Hart on creation

Reviewing David Hart’s recent book on the tsunami in The Christian Century, Willis Jenkins writes, “Curiously underplaying the resources of his own Eastern Orthodox tradition, Hart only vaguely affirms that creation must be an ‘ecstasy of spiritual intelligence and desire.’ Because he spends himself impugning nature’s vicious ways, he leaves readers unsure how the verdant earth simultaneously expresses the ‘yearning of all things for the goodness of God’ and grotesquely spasms after a ‘blind, thrusting, idiotic heliotropism.’ Knowing this would make a difference in how Christians regard seismic cycles—which, Hart recognizes, sustain our atmosphere—in distinction from the suffering they cause.”

As James Jordan pointed out to me, this gets things exactly backwards. Creation is not in rebellion against God; man is. And God calls out and sends forth the powers of creation against rebellions men. The dogs that devour Jezebel and the lion that kills the man of God from Judah are agents of Yahweh.