Continuity and Economy: “How Many Loaves Have Ye?”

Above:  Site of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, Between 1900 and 1920

Image Source = Library of Congress

(http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/mpc2010007469/PP/)

Reproduction Number = LC-DIG-matpc-21987

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

EDITOR’S COMMENT:

Galileo Galilei, that great scientist, devout Roman Catholic, and frequently blunt man, said it best (in Italian, of course):

The Bible tells us how to go the Heaven, not the way the heavens go.

That principle applies also to cosmology.  But on a major point I agree with my great-grandfather:  something comes from something else.  Creation, according to Jewish theology, was not the making of something from nothing.  No, it was the creation of order from chaos.  Read the earliest words of that myth, which contains much spiritual truth, closely.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

AUGUST 10, 2013 COMMON ERA

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Matt. 15, 34

Herein are embodied two principles:

(1)  Continuity–that which is to be must spring from what is.

(2)  Economy, naturally resulting from the former.

1.  In six days God completed creation.  He then ordained that everything itself and of itself should produce after its kind (Gen. 1, 11).  Two or seven of everything were saved in the ark.  Say to nature, “Feed me” and she’ll answer “give me something with which to begin and I will.”  Crops are not created but from seed.

2.  This law obtains in the growth of character–progress in the good and triumph over the evil.  God casts out the evil and quickens the good.  “Washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”  Man receives no new faculty after natural birth.

3.  In obedience to this law the missionary goes out.  God wants to feed the people, but some one who has it must take them the Bread of Life.  He multiplies the loaves in existence.

4.  Thus it is in the resurrection.  It is sown  a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.  Not a creation but a resurrection.

Hence results economy.  That what is already is made to contribute to what comes.  Let everyone who is saved reach another and what a work is done!

GEORGE WASHINGTON BARRETT