Creation
- Michael Haldas
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
“God creates the cosmos so that love between beings is possible. God creates the world with the intention of entering into the world in the incarnation. The incarnation is not God’s response to sin but is God’s intended plan from the beginning of time – it is an action of love not a reaction to sin. Sin and the fall were not God’s plan, but neither can they thwart God’s eschatological goal for the universe…God calls humans into existence as the created beings God intended to become not only one with but also one of. Salvation as theosis [deification, becoming Christ-like] was God’s plan all along as God willed to share His life and love with us. God desired us to return His love but created us with free will so that we would have to choose to love God back as we are not automatons programmed to do His will.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“In gifting a rational soul to man, God makes him like the “incorporeal beings,” and in creating him from dust He makes him a physical being like the beasts…While everything else came into being simply by a word (“ Let there be . . .”), Adam was “shaped by God’s hands,” which reveals God’s unique and personal concern for man’s creation.” (Fr. Joseph Lucas)
“Creation results from God’s self-emptying over the face of non-being. God appears, He shines out, as Beauty. This Beauty is so compelling that not even non-being can resist falling in love with it. Overcome with eros, non-being renounces itself, repents of its chaos and self-absorption, and arises into being. As it does so, it “learns” to behave as the One it loves behaves–full of self-emptying Goodness for everything around it. Thus, everything that exists is marked by a cruciform love–for God, as eros, and for all creation, As agape. In these two movements, rocks, stones, stars, plants, animals, electrons–all of it–becomes what it is, becomes true. That is how the world was, and still is being, created. And that is the path that anyone who wishes to be born again…will also have to follow.” (Timothy G. Patitsas)
“The reason for his Incarnation is not human sin but divine love: ‘God did all this for no other reason, except to make known to the world the love that He has’. He became incarnate ‘not to redeem us from sins, or for any other reasons, but solely in order that the world might become aware of the love which God has for the whole of his creation’ ” (Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, St. Isaac the Syrian)
“Our most common way of viewing the world is to privilege history, to presume that the past is immutable and is the cause of all things in the present. That makes us the authors of creation, the makers of the story of the universe. That is very alluring, even though it carries the seeds of anxiety and war. But God has not so constituted creation so as to make it the maker of its own destiny, the master of its own fate. At the creation, God observes His work and says, “It is very good.” This is not simply an observation of the work He had done, but a proclamation of the very nature of the creation itself. Its nature is revealed in its end…St. Paul offers this description: …having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth– in Him. (Eph 1:9-10) This verse should also be read along with St. Paul’s statement in Romans 8: And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. (Rom 8:28)This is the “good” or the “very good” according to which all things were created. This same good, however, is hidden. It is in no way obvious to us, except as we see Christ Himself.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
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