As the 2012 campaign rhetoric continues to escalate and tempers flare ever more intensely, I think about Jesus' words towards the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, that, "blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God" (Matthew 5:8).
Though this verse has been interpreted in a number of ways through the course of theological history, I think that we can at least say this much: those who promote peace, that is, irenic and "shalomic" activity and deliberations receive unique and special blessing from God. They enjoy special respect in the eyes of the divine.
Therefore, at the very least, this verse is telling us that, amidst the often vituperative and prevaricated campaign slogans and commercials and speeches, we owe it to ourselves, as a nation, to focus not so much on what we do or say, but rather on how we do and say it. We want to preserve the common good and unity on which the nation is built, to sustain the comity upon which a democracy best functions. We do not want to destroy unity in order to save it. We want to be at peace with one another, to make decisions about our leaders in a thoughtful, respectful, and openminded way. We want to honor the basis of who we are, fellow beings and travelers created in the image of a loving and sovereign God.
Only in this way can America consider itself genuinely blessed.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
"This is our world," David Petersen writes in his On the Wild Edge: In Search of Natural Life, and "it is all that ever will be." This is a classic statement of naturalism, the idea that this world represents the sum of all that we can know, all to which we can go to discover purpose and meaning. We do not need anything outside of or beyond this world to decide what is real, valuable, and true; we only need this world, this remarkable sphere of materiality and undeserved grace on which we live to know what life is all about.
On the surface, this assertion seems to make sense. Why, if we live in this world, do we need to look anywhere else for what this world means? Why, given that this world is the foundation of all that we think and do, must we suppose that we should look in other places to decide what it really means? We're here and, as the writer Joan Didion put it in a university commencement address few years ago, "should get on with it."
However attractive this perspective may seem, it overlooks one very important fact: we cannot know, with absolute certainty, whether this world is indeed "all that is" Finite creatures that we are, we simply cannot honestly conclude that, without any doubt, what we see and experience every day is all that we will ever experience, or that it is all from which we may draw any ideas for determining truth and meaning. It is beyond our capacity to fully discern and see.
Moreover, if we indeed insist that this world is all that we need to explain this world, then we are forced to ask another troublesome question: how we can use a world whose precise meaning we do not know, a world we ourselves did not make, in order to decide what it means? We're proving meaning on the basis of what is we already think--without any proof--is meaningful. It is circular through and through.
What can we do? As the writer of Proverbs (Proverbs 29:18) suggested many millennia ago, we must look to a source of information and content beyond the world to find what the world--and us in it--means. We look, as the writer proclaims, to God. We look to revelation, divinely inspired truth that we did not manufacture or make, divinely rendered truth that we did not previously know to make sense of this joyful yet bewildering (and unrequested) existence. Without revelation, without input from a being who created and grounded truth and purpose in the world we occupy, we will never know what is really true. How could we? Truth is only genuine if it is absolute, and a mercurial and shifting and ebbing world will never be absolute. It will always be contingent.
We need revelation to really see.
On the surface, this assertion seems to make sense. Why, if we live in this world, do we need to look anywhere else for what this world means? Why, given that this world is the foundation of all that we think and do, must we suppose that we should look in other places to decide what it really means? We're here and, as the writer Joan Didion put it in a university commencement address few years ago, "should get on with it."
However attractive this perspective may seem, it overlooks one very important fact: we cannot know, with absolute certainty, whether this world is indeed "all that is" Finite creatures that we are, we simply cannot honestly conclude that, without any doubt, what we see and experience every day is all that we will ever experience, or that it is all from which we may draw any ideas for determining truth and meaning. It is beyond our capacity to fully discern and see.
Moreover, if we indeed insist that this world is all that we need to explain this world, then we are forced to ask another troublesome question: how we can use a world whose precise meaning we do not know, a world we ourselves did not make, in order to decide what it means? We're proving meaning on the basis of what is we already think--without any proof--is meaningful. It is circular through and through.
What can we do? As the writer of Proverbs (Proverbs 29:18) suggested many millennia ago, we must look to a source of information and content beyond the world to find what the world--and us in it--means. We look, as the writer proclaims, to God. We look to revelation, divinely inspired truth that we did not manufacture or make, divinely rendered truth that we did not previously know to make sense of this joyful yet bewildering (and unrequested) existence. Without revelation, without input from a being who created and grounded truth and purpose in the world we occupy, we will never know what is really true. How could we? Truth is only genuine if it is absolute, and a mercurial and shifting and ebbing world will never be absolute. It will always be contingent.
We need revelation to really see.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Last spring, a colleague of mine posted some poignant thoughts on Facebook. Two years before, she had, very unexpectedly, lost her husband, altering her life in more ways that she could at that moment imagine. In the spring, however, she found a wonderful new light of hope in her life: the birth of her first grandchild. Though she still misses her husband terribly (but is thankful that he is now with God), she delights in this beautiful gift of new life.
Isn't this how life is? We face loss, often immense loss, yet, after a season, we encounter an event that, at least in part, fills, soothes, and supplants it.
But why is life this way? Why is, in most instances, loss followed by an experience that, to a point, replaces it? What is it about the world that ensures the inevitability of newness in the aftermath of privation and disillusionment?
Proverbs 27 gives us a clue. Towards its end, it tells us that, because of the presence of God in the world, "When the the grass disappears, the new growth is seen, and the herbs of the mountains are gathered in." God is a God of newness, a God who fills loss and eases disappointment, a God who, despite all circumstances, is a God of resurrection and new life, a God who is always working on the next thing. He never looks back, he never dwells on the past. God is all about what is to come.
And in his hands, something always will. So does Isaiah observe, "Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new . . . " (Isaiah 43:18-19a).
Take heart in the future of God.
Isn't this how life is? We face loss, often immense loss, yet, after a season, we encounter an event that, at least in part, fills, soothes, and supplants it.
But why is life this way? Why is, in most instances, loss followed by an experience that, to a point, replaces it? What is it about the world that ensures the inevitability of newness in the aftermath of privation and disillusionment?
Proverbs 27 gives us a clue. Towards its end, it tells us that, because of the presence of God in the world, "When the the grass disappears, the new growth is seen, and the herbs of the mountains are gathered in." God is a God of newness, a God who fills loss and eases disappointment, a God who, despite all circumstances, is a God of resurrection and new life, a God who is always working on the next thing. He never looks back, he never dwells on the past. God is all about what is to come.
And in his hands, something always will. So does Isaiah observe, "Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new . . . " (Isaiah 43:18-19a).
Take heart in the future of God.
Friday, August 24, 2012
If, as Traffic's song suggests, heaven is in your mind, is it really heaven?
Probably not: heaven wouldn't be heaven unless it is a place we, flawed beings that we are, did not make.
But why do we think about heaven? Most of us want to know that, after this life, something remains, something more, another opportunity, another experience, another chance to, in some way, live. Dying with no hope or thought of something beyond it can be a frightful experience: our finite minds stumble and cower before the immediacy and inevitablity of a absolutely final end.
Yet as we observed earlier, the only way that we can create a legitimate picture of heaven is if we acknowledge that something bigger than we has made it. And who would this something be?
It can only be God. Only an eternal God, a being who has no beginning or end, a being from whose infinitely creative heart and mind all things have come, could create a heaven worthy of its name.
But we will only find this heaven if we believe that God, as he presented himself in Jesus Christ, is fully and absolutely true.
We need to trust the wisdom of God.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
In a recent interview, Richard Dawkins, one of our century's most outspoken atheists, was asked about the meaning of life. "This is not a legitimate question," he replied.
Dawkins displays an acute grasp of the consequences of his life vision. If, as Dawkins believes, God did not create the world, then the world is an accident, a random happenstance occasioned by, depending on the theories one uses, virtual particles, quantum fluctuations, a twist of a multi-universe, or something else altogether, a blop of matter in a universe that other than its apparent existence has no reason to be. It's useless!
And if it is useless, then, as Dawkins understands so well, it is wholly without meaning.
And so are we. Unless something bigger and more meaningful than we, finite creatures in a universe we did not make, affirms the fact and presence of meaning in the universe, we indeed have no reason to ask about life's meaning: there is none! Apart from an idea like God, the world as we love and experience it has absolutely no meaning. There is no reason why it is here and, clearly, no reason why we are here, either. We are, as Paul Sartre so cogently observed, nothing more than a "useless passion."
Think about it. Unless an cognitive intelligence brought this cosmos into existence, we really have no explanation for why it is here. Simply saying that "it is here because it is here" solves little. It misses the central point: a world cannot be a meaningful world apart from an origin in a loving God.
Dawkins displays an acute grasp of the consequences of his life vision. If, as Dawkins believes, God did not create the world, then the world is an accident, a random happenstance occasioned by, depending on the theories one uses, virtual particles, quantum fluctuations, a twist of a multi-universe, or something else altogether, a blop of matter in a universe that other than its apparent existence has no reason to be. It's useless!
And if it is useless, then, as Dawkins understands so well, it is wholly without meaning.
And so are we. Unless something bigger and more meaningful than we, finite creatures in a universe we did not make, affirms the fact and presence of meaning in the universe, we indeed have no reason to ask about life's meaning: there is none! Apart from an idea like God, the world as we love and experience it has absolutely no meaning. There is no reason why it is here and, clearly, no reason why we are here, either. We are, as Paul Sartre so cogently observed, nothing more than a "useless passion."
Think about it. Unless an cognitive intelligence brought this cosmos into existence, we really have no explanation for why it is here. Simply saying that "it is here because it is here" solves little. It misses the central point: a world cannot be a meaningful world apart from an origin in a loving God.
[1] As quoted in Jesse Bering’s BeliefInstinct: the Psychology of Souls,Destiny, and the Meaning of Life
(New York
Monday, August 20, 2012
The Indians of the American plains occupied a land of tremendous breadth, a land of endless vistas of windswept grass and rock strewn hills, a land in which the sun seemed to never set, and the moon shone without shadow, crystal clear, a land, it seemed, of limitless possibilities, a land, it seemed, that would always be unbroken, unhindered, expansive and free forever.
Today, of course, only a very few of those prairies remain, assorted pockets of wildness spread around the sprawling midsection of the country, their existence mute and greatly diminished evidence of the glory that had once been.
But it is the idea of endlessness on which we want to focus here, the notion that a land can be without end, can be without start or stop, a seemingly bottomless fount of experience, ripe for any who dare partake of its wonders.
This is a land, we might say, that is infinite. Why? It has been made by an infinitude God. And because it has been created by an infinite God, this land, indeed, all land on this planet, is grounded in the purposes of infinitude. The planet's lands are lands of dream, lands in which we, creatures created and grounded in an endlessness of thought and intentionality, can dream. We dream of today, we dream of tomorrow, we dream of next year, we dream of many years beyond: we always imagine what we would like, one day, to see, to envision what, at the present moment, we do not. Though one day these lands will be no more, the dreams they bequeath will last forever.
People who view God as rigid and restrictive therefore miss the point. God is anything but such things. An infinite God creates infinite possibility, the incredible range of possibility on which we, trusting in the constancy and integrity of God, can, with joy and vision, build our lives.
So take heart: believe, then live in the compass of endless dream and forever possibility. The prairies, and the God who made them, are before you.
Today, of course, only a very few of those prairies remain, assorted pockets of wildness spread around the sprawling midsection of the country, their existence mute and greatly diminished evidence of the glory that had once been.
But it is the idea of endlessness on which we want to focus here, the notion that a land can be without end, can be without start or stop, a seemingly bottomless fount of experience, ripe for any who dare partake of its wonders.
This is a land, we might say, that is infinite. Why? It has been made by an infinitude God. And because it has been created by an infinite God, this land, indeed, all land on this planet, is grounded in the purposes of infinitude. The planet's lands are lands of dream, lands in which we, creatures created and grounded in an endlessness of thought and intentionality, can dream. We dream of today, we dream of tomorrow, we dream of next year, we dream of many years beyond: we always imagine what we would like, one day, to see, to envision what, at the present moment, we do not. Though one day these lands will be no more, the dreams they bequeath will last forever.
People who view God as rigid and restrictive therefore miss the point. God is anything but such things. An infinite God creates infinite possibility, the incredible range of possibility on which we, trusting in the constancy and integrity of God, can, with joy and vision, build our lives.
So take heart: believe, then live in the compass of endless dream and forever possibility. The prairies, and the God who made them, are before you.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
In a book he published earlier this year, Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who has made his name in recent years for his outspoken (and extensively published) atheism, argues that we human beings have no free will. Free will is an illusion, Dr. Harris says; that is, when we really consider why we do what we do, we must admit that we really have no idea why we do it. Moreover, he proffers, recent research indicates that our brains know what we are going to say or do a split second before we actually say or do it. In short, we cannot possibly conclude that we control how and why we make our decisions. Our thoughts and actions are no more than seemingly random fluctations of brain waves and neurons. The mystery is gone.
Well, if we really have control over what we say and do, we may as well abandon all pretense of defining culpability and responsibility in any area of life. We will never be able to definitively demonstrate that we, that is, our thinking and reasoning selves, did it.
Yet consider the writings of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Towards the beginning of his massive magnum opus, A Critique of Pure Reason, Kant suggests that human beings are born with the capacity to think and reason in terms of cause and effect. We are designed, he says, to consider and explain action and reaction, and act and consequence when we make decisions. We live in a universe where individual thought and reason leads to decisions with effect. To put this into contemporary terms, if we did not have the ability to understand why we come to decisions, humanity as we know it would be no more. People have an inherent capacity to come to understand why they are doing what they are doing--and that they are doing it.
(Brief caveat: of course, this conclusions adnits that due to various chemical imbalnces, illness, drug use, particularly adverse environmental circumstances, people may, on occasion, really not know why they do what they do. Nonetheless, they still possess the capacity to think about and do it.)
Let's enlarge the picture a bit. We are creatures who think in terms of cause and effect because we live in a universe grounded in cause and effect. And we live in a universe that is grounded in cause and effect because we live in a universe that has been created by a God who himself is a God of cause and effect. If he were not, he wouldn't be much of a god! Who wants a God who cannot cause things to happen?
Granted, if one believes that because God created the universe, he exercises absolute control over it and its creatures, one might conclude that we human beings really have no say in how and why we say and do what we do. We are no more than pawns of the creator, captive to his sovereign purposes. To an extent, this is true: we live in a world we did not make, a world that we will never fully control.
On the other hand, and this is a big "on the other hand," we still possess the capacity to consider and render decisions. And unless we fall into one of the categories of unfortunate situations I cited above, we, we ourselves, know that we are doing it. We cannot be otherwise. If we are sentient and reasoning beings created in the image of a cause and effect God, then we will be creatures of cause and effect. We will be able to consider the effects of our decisions, and we will be able to reason ourselves to the point where we make those decisions.
God is sovereign, yes, but we are as well, though in another way. We are sovereign creatures of cause and effect. In ourselves and by ourselves we can make choices and in ourselves and by ourselves we can understand, to a point (we will always be a mystery even to ourselves!), how and why we make them. There is more to us--much more--than chemical and neuronal exchange.
We cannot have it both ways. Either we are reasoning creatures endowed with conscious choice making capacities, or we are robots, victims of ourselves and our neurons, incapable of logical or credible function.
And I cannot think of anyone who, in her right and ordered mind would like to imagine herself this way.
Well, if we really have control over what we say and do, we may as well abandon all pretense of defining culpability and responsibility in any area of life. We will never be able to definitively demonstrate that we, that is, our thinking and reasoning selves, did it.
Yet consider the writings of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Towards the beginning of his massive magnum opus, A Critique of Pure Reason, Kant suggests that human beings are born with the capacity to think and reason in terms of cause and effect. We are designed, he says, to consider and explain action and reaction, and act and consequence when we make decisions. We live in a universe where individual thought and reason leads to decisions with effect. To put this into contemporary terms, if we did not have the ability to understand why we come to decisions, humanity as we know it would be no more. People have an inherent capacity to come to understand why they are doing what they are doing--and that they are doing it.
(Brief caveat: of course, this conclusions adnits that due to various chemical imbalnces, illness, drug use, particularly adverse environmental circumstances, people may, on occasion, really not know why they do what they do. Nonetheless, they still possess the capacity to think about and do it.)
Let's enlarge the picture a bit. We are creatures who think in terms of cause and effect because we live in a universe grounded in cause and effect. And we live in a universe that is grounded in cause and effect because we live in a universe that has been created by a God who himself is a God of cause and effect. If he were not, he wouldn't be much of a god! Who wants a God who cannot cause things to happen?
Granted, if one believes that because God created the universe, he exercises absolute control over it and its creatures, one might conclude that we human beings really have no say in how and why we say and do what we do. We are no more than pawns of the creator, captive to his sovereign purposes. To an extent, this is true: we live in a world we did not make, a world that we will never fully control.
On the other hand, and this is a big "on the other hand," we still possess the capacity to consider and render decisions. And unless we fall into one of the categories of unfortunate situations I cited above, we, we ourselves, know that we are doing it. We cannot be otherwise. If we are sentient and reasoning beings created in the image of a cause and effect God, then we will be creatures of cause and effect. We will be able to consider the effects of our decisions, and we will be able to reason ourselves to the point where we make those decisions.
God is sovereign, yes, but we are as well, though in another way. We are sovereign creatures of cause and effect. In ourselves and by ourselves we can make choices and in ourselves and by ourselves we can understand, to a point (we will always be a mystery even to ourselves!), how and why we make them. There is more to us--much more--than chemical and neuronal exchange.
We cannot have it both ways. Either we are reasoning creatures endowed with conscious choice making capacities, or we are robots, victims of ourselves and our neurons, incapable of logical or credible function.
And I cannot think of anyone who, in her right and ordered mind would like to imagine herself this way.
Friday, August 17, 2012
"Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we will die." We've all probably heard this phrase. It's a paean of cheery abandon, an ode to doing what seems best and good for the moment. And why not? We're all going to die, anyway.
This of course is true. We will all one day die, and, for most of us, we rarely know the precise time at which this will happen. It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be fifty years from now. But it will happen. Death is inevitable.
Where does this leave us? Should we really do everything with abandon, fatalistic abandon, believing that what we do doesn't matter, anyway? In a way, yes: in the big picture, really, what does matter? On the other hand, consider this: if nothing matters, why do we even bother living? If nothing we do really matters, we really do not have, if we are totally honest with ourselves, any reason to be here. We should end everything right now.
The writer of Ecclesiastes (in the Hebrew Bible) thought about this a lot. Towards the end of his ruminations (chapter 12:1), he made this observation, "Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, 'I have no delight in them.'" What does he mean? We see a clue in the two verses immediately before it, when he remarks that, "Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things."
What the writer seems to be saying is that it is good for us to enjoy life, to delight in existence, to seek out the experiences that work best for us (he says as much in chapter 9, too). However, and this is a BIG however, he also tells us that anything we do, we do not do in a vacuum. We are not random beings on a random planet. No, indeed. We must remember (and be happy) that we are creations of a purposeful and loving God. We need to remember that, yes, we may eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we could die, but even more that we eat, drink, and make merry in the compass of a world that has been created with intentionality and purpose by a meaningful and intentional God. Life is bigger than us. It is eternal. Not only does what we do in this life matter now, it matters for eternity. It is much bigger, much bigger than simply the "moment" before us.
So, as the writer encourages us, enjoy life. Enjoy its fruits, enjoy its wonders. Enjoy friends, enjoy good times. But remember this, and be hopeful: there is a God infusing everything we do with meaning and marvel far beyond anything we can conceive or imagine. We and our actions are vastly real, more real than we may think. They're the work of God.
In this we can rejoice. Though we may die tomorrow, squarely (and perhaps unexpectedly) in the midst of our various pursuits, we will not go without meaning. Our actions will not be done and effected without point.
We live in the love of an eternal God.
This of course is true. We will all one day die, and, for most of us, we rarely know the precise time at which this will happen. It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be fifty years from now. But it will happen. Death is inevitable.
Where does this leave us? Should we really do everything with abandon, fatalistic abandon, believing that what we do doesn't matter, anyway? In a way, yes: in the big picture, really, what does matter? On the other hand, consider this: if nothing matters, why do we even bother living? If nothing we do really matters, we really do not have, if we are totally honest with ourselves, any reason to be here. We should end everything right now.
The writer of Ecclesiastes (in the Hebrew Bible) thought about this a lot. Towards the end of his ruminations (chapter 12:1), he made this observation, "Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, 'I have no delight in them.'" What does he mean? We see a clue in the two verses immediately before it, when he remarks that, "Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things."
What the writer seems to be saying is that it is good for us to enjoy life, to delight in existence, to seek out the experiences that work best for us (he says as much in chapter 9, too). However, and this is a BIG however, he also tells us that anything we do, we do not do in a vacuum. We are not random beings on a random planet. No, indeed. We must remember (and be happy) that we are creations of a purposeful and loving God. We need to remember that, yes, we may eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we could die, but even more that we eat, drink, and make merry in the compass of a world that has been created with intentionality and purpose by a meaningful and intentional God. Life is bigger than us. It is eternal. Not only does what we do in this life matter now, it matters for eternity. It is much bigger, much bigger than simply the "moment" before us.
So, as the writer encourages us, enjoy life. Enjoy its fruits, enjoy its wonders. Enjoy friends, enjoy good times. But remember this, and be hopeful: there is a God infusing everything we do with meaning and marvel far beyond anything we can conceive or imagine. We and our actions are vastly real, more real than we may think. They're the work of God.
In this we can rejoice. Though we may die tomorrow, squarely (and perhaps unexpectedly) in the midst of our various pursuits, we will not go without meaning. Our actions will not be done and effected without point.
We live in the love of an eternal God.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Backpacking through Wyoming's Wind River Range a few weeks ago, I reveled constantly in the sublimity of the beauty around me, the vast valleys, verdant carpets of untrammeled rivers and wild and snow bordered lakes, the lofty tundra and rock strewn passes, the magnificent sculpted peaks, and, most of all, perhaps, the dawns, those magical times when the earth seemed so still and silent, mountains and water shrouded in crisp air and fading darkness, the sun hinting at its imminent presence behind the peaks, the entire creation seemingly poised to erupt, to emerge, glorious and free, from the long hours of night, fresh, renewed, ready to ignite the imagination once more, a new day come.
Over and over again, as I trod through those lilting mornings, I thought of the final lines of the first verse of the ancient Gaelic hymn, Morning has Broken, " . . . praise for the singing, praise for the morning, praise for them [created things] springing, fresh from the Word." I at the mystery, the ineffable mystery of creation: physicality sprung from nothing more (but, significantly, nothing less) than the word of God. Not physicality from abolutely nothing, for that would be philosophically impossible, but physicality from something greater than nothing, something that envelopes and supersedes nothing, but something we cannot see, something so remarkable that it, in itself, generates substance, identity, and form, the source of all origination in the universe.
Without an ultimacy, and without a word to communicate that ultimacy, creation would not be. Nothing can be, nothing can exist apart from something, yet only a something that in itself is "somethingness" could birth something, something that is, in this instance, a cosmos. Morning in the Wind River Range, morning splashing about the majesty and wonder of its peaks is a morning that, apart from an originative Word, would never come. The creator God exists, constantly, eternally, his Word forever communicating, through the beauty of the planet, the fact, force, and power of his existence, the eternal Word from which all things inevitably must spring.
Over and over again, as I trod through those lilting mornings, I thought of the final lines of the first verse of the ancient Gaelic hymn, Morning has Broken, " . . . praise for the singing, praise for the morning, praise for them [created things] springing, fresh from the Word." I at the mystery, the ineffable mystery of creation: physicality sprung from nothing more (but, significantly, nothing less) than the word of God. Not physicality from abolutely nothing, for that would be philosophically impossible, but physicality from something greater than nothing, something that envelopes and supersedes nothing, but something we cannot see, something so remarkable that it, in itself, generates substance, identity, and form, the source of all origination in the universe.
Without an ultimacy, and without a word to communicate that ultimacy, creation would not be. Nothing can be, nothing can exist apart from something, yet only a something that in itself is "somethingness" could birth something, something that is, in this instance, a cosmos. Morning in the Wind River Range, morning splashing about the majesty and wonder of its peaks is a morning that, apart from an originative Word, would never come. The creator God exists, constantly, eternally, his Word forever communicating, through the beauty of the planet, the fact, force, and power of his existence, the eternal Word from which all things inevitably must spring.
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