Radical Amazement
In the beginning God created . . . Genesis 1:1 NASB
God created – We have often heard the statement that the Hebraic cosmogony is different from all other ancient accounts of creation. It lacks the explicit or implicit overtones of violence, sexuality and conflict, as other ancient accounts include. It emphasizes the particular creation of Woman. No other account contains this detail And it conveys a divine sense of carefully conceived order overcoming primal chaos and fear. These differences are crucial in our attempts to understand the biblical point of view. But, perhaps, they are the most important ones for us. Perhaps we need to recognize how different the Genesis opening statement is from all the Western concepts of the beginning.
“Man has shown two different attitudes toward facts: acceptance and wonder. Acceptance stops with whatever is perceived and sees no good reason for going beyond it. The object is admitted as given (datum) and that is all there is to it. Wonder, on the other hand, is an attitude which far from being set at ease by a fact, takes it as a stimulus which points beyond what is immediately given. Such wonder can take different forms: it can become the starting point of science, which looks beyond individual facts to the laws they exemplify, or it can become the starting point of religion, which begins with wonder not only as the fact itself but at there being any facts and acts of awareness of faith. To science a fact points to its antecedents and consequences; to religion a fact points to the ground and power that stands behind all facts and perceptions. We may call the one kind of wonder curiosity, the other radical amazement.”[1]
“Wonder [as radical amazement] is a reaction to an objective aspect of the world we call the sublime. This is not an aesthetic category, opposed to the beautiful . . . but a transcendental allusiveness to all things; . .”[2]
“To the Biblical man it is never just there as a quality, but appears as a happening, a marvel. It is a way in which the presence of God strikes forth.”[3]
In other words, Genesis 1:1 is not a pre-scientific, naïve Western opening discussion of the casual chain of Being. It isn’t science at all. It is a statement about the unbelievable, indescribable, mysteriously undeniable existence of anything at all, and the equally astonishing claim that the reason there is anything at all is because of God. The Bible opens with a staggering shock to our self-justifying claims about purpose. It says, in neon letters, that God is the sole reason for existence, and because He is, we are utterly dependent upon Him and His graciousness for our very being, in fact, for the very being of everything. That’s where the Bible begins, not with some cosmic explanation of the universe but with a clarion call about God. Heschel calls this radical amazement. Now you know why.
“To be means to be the object of divine concern.”[4]
“The divine concern expresses itself in three different ways, as creation, revelation, and redemption. Creation conceived as a voluntary expressive activity shows concern with that which is coming into being and is maintained. It is not to be confused with the concept of causality in science, but is rather an explanation for the fact that there is a realm of causality.”[5]
Topical Index: Genesis 1:1, radical amazement, cosmogony, creation
[1] Fritz A. Rothschild, “Introduction,” in Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), pp. 12-13.
[4] Fritz A. Rothschild, “Introduction,” in Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 23.
