I want to write to you about a final consideration of why there is a creation, a sort of completion of the creation narrative that spans the New and Old Testaments.

Initially, the Israelites are a nomadic tribe travelling through the regions of the Middle East but with time, they settle down and control a territory that gives them a national homeland. It is at this time, also, that they start to think about their relationship with God in terms of a permanent location for God among them. This is where the suggestion arises to build a temple where God can abide with them. And the Israelites build the Temple. They do realize, as Solomon so aptly puts it, the Temple cannot hold Him who created the universe but this sense is lost as the Temple takes on the character of a talisman. Some of the Jews felt that since they had the Temple, they were protected against the forces of invasion and subjugation. On this score, they were sorely mistaken because the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians.

After the exile, the Israelites start the building of a new Temple which they completed. The Temple is seen as the abode where God is continually present and guarding Israel.

Onto this scene steps Jesus who forecasts the destruction of the Temple and at the same time announces that the new Temple will be His body. Jesus predicts his Resurrection but this is something that is lost before the people. They simply see him as not respecting the Temple but the prediction of its destruction did come about in 70 AD by the Roman destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the Jews.

The Temple was the indication that the point of creation was to have God in union with the created in the New Creation. This was the goal all along but it took on an interesting twist in that it was not God who was to reside in the universe but the universe and all that was created was to find fulfillment and completion in Jesus through the New Creation. This was what the Temple in Jerusalem hinted at.

The whole of creation was to act as a sacred temple and we see this in the instructions given for the construction of the Temple. The Temple represents a hallowed space and hallowed time is ushered in with the Sabbath. It is only through Jesus’ Resurrection that the New Temple is now being built and the Church is the first inkling of this. Throughout all this, the central role is played by the Spirit who, as one of the prayers of the Orthodox Church says, is the giver of life. All that we have in our theological statements is the working out and expressing, as best we can, the mysteries of this New Creation and new presence of God in the world. The language of this New Creation is necessarily paradoxical because Old Creation cannot satisfactorily discuss what is finally going to come.

For the Rabbis, wisdom and Torah preceded the “In the beginning…” of Genesis. And we acknowledge this through the Sabbath which represents the redemption of the world being celebrated in anticipation. It is this seventh day that offers the possibility of hallowing creation and preparing it for God’s entry. The relationship that time has to us and to God is that it gives the opportunity for worship. The eventual goal of time is eternity which embodies a decisive act of transformation of creation. God also relates to time by redeeming it so as to bring it into eternity and the best way humanity can aid in this process is through worship. The New Creation is so new and so different from what we normally experience that only God can speak of it.

Through Jesus’ atoning life and death, the problem of sin has been addressed. Sin is the theological category of separation of man from God – this is its essence. Death is the theological category of eternal separation of man from God and this has been addressed and redressed in the Resurrection of Christ. Death, spiritual and physical, can only be finally escaped through the resurrection which encompasses both the spiritual and physical components of man. Christ’s vicarious suffering and death has already been stamped onto creation because, since the beginning, myriads of creatures have given up their lives for the lives of others. What Christ has done is in keeping with what creation is – suffering but redemptive love.

I want to stress something important that we forget. The ‘head’ is important and it is a valuable gift from God but it is not the only tool that we have for nearing to God or for understanding creation. The Biblical texts, and the teachings of the faith can be discussed through our gift of reason but they cannot be understood, at a fundamental level, outside of praise and worship. It is important to keep this in mind. This is not to say that thinking is not important. What theology does is to work out and express more fully what was stated in the scriptures. The wisdom tradition in our faith stresses the love of wisdom and the fact that wisdom unlocks the door to the natural world and through this, a better appreciation of the world that God has created.

When we glimpse at the enormity of creation it daunts us, as we realize that humanity is not necessarily at the center of creation but, simply by making this realization, we see the importance of the role that we play, because of our capacity to observe and understand the natural world. We are called on to see the world as no other creature can, to explore this world, and what is most fundamental to our role – bring this creation to praising the Creator. Science, at the heart of it, is the story of the interaction between the human and non-human aspects of the world. The centrality of man lies in the access to wisdom through which even non-human creation can be given a voice so that every non-human part of creation can praise God also. For thousands of years apples have tumbled down to earth without any word coming from this action. It is with Newton that this has been translated into speech in his law of universal gravitation: F= Gm1m2/r2 . What this law does is sing the praises of a creation that is orderly and not chaotic, a creation that we reach and ‘touch’ through mathematics and in this way, the mute apple, praises the Wisdom of the Creator. This simple action continues to teach us that the universe is upheld by God.

Creation is a divine work that still awaits perfection, it awaits to be completed so that God can truly say – it is good. And as we live in the ‘Saturday’ of time, we realize that we cannot win God’s favor – our normal role is to worship and praise. We know that Jeremiah spoke of a new covenant between man and God, and Ezekiel spoke of a new heart being implanted in humanity. Throughout all of this, it becomes obvious that creation is crucial to God’s plans and cannot simply be dropped as something that is inconsequential. This is one of the reasons why Christianity holds on so tenaciously to the matter of the world. In fact, Christianity is probably the most ‘materialistic’ of beliefs amongst the faiths of the world.

There is a long tradition within Christianity, and it originates in Judaism with the building of the temple, that the universe is to be a sort of abode for God. Now, it is understood that nothing can really contain God but what creation points to is a special and unique and very intimate relationship between that which is created and God. And this is marvelously shown in the Incarnation and all of the paradoxes that this brings up before reason and logic. Important as the universe is, there is a special relationship between God and man and this comes out in the mysterious phrase that man is made in the ‘image of God’. Christianity cannot despise anything in the world, for everything in the world must be returned to the Creator with gratitude and praise and that is one of the important aspects of the Eucharist. Everything must, and will be, returned to the Creator and man plays a central role in this act. The dichotomy between the sacred and profane, something that troubled Christians in the past and continues to trouble them, is a false one. Everything is of God and is loved by God. The Church lives in the world and in the Eucharist she gives the world back to God – she ‘sanctifies’ all of creation, without exception. One of the criticisms raised against Christianity is that it is selective and not inclusive and this criticism is correct but this criticism comes becomes we have not been true to the teachings of our faith. Christianity is truly a cosmic faith and this cosmic component has often been drowned out with individualistic concerns about what happens to a given individual. But, more about this in the future.

Sincerely,
Bar-Abbas