Arthur (Avraham Yizhak) Green defines himself as a neo-Hasidic Jewish theologian. Hasidism, as he sees it, is an approach to religion that begins with the prophet’s intoxicating and transformative insight that “The whole world is filled with God’s glory (Isa. 6:3). One whose inner eye is open sees the natural world as radiant with sparks of divine presence. These are to be discovered (even in the most unlikely places!) and lovingly embraced, to be reunited with their Source, the oneness of all being or Y-H-W-H.
In such a Judaism, creation is interpreted as emanation, the constant flow of divine existence from the One into the endless variety of existing forms, each of which bears God’s presence. Such an understanding of creation, read in tandem with post-Darwinian scientific understandings of evolution, is a vital part of theology in the twenty-first century, when religion’s most essential task will be that of helping to change human attitudes toward the natural environment of which we are a part. The task of contemporary theology is to overcome its onetime hostility toward the Darwinian narrative, reframing it as the setting for religious wonder, appreciating it as the greatest of all religious dramas, the unfolding of divinity into life itself.
—By Munjed M. Murad