The practice of creation

“It is widely held that creation became a crucial claim of Israel’s faith in exile, when Gen. 1:1-2:4a is commonly dated. This setting for creation faith suggests that affirmations of creation as an ordered, reliable arena of generosity is a treasured counter to the disordered experience of chaos in exile. If this critical judgment is accepted, creation then is an ‘enactment,’ done in worship, in order to resist the negation of the world in exile. As a consequence, creation is not to be understood as a theory or as an intellectual, speculative notion, but as a concrete life-or-death discipline and practice, whereby the peculiar claims of Yahweh were mediated in and to Israel.”

—Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 533.