Creation and Revelation

Some time ago, I wrote a kind of throw-away post on (the lack of) creativity in today's theology. In it I wrote that to be a Christian involves cultivating one's creativity, because we are made in the image and likeness of the Father who is Creator. One response I got was that humans cannot create ex nihilo, and therefore should be content with stewardship. (I'm not 100 percent this is the intention of the commentor, but I'm simplifying to make a point).

Well, this is true if we consider creation ex nihilo as bringing atoms into existence out of nothing. Granted, this is something we would believe to be involved in God's creative work. But this is not the theological point of creation. The point of the theological doctrine of creation is not primarily about explaining how the world has come into existence - if this was the case, all ancient creation myths would have been deeply unsatistying, since they all included some form of unexplained actor, in the case of the Genesis story, God.

No, the point of the creation doctrine is to say something about God. God is the one who creates. What God does when he creates is not about bringing something into existence - though this is the result of the activity. The purpose of God's creative act is to reveal himself as creator. Thus we see a great unity in all of God's works: from creation to eschaton, God is creating and revealing himself at the same time. If we see creation as revelation is it also easy to include the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ in God's creative work: they all flow from the same longing to reveal himself.

Now, if we take this and apply to it the idea that humans are called to create, we can gain a deeper understanding of human creativity. To say that a human artist is not creating ex nihilo, because he or she is using paint and canvas is completely beside the point: what is created is not the paint on the canvas - what is created is the revelation found in the work of art. Just like God reveals himself in creation, humans reveal their deeper nature when they are creative: be it in the form of art, theology or any other human activity.

To live one's life so that one is opening up reality to other people is the most fundamental aspect of being a follower of Christ. That is to live in the likeness of the Father, that is theosis. Thus holiness and creativity are synonyms.

Is there a Gnostic Tendency in Modern Theology?

If you want you can read this post as frustration over Tillich's loss in yesterdays game, or over the fact that I still have over 400 pages of Panneberg's system to read, and I am supposed to go on vacation today.

I think Pannebergs victory in his current game is clear enough so I can say this: I am yet to find one engaging idea in this work, that would be Panneberg's own. He borrows a lot of good stuff (Barth, Moltman, Rahner...) and brings it all together in a impressive synthesis. But what I lack is the feeling of blood, sweat and tears on the pages. It's all too cool, aloft, balanced and... well, boring.

But my point is not to criticize Pannenberg. The thing that got me thinking is why this way of doing theology seems to be so popular at the moment, while the kind of theology that wrestles with the Christian tradition, that turns it around, breaks it up, kicks at it, shouts at it, loves it, and makes it shine seem to be considered not worthy of attention.

Gnostic? Well, gnosticism is a million things to a million men. I am referring to the notion that to create is to form pre-existent matter.

Now, what we see in Panneberg is a theology that is completely sealed, it is presents the Christian tradition as a unified systematic whole that encompasses most of the results of modern theological research. But like the demiurge of the gnostics, Panneberg has not created this theology ex nihilo, he has simply taken what is already there, modified some bits to get it all to fit together, and presented it all as a system. Now, this is no doubt a great intellectual achievement, and I am not denying it's usefulness. But it is a kind of encyclopedic knowledge. It is not alive.

My question is: Is this really a Christian way of doing theology? It is my firm belief that to be a Christian involves cultivating one's creativity. We believe in a God who created heaven and earth out of the ouk on. Divine creativity, according to Christian doctrine, is not about systemizing pre-existent ideas, it is bringing into being that which previously was not.

Obviously, as creations we cannot create ex nihilo, but we are still called to be the likeness of God. Creativity is what we are called to.

The gnostic notion of creation is stable. It is perfect (and thus evil, even the gnostic recognized that). This is not the case of the Christian notion. Even when God creates the result is not perfect, but it is good. God's creation has this element of insecurity in it, something that makes it alive. Maybe this is a way of understanding evil - it has to be to make creation able to move. (I know, this is metaphysics, don't use this in counseling...) Anyway, this, too is the case of human creativity - its goal is not to make something perfect, it is to make something that is alive.

This, it seems to me, should apply also to theology. We are called to create theology that is alive. This will make it maybe easy to criticize, but it will be so much more beautiful than theology that strives at perfection.

(I have probably misinterpreted Panneberg completely, and I'm sorry for that. See the reason in the first paragraph...)

Now let's get the quarter-finals started.

Creation Continued

In my first post on creation and the Creator God, I said in passing that I prefer to think God’s creative and upholding work together. Pannenberg distinguishes between them because he likes to emphasize that creation took place outside of time and the upholding of creation is taking place within time.

I prefer to think of time as an ongoing process of creation. Panneberg needs to think of time as something that sort of exists because of his idea of Spirit as field, which I do not know what to make of. Anyway, I like the thought of creation as something that is ongoing. This raises the question: is creation then also something that has a goal and a purpose? Is it going anywhere?

Certainly, if we are to remain within the Christian tradition we must believe that this is the case in one way or another. For the early church at any rate, time in this world was a way of getting from point A, creation, to point B, the eschaton, the next world that would be complete and perfect. To be a Christian is to live some aspects of life in the next world already in this one.

But does this mean that there is a progression from A to B? Well, if we ask a church father like Irenaeus he would probably answer: Yes and No. In Irenaeus vision there was certainly ment to be a progression, but this progression was haltered because of sin. The coming of Christ as the second Adam starts this progression again, but only for the believer. The same is true for many other fathers: they seemed to think that because of sin the natural progression of the world was stopped, but because of Christ human beings can instead start progressing. The goal would still be in the coming world, but the process of getting there would begin here.

Now, while the early church could envision the decline of elements of the culture they lived in, they probably could not imagine a culture that can bring the very creation itself with it in its downfall. In other words, for the fathers, the world wasn’t really in need of saving. That this is now the case brings very different perspectives to Christian theology.

The progression that the church fathers wanted to see among Christians was mainly or a moral kind. This would be a moral improvement in the individual, that would lead to an over all improvement of the entire church, and then the world.

Today we have a completely different sense of what progress is. We have the concept of biological evolution, we have the ever increasing complexity of science and technology and we have the economical idea of growth. None of these were known before the last few centuries. With them has come the idea of a progress of history towards a higher state of civilisation (Hegel). Somewhere along the way the idea of the Christian sense of progress, the moral growth of the individual, was connected with the overall “myth of progress” of our culture.

What we see is that two of these modern myths of progress are failing: technology has in a sense turned against us, by creating environmental problems and mass lay-offs, and economy is increasingly showing that its concept of growth is often anti-human, favouring solutions that create a deeply inhumane societies (and individuals).

If it were not for the fact that the world and humanity is facing a crisis that may mean the end of both, theology could with ease revert back to the old view of progress, seeing that the modern sense of progress is an illusion. Only humans can grow, by the grace of God. But since God is the creator not only of humans but also of animals and trees and lakes and atmosphere, this is not good enough. What we see is increasingly a culture against God: a destructive culture facing a creative God. God is not with us, he is against us.

This is the situation in which we must speak in a sensible way of salvation.

God the Father and a Creation in Crisis

After warming up now in a few posts I think it is time to tackle what I consider a serious problem for Christian theology in a time of decline like ours. The most fundamental aspect of the Christian faith is the belief in God as creator of all there is. Some theologians like to separate between Gods creating work and his upholding work (i.e. Pannenberg) but I prefer to see the latter as a continuation of the first, and thus essentially two aspects of the same thing.

This doctrine is all the more important because it is a part of Christian doctrine that I think is quite accessible even to secularized humans, provided that you acknowledge the myth-status of the creation narratives in Genesis. Most human beings experience reverence faced with the grandness of nature, the miracle of new life and the joy of beauty, and many find it plausible to connect this reverence with something we can call God. Thus the doctrine of God as originator has long been considered a solid part of the Christian dogma on which one can build new interpretations of more tricky aspects of Christianity, such as the doctrine of sin and of salvation.

Because of this it can be considered deeply unsettling that this doctrine seems to prerequisite a belief that creation is stable, something that can be ended only by its Creator. Can we really believe that the world as something that flows out of Gods ongoing creation, if we recognize that there are considerable threats to the continuation of life in this creation, threats that originate within this creation itself? This would indicate that there is a power within creation – humanity – that has in fact become powerful enough to counter the will and power of God. If the destructive power of man outweighs the creative power of God, what kinds of consequences does this have for our concept of God? Is such a God really pantokrator?

We can easily see that this situation is caused by the sin of humanity. The question is: is this the ultimate form of hubris, of believing to be god, something that God ultimately will not tolerate? Or is this too something that must be accepted as a consequence of man’s freedom of will?

And if God will not tolerate the destruction of creation, will this result in a nemesis that is the destruction of humanity? This is not difficult to envision, but theologically impossible. It goes against all we believe about God as loving and graceful. But one still has to ask: even if there is grace for every possible transgression a person can do, is there a limit to God’s grace that consists of the destruction of the World?

There is of course hope for the world. It consists of the possibility that our civilization collapses before the environment does. I doubt there is a solution based of the good will of man. But I think a slow decline is more likely, and if it is not fast enough, it will not cause the changes in lifestyle that are necessary.

How do we believe in God in a scenario like this? I think we must start by recognizing that our way of life is not acceptable in the eyes of God. To be able to uphold a belief in a God who is Love, who is Creator and who wants to save the kosmos, there needs to be a repentance, a recognition that as long as we live the way we live now we stand against God who stands on the side of creation. There needs to be a full metanoia: a turning away from life based on consuming to a life based on other values.

Of course God’s almightiness is not to be understood as an ability to do anything. Rather I think Tillich’s interpretation is useful: That God is the one who is able to stand against the non-being. Faith in a world on the edge of destruction must be to trust that God can stand against the non-being we are letting loose, and to enter into a community with God that consists of joining God in the creating work to keep upholding the creation.