Revelation and the 1st W

As we set out to walk through the book of Revelation, let's begin with some simple questions and starter answers. First, a story:

I had a Bible professor in college who did something very irritating on the first day that we studied the book of Revelation. He strolled around the room for at least five minutes saying, "Revelation, not Revelations," "Revelation, not Revelations," "Revelation, not Revelations," and so on. Over and over. Again. I wanted to scream. But, that five minutes made an indelible impression on me, which I will appreciate always. What did it teach me? Well, first, the title of the last book of our New Testament is called Revelation, not Revelations. That title is take from the very first word in the original Greek text, which is transliterated 'apocalyse'. The first line literally reads, "Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him..." Typically, translators add an implied definite article making this line, "The revelation of Jesus Christ..."

The second thing that five minute reptition from Professor John Swails taught me is to cringe whenever someone calls this book "Revelations." More importantly, it encourages me to think of this book as a whole, no matter how many differing scenarios there might be within it. Long before any attention to the 'trees' in this book-- what this or that symbol might mean and so forth-- the first thing about it is the 'forest'- it is the whole that is the revelation.

Now, let's start with the 5 W's of good study habits as a way of getting acquainted with this book. (All of the answers here are supplied in part by the book of Revelation itself, but mostly by studies of the book. I'll try to be clear when I'm moving from one to the other, but cannot promise that I will always do so. PLEASE feel free to differ with me on any issue, but do it kindly. We're all trying to listen faithfully to this book and we're all scratching our heads at times- even those who pretend that they've got it all figured out.)

Today's W: WHO?
The book of Revelation identifies the recipient of this vision as "John" at least 5 times, 3 of which come in the first chapter (vv. 1, 4, and 9). "John" was a fairly common name in Asia Minor during this time, so it is probably unwise to assume that this writer "John" is necessarily the same person as the apostle John or the writer of the 4th gospel or the writer of the letters called I, II, and III John. There is certainly a lot of similarity in language between the Gospel of John and the letters attributed to John, but that same kind of analysis has led many biblical scholars to reject the idea that the "John" of Revelation is the same "John" of the 4th gospel. A 3rd century Alexandrian bishop named Dionysius argued that parts of the book of Revelation were 'barbarous,' especially compared to the glorious language of the 4th gospel and that the style, grammar, and ideas in Revelation are obviously from a different pen. So ... my point is that we ought not to assume too quickly that every John is the same John in the New Testament.

There were certainly many persons among the church 'fathers' who accepted that the John of Revelation was the same John who wrote the 4th gospel (whom they assumed was the Apostle John also). Among them: Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement, Ireneaus, and Hippolytus- all of whom were pretty neat guys. But, among those who did not accept that the John of Revelation was the Apostle or the author of the 4th gospel: Marcion and the aforementioned Dionysius were chief among them.

In addition, there was a large degree of difference over whether the book of Revelation belonged in the New Testament. Since one of the criteria for accepting a book into the ‘canon’ was that it was written by or associated with an Apostle, those who accepted Revelation generally accepted John as the Apostle John; those who rejected it generally disputed that authorship. (Generally, but not always.) The 4th Century bishop of Jerusalem, Cyril, forbade the reading of Revelation in public or in private. The early 5th century theologian Chrysostom did not mention it as a book of the Bible.

I must add that, because of the decidedly anti-Roman flavor of this book, some of the early church folk accepted or rejected it as a biblical book based on their own relationship with Rome. Someone like Eusebius, in the 4th century, was a friend and supporter of Constantine, the ‘converted’ Roman emperor. Whether Eusebius rejected Revelation based on generally acceptable rules of scholarship or because he thought it was too negative toward Rome is hard to tell. Politics and religion is a theme of Revelation and always has been.

So … ‘who’ the “John” is who writes the book of Revelation is not and never has been a settled question. It looks to me that most modern scholars do not attribute it to the author of the 4th gospel.

To Whom was it written?
This one is a little easier to answer because Revelation 1:4 specifically addresses it to “the seven churches that are in Asia,” spelled out in 1:11, “Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.” Biblical scholars refer to this area as ‘Asia Minor,’ most of which we call ‘The Republic of Turkey’ today.

Next Post: What?

A New Way of Doing This Blog: Less is More?

Okay, back in September I set out to blog every day. I get up at 4:30 most mornings and I determined that I would spend at least an hour writing- partly because I had things to say and partly because I needed the discipline of writing. But, I've discovered that I need that morning time for other things. I usually spend Monday and Tuesday mornings translating the text for the upcoming worship services on Sunday- a discipline I value a lot. And, I spend other morning working on articles or lesson plans, depending on what's next in the hopper. Anyway, I have decided that I will not be blogging daily- as many of you have noticed.

Here is what I propose to do: I'll post every Monday and Thursday. When I do, I really invite you to use this google site for discussion. If this site is unweildy and not what we want, I could set up a facebook group or a chat room or what have you to meet our needs.

The topic for the upcoming posts will be the book of Revelation. Of course, many people have undertaken to write about this glorious, yet perplexing book. I do not pretend to have anything better to say about it than others (well, it'll be darned better than some others, I hope). What I do want to contribute uniquely, however, is this: I want to be as 'above board' as possible about the method, assumptions, and process that I am using to study the book of Revelation. And here it is.

You've seen that I am devoted to 'intertextuality' as a hermeneutical (interpretive) method. What I propose is simple: Using the Greek translation that I have, I will simply go through a few verses each day, sequentially, and then list alongside of them all of the Scriptural references that this version of the Greek New Testament lists beside each verse. Some of these references will be direct quotes, others will be obvious allusions, other will be more subtle. We will be dependent on the judgment of the editors of my Greek NT for their direction, but, of course, I will encourage you to chime in along the way. You may offer other intertextual references that are appropriate for us to consider.

I do not know exactly where this will lead us week after week. I do not have a particular ending point where I think the book of Revelation must end up. I just want to hear this book anew, and to use this method of intertextuality as a means of hearing it freshly, with the assumption that the writer of this Revelation got his bearings from the texts we know as the Old Testament, and from the oral tradition of early Christianity.

I'll start on Monday with some of the historical context of Revelation, before jumping into the text. If you have any input/questions, I'd love to hear them.

More Bookends: The Tree of Life

My last few posts on "cosmology" (the study of the earth) were begun by a comment from Barbara Rossing that II Peter's depiction of the earth as doomed for destruction is an 'anomaly' in the Scriptures. There remains the question, of course, of whether Rossing is correct in saying that II Peter is alone in seeing the earth doomed for destruction. One could argue that the same cosmology is found in Revelation 21: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. The interpretive question would be whether heaven and earth 'passing away' means that they've been destroyed or that they've been transformed. The promise of heaven and earth passing away is found in he apocalyptic texts of Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21 (see my earlier posts for some comparative thoughts on these texts). But, of course, in Paul's language old things 'passing away' and all things 'becoming new' does not signify a final destruction and end of the old, but a transformation and radical renewal- such as happens when one becomes a person of faith in Jesus Christ.

I remain convinced that if II Peter is proclaiming a final destruction of the earth as part of God's plan, then it is an anomaly in the Scriptures. (However, I'm not certain that I think that is what II Peter is saying.) In other words, I do read the words "heaven and earth had passed away" and even "the sea was no more" in Revelation as pointing to the old order of creation that is radically renewed into a new order. By "old order" of creation, I mean the kind of inherent decay, the struggle for survival, the 'nature red in tooth and claw' (a la Tennyson), that human communities have experienced for years and years. That old order would include human insecurity over matters of land and food, and therefore includes making warfare and establishing walls and gates and empires and so forth. To some extent, the "old order" seems to be driven by a mentality of scarcity, where territorial boundaries and ownership become occasions for violence.

The new order, then, would be quite different and would be built on the premise of abundance, not scarcity. In times of abundance, when everyone has 'enough,' things like war, walled and fortified cities, etc. would be unnecessary. But, that kind of living is so far removed from most of humanity's experience that it would indeed be a 'new earth' if that were to occur. And, to get there, it would require an enormous overturning of the present order of things- so much so that to say this earth shall 'pass away' would not be overspeaking.

That's the kind of connection that I see in the Scriptures between the 'old earth' (the one we all know) and the 'new earth', if you will. And I think we see something of that kind of connection in the way that the book of Revelation picks up on a motif from the creation story and repeats it- but repeats it differently. I would argue that this is yet another episode of 'intertextuality,' where a later text takes up an idea or some language from an earlier text and uses it in order for the reader to understand what is being said. So, the later text (like Revelation) would use the imagery of an earlier text (like Genesis) and expect the reader to say, "Ah, yes, this is the Genesis story all over again." But, in intertextual uses, the later text not only receives meaning from the earlier text- it also adds new meaning to it. So, one would read a reference in Revelation and say, "Oh, so that's what the old story in Genesis was talking about." As Paul Ricoeur says, the later text very deliberately receives meaning and adds new meaning to the earlier text.

I simply never think that intertextuality is an accident.

So, here's a great example of a motif that begins in Genesis and is taken up and given new meaning in Revelation. I am using these two books, not because they are the earliest and latest books in the Bible (I happen to think that Job is the oldest), but because we are so accustomed to seeing them as the first and last books. And, I think whoever was responsible for the present arrangement of the books of the Bible as we have it now, saw some of these same connections very clearly.

So, in the book of Genesis, specifically in the second creation story (which, I think, is the older of the two), we find these words:

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:8-9)

As we've seen before, the second creation story gives us "the God of dirty fingernails" who creates the human (Adam) out of the ground (Adamah) and now is dirtying those nails once again by planting a garden. "Out of the ground" the Lord God made trees and plants for both beauty and sustenance. And in the midst of the garden is "the tree of life" as well as "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

You may remember that the fruit from the second tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate nonetheless. When they did eat, God punished them. But, the reason God banished them from the garden was to prevent them from eating of the tree of life and being stuck forever in their disobedient, cursed state. So, after that, Adam and Eve move on in life outside of the garden, toiling with work and laboring in childbearing and contending with a ground that requires struggle to exact produce and so forth. But, the tree of life sort of gets forgotten. A flaming sword is placed at the entrance to the garden, so that nobody can go there, and that's about the end of the story.

I'm no expert on midrashic literature, but I'm guessing there is an abundance of it regarding this tree of life, because one thing the midrash does is to take up unresolved threads of the stories in the Bible and imaginatively follows them. If there are any midrash fans out there bothering with my blog, I'd love to hear from you on this.

One place where the 'tree of life' is revisited is at the end of the book of Revelation:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign for ever and ever. Revelation 22:1-5

The imagery is a bit different. Instead of a tree in the midst of a garden (the garden of Eden was bounded by four rivers), this time the tree of life is on both banks of the river of life. It has 12 kinds of fruits, one of which blooms for each month, representing abundance with no periods of scarcity or dormancy at all. And then there is that powerful, poetic phrase, "and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." Now that's beautiful. It presupposes not just Adam and Even running nakedly through the utopian garden, a world of wounded nations. In response to that grim reality, the tree of life is not just a tree that could (dangerously) fix Adam and Eve in their sinful dispositions forever; it can heal the wounds of the nations.

The cosmology here is not that the entire earth and been trashed and all of its peoples have been wiped out- despite all of the oodles of blood, death, and destruction found in the book of Revelation. The cosmology is that there is still and earth, and still nations, and not just the pure and whole people but wounded nations, which struggle no more. Instead of scarcity over which nations rise up against one another in violence, there is abundance to which nations turn for healing.

The Tree of Life makes beautiful bookends for how the Scriptures envision God's creation.

More later... hang in here with me if you will- I'm trying to figure out my rhythm during busy seasons like Advent.

The Earth as An Active Place

Consider these two stories, which appear almost as 'bookends' within the Scriptures. You may recall the story of Cain and Abel, from Genesis 4, where the older brother kills the younger brother out of religious jealousy. There are lots of things to say and think about that story, but here is the part that I want you to notice with me:

And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.’ Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.’ Genesis 4:10-14

Now, in the story, God gave Cain a 'mark' that protected him from any old avenger coming along and killing him, so Cain went on to establish cities and so forth. But, the curious thing about this part of the story is the agency of the ground. Look at how active it is. First, it opens up its mouth to swallow the evidence of Cain's crime. But, it is not a 'bloodthirsty' ground, so to speak, it has swallowed the evidence to preserve it and produce it at the right time, in order to witness against Cain's crime of Abel's death. As one Hebrew Bible professor put it, "the ground gathered the evidence and protected it so nobody could tamper with it before the trial." Second, the ground will punish Cain for his crime, by refusing to yield produce when he tills it. So Cain is forced to become a wanderer- a hunter and gatherer, rather than a settled cultivator, we could say. And Cain himself knows that, as a wanderer, he has no place, no refuge, no ownership, and so he is vulnerable to anyone who happens to come by and perceive that he is an outcast.

Now, toward the end of the Scriptures, here is another story, from the Book of Revelation, where a dragon is set to devour the male baby that is born to a woman. When the baby is born, it is snatched up into the heavens to God's throne and the woman flees to the wilderness. The dragon is then defeated by the Michael and his angel army and thrown down to the earth. When the dragon sees that he is thrown to the earth, he takes off after the woman, to kill her. The woman sprouts wings to flee to the wilderness (again). Then, the dragon opens his mouth and pours out flood waters to flush out the woman. "But the earth came to the help of the woman; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth." Rev. 12:16

Again, the ground/earth is an active agent, particularly in swallowing up the waters that intend to kill the woman.

There are two ways that I do NOT want to read these stories.
1. First, I do not want to take these texts literally- if that means that the earth has a mouth, or that a flood-vomiting dragon is really getting its butt whipped in heaven then foiled again on earth, etc. Taking these stories literally is the first step toward ruining them. John's imagination is actively at work, not telling the news in Walter Conkrite-like objective fashion, but telling the truth about life and meaning and violence and peace and hope and good and evil.

2. Second, I do not want to take these stories as meaningless nonsense. When these stories depict the earth as an active agent, that means that the earth has its own kind of inherent meaning and value- it is not just this passive thing, this repository of resources, that is there for no other reason than to serve our purposes. Maybe the whole "mother earth" language is taking it a bit too far, but the intention is correct. The earth, the ground, our planet, is not just the background setting for our great God-human drama. It is an active player in the drama, its role is significant and belongs on the credits at the end of the drama.

From the creation story to the story in Revelation, the earth is an active agent that has meaning in the drama of violence and justice. From preserving evidence and giving witness to protecting the innocent from undue violence, the earth is more than a passive setting for our drama.

Next time, we'll look at the Scriptures' framing from one garden to another.

Cosmology and Advent

Wow, I've gone a whole week and haven't posted anything. That's a sure sign of the times in itself and it says "It must be the season of Advent (or, perhaps Lent)!" From my perspective, Advent is Latin for "much to do followed by more to do." But, it is joyous work and I love it.

In the last post, we were looking at the second creation story in Genesis 2. There we see how the human (Adam in Hebrew) is a product of the ground (Adamah in Hebrew), when the God of dirty fingernails scratches out some dust of the ground and breathes life into it. The ground, then, is the primordial substance of humanity, giving us a close connection with the earth. Any biblical cosmology should reflect that inherent connection, contrary to the way that Left Behind Theology often depicts the earth as simply the backdrop for the God-human story. In Genesis 2, the earth is not simply the backdrop, it is the mediating substance in the God-earth-human story.

Let's see how the ground, the earth, continues to be a part of the human story. In the 3rd chapter of Genesis, there is the story that is often called "the story of the fall." It is when Adam and Eve are in the garden that God planted (dirty fingernails once more!) and disobeyed God's command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, this is an interesting story in its own right, deserving a lot more attention than I'm going to give it here. (A good place to see various perspectives on this story is the Bill Moyers special on Genesis that was produced by Public Television a few years ago. It is worth the time.)

For our sake, I would only point out that the ground, the earth, is implicated in this story along with Adam and Eve. Remember, the second creation story says that when God created the heavens and the earth, there was no vegetation because there was no one to till the earth. So, it is not after the 'fall' but before it that Adam, the groundling, has the vocation of tilling the ground from which he came. After the 'fall,' Adam's tillage changes from being 'work' to 'toil,' which is achieved through the sweat of his brow. Likewise, Eve's childbearing becomes 'labor' accompanied by pain and (especially for early communities) always a life-threatening situation. But, the consequences of Adam's and Eve's disobedience do not stop there. The ground also suffers because now thorns and thistles are introduced, which will compete with the plants and vegetation that Adam has been caring for. (This reminds me of Jesus' parable of the seeds and the soils in which the seed springs up into life, only to be choked to death by the weeds.)

That is to say, in the second creation story, the disobedience and punishment of Adam and Eve also includes the effects on the earth.

Theological moment: In 1750, Charles Wesley preached a sermon on earthquakes, during which he identified 3 'causes' of this deadly form of destruction. Wesley said that God was the 'author' of earthquakes, sin is the 'moral cause.' of them and he said this is in addition to whatever 'natural cause' there may be for them. Given the temper of his time, Wesley says that this 3-tiered 'causation' of earthquakes was obvious to anyone who believes the Scriptures.

With all due respect to Charles and his brother John- both of whom I generally admire, even if I am not a Methodist- I'd like to offer a different way of 'believing' the Scriptures.

First of all, I would point out that whether God punishes people or not is an open question in the Scriptures. One of these days I'm going to write a paper following the discussion throughout the Scriptures on this matter, some of which center on the ancient proverb, "The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge."

Secondly, I would point out that people who claim that catastrophes as God's punishment often point to Genesis 3 to substantiate their claim. I'd like to offer this slightly different way of reading that story: Shifting techtonic plates, spewing molten magma, hurricanes and the like ought not to be seen as God, behind the curtain, pulling levers and attacking hapless villages for their overwhelming sinfulness. Neither should a mother dying in childbirth or a child stricken with cancer or a guy killed in a car accident be seen as God inflicting punishment on bad people. 'Natural' catastrophes ought to be seen as part of the story of human life on this planet- filled with challenges and risks and hazards and work and labor and joy and choices and effects and accidents and generations and chidbearing pains, and so on. Genesis 3 invites us to see risks and catastrophes as something other than God pulling switches and punishing people. They are evidence that the earth, nature, the ground from which we are made, are all caught up in the same kind of finitude and fragility that we experience.

The story of 'fallen' humanity and the 'fallen' earth are stories that run together. In the biblical cosmology that I'm offering, that is key.

Next time, we'll see how the Scriptures depict the earth as having a kind of 'agency' rather than simply as a passive place where stuff happens, and we'll scratch our heads over what that means.

Toward a Biblical Cosmology, Part II

In the last note, we looked at the first creation story from Genesis 1:1-2:4. The second creation story begins with the latter half of Genesis 2:4 and it is somewhat different. In the first story, we see God as the one who speaks and creation happens. In the second story we get, as a friend recently put it, "God with dirty fingernails." Dirt- that's a key in the second creation story. The story begins with dirt, the ground on which there was not yet any vegetation. And why not? The storyteller offers 2 reasons: It had not yet rained (although there was a spring to water the ground); and there was nobody there to till the earth. So the story starts with dirt and out of that dirt God forms a human being. The close relationship between the Hebrew word for the ground "Adamah" and for the human "Adam" is why the Old Testament Professor Bill Brown refers to the man in this story as the "groundling."

So, in this story, there's dirt and God scratches a groundling out of that dirt and breathes life into him. He is now an 'inspired groundling', since the Hebrew word for 'breath' and 'spirit' is the same. Then God plants a garden for that inspired groundling to till and keep and enjoy its beauty and bounty. Then God creates animals of all kinds out of the dirt, to see if any of them is a suitable partner for the groundling. But none of them is, so God puts Adam to sleep and slices him open and creates Eve, a creature of similar bone and flesh. And the two inspired groundlings ran naked throughout the garden, tilling and eating and enjoying its beauty.

That's pretty much how the second creation story goes. It is quite different from the first one, both in tone, language, and even the orders of what comes first. In the first story, we saw the inherent goodness of creation, how God calls various stages of creation “good” before humans were in the picture and, after humans were created, the whole wad was “indeed, very good.” As I said in the last note, the first creation story has a cosmology that the earth has inherent value; it does not just have ‘instrumental value’ insofar as it serves human purposes. In the second story, the emphases are different. Let me name two:

1. God is not stepping back and calling things ‘good.’ In fact, during this story, God steps back, shakes his dirt-coated finger and says, “That’s a no good!” (Yes, God is Italian. Didn’t you know that?) ‘What’s a no good?’ we ask. The thing that’s a no good is that the inspired groundling is alone. So, God makes animals (“That’s a no good” the groundling says over and over), then God makes woman (“Ahh,” says the groundling, “that’s a very good.”)

2. The humans in this story are not fashioned in the image and likeness of God. They are described with respect to their inherent connection to the earth. Out of the earth they have come, and into the earth they will go, according to ancient funeral rites.

While there are many things that can be said about this second creation story, I want to keep focused on what it says about the world- its cosmology. As I said previously, in most Left Behind Theology scenarios, the earth is simply the backdrop, the passive scene on which the real drama between God and humanity takes place. But this second creation story displays a very different notion of the earth- namely, its inherent connection with humanity. Rather, I should say, this story shows humanity’s inherent connection with the earth, because in this story, the earth- dirt- comes first. Everything else arises out of that first substance of dirt.

Next time we’ll continue looking at the biblical conceptions of the earth as we inch our way toward a better cosmology than the ‘doomed earth’ fatalism of Left Behind Theology. For Left Behind cosmology, I can only say, ‘That’s a no good.’
Ciao

Toward a Biblical Cosmology

We have seen that II Peter speaks about the end of creation is very extreme terms, comparing the fiery end that God has in store for creation to the watery end of creation in the Noah story. If you take the Noah story and its memory within the Scriptures to be a worldwide, total annihilation flood, then the fiery end in II Peter looks like complete destruction with no ark. The significance of the ark was that when the flood was ended, Noah and is family would renew life on this planet. With no ark, there seems to be no promise of continued existence on this earth in II Peter, only sheer destruction.

I've also pointed out that Barbara Rossing argues that this view of the earth's total destruction is an anomaly in the Scriptures. That's what I'd like to explore for a spell. But, rather than playing "Here's my pile of Scriptures and there's your pile: Whoever has the biggest pile wins" I'd like to approach the question of the earth's fate by looking at the Scripture's "cosmology" in general. I am not arguing that there is only one other view of the earth within the Scriptures other than that of II Peter. There may well be as many views of the earth's final destiny within the Scriptures as there are within any historic tradition. What I want to show is a way of reading biblical texts regarding the earth that are different than the typical type of doom that Left Behind Theology usually assumes.

The Instrumental View of the Earth in Left Behind Theology
I would argue that most of Left Behind Theology has what we could call an 'instrumental' view of the earth. That is, the earth is depicted as a thing, a background almost, for the God-human drama of the end times. There is no inherent agency or dignity to the earth. Rather, it is simply the given scenario for the God-human drama that has no moral meaning in itself. While there is great drama over whether humans choose God or follow evil, the earth has no such moral character or meaning. It more or less just sits there until it is destroyed. Every now and then it might do something destructive, like an earthquake or something. But that's God's way of punishing people and the earth is simply the instrument. The real action, significance, morality, and meaning lies only in the drama that plays out between God and humanity.

The Earth as Good and Significant in Itself
There are two great creation stories at the beginning of the Scriptures. The first creation story is found in Genesis 1:1-2:4. The second is found in Genesis 2:4-25 (although the 3rd chapter should be read as an extension of this second creation story.) We can talk some other time if we must about whether these are two creation stories or just one creation story (as I was taught in Bible College), but the truth is ... they are two creation stories.

In the first creation story, I think two things are very significant: The order of creation and God's pronouncements about creation.

The order of creation is huge in Genesis 1. The whole story is built around what happens on this day, then what happens on the next day, etc. Even if you don't take this literally as signifying a 'new earth' that was actually created in seven actual days (as I don't), the significance of the seven days of creation is clearly important in the telling of this story. Each day has a wonderful and wonder-filled event that structures the world as we know it and everything ends with the Sabbath. It’s a beautiful story: One day, in the midst of the darkness of the primordial chaos, God says, "Let there be light!" and there was light! Our basic orientation of the world- light and dark, seeing and not-seeing, day and night- are given in this first act of creation. And now there is evening and there is morning, the very first of days.

The second day, God separates the waters below from the waters above and there is the distinction between the forming earth and the skies above. This is all beautiful, poetic, and powerful.

The third day adds something new to the story. Not only is there the separation of the lands from the waters on the earth, but God now calls on the earth to participate in the creative process by producing vegetation. On this day, when the earth begins to be a co-creator with God, there is the declaration that God saw it and it was good. That declaration is made twice on the third day.

Isn’t this beautiful story-telling? The significant thing is that humans aren’t even part of the picture yet and God is commissioning the earth to produce vegetation and God is declaring all of this marvelous arrangement ‘good.’ Theologically, what this first creation story gives us is a cosmology that the earth is good in and of itself, and not simply as an instrument of catering to human life. The earth, on that third day, with land and sea and sky above, producing plants and trees and vines, is good. God says so. It is good. God says so.

On the fourth day, we’re back to the sky where the sun and moon are given the task of ruling over the day and the night. The moon gets help from the stars. This too, God says, is good. The heavens, the milky way, the galaxies and expanding universe are good. God says so.

On the fifth day, God commissions the waters to start producing fish and even birds. And that was good. Then God blessed those creatures and commissioned them to join in the creative process by being fruitful and multiplying.

Then, on the sixth day, God commissions the earth to produce animals and humans. The animals are earthlings here; the humans are made in God’s own image and likeness. They are called to be fruitful and multiply. (Genesis 5 speaks of how Adam and Even did that when they produced Seth, who was in his own father’s likeness and image.) Then God steps back and looks at this whole of creation and “indeed, it was very good.”

The first creation story of the Bible does not portray and earth that is disposable or that simply has utility value. That’s the first thing I think we need to bear in mind when developing a biblical cosmology. But, there’s more…

Second Peter, again

In my last post, I cited a portion of II Peter 3, which showed the writer's cosmology in terms of a future and total annihilation of the earth. I stated that there are 2 ways of reading this text: 1. The anticipated annihilation is not total or literal, but points to a radical destruction of the current world order, with the purpose of 'disclosing' its sinfulness in order to cleanse it. 2. The anticipated annihilation is literal and total; but if this is the view then II Peter's cosmology is what Barbara Rossing called 'an anomaly,' an exception from other ways of seeing the world within the Scriptures.

Let's explore this second option a bit more, shall we? I'll use two questions as a way of looking more closely at it, one of which we'll explore in this post, the next we'll explore in the next post. Here are the questions: What is at stake if we call II Peter's cosmology an anomaly? What are some other ways of viewing the world found within the Scriptures?

What is at stake if we call II Peter's cosmology an anomaly?
It means, first of all, that we do not embrace what I've called in earlier posts 'homotextuality.' I use that phrase, admittedly a bit tongue-in-cheek, to describe the method of biblical interpretation that assumes that all texts say essentially the same thing. If we say that II Peter's cosmology is different from other cosmologies in the Scriptures (even if we want to argue that there is only one other cosmology or that there is a single dominant cosmology in the Scriptures), then we are saying that all texts are not essentially the same. It would mean that there are various (even if only 2) and diverse theologies at work throughout the Scriptures.

Personally, I believe that there are various theologies at work throughout the Scriptures. But, having grown up in a church that teaches biblical fundamentalism, I had to reckon with what is gained and what is lost when embracing this view of the Scriptures.

For many people, there is comfort and clarity in assuming that the theology throughout the Scriptures is all the same. It means that there is a single, correct message throughout the Scriptures and that single message offers single answers to the all-important questions that theology addresses regarding the truth about God, the world, and humanity. And faithfulness, within this view of the Scriptures, means that one simply believes in that singular theology. Richard Bernstein refers to this penchant for one, single, correct answer as "Cartesian anxiety," arguing that it is a product of the Modern period that began with Rene Descartes' need to find one, indubitable truth on which to base all of philosophy/theology. For Descartes, unless one could identify this one indubitable truth, nothing else could be reliable. I think Bernstein is correct and that much of our approach to the Scriptures in the 20th and 21st centuries has been built on this anxious assumption of 'modernity.' That is particularly true of the kind of biblical assumptions that lie behind Left Behind Theology.

Let me illustrate this way of viewing the Scriptures with a song that I was taught to sing in Vacation Bible School, at Church Camp, and in Junior Church on Sunday mornings.

God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me! (repeat).

Though some may doubt that his word is true,

I'm going to believe it. Brother how about you?

God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me."

When we sang that song we took away all of the human agency of the Scriptures and declared that all Scripture was God speaking directly, not mediated by human thoughts and diverse views. And when we sang that song we used the word 'it' to describe the message of the Bible. 'It' is a singular pronoun, so we were denying that there might be any diversity throughout the Scriptures. What God says is one thing, that one thing is identifiable, any other thought is casting doubt on the 'truth' of God's word, and faithfulness is believing this one thing that God says and that we've identified.

One of the implications here is that if anyone happened to disagree with us concerning about 'it'- well, then they were either stupid or evil. So, my best friend was a Southern Baptist whose church believed in "once saved always saved." We thought that was crazy- of course you can fall from grace, backslide, etc. and of course you can repent and get saved all over again. Our options for my best friend's church were: Either they just don't get it (i.e. stupid); or they get it but they maintain their 'once saved always saved' doctrine in order to ease their conscience whenever they are out sinning (i.e. evil).

Okay, this is a very narrow view of God, truth, the world, faithfulness, and others. But, I think it is a fair evaluation of the kind of views that come from beginning with the idea that all the Scriptures say essentially the same thing.

If we accept II Peter as an 'anomaly' within the Scriptures- that is, if we accept openly that the Scriptures have more than one cosmology at work- then we have to step away from the homotextual assumptions that lie behind much of Left Behind Theology. We cannot string together Genesis, Daniel, Ezekiel, bits and pieces of Isaiah, the Gospels, Paul's letters, I and II Peter, and Revelation as one seamless thread of a single end-time scenario. Instead, we honor the differences that lie between them; just as we can honor the differences that lay between my best friend's Southern Baptist tradition and my own Pentecostal Holiness tradition.

I can see why this approach to the Scriptures would be intimidating, because it seems to chip away at the 'certainty' of a single, correct answer to life's greatest questions. But, it can also offer a breath of fresh air, an honesty about what one encounters in the Scriptures, because we no longer have to make them all say essentially the same thing.

One piece of Presbyterian tradition that I've come to appreciate enormously is how the people who met, debated, and composed the Westminster Confession described the Scriptures as 'containing all that is necessary for salvation.' And, with all due respect to Rene Descartes, that's good enough for me.