CARING FOR

CREATION. THE BIBLICAL VISION.

Margaret Barker Newcastle 2007

Introduction. 1. The Bible has a beautiful and sophisticated account of the Creation and the role of human beings, but this is not set out in a single text. 2. Both in the Biblical stories of Creation and in the design of the Jerusalem temple, there is a single vision of the relationship between time and eternity; between God and Creation; and between the visible world and the invisible world of God and the angels. 3. To understand what the Bible says about the Creation, we too must glimpse the vision that informed the worship of the Temple, the poetry of the Hebrew prophets, the sayings of the sages and the images of the storytellers. 4. All express and honour the same truth about the Creation. Since the New Testament shares this view of the Creation, it is the basis of Christian belief about the environment. 5. The Bible does not give theology as propositions. It communicates with pictures and stories, the method of the pre-philosophical culture. The stories express the theology and do not have value simply as stories. 6. One of the keys to the biblical teaching, as we shall see, is the role of knowledge and how we use it. This has many implications in a university society- for example, who owns knowledge?

A. The temple in Jerusalem represented the Creation. 1. The Genesis story of the six days of Creation also described the ceremonial building of the temple, which was in two parts, divided by the great curtain. 2. The outer area represented the visible material world [the Garden of Eden] and the inner part was the holy of holies, the invisible world of the Glory of God and the angels [heaven]. 3. The curtain corresponded to the firmament made of the second day and represented matter concealing the Glory of God from human eyes, but the holy of holies in the heart of the temple showed that God was at the heart of Creation. We can see the pattern by comparing Exodus 40.16f and Genesis 1: Ancient pattern clear for the first 4 days: Day 1 = holy of holies; second day = firmament/ veil; third day = creation of plants/ table for plant offerings, i.e. bread, wine, incense; fourth day lights of heaven/ lamp stand which represented the sun, moon and five known planets. .

4. The 6 days were the extent of Moses vision on Sinai (Exod 24.16) of the creation, not the length of time for the creation to take place. He was told to copy as their place of worship what he had seen on the mountain i.e.to build the tabernacle to represent the creation. Exodus 25.9, 40 in the Hebrew does not say that he saw a plan of a heavenly tabernacle. . 5. All temple worship concerned the relationship of the Creation to God - praise, thanksgiving, asking for forgiveness - and the whole of the visible world was thought to be a temple where human beings were the priests. The greatest temple ritual was the atonement, and this was the symbolic healing of the creation. 6. ‘Adam’ [the name simply means a human] was put into Eden to ‘serve’ it and to ‘preserve’ it, two Hebrew words which also mean ‘worship in the temple’ and ‘preserving the teachings’ Gen. 2.15. 7. Not the steward, but the priest. Adam was remembered in Jewish tradition as the first high priest, and Jesus, the Second Adam was described as our great high priest. 8. After six days, God rested on the seventh, the Sabbath, showing that when the Creation was complete and ‘very good’, nothing more was made. Gen. 1 31 9. The goal of Creation was not more and more, but sufficiency, completion and rest. 10. The crown of creation is not the human, but the rest of completion.

B. The whole Creation - earth and heaven - was bound in a network of bonds, known as The Eternal Covenant and The Covenant of Peace. 1. Everything - the visible natural world, human society and the invisible world of the angels was part of one system created by God. 2. The bonds held everything together and joined the visible world to God at its centre. The vision:, Proverbs 29.18 is literally ‘where there is no prophetic vision, the people unravel’. Need to look towards the light or else see the whole world in own shadow. 3. Any action which broke the bonds was called ‘sin’, and so human conduct could and did destroy the system. 4. Sin could be deliberate or through ignorance; the effect was the same. Thus one of the key roles of the priests and the angels was to teach about right conduct. Malachi 2.7 5. Breaking away from God was not seen as liberation but as deprivation, losing touch with the source of life and renewal. 6. The mystics described the holy of holies as ‘the mystery of existence’ and ‘the mystery of becoming’. [e.g. in Dead Sea Scrolls]

7. When the bonds of the covenant had been broken, the whole system collapsed; because of human sin, the stars fell from the sky, the sun lost its light - the familiar pictures of the apocalypse. Isaiah 24.4ff. 8. The eternal covenant was repaired by ‘atonement’, when the temple/Creation was purified from the effects of sin [described as pollution], and recreated. This covenant underlies Matthew 26.28 9. Atonement involved repentance and self sacrifice to renew and restore everything that had been damaged - the Creation, and the person’s relationship with God.

C. The Holy of Holies, the invisible eternal presence, is a Unity because God is One. 1. This Unity underlies and binds together in one system everything in the visible Creation. 2. The prophets glimpsed this in their visions, and the sages warned that when people lost sight of it, everything disintegrated. 3. People on earth were able to learn something about God from the angels [meaning ‘messengers’], who were themselves part of the Glory and Unity of God. ‘Day One. The Benedicite and the invisible powers. 4. The song of the angels symbolised the harmony of all Creation centred on God, and when people on earth praised the Creator, they joined with the angels in their music and became part of the great pattern of the Creation. Pss 33, 96, 98, 144, 149 etc. ‘New song’ could also be read ‘renewing song’ Praise of the Creator renews the earth. This is why Christians sing. Therefore with angels and archangels and all…. 5. The harmony and shalom of Creation were maintained by the obedience of the angels, and humans had to be obedient to God if they were to preserve the Creation. The angels who sang to the Shepherds, Luke 2. 14, Glory to God in the highest, and then the counterpart on earth, ‘peace among people of goodwill.’

D. The pattern of Creation is determined by God, 1. Described as the statutes, the ‘engraved things’. 2. When earth is in harmony with these divine statutes, the natural world and human society enjoy ‘justice’ and ‘righteousness’, words describing the state of peace [shalom]. Current state is out of harmony with God.

3. The exact measurements, proportions and roles of everything are planned by God, and these are known as the ‘mysteries’ of the Creation. 4. They are not simply cosmic dimensions, but even include fair dealing in weights and measures. Ezekiel’s vision of the true temple 43.10ff and 45.10ff 5. ‘Progress’ is not part of the picture; the aim is to keep everything in harmony with the plan of the Ruler of the Creation. Sustainability is a Christian ideal; sustainable development is a contradiction in terms, and part of big business greenwash. . 6. And so we say in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Thy Kingdom come’, which means ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’

E. Humans were created as the Image of God on earth, 1. This is why there was no statue in the temple in Jerusalem. 2. People worshipped God by their treatment of other human beings and by their care for the Creation. Matthew 25.31ff 3. Humans as the Image also meant that people had to care for the Creation in the way that God cares. Steward not a biblical word- rather a priest. 4. Genesis 2 says that Adam was created from dust, but began his real life when God breathed into him. Materialism is acknowledging only the ‘dust’ aspect of human life, which is mere existence without the breath of God. 5. Adam was put into the Garden of Eden to serve God and to serve the Garden, but was forbidden to take the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil - secular knowledge. Often say Adam disobeyed, but need to look at the exact nature of the disobedience; it was the use of knowledge. 6. All the other trees, including the tree of life/the tree of Wisdom, were permitted. Proverbs 3.13-18 7. Satan, described as ‘the deceiver’ [Revelation 12.9] because he makes false knowledge look attractive, persuaded Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, and they discovered the consequences of secular knowledge. 8. Materialism and reductionism. 9. They became no more than the dust from which they had been made and could not live in the presence of God. 10. They left the Garden of Eden.

F. The tree of life was the symbol of Wisdom, 1. Wisdom is that God given-knowledge which was binds all Creation in harmony to the Creator. Prov.8.31 harmozousa - keeping in harmony, is the Old Greek text. The Hebrew word is not known anywhere else and the meaning is uncertain. 2. Some angels - known as the sons of God - rebelled against God and brought their heavenly knowledge to earth, but without the law of God. This is the story in 1 Enoch 3. They corrupted the Creation by teaching secular knowledge, which fragmented and destroyed. Fragmented knowledge fragments that on which it impacts. 4. Theirs was a deceptive, false covenant, offering a ‘freedom’, that led only to death and decay. 5. St Paul taught that Christians were the [new] sons of God who were to free the Creation from these bonds of decay and restore the covenant of shalom, Rom.8.18ff. 6. In the Book of Revelation, St John learned that faithful Christians would again eat from the tree of life and be restored to Eden. Rev.2.7.

G. There is only One God, and to worship anything else is idolatry. 1. An idol is anything man-made - not just a statue – e.g. Isa. 2..8. 2. It can be an economic or political system. 3. Idolatry gives a false centre to the Creation, which warps and distorts the whole system. ‘Iniquity is, etymologically, distortion, 4. The second of the ten commandments warns that idolatry results in iniquity, distortion, which affects several generations. Exod. 20.4

In his great vision of the day of Judgement in the Book of Revelation, St John heard heavenly voices proclaiming the Kingdom of God on earth, ‘the time for destroying the destroyers of the earth’. Then he saw St Michael and his angels fighting Satan, ‘the deceiver of the whole world’ The battle against those who destroyed the earth was a battle against those who deceived with false knowledge, the agents of Satan.