Idle hands are the devil's workshop and some people have too much free time rather in their heads, which leads to a ”
scholastikē noēsis”, a certain kind of idling — shouldn't this kind of nitpicking be Satan's workshop? Enough of the proverbs though, ”And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested (
shabath) on the seventh day from all His work which He had done”. It's told, that the hebrew '
sabbata' means the same as greek '
anapausis' — a
pausing from one's labour. Indeed,
Septuaginta, which one must never suspect of choosing the wrong word, says that God ”
katepausen” on the seventh day. Also this is like '
saturday' as the namesake of the roman god Saturn, i.e. greek Chronos, the day held in remembrance of the golden age, when men filled their stomaches with fattening food and loitered on smooth grass. This is the time, which should
always be — but some, like Socrates, would not still deem themselves worthy of happiness:
Well, then, if the foster children of Cronus, having all this leisure (scholēs) and the ability to converse not only with human beings but also with beasts, full use of all these opportunities with a view to philosophy, talking with the animals and with one another and learning from every creature that, through possession of some peculiar power he may have had in any respect beyond his fellows perceptions tending towards an increase of wisdom, it would be easy to decide that the people of those old times were immeasurably happier than those of our epoch. Or if they merely ate and drank till they were full and gossiped with each other and the animals, telling such stories as are even now told about them,
Since we're living the greek dream, heyday of nature made '
automatos' by our '
technē', provided by our great ability for fore-thinking (
promēthēs), and since even Jehova has His saturday, ”
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide” for another philosophical dish (
satura) — quite an enlightening difference by the way, how romans named their first god after a Dish full of
food, while greeks call him Time. This time eats it's own children since it's always coming
back to itself.
Is it becoming for God to rest? Many people have certainly believed so, and to return to the subject, an all-good, all-powerful God could be resting only with some presuppositions. First of all, it's quite reasonable that an
actual power always needs a subject to practice it's power
on, e.g. earthly ruler in his realm. An earthly ruler can't
begin as a ruler, if he were to create the realm from mere
nothing to begin with, even if he
later has absolute power over it — an
eternal ruler has
alway something, rather than mere nothing — even ”nothing” in the sense of nothing
for God presupposes a
relation to God and relation is not mere nothing, but nothing-besides-God. So, in a sense a sort of first matter
or — in the sense of equation — nothing as nothing-for-God is presupposed. This could be like the ”
Tohu wa-bohu” of Jehova, i.e. the earth as dark and formless, before the creation of light. Only such a ruler can be eternal.
Defining an equal ”axiom” for God's goodness is not as simple, e.g. is power
good? At least a greater power can be used to worsen or better a weaker and it doesn't befit God's goodness to make anything worse than it already is. We could say, that power doesn't always presuppose a ”moral” quality, e.g. a rock rolling downhill has certain power. It seems that it's worse having mere power without goodness, than having both, since it's better to be even a small ruler of a small realm, than even the biggest rock rolling downhill. So, it's quite plausible, that it's better to have even a little power living, than to have more power as lifeless. It's not
good to be merely powerful, but one must have life also — and
resting is a kind of living, which seizes from the
active use of power.
Nevertheless, a power which is
never used, is also never good
for anything. Some things are good in themselves, e.g.
living, but others merely good
for living, e.g. a house built of rocks is good-
for the good-
itself. Lifeless things are not good in themselves, but only for living things. Most living things also needs some lifeless things, e.g. man needs rocks to live. As such, man rules rocks and is in a way their ruler, since they are his subjects. Living in a house is having power over it and such living power belongs to a ruler even if he rules only a pile of rocks.
First of all, God needed not to create anything from matter or nothing to become a ruler with
something good in himself, i.e. living. For all-good God mere something good isn't enough, but He must be all-good and His form of ruling maybe should also be the best, what ever that might be — but is
leisure also a form of power? The best kind of ruling isn't perhaps active use of power, but could rather be passive. If God should create nothing or matter
better than it already is, His power is in accordance with His goodness. Such bettering of matter or nothing is to
liven it, since it's
better to live than to be nothing or matter — a living being is
worth more than lifeless, since God is all-good and all-powerful and His power can't
always be good for nothing. This doesn't mean God should
always use His power actively — it should be enough if He uses it actively
once to make something less powerful than himself, but also better than lifeless matter. The
rest of God's eternity could probably be '
sabbata', since His power is already actively used
once for better and the remaining eternity He will use His power
passively as a choice not to cancel His work — which He anyways won't do since making an ignorant choice to begin with wouldn't befit God's all-wisdom.