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peculiar. It is the Hebrew word eden a socket, which word is employed 52 times, for the
silver sockets upon which the Tabernacle rested (Exod. 26: 19 etc.). When this fact is
taken in conjunction with the testimony of Isa. 40: 22, that God stretched out the heavens
`as a curtain' and spread them out . . . . . as a tent (ohel) tabernacle (Exod. 26: 9) to
dwell in, the redemptive aspect of creation is most vividly suggested. We must,
moreover distinguish between the creation `in the beginning' and the reconstruction of
the earth, together with the limited `firmament' or expansion which followed the
`overthrow' of Gen. 1: 2. The creation of Gen. 1: 1 seems to be in view in John 1: 3
and in Col. 1: 16, 17, but in Heb. 1: 11, 12 the transitory character of the creation is
stressed:
"They shall perish; but Thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment:
and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed."
This would fit `the heavens' of II Pet. 3: 10 which are to pass away, or the heavens
of Isa. 34: 4 which shall be `rolled together as a scroll', a figure that is congruous if
the heavens here are `the firmament', the stretched out curtain, but not congruous if it
refers to the abiding dwelling place of the living God. When Scripture affirms that "In
the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth", it also affirms that God must have
been in Being before creation, and also that `heaven' is not the dwelling place of God, the
Invisible, Absolute and Unconditioned. God, Who existed before the first atom of
creation came into existence, and cannot be conceived of as `dwelling' anywhere. To
`dwell' in the very `heavens' is a concession, a condescension, a self-imposed limitation.
Solomon realized this when he said "The heaven and heaven of heavens CANNOT
contain thee" (I Kings 8: 27). However much we may fight against it, when we point
that "God is in heaven", we have mentally localized Him. This is not an error, it is
simply the recognition that unless God stoops we can know nothing of Him. We
maintain that God is a `person' simply because a person is the highest form of existence
that we know. Yet the word is derived from the Latin persona a mask, especially one
worn by play actors, from per `through' and sono `sound':
"No man can long put on a person and act a part but his evil manners will peep
through the corners of his white robe" (Jeremy Taylor).
Consequently when we speak of the `Persons' in the Godhead, we employ a term that
really means that the Invisible, Unconditional, Absolute has `spoken through' the person
of `Father' or `Son' or `Holy Ghost' in the N.T., even as He spoke through the titles
Elohim, Jehovah and El Shaddai in the O.T. No one name, nor all the names of God
employed together, can encompass and fully present God Himself. Even the employment
of the masculine pronoun `He', `Him' is a concession to our limitations, for God Who is
Spirit, Invisible, having neither bodily parts, form or parts cannot be properly conceived
of as male or female. At every turn human limitation is met by Divine condescension,
and nowhere is this more evident and more necessary than in the revelation of His
unspeakable nature to man. In philosophy or logic a name is `a word taken at pleasure to
serve for a mark, which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had
before', but like words, names are often mistaken for things to our undoing. God is
Elohim, but He is infinitely more. God is Jehovah, God is Father, God is Son, God is