At the risk of pushing another metaphor, I wanted to put forward some top-notch stuff by a top-notch thinker and writer. See, I got my hands on Robert Farrar Capon’s The Third Peacock: The Problem of God and Evil, which is out of print but still available as part of a trilogy, The Romance of the Word: One Man’s Love Affair With Theology : Three Books : An Offering of Uncles/the Third Peacock/Hunting the Divine Fox. The Third Peacock is a wild book… I noticed that he has a sentence that spans from the end of one chapter and into the beginning of the next, being a chapter called “Which Requires a Chapter by Itself.” What editor would let an author do that? But it’s brilliant. Chapter one, “Let Me Tell You Why” opens the book like this:
Let me tell you why God made the world.
One afternoon, before anything was made, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost sat around in the unity of their Godhead discussing one of the Father’s fixations. From all eternity, it seems he had had this thing about being. He would keep thinking up all kinds of unnecessary things—new ways of being and new kinds of beings to be. And as they talked, God the Son suddenly said, “Really, this is absolutely great stuff. Why don’t I go out and mix us up a batch?” And God the Holy Ghost said, “Terrific, I’ll help you.” So they all pitched in, and after supper that night, the Son and the Holy Ghost put on this tremendous show of being for the Father. It was full of water and light and frogs; pine cones kept dropping all over the place and crazy fish swam around in the wineglasses. There were mushrooms and grapes, horseradishes and tigers—and men and women everywhere to taste them, to juggle them, to join them and to love them. And God the Father looked at the whole wild party and he said, “Wonderful! Just what I had in mind! Tov! Tov! Tov!” And all God the Son and God the Holy Ghost could think of to say was the same thing. “Tov! Tov! Tov!” So they shouted together “Tov meod!” and they laughed for ages and ages, saying things like how great it was for things to be, and how clever of the Father to think of the idea, and how kind of the Son to go to all that trouble putting it together, and how considerate of the Spirit to spend so much time directing and choreographing. And forever and ever they told old jokes, and the Father and the Son drank their wine in unitate Spiritus Sancti, and they all threw ripe olives and pickled mushrooms at each other per omnia saecula saeulorum. Amen.
It is, I grant you, a crass analogy; but crass analogies are the safest. Everybody knows that God is not three old men throwing olives at each other. Not everyone, I’m afraid, is equally clear that God is not a cosmic force or a principle of being or any other dish of celestial blancmange we might choose to call him. Accordingly, I give you the central truth that creation is the result of a Trinitarian bash, and leave the details of the analogy to sort themselves out as best they can.
One slight elucidation, however. It is very easy, when talking about creation, to conceive of God’s part in it as simply getting the ball rolling—as if he were a kind of divine billiard cue, after whose action inexorable laws took over and excused him from further involvement with the balls. But that won’t work. This world is fundamentally unnecessary. Nothing has to be. It needs a creator, not only for its beginning, but for every moment of its being. Accordingly, the Trinitarian bash doesn’t really come before creation; what actually happens is that all of creation, from start to finish, occurs within the bash—that the raucousness of the divine party is simultaneous with the being of everything that ever was or will be. If you like paradoxes, it means that God is the eternal contemporary of all of the events and beings in time.
Although this blog entry will be deprived of the story of how duck #47307 came to be in May of 1970 as an illustration of the fact that God is still involved in creation and that ducks do not just propagate themselves in a cottage industry of duck-making, and that “The world is not God’s surplus inventory of artifacts”, I stop quoting here for one reason, and one reason only. If I didn’t, I may find myself reading another paragraph which I then find infinitely insightful and quotable, type it out for you, read the next, type it out, and so forth until the end of the book. And apart from the fact that it would be a copyright violation, it keeps me from savouring the book. So there… that’s all you get from Capon for now, and I am thus free to continue the book and find out what else it says.
But first, now that I have stopped quoting, let’s reflect. This absurd metaphorical metaphysical romp is profoundly orthodox, is it not? I love how he illustrates how God’s creative expression is also a sustaining, continuing one… God supplies the state of being. Blow your mind, and think of it this way: God is “is“. Without him, nothing would be, and all that already is would simply cease to any longer be. Really, this is pretty wild stuff.
Press your brain a little further with that notion that God stands outside of time, and can look down upon you and Socrates or Cleopatra or Jonathan Edwards — or all of them — at the same instant, despite their not having existed in the same time and space. That’s what it means to be alpha and omega, the beginning and the end… all at once.
But what of this story of creation… the notion that the world is a sudden impulsive act of God’s exuberance? Gotta say, I love that. And I’m imagining Jesus eating and drinking with the disciples or with the tax collectors and all manner of other sinners, feasting, laughing, hoisting a glass of wine, tugging on a leg of lamb, eyeing a plate of mushrooms — and throwing an olive across the table at John. John laughs, and Jesus winks. This is what it’s all about. Tov meod!
this was such a great quote…it is a blast! in fact, I ripped it off and posted it on my blog. Good and tasty!
Robin
I don’t know why, but this
“… after supper that night, the Son and the Holy Ghost put on this tremendous show of being for the Father. It was full of water and light and frogs; …
absolutely took my breath away. And made me laugh in wonder at the same time. What a glorious piece of writing.
Now, I am coveting that book!
It’s a great book :) I also have one of his early ones titled “The Supper of the Lamb.” The man has a great sense of rhythm and an amazing grasp of grace..
I am writing a paper on creationism vs. evolution, supporting creationism of course and after reading this I was so happy. VERY REFRESHING piece of writing. Well done!
So question though: Is the writer of this blog and the writer of the book being quoted being sarcastic and completely bashing the name of God and the whole idea of creationism or are they both totally for it?
Capon would support creation, as would I. Speaking for myself and not for Capon though, I would need to qualify my position, and interestingly enough, we just had a long discussion about this last night with our simple church friends. Essentially, I would say that creationism vs. evolution is a false dichotomy — that is, they are set up as being an either/or matter, and I don’t see them that way. Understood as written, evolution is not in opposition to creation — imagine you’re just talking modes or methods of creation rather than a yes/no scenario. Even Charles Darwin wrote straight out that the notion of evolution should not cause dismay to anyone’s faith at all. As he conceived of it, the two were not incompatible. Intelligent Design and Theistic Evolution are two different ways of explaining the relation, but they aren’t necessarily the only options for doing so. The essential point is that belief in a literal 6-day creation and a young earth are fundamentally not necessary the faith, which does not stand or fall on this question despite the way it’s been portrayed.
I like what you are saying. Let me reiterate and try to understand with my unlearned mind. I hope we can succeed in teaching me this different perspective.
So you are saying the debate between Creation vs. Evolution is not really legitimate? and that Evolution is not to dismay another’s faith? When I begin talk to someone who believes in evolution I, believing that God created the earth and everything in it and saw that it was good, try to explain my side. Can you expand on your statement a little more?
One of the reason I choose this topic (which was in the list that my professor gave) was so that when that someone begins to question the realisticness of my belief I tell them that I believe it in my heart. As you know our american culture doesn’t settle for “faith” most times. Do you kind of see where I am going or am I asking the wrong question?
As someone with a scientific mindset, who has struggled with this issue since first being challenged by my father (at 12 years of age) to consider that God may have used evolution to create the world and everything in it, and having only recently been able to embrace the position wholeheartedly, I can appreciate the challenge it is for some Christians to even consider the idea, nevermind fully embrace it.
For some reason, we tend to see it as Creation versus Evolution (perhaps because professors keep assigning essays with this title) rather than Creation by Evolution. I wrote a paper myself in high school Bible class on the topic. The title? “Creation vs. Evolution”.
But as Brother Maynard says, the positions need not be mutually exclusive. It is possible to believe in evolution and creation, if by “creation” we do not mean Young Earth Creationism, but rather Theistic Evolution, or “BioLogos” as Francis Collins calls it in his book “The Language of God”.
Christians that insist on a literal interpretation of Genesis (and therefore a young earth), do the faith a huge disservice. It makes it extremely difficult for the science-minded to accept Christianity if they are told it also requires them to reject the mountain of evidence for evolution and believe the 6-day creation myth recorded in Genesis – that is, to effectively commit intellectual suicide.
Even the Intelligent Design position, which I clung to for some time, is damaging to the faith. As science advances and fills the gaps in our knowledge, God will have fewer and fewer gaps into which the ID theory can put him. What’s happens then to our faith?
I love this Benjamin Warfield quote, which Francis Collins includes in his book:
“We must not, then, as Christians, assume an attitude of antagonism toward the truths of reason, or the truths of philosophy, or the truths of science, or the truths of history, or the truths of criticism. As children of the light, we must be careful to keep ourselves open to every ray of light. Let us, then, cultivate an attitude of courage as over against the investigations of the day. None should be more zealous in them than we. None should be more quick to discern truth in every field, more hospitable to receive it, more loyal to follow it, whithersoever it leads.”
If it’s the truth, it’s from God, and we should be its champion.
I’m jumping in over a year late, but here goes. Capon is refreshing. I agree that the possibility that God created through the mechanism of Darwinistic evolution is possible and is not ruled out by scripture. Unfortunately, Darwinism and Neodarwinism have been thoroughly discredited by the likes of Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells and a host of other Scientists. (See The Case for a Creator by Strobel). Faith seeking understanding, yes, but understand that the claims of Origins of Species are bogus. Christians seeking the truth about speciation are free from this well padded myth.