The Doveنموونە

Un-Creation

I doubt I am alone in recalling trying to chase a rainbow (who didn’t want that pot of gold?), but alas, it never did me any good. Now, however, turning my attention to that multicoloured wonder, the symbol of the Noahic covenant, does me a lot of good.

As children we learn how the animals went in two by two (hurrah, hurrah); post Covid, we may have a new appreciation for how hard lockdown on a lifeboat must have been; post Hollywood movie, we may have had some questions and felt the need to fact-check the source material.

The reality is that this great Kids' Church story, which has inspired many a Sunday school session, song and piece of art, deals with very adult, difficult themes, ones that we oftentimes neglect. What is actually happening here is that God is making good his creation gone-bad: dealing with sin and dealing out judgement is central.

In the Garden, things went badly wrong, and from Eden to Noah, there have been generations of corruption. A sequence of sin given time to spiral, allowing things to go from bad to worse. Genesis documents some of the evil that humanity is capable of: it’s violent and vicious, cruel and godless, and it’s gotten so bad that there is a need for God’s Judgement to intervene.

The chaos waters contained at creation are therefore unleashed, and the fountains of the great deep are allowed to burst forth, and the windows of the heavens opened like a faucet on full, and rain – lots of rain – fell. Everything that had the breath of life, the ruach, in its nostrils, all that were not on the ark, died.

As theologian John Goldingay summarises, ‘Bringing about the flood was a moment of un-creation', as God uncontained what he had hitherto contained and took the breath he had hitherto given, but God did not leave it there: 'God now begins the moment of re-creation.’

God had intervened and brought about an act of un-creation: a flood of judgement to lead the world back to its pre-creation setting. But God had not abandoned his people. Despite the evil of the world, God remembered Noah. He sent a wind, a ruach – a word translated as ‘Spirit’ in Genesis 1 – over the waters, and as the Spirit-wind blew, the waters receded.

Judgement over, it was time for re-creation.