"Creation's being is itself a mirror of the Creator's, and creation also mimics the form of the Creator's existence. Created being is, of course, receptive being, in imitation of the receptivity of the Son and Spirit in their procession from the Father, and the receptivity of the Father who is Father insofar as he has a Son. Because creation comes from God's Word, it is knowable and intelligible. Resulting from speech, creation is speech (Ps 8; 19). It signifies. The order of created causes is also an order of signs. Creation's order is linguistic and musical. Creation has the kind of meaning speech has, which means that knowing creation is a hermeneutical adventure. Poetry is the human "genre" that best matches the sort of world we live in, and science does best when it becomes like poetry—or, better, when it recognizes that it is already poetic through and through."
"Things are what they are, they become what they will be, by extending themselves beyond themselves; they are what they are in exceeding themselves. In traditional Thomist terms, substances manifest themselves in their accidents, by the substance is itself and is a presence in the world to and among others. Composite things exist by their self-transcending excess, and in this they are the mirror, not the negation, of the triune God."
"This means that objective reality has its own interiority, which is a participation in and echo of God's word. Objects are also subjects; everything speaks to us, because everything is created by and as a word of the Creator."
"Our inner life is ours only as it extends outward, touches and receives, and incorporates the outer life into the inner. Our inner life exists only as we communicate outward, as we reproduce ourselves in the world, among others. Life is life only as it extends forward. Life is life only as it is more life. Time is time only in its continuation. Language is only language as it continues to Speak. When language ends, there is only silence. Stopped time is no longer time. Life without more life is death. Created existence is only as it continually goes beyond what it is. Every being is itself in the ecstasy of being-beyond-itself. In all this, creaturely becoming is not a defect in created existence, but a mirror of trinitarian "becoming." Which is another name for triune love."
"Time is not a defect, nor corrosive of created existence. Time is glory, the gifted opportunity for each thing to become more fully itself by entering into more richly intertwined relations with what is not itself. Time gives each thing. and the whole creation, the capacity to diffuse the goodness it is more widely. Creation is beautiful precisely because it is temporal, beautiful with the beauty of music."
"The rhythm of created time is the rhythm of triune life. There is a "fit" between the eternal begetting/spiration (becoming) within God and the becoming of creation." Time itself is the process of becoming, as creatures through succession from glory to glory take part in the eternal triune perichoretic dance that is God.
"God is eternal not in that he is immune to time or estranged from it. God is eternal in that created time is suspended between the Father's Saying and Seeing, enclosed within the triune life of the Saying and the Seeing God, housed in the distension of triune being. Thus the Creator remains absolutely, faithfully, immutably the triune God he is, his life remains absolutely the life of Source, Order, and Completion, even as he acts in and reacts to the creation, even as he does new things and becomes new in time."
"Impassibility is just the question whether God is dependently responsive to the changes of creatures. On the model of Genesis 1, he is so, but only because the creation is absolutely dependently responsive to his initiating Word. The Word summons good fruit from the vineyard that is Israel; when that fruit appears, the Seeing God sees and delights in it, and his delight is truly a response to the good fruit Israel produces because it is truly God's response to God. The Word summons good fruit from the vineyard that is Israel; when in its freedom it uses his gifts to produce rotten grapes instead of the wine of righteousness, the Seeing God is filled with just wrath at Israel's abuse of her gifts. His wrath is truly a response to Israel's infidelity."
"He is in a real relation to creation because his relation to creation is embedded in his relation with himself." As patterned in Genesis 1, all of creation exists between the declarative Say and the evaluative See. God the bringing about, God upholding, God carrying through to completion, God judging what God has done. "God is responsive to creation, just because he is responsive to himself, for all "Very good" is nothing but a jubilant echo of "Let be.""
"Things are what they are, they become what they will be, by extending themselves beyond themselves; they are what they are in exceeding themselves. In traditional Thomist terms, substances manifest themselves in their accidents, by the substance is itself and is a presence in the world to and among others. Composite things exist by their self-transcending excess, and in this they are the mirror, not the negation, of the triune God."
"This means that objective reality has its own interiority, which is a participation in and echo of God's word. Objects are also subjects; everything speaks to us, because everything is created by and as a word of the Creator."
"Our inner life is ours only as it extends outward, touches and receives, and incorporates the outer life into the inner. Our inner life exists only as we communicate outward, as we reproduce ourselves in the world, among others. Life is life only as it extends forward. Life is life only as it is more life. Time is time only in its continuation. Language is only language as it continues to Speak. When language ends, there is only silence. Stopped time is no longer time. Life without more life is death. Created existence is only as it continually goes beyond what it is. Every being is itself in the ecstasy of being-beyond-itself. In all this, creaturely becoming is not a defect in created existence, but a mirror of trinitarian "becoming." Which is another name for triune love."
"Time is not a defect, nor corrosive of created existence. Time is glory, the gifted opportunity for each thing to become more fully itself by entering into more richly intertwined relations with what is not itself. Time gives each thing. and the whole creation, the capacity to diffuse the goodness it is more widely. Creation is beautiful precisely because it is temporal, beautiful with the beauty of music."
"The rhythm of created time is the rhythm of triune life. There is a "fit" between the eternal begetting/spiration (becoming) within God and the becoming of creation." Time itself is the process of becoming, as creatures through succession from glory to glory take part in the eternal triune perichoretic dance that is God.
"God is eternal not in that he is immune to time or estranged from it. God is eternal in that created time is suspended between the Father's Saying and Seeing, enclosed within the triune life of the Saying and the Seeing God, housed in the distension of triune being. Thus the Creator remains absolutely, faithfully, immutably the triune God he is, his life remains absolutely the life of Source, Order, and Completion, even as he acts in and reacts to the creation, even as he does new things and becomes new in time."
"Impassibility is just the question whether God is dependently responsive to the changes of creatures. On the model of Genesis 1, he is so, but only because the creation is absolutely dependently responsive to his initiating Word. The Word summons good fruit from the vineyard that is Israel; when that fruit appears, the Seeing God sees and delights in it, and his delight is truly a response to the good fruit Israel produces because it is truly God's response to God. The Word summons good fruit from the vineyard that is Israel; when in its freedom it uses his gifts to produce rotten grapes instead of the wine of righteousness, the Seeing God is filled with just wrath at Israel's abuse of her gifts. His wrath is truly a response to Israel's infidelity."
"He is in a real relation to creation because his relation to creation is embedded in his relation with himself." As patterned in Genesis 1, all of creation exists between the declarative Say and the evaluative See. God the bringing about, God upholding, God carrying through to completion, God judging what God has done. "God is responsive to creation, just because he is responsive to himself, for all "Very good" is nothing but a jubilant echo of "Let be.""