The Six Days: Old and New - Part 4

All of which are fittingly described as a truly Divine Rhetoric designed, as St. Paul says, to instruct, and for our learning....(Cf Romans 15:4 and 2 Tim.3:16)

 

 

God created the Body of the Universe and set its limits on Day Two. The Heavens and the Earth, with water, air and fire and light, were all created on Day One. The elements, constituting this Body of the Universe, and the composition of Act and Potency, of Form and Matter, the latter being the Prime Matter and the constituency of the First Substantial Form with all of its accidents - all, as Days One and Two, were inanimate. God created no physical - living forms until Day Three. With the Fathers and the Doctors, we believe the Angels, in a great spiritually, luminous Hierarchy of Nine Choirs, were also created on Day One. I like to think of the Angels and the Elements as Mirror images of each other - the Angels at the very top of the Hierarchy of Created Beings and the elements at the very bottom.

 

 

But these inanimate elements become absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the life-forms created on Days Three, Five and Six, - including mankind. In this way and because of this, it must be seen that they participate in some way in the life-principle of the living form into which they enter. This demonstrates the necessity for the Six - Twenty-four hour days in the Order of Creation. I have just read the article “New from Nothing – Is God Still Creating Today?” by James Johnson of ICR, in Acts and Facts, for May of 2013. If ever there was an opportunity for true ecumenism, it is here and now. Dr. Johnson has just clarified for me –the use of the Hebrew word nephesh as distinct from the word bara. Bara refers to what God created ex nihilo and in toto on Days One and Three –signifying the inanimate particles and elements and light of Day One and the vital principle of plants on Day Three. But the word – nephesh –is reserved for sensate life and for man’s rational soul. The unique character of rationality as added to the sensate or sense life of the animals, is signified by man’s soul being made in God’s image and likeness, (Gen.1:26-27).

 

 

Thank you, Dr. Johnson.

 

 

I do not see any least cause for disagreement about the plants! On the contrary, the article in the April issue of Acts and Facts, on the biochemistry of plants, abundantly demonstrates the processes of their vital principle – what the medieval termed a vegetative or merely nutritive “soul” – distinct from the sensitive “soul” of animals, with the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. In many cases, as we all know, the animals have much keener senses than humans. It is man’s rational soul –his intellect and freedom of will, that sets him above the animals – but also, just below the Angels. He thus fills a gap in the great Chain of Being, the Hierarchy of Reality – that leads to God – Who transcends all the Categories of His creation – but at the same time, has constituted Himself as Our Final, as well as our First Efficient Cause for, as St. Augustine said to Him, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” And this rest or peace, comes to us all with the life of Divine Grace, the Supernatural Order of Divine Grace, which also, must be distinguished from our natural – physical life. For it depends upon our free will, whether or not we accept this new life of Divine Grace, of the Divine Intimacy, whereby, we come to know Him as He wishes to be known – keeping the First Commandment to love Him above all things with our whole heart and mind and strength of being.

 

 

We are His possessions, first of all by Creation and secondly, by Redemption. Read the Collect for the Ninth Prophecy of the Easter Vigil. (Page 18 of this blog article.) We have this double reason to love Him – Who has first loved us. What the false science of evolutionism seems to have accomplished is this: it has taken over the entire natural order of Reality. This is the proper domain of the natural sciences, beginning with physics and chemistry. This is the area, too, in which the Protestant Creationists have been particularly timid, mainly because of their commitment to Copernicanism. I think they are at least beginning to see that geocentrism is an intrinsically necessary part of Creation Science - and because it is necessary for the science, it must also be necessary for the metaphysics and the theology. Truth is One and there can be no contradictions within the harmonious whole that is Reality. But that today an evolutionary world-view dominates the entire natural order of things - not to mention its disastrous effects on theology - certainly goes a long way in explaining the lack of a moral sense in so many people and especially in the young. Combine the educational system and the electronic media, and you have a cultural mind-shaper such as the world has never known.

 

 

Some speculate, (myself among them), that before the Flood, the Canaanites had also a highly developed technology that helps to explain the "violence" and "wickedness" of men that provoked God to wipe them out with the cleansing waters of the Deluge. But it will be by fire the next time, as St. Peter warns us. The thing about technology is that it makes use of the real processes of nature - especially of the elements, in order to fabricate so many artificial products. I am confronted at every meal here in the nursing home, with artificial sweeteners and butters. Also with de-natured milk - for safety reasons, I realize. But at the same time, it all demonstrates that Lucifer, that chief of all the rebellious Angels, continues in his major project - which is to be as "like God" as possible by imitating God's perfect, natural creations with his demonically inspired imitations.

 

 

Now, in the middle ages, men and women imitated God's "making" by producing works of art never since equaled in beauty and even in their usefulness. For the Cathedrals of Europe, for example, have never been surpassed in their beauty, and they still serve as the best places of worship that any civilization can offer. (Consult the many scholarly works on this subject for verification.) All this was lost with the rise of the new science of Descartes and Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon even based his new science of the useful on a mockery of the Six Days of Genesis. But it is a mockery - exalting his Masonic "merchants of light". This is an area of the occult that needs to be exposed as the counterfeit it is, so that the truths of the real Creation Science and Cosmology will be able to shine forth as the real "splendor of Truth" we have inherited from the Tradition of the Past.

 

 

Going back to Hugh of St. Victor - or maybe it was St. Ambrose - who said that all the history of the world revolves around the two great events of the Creation and the Incarnation. Those who have the privilege of daily Mass, recognize this great mystery every day and praise God for it when we pray the second prayer of the offertory: "O God, Who in creating human nature hast wonderfully ennobled it, but still more wonderfully has restored it.." - echoing the collect of the Ninth Prophecy of the Easter Vigil....."Grant that by the mystical union of this water and wine, we may be made partakers in His Divine Nature, Who hast vouchsafed to become partaker of our human nature..."

 

 

How is it that Traditionalists continue to ignore the unity of these two great historical events? This is, indeed, a mystery of iniquity and can only be a sign of the Great Apostasy of 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10.

 

 

Kyrie, Eleison!