Chapter 1 God Making Theopoetics and Anatheism Richard Kearney PART ONE: THEOPOETICS Why is “making” considered a sacred activity for gods and mortals alike? Making something out of nothing. Making something in the image of some- thing else. Creators making creatures that remake their creators: in each oth- cer’s images, shapes and songs, paintings and poems, dreams and crafts. One great game of holy imagination played with bodies and souls, with hands, tongues, ears, and eyes. Art as divine-human interplay, again and again, ‘Theopoetics names how the divine (7heos) manifests itself as making (poi- esis). The term dates back to the early centuries, meaning both the making human of the divine and the making divine of humanity. As the poet scholar Ephrem of Syria wrote: “He gave us divinity, we gave Him humanity.” Oras ‘Athanasius said in the fourth century: “God became human so that humans could become divine.” Catherine Keller puts it succinctly: “The term theo- poetics finds its ancestor in the ancient Greek theopoiesis. As poeisis means making or creation, so theopoiesis gets rendered as God-making or becoming, divine.” ‘Theopoetics carries an attendant claim that first creation calls for second