Tag: Creation

The Sacraments Pass Us Over Into the Kingdom of God

The holy water in Baptism, the bread and wine in the Eucharist, stand for, i.e. represent the whole of creation, but creation as it will be at the end, when it will be consummated in God, when He will fill all things with Himself.

It is this end that is revealed, anticipated, made already real to us in the sacrament; and in this sense each sacrament makes us pass over into the Kingdom of God. It is because the Church herself is the sacrament of this passage and in each of her sacraments takes us there, into the Kingdom of God, that the water of Baptism is holy, i.e. the very presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit; that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are truly, i.e. really, and with a reality more real than all the “objective” realities of “this world,” the Body and Blood of Christ, His parousia, His presence among us. Thus consecration is always the manifestation, the epiphany of that End, of that ultimate Reality for which the world was created, which was fulfilled by Christ through His Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, which the Holy Spirit reveals today in the Church  and which will be consummated in the Kingdom “to come.”

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 49-50

Creation is full of images that point to God

If, therefore, Holy Scripture, providing for our need, ever putting before us what is intangible, clothes it in flesh, does it not make an image of what is thus invested with our nature, and brought to the level of our desires, yet invisible? A certain conception through the senses thus takes place in the brain, which was not there before, and is transmitted to the judicial faculty, and added to the mental store. Gregory, who is so eloquent about God, says that the mind, which is set upon getting beyond corporeal things, is incapable of doing it. For the invisible things of God since the creation of the world are made visible through images. (Rom. 1.20) We see images in creation which remind us faintly of God, as when, for instance, we speak of the holy and adorable Trinity, imaged by the sun, or light, or burning rays, or by a running fountain, or a full river, or by the mind, speech, or the spirit within us, or by a rose tree, or a sprouting flower, or a sweet fragrance.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part I

The Church’s teaching on angels and celestial bodies

This also is a part of the teaching of the Church, that there are certain angels of God, and certain good influences, which are His servants in accomplishing the salvation of men.  When these, however, were created, or of what nature they are, or how they exist, is not clearly stated.  Regarding the sun, moon, and stars, whether they are living beings or without life, there is no distinct deliverance.

Origen
On First Principles, Book I
Preface

The Church’s understanding of creation and the end

This also is a part of the Church’s teaching, that the world was made and took its beginning at a certain time, and is to be destroyed on account of its wickedness.  But what existed before this world, or what will exist after it, has not become certainly known to the many, for there is no clear statement regarding it in the teaching of the Church.

Origen
On First Principles, Book I
Preface

It is still correct to say that the Word created alone

Inasmuch, then, as the heaven was prepared when Wisdom was present in the Word, and since all things were made by the Word, it is quite correct to say that even the Son stretched out the heaven alone, because He alone ministered to the Father’s work. It must also be He who says, “I am the First, and to all futurity I AM.” The Word, no doubt, was before all things.

Tertullian
Against Praxeas
Chapter XIX

The Logos was begotten as God said “Let there be light”

Then, therefore, does the Word also Himself assume His own form and glorious garb, His own sound and vocal utterance, when God says, “Let there be light.” This is the perfect nativity of the Word, when He proceeds forth from God—formed by Him first to devise and think out all things under the name of Wisdom—“The Lord created or formed me as the beginning of His ways;” then afterward begotten, to carry all into effect—“When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him.” Thus does He make Him equal to Him: for by proceeding from Himself He became His first-begotten Son, because begotten before all things; and His only-begotten also, because alone begotten of God, in a way peculiar to Himself, from the womb of His own heart—even as the Father Himself testifies: “My heart,” says He, “hath emitted my most excellent Word.”

Tertullian
Against Praxeas
Chapter VII

Creation is filled with symbols of the Resurrection

In a word, I would say, all creation is instinct with renewal. Whatever you may chance upon, has already existed; whatever you have lost, returns again without fail. All things return to their former state, after having gone out of sight; all things begin after they have ended; they come to an end for the very purpose of coming into existence again. Nothing perishes but with a view to salvation. The whole, therefore, of this revolving order of things bears witness to the resurrection of the dead. In His works did God write it, before He wrote it in the Scriptures; He proclaimed it in His mighty deeds earlier than in His inspired words.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter XII

God did not create out of preexisting matter

It is, however, much more true, that nearly all the heresies allow it an origin and a maker, and ascribe its creation to our God. Firmly believe, therefore, that He produced it wholly out of nothing, and then you have found the knowledge of God, by believing that He possesses such mighty power. But some persons are too weak to believe all this at first, owing to their views about Matter. They will rather have it, after the philosophers, that the universe was in the beginning made by God out of underlying matter. Now, even if this opinion could be held in truth, since He must be acknowledged to have produced in His reformation of matter far different substances and far different forms from those which Matter itself possessed, I should maintain, with no less persistence, that He produced these things out of nothing, since they absolutely had no existence at all previous to His production of them.

Tertullian 
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter XI

God the Word created flesh as an image of his coming in the flesh later in time

For, whatever was the form and expression which was then given to the clay (by the Creator) Christ was in His thoughts as one day to become man, because the Word, too, was to be both clay and flesh, even as the earth was then.  For so did the Father previously say to the Son: “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” And God made man, that is to say, the creature which He moulded and fashioned; after the image of God (in other words, of Christ) did He make him. And the Word was God also, who being in the image of God, “thought it not robbery to be equal to God.” Thus, that clay which was even then putting on the image of Christ, who was to come in the flesh, was not only the work, but also the pledge and surety, of God.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter VI