The final symptom of the malady of the world is the Tower of Babel. This is a sly dig at Israel’s neighbours in Mesopotamia, who boasted that their temple towers reached into heaven. Genesis is suggesting that, far from being a source of pride and a symbol of religious potency, these towers are sinful and destructive. In the Genesis scheme of things, the tower and the city are selfish and self-aggrandising: human beings are meant to be spreading out over the whole earth to be stewards and guardians of God’s creation, not huddling together in a self-serving, inward-looking circle. Their instructions, when they are created in chapter one, is to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it”, and this blueprint is repeated after the flood. The words have a slightly sinister ring to us, but in the context of Genesis, this is how human beings co-operate with God in the world.
It is very striking how Genesis sees the tragedy that has befallen creation as all-encompassing. Because human beings were made “in the image” of God, they have a real capacity to affect creation, and so their destructiveness does not just impact on them.
I liked the way she expressed this sad turning point:
[blockquote] So Genesis paints the heart-breaking picture of the world, with human beings alienated from one another and from the non-human creation. God has become a mysterious and rather distant figure in this world. Noah and God converse directly, but by chapter 11, generations after Noah, God’s speech is a soliloquy. No one overhears it so, presumably, no one understands God’s actions after Babel.[/blockquote]
I think her ending overstated and thereby perpetuated the bifurcation between salvation from the world and works done to transform it. I realize that she was writing for a secular publication, so she was reaching out to folks who might think that Christians are disinterested “pie in the sky” types. We’re not, but we’re not just do-gooders, either. She comes down a bit much on Abraham as founder of a community and not enough on our “Father in faith” and “friend of God.”
But overall, I liked her treatment of Genesis. By bringing out the divine narrative of our human condition, she can help us help those who are thrown off and discouraged by the particulars of the Bible’s first book.
Boy, Mrs. Williams plays to a hard audience when you read the comments! I thought there were some interesting points she made that the comments in the piece completely ignored.
You want hard audience/belittling: see Thinking Anglicans. It’s a different religion when it comes to the role of the Bible. Basil of Caesarea is praised widely for his Hexameron. Today he’d be judged a ‘silly man with outmoded ideas’ at TA.
#3: The Guardianistas are on the whole an atheistic or agnostic bunch with a reflexive hate of Christianity that liberal Anglicans like Jane Williams’ husband tries to court, with little success until he reverts to standard leftist tropes.
I stopped reading ‘Thinking Anglicans’ a couple years ago because it is neither particularly thinking nor ‘Anglican’. It has about 15-20 regulars, half of them gay or lesbian, and mainly reflects that preoccupation.