Considering Culture (8)
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The second stage in the biblical story that we omitted on the first run through is the bit that is happening now — our place in the story. Surprisingly, we are invited to join God’s Mission. We regularly emphasise this at a personal level — we take part in evangelism; we work to extend God’s new creation to other individuals. Or we look towards a personal spiritual formation — letting God’s work filter into our lives. But it important to recognise that there is a cultural component too — God’s re-creation is intended to impact all of creation and all aspects of life. So, the outworking of our following Jesus should impact all aspects of life, including our cultural life.
It’s worth having a brief aside at this point: It is easy to restrict our approach to a halfway point here, where we let our faith impact culture but only in a personal-piety sort of way. So, for instance, we focus a few key markers — perhaps the presence of sex and violence — in cultural products (possibly missing the larger issues that are going on). While this is not an irrelevant component, I don’t think it is getting away from the dualism we talked about earlier. It is really restricting God’s interest in culture to a simple morality issue. But I’m trying to get at something more here. A more holistic view of the redemption of culture that isn’t just about the moral values that are depicted on the surface.
But if we want to let God’s mission impact our cultural life then what do we do? So far, our approach has been to work from the perspective of the biblical narrative, so what are the consequences of the story and our place in it?
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, worldview
Considering Culture (7)
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Right, where are we on the culture seminar write-up?
So far we attempted to do a whirlwind tour of the biblical story to see how culture fits in. Essentially coming down to it being an integral part of creation and God’s Mission being to save and re-create all of creation, including culture.
Where does this get us? How should we then act?
Lets go back and look at two key parts of the story that we missed out the first time around — Resurrection and the Church.
Amongst the many things that the Resurrection of Jesus points to, a significant one is that New Creation starts now. This links in with the now-and-not-yet of Paul’s theology (I guess it is the basis of it, in fact). God’s kingdom has both come and is coming; with Jesus’ resurrection new creation has broken in on the old and the transformation has begun, but we wait for the all-encompassing re-creation at a future time.
I love the way this already-started theme comes into the New Testement, so although it is not strictly necessary lets mention a couple here:
As Tom Wright emphasises, John weaves this theme into his gospel: He emphasises that Jesus’ resurrection occurs on ‘the first day of the week’ (nudge-nudge, remember what happened in that week in Genesis?); and Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener (geddit? the one who is commissioned with stewarding the garden).
There is also the famous quote from Corinthians ‘If any man is in Christ — New Creation!’ Not, as we usually restrict it — he is a new creation (perhaps some dualism creeping in with that translation?) Us being in Christ is indicative of the bigger picture. And not a future picture but something that can be described with a present tense.
But if, in some sense, new creation starts now, what are the implications? What do we do as the church in response?
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology, worldview
Considering Culture (6)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
In the previous post we looked at Jesus as the culmination of God’s Mission. Now we look at the final result — new creation. As has been emphasised a lot recently, the end of the biblical story is not people going heaven, but heaven coming to earth. To quote from Revelation 21:
I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away … I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. .. He who was seated on the throne said “I am making everything new”
What happens to our culture in this new heaven and earth? Darrell Johnson points out the following (from Discipleship on the Edge):
God says from the throne, “I am making all things new.” God does not say, as I have wrongly read the words most of my life, “I am making all new things.” For years the future meant for me God scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan. “I am making all new things” is how I read it. Now certainly God can make all new things; and I believe, will, and does; and we are called to join God in it. But the point of Revelation 21-22 is that God is taking hold of all things — creation, humans and cities — and making them new.
So, we are reminded that new creation involves the transformation of all aspects of the current creation, not just a small aspect such as human souls. But, we can take this further and look specifically at culture. Johnson looks at Rev 21:24/26
The nations will walk by the light of [the city], and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it … The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into [the city].
and quotes Richard Mouw (When The Kings Come Marching In)
Ancient kings served as the primary authorities over the broad patterns of the cultural live of their nations. And when they stood over against other nations, they were the ‘bearers,’ the ‘representatives’ of their respective cultures. To assemble kings together was in an important sense to assemble their national cultures together. The king of a given nation could bear, singly, a far-reaching authority that is today divided among many different kinds of leaders: the captain of industry; the molders of public opinion in art, entertainment, and sexuality; educational leaders; representatives of family interest; and so on. This is why Isaiah and John could link the entrance of the kings into the city with the gathering in of the ‘wealth of the nations’.
As Johnson summarises it: ‘The presence of kings signals the presence of cultures!’
So, new creation incorporates purified culture. I guess this includes both old culture purified and new culture that develops as intended. In both cases, new creation is a properly working creation, developing in line with God’s character and bringing glory to the Creator.
A final quote, this time from Miroslav Volf (from The Church’s Great Malfunctions), makes the same point and takes on to the next stage of our discussion:
There is a remarkable image in the closing pages of Scripture that has become a touchstone for the way my colleagues and I think about faith and culture. Amid its descriptions of the New Jerusalem, Revelation includes “the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2). The tree holds out hope that whole cultures will be healed and mended, becoming places where people can flourish. And it sets an agenda for faith as a way of life that contributes to that flourishing, in anticipation, here and now.
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, eschatology, theology, worldview
Considering Culture (5)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
The previous post ended with God’s Mission starting with Abraham. Of course, the culmination comes with Jesus. I’ll assume you know the general plot here, but let’s look at the wider ramifications — Jesus’ life and death does not just impact individuals, but all of creation. God is rescuing the whole thing. To quote Jeremy Begbie again (this time from the essay ‘Created Beauty’)
… in the incarnate Son, crucified, risen and now exaulted, we witness God’s re-creation of the world’s beauty. The one through whom all things are upheld (Heb 1:3), by whom all things are held together (Col 1:17), by whose blood all things are reconciled to God (Col 1:20), is “the firstborn of all creation … the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:15, 18), the one through whom all things will finally be gathered up (Eph 1:10).
Rob Bell puts it like this in Velvet Elvis:
As Paul put it in Colossians, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Paul uses another significant word here: reconcile. To make peace where it has been lacking. To bring back together. To mend what is torn and to fix what is broken. And Paul wants us to make sure we grasp that this is a much larger issue than just human souls. He uses the phrase “all things, whether thing on earth or thinsg in heaven” because he wants us to see that this is all of creation. “All things really means “everything” — every bird and tree and mountain and star and every single square inch of physical creation.In Jesus, God is putting it all back together.
To make the cross of Jesus just about human salvation is to miss that God is interested in the saving of everything. Every star and rock and bird. All things.
Keep this in mind as we recall our starting point: “Creation in the biblical tradition, however, includes human society and culture in all its complexity and fullness…” (Richard Middleton). Consequently, if culture is an integral part of creation, then culture is part of these ‘all things’.
As I said earlier, we find it easy to miss the ‘all things’ in these passages. Partially due to dualism and partially, I guess, due to our (not inappropriate) focus on individual salvation. Tom Wright is useful in this context when he emphasises that our individual salvation should be located in the bigger picture — as a local outworking of the overall rescue plan.
I wonder also if we can look at it the other way — the overall salvation of creation has individual salvation as a key building block. If we are the stewards of creation, then the rescue must start with us and fan out from there. I guess this is something close to Paul’s point in Romans 8, where creation is desribed as waiting for the sons of God to be revealed and looking to join in their freedom.
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(As an aside, we probably should also say something here about Jesus being the ultimate Image of God and consider that in the context of our earlier comments on image: As mankind is made in the image of God, his imaging marks him out as the true human. Consequently he can reconcile to God all that humans are responsible for stewarding.)
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology, worldview
Considering Culture (4)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
In the next key point in the biblical narrative, the fall, mankind — the image of God in creation and the intended steward — turns its back on God.
We can refer back to our previous statement, that “a properly functioning creation is what brings glory to the Creator, God, and mankind has a significant role in that proper functioning”. Mankind’s significant role is now twisted as we refuse to work in line with the Creator and all of creation suffers.
In particular, culture no longer brings glory to God. We take “the freedom that God gives us in our role as stewards and divine representatives” (see previous post) and push it to places it was not supposed to go.
Looking at it another way, we can consider the following from Kevin Vanhoozer:
A culture expresses the totality of what a group of humans value.
Due to the fall, our values no longer coincide with God’s, and consequently our cultures express the wrong things.
If creation — including culture and including individual lives — is going to glorify God then something needs to be done.
God kicks off his great mission by calling Abraham and Israel. The ball starts rolling for the big rescue…
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology, worldview
Considering Culture (3/footnote)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
On the idea that a properly functioning creation is what brings glory to the Creator, it is interesting to refer to Chris Wright’s ‘The Mission of God’. He has a substantial section on God’s glory as the goal of creation. His emphasis is on the fulness of the earth giving God glory, but it seems to me that proper functioning has to be a part too, if only implicitly.
The following quote from Wright is also interesting. It comes from a slightly different angle, but ends up in a similar place as the last post:
The creation exists for the praise and glory of its Creator God and for mutual enjoyment. We humans, being creatures ourselves, share in that reason for existece — our ‘chief end’ is to bring glory to God, and in doing so to enjoy ourselves because we enjoy God. So that God-focussed goal of human life (to glorify an enjoy him) is not somthing that sets us apart from the rest of creation. Rather it is something that we share with the rest of creation. That is the chief end of all creation. the only difference is that of course we human beings must glorify our Creator in uniquely human ways, as befits our unique status as the one creature who has been made in the image of God. So, as humans we praise God with our hearts and hands and voices, with rationality as well as emotion, with language, art, music and craft — with all that reflects the God in whose image we were made.
This also has connections back to the quote from Steve Turner which considered renewal of cultures as giving God pleasure.
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, The Mission of God (Wright), theology
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...