God’s deconstruction
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
The epistemology of the cross is far more deconstructive of human ideologies and belief policies than anything post-modernity has yet produced. That God reveals himself on Christ’s cross as one who suffers and dies is an implicit correction, if not outright rejection, of the attempt to think of God on the basis of reason alone: “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Cor 1:20) This is why the confessions of the Reformed churches recognise the inherent corrigibility of theological formulations. The confessions themselves have only relative and provisional authority; they are under the Word of God and thus subject to correction from it. There is a built-in iconoclasm, an intrinsic guard against the tendancy to let a community’s language and concepts dictate what can be known of God. An epistemology of the cross incorporates ideology critique into its very fabric.
Kevin Vanhoozer in First Theology
Tags: church, postmodernism, theology
The Heavenly Good of Earth Work (4)
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
The final chapter of Darrell Cosden’s The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work looks at the impact of the preceding discussion on our view of missions. He starts by looking at the ‘crisis’ in missions. In particular, at his own experiences in Russia. In his experience there was an implicit denigration of ‘everyday work’ as those visiting on missions implied that they had been called from meaningless work to something more important. The general message being that everyday work is cut off from God’s mission.
This can be implied in any church when
… our practice of church, our spiritual heroes, and our beliefs about spiritual/eternal things have spoken louder than our words and have undermined what we intended… our words ring hollow when we only regularly and publicly pray for those missionaries on ‘faith support’. And it is hard to believe we really are full-time ‘salt and light’ when only visiting missionaries are asked to come up front in church and visit small groups to talk about the ups and downs of their ministries.
Obviously, a theology based on the ‘heavenly good’ of everyday work takes us to a more inclusive perspective. If all our work can be part of God’s new creation and involves us partnering with God, then we have the potential to be part of God’s mission in every area of our lives.
…when done in a way that images God and co-operates with him, human work in itself images God and thus co-operates with him, human work in itself is Christian missionary activity. Why? Because it is largely (though not exclusively) through our work that we reflect God’s image and co-operate with him in bringing people and the whole of creation to humanity’s and nature’s ultimate maturity and future.
This is, of course, incredibly liberating. Suddenly, I can become part of God’s mission in everything. Not just when preaching, but also when I carry out my everyday work in ways that line up with God’s kingdom.
Of course, we need to find a way to counteract the negative message that has been sent out. How do we do this?
Mostly we need to proactive. Slow and steady will win the race. When we are together in our various Christian gatherings and meetings, small or large, formal or informal, we have to be intentional about devising ways to help us see each person in their daily work as a missionary … [we] need to consciously practice naming ourselves and our work as missionary.
Finally Cosden looks at the way this interacts with evangelism. If we are all made in the image of God and our work is important, then all of us, non-believers and believers, are to larger or smaller extent working with God’s mission:
All people were created to image God, and thus all people by virtue of their humanity are included in God’s purposes for creation. Not all people image God in fellowship with him, but we do nevertheless corporately carry out his mission to work in one way or another.
Importantly, our new mission enterprise based on the heavenly good of earthly work treats people differently from our old approach to mission. God still includes in his purposes those who haven’t yet, haven’t fully, or even won’t ever, come to faith.
Previously, it was simple to catagorize people sharply as either ‘them’ or ‘us’. In this way of thinking, the tendency was always to dehumanize others by treating ‘them’ ultimately as projects.
This is a really fascinating line of thought. I’m particularly interested in the consequence of not treating others as projects. It something that I’ve noticed for a long time: sometimes we seem to be more worried about ‘contacts’ than friends. As Cosden implies, unless we are careful this is a frequent tendency.
Finally Cosden links this into the ‘belonging-before-believing’ debate:
…this new understanding of mission is actually not all that new. In fact, it dovetails nicely with what many of us have been discovering for a long time about mission. That is, people need to be included. They need to belong before they can believe.
In many ways, this final chapter shows the motivation that Cosden has had all along — the expansion to a fuller understanding of mission. And, as I said, it is a great vision that makes a lot of sense and enlarges our view of God’s new creation to one that really encompasses the whole world.
Hopefully, I will find time to write some other reactions to the book n the near future…
Tags: books, eschatology, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, theology, work, worldview
The Heavenly Good of Earth Work (3)
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
OK, back to Darrell Cosden’s book. The last section works toward building a ‘spirituality of work’ and the impact of the preceding discussion on missions. Let’s try for the first of those here.
He starts by looking at the problems surrounding work and our perspectives. An particularly interesting quote is…
A bad theology of work(s), therefore leads to a failure to enter genuinely into our salvation/justification. There are complex reasons for this, but part of it is that our work(s) are part of who we are, and they cannot help but seek some kind of spiritual home. If we don’t find an appropriate spiritual category for our work, then it takes over our lives and becomes alien to us. It begins to dominate us as we become dis-integrated people.
As we have seen, our work finds its spiritual justification, its alternate home and value, through out justification. Our work is an outworking and expression of who we are. Thus, our justification becomes our work’s justification too. through our freedom in Christ, our work(s) becomes set free so that it has a genuine earthly usefulness now, but also a continued existence, like we do, in heaven.
That triggers all sorts of thoughts and discussions. Not least the thought that in (rightly) guarding against work for our justification, we can throw away too much and find a part of our life that never really gets fitted into God’s plan. Cosden’s argument is that, if we dont’ consciously fit it in to our spirituality, then it takes a distorted place and causes problems. For instance, we subconsciously try to use working hard as a way to pay God back. On the other hand
The fact that God in ‘making all things new’ chooses to incorporate our work(s) moitivates us but does not crush us. It fills our work with meaning and purpose — but not more than we as humans can bear.
In addition, with this perspective we start to have a basis for making real judgments about our work — how does what I do fit in with ‘new creation’?
Tags: books, eschatology, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, theology, work
a fresh statement of redemption
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
it is .. urgent and vital that we explore … the way in which, within our own very different culture, we can rightly reapproporiate [Paul's] gospel in the world of late modernity, postmodernity, post-colonialism, neo-imperialism, and other things that swirl around our heads at the start of the twenty-first century. I believe it is part of the task of the chruch today to accept the postmodern critique of modernity but ot insist that it is not the last word. Modernity stands accused of arrogance… Postmodernity … has made its point. But, despite the misplaced enthusiasm of some, postmodernity does not give us a new home, a place to stay. What it provides is a fresh statement of the Fall, which in Christian theology ought always to invite a fresh statement, in symbol and practice as well as word, of redemption. I believe that part of the task of the church in our own day is to pioneer a way through postmodernity and out the other side, not back to modernity in its various, even in its Christian guises, but into a new world, a new culture, which nobody else is shaping and which we have a chance to.
N.T. Wright in ‘Paul: Fresh Perspectives’
Tags: church, culture, postmodernism
The Heavenly Good of Earth Work (links)
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I should have posted these at the start of my on-going review of The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work:
There are extracts available on the publisher’s site.
The is a LICC review & related article in the July ‘Workwise’.
Curtis Chang has written an article which touches on the same sort of issues/ideas.
Tags: books, eschatology, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, work
Everybody’s talking at me…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I’ve been intrigued that everyone seems to be talking about New Creation at the moment (let’s try, for example, Tom Wright, John Piper, Terry Virgo, Chris Wright, Rob Bell – yes, I know that’s not everyone, but it’s a good mix & you have access to Google too…).
Presumably we haven’t all finally made it the end of Revelation, so why the current focus? I’ve had a few theories floating round — post-modernism? environmental issues? Today I came across this by Douglas Moo (quoting Richard Bauckham), which fits it together interestingly…
…the perspective of our own culture may also legitimately become a lens through which we freshly read the Scriptures and formulate their message in terms of biblical theology. As Richard Bauckham argues, the environmental crisis has helped to free us from modernistic ideologies about nature. And so we can now “read the New Testament differently. We can recognize that, in continuity with the Old Testament tradition, it assumes that humans live in mutuality with the rest of God’s creation, that salvation history and eschatology do not lift humans out of nature but heal precisely their distinctive relationship with the rest of nature.”
Tags: culture, eschatology
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...