At the very beginning of the scriptures, in the book of Genesis, we get a first glance at the gift of God. The first gift revealed by God is the gift of light. God creates, and His creation is realized in the light and in the cycle between night and day. Perhaps one of the most surprising things about the gift of light is that it is a mediated gift. The first principle of God's government revealed in Genesis is that He gives to His creation by means of the mediators He has created. God is not the physical light of creation, a light which is nonetheless His gift and a metaphor for the true light of which He is the source. God created the lights in the heavens to give light upon the earth.[footnote: Gn. 1: 15, 17.] God gives light by creating other luminous realities. From the very beginning of creation, God creates mediators --- in fact, God's creation is itself a mediation of God's goodness, “And God saw that it was good.”[footnote: Gn. 1: 12, 18, 21, 25, 31. ]
Light is given by the heavenly bodies to all the earth. As we know from experience, living beings depend upon light in a very radical way. Plants depend upon light in order to live and grow. The plants become the food for everything that has the breath of life. [footnote: Gn. 1:29--30. ]
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I am hoping this is an introduction...
ReplyDeleteSo far, I am impressed but wanting more!
There is more! I will be posting every couple of days for the next couple of weeks... Thanks for reading!
ReplyDeleteAlso, after reading the small article that Cindy posted on my Buzz (http://www.thinkatheist.com/profiles/blogs/bill-nye-bood-in-texas-for) I think I'll add some more stuff about mediation. The light of the moon is a reflected light, a mediated light if you will. It is commonly used in Catholic Theology in reference to the Virgin Mary who reflects the light of the true sun - Christ.
ReplyDeleteThere was a generalization made in some of my theology classes about protestant theology (which is different from Anglican theology of course, but still too seemingly disparate for generalization in my opinion anyway) wherein mediation by creatures is rejected. And yet, Jesus commands us to bring the good news (the light of the Gospel) to all of creation. Angels are clearly seen as mediators of God's will (His messangers), Moses is clearly the mediator of God's Law (His teaching, for Israel to become a light for all the nations). It would only make since that in God's creation there is only one source of light, and that the other "lights" are mediators of that one light.
Of course, astronomy demonstrates that there are distant lights in other "Solar systems," or Galaxies which produce their own light. These could also be viewed as mediators of the one created light, and are compared to the angels and saints. The theological question then becomes: are we simply mediators of light, or are we sources of light? The answer is both of course, but the difference is between created light and uncreated light. We can be mediators of the uncreated light (the Word of God, light from light), but we are also sources of the created light within us, our intellect. The devil is called lucifer (bearer of light) because of the intensity of the created light within him, the brilliance of his intellect. But Jesus warns against putting created light ahead of the uncreated light, "Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness."(Lk. 11:35)
In the commentary I've got comming up on Exodus, I look at how God gives light in order to lead/guide, so any created light that does not light the path of God's way (the uncreated light) is in fact darkness - it still leads/guides, only to destruction "The blind leading the blind..."