Uncreation/Re-creation

Just as the Word Incarnate uttered the hidden things of the world through story and parable, so too does the written Word of God present the subtle nature of existence its through narrative. Story becomes the vessel in which the order of all things are arranged and dictated. And in a particular story found in the Scriptures, there is another vessel on which the story centers; the telling of a universal law that wears the form of an Ark.

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The world of Noah was a world changed from that of Adam's. Evil had grown up in cities, darkness had spread throughout and sin had chewed away the goodness in mankind. Then there was Noah, another Adam, the one righteous before God who was to craft the Ark in three decks, imitating the world model of Genesis 1 "the heavens above, the earth beneath and the waters under the earth." It was a new world, made perhaps from the very timbers surrounding the abandoned Eden. 

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The story of the flood is the story of creation in reverse, the creation days are played backward and the world which God made is disassembled. The chiastic center of the narrative is the image of the Ark "hovering above the waters" just as the Spirit hovered above the waters in the unformed world (Gen 1:2). Then, the creation pattern is repeated from beginning to end, the flood waters recede and the world is reconstituted; Noah and all the creatures of preserved alive. Upon the Ark, the old world is translated into the new world. 

Written here is the chiastic rule of nature: that which is broken must first be undone then restored; uncreated then re-created. According to earthly vision, life comes before death but God's vision of the world is the reverse. Death comes first. It is only the world first unraveled that can then be made again, and only the man who first tastes death that can partake of eternal life.