But Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad points out the uniqueness of the Hebrew Scriptures.218 There we read that creation was the result of one all-powerful God without a rival, who made the world not in the way a warrior wins a battle but more as an artist crafts something of wonder and beauty. As an artist, he creates for the sheer joy of it (Prov 8:27–31). And therefore the world has a pattern to it, a fabric. A fabric is a complex underlying designed order or structure. Biblical wisdom, according to von Rad, is to “become competent with regard to the realities of life.”219 Since the
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