Creation Theology in the Book of Job

February 19, 2012Andy Alexis-Baker

In recent weeks, Republican presidential hopeful and Catholic Rick Santorum suggested that any limits on exploiting the earth for energy, such as restricting arctic drilling or refusing the Keystone XL pipeline, as Obama has done, is a “phony theology” that puts the earth before “man” (Santorum’s anachronistic and sexist word for humanity). In Santorum’s words: “The Earth is not the objective, man is the objective, and I think that a lot of radical environmentalists have it upside down. . . . We’re not here to serve the earth. That is not the objective, man is the objective.” He went on to suggest that any view that differs from his is not based on the Bible. Unfortunately, Santorum’s thoughts just quoted represent a large portion of Christian theology in the U.S. when it comes to creation. But is this view really “the biblical view”? There are many places in the Bible to which we could turn to address this question, but the Book of Job is one of the most powerful because it contains one of the longest discourses on creation, and humanity’s part in it.

The human-centered view of Job, his friends, and Satan

At the outset, Job is depicted as a standard Old Testament patriarch who is blessed with family and domesticated animals as a sign of God’s favor. He is a man of virtue, being “blameless and upright,” who “feared God and turned from evil” (Job 1:1). He serves as the family’s priest, offering sacrifices in case any member of his family had sinned in their thoughts, and for actual sins any member of his household committed. Even after his children die, he still praises God. Yet no outsiders enter his little world. There are no wild animals; there is no wild creation. Job is master as God’s faithful steward. He is in control. Satan’s accusation is that God has placed a fence around Job, and he only prospers because the chaos of creation is kept out of Job’s protected circle.

Only after God allows Satan to test Job is anything wild allowed to enter the story. Fire and a “great wind coming from the wilderness,” killing his animals and children. Creation, then, is only allowed into the opening chapter of Job as a test.

Job laments these losses and his subsequent suffering beginning in chapter 3. In direct parallel to the creation account in Genesis 1, he invokes darkness, Leviathan, the rush of the waters, and his own unbirth. He is unable to make sense of the tragedies that have befallen him; so he wishes for an uncreation.

The same “fence” that Satan sees as Job’s protection, Job sees as a noose tightening around his neck. The fence does not keep creation out, but keeps Job in, and it menaces him: “While your eyes are upon me, I shall cease to be” (Job 7:8); “Am I the sea or the dragon that you place guard over me?” (Job 7:12). In a direct reversal of Psalm 8, where humanity is glorified as “a little lower than God” with all of creation below, Job does not view this exaltation as a gift. With this exaltation, God places severe restrictions on humanity, guarding us like prisoners in a tight cell, waiting to pounce on the smallest mistake: “What is humanity, that you magnify them, that you pay attention to them, that you visit them every morning, that you test them every moment? Will you not turn your gaze away from me? Will you not leave me alone until I swallow my spittle?” (Job 7:17–19). Satan sees the limits as protection, an orderly world in which creation plays no part; Job sees these limits as a prison, a Foucauldian panopticon, and in response he seeks to unleash the forces of chaos and undo any order at all.

Two different worldviews emerge in the early chapters of Job: in one a person can expect reward for pleasing God. In the other view humans are not stewards of God’s grace but the objects of God’s restrictions, which tighten into a death noose. The latter worldview is close to that of nihilism: order means death; morals mean power and restriction. We must break free and embrace death itself.

Job’s nihilistic lament provokes an extended discussion between himself and his three friends, who basically repeat Satan’s view that God protects the righteous from the outside creation. Job, for his part, continues to repeat his view that God punishes the righteous with an oppressive gaze. For Job and for Satan, humans have been given a special place. In Job’s view God has a sick obsession with humans that makes them vulnerable: God watches us too closely. If only God would leave Job alone, he could die in peace rather than suffering through life. But Job’s friends see this same mortality as evidence that humans are corruptible, and therefore deserve whatever God brings upon them. But both views hold in common that humanity is the center of God’s attention in creation.

In Job 28, Job describes humanity in godlike terms: Humanity brings down mountains, finds hidden things, and establishes limits. In chapter 28, only God has the transcendent wisdom to make sense of life, and only the righteous person can hope to acquire that wisdom. But in finding it, humans play a central role in creation.

One of the most striking examples of Job’s human-centered view occurs in chapter 29. Job describes his previous life as being, “eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame” (29:15). He compares his life to a powerful tree: “My roots spread out to the waters with the dew all night on my branches, my glory was fresh with me, and my bow ever new in my hand” (29:19–20). He plays God’s role in subduing the unrighteous like wild animals: “I broke the fangs of the unrighteous, and made them drop their prey from their teeth” (29:17). Even more poignant, Job saw himself as like life-giving water—“They waited for me as for the rain; they opened their mouths as for the spring rain” (29:23)—and vital sunshine: “I smiled upon them when they had no confidence; and the light of my countenance they did not extinguish” (29:24).

Even Elihu’s speech, which points Job to consider the rest of creation, is human-centered. To be sure, Elihu’s speech in chapters 32–36 echoes many themes from God’s own speech. Yet animals are entirely lacking in Elihu’s speech, except as a foil for human greatness: “Where is God my Maker, who gives strength in the night, who teaches us more than the animals of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of the air?” (Job 35:10–11). Humans, thus, stand in an exalted place as an object of God’s special attention and are the most important creatures on the earth.

These claims of humanity’s exalted and god-like centrality stands in stark contrast to the divine speech that ends the Book of Job, where humans have no role at all.

God’s Creation Theology

After all the humans have had their say, “out of the whirlwind” God speaks (38:1). While Job wished for uncreation, God begins by describing the act of creation: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (38:4). God established the earth, set the morning stars to give light, not darkness as Job wishes, and set limits to the sea (an ancient symbol of a threatening chaos). God does not act capriciously, but establishes order.

God not only creates and establishes order, but also acts providentially to sustain it. God sends rain “on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of human life” (38:26). This is the same place that Job had earlier despised, saying that people who he “disdained” and whom he would not want to allow even his dogs to associate lived in these “gullies” and “holes in the ground, and in the rocks, among the bushes” (30:1–8). Job despises these places and any person who associates with them, deriding them as people who “bray” like donkeys. But God affirms an ongoing providential care for even those places where no human lives. This is one of the few places where humans are even mentioned in the divine speech, and here only to note their absence. Yet God cares for the desolate places and the creatures there.

While in the human speeches animals are either derided or used as foils for human superiority, in the divine speech, God focuses on the animals as primarily in relation to God. From 38:39 to the end of chapter 39, God catalogs some of these animals. It is God who provides sustenance to the lions. It is God who observes the goats as they give birth and counts their days, helping them to grow strong. It is God who set the “wild ass” free and given it a land within which to roam free of human mastery (39:5–8). God challenges Job, asking, “Is the wild ox willing to serve you? Will it spend a night at your crib? Can you tie in the furrow with ropes, or will it harrow the valleys after you?” (39:9–10). The ostrich acts foolishly, leaving its eggs unattended and subject to predators. Yet “it laughs at the horse and its rider” who have “understanding” (39:18). The supposed wisdom in this rider and his horse is nothing compared to the providential care the ostrich receives. It does not need humans and their wisdom. God gives the horse its strength and causes the hawk to soar high in the skies. In these examples, God uses the creation to show human ignorance and powerlessness, and reaffirm God’s providential care. Human have no place, no role, no ability even, to create or sustain these creatures.

But the speech does not end there. God continues on with ever greater animals at divine beckoning and outside of human control. “Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you . . . It is the first of the great acts of God—only its Maker can approach it with the sword” (40:15, 19). God provides Behemoth with strength, with grass to eat, with shade, and with habitat. It is God’s first great act. Likewise, Leviathan, is out of human control and the watchful gaze of human dominion. Humans cannot understand it, cannot play or barter with it. They cannot even kill it. God delights in describing this creature: “I will not keep silence concerning its limbs, or its mighty strength, or its splendid frame. . . . On earth it has no equal, a creature without fear. It surveys everything that is lofty; it is king over all that are proud” (41:12, 33–34).

These are humbling descriptions for any human who thinks they are the center of God’s attention and the centerpiece of creation. Any person who says, like Rick Santorum, that “man is the objective” of creation, is brought low by God’s whirlwind. God’s repeated rhetorical questions put Job in his place. God is in control, not Job. Nonhuman creation is not a chaotic mess, but is cared for and ordered. Just because humans have no part in these spaces or creatures does not mean that God is unconcerned for us. More importantly, the vastness of God’s depiction is designed to show Job just how insignificant he really is in the grand scheme. Far from being “the objective,” humanity is just one other aspect of creation. But as an aspect of creation humanity also receives God’s providential care.

Conclusion

What is humanity in the midst of such a vast creation? In Psalm 104:14–15, humans are given a place between cattle and trees. In Job, humans do not even have that place. We are powerless and ignorant of God’s ways, but think ourselves central to God’s attention. Job sees himself as akin to life-giving rain and describes himself as one who smiles, mocks and laughs at those under him in an attempt to underscore the importance of humans in the scheme of creation. But God describes wild animals in such terms.

The idea that creation has humanity as its center-piece, is, in the Book of Job, a huge mistake; it is a proud, self-important view that God rebukes from out of the whirlwind. This idea that humanity is somehow allowed to set our own limits on our power so that we can exploit the earth is itself an unbiblical, prideful viewpoint. Indeed, to name creation as “resources” as so many Christians do, is already to undermine a biblical view of creation as good thing in itself, and to place humans at the center. The word “resource” is not in the biblical vocabulary of creation. Providence, care, gift, love: these are the words that describe creation, and they do so not by placing humans at the center, but by placing God at the center, and all of the vastness of creation at God’s beckoning. Humans are only one of those creatures.

http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn
What about Jesus, though? Doesn’t his life seem focused on human beings?
I agree that the rest of creation is not just a “resource” for us, and I agree that a human-centered theology has been wrongly used to legitimize terrible exploitation. But the mission of Jesus seems clearly human-focused, and I think that reveals a lot about God’s view of humanity. Jesus also presents himself as the model for how we are to live as his followers.
That doesn’t undermine environmental or “animal rights” efforts, though. We’ve learned quite clearly that part of caring for human beings is caring for the earth and other animals.

http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
Hi Paul,
I guess I would ask whether you are not bringing a certain lens to Jesus in your statement, rather than reading off the texts. The first place to go in response to a question like yours is John 1: The word became flesh. “Flesh” is a very important word because it is more than just human that Jesus became. A modern way to translate this might be “The word became a creature.” That is, God became a male Jewish human for sure. But none of those categories is the most basic. God became a creature. That is the most basic lens through which to read his story. And when we refocus on the creaturehood, rather than focusing on his maleness as some in the past (and some in the present) have done (which carries with it ethical and ecclesial emphases such as the maleness of pastors and such), rather than focusing on his Jewishness as did some in the early church called Judaizers, rather than focusing on his humanness, as most of Christianity has in fact done, we need to focus on his creaturehood as the widest possible category through which to read the importance of his incarnation. That has huge ramifications for all of theology that have only barely begun to be examined (See the book Creaturely Theology edited by David Clough and Celia Deane-Drummond for a recent attempt).
Another place I would point is to Mark 1:13. Jesus begins his ministry not with humans, but in the wilderness, “with the wild animals.”How interesting that he is led out to begin his ministry among the wild animals and not humans. This is, of course, the beginning of the eschatological peacemaking that Isaiah and other prophets announced. It begins with animals. It does not end there, but it is his start. He became a creature, just like the wild animals, and just like humans. So his work has ramifications for all creation.
There are a few other places to go. But I would just suggest that you take off the lens through which you are reading Jesus and start to read anew. Job points to something that cannot be absent from Jesus.

http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn
Sure, I can consider those parts of the story. And I agree that Jesus’ life had implications for all of creation.
But what about all the teaching and healing and interactions with people that seem to fill what we know of his life? And, as you say, all of this made possible by God being made human flesh, like us. Doesn’t this all suggest a human focus, all that effort and energy reaching out to, and struggling with, human beings? Even to the point of losing his life because of it.
That seems important to me both as an expression of God’s intense personal concern for us, and an example for our own lives. I suppose your work as a writer and as a teacher also demonstrates a human focus, doesn’t it?

http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
As earth’s most problematic inhabitant, who have the power to destroy the entire planet, it makes sense that a certain focus should be on humans, yes. But not for the exalted and glorious reasons we normally give.

http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn
True enough, like the problem child that gets more attention.
But then if we don’t think humanity is singularly important to God, why care much about earth, which is less than a speck in the grand scheme of the created universe? Stars and planets are destroyed all the time. Why work so hard to save the inhabitants of this planet and keep them from destroying it?
I’m all for humility in the face of the grandeur of God’s creation (which expresses something of the grandeur of God), but that seems to me to make God’s attention and focus on us seem more an act of undeserved love.
These lines from Psalm 8 come to mind:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars which you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
and mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them little less than God,
and crown them with glory and honor.
http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
Paul,
What I am saying is that the few places like Psalm 8 are not the center of the biblical view of humanity and our place within creation or are relationship to other creatures.
Just as Romans 13 is not the be-all-end-all of what the Bible says about the state, and must be put into a much larger context in which 1 Samuel 8, various sayings of Jesus, Peter’s statements about obedience to God and people, and the context of Romans have to be taken into account so that we don’t interpret Paul as giving a blank check to the state and an absolute call to obedience, so too here.
Job is a much larger account. It is purported to be divine speech, and is one of the longest direct addresses in the Bible. Then we have Genesis 1, in which humans are made of dust just like the other creatures, have the same living breath that they do as well. We don’t even get a divine pronouncement in that chapter that we are good. We are only told we are good in relation to all of creation, at which time the text says, “And God looked at all he had made and saw that it was very good.” Only as a a part of the larger whole are we said to be good at all. There is Psalm 104, where humans aren’t lower than God and above all other creation, but somewhere between the trees and cows! That we think that is not good enough for us is the problem. Psalm 8 is within a much larger canon. Even within the Psalms it is challenged. But in the larger canon it is a minority viewpoint at best. The way to interpret is canonically, a Psalmist reflecting like Job on his grandeur. But a later Psalm rejects this, as does the divine speech in Job. There are many other places too, but this reply is already long.
That God gives us so much attention is because as part of larger whole, we like Job also wish to uncreate, and can cause a lot of damage and suffering.

http://profiles.google.com/warren.kittler Warren Kittler
I enjoy your perspective.
I wonder, though… Jesus allowed Legion to destroy the herd of pigs (and the economic well-being of the village) to save an outcast man. He also cursed a fig tree to make a point to his disciples. What sort of ramifications do passages like these have in our understanding of humanity’s relationship with the rest of creation?

http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
Hi Warren,
Well, as it happens Tripp York and I just finished editing a book titled, “A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for Animals” that will come out in the Fall. Lots of good authors address questions just like this. The question about Jesus and legion is addressed by Annika Spalde and Pelle Strindlund from Sweden. I don’t want to preempt their chapter and give away too much, but I’ll say enough to hopefully answer you and whet your appetite for that book (which looks at other issues like “Didn’t Jesus Eat Fish?” “Didn’t Jesus Eat Lamb?” and “What About Dominion?” amongst others with authors like Carol J. Adams and Brian McClaren–half the authors are women and three are people of color).
First, the legion story is unmistakably political and not to be read in too literal of a sense. Legion, would be like saying to an American, “there was this demon who called himself the 101st Airborne Division.” It would unmistakably be read as a direct allusion to the US Air Force. That is what “legion” does here. No reader of the gospels at that time would have missed this. Not only that, but the Greek in this small story contains numerous military terms that we canot see in English. All of that points to a kind of allegorical or non-literal type of story about Jesus confronting the imperial powers.
Second, Annika and Pelle point out that the pigs in the story don’t really act like pigs. Pigs don’t run in a herd when they are frightened. They scatter in all sorts of directions. There is also the problem of their number, which is far too high for any realistic farming of that time. Pigs take a lot of work, and that number would have required a huge amount of resources to maintain. This and a few other details also point to a nonliteral type of reading.
So that at least should give us pause before we point to it as a callous attitude on the part of Jesus toward creatures he says very expclicitly elsewhere that God cares about to the point of counting them.
That is all I’ll say on that, and let Annika and Pelle do the rest later in the Fall. If you are on the email list, we’ll announce its release there for sure.

Sebastián
Interesting, I’ll have to read it again and again. In the meanwhile, there’s a correction: Santorum is catholic, not evangelical (though he panders the evangelical vote pretty well)

http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
Thanks. I corrected it. I new that, but it just slipped past.
http://www.facebook.com/amaryahshaye Amaryah Armstrong
It is not impossible to be an evangelical Catholic. I entered the Roman Catholic church under the tutelage of many.

Guest
There are some interesting thoughts on this topic coming out of political science and sociology. Some have gone as far as to suggest that the Protestant Reformation is over, at least in the United States. This isn’t meant to literally imply that Protestants have returned to Catholicism, but that the schism between the two isn’t as relevant as it use to be. Doesn’t Santorum’s rise in the polls and wins in evangelical-esque states demonstrate this. In the United States, aren’t theo-politics now at the forefront of discussion. It is no longer Catholics v. Protestants, but Conservative Theo-Politics v. Liberal Theo-Politics. Based on my experiences and analysis of contemporary American religion, I would tend to agree with this. Just an interesting idea I’m throwing out there.

http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
Would make a good post.

Travis
Can Woven Hand be the official theme music to this post?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8nhkj4_JNI
Did you oh, man
Give horse his might?
And did you oh, man
Clothe his neck with mane?
Thanks for this, Andy. Job always feels inapproachably confusing to me and this sheds a little light.
http://twitter.com/thejoeturner Joe Turner
I’m sorry to sound like a thick Limey, but can someone explain Santorum’s theology to me on this? Is he seriously suggesting that man has a divine right to use the earth’s resources without any limits? Isn’t that greed?
I was trying to think the other day of biblical precedents for being in a place of plenty – but refusing to consume it all (when you could have, if you see what I mean). The most obvious I could think of is Joseph storing up grain in Egypt to be ready for the years of famine. I was also thinking of whether Noah was somehow practicing restraint by only taking a few of each animal onto the ark.
I can also think of some counter-examples: Joshua entering the land flowing with milk-and-honey, the consumption of Manna (eat now, don’t save for tomorrow) and so on. But even there, I’m not sure that the suggestion is to consume and consume and consume without limit.
If anything, I’d think that Santorum’s theology was more ‘phoney’ than teaching people to consider the effects of actions and practicing restraint.
Just thinking aloud, of course..

http://dbcooper.livejournal.com P.F. Bruns
You’re not thick, Mr. Turner. Santorum really does seem to suggest that mankind has a “divine” right to use the earth’s resources. The trouble with this is that its logical–in fact inescapable–conclusion is that “man first over earth first” falls apart when the earth can no longer support man. But for him, this is about elections, not actual policy.

primaltruth
I appreciate insight to be found from this essay. I already understand humanity is not at all the totality of the concern of God, but that God, fully compassionate in caring, and not limited in his characteristics, is not limited as Creator of all in caring for the rest of it all, even apart from ourselves. But I did not know how to show it so well from the Bible, until seeing this essay. And regarding the focus of Jesus on humanity, it was humanity fallen from God’s will in sin, where redemption is needed, the rest of creation suffers for it and groans, not being at fault in the fallen condition of the world. The redeemed of humanity are promised a blessed future to come, there is no condition set for the rest of creation that will be released of suffering under which it groans.
Primal truth
positiveprimitivistradchristian.freeforums.org
http://twitter.com/_petegarcia Pete Garcia
Awesome post. This is a topic I spent a good deal of time with last year and is a great story for us to retrieve and subvert dominion theology with. It frightens me out how much mileage is achieved out of Genesis 1 regarding the centrality and dominance of the human species.
If you are not familiar with it, William P. Brown’s take on Job in “The Ethos of the Cosmos” has an excellent commentary on the whirlwind scene.
Andylewis
It seems a bit strange to separate the nihilism/ questioning and lamenting of Job from the response he ultimately receives. The relationship between the questioner and the one giving the answer seems to be missed here. I like how you emphasize the smallness of humans in the story but it seems like you miss the importance of Job’s nihilistic anger, he wants an answer, similar to Jonah’s nihilism at the end of that story but Job seems to actually be open to the answer, more than Jonah anyway.

http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
Hey A.L.
Jonah is a different kind of story. He was upset about the possible and actual redemption of his enemies. There is certainly something to be gleaned from it in relation to understanding God and creation (creation theology), but that is not front and center as it is in Job. I’d love to read somebody’s attempt if anybody wanted to try it.
But Job’s uncreation wish; his desire to see all things undone, is not quite a pervasive element in Jonah, maybe. Been a while since I read it. The specific drama that each of them enact is different, but both point to the otherness of God in comparison to human wishes and philosophies. Whether it be God’s otherness in contrast to our enemy hating, or God’s otherness in relation to our anthropocentricism. I’m not, in saying that, trying to glean some general timeless moral principle so that we could just bypass Job and Jonah as stories, and get on with the real thing of philosophical truths . . . The forms are important. The witnesses are important . . .
But yeah, Job repented. Whether that represents an inherent openness on his part the story does not say, but seems to contradict. It is not his own capacities that prompt repentence, but God’s confrontation. Yet, in principle, I think we do have to recognize a capacity for all of us to become witnesses. But that capacity is not of our own making god seems to say in Job . . . god is the creator.

Andylewis
I think you’re downplaying the importance of Job’s questioning. if all creation is a partner in creation then Job’s questions matter, if God is set apart from creation then there’s only one right response for Job, to submit to the unerring will of God which sounds a bit like Santorum.

http://twitter.com/thejoeturner Joe Turner
Huh, that is another interesting thought. I had always considered the response of God at the end of Job to be on the lines of: “ARRRGGGHHH do you dare to question me, little man!!! Do you know anything about anything? Puh, I can do more than your puny mind could ever imagine. Now stop this nonsense and bow before me!”
But perhaps there is another way to read it: maybe God is not punishing further the man-who-has-lost-everything. Maybe the reward of things-being-made-good is for wrestling with those difficult questions when all his friends are telling him to keep his mouth closed and his thoughts to himself. For daring to man-up and take his complaints directly to God.
Hmm. I might need to think about this a bit more, thanks for that jolt of inspiration.
http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
hey A.L.
Actually I think I am doing the opposite. Most scholarship, though not all, sees the book as structured in a way that Job has complaints and questions, his friends try unsuccessfully to answer his questions, and God comes into the scene and ignores his questions and makes a power play: I am God; shut up Job.
By contrast, I think God answers Job, and I think scholars miss the answers because they miss the creation theology element and focus on theodicy questions. Job asks a legitimate question: Why are these terrible things happening? But he also supplies his own answer: They are happening because God focuses on us humans, waiting for us to make a mistake and then sending down hellfire on us. or else God tests those of us who are righteous with overwhelming circumstances. Either way, God’s focus on humans is the cause. So Job, who is himself anthropocentric, accuses God of anthropocentricism.
God answers this. God says, in effect, I have created the heavens and earth. There are creatures about which you know nothing, but of whom I have intimate knowledge. There are creatures that will never befriend you, but whom come at my call. I have relationships with creatures you despise and I send life to them all. These things are not befalling you because I have an obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to watching humans. You are only one creature among many. I love you too, but I love all these creatures. I am God; I am not narrow minded and anthropocentric.
These things befall Job because of Satan’s anthropocentricism, which his friends reinforce. The book is about the place of humans in the created order and their relationship to God within that order. Everybody except God thinks that God is anthropocentric. God answers those questions, and says no.

http://twitter.com/thejoeturner Joe Turner
Hmm, I need to digest that a bit more – but my first thought is that I don’t really buy the idea that God is putting Job – and presumably mankind – in his place, ie alongside the rest of creation in his affections. If only because Job is not like the animals in that he is aware of his misfortune and is questioning why it is happening to him. In that very action he is separating himself from other animals. God answering him at all is the voice of someone communicating with a being that is able to comprehend communication.
Like many other parts of the bible, maybe it is impossible for any of us to perceive it outwith of our own biases.
http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
Perhaps I have not been clear. I haven’t said anywhere that God puts Job in his place in some dictatorial way. Nor have I portrayed God, at least intentionally, as one who subjects creatures to an arbitrary will. That is how many scholars interpret the divine speech. And they say that because God does not even mention humans. Job 38-41 does not answer the kinds of theodicy questions we have focused on: why do humans suffer, etc. That is what most scholarship has focused on in Job, and then they say God doesn’t answer Job because God is God. A Big Will in the Sky. A Big whimsical Will. But I completely disagree with that characterization of God in Job (and the Bible generally).
So if you don’t think God is relativizing humanity within creation, in the face of Job’s accusation, quoted in the article, that God focuses too much on humans and that is why Job is suffering, then why doesn’t God mention humans or any of Job’s suffering in the divine speech? Do you agree with most scholarship, which focuses on suffering and theodicy? If so, then God looks awfully tyrannical. If not, then why doesn’t God mention humans and does God answer Job’s accusation? If so where and how? It is in the structure of the argument, I think, that God answers Job. But God does not put Job down, but iterates that God is not a narrow-minded human, who is just waiting for people to mess up because God is so obsessively focused on humans, thereby restricting their freedom (the contrast is that Job thinks he would be freer if God would leave him alone). God does this by cataloging a host of creatures God created, that have no utility to humans, but whom God loves and relates. That catalog confounds most interpreters, because they themselves only want to see in a mirror when they read Job. I’d like to break the mirror, because that is what God does in the speech.
http://twitter.com/thejoeturner Joe Turner
I don’t know Andy, as I said above I’ve not thought like this before. I’d always just considered the final part of Job to be a put-down.
On some level I’m uncomfortable with the notion of God being a tyrant, because that sort of language seems to be shot through with projected human concepts. If I’m the creator of the universe then I hold all things (and their lives) in my hand, and therefore any choice I make to end one life over another is mine and mine alone. I can’t really see that you can argue that one decision over another is just – when the person you are describing embodies justice. I find this hard to think about, but I’m sure it is more than just a problem of language.
My head is hurting, but I’m currently thinking that Job was being rewarded for his questioning rather than put down. But that might be my bias and background coming to the fore – I tend to do a lot of questioning.
I’m sorry if that sounds like I’m plugging a weak counter-argument, as I said the truth is that I really am pushing the limits of my own explorations on this.
Andylewis
But that still means Job’s questions are basically inconsequential. I think you’re saying Job only needs to step outside of his anthropocentric subjectivity and his questions are a way of avoiding that step.
Your interpretation seems like a heavy handed moralistic reading of the story that doesn’t give proper weight to the importance of questions, lament, anger/ nihilism. Those things seem to be much more important in many Jewish interpretations. I think the Christian interpretations tend to emphasize the answers rather than the questions.
While I agree that Job giving up his anthropocentric faith/worldview is a central element in the story, it seems to me that the driving force of the story revolves around Jobs unwillingness to settle for easy answers. I’m guessing you’ll say this is an anthropocentric interpretation since it makes Job responsible in some way for the wild encounter, but I agree that ultimately the focus is taken off of him, as you are emphasizing. I’m just saying that I think you’re missing the importance of Job’s questions/ anger etc.. in getting to that point of culmination.
http://twitter.com/thejoeturner Joe Turner
Mmm. I like that.
I think there are many interesting questions you’ve brought up here Andylewis which I’ve found really stimulating to contemplate. To me, one of the central themes of the book of Job swirls around who won the bet out of God and Satan. A conventional reading seems to imply it was Satan – that Job had cursed (or at least ‘dissed’) God by asking the wrong questions.
During the encounter with God, Job seems to want to accept blame for asking the questions, yet there does not seem to be blame from the voice in the whirlwind. Indeed, if anything, the message seems to be that asking questions is the right thing to do and trying to crush questions (by implying that mankind is too evil to question the divine etc) is wrong. It seems very telling to me that mankind can now answer ‘yes’ to many of the questions of God.
In a similar vein, Jonah seems to argue with God – and survive.
primaltruth
I believe that what is expressed in the Bible is that Job asks valid questions, appropriate from any of humanity such as him, subject to things not understood. And having been faithful to God, he might have had questions answered as they applied to him, in ways he would understand. But God is Creator of so much more than humanity, and God’s answers show that God’s actions are concerned with many more things than humanity, and there are answers involving such other things that are not for any of humanity to know, and so what Job asked involved things not for him to know, other than it is God’s call on that basis.
Primal truth
positiveprimitivistradchristian.freeforums.org
primaltruth
I leave a link because there is not simply a thread in place or one I can start for discussing our having a group or forum, where simply having such a thread or simply post would be possible. There has not been a forum for us for over a year, although once it was said one would be back in place. I wound up starting one for us, but how can it be effectively announced? The link was shown, and I wonder where are those who were posting on forums for Jesus Radicals now? I did not get communication for it, but I try to make it good enough. I can fix it with suggestions for what is wanted. I don’t think of it as just mine, any from here can help in making it, even running it. But if you don’t want this, do not just say we can’t have a forum. We can, this or one any can start, but this is misconduct place, and can be fixed up. I will take suggestions or help, or even direction.
Primal truth
positiveprimitivistradchristian.freeforums.org
primaltruth
In the second to last sentence I meant that this forum is in place. My device put in a wrong word and I did not give it the time to notice. Being in place it can already be used.

http://twitter.com/thejoeturner Joe Turner
Oh I don’t know – the Jonah story seems to end abruptly before we can really tell if he is open to answers from God. Interesting point though, I hadn’t really considered similarities between Jonah and Job.

Andylewis
Yeah, I suppose Jonah’s response is an open question, but the story doesn’t make him look too good, even when he accepts his prophetic call it seems like a last resort after being brought low to the depths in a chaos creature. I guess it’s not so much a question and answer thing going on with Job and Jonah as a question which gets another question in response (like many of Jesus’ responses) it’s up to interpretation whether Gods response is rhetorical but it seems that way with both Jonah and Job.

nathaniel
I really enjoyed your this article. I have been thinking a lot lately about how humanity has pushed itself onto center stage, and how things look different after we step back into the background. Like when we learned that the Earth isn’t the center of the Universe and how that radically changed our science and our theology. I’ve also been thinking about Job and his struggle to make sense of God and his own existence. I’d never connected the two together until now. Thanks!
To move a little bit away from the topic of creation, I wonder what y’all make of the idea that Job’s attitude isn’t nihilistic, as in he never loses faith, but more an expression of his inability to make sense of his circumstances. Like when he is cutting himself with pottery and his friends come ’round trying to explain the reasons why he is suffering, in contrast to his response and even God’s response. To a point God doesn’t even really reveal rationally to Job what’s up, and Job is left in the dark. I don’t want to read too much into the story, but I wonder to what extent Job’s conflict is a conflict between his reason and the world around him, a struggle with the absurd.

http://www.jesusradicals.com Andy Alexis-Baker
In answer to your question about nihilism and Job’s faith: maybe. There is a line that Job crosses in wanting all things to fall into the abyss. He certainly repents at the end. What are the conditions for repentance? A question for Mark perhaps, since he’s working at that. But he repented of the accusation that God is obsessively focused on humans. In that sense, he was always somewhere in the faith . . . but his earlier view needed corrected because he had some misplaced values. The nihilism comes in when he crosses the line into hoping all things become completely undone and just do not exist at all, and when he says that he’d be better off and freer if he, as a human being, were allowed to act as he sees fit, without God’s laws, without God’s order, without God caring at all. The human can manage life well without God. That is where Job goes too in his complaint. That seems to go into apostasy. To the extent that apostasy and heresy are still within a kind of faith, a kind of “kin” to faithfulness, then sure, he was still within the Jewish faith. He never becomes polytheist; never becomes atheist. He becomes even more humanist though: humans without God. If not that, then nothing. But yeah, heresy is still Jewish or Christian. It is Jewish and Christian heresy. Repentance, it seems to me, requires that one be at least within the orbit of the possibility to do that, and that requires knowing the story, being corrected by the story.

edwin_ransom
“for God does speak – now in one way, now in another” -elihu
God does answer some of job’s questions and does not answer others. job’s questions about why he was born only to suffer, and who brings injustice into the world if not God, and “what is my end?” don’t seem to be addressed in the divine speeches directly. other questions such as “what is humanity?” can find implied answers. one of job’s questions i see most clearly being addressed is that of 23:3, “where can i find God? where is God’s dwelling” and the beginning of an answer comes in a question, “have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?” 38:18. which leads to other localized answer-questions such as, “do you know when the mountain goats give birth?” 39:1. at the end of the divine speeches job says that now he has seen God and he repents (interesting to read this in light of john1:18 “no one has ever seen God”), so you do have to ask about the conditions for this repentance. and i think it is clear that job’s nihilistic desires are refuted. but you also have to ask why job is the one who in the end gets to hear and see God while his friends don’t. and that has to go back to his unwillingness to settle for easy answers, his wrestling, his saying “no!” to the silence of God. job is not the faithful one because all of his questioning and complaining is right, but because some of it is, and because he doesn’t give up on it; refusing to accept domesticating theological “truths” that contradict his raw experience (job calls these “proverbs of ashes” 13:12). he’s the bluesman of the hebrew scriptures who has “tuned his harp to mourning” 30:31. he’s done with repression, telling the whole truth as he sees it like the bleeding woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. his faith is sustained by that primal groan that is now the groan of all creation. job reveals his faithfulness by loosing hope in everything except a direct confrontation with the creator. though believing God will kill him for trying, it is his only chance at salvation, “for the godless would not dare come before God” (13:16) it is job’s risk, bordering on blasphemy, that opens him up to the encounter with God in the storm.

primaltruth
It is interesting that there are questions that were unanswerable for Job in hearing from Yahweh, and yet the scriptures after that time do deal with answers to them. I think of the questions for why injustice in the world, and what in the end does a human come to. And yet although the events of Job were to early for those answers, the book yet deals with the disclosure of God as Maker and the one involved in the care of all the life and systems of the world, without special emphasis on humanity, more than any other writing in the Bible. And yet human originated civilization still does not have endorsement as such from the Bible.
There could be better ongoing dialogue for discussions like this through forums, with more than response to essays, mostly critiques of other writing. But are those who used to use the forums that were available before not involved with Jesus Radicals now, and when forums are again available for use as then. Do I need to receive communication for it? I gladly would. And Travis did once send a message to me. Thanks Travis. There should be something that would work.
Primal truth
positiveprimitivistradchristian.freeforums.org

Chris Grataski
thanks for this. you’ve knit together specific passages, and done so in a way that calls on the imagination to engage with the text… out beyond the reach of conventional theology (which is obsessed with theodicy and other fool’s errands) and this is essential.

Chris Grataski
that response was to Dr. Ransom

Janedoe
Who created the art work shown in the article ?
ward
Andy,
Per the discussion in the comments above regarding Jesus, humanity, and creation;
Doesn’t Jesus expressly place humanity in the context of creation (as opposed to civilization) when he teaches in Matthew 6: 19-34;
“19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,[c] your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are unhealthy,[d] your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Do Not Worry
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[e]?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
It seems to me that Jesus is expressly directing people that wish to be in tune with god to just walk away and enter the Kingdom of Heaven – it is at hand after all. Its just that people are not open to it; are blind so to speak.
Whether or not one takes Jesus as an green anarchist, I think we have to acknowledge that he is addressing man because man is using language and engaging in human communication. Thus, it is incorrect to suggest that because Jesus is addressing human concerns and condition that he is therefore, “human centric”. He is playing to his audience.

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Creation Theology in the Book of Job

Andy Alexis-Baker

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