But the view that the world came out of nothing in this absolute sense and that it has no natural affinity with the eternal and everlasting God has its logical consequence. It means that creation is under the constant threat of a return to nothingness, a threat which all particular beings which make it up experience as a decay and death. The fear of death, so widespread in creation, implicit in every creature’s attempt to survive at all costs, is not a fear of the suffering that death can cause, but of the return to nothingness that it involves. Creation as a whole, too, taken in itself is subject to extinction. Natural scientists today seem to say this, as they also seem to be endorsing the view “ or at least not excluding it“ that the universe came out of nothing. Both logically and existentially the doctrine of the creation of the world out of nothing implies that the world can be extinguished, for it has no natural capacity for survival.
But Christian faith goes hand in hand with hope and love. If God created the world out of love “ for what other motive can we attribute to him, knowing what he has done for the world?“ there must be hope for the world’s survival. But how? A simple, perhaps simplistic, answer to this might be that since God is almighty he can simply order things to happen so that the world may survive in spite of its contingency. In order words miracle working might save the world. Perhaps this is the answer given by most people in the face of the apocalypse. But Christian faith does not believe in Deus ex machina solutions. We cannot, like the ancient Greeks, introduce divine intervention at the end of a tragedy in which everything moves with mathematically accuracy to destruction. God did not, in creating the world, leave it without the means for its survival. In creating it he provided also for its survival. What does this mean?
To put all this in terms of Christian doctrine, we Christians believe that what Adam failed to do, Christ did. We regard Christ as the embodiment or anakephalaiosis of all creation, and therefore, as the Man par excellence and the savior of the world. We regard him, because of this, as the true image of God and we associate him with the final fate of the world. We, therefore, believe that in the person of Christ the world possesses its Priest of Creation, the model of Man’s proper relation to the natural world.
On the basis of this belief, we form a community which takes from this creation certain elements (the bread and the wine) which we offer to God with the solemn declaration Thine own of thine own we offer unto Thee, thus recognizing that creation does not belong to us but to God, who is its only owner. By doing so we believe that creation is brought into relation with God, and not only is it treated with the reverence that befits what belongs to God, but it is also liberated from its natural limitation and is transformed into a bearer of life. We believe that in doing this in Christ, we, like Christ, act as priests of creation. When we receive these elements back, after having referred them to God, we believe that because of this reference to God we can take them back and consume them no longer as death but as life. Creation acquires for us in this way a sacredness which is not inherent in its nature but acquired in and through Man’s free exercise of his imago Dei, his personhood. This distinguishes our attitude from all forms of paganism, and attaches to the human being an awesome responsibility for the survival of God’s creation.
All of this is a belief and practice that cannot be imposed on anyone else, and may easily be mistaken for sheer ritualism. Nevertheless we believe that this involve an ethos that the world needs badly in our time. It is not an ethics, but an ethos. It is not a program, but an attitude and a mentality, not a legislation but a culture.
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