The Shekinah Glory

I have been carefully reading commentary on the curious Shekinah Glory, and this seems to be interesting because it is not heard that often, and the name has turned up some enlightening facts pertaining to these cosmological reflections. A few lead-ins are necessary to tie the subject together on the cosmology point. This is further necessary in order to present the gospel in the stars to someone.
If the universe is causal -- which it is, from a complementary worldview of science and theology -- then how does that correlate that to the “standard” cosmology? By what standard? …one might ask, but that is omni-directional. God reveals Himself through the special revelation and the general revelation. Given this information, one might ask though then how the two points of cause and effect relate here between special and general revelation.
The Shekinah Glory is the divine illumination, the effulgence as it were, and in Hebrew He is given a female gender in the Shekinah ascription. This goes back to Adam as image, from whom was taken Eve, together both in the image, and of one made He them. Ontologic trinitarian studies specialize in the relations within the godhead, and the activities of the trinity are grouped into the economic trinity field of studies.
Christ is a hypostatic union, one hundred percent God, and one hundred percent man, at the same time. This seems to be a paradox to us, but since God is immutable, the hypostasis being omnipresent both outside of time, and within time; the Logos entering time and space in the incarnation, then there can be no blending of the 2 natures, or the striking of an imbalance between the two.
Static is descriptive in some manner to the immutability aspect of the trinity, and it is no wonder the church is statically referred to as “she”throughout. It would do violence to the bible to insist the Christ is a “she” based on mere biological chromosome pair reasoning without the conception of the He of the 3rd Person. The trinity is outside of the constraint of time, that is, God is not enslaved by time; time being understood to be simply the measure of change.
This is the divine presence; to be everlasting to everlasting, to be omnipresent to include the entire creation, and the cause of all things, and to remain immutable even in a mutable cosmos. The cosmos appears to be infinite because the heavens declare the glory of God, an infinite being. The geocentricity of the earth takes its form as an archetype of heaven, because the first three days of the creative act were divinely illuminated and the second set of three days were illuminated by the sun, the sun being the archetype of the glory. The second set of three days cannot be in contradiction to the substance of the first three days as a composite hexaemeron. There is no incongruity to the timeline between the divine light and the sun in the duration of these six days.
The question here is the divine illumination of the first three days and how this impacts cosmology. The starting point from our scientific observations would properly begin with the fourth day then.
Considering historical church figures, most theologians have postured themselves on the creation account, most notably St Augustine’s instant creative act position. Calvin does not directly address the issue of the exact nature of the days of creation in the Institutes but refers readers to Genesis, Basil’s Hexaemeron, and Ambrose’s Hexaemeron. John Calvin’s commentary on the fourth day in Genesis 1:14 says God had before created the light, but he now institutes a new order in nature, that the sun should be dispenser of diurnal light, and the moon and stars should shine by night. And he assigns them this office, to teach us that all creatures are subject to his will, and execute what he enjoins upon them.
In Genesis 1:3, Calvin remarks in his commentary on Genesis 1:3 that “It did not, however, happen from inconsideration or by accident, that the light preceded the sun and the moon. To nothing are we more prone than to tie down the power of God to those instruments, the agency of which he employs. The sun and moon supply us with light: and, according to our notions, we so include this power to give light in them, that if they were taken away from the world, it would seem impossible for any light to remain. Therefore the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and the moon."
Further, it is certain, from the context that the light was so created as to be interchanged with darkness. But it may be asked, whether light and darkness succeeded each other in turn through the whole circuit of the world; or whether the darkness occupied one half of the circle, while light shone in the other. There is, however, no doubt that the order of their succession was alternate, but whether it was everywhere day at the same time, and everywhere night also, I would rather leave undecided; nor is it very necessary to be known.”
Calvin, along with the other Reformers, rejected the Augustinian approach to the Genesis days. For Calvin, God did not merely accommodate himself to his people in the way he explained his creative work, God actually accommodated himself in the way he performed his creative work: it is too violent a cavil to contend that Moses distributes the work which God perfected at once into six days, for the mere purpose of conveying instruction. Let us rather conclude that God himself took the space of six days, for the purpose of accommodating his works to the capacity of men. Bede holds to six each 24 hour days, but emphasizes that an explanation is needed for the alternation of light and darkness in the first three days before the creation of the sun. He says that the light was divided so as to shine in the upper and not the lower parts of the earth, and that it passed under the earth, making a day of twenty-four hours with morning and evening, precisely as the sun does.
In the western or Latin church some commentators, such as Erigena, followed Augustine’s views, but most followed Bede’s approach, sometimes combining various elements from both views as in the case of Grossteste, who also emphasized the literary structure of Genesis 1 with three days of ordering and three days of parallel adornment.
Reformed Christians rightly agree that the doctrine of creation lies at the basis of the Christian worldview. Criticisms or questions about the calendar-day exegesis may be perceived as questioning the doctrine of creation itself. Calendar-day proponents are used to this coming from outside the church, but not from within and therefore have labeled the non-Calendar Day proponents as accommodating the secular culture. The mutual trading of accusations has certainly raised the temperature of the debate.

2 Comments:
Dear Kosmic,
You certainly have some very interesting articles posted here, of which I hope to read more.
You recently enquired of the article "Standing Between the Butcher and the Baby" by Scott Whiteman, which I have posted. The URL to the article has changed, here is the new link:
http://reformedchristianstudies.blogspot.com/2006/02/standing-between-butcher-and-baby.html
Kosmic,
Thanks for visiting my website. How did you find me? As far as I know, you are the first visitor that is not a relative or a machine.
I'd like to drum up a little traffic. Would you like to trade links.
BTW, Your article quotes freely from Augustine & Calvin. You may be able to help me out. I am starting a paper for a seminary class doing a compare and contrast between Aquinas' "Natural Reason" and Calvin's "General Revelation". Both deal with how man knows about God via the Natural World. Aquinas tends to indicate that (As I currently understand it) the natural world gives all the information necessary except fot Salvation. Calvin's concept of General Revelation is that man's sin makes true knowledge of the world impossible without the "spectacles" of the special revelation.
Any hints on where to look for good info on this topic?
Thanks for your comment on my blog. I'm glad to know somebody found it.
Grier Daniels
http://eclecticseminarian.blogspot.com/
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