One of those “all things” passages, in Colossians, 1, it is said of “The Son” that he is the “firstborn over all creation”; “He is before all things and in him all things hold together”; God was pleased to have all fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things”. I cannot avoid the thought that although Paul (or whoever is the source of this hymn of Scripture) would not have known the science of the “all things” here (like where it all came from), that he had some transcendent vision of “all things” which satisfied him; that “all things” was beyond his comprehension, and yet it all holds together under that “LOGOS become SARCS”; not “WORD become anthropos (human) but WORD become SARCS (translated “flesh”, often in contexts of referring to the wider creation that INCLUDES humanity. (the latter, SARCS insight courtesy of “Elizabeth Johnson in Ask The Beasts”.

I am also intrigued by the creation story passage where it is said “And the Spirit of God moved (or “hovered”) upon the face of the waters”. Given that the life we now know originated in the teeming of life that swirled in the oceans and lakes and ponds, this is another intrigue like the “all things hold together” passage. Not that the authors of this creation story were aware that the origin of all life developed in conjunction with water, but that there was a deep sense of the “stuff of creation” being “hosted” by the water.

It’s a bit saddening that so much religious energy has been devoted to denying or shutting out continuing and historic scientific advances and theories, holding fast to “systemic formulation” based on the theological stories of “Creation”, as if those real comprehension stories, to be legitimate, must be construed literally and historically. The authors of those stories were not even conceiving of this being construed as a scientific conclusion or statement of fact. In “fact”, they had no comprehension or expectation or awareness of such; the age was truly “pre-scientific”. This is we humans, projecting our contemporary notions of literature and history and theology BACKWARD into a time where such things as modern science were not only NOT an ingredient of those writings, it was not on the radar.

Elizabeth Johnson points out that the creation stories themselves were written AFTER the exodus stories. The creation was a sending backward of the faith affirmation of a loving and liberating God who brought Israel out of Egypt, and a “faith history” proclaiming the same power that liberates also creates.