Act I: Creation

In Deuteronomy 6.4 we find the classic Jewish refrain, the Shema: 'Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one.' By the time of Moses, the foundation of Jewish monotheism had been laid, but until the days of Isaiah, this declaration of the Oneness of YHWH worked itself out in a variety of ways. Some Jews clung to henotheistic polytheism, the worship of one god—in their case, YHWH—while acknowledging the existence of others. Monarchial polytheism developed somewhat later; this is the idea that other multiple gods exist but YHWH is the supreme god who rules over them.  Not until the days of the prophet Isaiah did monotheism solidify itself in Jewish thought. God speaks through his prophet, declaring, 'I am YHWH, and there is no other; apart from me there is no god.' (Isa 45.5) The Jewish people came to believe that there was only one God, their God, and that all other gods were shams, mockeries, parodies, or lies. The Apostle Paul, fitting snugly into Jewish monotheism (though reworking it around Jesus) quotes the Shema in his letter to the Corinthians: 'We know that "an idol has no real existence," and that "there is no God but one." For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.' (1 Cor 8.4b-6) Woven into the fabric of Jewish monotheism is the conviction that the one God, YHWH, is Creator, the One ‘from whom are all things’. Pantheism ran amuck in the ancient cultures in the Old and New Testaments, and the Jews came as a breath of fresh (albeit odd) air, declaring that within creation there was no divinity, that all of nature was a creation of their God, and that creation remained separate from Him.

Classic Jewish monotheism stood upon two pillars: the beliefs that (a) there is one God, who created the entire cosmos, and who remained in an intimate relationship while remaining distinct from it, and (b) this God called Israel to be His special people. The Creator chose Israel; but why? Why did He choose the Jews? In order to answer the question of why God chose Israel, we must look at the first Act of the story: the birthing of God’s world.

God’s creation of the world is laid out in Genesis 1-2. These accounts are difficult to interpret, and scholars from all branches of Judaism and Christianity disagree on the manner of interpretation to the point of name-calling and finger-pointing. These texts are chocked full of symbolism, polemic, and apologetic; sifting through all this in an attempt to reconstruct precisely how God did it, what it was like when He did it, and how long He took to do it, is like trying to take a family photograph in a house of mirrors while blindfolded, deaf, and dumb. Sidestepping critical issues, what can we know about God, His creation, and mankind from these creation texts, always bearing in mind that Genesis 1-2 aren’t the only creation texts in the Bible (Job 38-41 stands as its own sort of ‘creation text’)? 

First, What can we know about God? We can know He is powerful. God has the power to create something out of nothing. We can know He is creative. Not only does God create, but He creates creatively. Second, What can we know about God’s creation? This is an interesting question, because the world we currently inhabit is spoiled and marred by evil, and the current creation is but a weak shadow of the original. Even in all its beauty, the world we currently live in (a world of great deserts and thick jungles, a world of Siberian snows and deciduous forests, a world full of strange creatures like giant squids and anacondas and duck-billed platypuses) is just an echo, perhaps even a mirage, of what God originally created. Perceiving the beauty of the cosmos, and acknowledging the great mysteries that abound not only in the most distant solar systems but in our own deepest seas, we know that God delights in beauty, in strange things, in both comedy and mystery. He created the stupid ostrich, the bloated behemoth, and the terrifying Leviathan. 

Scripture tells us that God created his world and declared it to be 'very good'. Thus we know His creation is ‘good,’ but we must define what ‘good’ does and does not mean. ‘Good’ does not mean ‘perfect’ in the Greek sense of unchanging. Nor does it mean that God’s creation is always aesthetically pleasing; God delights in mosquitoes just as much as He delights in bunnies, and He finds pleasure in hammerhead sharks just as much as He finds joy in bottlenose dolphins. ‘Good’ means, quite simply, that God finds pleasure and beauty in His creation, even if our own aesthetic senses do not. One might ask, Were there thorns and thistles in God’s original creation? and What about tornadoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and forest fires? While we may not like thorns and thistles because they hurt, and while we fear natural disasters due to our vulnerabilities in being chained to an eventual physical death, these things are natural and not the enemy. Death is the enemy of mankind, not that which may bring death knocking on our front door. The curse regarding thorns and thistles in Genesis 3 is not that thorns and thistles become part of the landscape but that mankind would now have to wrestle with them in order to make a living (Gen 3.17-19). Nor is transience, such as the changing of the seasons, evil; winter is no less pleasing to God than spring or summer. All of these are parts of God’s good creation. 

Genesis 1-2 tells us that God created the universe, and within that universe He created galaxies. Within one of those galaxies He created a solar system, and in that solar system He created a very strange planet. He filled that planet with all manners of life; top-to-bottom He filled it, from the oceans to the land masses to the skies; and on this planet, in the midst of a wild world filled with dangers, mysteries, surprises, and adventures, He created a garden. Within this garden He created Adam and Eve. This Garden rivaled any of the most popular destination spots in the tropical hemispheres; forget Maui, Cancun, or Montego Bay. After creating entire worlds and ecosystems within planet earth, God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.' (Gen 1.26-27) 

The pluralistic language of God’s decision ('Let us make man…') has led some to wonder, 'Who is God talking to?' Recent advocates of the 'Alien Hypothesis', the idea that ancient aliens created mankind and that mankind perceived these aliens as divine, point to this text as evidence that there was some collaboration between multiple entities involved with the creation of mankind. Over against this, orthodox Christians point to Trinitarian theology. Trinitarian theology, however, was unknown to Moses (or whoever wrote the Book of Genesis), and recent studies into the ancient world have discovered that such pluralistic language doesn’t demand the existence of multiple entities. Ancient kings and emperors would often speculate to themselves in such a manner. The pluralistic nature of God’s statement could be representative of such an event: God, being One, speculates to himself and declares to Himself His agenda (to create man in His own image, male and female). Another theory is that God is addressing His heavenly council in His heavenly throne room: His council is an assortment of appointed angelic beings who serve God and carry out His commands. It could be that God is addressing His heavenly council, alerting them to what He is about to do. 

From Genesis 1-2 we can deduce mankind’s identity and purpose. God created mankind to be His image-bearers. In Latin, mankind is the Imago Dei, the 'image of God.' Many assume this means we are endowed with characteristics similar to God: feelings, emotions, creativity, and choice. Animals, however, who are not made in the Imago Dei, can experience feelings and emotions and can exercise creativity. A recent book advocated that we are made in the Imago Dei, male and female, in the sense that men tend to be warriors and adventurers whereas women tend to be nurturers and caretakers. I understand why these understandings of mankind in the Imago Dei make sense, but I don’t think that’s what it means to be made in God’s image. The language itself, 'image of God', is taken straight from ancient Near Eastern culture: an 'image' of something was believed to carry the authority of the image it bore. Ancient rulers of the Near East, when conquering foreign lands, would set up their 'images' in that land as testaments to their authority and ruler-ship. The ambassadors and emissaries of these kings would be considered to be 'in the image of their king,' in the sense that they carried his authority and rule into places where he was not directly involved. Fast-forward to the Romans, and we find them renown for carrying their standards, or images, into battle; these standards symbolized the power, weight, and might of Rome going forth against the pagan hordes, carrying the torch of Rome’s claims of justice and peace into alien territories. When Genesis says man is made in the Imago Dei, the point is the same: mankind, as God’s image-bearers, are the ones endowed with God’s creative power and authority, to go forth into the world and to rule over it as God’s representatives to all creation. The title 'image of God' speaks not of something intrinsic to our nature but to our God-ordained mission and purpose. Ultimately, human beings are created to advance God’s rule and authority into His good creation.

So God created a universe over which He  ruled, and He created mankind to be His royal ambassadors and emissaries, and he tasked mankind with the mission of going forth into the wild creation and subduing it. This isn’t a subduing of exploitation but a subduing by cultivation and reproduction (having lots of babies!). Mankind was to leave the Garden and go about subduing all creation to the glory of God, to 'carry His torch,' so-to-speak, and tame the wild creation, expanding the Garden of Eden into the rest of the cosmos. Before mankind even leaves the Garden, however, things went horribly awry.