The Resolution of Things

In my last post I wrote:

“Creation is—in a manner existing before any subsequent specification—one thing.

“This is not idle musing.  It matters—most specifically it matters in terms of Jesus’ teaching—that all Creation is one Creation.  Such division that exists in Creation—to the extent that any division is real—exists in either a perfect, absolute sense through the will of God, or it exists in some provisional sense through the will of creatures.”

God made the universe.  God made Adam.  God made the universe and Adam was in that universe.  God made the universe and Adam was part of that universe.  All of these statements are true, and none of them are surprising.

However, it would be surprising to say that God made Adam and the universe was part of Adam—and yet the only thing that was of necessity “other” to Adam was God.  Adam’s random-seeming, impinging, uninvited passing thoughts might have seemed “other” to him.  Adam’s welling emotions might have seemed “other” to him.  Adam’s limbs and their capacity for space-filling, clumsiness, and discomfort might have seemed “other” to him.  Adam’s food and drink—and the sensations of ingesting them—might have seemed “other” to him.  The air that Adam breathed might have seemed “other” to him.  Adam’s physical surroundings (the physical surroundings by which his very bodily survival was made possible) might have seemed “other” to him.

This, again, is not idle musing.  God created Adam in a state of fellowship with God—although, in a manner reminiscent of the initial factual statement of Creation as created by God and yet pictured as pre-existing the narrative (“In the beginning . . .”), Adam’s state of fellowship with God is noted first in how it is past.  God’s first described observation of Adam (“It is not good that the man should be alone . . .”) reflects Adam’s shrinking from the pure Other.  Adam shows himself to be attuned not to a relationship that is yielding (his identity found in a melding with an Other that he trusts) but rather to a relationship (or set of relationships) that is referential.  That is, Adam will find his center of existence not in God, but in himself centered in an experience-realm where simultaneously he measures a distance from his surroundings so as to define himself, and also measures his surroundings by the proportions in which they reflect himself.

And so, God sets about addressing the less-than-optimal situation in which the man is “alone.”  The situation is an awkward one, and the reader of Genesis is not spared the awkwardness inherent in the impudent fashion in which the narrative smacks of approximation and adjustment on the part of God.  First, animals (drawn by God, it should be noted, from the substance of the earth, and not separately decreed into existence) are presented to Adam.  They will not suffice.  Then, the woman is drawn by God from the very substance of the man—as though the essential one-thing-ness of the universe is not a thing to be violated.

Adam’s apparent delight at the woman (“bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”) is the epitome of the quandary of “otherness” in human experience.  We desire that which is simultaneously like us and not like us.  Of course, the matter is not so simple.  Our initial dissatisfaction with God extends to every corner of our existence.  The man and the woman did not enjoy perfect communion, despite the denomination’s fixation on a fairy-tale simplicity of a Fall disrupting a perfect Paradise.  As must be admitted, even an abrupt Fall had to be presaged by unseemly thoughts on the part of our ancestors.  (And even a casual observer can note that the “curses” after the eating of the forbidden fruit were intensifications of already-existing travails characteristic of human life.)

It is not for nothing that Jesus returns again and again to “the beginning” or to the ancient roots of his listeners’ heritage, for Jesus is addressing those things that are most fundamental in life.  There is, however, no warrant to assume that Jesus’ references to the past are mere ratifications of what we consider the “natural order.”  Genesis, if approached with vigorous honesty, is revealed to be an account that is (by the very logic that necessitates the unfolding narrative) an account of a degraded state of existence becoming progressively more degraded.  What we consider to be “nature” is a set of conflicts and competitions between actors, and this continues to be so even if the matter is by degrees relieved by episodes of cooperation or conciliation.

Ultimately, what Jesus points us toward is not a resolution of conflicts, but rather an essential resolving of humanity’s original predicament—a broken communion with God, the Perfect Other.  As far as our relationship with Creation is concerned, for all the practical advice that Jesus gives us about how to get along with others, the sublime advices (nay, commands) that Jesus gives us about how to seek salvation are eminently impractical.  To be perfect, to be one with each other and with Jesus, to reckon ourselves to be possessors of all kingdoms while yet possessing nothing, to reckon the leveling of mountains at the mere thought to be as automatic as commanding our limbs, to see the exertions and trials of all ages and places as bound up in a simple, momentary act like handing out a cup of water—all of these things bespeak a notion of affinity with all Creation that makes sense only in light of a call to reach out to an awesome dis-affinity—communion with God, the Perfect Other.