Parallel Guide 3 - The Priestly Creation Story

Lesson 3

• Creation ex nihilo - the creation of something out of nothing 
• opposes dualism - something existed previous to God, but God is the master of all.
  Gen. 1 does not suggest ex nihilo. Earliest theologians sided with ex nihilo so that dualists could not make claims about matter/chaos as source of evil.
• dualism - material vs spiritual distinction took root in Platonic thought.
• in Platonic thought, ideas are the fundamental backbone of things in the world. 
• class and instances of the class. instances of the class are created and destroyed, but represent and have all the methods and properties of the class.
• God controls chaos in P by
• naming it
• designating creation from ancient Gods. he transforms the collective memory gods for his own purpose by creating them.
• P suggests that God created the stars and planets as guides for marking seasons, and for illumination, but heavenly bodies have no power outside of God. This debunks astrology and polytheism, or the argument that other forces are at work. No evidence of this identified or recognized in Gen.
• P gives no real indication of human nature except that man should be a responsible steward for God's creation; man should be God's representative/agent on earth; man should be in relationship to God, because man is created in the image of God.
• Manichaeism, dualistic offshoot of Zoroastrianism - Ahuramazda represents the Good vs. Evil struggle in early Persian theology. Influential in 200-300 BC and shaped Augustine. (St. Augustine also neo-platonist)
• P uses a seven-day format. It culminates with the celebration of the Sabbath. Two days of God's work compressed into one. The events in the traditional legends needed to be adapted for liturgical reasons.
• Order v chaos
• Marduk and Tiamat are Babylonian creation myth Gods. Marduk killed Tiamat. Tiamat becomes tehom in Hebrew (the 'deep' = chaos) and Marduk brings order to chaos.
• Pantheism, the belief that God is embodied in everything or immanent. Immanence opposes the concept of transcendance.
  Stoicism and modern thought embrace pantheism. Nature and God are conflated. Deism is the belief that God is deterministic and detached from his creation, once created.
• Order vs chaos. Mutually exclusive or complementary concepts. There are benefits and disadvantages of both.
• In physics, the notion of complementarity - light and electron behavior is both wave-like and particle-like at the subatomic level. 
• Order vs chaos at what level of analysis? The distinction itself presumes dualism. Chaos and order are mutually determining conceptually. If none of one, none of the other. Always processual ordering of the chaos. spiritual chaos vs. spiritual direction.
• How are we dualistic? good vs. evil, material vs. spiritual.
• What is the threat of chaos? 
• insecurity
• What is the promise of God? order over chaos. order my steps in your world.
• Our humanity as God's representative means that we should be wise in every choice that we make, because God was wise when he created the world. He gives us freedom of choice. Just like we are ambassadors for Christ voluntarily.
• Platonism in the world today - Neo-platonism suggests that
• the One is the true central spirit 
• men are material and the most unrefined representatives of the One, trapped in a human body.
• Thru asceticism and prayer and fasting, a man can transcend.
• Differences between this bible study and others. 
• Evangelicals focus on how Jesus was foretold in Genesis.