that surrounds him, and he endeavors to grasp these things in their proper natures. The believer, however, begins with the historically revealed Lord, whose creative act, manifesting His glory, holds these things in existence (Summa Contra Gentiles 2.4). I believe St. Thomas shows great insight here. If reflection on Sample pages only. Purchase 27 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories Creation is to be properly theological, it must begin with the God who reveals Himself in history through His deeds of deliverance and covenant. Deliverance and covenant must also confer shape on the lens for the Christian study of the created world. Otherwise de Deo creante will diminish into mere cosmology . . . or worse. It may degenerate into the alleged objectivity and autonomy arbitrarily and imperiously demanded by the contemporary sciences. In contrast to all this, God’s free and redemptive intervention in history opens the door to the orthodox understanding of His Creation. Creation and Christology Among the doctrines of the New Testament most neglected these days, I submit, is that of Christ as Mediator. Well, perhaps “neglected” is too strong. Let’s say, “severely reduced.” An indication of this reduction, I believe, is the widespread failure of contemporary Christians to mention or even to think of the mediation of Christ when they speak of Creation, either of its structure or of our understanding of that structure. In other words, I believe that Christians nowadays rarely regard Christ with respect to cosmology and epistemology. Since, however, we are to love God with our “whole mind,” it is surely not legitimate to remove Christ from either concern. To reflect on the Christology of Creation, therefore, we will consider both cosmology and epistemology. First, cosmology. Cosmology addresses the question, “How are things put together?” And the Christian answers, “Things are put together in Christ. In Him all things subsist.” Several places in the New Testament provide starting points for a Christocentric cosmology, I suppose, but 2 Corinthians 4:6 will do as well as any: “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” In this text, we observe that Paul identifies the Creator in Genesis as the same God whose light shines out from the face of Christ. Now it is Paul’s thesis that this very light of Creation is disclosed on the face of Christ. He contends that it is through Christ that the mysterious, otherwise invisible light of Creation is rendered manifest. The knowledge of God in Christ reveals this light “in our hearts.” This, I submit, is one of the very important but often neglected Copyright © 2008 by 28Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Introduction senses in which Christ is the Mediator. It was with reference to Christ, too, that St. John asserted, in his own treatment on cosmology, “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him” (John 1:2–3). John, then, agrees with Moses about the light in Creation. Accordingly, we should begin with Jesus, “the One from whom the two greatest Wise Men began: Moses the originator of Wisdom, and John, its consummator” (St. Bonaventure, In Hexaemeron 1.10). In sum, according to the theology of Paul and John, Christ is our Mediator even in the sense of the world’s formal composition. In addition to the uncreated light that emanates from His divine Person, there shines also the created light that gives structure and essence to the universe. And this thesis brings us to the epistemological question, “How can I know this meaning at the heart of Creation?” Paul and John address this question as well. For them, Christ is not only the mediator of Creation, the Word in whom all created things subsist and have their being; He is also the intelligible light by which His own mediation is perceived. That is, Christ is not only the cosmological foundation of all created things but also the epistemological principle, through whom all things created are known to God and may, in divine revelation, be understood by men. Coming into the world, says John, He enlightened every man (John 1:9). For this reason, it is the thesis of the Bible that the true and ultimate intelligibility of the world is concealed from those who do not know Christ. On this point, let us stay with St. Paul, who prays that we may “[attain] to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). Observe that in Christ the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are said to be “hidden”—apokryphoi. Jesus too spoke of this concealment: “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden [ekrypsas] these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes” (Matthew 11:25). God’s Logos within the world is first a work of cryptography and then of disclosure. The lens of Christ, then, provides the “correct vision”—the “orthodoxy”—of the world, including its origin out of nothingness Sample pages only. Purchase 29 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories and its final transformation unto immortality. The meaning of all things created is concealed in the Person and life of Jesus and revealed to the little ones that entrust themselves to His sole mediation. Christ is the focus of the metaphysics of Moses: “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me” (John 5:46). The structural principle and the final destiny of Creation, then, are manifest at a specific point in history, which point is known by the name Jesus Christ. Ultimately, no view of the world is really correct, truly orthodox, except through the lightsome lens of faith in the mediation of the Man Jesus Christ.
Copyright © 2008 by 30 Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Part ONE Creation and Primeval History
1 Genesis 1 2 The opening chapter of Genesis has long been a favorite of Christians, and ancient commentators discovered in its lines profound levels of meaning. In more recent times, on the other hand, some readers of Genesis, distracted by apologetic concerns alien to the deeper interests of the Sacred Text, have failed to discover those depths. For example, even from boyhood I recall that some of my teachers were preoccupied with the length of the six “days” of Creation. Was it really necessary, they asked, to think of those “days” in the sense of having twenty-four hours? Might they not, instead, represent long periods of natural history? The problem with such questions is that they distract the mind from the deeper message of the Sacred Text. It is safe to say that the Bible nowhere thinks of a day in our modern sense of the time required for a complete revolution of the earth. A biblical “day” is normally a standard of measurement, not an object to be measured. Nearly from the beginning, therefore, Christians have been reluctant to measure the length of the days of Creation. This reluctance was perhaps summarized by St. Augustine of Hippo about the year 416: “What sort of days these were, it is very difficult or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!” (The City of God 11.6). Moreover, several ancient Christian readers of Genesis observed what seems to have escaped the notice of some modern readers— namely, that the sun was not created until the fourth day. There were three days of light and darkness before there was a sun to rise or set. Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at 31 http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories Indeed, this observation is partly the point. The setting and rising of the sun are not what determine day and night. We moderns think of the sunlight as that which creates the day, and the absence of sunlight as that which creates night. There is nothing of that idea here in Genesis. The Bible and its ancient commentators would have thought this a very shallow notion of day and night, light and darkness. In biblical thought, the sun “marks” the day; it does not create it. The day would be here, so to speak, whether the sun rose or not. The purpose of the sun is to enable us to see that it is day. Evening and morning, however, already existed for three days before there ever was a sun. Day and night are simply the names of light and darkness (v. 5); light and darkness exist independent of the sun or any other heavenly body. We note that Genesis does not say that God creates darkness; darkness was, so to speak, already there. Darkness is nothingness; it is nonexistence. Therefore night itself is symbolic of nonexistence. This is why night will eventually disappear (Revelation 22:5). Light, on the other hand, is the first creation of God; “Let there be light” are His first recorded words (v. 3). The light, then, and the darkness, which are called day and night, refer to something far deeper in Creation than the phenomena that our eyes behold. Light is not simply a byproduct of solar energy. It is, rather, the principle of intelligibility in the structure of Creation. The light that God calls into being at the beginning of Genesis is that inner structure of intelligibility that the mind of man, in due course, will be created to discover and investigate. Man’s investigation of the light is called philosophy, just as his investigation of God’s Word is called theology. In the biblical narrative of the Creation, it is noteworthy that the original day of Creation is not designated “the first” day. It is called, rather, “one day” (yom ’ehad). Although this difference of expression in verse 5 has proved too subtle for virtually all biblical translations into modern languages (the Orthodox Study Bible being a happy exception!), its significance caused it to be maintained in the ancient versions, such as the Septuagint (hemera mia) and the Vulgate (dies unus). In addition, that difference of expression (“one day” instead of “first day”) was the object of explicit discussion in nearly all ancient commentaries on verse 5, whether Jewish (e.g., Philo and Rashi) or Christian (e.g., Basil and Augustine). Alas, the difference seems Copyright © 2008 by 32Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Part One—Creation and Primeval History excessively subtle to modern minds, which come to the first chapter of Genesis as though it were a text of astrophysics. In those ancient and classical commentaries on this biblical text, moreover, we find the common assertion that the words “one day” served to elevate that day of Creation to something more than part of a sequence. There is a profound reason why the original day of Creation is appropriately called “one,” whereas the second day is not appropriately called “two,” nor the third day “three,” and so forth. The original day is “one” in a manner analogous to the number itself. “One” is not simply the numeral that precedes two; it is, rather, the number out of which that second number comes. There is a formal disparity between one and the other numbers. One (to hen) is the font determining the identity of two and the subsequent numbers. “One” is not just “first” as part of a sequence; it is what we call a principle, an arche. On “day one,” then, God creates light, which He thereby separates from darkness. It is out of this light, which is the product of God’s first creating word, that all the rest of Creation comes. All things that God makes are filled with His light. God’s light lies shining at the heart of the world. Excursus: Creation Ex Nihilo In our regular recitation of the Creed that binds us together, we first declare our faith “in one God, the Father almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and invisible.” The Church has always understood this declaration to refer to two aspects of God, God in eternity and God in time. From all eternity He is the Father; in the realm of time He is the Creator. It is this second aspect that I want to consider now. What does it mean that God is the Creator of “heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible”? There are three points to be considered on this subject. We should reflect, first, that this is a revealed truth. Creation refers to a specific act that cannot be reached by the power of reason. Creation, as Sample pages only. Purchase 33 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories the Christian faith understands that term, means the passage from non-being to being. I do not know, nor can I know, by the ability of reason, that all things, visible and invisible, have passed from non-being to being. My reason tells me, of course, that I myself and the world around me have a rational source. The intelligent design that my reason beholds in the universe cannot possibly have come from a series of undirected accidents; my mind cries out that it is utterly irrational to imagine otherwise. Only a fool would affirm it. (In fact, the Bible uses the word “fool” when it mentions this possibility.) Still, the intelligent design I see in the world does not tell me that all things, visible and invisible, come from nothing. Science and philosophy have never breathed a word of it. Creation is a truth divinely revealed, which is why it is contained in the Creed. It is not the business of the Creed, after all, to affirm things that can be affirmed apart from the Creed. How, then, do I know that all things have been created from nothing? To borrow a phrase, “this I know for the Bible tells me so.”Typical of the Christian conviction on this point, one may cite St. Hilary of Poitiers: “For all things, as the prophet says, were made out of nothing; it was no transformation of existing things, but the creation of non-being into a perfect form” (De Trinitate 4.16). Who was this “prophet” cited by St. Hilary? In fact, it was a prophetess, because St. Hilary was quoting the mother of the Maccabean martyrs, who said to one of her tortured sons,“I beseech you, my child, to look at heaven and earth and see everything in them, and know that God made them out of nothing; so also He made the race of man in this way” (2 Maccabees 7:28). This text from 2 Maccabees was the standard biblical proof text for the Christian Copyright © 2008 by 34Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.
Part One—Creation and Primeval History Church in respect to creation from nothingness.We find the thesis in late Judaism, from which it passed into the Christian faith as an essential teaching. But it is important to reflect that we believe it as revealed by God, and we have no access to that truth except through divine revelation. Creation is an absolutely unique act of the biblical God. Philosophy and science know nothing of it.This is why there can be no such thing as “creation science.” Second, what has been created from nothing? We affirm, “heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible.” Not just earth, we understand, but heaven too. Not just the material world that we see, but also the invisible world that we cannot see. Not just the chemical substances of things, but also the mathematical theorems and physical laws that give them coherence. Everything that is not God has been created from nothingness, no matter how high, how metaphysical, how spiritual. Apart from God, there is absolutely nothing that was not made from nothing. No part of Creation, then, is an emanation of the divine being. Nothing of God’s essence has passed into what He has made. Not only is the human brain created from nothing, but also the spiritual human intellect that uses that brain; and not only the human intellect but also the rational principles by which that intellect functions. The very laws of logic have been created from nothing. According to a summary of St. Bonaventure, “The world was produced in being, and not only according to itself as a whole, but also according to its intrinsic principles [sed etiam secundum sua intrinseca principia], which were not produced from other things but from nothing” (On the Sentences 2.1.1.1). Third, God’s creating act is the only thing that separates all things from nothing. No creature is Sample pages only. Purchase 35 the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/creation_and_the_patriarchal_histories/
Creation and the Patriarchal Histories adequately considered, then, if it is considered only in se, in itself. Creatures do not have their being a se, of themselves.They are held in existence only because an immense and continuing act of love holds them in existence. All things that endure, endure because the Creator’s hand sustains them in being. Each of us is held in existence by this same act of unspeakable love. We depend utterly on the sustained activity of the Creator, in whom we live and move and have our being. Even when I disobey God and stray from Him, God holds me in existence. Even when I insult Him and spit in His face, God’s creating love preserves me in being. His hands ever fashion me and sustain me. Under this consideration, who is the wise man? The wise man is the one who knows this truth and lives on the basis of it. He does not pretend that he has an independent existence, which is a mirage and a deception. If the doctrine of Creation is true, the wise man is the one who finds that place in his being where God touches him and holds him in existence. The wise man does not pretend that he is anything in se, in himself. His very existence is a created existence, and the Holy Scriptures give him the wisdom to know this. This, then, is the first declaration contained in our Creed, and it is a declaration of dependence. This is the wisdom handed down in the Holy Scriptures and affirmed in our faith.
1 Genesis 2 2 To even the simplest reader of the Bible it is obvious that there are two accounts of Creation in the first two chapters of Genesis. Both of them are theological interpretations of the fact of Creation; more to the point, they are different theological interpretations, analogous to the differences we find among the four canonical Gospels. Copyright © 2008 by 36Patrick Henry Reardon. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing.