KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 16 September
“And behold, it was very good”
“God is the beginning and end of all things, and especially of rational creatures,” Thomas Aquinas says at the beginning of his Summa Theologiae. It calmly and clearly states a philosophical understanding of the concept of God that belongs in one way or another to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Implied in the statement is the understanding that God is clearly not one of those things which God creates. What kind of thing is God? He is nothing, no kind of thing at all but is distinct from all things as their source and end; in short as Creator, the principle of the being and knowing of all reality.
Junior Chapel on Monday considered the first Chapter of Genesis, touching upon the first day and then leap-frogging ahead to the fourth and fifth days. The simple but profound point is that creation is an orderly affair that involves distinguishing one thing from another: light from darkness, heaven and earth, earth and sea, creatures of the air and creatures of the land and the sea. “God saw that it was good” is the recurring refrain throughout the entire chapter. It is a powerful statement that speaks to our contemporary anxieties and fears about the natural world as if it were something evil or threatening. At issue for us is about learning how to honour and respect nature or creation. This stands in contrast to both ancient and modern fears that chaos might just be stronger and greater than order. Creation is something intellectual. As the 12th century Islamic theologian, Al Ghazali, notes, eight of the ninety-nine beautiful names of God, Allah, are all about God as Creator. The Quran echoes Genesis and John: “Originator (Badi’) of the heavens and earth. When He decrees a thing, He says only ‘Be!’ and it is” (Qur’an 2:117).
The biblical account is not primarily descriptive; it is a poetic explanation, a way of thinking about the world and, ultimately, about our place in it. We are in this story. Thus the Thursday and Friday Chapels looked at the work of the sixth day and about the seventh day. Where do we as human beings fit into this orderly picture of a world spoken and called into being by an intellectual principle, God as Word? We are the work of the sixth day. Whatever we mean by day, and there are many different ways of marking time in various cultures such as the four day ‘market week’ in the Nigerian Igbo culture, it functions as an ordering principle and pattern in a rhythmic, liturgical and mnemonic way. Here it belongs to the unfolding or process of a world that exists for thought in its order and pattern; an order in which we ultimately find our humanity. We are the work of the sixth day.
