| Penguins, people and the
word
The world is always passing away. Its
life, whether plant or animal, depends on the death of other life for nutrition
and space. Life upsurges from the earth only to recede back into the earth again.
Meaning is sought within the cycle of biological life,
even as humans search for a word that will endure beyond flux. The word exceeds the world because
it is the source of all life from the beginning. The earth pulls back to oblivion,
every particular instance of life that has emerged to visibility; the earth takes
away as readily as it gives in an organic play of life trumped by death. Every
singular expression of life ends in death. Life formed from the earth is contingent
on death. The world was first
called into existence by the word. The volitional decisions and responsibilities
that the word of God invoke and call forth are more durable than biological life
formed from the earth. The time of decision is momentary but
established eternally as a response to the word. This reality exceeds the earth
and its organic rhythm of growth and decay in which emerging life cannibalises
previous life and any meaning derived from it. v Scripture
presents God as creator who is personal as volitional. These affirmations of biblical
testimony were central to Christian identity in distinction from the biological
prison of fate within paganism. People were liberated by the vocative story of
God in As
creator, God is distinct from creation, yet intimately present as its source of
possibility and meaning. Affirmation of God as sovereign creator and vocative
in call and encounter, who sends sunshine and rain on the good and evil
alike, gives a consistent and reliable context for human volition and responsibility.
Human
freedom is enshrined in biblical testimony as the possibility of love, responsible
decisions and acts of goodness. If nature generates adversity for humans, these are expressions of slight variation within consistent
recurrences of nature. God
is creator and personal as volitional. The gift of creation can therefore be engaged
with confident freedom toward the dignity of responsible life in response to the
God-breathed word that calls forth human existence. For Christians, God’s definitive
disclosure in Jesus Christ makes this volitional focus wholly evident. Biblical
elevation of human status as privileged within creation is accused
of promoting a destructive view of nature. This can seem plausible when images
of nature’s demise are framed with hostile intent, accusing
Christians of promoting a view that is destroying the earth. Yet this approach
fails to recognise that biblical testimony also speaks of human compromise or
sin that is expressed as hubris and which, in expressions
of rapacious greed, ravages creation. When Christians
reject the biblical elevation of human life in mistaken advocacy for an organic
spirituality of creation as a divine entity, they forfeit human distinctiveness
in God’s image and merge humans into a seamless identity with all life. This is
to conflate Christian faith with an ancient and contemporary pagan procedure. In a closed circle of reference between
nature and culture, ethical values are selected and attributed
to imperatives perceived to upsurge from the earth; their mystical spirituality
is then cited as an authority for these imperatives. This procedure is full of
folly. If experience of nature and cultural
values forged from natural phenomena form diverse ethical possibilities that are given spiritual legitimacy, such legitimacy was first forged
from selected criteria—benign from nature and amenable as assorted cultural bric-a-brac.
Selected examples of nature may give
images of social cooperation, such as emperor penguins huddled together in a blizzard,
reshuffling their relative formation for the sake of all against harsh elements.
Yet values derived from animal instinct are naked of anything beyond survival
of the species or the fittest, however elegantly this is expressed in selective portrayals of nature. Humans are
distinctive within creation; they can choose to live above survival of the fittest
or the preservation of a species, both of which occur pervasively at the cost
of other life and species. If humans
are not distinctive within creation, there is no reason for human ethics to be
distinguished from biological life, which endorses violent survival of the fittest
and cannibalisation of previous life. When merged with the earth without definition
by the vocative and personal word, there is also no basis to posit either human
capacity for sin and evil within distinctive freedom or redemptive transformation
as another possibility for human life. To jettison
the biblical elevation of humans within creation in a mistaken belief that humanity
is dignified and the earth is thereby protected, is to
diminish both human dignity and the gift of creation. The will of God in biblical testimony
is disclosed as possibilities engaged through personal
decisions toward responsibility and accountability in response to the word—beyond
the recurrences and instincts of natural phenomena and variegated cultural values
conjured from these. God by the word is the source of creation and the world of
time in which we experience this gift as delight in the giver and not as the ultimate
source of our existence. v The word is greater than the world in giving time
to the world. Time is not a problem to be overcome, to
which it has been reduced in two opposite theses. In one thesis, time stretches
and divides existence, generating differences, which is conducive to diversity.
In an opposite thesis, time gathers existence, gradually assimilating differences,
which is conducive to unity. Time divides or time assimilates. Both are
affirmed in perspectives of life formed from the earth as a closed reality,
with perpetual contests over their implications, either toward fragmentation or
toward uniformity. The word gives time to the world. Time
is not given to divide existence as endless differences
or to assimilate everything to one particular totality of existence. The word
that gives time by calling for response is relational—it gathers even as it sustains
uniqueness—neither inexorable difference nor incremental assimilation in time.
The word calls forth our response as relational in also being unique before God
in response to the word. The word awaits our response; time
exists because the word is vocative from the beginning. Without the word of God,
there is no time for creation because nothing is initiated
and no response is invoked. Without the word informing us of its created source,
the earth remains an endless recurrence of repetitions without meaning. The word calls for response within
creation that was first given by the word. The word of
God gives time within creation because it calls into being the possibility of
volitional response and vocation. There is always a gap between the creative word
of God in creation and human response in time. In this gap, every possible thing
can happen in the human freedom to respond. (Apropos The
word is greater than the world, for Christ, the expressive and intimate word of
God from the beginning displays the glory of God that is full of grace and truth.
Creation remains the context in time within which we can respond to God with gratitude,
yet without forging from an excess of gifts, either material or mystical idols
that stymie grace and in doing so, destroy gifts that are declared good.
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