Depending on who asked me, I would say that the first half of Genesis 11 is my favorite portion of the Pentateuch. Right or wrong, I admit that I take a lot about the character of GOD from this passage.
I'm not going to launch into the Hebrew because I don't know it. I'm not even really going to try to (dis)honor this passage by doing-it-up theologically. Really I just wanna enjoy this passage in public. Let's blog it!
A little posturing: I hate conventional wisdom about "the cultural mandate" taken from the pages before Genesis 11. I'm not sure that the bible teaches such a thing, and I'm not going to get sidetracked whipping this poor child, but it should be noted that I think that whatever is good in the concept of "the cultural mandate" must survive the GOD of Genesis 11. K?
Now, for the highly lit bits. "The whole earth had one language and the same words" (1). This is an amazing verse, literally. It confounds all that we know or think we know about what it means to exist in the world. We cannot imagine this pristine state of language. Interesting note (IN) #1: Apparently language didn't fall with Adam. I take it that this verse is not merely stating that they all happened to speak the same tongue. Their language art is essentially linked to their building art. Consider this: God confused their language in order to stop their building. Odd, no? Somehow, language --> power.
IN #2: They were building the tower using "brick for stone" and "bitumen for mortar" (3). Note that these are substitutions. I take it that this implies that previous constructions were built of natural materials. This is not necessarily the first time these are used, but I think that they are symbolic of a new level of artifice and industry. Now men weren't taking what occurs naturally and building with those blocks. Now men are actually refining and manufacturing more regular building materials. Bricks and extracted bitumen do not occur in nature....just a thought. Oh yeah, and bitumen...that's basically petroleum. Cue the lightbulb above your head.
Notice an interesting parallel, again linking the construction of the tower with constructions of language. IN #3: "Come let us": "make bricks, and burn them thoroughly"(3), "build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens"(4), and "make a name for ourselves"(4). And let's not forget the purpose clause, "lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth"(4). Two speed bumps here. Again, why the link between language and bricks? How is the making of a tower in effect the making of a name? (Try to remember that the phrase "make a name for yourself" hasn't become cliche yet, that you're hearing this concept for the first time and connecting it to something other than inventive spelling.) What is obvious is that this is rebellion, and that it represents a power grab for glory and authority. Remember, GOD will call Abram, and will name his seed Israel. GOD will disperse them, He will subdue them, and He will make a people for His Name. All of this negative correlation causes, in my opinion, for there to be open season in asking questions about the legitimacy of the city, and not just the tower built to the heavens. They're made with the same bricks, and are an attempt to justify the same name-giving authority.
Many think that the sin of Babel was trying to reach into heaven. To break in, so to speak. This is wrong, if we take "heaven" to represent being with GOD. No, the sin of Babel is idolatry. They aren't trying to treat with GOD. They aren't trying to elevate humanity to heaven, but rather to humiliate heaven to earth. This is the problem with analogy.
These are the sons of Adam, in the line of citizen Cain, born in sin. They have forgotten the Garden of Eden and have entranced themselves. They have forgotten their exile. They have found a way get away from working with the fire of the Sun which gives life. They have harnessed fire, and have turned the soil into bricks. They have discovered propaganda. They have learned about politics. They have justified oppression. There is no oppression so great as the strength of Sisyphus. They could build the tower. They did build the tower. But they never did master alchemy, the art of resurrection. Imagine me, now, standing before the tower at Giza, reciting Ozymandias.
It is in this tragic light that I read the puzzling verses which close this section. GOD comes to see the tower, and He says, "nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them" (6). This prompts GOD's confusing of their language and society. Now, Babel was no threat to GOD. Babel did not propose a relation with GOD. Rather, Babel proposed a mode of human being in rebellion to His authority, man in man's own image. GOD confuses their language in the way that a man might break Sisyphus's leg so that he might not spend eternity romancing the stone. Death is a gift. GOD killed the dream of Babel because humanity was going to get what it wanted, which was hell on earth.
Who is this god who kicks over a child's sand castle? Perhaps He's a King with a real castle inviting him to a Feast.
Your homework:
1. Read Genesis 11 (the Babel narrative)
2. Read Shelley's Ozymandias
3. Read Revelation 21
4. Realize that the "city" as we know it is Babylon. Sound it out. Cue light bulb #2. New Jerusalem is the city coming down from the heavens. Babel is the city coming up from earth. Now, do you want the red pill or the blue pill?
I don't think this is correct: "They aren't trying to elevate humanity to heaven, but rather to humiliate heaven to earth. This is the problem with analogy."
ReplyDeleteHere is why: creation is God's building--in the Garden (or whatever you like pre-fall), God's habitation is with man. There isn't this split between Heaven and Earth. We see this again, post-fall, in the tabernacle and then the temple. God has always purposed to live meaningfully with His creation, not distant from it. This is, of course, most poignantly seen in Jesus--God has tabernacled with man, yet again. He takes, at first, the lowly form of a servant, what with his poverty, weak body and so forth, and then he resurrects to *remain*, not a lowly human, but an exalted human being. Lastly, though, we see what happens at resurrection--namely, the new Jerusalem, a city, built by God and coming *down* from Heaven to earth where God will, as Christ, dwell forever with mankind. Here he will dwell inside of his creation. Heaven and Earth will be, at last, joined. I think your sentiments are driving a wedge between God and His creation that He never intended and I don't think are intended at all in any part of the penteteuch given that they were always looking for God to dwell with man. God leaving his dwelling place with man was always a horrible occurrence (the whirling wheels of God's chariot leaving the temple in Ezekiel, the destruction of the first and second temple, etc.), not a putting things to rights.
I idolatry was certainly the sin, but I doubt it's in the city building simpliciter. Rather, it's in the purpose of the building this particular city--that is, to abuse power, to magnify oneself, etc. Cities aren't all the disimilar from the rest of creation. They are meant to point us to the great Creator who will fashion for us a perfect city; however, we consistently take these artifices and worship them rather than the one to which they're meant to point.
Many typos--my apologies.
ReplyDeleteJT, thanks for the interaction. I think that this topic is quite important (this is not to say that what I have to say on this topic is particularly cogent or important).
ReplyDeleteNow, my first response is a question. How do you not commit the is/ought fallacy? "Creation is God's building", ergo whatever happens in history is apparently not only in God's decree, but also according to his law. There are cities, therefore there ought to be cities.
Second, I'm not saying that God isn't building a city of any kind. I'm saying that the city God is building stands to judge all cities we've built. I want to say something like what Barth says about revelation, that "the gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question mark against all truths." Similarly, Jerusalem is not a city among many lesser cities. It will be the city which sets a question mark against all cities, and which reveals the nature of sin inherent in the system.
I agree that Jerusalem is an incarnational, Immanuel fulfillment. I'm not sure where we're misfiring on that point. My point is that there is an infinite qualitative distinction between all things in New Creation and that which is in history. I think that this would be your main dispute, that this is an unwarranted bifurcation. I disagree. I suppose I would wonder how you would qualify the difference between the New and old.
New Jerusalem is utterly new, and yet it has been negatively revealed in the folly of men. All the ways we have failed, God will not.
One last parting shot (I'm ignoring the problem of analogy for now), who will build New Jerusalem? Do you think that we will help build it? Isn't this a source of qualitative difference, that God build the heavenly city, while men (through God's decree) build these mockeries we call cities?
You're quite welcome for the interaction!
ReplyDeleteThe is/ought fallacy: yes, I don't mean to imply that because there are cities there ought to be cities. Rather, it seems to me that city building is, as you mention in your last parting shot, something that God does and we, by reflection, also do. So, as I say, it isn't the building of cities simplicter that is the problem. The problem, I think, is that we use our cities to profane God and commit idolatry rather than revere God. I think the same is true of all artwork and aesthetic building--I take it that city building is a particular instance of this. There is a grotesqueness in our cities, but that's not anything necessary; rather, I think it's simply a symptom of the larger problem viz. that we abuse our jurisdiction as God's vice regents and stewards and pretend as though 'we' are the ones with ultimate authority (i.e., we act as if we can do all things by ourselves, for ourselves, and out of our own permission).
Who builds the city/kingdom of God/new jerusalem? Well, I think God builds the city. However, I think he has placed his laborers in the field to help dig up and carve out the stones. I think this is our role as instances of new creation--we get to build properly with an eye that God actually constructs the final project, we simply work the stones (so to speak). I think it's highly possible that all creative acts done in the power of the Spirit, even city building, can be done with an eye and heart toward this end. If not, I'm not sure we can cultivate anything.
Lastly: I'm not sure how much the new creation will have an 'infinite qualitative distinction.' I think that presses a metaphysic into the Scriptures that isn't there. Namely, I think that rests largely on the idea that this creation isn't any good and that we're somehow derivative of true being (in other words, I think the "great chain of being" cosmology isn't helpful in Christian theology). But, it seems to me that one of the primary lessons of the Genesis text is that God doesn't see this world as being of infinitely bad quality such that an infinitely good quality world must replace it. Rather, he sees that there are things in old creation that need redemption and reconciliation to His will. Further to that point, with the resurrection of Jesus, everything has changed. In our current spacetime existence, we've been invaded by new creation. It's already here, just not in full. So, it can't be that there will be infinite change--that would negate the acts of new creation that God began in the life and resurrection of Jesus. That would also negate the authority the Father has given the Son and the corresponding power given to us through the Spirit to work His will. In short: we're not polishing brass on a sinking ship here. Perhaps you don't mean to suggest that we are, but I fear that's the conclusion one probably reaches if one thinks that New Jerusalem has no relation to the world as we know it--particularly after the resurrection of Jesus.
Lots to say here, but I think I may just work my thoughts into a positively stated blog. It can be unwieldy to critique and assert simultaneously. So, a few concise critiques to your answer:
ReplyDelete1. How do you think of the Kingship of Christ? Is he in any way like earthly kings? Isn't it absurd that we relate these two? Isn't the fact that Jesus asserts His Kingship over Israel precisely to assert the absurdity of their desire for an earthly kingdom? The point of the incarnation is NOT to validate the earthly, but to deliver a people unto the heavenly. Again, the Kingship of Christ questions the conceptual currency of all earthly kings. The same is true of the City of God. Not to validate, but to be a reductio ad absurdum.
2. Yes, God builds the city. But he isn't doing it "here". He's doing it "there" and bringing it "here", packaged, no assembly required. We aren't workers in a quarry raping some mountain, we are the stones. This language of Christ as cornerstone points to the qualitative difference in the building plan of God. I think we will live in nature. There will be no need to construct buildings, because nature will no longer be alienating. To sleep under the stars will not be a form of impoverished exposure. No building here in the sense of walls and boundaries, just enjoyment and ever-more complex ordering of the life God has given.
3. I don't know how to help you with the thought that I'm falsely pressing the distinction between heaven and earth, new and old. Scripture is replete with the reinforcement of this distinction. Creation is not in a venn diagram with heaven. Such thinking is a category error. NT Wright says a lot of good things, and then he goes on to say some not-so good things. So I don't go with you there. The fact is that Scripture makes an absolute distinction between that made by man, named by man, judged by man in the flesh, and those made by God, named by God, etc. You'll have to do better to convince me that this isn't an infinite qualitative distinction.
1. Well, I suppose we're just going to disagree here. The true King of Earth is a man, Jesus Christ. He is fulfilling and taking back what the first king of earth, Adam, lost. So, in Christ God became the true human king
ReplyDelete2. Well, if he's not doing any kingdom work here, I'm not sure what you think the point of all the stuff that Jesus did between birth and death was--it seems to me he was demonstrating just what it means to live in the kingdom of God (as he kept announcing). He then told us to go and do likewise in the here and now. The kingdom has already begun to come--it's not in some distant remote place out of touch with earth. It has collided and is colliding with earth and will be fulfilled in the eschaton. We'll be his co-rulers then as we are his co-laborers now.
3. I think our disagreement lies in our christology, first and foremost. From what I gather, you don't put a lot of emphasis on Jesus' humanity and the work he did qua human being. It doesn't seem to me that you do, at any rate. In Jesus, God is showing to us that heaven and earth are no longer at odds--he's actually showing us that heaven and earth are meant to collide together. This is atonement, this is reconciliation. This is God being brought into relationship with God and so the earthly and the heavenly combined as they were always meant to be. If creation is at odds with heaven, irrespective of Jesus, then the incarnation is an abomination and itself a category error. Second temple judaism seems to have placed some emphasis on a category split between God--as a distant ruler--against His creation (echoing the epicureans and the platonists); but God seems to have blown back their categories by the incarnation. This is why the incarnation was such a stumbling block to the Jews. God had become a man? Heaven and earth were combined in the breaking in of Jesus and especially through resurrection? That was anathema. But this is precisely what I think is being preached in the NT and anticipated in the OT--in fact, it's what is expected in the OT even upon entering the holy of holies. That was heaven coming down to earth. Additionally, a lot of new OT scholarship is really hitting on the creation account as account of temple building. here we have God fashioning his own temple and, as was common, the last thing put in the temple was the God's image. Notice what happens on the last day of creation. Well, when God fashions his new temple, Jesus becomes that true image--undistorted from sin. but this isn't something that's only far off--its completion is---but its work has begun in and through Jesus' life, resurrection, and the mission that he's called his church to through the power of the spirit. If it isn't that, then I fail to see what we're suppose to be doing here other than yelling out a manichean sort of "abandon ship! creation is no good! leave it to burn!" I don't think we should say anything like that. Incarnation seems to demand otherwise.
You can imply that I dehumanize Jesus if you like. However, what I'm actually stating is that Christ is archetypically human. He is human in teleological perfection. I am stating that we are dehumanized through sin, that his humanity judges our own. The incarnation didn't occur because creation was good in itself. Creation has teleological goodness because it will one day be fulfilled by Christ. All of creation is a vessel for the glory of God, which means in itself it is empty. The incarnation is a judgment upon the earth. The incarnation and atonement RESOLVE the breakage, but they do not DISSOLVE it, and they only do so through baptism and resurrection, both requiring death.
ReplyDelete"heaven and earth are no longer at odds...heaven and earth are meant to collide together". This is at best confused language, and at worst a contradiction.
Cry Manichaean, cry Gnostic, cry Platonist! This is just theological fashioneering in my ears. I'm obviously pulling my ideas from Scripture, and you're not really substantiating your disagreement.
Part 1:
ReplyDeleteYeah, I suppose I just disagree that you're pulling your ideas from Scripture. Rather, I think you're pressing your ideas into Scripture. I don't disagree that Creation is without worth aside from God's having made it and His stamp on it. But, I don't know that such an 'empty creation' actually exists since God did, in fact, make it. There isn't such a thing as something not made by God in that ultimate sense. So, I don't know where to go with you on that but to say 'Ok'. And agreeing with you here doesn't derail what the Scriptures seem to indicate--that God thinks of His creation as good and that he's called for humans to rightly rule it. Right rule is then seen perfected through the archetypical human being, Christ.
Incarnation is truly a judgement on fallen creation; but it is also a reconciliation and a redemption given that he is still incarnate after resurrection. This means that the creation is then, through new creation and the power of the Spirit, united fully with God himself in Jesus. Here we have the ultimate instantiation of the all that the temple was supposed to be--God's dwelling place on earth among his people. That's not a rejection of creation, that's a correction on what's wrong with creation. But what's wrong with creation and what's right about new creation do not divide creation qua creation. There is still good here--at least in the existence of the good, true, and beautiful and most well seen in and through the kingdom being born out through the Church. Here we have many instances of new creation (new creatures) living lives with the power that raised Christ from the dead, even the Holy Spirit. *This* creation groans for the revealing of the sons of glory in anticipation of their right rule under the headship of *the* human being, Jesus Christ (romans 8:18-25). Creation isn't growing to be killed or thrown in the trash heap, it's growing to be repaired.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteIt's just a matter of history that the sort of dualism you have here has been preached against again and again through the patristic era--this is what caused the Christological confusions in the first place. If creation is no good, then God's union with said creation--and salvation of it--is no good and therefore not possible. That's manichaean, docetic, etc. not the Bible. The only reason to think heaven and earth are in contradiction is by thinking God has created one and not the other. He is creator of heaven and earth--and he's likewise lord of both. Our sin has put heaven and earth at odds--or, it did--but the incarnation breaks through that divide and brings it back together. This is precisely what incarnation is Jesus is the wedding of the divine (i.e., heaven) and human (i.e., earth). The end scene in Revelation is, I think, a great picture of this. The city put together by God is brought down to earth from heaven. A temple in the city is no longer needed because the whole city is, once again, a temple for God--He, as man, lives among and rules with His creation. Creation isn't *only* teleologically good. If it were, then the message of Genesis makes no sense--the author writing it would have been sending a false message to the people of Israel. Instead, what we find in Genesis is that the human author and the divine author are giving a story contrary to surrounding creation myths in which creation is the coincidence of some war or other between gods, fashioned out of spite or accident with men as whipping boy. The God of Israel, though, has fashioned the world for himself out of his good nature and has, in love, invited his image bearers to be his co-laborers in rule. That's 180 degrees from surrounding culture. If, though, it's as you say--and the creation isn't at all good even now, nor was it in the days of the penning of Genesis, then we have a world that's needing to be thrown away, not restored. Creation wouldn't be groaning at all for restoration--it'd be evil and wanting to remain this way. But that's not what Genesis says and it isn't what Paul says. It isn't even what Jesus says in all of his parables and it's not what he says in how he works and how he heals the creation (of which man is a part).
I think I would first clarify that creation includes humanity (with the caveat that Christ is uniquely begotten). Thus, whatever goodness you attribute to creation must likewise extend to humanity. Now, we see that we must make a distinction: things are "good" instrumentally, perhaps teleologically or even aesthetically (in the eye of the beholder), not morally. This is all I'm asserting with the goodness of creation, that it is only good insofar as it is precisely as God created it to be according to His purpose. The difference between a finely made folded-steel katana and a lump of ore and some leather is that it has extended use granted to it by the swordsman and the smith. It isn't good simpliciter; it is a good sword. Not sure if you would disagree with any of this, but I think we tend to assert that creation is good, nay exceedingly good, in some way that goes beyond this teleology, and falsely so.
ReplyDeleteI'll now put some things on the table. First, there is a sense in which there is a lack in creation as created, that it isn't yet ripe, fulfilled, come to full term. This is not a contradiction with it's goodness as stated if goodness is understood instrumentally or teleologically. I recognize that this brings us to an equivocation with terms like good and evil, since it is teleologically good that man sin, and yet this is morally evil. Yes, we need to be more precise here, and this is all fallible philosophy. You must recognize that when you say that creation is good and that you think you know what that means without reference to what is revealed about creation, this is just philosophy. My main move is a disagreement with this philosophical understanding of the goodness of creation, not the fact that, in some sense, it is good. My interpretation is likewise a philosophical move, since I don't think (so far) that Scripture proves my point, but merely supports it.
Now, another thing on the table, and I am being (hopefully generously) presumptuous here. My view is in no way gnostic. If anything, it is a modified Augustinian view. I clearly state that God created creation. And my eschatological vision is more "earthy" than yours. It is a major stretch to say that I'm gnostic in this sense. My intuition of your criticism is that you see that I'm rejecting certain theophilosophical moves during the patristic period which guarded against Gnosticism, neoPlatonism, and Manicheanism. But this doesn't mean that I go down that path. Perhaps this is dangerous because it will force us to rethink our defense, but this is a good danger because process and liberation theology or theology of hope is already taking significant root in the theology of the laity. So, the wall has been breached already.
ReplyDeleteReally, guys, we're ignoring the most awesome thing about this post: "citizen Cain" ... haha, seriously, Caleb. Nice move. :D
ReplyDelete