We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the self-same Word, who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for the Father has employed the same agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word who made it first.
Following yesterday's post, I have been thinking more about VanGemeren's idea of creation and consecration as he lays it out in his book, The Progress of Redemption. Over on Facebook, Jon Swales helpfully pointed out that Eden, as a temple, was consecrated. It does seem to follow that, since the presence of God was there in a very real way, Eden was a holy place.
What's more, VanGemeren seems to argue that since God intended creation to be something more than it was at the beginning, consecration would come when it reached that fulfilment. There is a problem here, however, because he argues at the same time that the Sabbath was consecrated. Yet, the Sabbath instituted at creation is also just a foretaste of the eschatological eternal Sabbath (Hebrews 4:9).
In his book, The Progress of Redemption: The Story of Salvation from Creation to the New Jerusalem, Old Testament scholar Willem VanGemeren notes that the creation still waits to be consecrated. Upon finishing his work of creation, God declares everything to be very good, but he only consecrates the Sabbath day. Thus, though creation is very good in God's sight, it is not perfect in its original state and anticipates a move toward perfection.
For VanGemeren, creation has both a christological and an eschatological focus. He writes, 'Creation anticipates a telos, or end. The God who freely, graciously, and powerfully rules creation has a goal: the new creation in his Son Jesus Christ' (62). Right from the start, God has in mind the history of redemption culminating in the restoration and perfection (consecration) of creation, achieved through the incarnation and resurrection of Christ. Interestingly, VanGemeren observes that with the fall into sin, the consecration of creation moved from being a possibility to a necessity. I am not sure what he understands by the possibility of consecration, especially if he sees the work of Christ in consecrating creation as something planned from the beginning. But certainly the necessity is there – what has been corrupted by sin must be rescued and redeemed, or 'put to rights', to borrow a phrase from N.T. Wright.
With the promise of the consecration of creation, God's people are given the responsibility of bearing witness to the future eschatological fulfillment of that promise. '[Israel] had received a foretaste of the promises of God in their special status as a covenant people and were guaranteed a greater restoration in the Promised Land' (61). The prophets later point forward 'to the restoration of all things in the messianic age' (62), which Jesus demonstrates in a powerful way during his life on earth. At his ascension, he promises the Holy Spirit, who will guide his people in bearing witness to his coming Kingdom (Acts 1:8). We don't just wait in hope for that which is to come, but we eagerly anticipate the consecration of creation. By living in fidelity to God's rule and proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom, we offer a foretaste of what is to come.
From VanGemeren's perspective, then,
the Garden of Eden is a prototype of the world planned by God – the world of restoration. The history of redemption, therefore, does not begin with a high point only to end up with the new earth as an equally high point. The new creation is better than the first because it will be perfect, holy, and characterized by the presence of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Rev. 21:22)... For that purpose, we must look upon Christ as the very purpose of God's creation. He is what Berkhof calls 'the pattern of existence for which creation is intended.' His redemptive work...was fully in view when God created the world. Creation is, therefore, the beginning, or the preamble, of the history of redemption (64).
In my first year of seminary, I was assigned a paper in which I essentially had to think about the idea of sacred space from a biblical standpoint and determine, more specifically, if this had any bearing on the architecture of church buildings. I found it to be a very interesting and challenging assignment, and though I came to no firm conclusion on the matter, I still find myself thinking about it often.
Recently, I finished reading N.T. Wright's excellent book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. Wright, an outspoken champion of biblical idea that redemption extends as far as the curse is found – in contrast to many Christians who view redemption as something spiritualised and otherworldly – helpfully guides the reader through a discussion of what this holistic redemption means for space, time, and matter. Wright says the following about how the redemption of space might give us pause to think about our church buildings:
The renewal and reclaiming of space has recently involved, among other things, a fresh grasp of the Celtic tradition of 'thin places,' places where the curtain between heaven and earth seems almost transparent. This is in fact just one aspect of a much wider theology of place, which has been under serious threat in the West since the Enlightenment. We urgently need to recapture this theology before, to use an obvious metaphor, all the ancient trees are cut down to make room for a shopping centre and parking lot just when people are starting to realise how much shade those trees provide in summer, how much fruit they bear in autumn, and how beautiful they look in spring. Jesus does indeed declare that God calls all people everywhere to worship him in spirit and truth rather than limiting worship to this or that holy mountain. But this doesn't undercut a proper theology of God's reclaiming of the whole world, which is anticipated in the claiming of space for worship and prayer. Church buildings and other places...are not a retreat from the world but a bridgehead into the world, a way of claiming part of God-given space for his glory, against the day when the whole world will thrill to his praise.
It is nothing short of dualistic folly, then, simply to declare without ado...that old church buildings and the like are irrelevant to the mission of God today and tomorrow... Many are rediscovering in our day that there are indeed such things as places sanctified by long usage for prayer and worship, places where, often without being able to explain it, people of all sorts find that prayer is more natural, that God can be known and felt more readily. We should reflect long and hard on a proper theology of place and space, thought through in terms of God's promise to renew the whole creation, before we abandon geography and territory.
I was hoping to get around to posting some thoughts on doing theology locally in response to my previous post on the problem of celebrity culture as it relates to theological formation, but I ran out of time this week. We are heading to Miami tomorrow for the weekend and I had some other pressing things to take care of before we leave that took priority over blogging. I plan to return to the subject at the beginning of next week.
For now, pull up a chair and get yourself a cup of coffee. Here's a question for you to think about:
If God creates something and declares it good, can/would/does he ever destroy that good thing?
I realise the question is rather vague, but that is part of what makes it interesting. Some friends and I were discussing it the other night, and it led us into further discussions on the nature and being of God, his actions, as well as the nature of creation and created things. I thought it would be a good question to ask on the blog, to get your interaction and to hear some different perspectives. What do you think? I'll look forward to reading your thoughts when I return on Monday.
This is the time of year when we frequently hear the familiar old Advent and Christmas hymns. 'O Holy Night' is one of those favourites. The song was first composed by a Frenchman named Adolphe Adam in 1847, based on a poem by Placide Cappeau. A Unitarian minister, John Sullivan Dwight, arranged the composition that we best know today in the English-speaking world.
The first verse of the song speaks of sin and the coming of Christ to bring redemption. In the original French, the verse goes as follows (the literal English translation is in parentheses):
Minuit, chrétiens, c'est l'heure solennelle, (Midnight, Christians, it is the solemn hour,) Où l'Homme-Dieu descendit jusqu'à nous (When God-man descended to us) Pour effacer la tache originelle (To erase the stain of original sin) Et de Son Père arrêter le courroux. (And to end the wrath of His Father.) Le monde entier tressaille d'espérance (The entire world thrills with hope) En cette nuit qui lui donne un Sauveur. (On this night that gives it a Saviour.)
What is notable about the original wording of the song is its emphasis on sin affecting the entire world, and that the world 'thrills with hope' at the coming Saviour. This emphasis carries over in the translation most common to English speakers, where the third line of the first verse says, 'Long lay the world in sin and error pining,' and the fifth line reads, 'A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.'
A couple of days ago, I heard a group of people singing this hymn, but in place of 'world' they used the word 'soul.' This caught me off-guard, on the one hand, because it was different from the lyrics I knew so well. Much more significantly, however, to understand the redemptive work of Christ only in terms of its effect on our soul is to miss a crucial aspect of the salvation Jesus brings. God did not send his Son into the world only to ensure that those who believe in him would one day have their souls taken away to a disembodied eternity in a far-off heaven.
No, the biblical idea of redemption is far greater than that. In their book, The Drama of Scripture, Mike Goheen and Craig Bartholomew note that God intended to redeem all of his creation:
When God set out to redeem his creation from sin and sin's effects on it, his ultimate purpose was that what we had once created good should be utterly restored, that the whole cosmos should once again live and thrive under his beneficent rule. In Jesus Christ that goal of cosmic redemption was first revealed and then accomplished (207).
Israel's longing for the Messiah was a longing for the one who would defeat sin and death and bring his Kingdom to rule over all of creation. No less is this our hope for today. We know that in Christ's death and resurrection, the promises of the covenant are guaranteed, but we wait with longing for his return and the consummation of his Kingdom. We too long for the day when he returns to restore his creation, and—to borrow an oft-quoted phrase from N.T. Wright—he sets the world to rights. We await the coming of the New Jerusalem, when all God's people will be gathered together to worship the sovereign King and live in a renewed and glorified creation where everything is as God intended it to be.
This is what the holy night long ago in Bethlehem was all about—the Incarnate God coming to bring a redemption that extends as far as the curse is found. If it is anything less, we have no reason to join in echoing the weary world's thrill of hope.
A couple of weeks ago, Ryan Stander pointed me to a story about Kathleen Folden, who drove 690 miles from Kalipsell, Montana, to Loveland, Colorado with the sole purpose of destroying a work of art she, as a Christian, considered deeply offensive. The piece, called "The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals," had drawn protesters for the duration of its exhibition who claimed the work was blasphemous and pornographic.
Christians have long had a contentious relationship with art; many find themselves without a framework for how to even think about art in the first place and so turn to embracing kitsch, rejecting anything they cannot understand, or protesting (in Folden's case, violently) against something they consider to be an attack on their faith because, after all, most art is anti-Christian.
Stories like this raise all kinds of issues and questions. In the first place, for some Christians any type of art dealing with the person of Jesus immediately requires consideration of the second commandment. What was the artist, Enrique Chagoya, intending to convey with this piece? Was his intention to provoke Christians, and is he afforded the right to do so? In a pluralist society, where is the line drawn between protecting the freedom of artists to express themselves and protecting against religious persecution (I think it would be fair to assume that Folden felt this was an act of persecution)? Is an act of protest against an artist's work ever legitimate, and what should that protest look like?
There is much to discuss about this incident, but in the end I found it interesting that all the commentary focused on Folden's act of destroying the work. In part this is not surprising—society likes stories that portray Christians as nut-jobs and Folden did act in a rather outspoken way. But when I looked at a photograph of Chagoya's piece, I wondered why this did not raise more questions about art itself.
In the Fall issue of Comment magazine, Bruce Herman has an excellent article discussing a pendulum swing in the world of art. In recent times, he notes, art has been all about what is novel, strange, and provocative, moving away from what used to be a focus on meaning and substance. He writes,
Since the Renaissance, the servant role of the artist—with craftsmanship as its central value—has been gradually waning and the intellectual-poetic aspects of art have steadily risen. Historians and critics during this period have hailed the 'breakthrough' mentality, and some have even equated art with the cutting edge and the avant-garde... One result is that in the past several decades, artists of every discipline have been trained with the primary expectation that they shall produce new and sometimes shocking objects; choreograph daring dance movements; compose provocative musical pieces or poems—and in many cases, skill has been moved to the margins or completely off-stage.
We cannot get inside Chagoya's head and determine what motivated him to create the piece, and further, I am not an art critic by any stretch of the imagination, so to offer a critique of his piece is really beyond what I am qualified to do. Nonetheless, from my cursory glances at the work Folden attempted to destroy, I think Herman's words ought to be taken into consideration here. In one sense, Folden's negative reaction to the piece as a Christian is understandable. But perhaps this should elicit a further discussion about bad art—is Chagoya's piece the skilled work of a craftsman, or merely something to shock and provoke?
Herman notes that the responsibility of the artist is to employ skilled craftsmanship in the act of creating something beautiful. In large part, these two things have been missing from the world of art in the recent past. It is the question of what constitutes beauty that should be at the center of discussions on art and craft, but modern artists often eschew this conversation because, Herman notes, "beauty was largely exiled from art for nearly a century, being held suspect since Kantian philosophy equated it with superficial pleasure." But the fact is that beauty is something intrinsic in our Creator's nature. God's creative work is shot through with true beauty and skilled craftsmanship, and our artistic work, whatever form it takes, must aim to reflect this skill and beauty. Herman says,
Though we value the new and surprising in art, we can never wholeheartedly let go of craft for the simple reason that it is seated in the deep human desire to reflect glory to God in and through the arts of the beautiful. We were made by a Maker of beauty, and are restless until we too manage to make something beautiful, something purposeful and lasting. It is not enough to make something 'striking' or 'interesting'—certainly not something merely shocking. The ultimate result of placing lesser qualities like these at the centre is often a movement toward the extreme novelty of the perverse, in which case 'interesting' crosses over into the peculiar and finally into the taboo. Images are no more neutral than words, and yet there is a great resistance to legislating imagery of placing prohibitions on art the way we do on speech.
This incident, then, leaves us with a lot of questions. Was Folden justified in her attack on Chagoya's art? I don't think so. Was she right to protest something she considered blasphemous? Surely, although it could have taken a much more productive form. But perhaps the discussion should focus more on the nature of art. Is Chagoya's piece a skilled work of beauty? Must we accept modern art's propensity to make beauty a subjective standard in the mind of the artist or beholder, or must we judge it by a higher standard? If Chagoya's work is an act of provocation against Christians, can it also be seen as an implicit rejection of God's standards of beauty, and thus his sovereignty over all spheres of life? How do we determine what constitutes God's standards of beauty, and what role does common grace play in bring this beauty to fruition in the work of those who do not know God?
Since I am not artistically-minded, these are only musings. What do you think?
The March edition of Comment magazine—yes, I'm a little late in picking up on this—has three articles dealing with each aspect of the biblical story: creation, fall, and redemption. Understanding the biblical narrative in this way is characteristic of the school of thought known as neocalvinism, which Comment roots itself in. All the pieces in this three-part series are excellent, and all worth your time (as is Comment as a whole—incidentally, Comment publishes five times more material online than in print if you wanted to read it on a regular basis). A taste of each piece follows.
The first thing most people think of in connection with creation is the so-called 'natural world'—that is, the physical and biological world. We think of stars and galaxies as well as molecules and atoms, of trees and flowers as well as birds and beasts. But that is a very limited view of creation. In the biblical view, creation is everything which God has ordained to exist, what he has put in place as part of his creative workmanship. To be sure, this includes the great variety of physical entities and processes, and the enormous diversity of flora and fauna that God has created 'according to their kind,' but it also encompasses much more. Creation includes such human realities as families and other social institutions, the presence of beauty in the world, the ability to appreciate that beauty, the phenomena of tenderness and laughter, the capacity to conceptualize and reason, the experience of joy and the sense of justice. An almost unimaginable variety of objects, institutions, relationships and phenomena are part of the rich texture of God's creation.
[The fall] is the second 'act' in the overall narrative of the Scriptures, the next major theme in a biblical view of life and the world. First, there is the good news of creation, but now we have the bad news of the fall. It introduces fundamental conflict into the biblical drama, which must be resolved before God's story ends. It shows, contrary to other worldviews, that evil is not rooted in creation itself, but in the moral rebellion of the human race against the divine authority of the holy God. I sometimes call this episode the 'uncreation' because of the damage it did to God's very good world: how it twisted his intentions for humanity, for our knowing and loving and culture-making, and for all the earth.
And finally Jamie Smith paints a wonderful portrait of God's all-encompassing redemption:
Our good Creator has not left us to our own devices. While we ruptured the plenitude of creative love, our condescending God has also ruptured our brass heaven, along with our desire to enclose ourselves in immanence, appearing in the flesh—our flesh—as the image of the invisible God. Jesus of Nazareth appears as the second Adam who models for us what it looks like to carry out that original mission of image-bearing and cultivation. The Word became flesh, not to save our souls from this fallen world, but in order to restore us as lovers of this world—to (re)enable us to carry out that creative commission. Indeed, God saves us so that—once again, in a kind of divine madness—we can save the world, can (re)make the world aright. And God's redemptive love spills over in its cosmic effects, giving hope to this groaning creation.
So our redemption is not some supplement to being human; it's what makes it possible to be really human, to take up the mission that marks us as God's image bearers. Saint Irenaeus captures this succinctly: 'The glory of God is a human being fully alive.' Redemption doesn't tack on some spiritual appendage, nor does it liberate us from being human in order to achieve some sort of angelhood. Rather, redemption is the restoration of our humanity, and our humanity is bound up with our mission of being God's co-creative culture-makers.
Be sure to read all of the articles in their entirety. It is this three-part framework (alternatively construed as wonder, heartbreak, and hope) that forms the point of view from which Comment looks at the world, a point of view which, my friend and the magazine's editor Gideon Strauss writes, manifestly reveals the love of the triune God. This love "evokes—from our whole person and in unity with the whole people of God—a life of worship, a love of our neighbours, and a respectful caring and disclosure of all of creation. Lives ordered by the love of God are ordered well, and can be lived well."
Abraham Kuyper, in that oft-quoted dictum, rightly declares that all of life is to be lived under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our worldview needs this truth as its foundation. We do not begin to live our lives well, to borrow Gideon's words, unless we begin with the recognition of His total claim over all of creation and His holistic work of redemption. Indeed, as Cornelius Van Til once said, "Man cannot be man unless God is God."
