The Mystery of Christ: Meditations And Prayers

By Keith Ward

‘Keith Ward . . . makes complex matters readily accessible.’
Rowan Williams

At the heart of Christian faith lies a vision of Christ present at the beginning of creation, in the crucified and risen Jesus, and at the end of all things. This vision retains its ancient power and gains new depth as it is reshaped in the light of our advanced understanding of a vast and evolving cosmos.

To help us form a truly contemporary Christian spirituality, Keith Ward, writing in our own time and place (rather than the fourteenth century of Julian of Norwich or the twentieth of Thomas Merton), offers a set of reflections on what he believes to be the unique and life-transforming revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. And as we explore the spiritual truths relating to this mystery expressed in the Gospels, meditation leads naturally to prayer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Mar 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780281079162

Keith Ward

Keith Ward is a fellow of the British Academy and Professional Research Fellow at Heythrop College, London. He was formerly Professor of Religion at King's College, London, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He is also a well-known broadcaster and author of over twenty books, including More than Matter? and Is Religion Irrational?

Book preview

THE ETERNAL CHRIST

The eternal Word

‘In the beginning was the Word’ (John 1.1). The Greek for ‘Word’ is Logos, which can mean reason, intellect or wisdom. We could think of it as an intellect or mind which knows everything that could possibly be. It knows all possible states of affairs, and so it contains the patterns or archetypes of all worlds. Nothing is beyond its knowledge.

‘The Word was with God’ – that mind of limitless knowledge arises from the ultimate source of all beings, which is beyond intellect and beyond human understanding and imagination. ‘And the Word was God’ – this mind is not other than God. It is the one divine reality itself, as it expresses its being in the form of mind and thought. The Word is the mind of God, eternal and infinite. The Word is Christ, existing before any universe existed, and is one of the ways in which God exists.

‘All things came into being through him’ (John 1.3). The universe was shaped in accordance with the patterns that exist in the divine mind, that is, in Christ. In the beginning of this universe, ‘the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters’ (Genesis 1.2). When this universe began to be, it was a great and formless deep, called in Hebrew tohu va bohu, without shape or form. Physicists, though only since 1927, see it as a minute point of virtually infinite mass and density, from which developed what we see as a four-dimensional space–time. The universe was created as other than God. But God relates to it in three ways: first, as its source and Origin, the eternal reality, limitless, beyond thought and imagination, that underlies and supports the fragile structures of space and time; second, as Word or universally embracing Thought that contains the patterns, the blueprints, of all things that may ever begin to be; third, as Spirit, like a mighty wind, a shaping dynamic energy that breathes fire into those patterns and gives them finite material existence. God is the primal Origin, the eternal Word that is the pattern of all things, and the Spirit of wind and fire that shapes the primal void in accordance with that pattern.

In creation, the values that exist eternally and changelessly in God are given a new, finite, temporal and physical form. Within that creation, intelligent personal beings emerge which can share in their own limited way the contemplation and love of all that is true, beautiful and good. As parts of creation, they can appreciate and help to shape those forms in new ways, sharing to some extent in the creative activity of God, and developing societies of embodied minds where loving personal relationships with other beings could be realized.

The Bible says that when the universe began, ‘God said, Let there be light; and there was light’ (Genesis 1.3). Putting this within the modern scientific understanding of the origin of the universe we could say that the Word of God, existing eternally beyond the finite forms of space and time, conceived the idea of light. The Spirit of God shaped within the cosmic abyss the physical expression of this idea. Thus the universe was formed in thought and shaped in the realm of time, a realm poised between the self-existing reality of God and the half-reality of the dark and unformed void. The history of the universe began.

Lord God, you are the creator of all things; enable us to be creative in our own lives and in our own way, bringing about things that are worthwhile in themselves and for all who can share them. Lord, help us to be creators of