Autor: Ormerod, Neil

Buch: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Titel: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Stichwort: Genesis, Schöpfung: Erlösung; Gesetz (Ordnung im Chaos)

Kurzinhalt: The creation of Israel as a nation, achieved through the gift of the Law, or Torah ... is the basic model of creation within Hebrew thought forms. It is a reminder of the close connections between creation and redemption within this horizon.

Textausschnitt: 2b We find the same conviction at work in the opening chapter of the Book of Genesis. In mytho-poetic language the author of the first chapter of Genesis puts forward a powerfully religious vision of a universe that finds its source and origin in the divine command: "Let there be light... let there be night and day... let there be lights in the vault of heaven ... let the earth produce vegetation ... let the waters teem with life ... let the earth produce every living creature ... let us make human beings in our own image and likeness." God speaks and so it happens. Every pattern, every element of order that we find in the universe, from the "lights of the sky" to the complex interacting patterns of living things, has its source and origin in God's creative work. And this same conviction that the universe finds its origin in God stands behind the fundamental belief in the goodness of that creation: "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good" (Gen 1:31). (Fs)

2c Biblical scholars tell us, however, that the source of this conviction regarding creation began not with speculation about the cosmos, as we have outlined it above, but with a much more concrete experience, that of the establishment of order in society. What emerges from these scholars'work is the strong connection between cosmogenesis and the "creation/redemption" of Israel as a social body. This interrelationship between the cosmological and social is common among what Eric Voegelin would call "cosmological cultures," in which the individual is ordered to the society and the society is ordered to the rhythms of the cosmos.1 The creation of Israel as a nation, achieved through the gift of the Law, or Torah-out of the social chaos of lawlessness emerges the nation built upon the order of the Torah-is the basic model of creation within Hebrew thought forms. It is a reminder of the close connections between creation and redemption within this horizon. The creation of social order is the basic experience of redemption. People who have experienced the breakdown or fragility of the social order, such as the recent devastation in New Orleans, will know what this means. These biblical creation texts are not metaphysically speculative, but historically grounded.2 (Fs) (notabene)

3a Nor should the Bible be read as providing us with a scientific account of the origins of the universe, in particular of the origins of life. The Bible does not seek to provide us with scientific information about the origins of life, but with a faith conviction that everything finds its origins in the divine command. Ultimately God, through divine wisdom, is the source of order and of life, but the Bible does not seek to tell us how God created these things, or the mechanisms for that creation. To read the Bible literally in this case, as found in so-called creation science, is to fundamentally misunderstand the literary form of the text.3 Science is free to develop theories such as evolution in order to understand the emergence of life, so long as scientists remain faithful to the empirical data, not to a literal misreading of the biblical text. (Fs)