Is God the Soul of the World?

You suggest this to a Christian, and right away they balk. I told several friends that I was writing on this topic, and they brushed it off as some dumb thing Plato came up with out of no where. I beg to differ; Christians can label God as the Soul of the world without being pantheistic. It’s all a matter of terms –  and some hard thinking. It requires you to think not just of the physical, and to keep the witness of Scripture in the back of your mind as you look at the world around you.

WORLD

What do we mean by world? Usually when we say “the world”, we tend to think just of our planet Earth, but this sense of “the world” is too minuscule. If God is the soul of the world, the world must be all of creation – the universe. Our English word “universe” comes from the Latin-based French, and the French word was not in use until the thirteenth century, when it meant “all of creation”. (See the use of this word throughout the centuries here.) I  urge you to think not just of physical creation when you think of the world, but to include all of spiritual creation as well, combining the seen with the unseen, “whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities” (Col. 1:16) Doesn’t this give you a whole knew perspective of the supposed Christmas carol, “Joy to the World” (which was actually written about Christ’s second coming)! The world, or universe, contains all of space and time.

SOUL

What is a soul? A soul is defined as (1) the spiritual or immaterial, immortal part of a human being or animal, and (2) the essence or embodiment of a specified quality, particularly used to denote a person’s individual personality.  The soul gives the body life. A body is separate from a soul in many ways. The soul gives life to the body and the body supports the soul, allowing it to move around.

Plato labeled the soul as a thing begotten by the the Divine Being. In Timaeus, Plato explains that the soul of the world extended throughout the entire body of the universe and was the most excellent of all the things begotten. He says a lot of things about the soul, but to recount them here would evade my purpose.

GOD

God is spiritual, not physical – incorporeal, if you will. Even Jesus Christ, the Son, has a glorified body that is not like our bodies in the present earthly state. Because God is omnipresent, he is not contained within the world, but why should He operate the same way our souls and bodies do? At any rate, my soul is not as limited by my body as one might think. He can be the soul of the world, giving it life, without being limited by the physical bounds of the world. Through Christ, the Father made all things. Now, the soul does not make the body, but the soul gives life to the body in both instances. For God, the Soul-Body dichotomy works in reverse: the soul is understood to be pervading every piece of creation instead of the soul being physically bound by the body.

What does the Bible say? Throughout the Hebrew scriptures we are told that God is the supreme creator and sustainer of the world. We do not see any direct commentary on this question until the New Testament, in Paul’s sermons and letters.

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.'” (Acts 17:24-28)

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. . .” (Romans 1:20)

Paul seems to say that God dwells in the world without being physically perceived. Coming from that, we could say that God is the soul of the world, because He rules the world without being seen with human eyes, but yet seen through His work. Similarly, we do not see a soul but can learn about a person’s soul by studying what they have said, created, and done. Instead of rejecting this question, we should instead seek God’s wisdom in this, studying Scripture alongside the book of Nature, allowing God to use the things and people around us to reveal to us more about Himself.

Work-day Sunrise (a poem)

 

If sun’s rise was my daily task
I fear the day would start too late,
and creatures who in its rays bask
would simply have to watch and wait.

Would I be apt to paint the sky anew
each morning with wonderful hues
whilst birds would sing to greet the dew
drops ling’ring onto evening’s snooze?

To give the starting shove to such a globe
my feeble arms would ne’er be able.
Prefer I, then, to watch Him robe
the skies with light so stable.

I never thought I could be a poet, but then I started reading Robert Frost and realized that poetry is really just an outpouring of observation. If you pay enough attention to a thing or spend time contemplating it, you can write poetry about it. Part of this poem came to me this morning as I cleaned Sutherland Hall (the picture above is from yesterday morning, in the early stages of dawn).

Being able to see the sun rise each weekday morning is one of the reasons I rarely complain about my early morning custodial job. I know that seeing such a spectacle so often has had a great impact on me. Although I enjoy getting to sleep in on the weekends, I hate to miss the sunrise. In fact, I’m usually a bit disoriented if I wake up and it’s already bright outside because I am so used to being at my work before the sun. The sunrise means a new beginning. It puts an end to the darkness that I started my day in.  It means that God is still in control.

And this morning I was so glad that it’s not my job to make the sun rise. Often I try to control every aspect of my life, and I tend to hold myself responsible when any small – or large – thing goes wrong. But there are some things I have absolutely no control over, and one of the most obvious things is the sunrise. I would never be able to do such a thing, but I know the God who can, and He knows me.

Now, I know that the “sunrise” is actually just the earth revolving around again to where the sun shines on my specific hemisphere, and I know that some would have a problem with me saying that God even causes this to happen every day. Regardless, without God, the beautiful sunrise would not be, nor would I be here to admire it.

Social Media & Autobiography: Instantaneous vs. Retrospective

We all love talking about ourselves. While this may seem like a modern phenomenon, people have been writing about themselves for centuries. What makes my Facebook or Twitter any different than Augustine’s Confessions or Wordsworth’s Prelude – or even the Psalms? Maybe it’s that I don’t think that much about what I post, and it is posted in an instant with little to no revision, or maybe it’s because mine don’t follow any meter or rhyming scheme. Even though some may do more editing to their updates, social media is supposed to be instantaneous, and most use it that way.

The content of social media is also much different than an autobiography, at least in the style of Augustine and Wordsworth. If someone were to make a biography for me from my Facebook posts, they would not get the same  depth of information about my soul as Augustine and Wordsworth reveal. When we post on social media, who are we talking to? Augustine was talking to God, Wordsworth to Coleridge, but who do we talk to? What about our lives are we revealing to our “friends” and “followers”?

Their autobiographies come from a lot of solitude and introspection. Do we avoid solitude and introspection by posting to social media as soon as something happens to us?We need time alone to process, not just time. It used to be that our true, initial reactions could only be shared with those in our direct vicinity. Now, our immediate reactions are broadcast to the world and then recorded forever. What would Ralph Waldo Emerson think of social media and social networks? He would commend its use when we share our own opinion and experience, and disapprove its use when we spout others’ words and conform to society’s notions. Then again, he’s a big fan of solitude. But Thomas Traherne is also a fan of solitude, and he says that it’s in our nature to want to share! So I say that we should share our experiences with others, but we first need to spend time alone to gather our thoughts about our experience and better articulate what is happening. We can all agree that we can better articulate the facts of an event or experience when we have for some time been removed from the moment and the emotions it brought with it. In the moment, we are so caught up with emotion that we cannot speak or write clearly. We have to live a life in order to have one to talk about. In our personal walk with God, we should share our experiences with others, but we have to spend some time alone with God in order to have anything to tell.

The Hippopotamus: Cute, Not Cuddly

Hippos have been a favorite animal of mine for awhile now, probably since I figured out exactly just how awesome they are. There’s just something about a vicious, bone-crushing, monstrous beast having the ability to be so very graceful and also just plain cute! It may help that they’re one of the few animals commonly depicted as being purple, even if they’re actual skin tone isn’t quite there. I once went with my mom’s class to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, New Jersey, and watched the hippos swim around their enclosure for a good half-hour, at least. Now that I know about it, I will soon be making the trip out to the LA Zoo to see this baby hippo!

Yes, hippos are the most dangerous animal in Africa, as long as you’re not counting the mosquito. While many people would assume lions or crocodiles to be more dangerous than the adorable hippo, the truth is that people tend to get in the hippo’s way more than they do lions or crocodiles. For example, if you’re in a small boat going down a river, and a hippo is coming up for air, there’s not much to stop your boat from flipping over. On second thought, the hippo may intentionally flip your boat over, once he realizes that he doesn’t want you in his water. I’m not sure if he would eat you after crushing and ripping you to death with his giant teeth, since hippos are vegetarians and eat hundreds of pounds of grass every day.

Talk about a testimony of God’s creative power. Although the hippo can weigh anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 lbs., they are excellent swimmers, and can run at speeds up to 18 mph. They can stay underwater for five minutes without taking a breath, and when they’re sleeping (which they do underwater), their bodies know when to float back up to the water, take in some air, and sink down to the bottom!

Why do we even have zoos? Do we want to show off our skill in capturing these animals? That might be part of it, but I think a more convincing motive is that we want everyone to be able to observe these marvelous animals. Ultimately, we want everyone to see these animals and worship their Creator for His wisdom, beauty, and overall creativity displayed in the animals. And then we look to ourselves, and to think that we are even better than these fantastic beasts!

I think the way we try to make hippos into these cute, harmless cows is telling of our desire to have everything be nice and friendly. For some reason, we think what’s good has to always be nice. That’s not how God works either. God is not our genie, granting every wish, but rather an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, self-sufficient Being. He is anything but tame, but He’s good.

This post inspired by Professor Bradley’s Pull Question Prompt for Basil: Pick one animal, plant, phenomenon, etc., and do your best imitation of Basil talking about it. Reading Moby Dick provided encouragement as well – although I would never kill a hippo, except perhaps in self-defense. And hey! hippos are closely related to whales!