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Primal Paradigm
By Hugh T. Kerr

THE current fascination over the Genesis account of creation must surely arise out of more than biblical, doctrinal, or scientific controversy. It is always so that what disturbs us most reflects deeper concerns. What we see going on around us, theologically, may not actually disclose what we are really concerned about or how we respond to a lot of things not directly related to the doctrine of the creation of the world.

I

Why is it that at this particular point in history, and the history of doctrine, we are re-opening the creation-evolution debate which many of us, on both sides, assumed had been settled long ago? And we can step back a pace or two and, looking at the whole landscape of Christian history, ask why it was that certain theological issues emerged at certain times with such consuming urgency?

We tend to think of theology as a comprehensive structure of doctrines and beliefs. Yet we seldom carry around with us the whole bundle, even such a portable package as the Apostles' Creed. We are more inclined to accent this rather than that at any particular moment, just as we tend to make our own private canon of Scripture. But why do we select this rather than that, and why are we intrigued today about the doctrine of creation rather than, say, providence, repentance, or the problem of evil?

Part of the answer must lie with the times in which we live. There must be something about our day that provokes, through the doctrine of creation, some inner personal concerns and anxieties. It is not that one doctrine is more important than another, or that the whole structure is threatened if we are not always inspecting and tightening each link in the chain.

Let me suggest that the Genesis account of creation stirs in most of us

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mixed feelings about new beginnings. And further, let me add that we can discover this ambivalence not only in Genesis but in every mundane birth including our own, in so-called out-of-the-body near death accounts, and, perhaps most dramatically, in the Christian conversion experience. It may be that in all these ways we are in touch with a primal paradigm.

II

However we read Genesis theologically or scientifically, there is no escaping the mood of eerie mystery the narrative precipitates or the exciting prospect of things yet to be. The hovering Spirit brooding over the formless waters, the division of darkness and light by which day and night are distinguished, the succession of the sun, moon, and stars by which we reckon time and history, the plentitude of nature with birds above, beasts of the fields, and creatures under the sea-all this and more seems divine legerdemain of startling and spectacular proportions.

It may be, as Huston Smith has been saying recently, that one reason scientific creationism captures the popular imagination so readily relates directly to this aura of transcendent fascination. Neo-Darwinism, on the other hand, no matter how persuasive scientifically, cannot compete in its prosaic descriptions with the high melodrama of Genesis.

In any case, if we ponder on this cluster of archetypal images expressed in simple everyday language, we can be both frightened at the majesty of the creative enterprise and exhilarated by the promise of what is to come next. Creation means a new beginning-out of nothing, out of the darkness, out of the past-into reality and present existence and the light of life. We may be impatient to move from one to the other, or we may prefer, for all kinds of reasons, the darkness to the light ("this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light," John 3:19).

Internalized, we can recall T. S. Eliot's first and last lines of "East Coker" from the Four Quartets: "In my beginning is my end…. In my end is my beginning."

III

To personalize or interiorize Genesis may strike some as misleading and unacceptable. But consider three other Genesis-type experiences: human birth, post-mortem existence, and personal conversion accounts. All share certain common features, including a sense of ambiguity and apprehension.

Some years ago, Arthur Janov wrote a best-seller entitled Primal Scream (1970). Drawing on Freud's earlier linking of adult neuroses with childhood anxieties involving the mother or the father, Janov discovered that many of his own patients could be persuaded to go backwards in fantasy to early childhood experiences, many of which

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were deeply troubling and even traumatic. Others, notably Otto Rank and Erik Erikson (especially in his Young Man Luther), have also explored the possibility that we all carry around with us hidden and repressed experiences from our earliest infancy.

So-called "natural" training methods for childbirth suggest that human genesis can be pleasant and joyful for both mother and child (as well as for the helpful father, standing by). But counselors such as Janov remind us that to be expelled from the warmth and protection of our mother into the glaring light of day, surrounded by so many new noises, sights, and faces can often be accompanied by a figurative, if not actual, primal "scream."

If now we turn to the collected evidence of post-mortem experiences as set forth, for example, by Raymond Moody and Elisabeth Kò bler-Ross, we discover the same sort of ambivalence about entering upon a radically new existence. On the one hand, there is fear of death and pain, and, on the other, a sense of quiet peace opening out on the promise of what comes next.

Sensations of darkness, passing through a tunnel, overheard voices, bright lights, and friendly surrounding people-all these and other common details can be documented from the later reports of those pronounced clinically dead but who were revived. To read such accounts, of which there are now thousands available, is to be aware that we are in the midst of a Genesis or primal paradigm once more. (George Gallup, Jr., the pollster, has collected the latest data in his book Adventures in Immortality: A Look Beyond the Threshold of Death, 1982.)

Accounts of personal conversion experiences all the way from the Apostle Paul to Charles Colson, including most of the familiar names of Christian history, tend to replicate the same kind of paradigm already noted. The transition from darkness to light, from the feeling of being unworthy to being somebody, from aloneness to a company of the faithful, from one dimension of meaningless existence to the promise of new life-these are the characteristic trademarks of the conversion experience. Differing in detail, as do our other patterns, we may nevertheless take Isaiah's call as a prototype:

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. (Isa. 6:1-8).

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IV

Some of the notions hinted at here are developed in various ways in this issue of THEOLOGY TODAY. Let this editorial suffice as preface, but allow a concluding suggestion. The three illustrations so briefly alluded to above, namely birth, post-mortem, and conversion experiences, find their parallel not only in Genesis but in the three major seasons of the Christian liturgical year, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. It is as if the church calendar were providentially designed to jog our memories at appropriate intervals every year to remind us of our new humanity in Jesus Christ, of the Easter hope of eternal life, and of the radical reality of life in the Spirit.

And once more, all share common features of the primal paradigm, such as the ominous atmosphere hovering over a new creative beginning, the illuminating sensation of light out of darkness, and the comforting presence of a cloud of witnesses.

When Christ the Lord was born,
It was starlight,
Not sunlight.

When the Christmas angels sang
The Gloria in Excelsis,
It was midnight.

When on Calvary, the Savior of the world
Opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers,
There was darkness over the whole land.

My soul: Why is this? Why does God
Come in the shadows? Is it because
The whole world is still, and our eyes are clear?

Listen then! A sound from heaven
As of a rushing mighty wind
With cloven tongues of fire!

"Behold, I make all things new."