What if the word ‘God’ itself might refer, not to this distant, remote, occasionally-intervening Being, but to a God who breathed with the breath of the world? What if this God, as the Old Testament says, feeds the young ravens when they call out, not (presumably) by dropping food ‘miraculously’ from the sky, but by being active within his creation, within ‘instinct’ and hidden motivations? When the Bible says that God commanded Adam and Eve to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, and gave them tasks to perform in relation to his creation, did this mean that he barked a command at them from a distance, or put up notices in Eden telling them what to do? Of course not. He put into their inmost beings, as creatures made to reflect his image into his world, a deep desire for one another, and a deep longing to create and nurture order and beauty within creation.
N.T. Wright, Who Was Jesus?
