Two Things Out of Nothing

No sense can be derived from an ostensibly monotheistic ideology that considers the deity within a framework of co-existing or priorly-existing independent entities.  A monotheistic ideology considers a single deity from which all else flows—otherwise anything independent of the “single deity” would be characterizable ultimately as another deity.

The Abrahamic belief systems identify a single deity—leaving aside the controversy (in which my position will be clear)—over whether a monotheism can encapsulate multiple “persons” within the deity.  Generally, the Abrahamic belief systems reckon that entities can exist which are distinct from the deity, but it must be the case that such entities are created by him—leaving aside the controversy about the deity’s “gender” (in which my position must be clear already.)

So, all else besides God has been created by him—out of nothing.  It might also be contended that a certain logic would dictate that—there being no independently-existing substrate—God has created all out of himself.  My position on this is clear—postulation about any illogic of something out of nothing is coterminous with postulation about God himself being created out of nothing.  Either God exists or he doesn’t.  Arguments about how he could make something else exist are simply re-litigations of the original point.

Jesus refers to two kingdoms.  The first important point about the “two kingdoms” is the fact that their realms incorporate the entirety of our experienceable existence.  “This world” (often ascribed some practical or titular—though hardly un-contested—subjugation to Satan) is described along with the “kingdom of heaven.”  In that the kingdom of heaven is described by Jesus as existing within the believer as well as existing in rightful sovereignty over all, it is most logical to view the two kingdoms—in an ethical if not practical sense—as two states of being.  On a single plane, we are describable as citizens either of the kingdom of this world or of the kingdom of heaven.

In parallel with the idea of “two kingdoms,” I contend that our existence is understandable most clearly in terms of two things—and two things only—described for us in the scriptures as having been created out of nothing.  First, the original Creation was formed out of nothing.  As I have noted elsewhere, it is paradoxically the case that this necessary “creation out of nothing” is given an amazingly short shrift in the Bible.  The “original Creation” is not even described narratively.  We are greeted in Genesis first by the (narratively) pre-existing chaos.  “Let there be light” is counterpoised with the substrate of darkness, which is given a substance even though we call it simply the absence of light.  Then we are told how this produced this which gave rise to that, and so on.

And the Gospels proceed in similar fashion.  Jesus will make wine, but only out of water.  Jesus will come up with a coin that Peter can use to pay their tax, but Peter has to go literally fishing for it.  Even the return of Jesus to his body (certainly a “creation” of an event unextractable by us from any realm of experience) is framed in a narrative similar in one sense to all other of his miracles.  Here an event of unsurpassed import is not displayed in itself before any mortal’s eyes.  As far as any human’s eyes are permitted, it is as though the Savior was (re)birthed by the tomb.

This leads me to the second thing that was created out of nothing. This second thing, the unity of Creation—not just Creation itself—was created out of nothing.  There is no logical reason why anything we can perceive ought to have ever existed—true.  Such is a foundational tenet of any monotheism that acknowledges a sovereign deity—and certainly God has been lauded for his creative act throughout the ages.  What is also true is that there is no logical reason why everything we can perceive is understood necessarily to be in connection to all else.  I am not referring to the idea that we each possess single sensory systems such that our processing of information must necessarily presume to connect all input—whether by close or by distant association.  What I am referring to is the biblical assertion that all is connected.  God made Creation.  He did not make Creations.

God gave us bodies.  He also gave us to understand that our care for our bodies can be at the expense of our neighbors’ welfare.  God gave us children.  He also gave us to understand that our familial responsibilities can be at the expense of larger ethical demands.  God gave us lives.  He also gave us to understand that our care for our lives can be at the expense of our eternal fates, or those of our fellows.

In all those “gave us to understands” lies a certain presumption that I am attempting to highlight.  It is in a certain sense possible to maintain that the believer’s foundational premise—in trying to do what is right—can be to try to do everything possible, and to “cast the rest upon the Lord” (or some such.)  Certainly, prayer and trust are laudable, but it must be understood that the persistent tendency to which we are drawn is to delineate between what we can do and what we cannot.  That—within the logic of Jesus’ teaching—is impermissible.  There are no realms of ethical responsibility in Jesus’ teaching, just as there are no realms within the larger realms of the two coexisting kingdoms.

It would be ridiculous for me to speak of “ethical responsibility in Jesus’ teaching” and to ever act as though I was not simply relaying the message.  What I can do is try to draw attention to what are really two “created out of nothing” phenomena.  God’s hand can be seen in everything, but for us mortals God’s unaccompanied creative power can be seen in only two things.  First, there is the fact that Creation is described as existing.  Second, there is the fact that Creation is described as single.  This is possibly just for our consumption—certainly God can make as many Creations as he likes, but similarly he could at his pleasure have placed us in view of—perhaps even straddling—such diversities.  He has not.  There is one connected Creation for us.

And so we have bodies and children and lives.  There can be no notion that care for those things is mandatory, and care for other things is optional.  There can be no notion that any parochial value systems displayed by ostensibly godly men and women “in Bible days” can serve legitimately as templates for our behaviors.  There can be no notion that care for all Creation is creeping “pantheism,” or some such.  We can only try to do what Jesus requires, and in a single, connected Creation, what Jesus requires of us binary-oriented creatures is necessarily impossible—that is the upshot of his ethical system.

Jesus requires everything of us all the time.  The important thing here about his teaching of the two kingdoms is the fact that they are two modes of being.  The lesser mode is the realm of Satan, in which we can try to do our best.  The greater mode is the kingdom of God, in which we can also try to do our best.  We can submerge ourselves in the “earthly” realm of Satan, and believe ourselves to be on the right track, if we try to wend through an imagined landscape of the devil’s traps.  What Jesus teaches is that there is an entire coexisting kingdom, the “kingdom of heaven,” where our efforts dissolve before our eyes even as the arbitrary moral distinctions to which we are irresistibly drawn dissolve as well.

When we embrace the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of our personal dissolution, we can—haltingly, it must be admitted—address ourselves to Jesus’ demands.  Here it is absolutely essential to embrace as well the two conjoined elements of Creation and of interconnected Creation.  When we are the pitiful servants of a merciful master, all we might attempt will be impossible, but it is the extent of the impossibility that is crucial to any moral grounding that we might by his grace be granted.  Failing, as the kingdom of Satan will espouse, to do what we must for delineated causes—family, community, church, and the like—is not what we are truly to understand as failure.  We are to understand our failure in the vein of one great cause in one connected Creation.

The citizens of the kingdom of Satan and of the kingdom of heaven can be defined by precisely those implications of a connected Creation that are embedded in the teachings of Jesus, which will brook no notions of the sequestering of ethical demands.  In the kingdom of Satan, “hating one’s parents” is taken as some sort of admonition to be prepared to forsake all if necessary to serve God.  In the kingdom of heaven, “hating one’s parents” is an ever-present condition of existence.  To be “of” someone or “from” someone is to be of necessity not “of” or “from” the single Creation to which we are ethically bound.

To enlarge further on the subject of ancestry, there is Jesus’ denouncement of those of the Jews who maintained that they would not have joined their ancestors in persecuting the prophets.  In the kingdom of Satan, such an assertion would seem entirely reasonable, though of course entirely convenient when said by someone at a comfortable distance from the prophets’ age.  To Jesus, this contention of some Jews of his time—that they would have forborne from the evil deeds of their ancestors—is ridiculous.  To identify with being “of” or “from” something is always a trap—at least, that is the implication of Jesus’ teaching.

God created, as far as we know, two things out of nothing—two things that did not exist priorly, and that had no necessity of existence.  He created Creation, and he created one, single, interconnected Creation.  In the realm of Jesus’ teaching for us, God did not make Creation.  He made The Creation.