| Creation, idolatry and the
gospel of God
A simulated aspect of creation isolates a small piece of its inexhaustible wonder and gives human observation the capacity to adjudicate over a mere fragment. Encompassing the whole creation eludes this possibility, as the end of Job majestically shows. The idol maker, who takes an aspect of creation in order to represent reality, steals from the glory of God as creator. Fragments of creation become bric-a-brac for the artifice of making images. Creation becomes less real in being displaced by the surreal. By simulating aspects of creation, humans conjure a delusion; visible foci are fabricated in the quest for meaning within a longing for what exceeds arbitrary selections of visible phenomena. Humans can miss the panorama of creation that invokes humility as creatures before their creator. To miss this, is to risk plunging human life and creation into folly (Rom. 1). Creation
exhibits the glory of God. If this exhibit of God’s glory is reduced to the production
of images, it is also framed as a manipulable focus. Instead of beholding the
wonder of excess, humans become enamoured with visible things that are manipulable
because they have framed them as such. (apropos v Whether
it is constructed or found in creation, the idol maker assumes that a visible
thing is a manifestation of an invisible reality behind visible things. Even if
well intentioned, this assumption is ultimately an expression of self-righteousness—adoration
invested in the visible is assumed to be adequate to some divine reality,
yet such an assumption is self-deceived. A skewed sense of gratitude too,
can fail to see the evidence of creation as a gift in grace. Deploying a part to represent the whole is an attempt to make the invisible visible and manageable to our senses; it is the essence of idolatry in which an aspect becomes a focus of greater value than thought for its source. Humans seek in the visible, assurances of their existence; faith sees the invisible and does not confuse a thing or representation with God who exceeds our existence. Abraham is the primary example of turning from idolatry and in faith, focusing on the invisible. In biblical testimony, the invisible is not another other world removed from the physical and tangible but the future and the word of promise that speaks of future reality. To respond to the word of God in faith is to anticipate that the invisible—promise and future—is wholly sure in the word of God. The tangible idol, supposedly representing a greater reality underpinning the visible, is a present focus that is without anticipation and therefore without movement toward God as the source of promise and sure word of the future. The invisible therefore becomes nebulous, even when represented visibly. As the invisible, God and the word of promise are wholly tangible for human existence called to live toward the future. To live toward a particular word of the future requires decision and commitment. To see the invisible is to respond to a future to which God calls and gives by word of promise. v Humans are always before the theological possibility of recognising God. They can respond crassly to this possibility in defiant disregard for their creaturely status. They can respond with a refined sense of spiritual ingenuity, construing God after their own selected images. God can be invoked within conjectures as a vague mystery that calls forth no decisions in response. When the “mystery of God” becomes a primary focus of human spirituality, there is no imperative to articulate anything specific concerning faith. If faith is reduced to engagement with mystery through the representation of an artefact, anything can be enjoined to give it seeming plausibility. Artefact and imagination combine to express such mystery—as open to any interpretation while defying any imposition of specificity. The reality of God for human life is therefore subject to relative perspective. Vague mystery and a tangible object are joined to present a wholly arbitrary perspective. Biblical injunctions against idolatry prohibit the confusion of God with perceptions conjured from material phenomena and mere conjectures about God’s reality. Instead, faith is called forth as a distinctive personal encounter with the source of all things. The disclosure of God in intimacy to human life through the initiative of grace is central to Christian testimony that invokes particular faith and responsibility within creation. In the context of such faith, creation gives testimony to the glory of God. Without such faith, creation becomes a confused medium within the human search for meaning; the phenomena of creation can be made to say almost anything, yet without invoking responsibility. The glory of God is not given to imaginative licence but decisions of the heart in response to love expressed in gift and guidance. Alternatively, noble aesthetic feelings can conjure idols that reflect in each instance, an arbitrary perspective, negating the call to integral humanity in recognition and honour of God’s glory. God
is not a vague mystery that can be filled speculatively with the bric-a-brac of
human perspective but is disclosed uniquely in love and righteousness in v Paul makes clear that the gospel of God also encompasses the wrath of God against the suppression of the truth about God (Rom. 1). This is the harsh reality of gospel that is easily dismissed in seeking a form of grace—which is no grace—that merely sanctifies the folly of human self-assertions in hubris, however imaginative. In the midst of creation, we are given the possibility of recognising the creative giver of life and sustaining source of human existence. The invisible can be seen in faith and honoured in gratitude for life that is not dissipated in its own futile pursuits hatched in hubris. As intensely as such hubris is invoked through conjectures of reality from aspects of creation, as futile and foolish such hubris becomes. A compounding darkness ensues. Humans are implicated in a massive process of exchange—exchanging gratitude for hubris and with this, an exchange of truth for a lie, which installs a further exchange—distinction of the creator for the familiarity of creatures. These exchanges even fail to distinguish between human and nature. God could at least be projected uniquely after humans—as the atheist Feuerbach argued, but this is surpassed in fabricating divinity after any creature. By fabricating divinity after any creature or aspect of creation, human distinction among phenomena is blurred. With the necessity of violence and death to continuing life within nature, distinctive human volition and ethical capacity are also diminished. With a loss of volition, humans imitate phenomena or further invent variations of nature. The wonder of being human is therefore sullied; the possibility of serving God as creator in distinctive life that is given to wholeness as gift within creation is thwarted. If the gospel of God also includes the wrath of God revealed against all unrighteousness, it does so for the possibility also, of disclosing definitive grace and truth for human life. Selected
sources: Feuerbach The Essence of Christianity; Luther Romans; Marion In Excess. |
