loss and recovery of creation in Old Testament theology, The

Theology Today, Jul 1996 by Brueggemann, Walter

There is no doubt that Old Testament theology, like every critical discipline, is organized around major, shaping models of interpretation.' 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 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 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