Acts of (re)Creation and Destruction

Oh! Athenasius, you give me so many good things to dwell on!!

"the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning."

Salvation, rebirth, comes about through the same person, and esentially does not salvation come about Ex Nihilo much the same as creation?

"The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good."

Athenasius says a few paragraphs later that loss of our analogous relationship to God results inevitably in decay and entropy. A slipping back into nothingness. The antithesis of the work of creation that God has done/ is doing.

I find this all completely facinatiing in that these are the things I have been thinking about lately. Those who are at peace with God and as Bonhoeffer correctly asserts, "only the crucified man is at peace with God" are set about joining God, the creator and sustainer of all things, in his acts of (re)Creation. The opposite holds true as well, those who are at war with God are at odds with the creator and sustainer of all things, and thus cultivate nothingness and entropy.

If that sounds confusing let me know, this hasn't been in the oven very long and might not be fully baked, but ultimately it seems to me that all of mans actions are bound in either acts of creation or destruction. Creative acts are totally and completely the domain of God and we can only join Him in the venture by accepting the Word that creates and recreates and by repenting of our acts of destruction.

I think this is a line of thought that might be worth traveling down as half baked as it at the moment.

books books books

I recently went through all the books I have in my closet and was surprised at how many of them I had not actually read yet, or read all the way through. I guess this is the unfortunate price of buying more than one at a time. Anyway, I recently found my copy of "Radical Reformission" by Mark Driscoll and have been finding it extremely relavent to discussions I have been having lately. I just finished reading this part where he was talking about how some churches value tradition over innovation and that this can impede the gospel from going out. The example that imediately popped into my head (showing how ecclectic my head is, most likely) was that of translating the bible. If we didn't translate the bible from the greek and hebrew, who would be able to read it? We need to translate the gospel into modern day vinacular in much the same way. He also mentions the opposite error of valuing innovation over tradition. When this happens it is inevitable that the gospel will be innovated into oblivion. The gospel MUST nessasarily cause offence to sinful humanity with which it is at odds. So we must stay true to orthodox, traditional christian belief while being inovative in our gospel presentation. On the cover of "radical reformission" it says "reaching out without selling out" and that is exactly the right way to phrase it I think.