{160} (cont’d)

B) In the priestly text we are also told the same thing, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gn 1:1). The totality appears exactly as in the Yahwist text. However, the verb used here is different. That is the question. While the Yahwist text uses the verb ’asah, “to make”, here the verb used is bara’, which may etymologically mean “to make”, except that in the Old Testament it is only applied to God exclusively. It means “to create”. This involves, of course, an evolution of the very concept of God and an evolution, above all, of what we call “creation”. It no longer is a simple making, but something else. The Yahwist text says that God, like a potter, has modeled man “from clay of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gn 2:7). On the other hand, it is not a question here of a potter who proceeds to model a figure. It is the case of something quite different. That with just one word God produces what He says. Now we have a God not only maker, but also creator.

What does He create first? Alas, it is not a viable world. It is something much worse, a chaotic reality. The Biblical text says, “The Earth was chaos and confusion and darkness covering the abyss, and the spirit of God fluttered over the waters” (Gn 1:2). This idea of chaos is expressed in three {161} clear and successive concepts. In the first place, the havoc, what we call the chaos, a kind of dust in turmoil, and they call this tohu wabohu. The expression still survives in French, le tohu-bohu. In the second place, the idea of the darkness. The lack of differentiation of anything that might be a concrete and distinct reality. And in third place it says, “the spirit of God fluttered over the waters”. The ancients believed that at the base of the world there was what they called the abyss, the Babylonian Tiamat, which is the Abzu, and over this the Earth was floating. These are three important concepts.

1) In the first place, the concept of this kind of dust, the tohu-bohu, which is even etymologically, the semantic and conceptual reflection of what the Babylonian Tiamat was. The priestly code is written when the Iranian civilization is pressing over Babylon.

2) Thus, for the Iranians the great problem was precisely the light and darkness. The Iranian dualism begins here. Even Isaiah, still influenced by the priestly scribes and by the previous prophetic preaching will put in the mouth of Yahweh precisely this phrase, “I am the one who made the light and created the darkness” (Is 45:7). Facing the Iranian dualism there is a total and radical affirmation of the act and the creator, of the one only God.

3) In the third place, we are told that “the spirit of God merajæfæt upon the waters”. The verb rajaf means to move itself. Upon this movement of the verb rajaf there has been much speculation. Obviously, one cannot but recall that in the ancient cosmogonies the world has been born from a kind of great cosmic egg. Then the verb rajaf could mean the movement of an eagle flapping its wings and moving to defend its chicks and incubate reality, precisely from itself. Rajaf would mean this movement. It is not the only thing we might think. We could think that ruaj does not {162} mean precisely “spirit”, but what spirit meant for many of the ancients, that it was purely and simply the wind of God, the great storm. And here in that case the chaos would be expressed by the great storm that puts the waters in commotion and adds itself to the turmoil of the dust of the tohu-bohu, and the darkness.

We can immediately recognize there is no syncretism in all of this, as I have explained somewhere else¹. It is not the case of having taken a few notions from here and there. From the time of the entry of the Israelites into Canaan, until the moment of the literary fixation of the first chapter of Genesis, Israel has been able to learn about all the cosmogonies that have surfaced in Mesopotamia. And what are these cosmogonies going to talk about but of heaven, earth, chaos, light, etc.? They are notions, which were commonly current, and made the rounds of the whole Mesopotamian civilization, eventually being appropriated by the author (or authors) of the priestly code. But (here is the difference) he took them, not to add them up, but just the opposite, to give them a new sense from his idea of God. It is anything but a syncretism. It is the way by which the idea of the reality of God that man has, is forced to expand into all the rich possibilities that constitute its fullness. God appears as creator of the cosmos precisely in what it has of material and earthly chaos, in what it has of darkness, and in what it has of waters.

Hence, creation has to continue precisely to cease being chaotic, in order for this chaotic reality to change into something that in Greek has a precise name, the kósmos. Something organized. And here begin the days of creation, which is the first thing that is usually thought about, as if the first three versicles did not matter, when they are the ones that provide the key {163} to the whole affair. And that is precisely the cosmos, an ordering through creation. Indeed, this creative intervention to make a cosmos from the chaos is expressed in the Hebrew text with a very precise verb, the verb badal, which means to separate. The important thing is that this separation, as the creation of chaos, is owed purely and simply to one word, the word of God, dabar ’Elohim. And this word of God has a consequence, and is so efficacious that what it does is precisely what it wishes to do. In this sense it says, ki tov, “it is good” (Gn 1:4).

The exposition of the seven days of creation tells us what kind of separation it is. In the first place, it is the case of a separation of the great regions that compose the cosmos. That is the work of the first three days of creation.

On the first day it separates the light from the darkness. Facing the dark chaos there is an intervention of God. According to the Biblical text, “God said, be light made, and light was made” (Gn 1:3). The text says that He saw the light “was good” (Gn 1:4). It adds, “separated the light from the darkness”. Here we find the verb badal, “to separate”. One may wonder how is it possible for these ancient men to think that God has created the light before creating the stars. The fact is that these ancient men did not believe it was something that depended only on the stars. Not at all, the ancients thought that light was a reality all by itself. We have quite a direct apprehension of this at dawn when we have light and still there is no sun. From this the ancient world starts.

On the second day there is a different separation. By the creation of a dome, believed to be metallic, ancient man has separated some waters above the firmament, which are the ones that will constitute the rain and the origin of the rivers, and the oceans, from the other waters, which are located precisely in the depth {164} of the abyss. This dome is precisely what in antiquity was called firmamentum, something that is firm and solid. We shall leave aside the fact that they believed this dome was resting upon four columns. This has no bearing on the case. It separates the waters of the heavens from the waters of the Earth (cf. Gn 1:60-8).

On the third day we have the separation to one side of the firm land and to the other the waters of the seas. No longer the waters above the heavens and the waters under the Earth, but the waters that compose the oceans and the seas. From these the Biblical text says they were the ones that produced the first trees and the first vegetables (cf. Gn 1:9-13). It should be pointed out that for an ancient Israelite vegetables are not living beings. It is important to remember this. Certainly the land produces vegetation, and this is not alien to an Israelite. But for a Hebrew vegetables are not living beings.

Here we have the constitution of three great regions. The constitution of the ethereal region, light. The constitution of the firmament with the waters that are above and below it. And the constitution of the region of lands and seas. These are the three great regions or the three great boundaries that compose the regions of the cosmos, and are the first terminus of creation.

Nevertheless, creation does not completely annul the chaos of matter, nor does it completely annul the darkness. We read that God separated light from darkness, and called the darkness night and the light day (cf. Gn 1:4-5). Obviously, he has not annulled them. Neither does he annul the stormy characteristic of the waters. Then, in what can that creation consist? From my point of view, these are precisely the anti-cosmic forces and powers, which are there subjacent to creation, and are dominated by the God that has created them, but whose action is permitted {165} within the bounds set by the creating God. Some connection appears to exist between this idea of the anti-cosmic forces and the idea of St. Paul that the entire material creation groans pining for a trasfiguration (cf. Rm 8:19-22). At least, that is how I view the problem.

But the creative action has not simply created the regions of the universe. Has also created the things that populate those regions. On the fourth day He has created what populates the region of light, the celestial bodies, especially the sun and the moon. That is an afirmation of supreme importance to the Israelites, engulfed in a civilization essentially of celestial bodies, and an astral religion with the divinities of the sun, the moon, the stars, of Sirius and its constellation, etc. The author of the priestly code, doing as he did with the Tiamat, and with the darkness of Iran does not reduce all this to nothingness, but reasumes it to indicate the creative and supreme characteristic of God. God has created the celestial bodies to provide us with light, and not simply to provide gods to be adored by man.

On the fifth day God populates the region of the waters and the air. The region of the waters with fishes, naturally. There we find a long list, which begins with sea monsters and runs to the small fishes. Israel had memory of monsters and dragons. In other passages of the old Testament (Ps 148:7; Jb 7:12) these dragons appear, the taninim. On the other side, the birds appear populating the air (cf. Gn 1:20-23).

On the sixth day there is a different separation, this one only on land. On the one hand appear the animals that walk on land. On the other (we shall see this immediately) man appears. Inasmuch for what concerns the vegetation and the animals, the author of the priestly code has kept in mind the idea of the mother-goddess, {166} Mother-Earth, that produces the fertility of life and the separation of things. Of course, he remembers what the ba’als were in Canaan and reabsorbes that notion in the idea of a transcendent and creative God.

Facing all this the text tells us, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gn 1:26). Let us put aside the problems the verb presents; what concerns us now is the term sælæm, image. It must not be taken in an exaggerated transcendent sense. God has simply created man and woman (no mention of the rib here) with the direct and explicit order, “be fertile and multiply” (Gn 1:28), much earlier than the original sin, which has nothing to do with this history of the conjugal union. Here the author of the priestly text has kept in mind the two ideas that most horrified an Israelite. In the first place, hierogamy, to think that the world was born from the copulation of gods and human realities. It only appears in the Bible in an old and legendary text at the beginning of the account of the deluge (cf. Gn 6:1-4), that has no bearing on this case. The priestly text, much later than this account, rejects hierogamy. And also rejects, in second place, the religious practice that keeps alive and maintains the idea of hierogamy as reproduction and reactualization of creation. Precisely the sacred prostitution of the qedešot, the “sacred prostitutes” of the temples.


C) These are the two creation accounts, quite different from each other. [Nevertheless, even with all the difference of mentalities between the Yahwist and the priestly separated by four centuries, and also between them and us, however, what they both wish to say about God in their intellectual conception of things, is absolutely identical to what the most polished system of our metaphysical concepts can or may say about {167} God. In the end, it is reduced to one single thing, the transcendence of God, expressed in three dimensions²].

1) In the first place, they have in common that they refer to the totality of the real. Both begin by saying, “the heavens and the earth”. And the creation as principle of all reality is creation ex nihilo, creation oúk ex ónton (2 Mc 7:28).

2) In the second place, it is a creation beyond time. The priestly text ends by saying that “He rested on the seventh say” (Gn 2:2). This is an allusion to the sabbatical rest. Whatever may be the origin of this sabbatical rest in the priestly text, what is evidently certain, is that the division into days of the week is made in order to reach the day of sabbatical rest. Even though some present theologian or exegete may disagree with this opinion I see no sufficient reason to do so. It is the case that the seven days end with the Sabbath. Therefore, this is strictly and specifically a religious account. Israel never had a New Year celebration, as the Babylonians had, for example, with the feast of the bit-akitu. But Israel sees in creation the first act of the life of God upon the whole of reality, which is precisely to have created it.

Because of this, the beginning of history in the priestly text is different than the beginning of history of the Yahwist text. In the Yahwist text history follows immediately. It is the expulsion from paradise because of the original sin. And it is a precise history. The priestly text, on the other hand, ends by saying “these are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when God created them” (Gn 2:4). Here we encounter the term toledot, “generations”. Quite appropriately the expert orientalists have translated this as “genesis”. But the term “genesis” clouds the understanding of something important I would like to {168} maintain in this case, the idea of generations, which later appears (it is an expression belonging to the priestly source) in the rest of Genesis, these are the generations of Adam (cf. Gn 5:1), of Noah (cf. Gn 10:1), of Shem (cf. Gn 11:1), of Ishmael (cf. Gn 25:12), etc. It is the case of an erudite history, which is being told by generations. And these generations are strictly such. Does this mean that for the priestly text God is the generator of the world? Certainly not. But there is no doubt that the idea of generation is the mental scheme with which the phantasmic thinking of these men has conceived causality, as I mentioned elsewhere³. That is what occurs in Gn 2:4. In a manner as rudimentary as anyone may think, but no more or less certain than ours with all our metaphysical and theological constructions of every type, what is expressed here is something supremely clear and apprehensible, the transcendence of God.

The transcendence of God, whether called Yahweh or Yahweh ’Elohim (it makes no difference here), in the first place, has produced things purely and simply oúk ex ónton (2 Mc 7:28). And precisely in this type of transcendence consists what I called the transcendence of the world. Because, in second place, that reality has been produced at the start of everything, “in the beginning (bere’šit) God created the heavens and the earth” (Gn 1:1). On numerous occasions I have thought, and properly so, that there is a deliberate parallelism with that phrase when the Gospel of St. John begins, “In the beginning (en arché) was the Word” (Jn 1:1). Yes, but with a difference, while the beginning of Genesis is a beginning of time, the other arché is not a beginning of time, but the beginning of an immersion in the very eternity of God. Be that as it may, there is in Gn 1:1 that particular concept of the transcendent beginning of time. {169} Transcendent because there is no reality upon which God would have any support to produce things. Transcendent, because He is anterior to the whole time of creation, and above all (this is the positive point) transcendent, because He does it only by His word. That is the third aspect.

3) God is a dominating principle; He dominates precisely by the mere fact of His word, by His dabar (Hb.), by His lógos, without any struggle between God and any elements of the chaos, as it happens in the cosmogonies of the surrounding peoples. God does not create by any particular special action, but only by His word, “be light made, and light was made”⁴ (Sp. haya luz y hubo luz) (Gn 1:3). It is important to use that translation, which is the exact one, precisely to avoid the false entification of reality, that the light “be”. The concept of being does not appear there at all, “be light made, and light was made”. The rest is left to metaphysicians.

For this reason the first apologists called it Logos, taking the expression from St. John. Certainly, but the lógos prophorikós, the uttered logos, quite different from the lógos endiáthetos, the immanent logos in which God says to himself what He is and constitutes His second Trinitarian procession. The idea of this creation by the word appears all along the Bible. In the Old Testament, in several Psalms (cf. Ps 33:3; 148:5; etc.). In the New Testament it appears in several passages (cf. 2 Pt 3:5), especially in the Epistle to the Romans (cf. Rm 4:17). The first chapter of the Gospel of St. John says that everything was created by the Word (cf. Jn 1:3).

For the New Testament the idea of creation is built on the very Trinitarian structure of God (1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:15-20; Eph 1:4-5; Hb 1:1-8; Jn 1:1-8). The word will be a lógos prophorikós, but it is the uttered logos of something that is precisely the real truth of God, and is precisely {170} the very reality of the Son. As we shall see further on, creation is the creation of things by the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. But what the whole of reality can be is, precisely in its truth, that which constitutes the very reality of the Son, who is the Truth. And in the Holy Spirit it is the actualization of the identity of that which is true with what reality is.

From creation intellectually conceived this way is how we must understand the Christian God in his relationship with the world. Certainly, the Trinitarian life we examined in the previous chapter is the most important thing we must say about God, but that which has to be said Trinitarially about God is revealed precisely to fundament our life, and consequently our knowledge of God. In the end, regardless how we approach the question, about God we do not know His reality, nor anything about what He is, except as creator.

However, this requires a marginal comentary. There has always been a tendency, rather dull from my point of view (it has had twenty centuries of theological tradition), of never assigning to God any other proper attributes except intelligence and will. The rest of the attributes are relative to creation, like the immensity, to be present everywhere (if there were no parts and no space, He would not be immense and could not be everywhere), etc. But the attribution to God of other purely mental attributes, for example, the sentimensts, the passions, has been carefully guarded by saying they are only anthropomorphisms. But one can ask if it is not equally anthropomorphic to attribute to God intelligence and will, because after all the intelligence and will of God do not resemble the intelligence and will of man at all.

It will be said they are analogical. The scholastics are experts on {171} these distinctions. But before we proceed to discuss what I think of that analogy, what must be noted first above all is that if God has intelligence and will it is not because men think that is the most important thing that can exist in reality. No. I have already explained why. God is an absolutely absolute reality, and therefore his-own. And nothing can be absolutely his-own if it is not precisely an open essence that possesses itself in intellection and will. The deduction of intelligence and will is made from the absolute characteristic of his-ownness and not the reverse⁵. Then, what can we say about those attributes called anthropomorphic? Certainly, in that case the analogy consists in saying that the same reality (the very concept of analogy) is realized in different forms. Yes, but these forms resemble the human form so little that the analogy remains quite remote. Take the subject of the sentiments and the passions. It is clearly true that one cannot think of God as a person that becomes angry, sad, and happy. We cannot also think of God as a person that makes decisions. That is absurd. God does not assume attitudes, not even decisions. That is also anthropomorphism. We slide easily over that anthropomorphic characteristic of decisions, and on the other hand, we charge against this aspect of the sentiments.

Now, we may well ask whether the Biblical text contains expressions of this type. Quite at the beginning of the account of the deluge, after saying that the human species had become corrupt on Earth, God says according to the text, “for it repenteth me that I have made them” (Gn 6:7). Here the verb najam, “to repent”, appears. What is the sense of this repentance? {172} Is this the repentance of a person who changes opinion? Clearly, He does not change opinion. Let us remember that the reality of God is a simple physical reality and all the distinctions we make about Him, including intelligence and will, we make from our perspective of created humans. Naturally, by convergence, we must conceive that in some manner what we call intelligence on the one hand, or will on the other, are aspects of a most simple unfathomable reality, which is at the same time intelligence and will.

Of course, we may ask if the same thing can be done with the sentiments. What in us is terminatively something we call anger or repentance can also be made to converge, by way of simplicity, into that physical act of unfathomable simplicity, which constitutes the reality of God. In that case, from my point of view, it would not be purely and simply an anthropomorphism, it would be a case for a more integral vision of what a personal life is.


II. The structure of the creative act

To create is formally an action of the transcendent God in the triple sense I have just indicated. However, that is creation insofar as creation from God regardless of the reality created. But one can ask, What has God wished to create? What is its real characteristic? Anticipating its justification with what will follow, I would say now that what creation provides and what God has formally wished is the molding ad extra of His own Trinitarian life. Taken absolutely and from any perspective we may wish to take. Of course, we can ask, What do trees have to do with {173} the Trinitarian life? We shall see that further on. At any rate, it is a strict molding of the Trinitarian life.

Here we come across one of the marvelous interferences between Greek philosophy and Biblical revelation. The idea that all existing things have a nature, are natural, and anything else is supernatural. And, as far as we know, neither trees nor celestial bodies have anything supernatural. Presenting the issue from that point of view, it is absolutely true. But one has the right, at least, to formulate the question, Is the concept of supernatural true? Is it not perhaps that the natural is a kind of concretion of the supernatural? In that case there would not be supernaturality; the only thing that we would have is precisely the finite way of having divine life without being God. What we call nature is only the essential finitude with which Trinitarian life is realized ad extra. It is not the case that the supernatural life is something added. One can always say, I have been given a nature, and in addition I have been given something supernatural, which I have been told is gratuitously given, and if I do not want it will result in my eternal condemnation. I have not asked for any gifts. All this is irrefutable.

Hence, the point of departure is the denial of the supposition that it constitutes an addition. Perhaps the case is just the opposite, that what we called nature is the finite contraction of what the Trinitarian life is. The only terminus, which adequately and really God has proposed to create ad extra. Creation would be the molding of His own Trinitarian life.

In that case we would find that the Trinity as processional reality gives of itself (because reality is essentially, constitutively, and formally active), in the first place, an essence, as we have seen. The Father as absolutely absolute reality has an essence, which is the open essence, and in the personal perichóresis (circulation) of the three persons the very essence of what I call the divine essence is constituted. The “what” of God qua pure act {174} is a result of the Trinitarian life and not a principle of it. Here we have, in second place, the same situation, or at least a homologous situation. In God, as active constitutive essence, there is, in addition to the Trinitarian processions, a different procession. The procession of producing reality, i.e., his own Trinity, his own Trinitarian life ad extra, as different from God. Certainly, this Trinitarian life does not realize itself in a finite form in His own internal essence. But it is strictly and formally speaking a procession. In God not only are distinguished the intelligence, the will, and the sentiments, which converge in their simplicity, but also converge in their processional simplicity, the internal processions and the procession ad extra. It is the molding ad extra of his own Trinitarian life. In that case, the world and all the transcendence of the world precisely consist in being the transcendent precipitate of an immanent and vital procession, because the procession of creation is immanent and vital.

This, instead of clarifying the question, seems to complicate it. Three questions are activated, which we shall have to answer successively.
A) What is that procession ad extra from the part of God?
B) What is that procession ad extra by reason of its terminus; what is the world insofar as being the result of that procession?
C) And, combining these two dimensions, in what does it consist, finally, the internal and effective structure of creation?

________________
¹ Cf. X. Zubiri, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions, op. cit., pp. 170-174.
² The text between square brackets comes from another section of the same 1971 seminar.
³ Cf. X. Zubiri, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions, pp. 126-129.
⁴ Challoner-Douay-Rheims Bible, John Murphy Co., Baltimore, Md., 1899.
⁵ Cf. X. Zubiri, Man and God, op. cit., pp 168-171.