Of the Beginning of All Things - Introduction (2 of 2)

In which I discuss truth that matters before messing with the rest...

This is the third post in this series. Here is the first, my preamble. And the second, the first half of the Introduction. This third post is the latter half of the second. If this were a book we'd still be in the roman numerals, but not for long. Here end the 'but firsts'.

Therefore, the next post in this series will be like chapter 1, and like Trajan I will leave these romans behind and head to arabic lands. So here is the second half of the introduction...

After forty days God sends a wind over the Earth. In fact, this is no wind, but just as Christ returns from the grave, ascends to heaven and sends us his Holy Spirit, so does the Father returning send his Spirit again over the Earth. Ambrose says: "in fact the wind had no power to dry the deluge. Otherwise the sea, which is moved every day by the winds, would become empty. How would the sea become empty by the strength of the winds alone?...There is no doubt therefore, that the deluge was subsided by the invisible power of the Spirit, not through the wind as such but through divine intervention."

So by the Spirit the waters recede, and the raven, signifying death, is sent out from the ark, which is the church, and does not return. But the dove, signifying the Spirit, goes out on the Earth and brings back the sign of anointed peace - the olive branch, an evergreen branch of life and oil. God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows. (Psalm 45:7)

Not only is the branch the physical sign of safety, but the eternal sign of peace. Bede describes it thus: "By a most beautiful conjunction the figure is in agreement with the fulfillment-a corporeal dove brought the olive branch to the ark which was washed by the waters of the flood; the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a corporeal dove upon the Lord when he was baptized in the waters of the Jordan. Not only the human beings but also the living things which the ark contained, and also the very wood from which the ark was made, prefigure us members of Christ and of the church after our reception of the washing of the waters of regeneration."

Just as baptism makes us new, the flood washed the world, making it a new creation. Just as the ark was of built of wood to save the seed of the new creation, so Christ with wood on the cross builds himself for us an ark, and we who are in him are the seed of the church, his bride and the seed of new Jerusalem and the new Earth. These kernels of wheat, the ark and the cross, have fallen into the ground and died, and sprung up bearing much fruit. So do we in our baptism of repentance die and are born again as new creations, wholly changed, and so does the Spirit come to move as the breath of God over the land and over our lives to refresh the sodden ground.

And finally, just as the light is never unmade, so does it come in the rainbow, the light shining through the waters of destruction to reveal the whole glory of the coming kingdom. The waters refract the light whose source is God, showing more of His being and essence, the rainbow being a seal on the world, a promise. So too does Christ shine through us, through our baptism and repentance and walk with His Spirit. So does he place his seal on our hearts and let his light refract in our lives, reflect and bend and break into all colors and all beauty and reveal the goodness and the glory of the love most high.

Which is to say, we do not need to explain through science all that happened in Eden to know sin. And we do not need to understand the flood to know salvation by the baptism of repentance.