Not forgetting the incarnation…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I’ve had a question floating around in the back of my mind and reading Voicing Creation’s Praise by Jeremy Begbie a while ago caused it to crystalise. I’ve been meaning to write about it every since. It is this…
When considering how Christianity should impact all areas of life (art, science, technology, etc, etc, etc) does the fact that Jesus has come really make a difference to our discussions? Not should it — does it really? Does it make a deep difference to our view when we look at thinking christianly ? Obviously as I am writing this, I have a suspicion that the difference may be pretty small. Of course, this is mainly my problem, but given that I have read a number of books on this area I don’t think it is just me.
Discussions of the christian worldview generally focus on Creation – Fall – Redemption (and sometimes ‘glorification’). I’m not saying that we miss the importance of redemption completely, but that many of our cultural analyses wouldn’t change significantly if Jesus didn’t exist. As an example, I was flicking through ‘Discipleship of the Mind’ by James Sire earlier. (Don’t take any of the following as criticism of Sire or the book, I have a lot of respect for both.) He includes a discussion of technology from a Christian perspective. (To emphasise my respect: how many books get anywhere near that?) The entire discussion is based on Genesis 1, with hints of the fall. All good things — stewardship, serving, aesthetic norms, justice, etc. — but there appears to be no significant use of the ‘redemption’ component of the worldview in the discussion. It seems often that creation and fall are the primary drivers for cultural analysis, with redemption treated as an add on that just fixes us personally.
In Begbie’s book he discusses the Dutch Neo-Calvanists (i.e Kuyper and co.) and their approach to cultural analysis. He questions a number of distinctions they implicitly set up, but primarily a ‘dualism’ between creation and redemption, as if these come from separate (almost contradictory) parts of God’s character. So, we have such distinctions as ‘common grace’ and ‘special grace’; the first mainly related to creation, the second to redemption. Given that most of the good cultural analysis seems to be based on aneo-Calvanist approach this came as a real eye-opener for me. If in the roots of our worldview we separate creation and redemption too firmly, then we are going to find it hard to bring the two equally into our cultural analysis. Consequently, we end up discussing God’s norms for creation, culture, etc. and assume that redemption adds little further light on the matter. Hence, my nagging thoughts…
Begbie also widened my conception of the problem — not only is redemption under-emphasised, but incarnation is hardly there to begin with. If Jesus is the one ‘through whom and for whom all things were created’, if Jesus is God’s ultimate self-revelation then surely the incarnation should change everything about the way we view the world/life/culture? We can’t just base things on Creation and Fall; Incarnation and Redemption should be allowed to completely re-fashion the way we look at things. The fact that they take send place in our discussions suggest they haven’t. (And, consider the often-used term ‘Judeo-Christian worldview’; is it really the case that the incarnation does so little that the pre- and post- perspectives are interchangable?)
Here’s an interesting test: a while ago I came across an article called Technology As If the Incarnation Actually Happened. For me the title provoked a ‘does not compute’ feeling. Now I wonder if that response just exemplifies the problem.
No answers, I’m afraid, just a provocation to think this through further. (Maybe when I’ve finished Begbie’s book… 
Perhaps we will conclude that (for example) the incarnation should impact our view of technology, but we should consider why…
Having listened to Tom Wright talking about New Creation today, I have to add one further comment: surely that also should impact our cultural engagement significantly, too? If we are agents of the new creation, then to stick to Creation-Fall-and-maybe-Redemption as our guidelines could lead to us do all the wrong things. Couldn’t it?
Tags: books, culture, provocations, Voicing Creation\'s Praise, worldview
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...