How the Doctrine of Creation Grounds All Reality

[Michie]

If we are not self-made, then life is not a struggle for dominance, but an invitation to gratitude, communion, and hope.

The great metaphysical truth on which the whole of Sacred Scripture opens, and to which everything from beginning to end testifies, is that this world in which we live and move and locate our being is a visible and created place. That it is, moreover, the result of a good and generous God who, bringing it forth from nothingness, holds it in being from moment to moment lest it fall back into that same nothingness to which all creation tends when left to its own devices.

Therefore, the world we see and touch, taste and smell and hear, is not the outcome of a God having to somehow struggle against a horde of lesser deities, forced to wrestle with the forces of chaos in order, as it were, to capture the cosmos. But a God who need only say “Be!” and things are, they exist. A God whose very name bespeaks being. “I Am Who Am!” he thunders forth when asked by Moses to reveal his name to the Israelites. “Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: He Who Is, hath sent me to you” (Exodus 3:13-14). This is how we are to address the God of Israel, who is at the same time the God of all peoples, and of the universe itself — Yahweh, for Yahweh means “He Who Is.”

Continued below.

How the Doctrine of Creation Grounds All Reality

COMMENTARY: If we are not self-made, then life is not a struggle for dominance, but an invitation to gratitude, communion, and hope.

www.ncregister.com

 

[fide]

If we are not self-made, then life is not a struggle for dominance, but an invitation to gratitude, communion, and hope.

The great metaphysical truth on which the whole of Sacred Scripture opens, and to which everything from beginning to end testifies, is that this world in which we live and move and locate our being is a visible and created place. That it is, moreover, the result of a good and generous God who, bringing it forth from nothingness, holds it in being from moment to moment lest it fall back into that same nothingness to which all creation tends when left to its own devices.

Therefore, the world we see and touch, taste and smell and hear, is not the outcome of a God having to somehow struggle against a horde of lesser deities, forced to wrestle with the forces of chaos in order, as it were, to capture the cosmos. But a God who need only say “Be!” and things are, they exist. A God whose very name bespeaks being. “I Am Who Am!” he thunders forth when asked by Moses to reveal his name to the Israelites. “Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: He Who Is, hath sent me to you” (Exodus 3:13-14). This is how we are to address the God of Israel, who is at the same time the God of all peoples, and of the universe itself — Yahweh, for Yahweh means “He Who Is.”

Continued below.

How the Doctrine of Creation Grounds All Reality

COMMENTARY: If we are not self-made, then life is not a struggle for dominance, but an invitation to gratitude, communion, and hope.

www.ncregister.com

I was very happy to read this excellent essay, which very powerfully points the man or woman who thinks well and seeks goodness to the right and true conclusion. And this very conclusion - God IS - is indeed the necessary knowledge that can save us as this creation heads toward final Judgment. So I say, of this essay, superb and thank you.

But I found one thing lacking. Or maybe I missed one thing essential. I searched a bit but did not find a truth that ought to have been prominent. I added this, copied below, as a comment on the Register:

Maybe I missed something, but I didn't find in this otherwise superb essay, a statement that the chasm separating the two opposing conclusions about one's existence is that separating the natural from the supernatural: the gift of holy grace.

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God — not because of works, lest any man should boast. (Eph 2:8-9)​

We can "logic" our way to the door of the bridge, but the door is closed until He, until and unless, in His infinite wisdom opens it.​

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But without that God-enabled humility, our very reasoning inclines us toward arrogance and thus defeat. We would be left a scribe, Pharisee, hypocrite: well-spoken but blind. God help us!​

We must seek, search, hunger and thirst for Truth, no matter the cost.

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. (Mt 7:7-8)