Is God proud?

What does it mean to be God?  What is the most important aspect of deity that sets it apart from non-deity?  What does God think about himself?

What is the defining characteristic of God?  Most people throughout history would have answered immediately, "Power."  God is set apart from us because he can do things that we cannot do.  The Bible certainly agrees that God has power, but this is not the definition of what it means to be God.  Orthodox Christian theology teaches that Jesus did not cease to be God even though he surrendered the independent exercise of his power, and was weak as we are.  While we may shy away from the implications, the incarnation showed us something remarkable and unexpected about God that we never would have understood any other way: that power is not the essence of divinity.  Of course, this statement is derived from later trinitarian formulas, not the New Testament; what does the Scripture itself say?

Probably the clearest answer comes from Philippians 2:5-11 (a passage which figured prominently in the formation of trinitarian theology).  Here is this short poem in its entirety (NRSV translation):

³Do nothing from selfish ambition of conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each one of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
⁶who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
⁷but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Paul says that Jesus was "in the form of God" (v. 6) and it is hard not to take this in the same sense that Plato used the word "form", meaning that Jesus is the eternal, perfect ideal of God.  (There is some debate about whether we can attribute a Platonic sense to "form" here, but Paul says pretty much exactly that Jesus is the ideal of God later in this passage, so I see no reason not to interpret the phrase that way here.)

Perhaps the key phrase here is what is translated by the NRSV "did not consider equality with God something to be exploited" in v. 6.  Most older translations have something slightly different (KJV "thought it not robbery to be equal with God"; NIV, NAS "did not consider equality with God something to be grasped").  The reason for the diversity is that a key Greek word, harpagmon, occurs only here in the New Testament, and in the writings of the church fathers only when discussing this passage, so its meaning was not clear.  More recent philological research (see references in the article by Wright cited below) indicates than harpagmon means something to be exploited rather than something to be grasped or seized or held on to.  "Something to be exploited" makes much better sense of the passage.  Jesus possessed equality with God (he did not have to grasp for it)--but he did not exploit that for selfish ends.

Instead, Jesus did nothing from selfish ambition or conceit and regarded others as better than himself--that is the implication of v. 3, since we are to be that way in imitation of him.  The whole Roman world was devoted to doing things to gain honor, more so than our culture; it is hard for us to understand the extravagant lengths people in a shame-based culture go to gain honor for themselves.  Honor in such a society tends to be like a currency: if you gain it, someone else loses it, and that's how politics and just about everything else was played out in all the cultures around the Mediterranean world.  Striving for honor in that culture, perhaps more than in our own, meant putting down other people, the opposite of "being in full accord and of one mind".  The ultimate honor, of course, was payed to the gods, who were as jealous of their praise as any human would be.

But Jesus was not like that:  Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be exploited to gain honor and praise, unlike, for example, the Roman emperors who even at this time were beginning to be worshiped in the eastern parts of the empire as gods.  What did Jesus consider equality with God to mean?  Jesus thought equality with God meant emptying himself for us.

Instead of demanding reverence and homage as God, he humbled himself and took on the form of a human.  More than that, he humbled himself further to the point of death on a cross.  Crucifixion was not only a painful way to die; it was the most humiliating death possible, designed to take every last vestige of honor from the victim; and that's why the Romans did it.  (Remember that taking honor from someone else, it was thought, would bring you honor; in our culture, which has lived in the shadow of the cross for a millenium and a half, such actions might discredit you rather than bring you honor, but people did not think that way in the ancient world, or even in some cultures in the modern world.)  Victims were nailed to a cross naked, in full view of everyone.  This was usually done at the gates to cities, where as many people as possible would pass by, to show their absolute powerlessness to avoid even the most agonizing of suffering, and thereby to glorify the conqueror.

The poem says several times that Jesus took on the form of a slave, or servant.  On its own, the Greek is probably better translated "slave", but "servant" correctly alludes to the Old Testament figure called the "Servant of Yahweh".  The Servant of Yahweh endures humiliation, and everyone around him thinks that it is for his own sins (Isaiah 52:12-53); but this is not so.  He suffers out of obedience to Yahweh, because it was necessary for redemption of the people.  Following the outline of Isaiah's climactic poem on the work of the Servant (Is. 53), the text in Phillipians also shows how God highly honored the Servant for his obedience.

God did not have the same opinion as people.  "Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave him the name above every name...."  To a Jew like Paul, there is only one "name above every name": the tetragrammaton YHWH, "Yahweh", "I am who I am".  Because of his obedience as a servant, and his humility for our sake, God points to Jesus and says, "This is who Yahweh is.  This is what it means to be Yahweh."

Lest we miss the idea that Jesus in his humiliation for us is the truest possible vision of Yahweh, he goes on to quote unmistakably from one of the most monotheistic passages in the Old Testament about Yahweh (Isaiah 45:23).  In its context, it is part of a challenge to the Babylonian gods to present evidence, any evidence at all, that they can save:

²¹Who told this [that Cyrus the Great would conquer] long ago?
Who declared it of old?
Was it not I, Yahweh?
There is no other god besides me,
a righteous God and Savior;
there is no one besides me.
²²Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
²³By myself I have sworn,
from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
a word that shall not return [void]:
"To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear."
²⁴Only in Yahweh, it shall be said of me,
are righteousness and strength;
all who were incensed against him
shall come to him and be ashamed.

Referring to this passage, Paul says, "At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."  The passage from Isaiah was speaking of men confessing Yahweh to be the true God; Paul has taken this and changed in into a confession that "Jesus is Lord."  "Lord" is an ambiguous word in Greek.  It can mean a polite "Sir"; it can mean "Master" or "Caesar"; or it can mean Yahweh (it is the translation into Greek of "Yahweh" in the Old Testament).  Given the context, it seems clear here that "Jesus is Lord" means here that "Jesus is Yahweh."  Everyone will eventually confess that Jesus in his humility is exactly what Yahweh God is like.

This confession is "to the glory of God the Father."  How does the greatness of Jesus glorify God the Father?  Because understanding that Jesus is Yahweh shows us what God the Father is really like: he is just like Jesus, not proud, willing to endure anything for the redemption of those he loves.  The greatest glory of God is not primarily in his power, it is in the love that he shows, and Jesus is the ultimate proof of that.

This is not an entirely new idea in the Bible.  Moses had seen the incredible power of God in the exodus, but then he prayed to see the glory of God.  What did God show him?  "Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed, 'Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness....'" (Exodus 34:6)  The power of God is glorious; but the greatest glory of God is in redemption, in his love and forgiveness.

Other places in the New Testament affirm that the glory of God is found in his love and humility, not primarily in his power.  This is particularly evident in the writings of John, where perhaps the most frequently emphasized idea in the gospel is that Jesus reveals the Father by his actions.  This is first developed explicitly in John 5:19-20: "The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.  The Father loves the Son, and shows him everything that he himself is doing...."  In the context there, Jesus sees that the Father is raising the dead, so he raises a dead man (metaphorically at that point, literally later); in the next chapter, Jesus sees that the Father is providing spiritual bread, so Jesus provides physical bread; later Jesus sees that the Father is opening the eyes of the blind, so he does it too.  Everything Jesus does is an imitation of his Father.

Jesus' imitation of his Father does not stop after his last sign.  "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him."  (John 13:3-5)  Washing feet was about the lowest of jobs that could be given to a slave.  A Rabbi's disciples would do many menial tasks for him, but they were explicitly not required to wash his feet.  Here the Rabbi, knowing his divine origin and destiny, washes his disciples' feet.

What does this say about God? God the Father acts as a servant, just like the best of human parents.  After all, Paul says, all fatherhood derives its name from its archetype, God the true Father, Eph. 3:15.  A good human parent humbles himself to clean the baby's diapers, and God the Father will do no less for his children.  We need that kind of humble service from God, and God is not averse to providing it.

This was not very easily visible before the incarnation, though the Old Testament hints in that direction.  For example, Hosea shows God to be suffering and humble (only a humble person can forgive the insult of adultery and accept his erring wife back).  But the incarnation has shown much more clearly what God is really like.


In John's first epistle, he twice makes a remarkable statement about the nature of God: "God is love." (1 John 4:8,16)  The one thing that we have to understand about God, before anything else, is that the essence of God's nature is love.  Pride, arrogance, vengefulness--anything that conflicts with this fundamental part of God's nature is excluded.  John says that if you do not understand that about God, you do not know God--you have missed the most important fact about the being of God.

Now the point of the passage in Phillipians, as well as the footwashing passage in the gospel of John and the "God is love" statement in his epistle, is that we are to think the same way: we are to have the same mind in us as was in Christ, and we are to wash each other's feet.  We, who are made in the image of God, ought to behave as God did.  Unlike Adam and Eve, who sought to be like God to enhance themselves, we are to seek to be like God in that we empty ourselves for others.  Jesus, the one who was not only God but also fully human, has showed us the way of true humanity; we are "being renewed in knowledge according to the image of our creator" (Col. 3:10).

References

A detailed relatively recent discussion of the philology and the theological significance of the Phillipians passage is "Jesus Christ is Lord: Philippians 2.5-11" in The Climax of the Covenant by N.T. Wright.

I first understood this from a really excellent sermon by Darrell Johnson, then at Glendale Presbyterian church a number of years ago, but I have been unable to find any links to anything he has written or spoken on this.

Babel, Abraham, and Pentecost

In the Genesis account, the call of Abraham (Genesis 12) occurs shortly after the story of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11), and has some interesting links to it. The tower builders are trying to "make a name for themselves," but God promises Abram that "I will make your name great." The tower builders want to build a city and a tower so that they will not be scattered; Abram leaves the city life not far from Babylon for the life of a nomad. The nations were formed in the chaos after the tower building ceased; the nations will be blessed through Abraham. Yahweh comments that nothing will be impossible for the people of Babel, but Abram must learn that "nothing is impossible for Yahweh."

God's call of Abraham is his answer to the problem created by the tower builders. The tower is an expression of human determination to do what we want regardless of what God intends. God told Noah to fill the earth (Genesis 9:1); the justification for building the tower is to avoid doing that. The tower depends on human initiative and ability and ingenuity (figuring out how to make bricks in a land that has no stone for building--that is why the text makes a point of their discovery that they could fire mud bricks). The builders are proud of their abilities (they are making a tower whose top reaches heaven), but God does not agree with their self-assessment: He has to come down to inspect the tower, it is so small. So God removes the source of whatever strength they have, their common language and unity (11:6), and scatters them all over the earth, to be forever frustrated in their self-serving efforts to make a permanent name for themselves. Humanity's effort to achieve its goals results in curse and futility rather than blessing--the scattered nations will never achieve anything permanent. Rebellious humanity cannot accomplish the work of God, and God cannot let it accomplish what it wants.

But God has not given up on his plan to bring blessing, so he calls Abram to form a new people. This new people will not make themselves great; God will make their names great. (Furthermore, Genesis 12:3 says more literally that "the one who thinks lightly of you will be cursed"--whoever does not agree that Abraham's descendants are critical to God's plan will not obtain God's blessing.) Abraham's family, unlike the tower builders, will not depend on their own strength; one of the lessons that the patriarchs must repeatedly learn is that manipulation and human cleverness does not accomplish the purpose of God. Through them, the blessing God intended in creation will go out to the entire world ("in you all the families of the earth will be blessed").

But Abraham's family is just one family among many; how is this going to happen? There are some hints in the Old Testament. For example, we see Abraham blessing Sodom by his rescue operation and later by intercession. Deuteronomy talks about how the nations will learn from the Law if it is faithfully carried out. The Queen of Sheba, among others, is blessed by Solomon. Elijah and Elishah miraculously save Sidonians and Arameans. But for the most part, the kingdom of Israel could not be said to be a blessing to much of anyone. The prophets talk about a great day when blessings will flow out from Israel, but that did not happen in Old Testament times.

At Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came (Acts 2), there was another miracle involving languages. This time, instead of confusing the the languages, God made them intelligible. The old humanity breathed out self-willed arrogance; the new humanity speaks from the Spirit in praise of Jesus. (Note also the close connection the act of speaking and the word "spirit", which in both Hebrew and Greek is indistinguishable from "breath".) The old humanity was unified by its common speech, and derived its power from that unity (Genesis 11:6); the church is unified by sharing in the one Spirit, and derives its power from that unity.

The miracle of the languages at Pentecost is the beginning of the undoing of the tower of Babel, the time when the blessing that God promised to all nations through Abraham will start having a very visible effect. The blessing is, of course, primarily Jesus and the proclamation about him (Acts 3:25-26); this is what will accomplish God's goal in creation. Instead of collecting humanity together in a city dominated by a tower, God collects all nations into a single coherent people in Christ (see Paul's extensive discussion in Ephesians 2). The promise to Abraham that his name will be great has been fulfilled. God's people have a great name because what they accomplish has lasting significance; Jesus, the seed of Abraham, has the greatest possible name (Phil. 2). God's kingdom endures forever, while the tower builders are only significant today as a foil for the story of Abraham.

Genesis 1: God's plan (updated)

In a previous post, I argued that Genesis 1 teaches important truths that are foundational for living by faith simply by how it differs from pagan cosmologies. Now I want to look at the Genesis 1 account itself.

Structure and emphasis communicate the author's intent. As usual for any Bible passage, the key question to ask is: Why is he telling us this? This question is particularly relevant for Genesis 1, where the account is highly structured and obviously very carefully organized with a minimum of words. Why does he enumerate the days? Why does he mention days at all? And why does he number them? Why does God create in stages, rather than all at once? Why does he tell these things, when so many other details are omitted?

For several generations now, scholars have pointed out the following interesting structure:

Forming	Filling
Day 1: God made light, and separated light from darkness (making day and night, i.e., time).	Day 4: God made the great light (to preside over the day) and the lesser light and the stars (to preside over the night), in order to mark time.
Day 2: God made the firmament (separating sky and sea).	Day 5: God fills the sea with creatures, and the sky with birds.
Day 3:	Day 6:
Part 1: God made the dry land (separating the waters from the waters).	Part 1: God fills the dry land with creatures.
Part 2: God put vegetation on it (to provide for the animals he was going to make, v. 30).	Part 2: God makes man to rule over the creatures and care for them.

So day 4-6 fills the spaces created by days 1-3. The two phases of creation correspond exactly to the description of the original state of earth, "formless and empty" (Genesis 1:2). This narrative is carefully constructed to bring out this structure. (In fact, he keeps to this structure even when it causes apparent difficulties: the sun appears on the fourth day, but day and night on the first. This is bound to raise eyebrows, as much in the ancient world as in the modern.) Why is this structure here?

I do not believe this structure is mere literary ornamentation. Rather, it provides a key to understanding the passage. No one lays a foundation without knowing what the house is going to look like; God did not make the spaces in his creation (days 1-3) without knowing how he planned to fill them (days 4-6). Here is another of the key differences of the Genesis cosmology with essentially all other cosmologies, both ancient and modern: God had a plan from the beginning. In the pagan accounts, the creation of the habitable world is an afterthought of the big battle between the gods and was not planned from the beginning. (See my post on Genesis 1 and pagan cosmologies.) In modern atheistic evolutionary thinking, the creation of the world is an accident and there is no design, no goal, and no purpose.

Why is the account so repetitive?

Repetition is the main device the author uses for emphasis. (Also he sometimes repeats things and then unexpectedly breaks the repetition to provide a contrast.) We therefore must ask ourselves why he chose to emphasize these particular things.

Repeated element	Likely purpose
God said... and it was so (8x)	The verbalization of the goal is another indicator that God has a plan. He states what he is doing, and is happy with the result. Furthermore, when God says something, it happens. This not only emphasizes his power; it also is a key idea in the later parts of scripture, when God says things to the patriarchs and prophets and apostles. The promise to Abraham is as certain as God's statement, "Let there be light." Redemption is as much by the word as creation. A number of passages compare the surety of the word of promise to the stability of the word of creation (e.g., Ps. 89:36-37; Is. 44:24-28; Jer. 32:35-36; Rom. 4:17) and this idea is behind other key passages (e.g., throughout Is. 40)
God saw that it was good (8x)	Not only did God have a plan, but he did exactly what he planned. He did not fail in the execution, nor did he conclude after executing his plan that it wasn't a such a good idea after all. (See below on "God's good plan".) Contrast this with the Prometheus/Epimetheus creation myth from Plato (recounted very briefly in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimetheus_(mythology)), where the resulting creation was not good because Epimetheus lacked foresight. Also, this strongly emphasizes God's statement in Genesis 2 that "It is not good for the man to be alone."
God separated (3x)	This phrase occurs in each of the first three days. It links them together and contrasts them with the second three days, reinforcing the structure above.
God called the ...	This is one of the indicators that the passage is intended to be linked closely to Genesis 2, where the concept of naming is key. Naming in the ancient world indicates authority and ownership. God rules the inanimate world because he names it; Adam rules over the creatures because he names them, in agreement with comission to man in Gen. 1:28.
after its kind (10x)	The idea of a "kind" is yet another indicator that God had a blueprint or plan in mind when he made the creatures. More importantly, there is one creature who is not made after its own kind: man is made after God's kind. The breaking of the monotonous repetition highlights the contrast between man and the animals. See previous post on the image of God for more details.
God blessed (2x) them and said, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill..."	God's plan is a good plan, not just in his own eyes, but for the creatures as well. See below on "good". "Blessing" is a key word in Genesis (and also later in Scripture), and summarizes what God intends to do.
There was evening and there was morning, day... (6x)	This formula appears for all of the days except day 7, and emphasizes the difference between that day and the others. Hopefully I will write on the theology of the Sabbath later. Incidentally, the order "evening and morning" sticks out like a sore thumb to a Westerner, because for us the day begins in the morning; but for a Hebrew, the day began at sunset of what we would call the previous day, so for them "evening and morning" is a natural way to describe a day.
the image of God (3x)	This is contrasted with "after its kind", and shows the importance of the special role of man (see previous post on the "image of God").
God rested (2x)	God was finished, having achieved his goals.

Redemption and God's good plan

Genesis 1 lays the foundation for the understanding of redemption in the rest of scripture. Not only did God have a goal in the beginning, but he is once again moving to achieve that same goal. The Bible repeatedly refers to redemption as a new creation which achieves God's goal in the original creation.

No other ancient culture nearby had a concept that history was going anywhere. Either the present situation will continue indefinitely (Babylonian gods will rule the world this way forever, and therefore Babylon will never fall), or there will be continual cycles (e.g., the great cycles of the Stoics or Hindus). Nothing fundamentally different will ever happen. Nowhere is there any sense of eschatology, that the gods will ultimately intervene and fix things up permanently.

But the joining of the creation story to the story of the fall in Genesis 3 shows that the present state of the world is not what God intended (there is curse instead of blessing). Furthermore, the rest of Genesis, especially the themes of promise and future blessing, make it clear that God still has a plan--it is really the same plan of blessing in creation, but now we are looking at it while it is being carried out, not after it has been finished. (At key stages, the author is careful to connect with Genesis 1 by repeating the key ideas of blessing, fruitfulness/seed, and ruling. See Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology.)

Now just as God's initial creation happened in stages, redemption also happens in stages; it is not instantaneous. The old creation climaxed with man and his commission to fill and rule the world; the new creation starts from a new humanity (beginning with Jesus, the new Adam) and will spread to fill the world (the great commission, Matt. 28:18-20) and finally the universe (e.g., Rev. 21:1). The old creation ended with a judgment ("God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good") and a rest ("God rested from everything he had created and made"). The new creation ends with a judgment (the last judgment, after which only what is good will be left) and a rest for the saints (Heb. 4:9-10; Rev. 14:13).

Genesis 1 and pagan cosmologies (updated)

When the Babylonian creation accounts first came to light over a hundred years ago, they caused quite a stir because they had some notable similarities to Genesis 1-11. Some scholars argued that this showed the Biblical accounts to be a reworking of earlier forgotten pagan accounts, and therefore presumably not reliable or divinely inspired. More recent scholars have pointed out not only the similarities but also the striking contrasts between the narratives. It now appears that Genesis 1-11 was written primarily to refute certain pagan notions. Emphasizing the similarities rather than the differences between Genesis and pagan accounts would be like thinking that Copernicus' heliocentric theory is nothing more than an extension of Ptolemy's geocentric thinking. (By the way, probably the best book on this topic is Understanding Genesis: The Bible by Nahum Sarna.)

Genesis 1's cosmology establishes the Judeo-Christian world view. Since a world view is something we look through rather than look at, it is hard to see its importance unless it is contrasted with a different world view. But Genesis 1 has dominated western thinking so much that all other cosmologies were forgotten for a millennium; it takes effort for us to appreciate how revolutionary it must have been when it was written.

The Enuma Elish is a Babylonian poem which was recited every year during the New Year festival which celebrated the power of the Babylonian gods over the forces of chaos, and the security of the Babylonian system that rested upon those gods.

When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name,
Nothing but primordial Apsu [fresh water] the Begetter,
and chaos Tiamat [salt water], She Who Bore them All,
-–their waters commingling as a single body–-
No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared,
Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined–-
Then it was that the gods were formed within them.

So begins the Enuma Elish. Our most complete copy of this poem dates to about 1100 BC, but it includes material which is much older, coming from the Sumerians more than a thousand years earlier.

Tiamat and Apsu beget a series of deities, including the sky Anu. Apsu then is angered by his children and conspired to kill them all. The god Ea son of Anu strikes down Apsu and becomes the chief god. He also conceives Marduk, the principal god of the Babylonians. Anu then rouses Tiamat to revenge for killing Apsu, and Tiamat sends terrifying monsters to fight the other gods and destroy them. Ea and Anu are too frightened to face Tiamat. Marduk, in exchange for the supreme authority over the gods, agrees to fight Tiamat.

Then the lord [Marduk] raised the thunderbolt, his mighty weapon,
He mounted the chariot, the storm unequaled for terror,
He harnessed and yoked unto it four horses,
Destructive, ferocious, overwhelming, and swift of pace;
Poisoned were their sharp teeth...
He posted on his right the Batterer, best in the mêlée;
On his left the Battle-fury that blasts the bravest,
Lapped in this armor, a leaping terror,
With overpowering brightness his head was crowned;
With a magic word clenched between his lips,
A healing plant pressed in his palm, this lord struck out.

The dramatic, heroic poem goes on to describe how Marduk kills Tiamat, and cuts her in two. With half of her body he forms the sky (note the reference to the waters above the sky here, as in Gen. 1), and half the oceans beneath. Marduk sets in place various deities as stars in Tiamat's body in the sky, and orders them "to mark off the days" and keep time.

Many other pagan cosmogonies from the ancient near east are similar: gods are born, there is a battle between the gods, and one god becomes supreme and destroys the others. Canaanite mythology had a similar saga of conflict with the monsters of chaos and the eventual triumph of Baal. Modern readers are probably more familiar with the similar Greek myths of the Titans and their struggle with the Zeus and the Olympian gods. In all these accounts, the creation of the world is a more or less accidental consequence of the outcome of the battle between the gods. The body of the dead god formed the world and the sky.

The nature of God: monotheism makes faith possible

The creation narrative in Genesis 1 has a few superficial similarities to the Babylonian account. For example, it starts with salt water ("Tiamat" is possibly a cognate of the Hebrew word tehom, "the deep"). The water is separated into the waters above and the oceans. Stars are for a calendar.

While the similarities are real, the differences are much larger, and the differences are what would have been noticed first by ancient audiences. It should be obvious to even a casual reader that the world of Genesis 1 is utterly different from the world of the Enuma Elish. Probably the most obvious difference is that Genesis 1 has no conflict. In comparison with the poetry of the Enuma Elish, Genesis 1 is a dull, plodding list. There is no violence and there is no sex. The mythological accounts of cosmology are frankly much more interesting as a story than anything in Genesis 1 or 2. But the fact that Genesis 1 is boring is what makes it so exciting. Reading a gripping drama is pleasurable and interesting, but living in one is unpleasant and terrifying.

Drama depends on conflict. Now we do not see the world as populated by independent, disagreeing, and unpredictable entities, but the ancients did. Gods were as unpredictable as weather; in fact, that's what caused weather. The supreme deity barely managed to keep all the fractious gods in line. There were lapses where his will was not obeyed, and there are limits to his power. This is the main plot device in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aneid, and various other classical myths such as the Prometheus story. The same is true of mesopotamian stories such as the Atrahasis Epic and the flood story in the Gilgamesh epic, and many other ancient works. In most of these epics, it is sometimes better for humans when the supreme deity's will is not obeyed. For pagans, no deity could be trusted; even if there were a deity with the character, he did not have the power. In contrast, if the Genesis 1 cosmology is true, the creator can be trusted because his will is always done. There are no limits to his power, and no one can stand in his way. Living by faith is impossible without monotheism.

This point is reinforced by what Genesis 1 does not mention. Genesis 1 goes out of its way to avoid even naming other possible actors. In other scriptural discussions of creation (e.g., in Proverbs or Job) we hear that Wisdom and the angels were in some way involved. But mentioning them here would weaken the argument that the author is making, that there are no other gods involved, because people from a polytheistic background would automatically think of angels or wisdom as distinct gods. Similarly, the sun and the moon are not even named. This is probably because they were widely worshiped in the ancient near east, and the author of Genesis wishes to demote them to mere created objects. So he calls them just "the greater light" and the "the lesser light". Such a slight on the celestial bodies would stand out to an ancient audience.

In the same vein, in 1:21 it says "God made the great sea monsters"--which would have been understood in ancient times as the sea monsters who were the imagined incarnation of frightening pagan deities, the monsters of chaos (like Tiamat). God made those too. There is no danger that these personifications of chaos will again swamp the creation--God made them.

Another difference between Genesis 1 and the other ancient cosmologies which would be blindingly obvious to a person in the ancient near east is that God has no origin. Most other ancient cosmologies are primarily cosmogonies (i.e., stories about the origin of the gods), and the origin of the visible world is usually an afterthought. Set against this pagan background, the omission of any history of God makes a powerful statement. "In the beginning, God created...": the fact that the God whom we worship now is the same God who was there at the beginning, without any development, is important for living by faith. If God changed in the past, then he might change in the future. If God changes and develops, then we cannot trust in his plan for all time--he might change his mind. The unchanging nature of God is often celebrated later in the scripture, because it gives us hope. "I, Yahweh, do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed." (Mal. 3:6)

Vital to every mythological creation account is sex between the gods; all over the ancient world, sex seems to have been regarded as something that has power over even divinity. Once again, the Genesis account is completely different: sex is something that God created, not a fundamental force in the universe apart from God which controls even him. It should therefore be subservient to him. This is part of the foundation for biblical sexual ethics.

The nature of the universe

Another fundamental difference between Genesis and other ancient cosmologies is the clear separation between God and what he made. The world that is created is not part of a god (as in the Babylonian account), or something that proceeds from a god (as in several Egyptian accounts), nor is the universe equal to god (as in Stoicism and Hinduism and other pantheistic religions); instead, the world is something separate from God, that he created. The universe itself is not divine, nor does it have any divine essence.

What difference does it make whether God created the universe or God is the universe? It is obvious to everyone that the world has some serious flaws right now. If the world is divine, then God is the problem, and there is no hope that the world can improve. The best that we can do is to accept suffering (Stoicism or Buddhism), or to withdraw (e.g., to stop being reincarnated, as in the Hindu concept of Nirvana). But if the world was created by and is separate from God, then the Creator can make things new again. The entire Christian hope of redemption of the world depends on the concept of God as creator separate from and superior to the universe.

Although the creation is not divine, it is good. This assertion also has far reaching consequences. Later Greek thinkers tended to regard the material world as a mere poor copy of the nonmaterial world, the world of Platonic "forms" or ideals, where there was true perfection; the physical body was seen as a hinderance which would gladly be sloughed off. Still later, gnostics thought that matter is intrinsically evil; a bad god imprisoned our spirits in matter, and our hope is to rise above the material existence and enter the world of pure spirits.

Although the author of Genesis likely does not have these gnostic theologies in mind as he writes, this text nevertheless clearly contradicts these ideas, with important consequences for us. The simple Christian practice of thanking God for our food would make no sense if we did not believe that matter is a good creation of God. The body is not unnecessary or bad; far from it! The body is a good creation of God, and we cannot be what God intended us without it. This is why the ultimate Christian hope is resurrection from the dead rather than a disembodied existence in heaven; we long to be clothed with our new bodies, as Paul says, not to be unclothed (2 Corinthians 5:3). A mere nonphysical existence after death would be a defeat for the creator. Only resurrection of the physical body can swallow death up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54).

The world view established by the Genesis creation account makes possible the Christian hope in God's good plan. More on this later....

The new Adam and the new humanity

What does it mean to be human? This is obviously a vast topic, but the best starting point in the Bible is Genesis 1, where God says, "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." After making man, he "blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

From this passage, we see that what makes man human is that he is in God's image, as opposed to the animals, which are made after their own kinds. Clearly we are like God in some important way, unlike the animals, and clearly the the image of God is connected with ruling over the world. I think that it is best to say that the image of God is the likeness of man to God which enables him to rule. This consists of the intellectual ability to rule (planning, speech). It also consists of the character to rule, which is the main focus of the biblical discussion.

The image of God is also connected with sonship. Consider Genesis 4:1: "Adam had a son in his own likeness, in his own image." This is the only other place in the Bible where the phrase "in his own image and likeness" appears, and I think we are to understand the sons of God as those who bear the image of God. (Adam is explicitly called the "son of God" in Luke 3:37.) A son is to be like his father, and a son will do what his father does.

God created man as the keystone of his creation, and gave him the charge to rule, and in the same passage blessed all of creation. I think it is not a stretch to say that God gave man the charge to rule so that all creation would be blessed. But when Adam fell, he brought curse to the entire creation instead of blessing. Creation is now waiting in eager expectation for the unveiling of the sons of God (Rom 8:19-20) who will liberate it from its bondage to decay. What God is doing in redemption is creating a new humanity which will accomplish God's original plan to bring blessing. At key stages in redemptive history, the scripture is careful to connect the people of God with the blessing of creation.

When God calls Abram, he tells him to "leave your country, your people, and your father's household" (Genesis 12:1). He says it three times, so it must be important. There is more involved here than just leaving behind the idolatrous influence of his family (Joshuah 24:2). Leaving family behind was very unusual in the ancient world, where family gives a person his identity. Family ties define one's connection to the rest of the human race. (This is one reason why genealogies are so important in many cultures.) When Abram turns away from his family, he loses his connection to the rest of humanity, and that is the point: the family of Abraham will be a new humanity.

God promises to bless Abram and to make him a blessing, a clear allusion back to the blessing of creation. It is through Abraham that the blessing of God will reach the ends of the earth. Abram also will have many descendants, corresponding to God's blessing to Adam to "be fruitful and multiply". (In fact, his offspring "will be like the dust of the earth," which is perhaps an inverted allusion to God's curse on Adam that he would return to the dust.) Abraham's descendants will "rule over the gates of their enemies" (Genesis 22:17), corresponding to Adam's charter to rule. Abraham is given the land, which Paul understands to mean the whole earth (Romans 4:13), not just the land of Israel.

It is the descendants of Abraham, the children of Israel, who are referred to as the sons of God (Exodus 4:22). Note also the reiteration of blessing as part of the covenant (e.g., Deuteronomy 28) and the curses that follow if the people refuse their calling, just as with Adam. The people of Israel are intended to be the new humanity who accomplish God's purpose.

David is given a similar blessing: seed, a special relationship with God, authority, land. Note particularly 2 Sam 7:19, which can arguably be translated, "Is this your charter for humanity?" (See Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology, pp. 152-155.) The kings of Israel are called "the son of God" (e.g., Psalm 2; 2 Samuel 7:14); they are the representative head of the new humanity, and the commission and the blessing are focused on them (e.g., Psalm 72: "All nations will be blessed through [the king]", referring back to Genesis 12).

Daniel 7 is God's plan for humanity. (It is a development of the same theme earlier in Daniel; chapter 2 is about humanity's destiny, and chapter 4 is about how proud humanity's boasts make it less than human.) Daniel 7 portrays the kingdoms of men as ravaging beasts--they are not even human. Men in their sinfulness and violence have sunk to the level of animals: they do not have the character to rule. But then "one like a son of man" is given the final authority to rule over the entire earth. The contrast between the man and the animals is strikingly reminiscent of Genesis 1. The angel interpreting the vision explains that the meaning of the son of man is that "the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever"--the truly human people will rule. This passage is particularly interesting because it highlights the divine likeness of the "son of man" (he comes with the clouds, and people worship him), and yet it connects it with the people of God. This tension between the "son of Man" as a divine person, and the "son of Man" as collectively the people of God is not resolved until the New Testament, where the "Son of Man" is in fact the Son of God, the exact image of God, and his people who are in his likeness and rule with him.

Though the Old Testament presents Israel as the new humanity, it is only as a type (a foreshadowing), not the reality. Israel, as is apparent from her record, behaves very much like the old humanity. The real change begins with Jesus and the coming of the Spirit, and is still continuing today. Of course, like Israel, the church does not often act as the true humanity, but with the Spirit it has the potential to do so, sometimes does now, and is guaranteed to do so in the future.

In the New Testament, it is Jesus who is the truly human person, because he is the exact image of God. A number of passages compare him with Adam (most obviously Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15). The gospels show how he was tempted as Adam was in a garden (and also in the wilderness, the opposite of a garden), but he obeyed. He wears a crown of thorns, symbolically bearing the curse. Pilate and the soldiers jeeringly proclaim him as king, but what they say is ironically true: Jesus is the ruler of the world. And Pilate, in another ironic act with much deeper significance than he realizes, brings Jesus out dressed as a king, and says, "Behold the man!" (John 19:5) That John intends this an allusion to Genesis 1 is likely given the other allusions to Genesis 1 nearby: this happens on the sixth day of the week, a day which is ended by Jesus' loud cry, "It is finished," and then comes the sabbath. The point is that in the death of Jesus, God has created the new humanity. Jesus has accomplished what God intended, and is ruling as God intended for man.

After his resurrection, Jesus breathes his Spirit into the disciples (John 20:22), which is an allusion to God breathing the breath of life into man in Genesis 2. (Also the Spirit came as a mighty rushing wind at Pentecost, which is likely an allusion to Genesis 1:2--now the whole world is being re-created, with the new humanity first rather than last.) After announcing that "all authority is given to me" as it was in part to Adam, he gives them the commission to "go into all the world and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). This is essentially the same as saying "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it."

Now we are the sons and daughters of God, and it has not yet appeared what we will be (1 John 3:1ff), but we will be like him when he appears. We, Jesus' brothers and sisters (Hebrews 2:11), are putting on the new man, which is being made in the image of our creator (Colossians 3:10). These and other New Testament passages about the image of God are primarily about having the character of God. We will one day rule the world with Jesus, the way God intended for Adam to rule; but we must have the character to rule.

The climax comes when Jesus has finally subdued the earth, as Adam was supposed to: "He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.... For it says, 'he has put everything under his feet.'" (1 Corinthians 15:25ff, quoting Psalm 8.) Paul here takes what was said of humanity in general, that humans rule over the earth because God intended it that way, and applies it to Jesus in particular (as the new Adam), and explains it as the goal of history. The last Adam, unlike the first, "will himself be subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all." In the end, the curse that came from Adam's action is undone, the tree of life is again accessible, and the redeemed people of God rule over the earth as God intended (Rev. 22:1-5).

[Material for this was gathered primarily from W. Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology, and N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, both of which are well worth reading for their insights into the development of key themes of the Bible from beginning to end.]