On an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) TV show about advertising (ABC2, “The Gruen Transfer”, 1 April 2009), Todd Sampson, one of the advertising panellists, made this remark about advertisements for bottled water based on images of the water’s source:
“…but origin is a really good strategy: so it’s more about the perception of what the origin is rather than the actual origin and they are often very different. I mean, I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that Mt. Franklin [bottled water] doesn’t come from Mt. Franklin, and my favourite one is Everest water from Texas [USA presumably, rather than Texas, Qld in Australia]. These water companies use glaciers and snow mountains and lots of beautiful blue and crystal images; that’s their strategy to communicate their symbols…”
The question of origins is a basic question; the answer orientates us fundamentally. It structures our view of self and world, and provides the context against which we understand everything, whether people believe an image presented to them, or the truth, the outcome is the same: the answer delineates our limits and sets what is basic in our relationships. Our origin is comprehensively definitional of who we are, why we are and what we are.
Needless to say, most people probably have a sub-articulated view of origins, with vague beliefs or understanding of the origin of the life and the cosmos, let alone humanity and its connections.
Others have a clear view: our origin is in the will of God and is brought by his word; we are created to enjoy life and our relationships (with God and each other). In this frame, personhood is basic, and love the mode of relationship. Life in this setting is far more than an outworking of material processes (this reflects how most of us live).
Still others reject this and believe our origin is material, where the basic modality of life is material: the molecules and energy we are made of represented in the collection of processes that in and of themselves imply nothing beyond their mechanical routines and interactions. Needless to say, this view is the orthodox and culturally dominant view today.
For these people, life, if it has any explanation, can only be purely physical, and material is primary, all else is dependent upon it. Truth, if there is any such thing, is merely the report of what is, materially, and to the extent that any belief is a result of material interactions in the brain, presumably, then it is true to the extent that it is a report of the material state at a moment. Of course, there is no ‘value’ in this framing of life, life just is. No oughts can flow from that (which is not how most of us live).
30 June 2009
28 June 2009
Death's hand
Whenever one reads statements such as “the Bible is not concerned with…” one should, I think, be immediately suspicious of a perhaps not very hidden agenda (see also my previous blog on this).
So, while the Bible may not have an interest in the death of dinosaurs, specifically (although some people seem to see the link!), does it have an interest in animal death, per se? To think that the Bible has no comment to make on animal death, or that animal death is not relevant to the Bible’s picture of the world as fallen, is, I think, inaccurate; moreover, it is an inaccuracy that hobbles a proper understanding of the Bible’s message. Taken to its full extent, it seems to suggest that there is an independent 'nature' separate to the world of the Bible and one that has different rules, different frames of reference, if not a whole different coordinate system from that described in the Bible. So two worlds, one derived from God, as per the creation, the other from who knows where, that is separated in reality from our God??
But perhaps the author is not interested in the question because to admit it would unseat this artificial division the author needs between salvation history and creation history to avoid challenging the prevailing world concept that has as its starting point that there is no God; and like all pagan world concepts needs huge spans of time (during which animals must have died, obviously, and before Adam brought death: 1 Cor 15:21 )
to permit the indulgence that what is not credibly possible in a short period becomes possible (likely, even) given long periods; where objective events are lost in the mists of time and where human imagination and myth-making can exercise their options independently of God.
Now, the implication of deferring to myth over historical objectivity (i.e. what actually occurred) is that the myth-makers’ and users’ preoccupations shift to mankind and away from God, pretending a breach in the chain of cause and effect that joins us and God (thereby asserting humanities’ forlorn desire for independence of its creator). Taking the story of our past and the setting it gives our human exchanges and relationships from our imagination dislocates the historical stream which in the Bible resolutely makes our connection with God objective, real and traceable in the terms that make sense in the setting which we share with God: he as creator, we as creature.
Myth lets imagination take our focus and erects a setting that denies God and his real involvement with the creation as a totality. If we deny that the Bible is other than myth, then we run the risk of presenting God as being a result of human invention, and his ‘creation’ being a comforting story that transfers our origin from this world to another world that has escaped from the objective flow of history. So there must be multiple worlds for myth to be entertained as having any substantial connection with anything, most of which must be fictional and without points of reference in this world that would permit it to be objectively and independently communicated to unify word and reality (thus ‘myth’, of course)
And this leads to my next point: creation is a totality.
Separating animal death from human death must, I think, deny the ontological unity of creation. Creation then ceases to have a single mode of connection with God, but multiple modes and therefore must have multiple ontological coordinates (to borrow from physics) that only connect in God. But the creation account does not read as though this is or could even be the case; nor is it a possibility theologically, I think, given the obvious relationship between humanity and creation and humanity and God with mankind as the steward of the creation on God’s behalf ( Genesis 1:26 .;)
The unity is indicated by the dependent sequence in the six days (each successive day relying in a physical manner on the acts of the preceding days, man being set over the creation, and in relationship with God, and God making living creatures, a translation of nephesh chayah, also used of man!
To think that God, in who is life, also has in him, at the same time, death, which is the absence of life, and by extension, absence of God, is simply impossible. To think that anti-life can occur for some living creatures (animals) but not others (man), when all come from the will of the one who is love and only provides for the best within the scope of relationship of dependence (which was rejected by A&E), and who is life ( John 1:4 is plainly nonsensical.
One of the grand under-themes of Genesis 1 is its anti-idealism (as though God predicted the without-hope-ness of western philosophy from Plato to Hegel), thus its realism: that what is real is circumscribed by the scope of creation: the entities and relationships they are in as defined by God. The great breakdown is brought in divorce from God through sin, so the antithesis of God enters as he is rejected. Life is pushed out and its reverse, death, that which is not in Christ, enters. But only through one man!
Splitting the scope of death between different living creatures excludes part of creation from the Bible’s message. But it is a critical element of the Bible’s message that it has in view the whole of creation and none of it is outside of the Bible’s historical flow, and no part of it has a reference outside the creation account. The chief theme of the Bible is the cause culmination and conclusion of salvation; salvation history, but it is all set in the realist structure that is given by, totally, the creation, the physical cosmos and our place in it. The fall we are clearly told devastated the whole of creation, and not just our relationship with God, but all relationships. Indeed, we can go no further than what is told to us of the new creation to see it as a complete undoing of sin and death, the final enemy (if an enemy, how a part of the creation pre-fall, from the one who is life?)
To think that we can separate one type of death from another is a duplicitous theological evasion of the confrontation of the word of God with the rejection of God. It accepts a definition of the world that does not derive from the revelation of God, but, as part of paganism’s long history of mythical origins that remove God from man, springs from the modern deism of Hutton who thought that we needed long ages for the earth to take its present form. This denies what we are told of the flood, as Peter warned us (2 Pt 2:5). Peter clearly saw the need for theological connection between the creation and the saviour!
So, while the Bible may not have an interest in the death of dinosaurs, specifically (although some people seem to see the link!), does it have an interest in animal death, per se? To think that the Bible has no comment to make on animal death, or that animal death is not relevant to the Bible’s picture of the world as fallen, is, I think, inaccurate; moreover, it is an inaccuracy that hobbles a proper understanding of the Bible’s message. Taken to its full extent, it seems to suggest that there is an independent 'nature' separate to the world of the Bible and one that has different rules, different frames of reference, if not a whole different coordinate system from that described in the Bible. So two worlds, one derived from God, as per the creation, the other from who knows where, that is separated in reality from our God??
But perhaps the author is not interested in the question because to admit it would unseat this artificial division the author needs between salvation history and creation history to avoid challenging the prevailing world concept that has as its starting point that there is no God; and like all pagan world concepts needs huge spans of time (during which animals must have died, obviously, and before Adam brought death: 1 Cor 15:21 )
to permit the indulgence that what is not credibly possible in a short period becomes possible (likely, even) given long periods; where objective events are lost in the mists of time and where human imagination and myth-making can exercise their options independently of God.
Now, the implication of deferring to myth over historical objectivity (i.e. what actually occurred) is that the myth-makers’ and users’ preoccupations shift to mankind and away from God, pretending a breach in the chain of cause and effect that joins us and God (thereby asserting humanities’ forlorn desire for independence of its creator). Taking the story of our past and the setting it gives our human exchanges and relationships from our imagination dislocates the historical stream which in the Bible resolutely makes our connection with God objective, real and traceable in the terms that make sense in the setting which we share with God: he as creator, we as creature.
Myth lets imagination take our focus and erects a setting that denies God and his real involvement with the creation as a totality. If we deny that the Bible is other than myth, then we run the risk of presenting God as being a result of human invention, and his ‘creation’ being a comforting story that transfers our origin from this world to another world that has escaped from the objective flow of history. So there must be multiple worlds for myth to be entertained as having any substantial connection with anything, most of which must be fictional and without points of reference in this world that would permit it to be objectively and independently communicated to unify word and reality (thus ‘myth’, of course)
And this leads to my next point: creation is a totality.
Separating animal death from human death must, I think, deny the ontological unity of creation. Creation then ceases to have a single mode of connection with God, but multiple modes and therefore must have multiple ontological coordinates (to borrow from physics) that only connect in God. But the creation account does not read as though this is or could even be the case; nor is it a possibility theologically, I think, given the obvious relationship between humanity and creation and humanity and God with mankind as the steward of the creation on God’s behalf ( Genesis 1:26 .;)
The unity is indicated by the dependent sequence in the six days (each successive day relying in a physical manner on the acts of the preceding days, man being set over the creation, and in relationship with God, and God making living creatures, a translation of nephesh chayah, also used of man!
To think that God, in who is life, also has in him, at the same time, death, which is the absence of life, and by extension, absence of God, is simply impossible. To think that anti-life can occur for some living creatures (animals) but not others (man), when all come from the will of the one who is love and only provides for the best within the scope of relationship of dependence (which was rejected by A&E), and who is life ( John 1:4 is plainly nonsensical.
One of the grand under-themes of Genesis 1 is its anti-idealism (as though God predicted the without-hope-ness of western philosophy from Plato to Hegel), thus its realism: that what is real is circumscribed by the scope of creation: the entities and relationships they are in as defined by God. The great breakdown is brought in divorce from God through sin, so the antithesis of God enters as he is rejected. Life is pushed out and its reverse, death, that which is not in Christ, enters. But only through one man!
Splitting the scope of death between different living creatures excludes part of creation from the Bible’s message. But it is a critical element of the Bible’s message that it has in view the whole of creation and none of it is outside of the Bible’s historical flow, and no part of it has a reference outside the creation account. The chief theme of the Bible is the cause culmination and conclusion of salvation; salvation history, but it is all set in the realist structure that is given by, totally, the creation, the physical cosmos and our place in it. The fall we are clearly told devastated the whole of creation, and not just our relationship with God, but all relationships. Indeed, we can go no further than what is told to us of the new creation to see it as a complete undoing of sin and death, the final enemy (if an enemy, how a part of the creation pre-fall, from the one who is life?)
To think that we can separate one type of death from another is a duplicitous theological evasion of the confrontation of the word of God with the rejection of God. It accepts a definition of the world that does not derive from the revelation of God, but, as part of paganism’s long history of mythical origins that remove God from man, springs from the modern deism of Hutton who thought that we needed long ages for the earth to take its present form. This denies what we are told of the flood, as Peter warned us (2 Pt 2:5). Peter clearly saw the need for theological connection between the creation and the saviour!
26 June 2009
Death and its place
Flip over to the theologians theologian for this piece on death.
Mark says in this post:
I can't agree with him in putting a limit on the scope of the biblical opposition to death that the Bible itself does not apply. The creation, of which mankind is part, is one in its relation to and rejection of God. Man as 'federal head' has brought the whole creation crashing down, and so the death that marks our separation, the creation's separtion, from the life-giver must echo throughout the creation the discord that it brings. To hope that it is only human death that is a concern (and it indeed is) is to ignore God's intention in the new creation. For instance Isaiah 65:25 and Romans 8. References could be multiplied to show that God does not forget his creation in total, because it is the creation in total that bears the marks of dissolution, not only mankind.
Mark's acceptance of the notion of deep ages showing death presumably before humanity is troubling. Would death, the mark of alienation from God, could death, being such, pre-exist the rupture between God and man? It seems hardly likely and seems to me to misunderstand the reason that death came at the point at which the rupture was made. It is no good to say that the Bible is silent on the pre-existance of death, rather to concentrate on the Bible's positive statements on the matter. The introduction of death would seem logically to exclude it being a phenomenon prior to the change of state between God and his creation.
I've covered some of this ground in 'Death's line'
Mark says in this post:
There may still be unanswered questions, of course. For instance, just what can we imply from the fossils of dinosaurs so many million years ago? And yet the Bible is not the slightest bit interested in such things. Its concern is the death of human beings in the light of God's own nature and his purpose borne out in creation.
I can't agree with him in putting a limit on the scope of the biblical opposition to death that the Bible itself does not apply. The creation, of which mankind is part, is one in its relation to and rejection of God. Man as 'federal head' has brought the whole creation crashing down, and so the death that marks our separation, the creation's separtion, from the life-giver must echo throughout the creation the discord that it brings. To hope that it is only human death that is a concern (and it indeed is) is to ignore God's intention in the new creation. For instance Isaiah 65:25 and Romans 8. References could be multiplied to show that God does not forget his creation in total, because it is the creation in total that bears the marks of dissolution, not only mankind.
Mark's acceptance of the notion of deep ages showing death presumably before humanity is troubling. Would death, the mark of alienation from God, could death, being such, pre-exist the rupture between God and man? It seems hardly likely and seems to me to misunderstand the reason that death came at the point at which the rupture was made. It is no good to say that the Bible is silent on the pre-existance of death, rather to concentrate on the Bible's positive statements on the matter. The introduction of death would seem logically to exclude it being a phenomenon prior to the change of state between God and his creation.
I've covered some of this ground in 'Death's line'
23 June 2009
Right for the wrong reasons
The sermon at church last Sunday morning dealt with the Colossians passage that we studied last week in our home group.
Its conclusions were right, basically, but for all the wrong reasons...or, to be fair, for some of the wrong reasons.
We got off to a bad start with a reference to the common misunderstanding of the 'give way at a roundabout rule' as an illustration of the operation of rules. The speaker told us that we had to give way to traffic on our right. Not so! The rule is give way to traffic in the roundabout.
The sermon then followed the tenor of this slight misunderstanding, to slightly misunderstand scripture, in my view.
The obvious connection was made with Genesis 3, and the curse undoing harmony in relationships, and it was well made, with the further point being that Col. 3:18-4:1 gave us a set of rules for family life (slaves included in the household, as they often were then).
For all its good, I don't think that Paul is giving rules here, but is rather showing how life in Christ undoes the mores of life in the world. Each of Paul's calls for behavioural change is not so much a rule (albeit a rule that reverses the outcomes of the fall for relationships), but a reversal of the power and exploitation that exists, or could easily and acceptably exist in the relationships mentioned at that time, particularly. The way of Christ is not the way of the world. Our relationships are to be different because of him who called us.
Unsurprisingly the 'role' of the husband as the 'head' of the wife was mentioned. Given the spotlight, in fact, for part of the talk. However, the Biblical relationship identified in the connection of 'head' between man and woman, (and between God and Christ, Christ and man and Christ and the church) was by a slight of hand made in to the office of 'headship'. I don't and can't see an 'office' in these relationships. It is alien to the whole tenor of the Kingdom of God, and it is certainly alien to the tenor of human relationships (although a reference was made to Eph 5:22 as illustrating what 'head' meant, and that itself was fair enough). But the central reference by Paul to these relationships has got to be Galatians 3:28, where distinction is tossed out altogether, in Christ, which is where we are. Everything must be read in this light, I would think.
The idea of an office of 'headship' also brings with it ideas of power needed to overcome opposition. The idea is simply at odds with not only the life of the Kindgom of God, but of the relationships in the godhead itself. See this short blog on 'head'. The sermon talked about an 'established order' but there is no such thing, in the terms presented in the sermon (that is, 'headship' being about some sort of authority order) just the distorted dis-order of the fall, which we go against as we head to the new creation, where the strictures of the world and its confining 'established order' are rejected. Sure, one could say that a new order replaces the old, but my concern is that mainstream readings of this and related passages of scripture see order at the forefront, and not relationships of mutual submission, love and service (as elusive as they might be).
Paul is not about rules, per se, but about the reconfiguration of the concept of self from independent to Christ-centred.
The last comment that horrified me was the local favourite 'servant-leadership' with reference to husbands and wives. This is another concept (along with 'headship') which does not exist in the Bible. Servant, yes. 'Leader' no. A leader knows where they are going and where to take followers. But we follow Christ, and his Spirit is the one who knows where to take us. We are all for each other but servants along the way. This 'servant-leader' oxymoron is a dreadful intrusion of worldly thinking into the church and it cannot fall out of favour soon enough for me. Matthew deals with this (oh, and I know 'leader' pops up in Hebrews too, but I doubt it can be recontextualised to how the term is conceived in contemporary life when it must be read against the full biblical background).
Now the sermon did say agreeable things about the actual relationships, but unfortunately not for always biblical reasons. Cultural reasons intruded.
Its conclusions were right, basically, but for all the wrong reasons...or, to be fair, for some of the wrong reasons.
We got off to a bad start with a reference to the common misunderstanding of the 'give way at a roundabout rule' as an illustration of the operation of rules. The speaker told us that we had to give way to traffic on our right. Not so! The rule is give way to traffic in the roundabout.
The sermon then followed the tenor of this slight misunderstanding, to slightly misunderstand scripture, in my view.
The obvious connection was made with Genesis 3, and the curse undoing harmony in relationships, and it was well made, with the further point being that Col. 3:18-4:1 gave us a set of rules for family life (slaves included in the household, as they often were then).
For all its good, I don't think that Paul is giving rules here, but is rather showing how life in Christ undoes the mores of life in the world. Each of Paul's calls for behavioural change is not so much a rule (albeit a rule that reverses the outcomes of the fall for relationships), but a reversal of the power and exploitation that exists, or could easily and acceptably exist in the relationships mentioned at that time, particularly. The way of Christ is not the way of the world. Our relationships are to be different because of him who called us.
Unsurprisingly the 'role' of the husband as the 'head' of the wife was mentioned. Given the spotlight, in fact, for part of the talk. However, the Biblical relationship identified in the connection of 'head' between man and woman, (and between God and Christ, Christ and man and Christ and the church) was by a slight of hand made in to the office of 'headship'. I don't and can't see an 'office' in these relationships. It is alien to the whole tenor of the Kingdom of God, and it is certainly alien to the tenor of human relationships (although a reference was made to Eph 5:22 as illustrating what 'head' meant, and that itself was fair enough). But the central reference by Paul to these relationships has got to be Galatians 3:28, where distinction is tossed out altogether, in Christ, which is where we are. Everything must be read in this light, I would think.
The idea of an office of 'headship' also brings with it ideas of power needed to overcome opposition. The idea is simply at odds with not only the life of the Kindgom of God, but of the relationships in the godhead itself. See this short blog on 'head'. The sermon talked about an 'established order' but there is no such thing, in the terms presented in the sermon (that is, 'headship' being about some sort of authority order) just the distorted dis-order of the fall, which we go against as we head to the new creation, where the strictures of the world and its confining 'established order' are rejected. Sure, one could say that a new order replaces the old, but my concern is that mainstream readings of this and related passages of scripture see order at the forefront, and not relationships of mutual submission, love and service (as elusive as they might be).
Paul is not about rules, per se, but about the reconfiguration of the concept of self from independent to Christ-centred.
The last comment that horrified me was the local favourite 'servant-leadership' with reference to husbands and wives. This is another concept (along with 'headship') which does not exist in the Bible. Servant, yes. 'Leader' no. A leader knows where they are going and where to take followers. But we follow Christ, and his Spirit is the one who knows where to take us. We are all for each other but servants along the way. This 'servant-leader' oxymoron is a dreadful intrusion of worldly thinking into the church and it cannot fall out of favour soon enough for me. Matthew deals with this (oh, and I know 'leader' pops up in Hebrews too, but I doubt it can be recontextualised to how the term is conceived in contemporary life when it must be read against the full biblical background).
Now the sermon did say agreeable things about the actual relationships, but unfortunately not for always biblical reasons. Cultural reasons intruded.
19 June 2009
In the family
Our home group study last night was on Col 3:18-4:1.
In the usual fashion the very implications of study book questions raised my concern on a few points. The prepared study notes our convenor had just made it worse, as you’ll see below.
1. The questions in our study book treated the list of imperatives as a list of commandments about family relationships, including slaves, which were typically part of all but poor households.
I don’t think that this is the whole matter, or indeed captures the thrust of Paul’s intention.
If you read the list in the light of what we know of social arrangements and patterns in the Roman Empire it could be argued, I think that each one overturns the contemporary reaction to circumstances, calling the readers to act not as the world around them acts, but as people who follow Christ, filled with the Spirit of God. Thus they are what they are, but also are exemplars of what we are to seek in all relationships in all circumstances: promoting the benefit of the other, and not selfishly our own.
2. The study notes referred to vs. 21 as reflecting the divine order of family life in fathers not exasperating their children (well, NT Wright actually…and I wonder why we just got slabs of quotes, and no reflection on them in the notes). This is less about the father’s role in any divine ordering of the family, although it is not inconsistent with what the Bible tells us about family relationships, and more about family law in the Roman empire: the father was the supreme, indeed, the only authority in his household, the wife was of no legal moment, and it was the father who was responsible for the children, in every way. So, in line with my comments above, the father, who was in a position to frustrate his children and with the support of the law, is here urged to undo the worldly way, and adopt a godly way.
3. Also in the study notes the word ‘headship’ was used. I was at least pleased that the head as the sacrificial giver was discussed, rather than any trite modernist view of it indicating ‘leader’; but adopting the term ‘headship’ pretends that the relationship of ‘head’ makes an office creates an authority hierarchy which is just not in the Bible. There is no ‘headship’ in the Bible, but the idea of ‘head’ is applied as a description of certain relationships.
The description is to the unity of the ‘head-product’ pair and relates to nothing but the facts: of Christ as the begotten son of God, as represented to us, of Christ as the source and succor of the church, his body (noting that heads and bodies are usually in intimate and supportive connection and unified as to purpose, and not in opposition to each other…check with your neurologist if your head and body are in opposition to each other), and man as head of woman see here and also check Genesis 2:21.
See also my blog here.
And an amusing aspect of the study notes: large slabs of quotation from NT Wright! Presumably his commentary on Colossians. The amusing bit is that Wright is a protagonist of the new perspective on Paul, which is not exactly embraced with great warmth in mainstream conservative churches.
In the usual fashion the very implications of study book questions raised my concern on a few points. The prepared study notes our convenor had just made it worse, as you’ll see below.
1. The questions in our study book treated the list of imperatives as a list of commandments about family relationships, including slaves, which were typically part of all but poor households.
I don’t think that this is the whole matter, or indeed captures the thrust of Paul’s intention.
If you read the list in the light of what we know of social arrangements and patterns in the Roman Empire it could be argued, I think that each one overturns the contemporary reaction to circumstances, calling the readers to act not as the world around them acts, but as people who follow Christ, filled with the Spirit of God. Thus they are what they are, but also are exemplars of what we are to seek in all relationships in all circumstances: promoting the benefit of the other, and not selfishly our own.
2. The study notes referred to vs. 21 as reflecting the divine order of family life in fathers not exasperating their children (well, NT Wright actually…and I wonder why we just got slabs of quotes, and no reflection on them in the notes). This is less about the father’s role in any divine ordering of the family, although it is not inconsistent with what the Bible tells us about family relationships, and more about family law in the Roman empire: the father was the supreme, indeed, the only authority in his household, the wife was of no legal moment, and it was the father who was responsible for the children, in every way. So, in line with my comments above, the father, who was in a position to frustrate his children and with the support of the law, is here urged to undo the worldly way, and adopt a godly way.
3. Also in the study notes the word ‘headship’ was used. I was at least pleased that the head as the sacrificial giver was discussed, rather than any trite modernist view of it indicating ‘leader’; but adopting the term ‘headship’ pretends that the relationship of ‘head’ makes an office creates an authority hierarchy which is just not in the Bible. There is no ‘headship’ in the Bible, but the idea of ‘head’ is applied as a description of certain relationships.
The description is to the unity of the ‘head-product’ pair and relates to nothing but the facts: of Christ as the begotten son of God, as represented to us, of Christ as the source and succor of the church, his body (noting that heads and bodies are usually in intimate and supportive connection and unified as to purpose, and not in opposition to each other…check with your neurologist if your head and body are in opposition to each other), and man as head of woman see here and also check Genesis 2:21.
See also my blog here.
And an amusing aspect of the study notes: large slabs of quotation from NT Wright! Presumably his commentary on Colossians. The amusing bit is that Wright is a protagonist of the new perspective on Paul, which is not exactly embraced with great warmth in mainstream conservative churches.
15 June 2009
It doesn't hurt to ask
The Anglican Church in Sydney is running a campaign called "Connect09". I'm a little wary of campaigns, let alone those attended by slogans (change management by slogan is the most arid and pointless exercise of organisations without ideas). Nevertheless, I think our parish is hitting a few good bases.
Along the lines of connecting with people Seth Godin posted this blog a while back.
Along the lines of connecting with people Seth Godin posted this blog a while back.
5 June 2009
Cole's on fire
The other evening I attended a lecture at St. Swithun's Anglican church at Pymble. The lecture was given by Graham Cole and it had the title "The Grandeur of God's Atoning Project.
I'd love to link to the lecture, but unfortunately it hasn't been made available for the web. The number of references that Graham made to God's creation surprised me a little (or maybe it shouldn't have, with the creation-new creation line permeating Paul's theology).
He referred to the basic Christian framing of history: not only salvation history, but history in toto: the sequence of our experience:
Harmony: God created the world
Dis-harmony/rupture: The world goes wrong
Higher harmony: God restores the creation, but better!
He saw creation as a great act of generosity on God's part, an act of love; he didn't 'need' to create, but he did, because it would bring life and greater love-events. The fall, of course changed all that, but God out did the fall in Christ.
But love goes to life, not death; it is the contraversion of love that brings death; this struck me as a great indicator of the basic incompatibility of death and God's very good creation. This leaves heterodox approaches to Genesis 1-3 in a pickle, to my mind.
Man being in God's image also presents a problem for the 'death is basic' crowd. Death is not basic to man, as being in God's image would present a front of incompatibility between God's being and man's reflection of that. The image marred results in God's being spurned and death coming by curse: to the unity of the creation, over which man was God's caretaker. How could death a) not go everywhere in creation at the curse, when the relationship between caretaker and creator was broken: image defaced and life undone; therefore death! and b) preexist the rupture in the creation brought by the primary rupture between image bearer and creator. Pre-fall there is no room for death in the unity of the unruptured creation.
Again, the death is basic crowd has, I think, missed a basic premise of theology and the scriptures.
Interesting to reflect in this connection the historical unity of man's creation and his image-bearing. Genesis 1:26-27 is in mind, along with Genesis 2:7. It seems to leave no room for man to 'emerge' from the creation through a chain of death to be the caretaker of a unified creation giving God pleasure: in that it contains no 'not-God'. The fall turns that around!
The idea that death is the engine of creation (as horrible as this is) comes from within the context of the ruptured world, and so must, I think, but set to one side.
PS
At his lecture on Thursday evening, Graham offered two post scripts. I'll offer one, starting with a quote that unfortunately applies to many conservative evangelicals when it comes to their interpretation of Genesis 1:
In too many quarters we see "sterile supernaturalism" giving rise to "practical deism" working itself out in a "moral stoicism". Or something like that. Its the first two steps that attracted my attention in this connection: denying that God could create as the surface reading of Genesis 1-3 reveals leads quickly to a deistic view of the world and God, which removes God from us and invites in ideas such as theistic evolution, in my view.
I'd love to link to the lecture, but unfortunately it hasn't been made available for the web. The number of references that Graham made to God's creation surprised me a little (or maybe it shouldn't have, with the creation-new creation line permeating Paul's theology).
He referred to the basic Christian framing of history: not only salvation history, but history in toto: the sequence of our experience:
Harmony: God created the world
Dis-harmony/rupture: The world goes wrong
Higher harmony: God restores the creation, but better!
He saw creation as a great act of generosity on God's part, an act of love; he didn't 'need' to create, but he did, because it would bring life and greater love-events. The fall, of course changed all that, but God out did the fall in Christ.
But love goes to life, not death; it is the contraversion of love that brings death; this struck me as a great indicator of the basic incompatibility of death and God's very good creation. This leaves heterodox approaches to Genesis 1-3 in a pickle, to my mind.
Man being in God's image also presents a problem for the 'death is basic' crowd. Death is not basic to man, as being in God's image would present a front of incompatibility between God's being and man's reflection of that. The image marred results in God's being spurned and death coming by curse: to the unity of the creation, over which man was God's caretaker. How could death a) not go everywhere in creation at the curse, when the relationship between caretaker and creator was broken: image defaced and life undone; therefore death! and b) preexist the rupture in the creation brought by the primary rupture between image bearer and creator. Pre-fall there is no room for death in the unity of the unruptured creation.
Again, the death is basic crowd has, I think, missed a basic premise of theology and the scriptures.
Interesting to reflect in this connection the historical unity of man's creation and his image-bearing. Genesis 1:26-27 is in mind, along with Genesis 2:7. It seems to leave no room for man to 'emerge' from the creation through a chain of death to be the caretaker of a unified creation giving God pleasure: in that it contains no 'not-God'. The fall turns that around!
The idea that death is the engine of creation (as horrible as this is) comes from within the context of the ruptured world, and so must, I think, but set to one side.
PS
At his lecture on Thursday evening, Graham offered two post scripts. I'll offer one, starting with a quote that unfortunately applies to many conservative evangelicals when it comes to their interpretation of Genesis 1:
In too many quarters we see "sterile supernaturalism" giving rise to "practical deism" working itself out in a "moral stoicism". Or something like that. Its the first two steps that attracted my attention in this connection: denying that God could create as the surface reading of Genesis 1-3 reveals leads quickly to a deistic view of the world and God, which removes God from us and invites in ideas such as theistic evolution, in my view.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)