Ever thought of watching Genesis as a historical movie whose female director is God? Probably not, but that is the creative strategy utilized by the ever imaginative Robert Farrar Capon who has for 37 years been trying to get Christians to revise some of their stodgy and often wrong-headed understandings of God, the Trinity, the Bible, and Jesus Christ. With a little help from Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and many poets, Capon presents his theological take on the first three chapters of Genesis. From the get-go, the author makes it clear that God saw the creation as very good. And that includes human beings. "We're all fine wines in God's cellar. He has all of eternity to give us the aging we deserve." That quote is only one example out of many that leap off these pages, just as a startling image in a movie would.
While many gloomy souls continually harp on sin and degradation, Capon prefers to emphasize love: "God makes the world not out of necessity but by a divine Whim, and the world he makes is a whimsically romantic place. We're all crazy about each other because we're made in the image of Someone who's been crazy about us." There is a playfulness in the creativity of the Trinity and in the way the world has been set up.
Capon has some profound things to say about death, which he sees not as a curse but as a blessing. In a number of meditations on the ecology of creation, he spins out comments on free will and God's responsibility for both good and evil as part and parcel of his hands-off management of the world. Best of all, Capon celebrates grace as the first and the last word in this movie that has a happy ending written into it.
