{"id":17811,"date":"2019-02-20T09:46:24","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T14:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17811"},"modified":"2019-02-20T09:50:01","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T14:50:01","slug":"the-first-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17811","title":{"rendered":"The First Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C2U7ffUM5Ec\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Wednesday, February 20, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sacred writings are bound in two volumes\u2014that of creation and that of Holy Scripture.&nbsp;<\/em>\u2014Thomas Aquinas (1224\u20131274) [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Ever since God created the world, God\u2019s everlasting power and deity\u2014however invisible\u2014have been there for the mind to see in the things God has made.&nbsp;<\/em>\u2014Romans 1:20<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think what Paul means here is that whatever we need to know about God can be found in nature. Nature itself is the primary Bible. The world is the locus of the sacred and provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you scale chronological history down to the span of one year, with the Big Bang on January 1, then our species,&nbsp;<em>Homo sapiens<\/em>, doesn\u2019t appear until 11:59 p.m. on December 31. That means the written Bible and Christianity appeared in the last nanosecond of December 31. I can\u2019t believe that God had nothing to say until the last moment of December 31. Rather, as both Paul and Thomas Aquinas say, God has been revealing God\u2019s love, goodness, and beauty since the very beginning through the natural world of creation. \u201cGod looked at everything God had made, and found it very good\u201d (Genesis 1:31).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Acknowledging the intrinsic value and beauty of creation, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western and cultural Christians. In fact, we have often dismissed it as animism or paganism. We limited God\u2019s love and salvation to our own human species, and, even then, we did not have enough love to go around for&nbsp;<em>all&nbsp;<\/em>of humanity! God ended up looking quite miserly and inept, to be honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listen instead to the Book of Wisdom (13:1, 5):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How dull are all people who, from the things-that-are, have not been able to discover God-Who-Is, or by studying the good works have failed to recognize the Artist. . . . Through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sister Ilia Delio writes in true Franciscan style:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The world is created as a means of God\u2019s self-revelation so that, like a mirror or footprint, it might lead us to love and praise the Creator. We are created to read the book of creation so that we may know the Author of Life. This book of creation is an expression of who God is and is meant to lead humans to what it signifies, namely, the eternal Trinity of dynamic, self-diffusive love. [2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All you have to do today is go outside and gaze at one leaf, long and lovingly, until you know, really know, that this leaf is a participation in the eternal being of God. It\u2019s enough to create ecstasy. The seeming value or dignity of an object doesn\u2019t matter; it is the dignity of your relationship to the thing that matters. For a true contemplative, a gratuitously falling leaf will awaken awe and wonder just as much as a golden tabernacle in a cathedral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/O7bD02ZmTqk\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, February 20, 2019 Sacred writings are bound in two volumes\u2014that of creation and that of Holy Scripture.&nbsp;\u2014Thomas Aquinas (1224\u20131274) [1] Ever since God created the world, God\u2019s everlasting power and deity\u2014however invisible\u2014have been there for the mind to see in the things God has made.&nbsp;\u2014Romans 1:20 I think what Paul means here is that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17811"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17811"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17814,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17811\/revisions\/17814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}