The Logic of Creation

Some of our more recent readers may not be aware of the fuss that Hnaef caused a while back, when he came "out", as I believe the expression is, as a member of the Church of England. This caused us to see him in a new light, especially when I realised that the "Daily Office" he was reading was in fact Morning Prayer, and not a newspaper for the business community.


And a verse he quoted to us this morning pulled me up short. It's from Colossians 1: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created..."
All a bit John 1, of course. But the thing that struck me was the contradiction between "the firstborn of all creation" which could be taken by some as implying Christ was created, and "in him all things in heaven and on earth were created" - which implies he certainly wasn't. 


But it seems to me that "first-born" isn't "first-made". The Egyptian and Roman gods produced new gods by - ahem - the way that rabbits produce rabbits, meerkats produce new meerkats and even, let's say it - even humans new humans. By which means the divinity wasn't lost, and the new generation were gods just as the previous ones were.


And maybe that's what Paul's trying to get at, it strikes me. Christ is "first-born" because he's got all the same god-ness as the Father. Of course, there's no Mrs God about the place (if there is, the Bible's  very quiet about it, although I know that Francesca Stavrakopoulou would say that powerful vested interests edited the text to get her to go away, and provide Dr Stavrakopoulou with the chance to make hard-hitting TV series and the Daily Mail the chance to get hot 'n' bothered about it).


But God doesn't need that Mrs God because (a) as far as we know, God doesn't do that sort of thing and (b) if anyone is Mrs God, then it's God Godself, as God has neither X nor Y chromosomes (and no mucky comments) and (c) the point Paul's trying to  make here is one of relationship rather than sex and the single deity. Paul's saying that Christ is not made - he's "born". And if he's firstborn of creation then he's there first - in the sense of really first, not merely waiting ever since a date I shall call "minus eternity"' and then just nipping in first before all the rest - but first-first.


But if first-born of all creation, and the one through whom it was all made, then when he was, if you will excuse the expression, born again - a second, physical birth, in a piece of rock orbiting a medium-sized star at the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy, as a sage once put it - then in a way, he was there already. He was coming back to his own. Because he was there in the beginning and all along - not as some spaceman came travelling, an alien in an alien place, but as one who knew every nook and cranny in that stable, every strand of DNA in the governor who was to condemn him, the full life-cycle of the tree that made his manger, and the tree that bore his body. That doesn't mean that Jesus the man knew all these things - as his brain was the same size as ours, give or take - but it does mean that Christ underpins the whole shooting-match in the first place.


It means the Son is the Logos, as John puts it - the Word through whom all creation was spoke, but also the logic that holds the whole universe together - the one who defines the fine-structure constant, Planck's constant, the speed of light in a vacuum and, for all I know, the numbers π and e (I'm not too sure about these last two - I can imagine a world where c is different, but I don't know if I can imagine one where π is).

All of which leaves me wondering - if that's true then has an assumed truth of the last western Christian century been upside down? We've got into a habit of thinking (which I'm not going to bother referencing as (a) I don't know where to find this and (b) I hope you'll recognise this) that people - of all faiths and none - have an appreciation of the Spirit, but not one of Christ. We beloieve that it is Christ that people are lacking, but because everybody is spirit-ual they all possess, to one degree or another, the Spirit. But if the first-born of creation is the one who defines the logic of the universe, then in fact it's the other way round. The Logos who sets our very physical parameters is the One whom we all - implicitly - understand. Of course, it's a bit of a shock when the Logos decides to reside on earth as a small Jewish boy-child, born to what we might call an unconventional family. But the shock is that one who was here all along, is here embodied and en-souled.

Maybe the spirituality we see in others - even non-Christians, even non-believers - the belief that "there must be something", the innate nagging that sees purpose - comes from the Logos, the one who innately fills the world with meaning and reason, not the Spirit. The Spirit meanwhile is the one who blows where she wills, the one who, while we've been presenting our logi-cal cases for faith, has been howling down the outside of the church building wondering when she's going to be let in.

I'm not sure what all this means, if anything. But it made me think. I think I'd better open the window. You never know what might blow in.