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Christianity Today, June (Web-only), 2009 |

Soulwork

Chaos Theology

Finding hope in the midst of the terror of creation.

Mark Galli | posted 6/18/2009 11:32AM

The cover story for the July/August issue of The Atlantic is titled, "The Ideas Issue: How to Fix the World." The article addresses, among other things, the housing mess, the Afghanistan war, the collapsing ...

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David A. Taylor Jr.

Posted: June 28, 2009 1:32 AM


On day six of Creation Week everything was "very good". Sin separated us from God. Jesus brought us back to Him. This article is incorrect on many points.

Terry W. Spencer

Posted: June 23, 2009 9:31 PM


Thought provoking, unsettling. Especially the need to shake loose of a merely sentimental faith. I'm not sure using Genesis 2:1 for the springboard for this discussion is sound. The "was" in that verse probably carries the sense of "became". There is great power in the story of God bringing order out of disorder. Great comfort also. I doubt God ever created disorder, though.

t	Posted: June 22, 2009 4:07 PM

We are truly separated from God by our sin. He is inaccessible to us because we cannot see him nor hear him anymore while we desire our own self and desire lifting ourselves to heaven. Just as Adam and Eve were blinded to the adorable attributes of God when they were guilty, so we are separated from God. In that sense he is inaccessible: Blame it on us. If we are in any way proud of our knowledge or status or sanctity or salvation or purity then we take the Kingdom by robbery. If we want to receive the Kingdom properly and honestly then we must humbly wait for the graces of God.

so_free_me

Posted: June 19, 2009 7:36 PM

"We come to know God most deeply when we begin by acknowledging his utter inaccessibility." Sorry I don't buy that. For some reason God wants to have fellowship with me and you. As unfathomable as that is, it is true. And I can assure you my fellowship with God did not start with me acknowledging how inaccessible he is. Surely Adam walking in the garden with God was not pondering the utter inaccessiblility of God, nor Abraham nor Moses, nor Mary (any or all of them). This is just wrong.

Brother Spence

Posted: June 19, 2009 6:58 PM

Mark has given us enough in this article to enourage us to read more. If the article is confusing it's probably becaus we are looking at it with our western logic instead of the eastern Christianity Mark aludes to. Our western theology or kataphatic theology is our affective response to God using our rational faculties enlightened by faith whereas apophatic theology is simple faith in God, a resting in God's presence. To me we live in a world of chaos but we are not of that chaos... The presence of God dwelling within us enables us to function as the children of God. But the enabling is God's work and not our work... As Mark relates: "He is infinite, we are finite; while we can know him truly in Christ, we can only know him partially, so partially that it can seem like we're looking into darkness." In "The Cloud of Unknowing" we have a vision of God's presence within that cloud and we too are in that cloud with God but God is inaccessable to us yet He brings us "peace and order."

Gregg

Posted: June 19, 2009 11:03 AM

The problem with apophatic theology, and eastern philosophy as a whole, is that God is not inaccessible. God is light and we are the ones who hide. This is clear as the Spirit creates and brings order – God is a God of order. God creates in His image and who is hiding? Adam and Eve. It is the sin that brings hiding and inaccessibility. God is seeking and totally accessible even after the fall in one of the saddest stories in scripture. Adam and Eve hiding from the God of the universe who desires fellowship. He sent his son that we might have fellowship with the God who is light and His Son Jesus Christ. Is God infinite and we finite? Absolutely. Is God therefore inaccessible? Absolutely not. The darkness and inaccessibility is our problem not as a result of the nature and character of the God of light who desires fellowship.

chaliapin

Posted: June 19, 2009 10:22 AM

When a potter takes a lump of clay and puts it on his wheel, the clay has no form. That by this definition is chaos. When God created the cosmos he first created the material. Then He formed it. To us that first material was chaos. To God it was the raw material from which He formed the cosmos. The entire article is one of someone using semantics to appear knowledgable. If we spent less time trying to understand God (something that by definition is impossible) and spent more time understanding one another, we might be able to better carry out God's purpose of caring for His world. He gave us the raw material for a Garden of Eden, and we have made great progress in restoring it chaos. How long will it be before someone pushes a button that starts an atomic Armegeddon that totally destroys man? That time is coming closer every day. We are returning God's creation to chaos.

NS	Posted: June 19, 2009 10:21 AM


I'm surprised the author did not reference Amos 3:6, "shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?" (KJV). "Evil" is also translated as "chaos," "disaster," "calamity," and "affliction" in other editions.

Jim M Roane, PhD

Posted: June 19, 2009 10:00 AM


Apophatic theology comingles, it seems, the chaos of creation with a subsequently intervening evil. Chaos is adjectival; whereas, evil is subjective. Christ (praise his name) has conquered both.

sptrick

Posted: June 19, 2009 10:00 AM


Chaos is a human term. Is anything chaotic from God's standpoint?

Kris	Posted: June 19, 2009 7:27 AM

I'm finding the article confusing. The examples of chaos in the beginning of the article seem like evil (certainly in the Coen Bros. movies mentioned). But the chaos of creation - and the profound mystery of God -- well, certainly not evil. I'm distracted, really, by the statement that we're living in chaos. Here, in the U.S., it seems like we're mostly living in order, with most people obeying most laws most of the time. We go to work, able to expect things to be pretty much like yesterday. Things feel less certain than a few years ago, but proportionally, it seems we have more order than chaos.

mike ross

Posted: June 18, 2009 10:38 PM

It is interesting that this being a Protestant magazine (not pretensions there..!) would forget the chaos and bloodshed after the 'reformation' of the Roman Catholic sect, in Germany after Luther, the Arch Protester brought 'new light' to the Germanic peoples. Every kind of sectarian division was unleashed upon us, and via the ancestors of our homeland, through this so-called 'reformation'. Does anyone really know, for sure what the Church was like in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD..? I know that I have experienced a few of the sects/schisms/cults that reside in America. May Christ God have mercy on us, in our waywardness, arrogance and willful ignorance. +

Paul Julich

Posted: June 18, 2009 10:27 PM


Isaiah 45:18 says "He did not create it to be chaos"

Greg K

Posted: June 18, 2009 9:10 PM

Chaos is a funny thing. We think just because we can put a name to it that it must exist. This entire article is based on the idea the chaos is substantial, that it has some sort of form and substance. But chaos is like shadow. We can see our shadow, and when we run it runs alongside us, and yet a shadow is nothing. It is the mere absence of light, not the presence of anything. Chaos is the absence of order. When we say that chaos is created that violates the very definition of chaos. In turn, to say that God created chaos is akin to saying God created a round square (and that, according to CS Lewis, is nonsense). It is a very good thing to dwell on the mysteriousness of God. At the same time, we need to think deeply about our tools of meditation. When you go out on the water you are only ever as sound as your boat.

Warren

Posted: June 18, 2009 9:06 PM

It seems to me that logically the redemptive characteristic of God is meaningless without something to redeem. That's why as Simon Tugwell seems to argue in The Beatititudes Soundings in Christian Tradition, that evil really has no ontological basis in and of it's self. It is merely a tool, and really because of the good that can come out of evil, evil thus becomes good in at least those circumstances. And also if we really believe God to be totally good and that nothing exists that does not exist in God thus somehow evil has to exist as part of God. Pretty much does a number on dualism.

Tom Tomshany

Posted: June 18, 2009 8:53 PM

This article speaks to all of us---but not just now, but for times past as well. Thank you for inviting us to expand our notions of God, Mark. God is beyond us---that's positive in an emotional sense but negative in a logical sense. And the mystery in that is perfectly okay with me. God will forever be a mystery to human kind, and besides metaphors which are compelling and understandable but potentially verbal traps, so often we rely on negatives to "describe" God. This, to me, relinquishes all the power and glory to God. Fortunately, we also rely on the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, who tried with everything he had to point us the way to God. So you see what wonderful thoughts were provoked by your essay, Mark? Thank you again!

Peter

Posted: June 18, 2009 6:58 PM


Many biblical scholars do not think that Genesis is saying that God created chaos, but that there was chaos. Hebrews has God creating ex nihilo, but Genesis has God creating out of something, a swirling mix of water and other stuff shrouded in darkness. I would not connect that to apophatic theology, which I do think has a point to make.

Vic	Posted: June 18, 2009 5:26 PM

06/18/09 It seems to me that there is some confusion in the article. God is certainly not A GOD OF CHAOS. Human limitations/short-eightedness and sin will inevitably lead to choas and error in judgement, but God is always in control. Now, God committed himself to allowing EVERY HUMAN BEING the freedom to choose -no matter the choice- because God will use even the wrong and terrible choices to His glory. Job's situation is a good illustration: God wanted Satan to observe how ONE MAN/Job can withstand all the chaos so that others may come to see God's love and holiness more clearly. In my personal opinion, God keeps trying to convince even Satan that chaos, evil, and rebellion do not lead to the insitigators' desired or hoped-for results in the long term; because they do not fit in God's PERFECT PLANS for His creation.

David

Posted: June 18, 2009 5:21 PM

"This is the great insight of Eastern Christianity and what is called apophatic theology: We come to know God most deeply when we begin by acknowledging his utter inaccessibility." This is patently incorrect and unhelpful to the vast majority of Christians, be they Eastern or Western. Apophatic theology is helpful to describe God by way of negations, but such a method eventually requires a positive theology. We dont know God merely by way of negation, but of confessing and affirming who He is and what He has done for us.

Lastdazeman

Posted: June 18, 2009 5:05 PM


But there is order in the chaos, see fractal geometry and quantum mechanics.

pete Benson, editor UNITYINCHRIST.COM

Posted: June 18, 2009 4:34 PM

Good timing this article. I will be putting up a expository sermon series on the Beatitudes, and I'm transcribing an excellent one on peace, and the pastor is make a lot of points, some of which are mentioned in this article. The sermon I'm working on now is "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the friend of God." They should be up on the site by the beginning of July, just check out the section on Matthew. This world offers nothing but the absence of peace, which is basically chaos.

mali	Posted: June 18, 2009 3:53 PM

"But in either case, we are assured that the Spirit is hovering over the turbulence, preparing to create, sooner or later, something remarkable." Love that last sentence! Isn't that exactly what He does with us? He either creates turbulence in our lives, or at least allows it, so that He can create, sooner or later, something remarkable -- something that changes us into the likeness of Christ -- the culmination of our becoming a new creation/creature in Him (2 Cor 5:17)? In fact, even Jesus had His own turbulence (although, unlike us, He walked in peace through it all), in order that the remarkable way of salvation could be birthed!

Colleen

Posted: June 18, 2009 3:17 PM

Dane, what would you call the Tower of Babel? That most certainly was not the work of terrorists...and it most certainly did not lack confusion...in fact, divinely inspired confusion was the goal. We may have an annointing and know truth, but we are merely humans with feet of clay, sheep in the Shepherd's field [note: we aren't cunning wolves or sly snakes...we're sheep..that should be cause for pause when we start thinking we're all that and set apart from the other sheep that surround us...in fact what sets us apart is that we have a Shepherd!...], and even the best of us (if there is such a bird) have a long ways to go.

Dane	Posted: June 18, 2009 2:53 PM


God is not the author of confusion. If God creates chaos, then it's not a confusing chaos. It certainly might be mystery and unfathomable - but not confusion. We have the mind of Christ and we have an anointing and we all know the truth and it teaches us to abide in Christ. This is not confusion. Terrorist create confusion. God doesn't.

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