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The Loss and Recovery of Creation in Old Testament Theology
By Walter Brueggemann

There is no doubt that Old Testament theology, like every critical discipline, is organized around major, shaping models of interpretation.¹ And there is no doubt that such major, shaping models arise out of and in response to the social-political-cultural context in which scholarship is undertaken. In the present essay, I will explore the way in which a dominant paradigm has dictated the terms of Old Testament theology in the. twentieth century, and the ways in which Old Testament theology is undergoing a major transformation at the end of the twentieth century.

THE MARGINALIZATION OF CREATION IN THEOLOGY

It is widely recognized that Karl Barth's commentary on Romans, published in Germany in 1919, constituted a decisive challenge to the theological liberalism of the nineteenth century. In his early writing, Barth posited a radical discontinuity and contradiction between "faith," as it is articulated in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and all forms of "religion" that are rooted in cultural assumptions and practices. There can be no doubt that Barth's program sought to provide, and in fact did provide, standing ground for the church in Germany, as it distinguished itself from the "Blood and Soil" religion of National Socialism. Practically, that conflict pitted the Confessing Church against the "German Christians." This conflict was especially dramatized in the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose program of "religionless Christianity" surely reflects in a practical way the governing antithesis of Barth. Barth's opposition to

Walter Brueggemann is Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary and a member of the Editorial Council of THEOLOGY TODAY. Most recent among his many books is Psalms and the Life of Faith (1995).

¹Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) has made available to us this crucial dynamic of interpretive activity.

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cultural religion came to be expressed as resistance to natural religion, that is, the claim that in the natural processes of life, there is disclosure of God, God's will, and God's nature.

What interests us in that development of theology, is that the enduring paradigm of theology articulated by Barth arose out of and in response to the social-political-cultural context of crisis in which Barth did his early work. The Barthian formulation of faith constitutes the beginning point and shaping influence for Old Testament theology in the twentieth century, with its antagonism between faith and religion, which is to be understood practically and concretely in terms of the expressions of the church struggle in Germany.

That model of antagonism, articulated sharply in the Barmen Declaration, became a rallying point in 1934. Two years later, Gerhard von Rad gave the continuing expression to the Barthian program, as it pertains to Old Testament theology, in his essay "The Theological Problem of the Old Testament Doctrine of Creation."² It was in this article (which adumbrated aspects of his epoch-making 1938 article "The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch")³ that von Rad asserted that "the doctrine of creation" was peripheral to the Old Testament, and that the Old Testament was not, at least until very late, at all interested in creation per se. There is no doubt that von Rad's reflection upon "creation" is to be understood within the context of the German Church struggle.

Von Rad's framing of the problem transposed the opposition Baal versus Yahweh, Israelite faith versus Canaanite religion, into the church struggle in which the opposing religion came to be regarded as natural religion.⁴ This transposition alerts us to the likelihood that from the outset, von Rad's understanding of creation in the Old Testament was shaped by the German Church struggle. Von Rad's cultural context caused him to pose the question) as he did, because Canaanite Baal religion with its accent on fertility was easily paralleled with "Blood and Soil" religion in Germany. In so doing, he made creation a quite marginal matter in Old Testament theology, and his decision had far-reaching consequences.

In the United States, this same contrast between Canaanite religion and Israelite faith was championed by G. Ernest Wright, surely the most

² Gerhard von Rad, "The Theological Problem of the Old Testament Doctrine of Creation," in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 131-142. The essay was first published in Werden and Wesen des Alten Testaments (Berlin: A.' I Töpelmann, 1936).

³ Gerhard von Rad, "The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch," in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, pp. 1-78.

⁴ This connection is confirmed by Norbert Lohfink, "God the Creator and the Stability of Heaven and Earth: The Old Testament on the Connection Between Creation and Salvation," in Theology of the Pentateuch: Themes of the Priestly Narrative and Deuteronomy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), p. 118: "Since its origin in the year 1935, when Gerhard von Rad proposed this theme for the first time at a meeting in Göttingen, it has been far too closely connected with the narrowing of the question necessitated by the conflict of the Confessing Church with the tendencies of the churches to accommodate themselves to the ideology of the Third Reich, an accommodation that sought legitimation in a theology of creation, even though this is scarcely evident in the subsequent literature."

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influential theological interpreter of the Old Testament in the U.S. in this period. In three books, Wright articulated what came to be the standard categories for Old Testament theology "as recital."⁵ While Wright did not make the connection explicit, there is little doubt that he was pursuing the line of faith versus religion, as we know it in the program of Barth. Wright took aim against nineteenth-century developmentalism, which assumed that Yahweh evolved out of and so stood in continuity with ancient Near Eastern religion and its gods.⁶ Wright's main insistence was that Yahweh is sui generis and has nothing in common with those gods.

In his assault on the religion of Israel's Canaanite environment, Wright was especially concerned with polytheism, which issues in gods who are male and female and are articulated in myths. This triad of polytheism, divine reproduction, and myth is characteristic of Wright's sustained polemic. By contrast, Israel's faith is historical, has no mythology, and comes to be expressed as covenant. The contrast between the two is total, between polytheism, which supports the status quo, and Yahwism, which maintains a critical perspective on the social status quo: "But Israel was little interested in nature, except as God used it together with his historical acts to reveal himself and to accomplish his purpose."⁷

The work of Gerhard von Rad and G. Ernest Wright, taken up, advanced, and echoed by numerous scholars, articulated a radical either/or of history versus nature, monotheism versus polytheism, and ethical versus cultic categories. It is my judgment that this entire enterprise came out of Barth's assault on liberalism and, more specifically, was shaped by the German Church struggle. In the end, I submit, as with any such program that remained largely uncriticized, this model of Old Testament theology came to be rather an exercise in sloganeering, in which large, sweeping antitheses were traded upon, and in which the Canaanite enterprise, although obscure and variegated, came to be reified and demonized.

Wright's statement "Israel was little interested in nature" seems to yield a form of faith that is removed from human birth, suffering, and dying-bodily and communal processes in which the mystery of human life is lodged. Such a perspective intended to resist the reduction of the divine to the natural. But what it did, in effect, was to reiterate the Cartesian dualism that served masculine logic while not appreciating the feminine-maternal hosting of the. mystery of God-given life as an important theological datum.

EMERGING CRITICISM of THE MODEL

The critique of and departure from this model of interpretation was not an abrupt one. Two mediating figures provided a way out of the reification

⁵ G. Ernest Wright, The Challenge of Israel's Faith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944); idem, The Old Testament Against Its Environment (London: SCM, 1950); idem, God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital (London: SCM, 1952).

⁶ Wright, The Old Testament Against Its Environment, p. 9.

⁷ Ibid., pp. 17-19, quotation from p. 71.

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of this model, without rejecting its theological intention. Claus Westermann was von Rad's close associate in Heidelberg for many years. It is striking and enormously important for our purposes that Westermann, in the 1960x, undertook a quite new task that moved, in effect, against the faith-versus-religion model that von Rad had established as normative.

In an extraordinary essay published in 1971, Westermann offered in outline form an argument for the crucial place of creation in Old Testament theology.⁸ He fully accepted von Rad's judgment that creation lies at the edge of the Old Testament, but he proceeded to show that creation is integral to and decisive for Israel's faith: "Israel in this regard saw no alternative: not to believe in the creator or creation was impossible .... Because God's acting for his people and God's acting in history are bound together, the Old Testament does not know a one-track, all-encompassing concept of history."⁹ Westermann then proposed a new model for Old Testament theology, one that departs from the over-againstness of von Rad and Wright and sees creation and history in tension but together. "The acting of God in creation and his action in history stand in relation to one another in the Old Testament; the one is not without the other . . . . Creation and history arise out of the same origin and move toward the same goal."¹⁰ But the 'major gain in Westermann's work, one he has elaborated in a variety of forms, is the accent upon blessing:

The Old Testament knows a wholly different kind of divine acting not manifested in history; a constant acting not manifested in momentary events, namely, God's work of blessing. Blessing really means the power of fertility. God's blessing causes a developing and growing, a ripening and fruit-bearing, a silent advance of the power for life in all realms. ¹¹

Westermann offers an alternative scenario of Old Testament theology that has undermined, in my judgment irreversibly, the radical and simple either/or that has dominated scholarship. One notes in the perspective of Westermann: (1) an absence of polemic against Israel's religious environment, allowing that Yahweh participates in functions otherwise attributed to Baal; (2) an absence of the ominous construct of "Canaanite fertility religion, "I which has been demonized; (3) a readiness to take seriously all of the texts of the Old Testament, including those that do not fit the regnant construct; and (4) a willingness to be genuinely dialectical about deliverance and blessing. The gain in this changed model is that the contextual, dailiness of life is to be taken as a positive theological datum. It is not unimportant that this crucial shift also represents a break with the extreme

⁸ Claus Westermann, "Creation and History in the Old Testament," in The Gospel and Human Destiny, edited by Vilmos Vajta (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971), pp. 11-38. Westermann's other important discussions of this theme include Creation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971); Elements of Old Testament Theology (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982); and What Does the Old Testament Say about God? (London: SPCK, 1979).

⁹ Westermann, "Creation and History," pp. 17, 32.

¹⁰ Ibid., pp; 24, 34.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 32. See Claus Westermann, Blessing in the Bible and in the Life of the Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).

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masculinization of biblical faith. While the continuing advocates of the either/or model claim to put God beyond sexuality, in fact, the action celebrated in Yahweh is that of a macho, intrusive God.

Frank Moore Cross's influential book Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic articulates the primary challenge to Wright (and to the larger either/or of the German Church struggle) in the United States.¹² The title of Cross's book is voiced in the familiar either/or contrast of Canaanite myth and Hebrew epic. The force of the book, however, is exactly the opposite. Cross aims to show that the modes of thought and speech and the ways of imagining the world expressed in the religious documents of Canaan thoroughly saturate Israel's text. The appeal to the evidence of Canaanite myth as a way of understanding the Old Testament frontally assaults the neat distinction between myth and history upon which the older model relied.

In his study of the Song of the Sea (Exod. 15:1-18), Cross shows that the imagery of exodus is informed by and closely parallels the Baal and `Anat texts of Canaanite mythology.¹³ Moreover, the fight against "the waters," Cross suggests, was not, in the first instance, a fight against the historical waters of the Sea of Reeds but against the primordial waters of the god of chaos, Yam. Thus, Israel's telling of its primal "mighty act" of exodus depends completely upon mythic categories that are clearly and unmistakably Canaanite. And in the end, one cannot distinguish between the battle for creation against chaotic waters and the battle for exodus against historical waters. While Cross concedes that Israel did have a distinctive historical consciousness, he insists, "It is equally unsatisfactory to posit a radical break between Israel's mythological and cultic past and the historical cultus of the league. The power of the mythic pattern was enormous. The Song of the Sea reveals this power as mythological themes shape its mode of presenting epic memories."¹⁴

It is instructive that Westermann's work was published at the end of the 1960s and Cross's book in 1973. We may suggest that it was in the period of the 1960s and 1970s that a shift in models was occurring in Old Testament study. It is worth remembering that there was enormous political and cultural upheaval in this period in Europe (for example, the Paris revolt

¹² Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). Brevard S. Childs has recognized the important contribution of Cross in moving beyond the models of the so-called Biblical Theology Movement (Biblical Theology in Crisis [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970], pp. 75-771. Cross's program is imaginatively reflected in the work of a number of his students. See, for example, Patrick D. Miller, The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975); Patrick D. Miller and J.J.M. Roberts, The Hand of the Lord: A Reassessment of the "Ark Narrative" of I Samuel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., 1977); Thomas W. Mann, Divine Presence and Guidance in Israelite Traditions: The Typology of Exaltation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); and Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).

¹³ Cross, "The Song of the Sea and Canaanite Myth," in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp.112-144.

¹⁴ Ibid., pp. 143-144.

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of 1968) and, especially, in the United States (for example, Civil Rights, I
Vietnam, the Democratic Convention in Chicago). I do not suggest that these large societal matters are directly related to the shifted scholarly accent. Noticing the context, however, does suggest that a simple reiteration of a model suited for the German Church struggle was increasingly seen to be inadequate. The emergence of new scholarly paradigms is an inscrutable process. But there is no doubt that as Westermann moved beyond von Rad, and Cross decisively challenged Wright's categories, a shift was underway.

RENEWAL OF INTEREST IN WISDOM

We may pay attention to one other important development in scholarship, namely, a renewal of wisdom studies.¹⁵ It is fair to say that wisdom studies had, in critical scholarship, been almost completely dormant. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, a vigorous new effort in wisdom studies was undertaken, surely as an alternative to, if not an escape from, the dominant model.¹⁶

I will refer in particular to the work of two scholars that I judge to be important in giving impetus to and categories for a new wave of scholarship. First, the work of Hans Heinrich Schmid of Zurich is singularly important. Four accents of Schmid's dissertation, published in 1966, have continued to be prominent in subsequent study: (1) the relationship between ma'at, an Egyptian notion of social-cosmic order, and wisdom, understood as an allegiance to that order, which is ordained in the fabric of creation ;sand keeps the world and society coherent; (2) the relationship between Yahweh and wisdom, with particular reference to the hypostasis of wisdom as an agent of Yahweh, in the context of monotheism; (3) the anthropological accent in wisdom, which exposes as inordinant the stress on Yahweh's purpose and action in the theology of recital; and (4) the construct 4 "deeds-consequences" (Tat-Ergehen), whereby deeds themselves produce results, without the intervention of any active agent.¹⁷

In a somewhat different way, Schmid returned to these matters in 1968, in a study' that is not aimed particularly at wisdom.¹⁸ In this study, Schmid considers the notion of sdq (righteousness) as a notion of order (Weltord-

¹⁵ For the fullest, most recent summary of scholarship on the wisdom traditions, see John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue, The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990).

¹⁶ For representative treatments of the problems and the possibilities of taking wisdom into account in Old Testament theology, see Samuel Terrien, "The Play of Wisdom: Turning Point in Biblical Theology," Horizons in Biblical Theology 3 (1981), pp. 125-153; Alan Jenks, "Theological Presuppositions of Israelite Wisdom Literature," Horizons in Biblical Theology 7 (1985), pp. 43-75; and John J. Collins, "Proverbial Wisdom and the Yahwist Vision," Semeia 17 (1980), pp. 1-17. My book In Man We Trust: The Neglected Side of Biblical Faith (Atlanta: John Knox, 1972) was an early attempt to take seriously the emerging accents of scholarship.

¹⁷ Hans Heinrich Schmid, Wesen and Geschichte der Weisheit: Eine Untersuchung zur altorientalischen and israelitischen Weisheitsliteratur (Berlin: A. Töpelmann, 1966).

¹⁸ Hans Heinrich Schmid, Gerechtigkeit als Weltordnung: Hintergrund and Geschichte des alttestamentlichen Gerechtigkeitsbegriffes (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1968).

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nung). He pays attention again to the Egyptian notion of ma'at and to the matter of "deeds-consequences." What should be especially noticed, however, is that the notion of sdq is treated as a matter of order, of the right ordering of the world, which intends shalom and eventuates in well-being when honored and in harm when not honored.

In 1973, Schmid, drawing upon his two book-length studies, published an essay that is fundamental to our topic.¹⁹ Here, Schmid argued that creation forms the horizon of biblical theology, for the ordering of creation is the will of Yahweh as structured into the fabric of creation. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this thesis for the scholarship that has followed.

The second scholar from this same period who greatly advanced wisdom studies, astonishingly enough, is von Rad himself. In 1970, von Rad published his final book, which appeared in English in 1972.²⁰ It is a measure of the greatness of von Rad that he himself provided a study that moves well beyond his earlier work and, in fact, functions as the third volume of his theology of the Old Testament, though, of course, it is not identified as such.

His Wisdom in Israel is a fresh maneuver in theological exposition. Wisdom theology, as presented by von Rad and by many other scholars, is belief-ful reflection upon creation, its order, its gifts, its requirements, and its limits. In the middle of his book on wisdom, von Rad offers an exquisite exposition of Proverbs 8, Job 28, and Ben Sirach 24, which is clearly a theology of creation, though it was Walther Zimmerli who had enunciated the dictum "'Wisdom thinks resolutely within the framework of a theology of creation."²¹ In von Rad's general analysis, wisdom theology has as its subject, the ongoing, generative order of creation, which is nourishing, sustaining, and reliable. For our purposes, what strikes one is that none of the older, pejorative phrasing about "Canaanite fertility religion" is anymore used. In the context of his treatment of "The Self-Revelation of Creation," von Rad has no hesitation about something like natural theology.²² Thus, von Rad does not resist a departure from his own earlier categories, from Barth's either/or, and, we may believe, from the categories so urgent in the German Church struggle.

A NEW PARADIGM DEVELOPS

The extraordinary shift in the models for Old Testament theology in the 1970s, of which I have cited the very different contributions of Wester-

¹⁹ Hans Heinrich Schmid, "Schöpfung, Gerechtigkeit, and Heil," published in English as "Creation, Righteousness, and Salvation: `Creation Theology' as the Broad Horizon of Biblical Theology," in Creation in the Old Testament, edited by Bernhard W. Anderson (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 102-117.

²⁰ Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972).

²¹ Von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, pp. 144-157; Walther Zimmerli, "The Place and Limit of the Wisdom Framework of the Old Testament Theology," Scottish Journal of Theology 17 (1964), p. 148.

²² Von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, p. 144.

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mann, Cross, Schmid, and von Rad, has been followed by a rich literature that takes creation as the horizon (that is, scope, sphere, agenda) of Old Testament theological interpretation. Here I will briefly catalogue some of the more suggestive pieces of this new work that is committed to a very different set of categories.

(1) In ,1967, Bernhard W. Anderson published his book Creation Versus Chaos (which was reprinted in 1987).²³ We note again the date and context of publication. Anderson, in an early attempt to make a move beyond the regnant hypothesis, takes up the theological theme of creation, with reference to history, covenant, worship, consummation, and conflict. All through this discussion, one can sense that Anderson is both paying attention to and struggling to move beyond the dominant model.

(2) In 1969, Walter Harrelson published a little-noticed but enormously insightful book, From Fertility Cult to Worship.²⁴ As the title of the book indicates, I Harrelson intends to show that Israelite worship in the Old Testament was concerned with the order and generativity of life in the world, themes which are ultimately related to creation:

In the ancient world the gods gave life and fertility . . . . The Israelites certainly gave large place in their thinking and in their worship to fertility .... The theologians of ancient Israel came to understand Yahweh to be the creator of all fertility, providing within the natural order for a continuing appearance of life. It was Yahweh who at the time of creation provided their own seed, and animals 'and men who could procreate .... Fertility was related to the history of Yahweh's salvation also.²⁵

Harrelson draws attention to the world and to the remarkable generative powers of God embedded in the processes of creation.

(3) Among the more important contributions to the shifted paradigm is the suggestive and original book of Samuel Terrien, The Elusive Presence, published in 1978.²⁶ In this book, Terrien quite self-consciously sets out to break the grip of covenantal theology, now one of the code words of the Biblical Theology Movement that followed von Rad's and Wright's either/or model. The book is best recognized for its emphasis upon the "elusive," for Terrien does not countenance any obvious, direct, or easily accessible presence of God in Israel. God is hidden in the world. But for all the elusiveness, this God is present. To be sure, Terrien's book is not directly concerned with creation, and it mentions creation only in passing. It belongs, however, at the center of our consideration, because Terrien intends to speak of a hovering, haunting, pervasive presence that comes to Israel in, with, and under the experiences and processes of the world.

23Bernhard W. Anderson, Creation Versus Chaos (New York: Association, 1967; reprint, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987). We are now fortunate to have a reprinting of Anderson's many ground-breaking essays on creation, under the title From Creation to New Creation: Old Testament Perspectives (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). See also the book he edited, Creation in the Old Testament, cited in n. 19.

²⁴ Walter Harrelson, From Fertility Cult to Worship (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969).

²⁵ Ibid., pp. fit, 68.

²⁶ Samuel Terrien, The Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978).

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(4) Rolf P. Knierim published an especially important essay in 1984, "The Task of Old Testament Theology."²⁷ Knierim begins with the vigorous acknowledgement of plurality in the theological tendencies of the Old Testament.²⁸ This accent on pluralism seems innocent enough. In context, however, the accent on pluralism is a protest against the reductionism of Old Testament faith to the simplistic either/or claim of recital theology.

Knierim set:. up the problem of Old Testament theology as the need to find a universal basis for the claims of covenant and justice.²⁹ That is, the God who wills covenant is a God who must be before and behind the whole world. (There are echoes of Schmid here, whom Knierim cites.) The response to the need for a universal horizon is creation; Yahweh is not simply the enactor of deeds in Israel but the one who orders, guarantees, and commands the whole of reality.

(5) Jon D. Levenson, who brings together the interpretive categories of Frank Cross and the passions of his own Jewish tradition, published an important book: in 1988, Creation and the Persistence of Evil.³⁰ Levenson's book sets out to show, by citing specific texts, that the God of Israel does not yet exercise mastery of creation. On the one hand, the power of chaos is still at large. Cm the other hand, the elemental polytheism of the Hebrew Bible means that the God of Israel exercises governance only by the consent of the other gods. Thus, the ordering of creation is indeed a fragile, precarious business. Israel is promised that Yahweh will exercise complete mastery of the world, but that mastery is not yet at hand. Levenson's book, characteristic of the tradition of scholarship fostered by Cross, sees Israel as embedded in and participating in the religious world of its environment. It is impossible, in the face of Levenson's analysis, to appeal to any simplistic contrast any longer. The God of Israel is at work on a large front against the powers of chaos, which turn out to be resilient and unyielding.

(6) Levenson's study, with its accent on Yahweh's struggle for creation against chaos, provides an introduction to Terence E. Fretheim's daring 1991 article, "'The Plagues as Ecological Signs of Historical Disaster."³¹ Fretheim begins by referring to the work of H. H. Schmid and proceeds from Schmid's understanding of creation.³² In the second paragraph of his essay, Fretheim makes an amazing statement, one unthinkable under the old model: "Pharaoh's oppressive measures against Israel [in the book of Exodus] are viewed as fundamentally anti-life and anti-creation."³³ Fretheim then undertakes a detailed analysis of the plague cycle in the book of Exodus, and suggests that the plagues are disruptions of creation caused by

²⁷ Rolf P. Knierim, "The Task of Old Testament Theology," Horizons in Biblical Theology 6 (1984), pp. 25-57.

²⁸ Ibid., pp. 29-31.

²⁹ Ibid., pp. 42-4:3.

³⁰ Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, cited in n. 12.

³¹ Terence E. Fretheim, "The Plagues as Ecological Signs of Historical Disaster," Journal of Biblical Literature 110 (1991),pp.385-396.

³² Fretheim, "Plagues as Ecological Signs," p. 385.

³³ Ibid.

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the antilife, anticreation policies and practices of slavery. As a response to Pharaoh's destructiveness, Yahweh acts in the exodus not simply to save Israel but to restore creation. "Generally for Exodus, God's liberation of Israel is the primary but not the ultimate focus of the divine reality. The deliverance of Israel is ultimately for the sake of the entire creation. ³⁴

The conclusion of Fretheim's study is that the plagues are the disruption of creation, so the exodus and its celebration in Exodus 15:1-18 are the restoration of the order of creation. Fretheim is able to show that this horizon of creation is not some foreign, "mythic" element in the narrative but Israel's very own affirmation of creation.

(7) James Barr's 1991 Gifford Lectures were published in 1993 as Biblical Faith and Natural Theology.³⁵ The Gifford Lectures, by statute, must discuss natural theology. Two points in Barr's lectures interest us. First, Barr makes a sustained case for "natural theology" in the Bible. He begins with Romans 1 and Acts 17, works backward through Baruch, and gives extended attention to Psalm 104. Barr simply refuses the restrictive categories that von Rad laid out in 1936.

Second, it is of enormous interest that Barr articulates his verdict not only on Barth's construct of contrast but also on the reason for which Barth laid out his construct in the first place. According to Barr, Barth simply gave a "wrong diagnosis" about "natural theology."³⁶ Barr opines that Barth was wrong to insist that embracing natural theology would lead to an embrace of Hitler and that reliance upon revealed theology would lead to resistance; Barr argues that no correlation can be found between revealed religion and resistance or between natural religion and collusion.

It is now increasingly clear that the sharp contrast between Israel and Canaanite fertility religion may have served as a reference point for the Confessing Church, but it cannot be sustained "on the ground" for the Old Testament. And it is equally clear that this contrast required the contemporary church to give up too much, when it read the Bible as having no interest in creation. This twin recognition means that Old Testament theology stands at a place where (a) it must abandon or treat with extreme care some favorite slogans of the mid-twentieth century and (b) it is open to very different categories of interpretation, which invite a major reconfiguration of the field.³⁷

³⁴ Ibid, p. 392. Fretheim's article was an adumbration of his commentary Exodus (Atlanta: John Knox, 1991), which in a programmatic way, boldly reinterprets the Exodus narrative in terms of creation theology. This commentary evidences in a most compelling way how the shift away from "mighty deeds" touches even those texts that had been pivotal for the older approach. The commentary is a model for this newer perspective and a base line for much that is still to come.

³⁵ James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).
³⁶ Ibid., p. 113.

³⁷ Barr's is the definitive statement on creation in recent interpretation. I parenthetically add one other reference, however, because it pertains to me particularly and intensely, even if awkwardly; it reflects my own struggle with this major shift in paradigms, to which a student of the Old Testament must now respond. I refer to J. Richard Middleton's careful, critical assessment of my handling, throughout the course of my writings, of creation theology in the Old Testament ("Is Creation Theology Inherently Conservative? A Dialogue with Walter

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SOME ADVANTAGES OF THE NEW MODEL

We are only beginning to see the implications of treating creation as the horizon of biblical faith. Here, I will mention three unmistakable advantages of the new perspective.

(1) The paradigm that takes creation as the horizon of biblical faith (and therefore looks to God as creator) makes possible new contacts between theology and science.³⁸ This interface is extremely complex, given the long history of hostility between the disciplines, and few if any Scripture scholars are equipped for discussion at this interface. The resistance to natural theology, as demonized by the phrase "Canaanite fertility religion," meant that Scripture scholarship-and to some large extent, Western, Protestant theology-ceased to be engaged in critical reflection about the mystery of the world. It can now be reasserted, in terms of biblical theology, that the world has an inescapable theological dimension to it. It seems obvious that Scripture interpretation may contribute to a fresh science-religion conversation, which need not be one of hostility, at two points.

First, a biblical-theological discernment of creation attests to a generative mystery at the core of reality, a generative mystery that is intrinsic to the reality of the world but is not finally and fully at the behest of the world. This generative mystery grants to human knowledge a great deal of freedom for exploration, but in the end, it invites wonder, astonishment, celebration, gratitude, praise, and doxology. Second, Scripture study that refocuses upon creation attests to the claim that ethical insistence, limits, and restraints are inherent in the processes of creation themselves. The production of scientific knowledge, therefore, is not simply a matter of power, resources, and technical capacity but also of responsibility, so that scientific investigations must answer to the uncompromising claims of the stuff of creation itself. The material of the world is invested by God with what the Bible terms wisdom, a sense of life-giving, life-valuing, life-protecting coherence that cannot be mocked or shoved aside.

Brueggemann," Harvard Theological Review 87 [1994], pp. 257-277). My published response to Middleton indicates that I accept his critique as largely on target ("Response to J. Richard Middleton," Harvard Theological Review 87 [1994], pp. 279-289). There are no doubt many reasons for my vacillation on the issue, only some of which are known to me. The one of which I am most aware and wish to accent here is the power of paradigm. Von Rad's 1936 essay has been decisive for me, as for many others. I take my struggle, with this matter as a reflection of the struggle within the discipline since the appearance of von Rad's article. The immediate point is the power of von Rad's essay. The larger point is the power and authority of paradigm. Every interpreter lives in and with a paradigm of interpretation, either a dominant. one or a protesting one. Paradigms are inevitable, and every one of them hardens even as it: reveals.

³⁸ See Knierim, "The Task of Old Testament Theology," p. 39. On the interface between biblical-theological thought and the natural sciences, see Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM, 1985); Langdon Gilkey, Nature, Reality and the Sacred: The Nexus of Science and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993); and Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). Clearly none of these theological thinkers is burdened with the specificity of the text as are biblical scholars. But then, none of them has such resources of a concrete kind readily available either.

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(2) The recovery of creation as the horizon of biblical theology encourages us to contribute to the resolution of the ecological crisis. New investigations in creation faith and its complement, wisdom theology, suggest that the environment is to be understood as a delicate, fragile system of interrelated parts that is maintained and enhanced by the recognition of limits and givens and by the judicious exercise of choices.³⁹

(3) Creation theology permits us to acknowledge and appreciate that human life is embedded in ongoing daily processes of generation and decay, of birth and death, of alienation and embrace, of work and rest, of rise and fall (Eccles. 3:1-8). And of course, it is these daily turns of reality that claim most of our energy and attention and produce the structures and relationships of meaning whereby we exist as identifiable, self-conscious creatures. While the emergence of a theology of blessing, which attends to the daily embeddedness of generative processes, cannot be subsumed under or equated with feminist consciousness, it also cannot be separated from it.⁴⁰ It seems clear, in retrospect, that recital theology is indeed a quite masculine model of theology. I have learned, especially from Gerda Lerner's work, about male interpretive hegemony, which has taken the form of the "educational deprivation of women and male monopoly on definition "⁴¹ Lerner writes of the social experience of women under the aegis of patriarchy:

Yet, living in a world in which they are devalued, their experience bears the stigma of insignificance. Thus they have learned to mistrust their own experience and devalue it. What wisdom can there be in menses? What source of knowledge in the milk-filled breast? What food for abstraction in the daily routine of feeding and cleaning? Patriarchal thought has relegated such gender-defined experiences to the realm of the "natural," the non-transcendent. Women's knowledge becomes mere "intuition," women's talk becomes "gossip." Women deal with the irredeemably particular: they experience reality daily, hourly, in their service function (taking care of food and dirt); in their constantly interruptible time; their splintered attention. Can one generalize while the particular tugs at one's sleeve? He who makes symbols and explains the world and she who takes care of his bodily and psychic needs and of his children-the gulf between them is enormous ⁴²

I have no wish to reduce the matter of a changed paradigm to a transformation of gender consciousness. The theology of recital is more I

³⁹ Of course, reference to the Bible and ecology cannot fail to evoke thoughts of the now famous thesis of Lynn White, Jr. that the biblical notion of dominion is the taproot of the abusive exploitation of the earth ("The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science 155 [March) 10, 1967], pp. 1203-1207). The urgent issues surfaced by White have been carefully reviewed by Cameron Wybrow, in The Bible, Baconism and Mastery over Nature (New York: Peter Lang, 1991). Wybrow makes clear that it was the misreading of Scripture in the service of modern technology that led to the abuse of the earth about which White writes.

⁴⁰ "Creation theology undercuts patriarchy" (Phyllis Trible, "Treasures Old and New: Biblical Theology and the Challenge of Feminism," in The Open Text: New Directions for Biblical Studies? edited by Francis Walton [London: SCM, 1993], p. 47).

⁴¹ Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 219.
⁴² Ibid., p., 224:

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than patriarchy, and creation theology is more than feminist consciousness. But the linkages are important. When biblical theology has no interest in creation, very much of the creation process of daily life is reassigned to the outer darkness of Canaanite fertility religion. The gains of the new paradigm are enormous on all of these issues.

SOME CAVEATS ABOUT THE NEW MODEL

Finally, I want to make three critical comments about this shifted paradigm. (1) I must register some unease with the shift, an unease that runs through my writings on the subject: Creation theology, it seems to me, has a powerful propensity for the maintenance of the present system. Whether that propensity is intrinsic to the nature of creation theology or not, it is evident in practice. For that reason, I want to insist that in some situations of interpretation and practice, a recital of Yahweh's transformative activities that takes on the dimension of social revolution inherent in the substance of the text seems to me urgent and nonnegotiable. In revolutionary situations, it is the socially revolutionary part of the witness of biblical faith that is more likely to be heard and acted upon as God's live word. And in such revolutionary contexts, it may well be that creation as horizon is an inexcusable softening of the abrasive dimension of biblical faith.

(2) It is possible to cling to a theology of recital as a reactionary defense of the status quo. Thus there are users of a theology of recital, who in the interest of established privilege (usually male but not always), continue to organize interpretation around saving deeds, and continue to demonize Canaanite fertility religion. Just as Karl Barth and Gerhard von Rad found a usable connection between Canaanite fertility religion and the Nationalist Socialist movement in Germany, so these latter-day interpreters find a usable linkage between Canaanite fertility religion and revolutionary feminism. My own judgment is that such a usage of the liberation trajectory employs revolutionary rhetoric in the service of social reactionism, which in substance is completely incompatible with the theological rhetoric used. In this case, then, a theology of recital, which had a powerful revolutionary bite in Germany, is used for exactly the opposite, ignoble purpose.

(3) I have argued that the model of Barth and von Rad was peculiarly appropriate to (and therefore faithful to) its context. That is, the model is context-attested. Our own situation at the end of the twentieth century permits us to see that the model was in part context-determined, and we are compelled to move beyond it as context changes. Two temptations, however, attend this recognition. The first temptation is to regard the model of Barth and von Rad as an unfortunate experiment and to think that we can now get over it and get back to normal. But there is no getting over it or getting back to normal. That model now belongs to our history, and all subsequent paradigms will be articulated in light of it.

The second temptation is to imagine that whereas the theology of recital was context-evoked and lasted only for that context, our creation-as-

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horizon model is a better, more durable, less context-evoked model. Against the temptation to that self-deception, I have no doubt that "creation as horizon" is as context-evoked and circumstance-conditioned a model as was that of Barth and von Rad. Ours is a time of synchronic, systems thinking. And with the emergence of the crisis of ecology and the new sensibilities of feminism, "creation as horizon" is almost completely commensurate with our interpretive context. But that is no warrant for absolutizing this model, especially after we have witnessed the unfortunate absolutizing of another model. Indeed, it is important that scholarship not shift from one hegemonic model to another hegemonic model but recognize an irreducible pluralism in both the text and in interpretive habit. An accent on creation strikes me as especially hospitable to that pluralism. Such an awareness invites and requires us to be vigilant and self-critical about thin paradigm, perhaps more vigilant and self-critical than were the advocates' of the model of theology as recital.