36 Remythologizing Theology A gallery of canonical exhibits The purpose of this brief survey is to concentrate our attention on the biblical material upon which theology must reflect in order to formulate a theodramatic metaphysic: a categorial analysis of God’s mighty (and occasionally meek) communicative acts. The key assumption is that theology must think God according to God’s self- presentation, which effectively means attending to what God does, not least by means of speaking. Genesis 1:1-3 In the beginning ... darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. ‘As these opening verses show, the Bible begins with some demyth- ologizing of its own. In ancient Near Eastern myths, the “waters” symbolize the chaos with which the deities had to struggle in order to bring order into the world. Some of these myths personified the chaotic waters as sea-monsters or dragons (Leviathan). It is therefore significant that the biblical mythos stipulates that “God created the great sea creatures” too (Gen. 1:21). As the darkness that was upon the face of the deep is no match for God’s saying that brings forth light, so the waters that parted for Israel's delivery from Egypt pose no problem to God’s word (Ex. 14:26-9). As God makes sport with the sea monster (Ps. 104:26), so the Word of God will defeat the dragon in the last battle (Rev. 19:11-20:10).4 Genesis 1 anticipates the end in the beginning, thereby providing a dramatic rendering of God's absolute sovereignty over all. Nowhere in the seven-day creation scheme of Genesis does it explicitly say, however, that God created the waters.* According to Jon Levenson, God struggles to create and to control chaos. Levenson detects signs elsewhere in the canon of Israel’s belief that creation is not the display of God’s absolute sovereignty but of God’s victorious struggle (Chaoskampf) over the dark forces.* 4. Note, too, that in the new heaven and new earth “the sea was no more” (Rev. 213) 5. Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton University Press, 1988). p. 5. 6. For example, Ps. 74:12-17 attests to God’s combat with Leviathan that is fol- lowed by a triumphant act of world-ordering, See also Mary Wakeman, God'sBiblical representation In what sense, then, may God be said to be the Author of creation? On Levenson’s view, the language of combat and divine victory that figures prominently in many biblical creation texts is not given its due unless the “darkness” or “nothingness” with which God fights is more than a non-entity” Apparently, even the author of creation can suffer writer’s block. Levenson’s reading challenges traditional theistic doctrines of creation, according to which God has merely to speak in order to create. There is theodrama, to be sure, but this is because (as he insists in his subtitle) creation is not a fait accompli so much as a “drama of divine omnipotence.”* The drama of creation is, on Levenson’s reading, ongoing. Chaos continues to assault God's order; Israel (and now the church) con- tinues to await the divine enthronement at the last day. Meanwhile, it is important to call upon the name of the Lord in order to rouse him to action, for Leviathans abound: “What this biblical theology of dramatic omnipotence shares with the theology of the limited God is a frank recognition of God’s setbacks, in contrast to the classical theodicies with their exaggerated commitment to divine impassibility.”» This first case study encapsulates many of the core concerns of the present work: the nature of the Creator/creature distinction; the nature and appropriateness of the dramatic model for conceiv- ing the ongoing God-world relation; the nature of the “powers” that oppose God and God’s ability to deal with them; the ability of human communicative activity to affect God. These are the elem- ents of the biblical mythos with which remythologizing theologians need to reckon." Genesis 18:22-33 Then [Abraham] said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.” [The Lord] answered, “For the Battle with the Monster (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1973) and John Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea (Cambridge University Press, 1985). 7. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, p. XXV. 8. Ibid., p. xvi, What gave the ancient combat myth staying power in the Hebrew Bible was Israel's oppression “in a world supposedly governed by the God who loves them more than anything else” (p. 49). 9. Ibid., p. xvi. 10. My own constructive alternative to Levenson’s position is presented in Part IL 3738 Remythologizing Theology sake of ten I will not destroy it.” And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham This dialogue is not the first such interchange between God and Abraham, but it is one of the most remarkable. Abraham intercedes on behalf of the city of Sodom, pleading with God not to destroy it if there are fifty righteous people within. When the Lord acquiesces, Abraham drives a harder bargain: forty-five; forty; thirty; twenty; ten. What funds Abraham's position is the conviction his rhetorical question presupposes: “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen, 18:25). It is not the ethical question that concerns us here, how- ever, but the account of the dialogue itself."* On the so-called “open theist” reading, God genuinely wants Abrahams input before he makes up his mind: “The divine decision was yet open, and God invited Abraham into the decision-making process."* Walter Brueggemann goes further, suggesting that Abraham offers himself “as a theological teacher to God so that God may think more clearly and responsibly about his own vocation ... Abraham disputes with God about the meaning of Godness.”® Such a reading prompts the question: whose voice, yiwu's or Abraham’ should be recognized as the authentic voice of God? Others suggest that Genesis 18 depicts an instance of prophetic intercession. Abraham is made privy to the Lord’s plans precisely so that he can intercede for Sodom (Gen. 18:17-19). Abraham is but the first of many such intercessors. Indeed, what was reserved for the prophets in the Old Testament gets democratized in the New ‘Testament: through petitionary prayer any Christian believer, a true child of Abraham, may seek to persuade God. This relationship of divine-human reciprocity “is nowhere more evident than in the dia- logue of prayer.” For Levenson, this relative human autonomy explains “one of the most remarkable features of the Hebrew Bible, the possibility 11. The passage raises other issues for the theological interpretation of Scripture as well. See E. Ben Zvi, “The Dialogue Between Abraham and vuwa in Gen, 18:23-32: A Historical Analysis,” JSOT 53 (1992). pp. 27-46. 12, John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998). p. 53. For a critique of open theism, see Steven C. Roy, How Much Does God Foreknow? A Comprehensive Biblical Study (Downers Grove, ILand Nottingham: IVP Academic and Apollos, 2006). 13. Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), p. 176. 14, Samuel E. Balentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible: The Drama of Divine-Human Dialogue (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993). p. 262.Biblical representation that people can argue with God and win.” Walter Moberly makes a similar point, though less provocatively: “I suggest that Abraham in Genesis 18 be viewed as an exemplar of the person who in some way makes a difference to God in God’s relationship with the world.” A third scholarly witness concurs: “It is a consistent aspect of the bib- lical portrayal of the relationship between God and human beings that human response is crucial.”” Yes, but crucial for what, and how? What difference do humans make for God? The theological challenge, for remythologizers and others, is to characterize the nature of the divine-human dialogue such as that represented in Genesis 18. Can humans bargain with God? Does God haggle? Haggling is a particular type of communicative inter- action that has several distinguishable generic features.” There is an asymmetry of knowledge between buyer and seller from which the seller hopes to profit; there is bidding on the price from each side. What is striking about the dialogue in Genesis 18, however, is that though the speakers alternate, the bids do not. Perhaps this is why Abraham breaks off his negotiations at the figure of ten; it takes two to haggle. What is God doing in his speech and what is the significance of Abraham's response? The words tell only half the story. Besides agreeing explicitly with Abraham's conditions, God implicitly asserts his unconditional freedom from those same conditions; he is under no obligation to accede to Abraham's request. He also tests Abrahams resolve, and very possibly his theology as well. This lat- ter point suggests another possibility for interpreting the dialogue that casts vw, not Abraham, as the teacher. For the dialogue itself is instructive. Abraham learns that yawn is “far more merciful than 45. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, p. 149. 16. R. W. L. Moberly, The Bible, Theology, and Faith: A Study of Abraham and Jesus (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 159. 17. Nathan MacDonald, “Listening to Abraham - Listening to vw: Divine Justice and Mercy in Genesis 18:16-33,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 66 (2004), p. 41 18. Both Levenson and Moberly note the contrasting perspectives on the divine-human relationship in Genesis 18 and 22. Abraham takes issue with God over the morality of what God proposes in the first passage, but submits without protest to God’s command to sacrifice his son in the second. Whereas Levenson speaks of two contrasting theological perspectives, Moberly appeals to canonical shaping in support of the ultimate finality of Genesis 22, not least in light of its connections to the story of Jesus (see Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, pp. 152-3; Moberly, The Bible, Theology, and Faith, pp. 157-60). 19. For the material in this paragraph, I am indebted to the discussion in MacDonald, “Listening to Abraham - Listening to vHwH,” esp. pp. 30-5. 3940 Remythologizing Theology Abraham imagines." Though the text positions God as the respond- ent to Abraham's questions, yiw# is in fact the superior interlocutor. Indeed, the dialogue taken as a whole is a divine “educative” - an instance of God’s edifying discourse - thanks to which Abraham, and we, learn something of the expanse of God's mercy. Still, the fate of Sodom does seem to be genuinely at stake. Even if the dialogue is ultimately an example of divine pedagogy, must we rule out the possibility that human communicative acts make a difference to God? I think not. For what Abraham learns is “the Kind of response expected from yiwn’s elect so that the divine bless- ing may be mediated to the nations.”* Abraham does not argue and win, but argues and learns: about God and how to participate rightly in the drama of redemption. It is not that God needs humans to do what is right. It is rather that God has decided not to execute his plan apart from human participation in it, just as he has decided not to be God without humanity Exodus 3:13-15 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “Iam who Iam.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘Iam has sent me to you.” God’s speaking to Moses out of the burning bush contains its own form of demythologizing: in contrast to the pagan belief that to know and use the name of a deity is to be able to control him, the very content of yrw#’s name, problematic though its meaning is, forestalls any thought that the Lord can be manipulated by simply invoking his name. Most commentators think the name “yaws” (‘chyeh ‘a’ser ‘ehyeh) is etymologically derived from the Hebrew verb hayah (“to be”) - though it is not entirely clear whether it should be translated “I am who I am,” “Iam he who is,” “I will be what I will 20. MacDonald, “Listening to Abraham - Listening to vHws.” p. 40. Cf. my dis- cussion of “soteric” dialogues in the Conclusion. 21. Ibid., p. 43, 22, That God freely decides not to be God without his human covenant part ner is the basic thrust of Barth, Humanity of God, pp. 37-65. 23, Brevard S. Childs comments that the formula God uses for his name “is paradoxically both an answer and a refusal of an answer” (The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), p. 76).