This is an unusual choice. As Kelsey notes, most theologians use Genesis as the source for creation theology. Humans are created in the image of God. We dwelt in Paradise. There was a primordial fall from grace. We live with the consequences of this fall. Genesis was the framework of my last post, describing how creaturely finitude was exposed by the fall, how the latent potentiality of creaturely contingency became actualized.
In contrast to this move, leaning on the work of Claus Westermann, Kelsey argues that the Genesis account of human origins is biased in ways that makes it ill-suited for theological anthropology. Specifically, Genesis was written to set the stage for God's mighty acts of deliverance in the Torah. Thus, the theological interests of Genesis are soteriological rather than anthropological. Kelsey argues that if we want to explore the Biblical view of human persons we need to look toward Biblical resources that aren't "bent" by soteriological concerns but attend to the experiences of day to day human life within created existence. We find this creation theology in the Wisdom tradition of Scripture, the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Job.
As Kelsey points out, the Wisdom literature lacks the soteriological and cultic concerns of the Torah. There is no story about cosmic origins. There is no primordial fall and lingering curse. There are no grand narratives about God's saving acts in history, like the Exodus. The cultic life of Israel, as set forth in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, is absent or marginalized. Nor is there an eschatological vision of future restoration. What we find in the Wisdom tradition is, instead, just normal, everyday human life, what Kelsey calls the "quotidian."
Step back and take in the implications of this theological move. It's fascinating. When it comes to pondering human existence, what if we started with Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes rather than with Genesis? How might that cause us to rethink the nature of human existence?
Here's one implication: Finitude isn't cursed.
In the last post I tried to connect finitude to the Fall. I did this because, like a lot of you, we take our creation theology from Genesis. But what if this theological habit of ours imports some of the distortions Kelsey is describing? For example, the notion that finitude is cursed. What if, as we see described in the Wisdom tradition, finitude is taken for granted? With no description of cosmic origins or primordial fall, creaturely life within the Wisdom tradition is exactly what it is, no explanations offered. Nor is creaturely existence to be "overcome." Upon being born we simply show up in the middle of finitude. Finitude is a creational given. Contingency is assumed and its origins are not interrogated.
What, then, is Wisdom's position on finitude being either good or bad? The answer Wisdom gives is that creaturely life is a mixed bag. We see this most clearly in Ecclesiastes. We're all familiar with how Ecclesiastes dances between desolation in regards to human finitude and gratitude for the gifts of existence. In the poetic way I've used to describe this, Ecclesiastes dances between sunlight and shadows. Creaturely existence is a positive good, but it is haunted by contingency. As Kelsey describes it, our quotidian existence, being finite, is experienced by us as ambiguous:
"Finite" means "limited." Creaturely being is limited being. This is an ontological claim...
Every particular physical creature making up the quotidian is finite in at least two ways. First are the intrinsic limits to which creatures are subject. Every physical creature is a complex set of interrelated energy systems that is inherently subject over time to progressive disintegration. Energy becomes progressively less organized and eventually dissipates altogether, and the creature ceases to be...Particular physical creatures' finitude is a function, second, of extrinsic limits to which they are subject...They impinge on one another in rule-governed ways that inevitably involve the change and eventual destruction of each of them. The realm of physical creatures, which is the context into which we are born, is inherently accident-prone, as creatures inescapably damage one another...
One consequence of the finitude of creatures is that the quotidian is inherently ambiguous experientially. This ambiguity is rooted ontologically--that is, in the creatureliness of the quotidian....Hence what God relates to creatively, ourselves and our everyday world, may be experienced by us in delight and pleasure as, from our perspective, (relatively) good for us. On the other hand, the finitude of creation means that creatures are inevitably vulnerable to damage, deterioration, and destruction. The context into which we are born simply is the condition of the possibility of our undergoing hurt, lost, and death. Hence, that which God creates, ourselves and our everyday world, may be experienced, from our perspective, as threatening to us. On the pleasure-pain axis, that which God creates is profoundly ambiguous for us experientially.
Again, Wisdom just assumes all this about life. No explanation is given about why existence is ambiguous. Nor is this ambiguity described as comprehensively accursed. And there is no eschatological vision about how this ambiguity will be, one day, overcome and escaped. The mix of good and bad we experience in life, joy and sorrow, is just what it is. Life was like this yesterday. Life is like this today. And life will be like this tomorrow. Finitude just is.
Now, how does a creation theology rooted in Wisdom recast what we call "the problem of evil"?
Again, since we tend to take our beats from Genesis, we frame finitude soteriologically. That is, finitude enters as a curse, persists as a problem, and will be eschatologically overcome. Eschewing this soteriological framework, Wisdom views finitude not as a problem but as an ontological given. True, as we see in Ecclesiastes, this givenness presents challenges. But the problem isn't ontological, a quarrel with finitude itself, but is, rather, moral and existential in nature. Finitude sets the table for the human drama and we're called to act wisely within this drama. In this view, there really isn't a "problem of evil." Again, as I've describe in this series, if "evil" is just another name for "finitude," and finitude is not questioned in Wisdom, then the presence of "evil" isn't rendered problematic. As Kelsey observes, "I question whether much of what has traditionally been classified as 'natural' or 'metaphysical' evil ought to be theologically named 'evil' at all."
To be sure, after floating that assessment Kelsey goes on to reflect upon gratuitous and horrendous evil. Though a lot of this, like abuse, torture, and genocide, can be attributed to human actors. Still, there are natural evils that create horrors. But the reframing of evil by the Wisdom literature remains. If finitude, in all its ambiguity, is simply a given, then the question shifts away from finitude's origins to our moral and existential response to finitude, even in it's "evil" manifestations. Focus shifts away from abstract ontological questions about theodicy toward wise responses to the ambiguities of our quotidian existence. Wisdom asks us to relate to finitude as finitude.
What would such a posture look like? We'll turn to those questions next and bring Albert Camus back into the conversation.
