Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010 12:48 p.m.
This written by American preacher Jonathan Edwards sums up most if not all of the things I wanted to express through my previous work, although I identified more with Eastern philosophies rather than Christianity. 'Tis certain with me that the world exists anew every moment, that the existence of things every moment ceases and is every moment renewed. For instance, in the existence of bodies, for there to be resistance, or tendency to some place; 'tis not numerically the same resistance that exists the next moment, 'tis evident, because this existence may be in different places. But yet this existence is continued so far, that there is respect had to it in all the future existences; 'tis evident in all things continually. Now past existence can't be continued so that respect should be had to it, otherwise than mentally. If the world this moment should be annihilated, so that nothing should really and actually exist any more; the existence of the world could not be continued so that, if another world after a time should be created, that world should exist after this or that manner from respect to the manner of the existence of this, or should be so only because this had been thus or thus. Indeed, we every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen, if we had seen [him] create the world at first. Revelation 4:11, "For thy pleasure they are and were created." 'Tis only this way that respect can be had to existence distant as to place as well as time, but as much respect is had to distant existence in one sense, as in another.
After school I went through what I copied from the Tate Britain exhibition last week and looked up the web once more, and I found that the text that moved me so much actually came from Harvard professor Perry Miller's book on Jonathan Edwards. What I saw on that day was actually this:
Copied from http://naomithoughts.blogspot.com.
if all the world were annihilated, he wrote... and a new world were freshly created, though it were to exist in every particular in the same manner as this world, it would not be the same. Therefore, because there is continuity, which is time, 'it is certain with me that the world exists anew every moment; that the existence of things every moment ceases and is every moment renewed.' The abiding assurance is that 'we every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen if we had seen Him create the world at first.'
Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards
Naomi the blogger wrote:
...I find this fascinating. Just as the subject of a photograph can never be the same thing twice; You could take a picture in the exact same spot, but it will always be different. New lighting, new settings, new figures, new arrangements, new shapes and new movements...the renewal never ends. The creating never ceases. |