by Gianni Gennari
4*/ Thinking about faith
A step forward. To "believe" you need something to rely on and trust, and therefore a "communication", a word to listen to or the experience of an event to take note of. Listening therefore, and the experience gained in life, are at the origin of believing. This is why at the end of our second meeting I recalled a book, "Hearers of the Word", by the theologian Karl Rahner: our belief, in the strong sense that is that of "faith", includes someone who "speaks", someone who "works ” and respectively someone who “listens” and someone who “sees” and lives an experience, a life encounter. Therefore: speak, listen, see and understand. This is man's profession: it is us with our lives that are at issue.
We also saw last time that "belief", in the true and strong sense, offers to our free choice the proposal of the ultimate and full meaning of life: it is not useful - faith - for anything worldly, it does not give greater scientific knowledge, not even greater technical powers, but the ultimate meaning of everything. Man is by nature one who can listen, he can see the events of life, and if someone speaks to him, if he sees some important event he can respond, both with words and with life.
But when it comes to faith - we are always on the "Belief" - who in history has spoken to man, and who possibly presented himself to him?
Here is the big and decisive leap. To the word “I believe” we add “in God”.
Human philosophy, the intellectual research of the wise, can come to think that a superior Being exists, and then to hypothesize that if this Being wanted to speak, we men would be capable of listening to its voice, that is, "the word" pronounced for us in our story, and then to respond.
It is the basis of the statement that begins our “Creed”. We have heard it said in human words that in the history of men at a certain point a voice manifested itself that "revealed" its existence as the basis of theirs. He spoke, he manifested himself as "God" and "Creator", and since the life of men is also marked by difficulties, illnesses, violence and death itself, he also presented himself as a loving Father and savior of those who listen to him the voice and carry out his “words”, his commands. In the Bible the commandments are called “the words.” He spoke to the men who listened, then they obeyed both by telling each other what He said and did for them, first in words from generation to generation and then gradually also in writing, and by carrying out in history what He ordered .
it is the announcement of the existence of God the creator and of the salvation offered to his creatures in a "book" that we call the Bible. From it arises in the historical reality of men and peoples, the possibility of the beginning and transmission of the Jewish-Christian faith. He who spoke to our Fathers is God, the only God and Creator of everything.
So our "Bible", the book of books, begins with an ancient, primitive story, rich in symbols and images that touch the imagination of ancient peoples, simple and at the same time mysterious, which stimulates our curiosity with rich and of different origins in ancient cultures, but which - and they are the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis - essentially affirm that He, God, is "creator of Heaven and Earth" (the very beginning of our 'Creed'), that is of all that exists, that He created everything "good" - stated several times in chapter I - and that He completed all of His creation with the reality of "Man", that He made "male and female", and that just as male and female man is a "very similar image" of Him, creator of everything, who is all good, and with man becomes even better, indeed "very good". it is the final outcome of creation.
The story of the beginnings of our faith
It is worth going and rereading them, the first chapters of Genesis. And so in the first we will find that with a specific scheme the story presents us with all things - the sky and the earth - and then lists them with a sequence of 4 plus 4 plus 1. If readers can, take the Bible in hand, in the chapter one from Genesis.
The Creation of all (Genesis 1).
The first sequence is of separations, the second of filling the first: the darkness separated from the light (n.1), the waters above (n. 2) from those below (n. 3) and the waters below from the earth (No. 4). These 4 things must be filled with 4 other creatures: the light is filled with sun and stars (n. 5), the waters above the vault of the sky are filled with birds (n. 6), the waters below with fish (n. 7) and the land of animals and plants (n. 8). Finally, out of series, at number 9 follows the creation of man, male and female and as such a "very similar image" of God. A precise scheme, in the story of the old man who instructs the little Jew, to make it clear to him that God he really created everything…A real catechism lesson with a stratagem intended to be imprinted in the memory. An example to understand: when we teach children the cadence of the days of the months we use a special nursery rhyme: 30 days in November, with April, June and September, there is one of 28, all the others have 31!
Precisely so, the first story of the reality of God the creator, schematic and specifically organized to encourage catechesis in the family, made specifically to make it clear into the mind of the young Jew that God is the only creator of everything, that everything is good, and that the maximum goodness of creation is manifested in the reality of man as male and female, a true image very similar to the Creator himself...
The story of man (made of earth) and woman (mother of life) (Genesis 2).
The book then follows, rich in images and fantasies, probably much older from a historical point of view, the second narrative of the creation of man and woman, from the dust that becomes clay and then animated by the "breath" of God the creator, with the male man in first place, called “Adam” because he is made of earth (Adamàh) and the female man taken from him, called “Eve” because she is the author of life (Hawwàh). But it is a repetition of what was already read in the 1st chapter.
Where do the evils of the world come from? (Genesis 3-10).
So? Then it should be kept in mind that the following chapters, from 3 to 10, present a single theme. To the statement in the chapter. 1, that everything is good, and in the end that everything is very good, the spontaneous question follows: but then where does evil come from, where does death come from, where does illness come from, where does enmity come from, where does hatred come from? , whence the hardness of toil, whence the pain? And here is the biblical story of the sin of Adam and Eve, the fact of the earth and the mother of the living, who want to replace God by taking control of good and evil by listening to God's adversary (Hassatàn: the adversary who stands against God) and hence death (“You will die of death!”), the pains of childbirth, and fratricide, and the fatigue of work, and the rebellion of nature, and the dispersion of languages like the Tower of Babel , and finally the revolt of nature which threatens with the flood to erase humanity... is the imaginative explanation, but essential to faith and hope of the prevalence of good and salvation, why God does not resign himself, and as at the end of c. 3 promised the victory of good through the fruit of the Woman, in c. 11 the definitive call begins, with the story of Abraham, the father of all believers...
I know I've put a lot of irons in the fire. I ask those who read to have patience: perhaps to have the biblical text in front of them and to think about it. Next time we will start from Abraham, then Moses, and the definitive Covenant: the one which through many events and many ways, as the Letter to the Hebrews will say, has reached us in Jesus Christ... The whole journey is still ahead. That's enough for this time.