KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 24 September
Wisdom taught me
Our Chapel reflections on Genesis 1 continue beyond that opening chapter in all its monumental grandeur to later considerations such as in the Book of Job and the Wisdom of Solomon. Genesis 1 has reminded us of the critical point that how we think about the created order ultimately shapes our thinking and acting towards one another especially in the light of our being made in the image of God. God as the ordering principle in creation counters and corrects our misuse of nature and one another as well as our mistaken views of ourselves. Education is about the mediation of ideas to us that are incorporated in us and shape our being and our understanding.
Far from being a one-off concern, the idea of creation is an underlying theme throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and shapes the later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic imaginary. Creation as the unfolding of the intellectual principle, God, means that how we think about ourselves and our world inevitably and necessarily centers on God. It is in that understanding that we truly begin to learn about ourselves. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God says to Job in that great classic of human suffering and grace. The grace lies precisely in God’s speaking to Job, questioning him and calling him to account through his wisdom in creation. It is the counter to our attempts to make God accountable to us. Job will be at once humbled and exalted. God’s questions, rhetorical and arresting, remind us that wisdom belongs to God, first and foremost. That God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind emphasizes his power and nature as beyond nature and his wisdom as more than human reason. His questions recall both Job and us to God in whose image we are made.
Yet creation is revelation and so it speaks to the dignity of our humanity in terms of our relation to wisdom and truth. The Wisdom of Solomon reminds us that “both we and our words are in his hand, as are all understanding and skill.” We are taught by Wisdom, the Wisdom of God, and by that wisdom as manifest in creation. “She is a breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty … she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends with God.” In a famous phrase, “she reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well,” suaviter et fortiter, sweetly and strongly. Creation is not static; God sustains its being in the wisdom through which all things are made.