"In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth [,]...the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters[.] Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good. God then separated the light from the darkness. God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night.' Evening came, and morning followed the first day." [1]
And so on ...
Genesis established that God was there at the beginning, but what was there before?
This entry attempts to reach back into the amorphous space before Genesis. In it (more accurately, in this blogger's imagination), there was an indescribable love unknown to man. This blogger calls it the Spirit of Love, an entity separate and apart from the Holy Spirit. It was the Spirit of Love that gave existence to God and it was God that gave it its existence. It does not matter if God came first or the Spirit of Love came first--for God could not be God without it and it would not have been nor would it want to be formed without God. God and the Spirit of Love exist simultaneously for each other and indistinguishably from each other. In this respect, these are the three most important words in the Bible: "God is love." [2]
Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, perhaps the most erudite of all the popes, found those the three words to be so profound that he entitled his first Encyclical DEUS CARITAS EST, or "God Is Love," [3] in which he succinctly and eloquently linked the New Testament with the Old:
"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John's Gospel describes that event in these words: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should ... have eternal life' (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel's faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth. The pious Jew prayed daily the words of the Book of Deuteronomy which expressed the heart of his existence: 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might' (6:4-5). Jesus united into a single precept this commandment of love for God and the commandment of love for neighbour found in the Book of Leviticus: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself' (19:18; cf. Mk 12:29-31). Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere 'command'; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us." [4]
Pope Benedict XVI's paragraph above talks about different kinds of love but not the kind that is coextensive with the Spirit of Love, which is a living love, for lack of a better description. Nowhere does the Bible mention this "living love" because it is imagined and beyond what man can comprehend. In contrast, the kinds of love Pope Benedict XVI cited are the basic kinds of love that man supposedly knows, except that he really does not (besides self-love), and that man can act on, except that he will not.
First, he pointed out God's love for man, by citing the Gospel of John: "'God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should ... have eternal life' (3:16).'" [5] How can man understand a love that requires a man to made just so that he can be sacrificed for the salvation of souls? How does man know what response to give to a love that he cannot emulate?
The Pope then turned back the clock from the time of the New Testament and referred to the Book of Deuteronomy in which it asked man to love God with all his heart, mind and soul. [6] Is man willing to express that love (even if he knows how to) without leaving a portion of it for himself and his sins?
Not only was man asked to love God in Deuteronomy, but he was also asked to love his neighbor in the Book of Leviticus. [7] When Jesus came to speak to man in the flesh and in his language, He affirmed the words in both books in the Old Testament, but stopped short of asking man to love as God loves. In other words, man's love for God has been limited only to what man has, namely, his heart, mind and soul; likewise, man's love for neighbor has also been limited, to what man knows--how to love himself.
Expecting man to love in ways he is capable of and knows how to, to the best of his abilities, is reasonable. To expect more would be impossible. That impossibility does not apply to God.
Pope Benedict XVI did not say whether God's love for man is the full extent of God's love. He only cited the Gospel of John describing how great God's love for the world was, by giving to the world God's only Son so that whoever believes in Him could have eternal life. [8] That single act of love, great by any human standard, is not the limit of God's love.
God's love has no limits. It is encompasses unconditional love but is not confined by it. It extends to man, of course, but it also extends to things that are inanimate, such as a single rosary bead, whether it is a gemstone or a knot made from a piece of string, and things subatomic [9], or tinier, or bigger and abstract, like time and space. It is also vast, as vast as the boundless universe. And it is inexhaustible, for it is after all a "living love" that replenishes itself in abundance.
This overflowing love is in God but at the same time, it is a spiritual energy, a force of endless love that provides momentum to the creation of things functionally perfect and aesthetically pleasing (in God's eyes). It is not God, and not a god. It is what God is, and God is what it is: love.
It was this love that led to the creation of the universe described in the Book of Genesis. It was out of this love that man was created in the image of God. It is from this love that man derives meaning for his existence. It was this love that joined seamlessly with the Holy Spirit to conceive the Son of God. It was this love that kept burning in the Sacred Heart of Jesus that repelled all of Satan's temptations. It is this love that has saved man from eternal death. It is because of this love that creation is continuing, with new lives, new species [10] and new areas of the universe [11] being born. And it is in this love, in God, that every question from before Genesis to beyond the present has an answer, even if irrational, for perfect love defies logic, and is above it.
[1] http://usccb.org/bible/genesis/1
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+4:16
[3] http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] http://www.explainthatstuff.com/atoms.html
[10] http://earthsky.org/earth/top-10-new-species-of-2016
[11] http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-s-hubble-finds-universe-is-expanding-faster-than-expected
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