Theology of Creation in Isaiah Part 1
Discussion of the doctrine of creation in Christian theology often centers around a few loci. In fundamentalist circles, it at times revolves around the creation-evolution or the young-earth/old-earth debates. Others, having reconciled with Darwin, explain the contributions of evolutionary thought to the understanding of God and the world. In much contemporary theology, the doctrine of creation centers on providing a justification for ecological and environmental initiatives, responding to critiques that the biblical command to “subdue the earth and have dominion over it” is at the root of the current ecological crisis. For others it centers on discussions of the plausibility and implications of creatio ex nihilo.
The author has been greatly interested in the doctrine of creation as it provides a counter-affirmation to Gnostic “schizoid spiritualities.” In the present day the primary heresy the faithful routinely gird themselves for is a denial of either the deity of Jesus, the mere existence of God or the reliability of the Bible. However, in the early church, no false teaching “was as dangerous, nor as close to victory” as Gnosticism. This Gnosticism was not eradicated then but has continued in the church both implicitly and explicitly. In our day Gnosticism is seeing a revival and is being touted as an alternate version of Christianity that was marginalized and suppressed in the early centuries of the church. This is especially so with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi corpus, the promotion of the Gospel of Thomas by the Jesus Seminar and recent discussions of the Gospel of Judas. Gnosticism’s basic premise is that matter is inherently bad or evil. In its Christian versions, the Jewish god Yahweh who created the world is not the true highest God, but a foolish lower god who attempted to make something on its own and the resulting mess, or “abortion,” was the world. Salvation is of profound importance for Gnostics, which they understand as when the divine sparks imprisoned in bodies are liberated by knowledge (gnosis) from an enlightened spiritual messenger.
While some teachers are actively or subversively propagating these concepts, the basic dualism between the material and spiritual, material and immaterial is common in many circles in the body of believers. While creation may not be accounted to the abortion of a foolish lower god, it is remains mystifying what the purpose of the material order may be. The “flesh” commonly seems to get in the way of “spiritual” progress. Specific verses in the New Testament are not helpful in this regard, even beyond the plethora of “flesh/spirit” tension passages. 1 John 2.15 says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world.” James 4.4 declares, “Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” The gospel of Luke (14.26) records the words of Jesus himself saying, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” If we follow the admonitions of these passages where does that leave us in relation to the “world,” the “earth,” or the material world? Many Christians respond with a variant of what the author terms “schizoid spiritualites.” These spiritualities introduce a split (dualism) between the believer and those things which are foundational to our lives: the earth, our emotions, our bodies, and our relationships. In this dualism the spiritual is at a more important level than the physical. This gradation often intensifies to the point where the “spiritual” is of extreme importance and the “physical” is of little or no importance, if not of negative value.
In our day, when little is heard in the pulpits about the dangers of Gnosticism nor the doctrine of creation beyond the few points mentioned earlier, it almost seems preposterous that it could be a called a, if not the primary danger to the Christian faith. When the doctrine of creation withers it is not soon before a gnostic or quasi-gnostic spirituality takes its place. As this happens many of the other doctrines of Christianity begin to wither: Anthropology loses its celebration of embodiment and sexuality forged in the image of God. Incarnation is no longer the untold union of God with humanity and the ultimate “hallowing of human flesh” (to borrow a phrase from George MacDonald), but rather Jesus only appearing as human (at least in the docetic version of gnosticism). In the cruxifixion, God neither joins with the suffering of humanity nor atones for the sins of the world as the human either was only an appearance (docetism), was vacated of the divine before suffering, or was the pathway to freedom from the body (as in the Gospel of Judas). Jesus’ resurrection is certainly not of the body and is not the inauguration of God’s renewal of the earth. Pneumatology no longer envisages the revivification of life that has been lost, imbibing us now with the joy of the Kingdom and passion for life, but instead offers the proleptic escape of an unsalvageable world. Ecclesiology loses its mission of renewing the earth but merely with aiding souls in eluding their doomed fate, if they are in fact ones with the divine “spark” within them.
Thomas Aquinas once said that, “any error about creation also lead to an error about God.” Wrong ideas about creation systematically deconstruct the true Christian meaning of almost every doctrine. For that reason it is critical to have a biblical understanding of the cosmos. However, as we have previously mentioned, of the common approaches to creation theology, almost none of these issues were concerns in the minds of the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures as they either formed underlying assumptions (embodiment, the good of creation) or were irrelevant (creationism debates, ecological crises). Less studies focus on how the concept of creation actually functions in the Biblical text and to what ends authors employ it. This will involve unearthing some of the underlying assumptions that emerge from the text in our far distant reading of these ancient documents.
The goal of the present study will be to begin with the biblical text, rather than an ideological goal, although the author has no delusions that he is without them. Our method will be primarily to observe how the concept of creation functions specifically within Isaiah 40-55 and then to conclude by drawing together the common streams of thought that emerge. We will seek to answer the question of how the text of Isaiah employs the concept of creation, which will in turn provide insight into how it was understood by the inspired author of the text.
Related posts
« The Person and History of the Holy Spirit Part 2: Trinitarian Ecstasy
Theology of Creation in Isaiah Part 2 – Isaiah 40.12-17 »
