Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Weltgeschichte: Sinn, Bedeutung; Genesis, Erschaffung der Welt

Kurzinhalt: worldhistory is meaningful in so far as it reveals the ordering will of God in every stage of the process; Creation and Exodus, thus, are successive phases in the unfolding of the order of being

Textausschnitt: The construction of world-history unfolds the meaning that radiates from the motivating centers of experience. And since it is the will of God, and his way with man that is experienced in the concrete situation, worldhistory is meaningful in so far as it reveals the ordering will of God in every stage of the process, including the creation of the world itself ... He is the Creator, the Lord of Justice, and the Savior. These are the three fundamental aspects of divine being, as they become visible in the Israelite construction of world-history. They become something like a "theology" when they are brought into focus in the work of Deutero-Isaiah; and they remain the fundamental modes in which God is experienced in Christianity.
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11/5 The experience of existence under God unfolds into the meaning of world-history; and the emergence of meaningful order from an ambiance of lesser meaning supplies the subject matter for the Biblical narrative. ... The Biblical narrative is built around the great cases of emergence, and gains its dramatic movement in detail as the story of recessions from, and returns to, levels of meaning already achieved.
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Genesis establishes the dramatic pattern of emergence and recession of meaningful order. It opens with the creation of the world, culminating in the creation of man; and it follows the account of the original emergence of order with the story of the great recession from the Fall to the Tower of Babel. A second level of meaning emerges with Abraham's migration from the Chaldaean city of Ur, with a way station in Haran, to Canaan. That is the first Exodus by which the imperial civilizations of the Near East in general receive their stigma as environments of lesser meaning. ... Creation and Exodus, thus, are successive phases in the unfolding of the order of being; but the rhythm of emergence and recession was to be beaten twice in Genesis, and the order of being is not yet completed. Genesis is clearly the prelude to the main event whose story is told in Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua-that is, to the second Exodus, the wandering in the Desert, and the conquest of Canaan. Only with the main event, with the constitution of Israel as a people through the Covenant and its settlement in the promised land, the historical present is reached from which the ray of meaning falls over Genesis.