by Gianni Gennari

“I believe”, and then “I believe in God”: so from the beginning of these dialogues, then up until now “Almighty Father”, with the strong warning that this “Father” is only a consequence of the revelation of the incarnate “Son”, not spontaneous name given to the unknown by our human feeling of inferiority produced by the experience of limits and that the "omnipotent" is not the immeasurable expansion of the reverse of our failures and our impotence of knowledge and power, which in the religions invented by men produce "myths" and "rites", but perception profoundly changed by listening and remembering the reality revealed and given in our history with the Son Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, dead and risen.
A special Father, therefore, certainly not in the image of what our often contradictory experience calls "fatherhood". It is not for nothing that every religion invented by men, from Persia, to Egypt, to Greece, to Rome, had always led to imagining the paternity of the divinity as jealous of the growth of children, rival and hostile to them. The divinity conceived in this way by us required the sacrifice of what was dearest, the firstborn, and the offering of all the firstfruits.
It is appropriate to remember, here, that chapter 22 of the Book of Genesis is not "new" because Abraham thinks that Isaac's sacrifice is a divine will, but because his "new" God, who called him to start from Ur and set out towards the future he refuses the sacrifice of his firstborn son, and thus opens up that prospect which the Fathers of the Church definitively described thus: what God did not ask of Abraham, he did for us, sacrificing his Son on the tree, the Cross, and on the mountain, Calvary... No rivalry, therefore, of this "Father" towards the "children". No fear of a "castrator father" who limits the fertility of his children. Freud's reading is completely out of place in the revelation of divine paternity truly offered to us in the incarnate Word, the only begotten Son, Jesus of Nazareth who calls us brothers and also makes us true "children of God". No "opium of the people", if some clarification were still needed: the greatness of God is not built on our misery, but is given to it and transforms it into a very real perspective and hope in Himself.
God “Creator”:
the biblical story of the “beginning”
And here we are at the next theme, holding "the Book" (the Bible) in our hands right at the first word (Gen. 1, 1), "Bereshìt" (at the beginning). Rosh, in Hebrew, is always principle, beginning, head, absolute beginning: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth".
The entire first chapter recounts the action of God the creator in a certain, highly studied way, and the second chapter will tell the same thing in a different way, focusing particularly on the way in which man and woman were created. , while the first chapter simply described the fact with synthetic imagination, after the initial substantial statement.
I would ask the reader to have the biblical story before him, from verse 1 to 26. It seems like a "fable", and in some respects it is, but not in the sense that it tells false, mythical things, fruit of human imagination, but rather in the sense that it's about putting the statements together in a certain way, with a certain sequence, so that those who listen to the story can form a fundamental idea of ​​the whole...
A small example, as in brackets, to understand better. We all remember the refrain of the measurement of the times of the year, the months: "30 days in November, with April, June and September, there is one of 28, all the others have 31". What purpose does it serve? To make us understand the whole year in an easy sequence, which can be assimilated by heart. Here: let's imagine that the elderly patriarch, the father of the family, the Jewish grandfather at the beginning of the millennium before Christ tells his grandchildren the epic story of their people, and obviously starts from the beginning: "Bereshit!"
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” “Heaven and earth” for Jewish cosmogony were – and are – everything. Everything comes from God, who "creates". The Hebrew verb used is “baràh”, a technical term used only for creation…
Everything comes from God, but the text continues that this "everything" was, always "in the beginning", desert and emptiness - "tòhu wabhòu" says the Hebrew text - chaos and confusion, a disordered and dark abyss, but...But the text continues : “and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
The beginning of everything, therefore, from the creative action of God, who does not transform something that already exists like ours, but produces it through his power.
And then? Then the description of an orderly and precise sequence, made in practice of nine divine actions, all made of a word that orders. The verb used is “amàr”, that is, to say, to speak, to pronounce an order in words. The text is identical: “And God said”. And the nine actions produce nine realities, in perfect correspondence of pairs, four in a row, followed by a final reality, which in turn is already a pair, on its own...
A cleverly precise construction: the fifth corresponds in content to the first place, the sixth to the second, the seventh to the third, the eighth to the fourth, and everything concludes with product number nine.
And “God said”: number one, the light and number five the sun, moon and stars. Number two, the waters above and number six the birds, which fill the space above. Number three, the waters below and number seven the fish that fill the seas, lakes and rivers, namely the waters below. Number four the dry land divided by the waters already created and number eight the animals and plants that fill it. All things in heaven and earth created by the creative word of God, who sees that all of them “are good” – “Wajar Elohìm ki tob (And God saw that it was good)”. In last place, the ninth that crowns them all, the word changes: “naaseh et haadam…
Let us make man in our very similar image, let us make him male and female." And here, only here, “God saw that he was very good.” The terms used for this last formula çelém and demut, express precisely the creature's response to the reality of the Creator who can then, on the seventh day, finally rest.
Everything comes from God, Creator and Lord: this is the meaning of the story of the first chapter of the Bible, everything, really everything, and the judgment on everything is unilaterally "good", or rather in consideration of the creature, the man male man female couple "very Good". The grandfather (master, rabbi) has finished the story of the origins, making sure that the memory of his grandson disciple can remember every single creature without losing sight of the unity of the revelation of the origin and value of the whole. This is the catechetical explanation of the ancient wisdom of the chosen people, who found in Abraham the progenitor precisely in the memory of the initial Adam, the male female man produced by the earth, "adamàh"...
The first lesson of the biblical story has ended: to the glory of God, our Father in Christ and Creator of the universe world.
From here we will continue our discussion. Happy Easter belated, but always necessary: ​​every day of the "new creation" is Easter day, and if it is not every day, the calendar day arrives in vain, in which I write these simple lines. Until next time.