TOHU VA BOHU | The Word Made Fresh | Genesis 1:1-5

Believe it or not but the concept of "creation out of nothing" (or in fancy terms, "creation ex nihilo") is completely unbiblical. It's all right there in the second verse of the Bible: "The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God sept over the face of the waters."

Creation is not a beast to be tamed. The chaos doesn’t always need order. Sometimes we just need to shift our perspective, take off the lenses of Creation ex Nihilo that we didn’t even know we’ve been wearing, that “abiding western dominology” and see the beauty that is always and already here, the spirit of God hovering over the deep and anointing all who wear the mark of chaos.

Or as Dr. Catherine Keller writes in her book, The Face of the Deep A Theology of Becoming, “The abiding western dominology can with religion sanction identify anything dark, profound, or fluid with a revolting chaos, an evil to be mastered, a nothing to be ignored. 'God had made us master organizers of the world to establish a system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples.' From the vantage point of the colonizing episteme, the evil is always disorder rather than unjust order; anarchy rather than control, darkness rather than pallor. To plead otherwise is to write 'carte blanche for chaos.' Yet those who wear the mark of chaos, the skins of darkness, the genders of unspeakable openings -- those Others of Order keep finding voice. But they continue to be muted by the bellowing of the dominant discourse.”

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[robertw]

My Spirit fiecely latches on to this phrase like it innately knows it in a profoundly intimate way..My mind lags somewhat behind in humble ignorance being trapped in my humanity. Thanks for posting this extremely enlightening video.

[Digivangelism]

What a great time to find beauty in the chaos...😜 My Old Testament professor in Seminary looooved teaching on this phrase. Thanks for this!

[Incredisuper]

This is very interesting. What would you say the act of letting there be light means for the beauty within tohu va bohu?

[smyleegrl]

Thank you, I’m just starting to studying. This second verse just blew me away!

[whowereweagain]

"the state of things in the infinite future is death, the nothingness in which consists of the absolute triumph of law and the absence of all spontaneity" -- CS Peirce

[ravensetc]

I got to this video from the hebrew on the EP Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada from Godspeed You! Black Emperor. good stuff

[jenn]

🤯 That was a real paradigm shift, thank you! Also, where did you go the rest of Advent? I was a little worried about you as you seemed to suddenly stop making videos right in the middle. Hope all is well with you and your family.

[ranger-uwgw]

If you consider God as nothing then yes..creation is created out of nothing..
But tohu and bohu or formless and void could have been ancient rhythmic sounds that stirred in the bosom of infinity as the first germinal traces of cosmic ideas..swirling and churning as primordial elements in the imagination of All Being..then the Spirit hovers over the face of the deep to bring forth those inner stirrings of Gods imagination..bringing these ideas out of the rythmic ancient sound vibrations and frequencies of chaos and yet to be manifest substance out of the void..
I'm really just playing here as i don't think any of us really know what it was truly like

[timhandley]

this very old false teaching just buys into a modern paradigm that choas is okay and (almost) God's will which I don't buy, and thankfully neither do other orthodox Christians and the major churches, now or ever. Creation ex-nihilo is part of our inheritance as Judaeo/Christians. It is thoroughly biblical and affirmed by the church's creedal statements and philosophical teaching. We bin it at our peril. Read around this before accepting this 'teaching'

[reverie]

I would like to tell you that you need to think about Jonathan Pageau's argument about turning postmodernism against itself (my comment disappeared because I mentioned content by title). In the watchable production, he describes how a radical acceptance of chaos necessarily opens up the space for death to impose itself as the central aspect of the discourse. This will in turn invite a totalitarian response from order, which is a metaphysical constant, and create a destructive adversarial dialectic between totalitarianism and anarchism. How would you respond to his criticism that can be applied to your notion of seeing the beauty within chaos by letting it be as it is? Isn't the Christian story, and especially Christ's passion, about facing the depths of chaos and ultimately even death by fully accepting their darkest reality, which is symbolically represented as the crucifixion of Christ in the Bible? Do you think Jesus is seeing the beauty of chaos by letting it be as it is when He is dying on the cross?

[Alwizcaliteach]

Genesis 1:2 doesn't necessarily prove God did NOT create something from nothing; Bible states he created the WORLD by speaking it into existence, right? One school of thought is that when the battle in heaven occurred and angels thrown out; the earth was destroyed in the process, hence the command to Adam to RE-plenish the earth. Eh, maybe so maybe not about the re-plenish/earth destroyed theory; but I see no problem with God created from nothing, after all, if he created it from SOME thing, the thing had to come from something else, which came from something else, etc. This was fine back in the day when a cell was thought to simply have a nucleus and some 'plasm, '; but now atheist evolutionists are having to backpedal, as they ALL realize that complex systems--even the proteins which comprise the one-cell bacteria, are complex.

[cubestur]

wow what weird translation are you getting this bink out of? and it ain't nothing... where is tohu wa bohu and the slimy stone and the green string?... where is ruach? it aint blowing in the wind dude... maybe try using a more literal translation process from thw ancient Hebrew...

[whitearmchair]

I heard the title "The Theology of Becoming" and knew immediately it was gonna be gnostic/dialectical trash.

[williamm.]

For any KMFDM fans that land here wondering how to say it: 2m47s

[daveg]

Came across your channel. Will not subscribe or be back. The default position that you espouse is that God is the author of chaos. He is not.