Status Updates From Creation: A Guide for the P...

Is a bit of a mind bender. Like you’re playing in a kiddie pool, only to discover it’s on the high diving board and some British bloke with bushy eyebrows has scooted you to the edge with his foot and says, “Time to learn how to swim, innit?”

The remaining chapters are full-blown radical orthodoxy. To go from similarities between Genesis and the ANE to “In the relation between God and creation, there is nothing held in common between the terms, and neither is there a mediating act besides the very act of creation ex nihilo. God and creation do not share existence, or being in common, because God is existence itself, in which Creation participates.”

I’ll just say, I shouldn’t have been surprised by this book, because I know Simon, but I am surprised. It’s the arrangement of material that makes it surprising. The first chapter draws connections between the Genesis creation account and the ANE, but then shows how Genesis stands on its own in many respects, with interest especially in purposiveness. It felt too easy. Admiral Ackbar at my side…