Genesis

Written by R. R. Reno Reviewed By Noel Weeks

Source criticism and historical criticism have created a dilemma for how individual Christians and the church use the Bible. How can this poorly-cobbled-together collection of inconsistent traditions speak to us? How can accounts of events that probably did not happen be authoritative? A further dilemma is posed by the charge of bias: none of us reads what the Bible says but rather what our tradition and context dictate it “must” say.

There are many proposed solutions to these challenges. Some dispute the “assured results” of criticism. Another leaves aside the messy issue of textual origins and takes the text received by a particular community as starting point. This commentary attempts a different approach. It takes what it sees as the Nicean theological tradition—the current of theological tradition that flows within churches accepting the Nicean Creed—as the starting point from which to look back upon the text. This accentuates the problem raised above: can the Bible be heard above the tradition?

It also raises the question of whether there is a unified approach flowing from Nicea. With specific reference to a commentary it can be asked another way. Is not looking at the Bible through the lens of tradition a specifically Catholic approach and as such a repudiation of the Protestant assertion of the authority of Scripture over tradition? I ask the question well aware that, while this particular author sits within the Catholic tradition, there are writers within the series who do not. I do not pass judgement on how other writers meet this challenge. Rather I ask whether the Catholic approach of this commentary is fully to be expected in terms of the task.

There is a neither “fish-nor-fowl” aspect to the work. There is no thorough consideration of how the Ancient Church viewed Genesis. If Augustine were not extensively cited, that would be a very minor part of the commentary. Protestant views are occasionally given, but one of the two references to Calvin occurs on the same page (p. 154) where he contends that the church’s sacraments continue Christ’s priestly office—hardly a Calvinistic view. Yet to be fair, while the institutional Catholic church is defended at many points, an ecumenically inclined Catholicism emerges. He declares that both Protestant and Catholic views of justification are correct (p. 160). He strongly affirms the doctrine of election (pp. 217–22) and when he cites the Council of Trent, he interprets it with Augustinian tendencies rather than semi-Pelagian ones.

The most significant—and yet most frustrating—aspect of the commentary is its treatment of the challenge of criticism. It seems as though Reno uncritically accepts the Documentary Hypothesis (e.g., the two creation stories represent P and J [p. 33]). However, he declares that texts that the Documentary Hypothesis views as duplicates are meaningful repetitions (pp. 147, 192, 223). I suspect that this ambiguity can survive because the text serves as a basis from which issues significant for the tradition can be raised, rather than the text being significant in its own right. Further evidence of this is that the commentary deals with selected passages and not the whole text. It often reads more as a set of theological/ethical/philosophical meditations on selected texts than as a commentary. A disappointing result of Reno’s selectivity is that he ignores the sophistication and subtlety of Hebrew biblical narrative, which Alter and others have highlighted.

Is Genesis about events that actually happened? Reno sees eschatology as built into the text and into the purposes of God. He stresses that the blessings that lie before us are real and tangible and not merely spiritualised imagination (p. 177). The logical corollary would seem to be that the beginning was also real and tangible. Yet here he is at his most frustrating; though he never commits himself explicitly, I think he implies that the beginning of Genesis is myth. He does not explain how the real emerges from the non-real. Further, this raises Augustine’s often-quoted philosophical problem with creation as a series of temporally distinct acts, but did the entire “Nicean tradition” see no temporal significance in the original creation? Are we seeing the text through the lens of the Nicean tradition or through the lens of an author trying to balance developed Catholicism and modernity? To add to the confusion, I found some of the discussion of the crucial opening chapters close to incomprehensible. He writes as though he sees God as “ground-of-being” rather than the creator (pp. 33–42). It seems he accepts that Gen 1:2 is a version of the myth where the deity(ies) create(s) out of pre-existing matter, but he then defends ex nihilo creation as implied by the logic of the Bible’s monotheism (pp. 39–46). Is this confusion or the text’s or church’s later view triumphing over original myth? As in the case of source criticism, I was frustrated by Reno’s failure to confront the tension between his beliefs, based on other parts of the text, and the “assured results” of criticism. Yet does the very aim of this set of commentaries imply that tension?

Once the section on origins is passed, there is much interesting reflection on life and reality, even if some seems allegorical. Reno’s connection to other texts is sometimes instructive, sometimes unconvincing. Hence, if one wants the thoughts of an intelligent and sensitive Catholic, this work is valuable. Yet I cannot see it as contributing to an understanding of Genesis. Can we come to an understanding of the text without confronting the issues raised by criticism? I suggest that that is a particularly acute question for Protestants, but the ambiguities of this work raise it for Catholics also.


Noel Weeks

Dr. Weeks is a lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Sydney, and holds degrees in both zoology and theology; his PhD (Brandeis) dealt with some of the Nuzi texts.

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