The 1994 preface, briefly considered above, disabused me of that. "The notion of the God who sustains all things, though derived from some common biblical affirmations, is difficult to reconcile with the old mythological image of the divine warrior at combat with the inimical forces."When I picked up this book from Amazon I thought I was purchasing a theodicy. While the God of the Philosophers seems to lead some commentators in the direction of an 'All is God' position, our author will have none of it. Levenson argues that this is not the God of Israel. Why then are they so often forsaken? "The possibility of an interruption in His faithfulness is indeed troubling, and I repeat that I have ventured no explanation for it."The God of the Philosophers, the All, the One, Knows no Other, except nothing (void). Yes, God entered into Covenant with His people.
But the world of the Hebrew Bible did not contain philosophers.Our author also maintains that the biblical understanding is that, "history, no less than nature, slips out of God's control and into the hands of obscure but potent forces of malignancy that oppose everything He is reputed to uphold." Why does this happen? Again, God's Will and Ways are Inscrutable and Mysterious. It is "something - something negative." What? Our author states that for the Jews of those times "it seems more likely they identified 'nothing' with things like disorder, injustice, subjugation, disease and death." If you philosophically identify God with Perfect Being, its opposite is nothing. Why? In the Bible (the O.T.) Gods people want Him to Act, not explain.But theodicy is, above all, an explanation (of evil, suffering, etc.).So, who or what is God acting upon (or against) when He Acts? Chaos! Thus ".the world is good the chaos it replaces or suppresses is evil." Levenson maintains that the 'nothing' (in the biblical doctrine of creation out of nothing) is not mere void, absence, privation.
Our author pointedly denies writing a theodicy in the 1994 preface. For reasons that always remain inscrutable. a dramatic enactment: the absolute power of God realizing itself in achievement and relationship." Omnipotence is not rejected by our author it is just not always enacted by God. Levenson, is both a monotheist and a believer in God's Omnipotence.This is curious because omnipotence is not here conceived as mere fact but, as our author puts it, ".
The Survival of Chaos After the Victory of God Chapter 10: Part I: The Mastery of God and the Vulnerability of Order.Chapter 1: Creation and the Persistence of Evil.
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