If this catches your attention then you might also be interested in some posts I did a few months ago on this book.

Coincidentally, I’ve been preparing a talk which touches on Christians and work. In the process I found a piece by Miroslav Volf: God and Work.

I’ll also mention again another article that I’ve linked to before: Work as sacrament by Curtis Chang.

What are the consequences? The first is that we have to listen to what is being said by the culture around us and work to interpret what we hear. By this, I mean active listening — trying to understand what is under the surface and its implications. We also need to relate this understanding to the Biblical story itself.

Kevin Vanhoozer talks about how we need to be ‘bilingual’.

Christians must learn to read the Bible and culture alike. Christians cannot afford to continue sleepwalking their way through contemporary culture, letting their lives, and especially their imaginations, become conformed to culturally devised myths, each of which promises more than it can deliver: “Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”

(from ‘Everyday Theology’)

John Stott says something similar, describing our task as ‘double listening’

We listen to the Word with humble reverence, anxious to understand it, and resolve to believe and obey what we come to understand. We listen to the world with critical alertness, anxious to understand too, and resolved not necessarily to believe and obey it, but to sympathize with it an to seek grace to discover how the gospel relates to it.

(from The Contemporary Christian, quoted by Opitz ad Melleby in The Outrageous Idea…)

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(By the way, I’m currently reading ‘Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends’ by Kevin Vanhoozer et al. This is a great book on precisely the topic of reading culture. I hope to get around to blogging about in more detail at some point. Briefly: The book starts with an extended essay by Vanhoozer on the theory followed by a number of eclectic examples of interpretation in practice. Highly recommeded.)

It’s interesting therefore to notice the trend for connecting potentially abstract knowledge to living-it-out that is coming up in different areas — in particular, in the context of theology and worldviews. Perhaps, this is one of the things that the post-modernism atmosphere has given us — it’s kicked us out of our heads and reminded us that we have to think seriously about how this all gets lived out. Not that it hasn’t been lived out, but it’s been easy to have the theory and practice partitioned in our minds.

Some examples: First, in books on worldviews, we have David Naugle relating the worldview idea to the Biblical concept of the ‘heart’ For this see his ‘Worldview: The History of a Concept’; though I got it indirectly from James Sire’s ‘Naming the Elephant’, which is another good example of the trend.

There is also J. Mark Bertrand’s (Re)Thinking Worldview, which relates worldviews to wisdom (again, I’ve not got this directly, but see Steve Bishop’s trip through the book at An Accidental Blog).

All these are trying to remind us that worldviews affect the way we act, not just the way we think about the world. And so, it’s not just about analysis or intellectual arguments, but we also think about our view of the world in order to act appropriately.

Of course, Steven Garber’s Fabric of Faithfulness also makes this connection in a much stronger way, but coming from the other direction. He starts from the question, how do we act well; the first step in the answer: have a worldview that is up to the job. With our comments above in mind, it is interesting that the critiques he uses as a basis are frequently by writers who have modernism in mind (e.g. McIntyre).

In theology there is Tom Wright’s famous ‘How can the Bible be Authoritative?‘ which puts forward the analogy of the Bible as an play which we come to as actors who must take our roles in directions faithful to what has gone before. So, the Bible is not just a source of knowledge but a starting point for action. As with the worldview examples, we aim to think well in order to determine how to act well.

Kevin Vanhoozer pushes this idea on further. His essay ‘The World Well-staged?’ (in First Theology) writes about the church as a community that interprets the Biblical text by performing it. He develops the dramatic analogy in these talks: The Stage, the Story and the Script and Doing Church: the Theater of the Gospel. I guess that the source vor these talks is his book ‘The Drama of Doctrine’.

Finally, The Mission of God by Christopher Wright comes to mind. This approaches the Bible with a Missional Hermeneutic — the Bible as description of God’s Mission and the basis for our missional action.

In all these, thinking (or interpretation, or doctrine, etc.) isn’t an end in itself, but is the motivation for acting appropriately; for letting our story filter through and shape what we do.

Theology … transcends proposition in performance. And only in its performance is theology fully in view. … proper theology transforms proposition into performance so that the performance is the proper proposition.

Scot McKnight in A Community called Atonement

John declares from the start, with the obvious allusion to Genesis 1:1, that his book is about the new creation in Jesus. In chapter 20 he makes the same point by stressing that Easter was ‘the first day of the week’ (20:1,19; when John underlines things like this he clearly wants us to ponder the point). On the sixth day of the creation narrative, humankind was created in the divine image; on the sixth day of the last week of Jesus’ life, John has Pilate declare, ‘Behold the man!’ The seventh day is the day of rest for the creator; in John it is the day when Jesus rests in the tomb. Easter is the start of the new creation.

This is reinforced by the themes of light and life. ‘In him was life, and the light was the light of human beings,’ shining unquenchably in the darkness(1:4-5). Now Mary comes to the tomb while it is still dark, and discovers the new light and life which has defeated the darkness. … Reading chapter 20 in light of the prologue, we are thus to understand that Jesus’ death and resurrection have together effected for the discipes the new birth that was spoken of in 1:13 and 3:1-13. We should not be surprised when Jesus then breathes his own Spirit into them, as YHWH breathed his own Spirit into human nostrils in Genesis 2:7. What happens to Jesus’ people is a further indication of who Jesus is:the Word made flesh.

This emphasises another point, which we mentioned a while ago: we should guard against ‘new birth’ becoming a dead metaphor and keep in mind the allusion to an individual’s sharing in the new creation. It also links the gift of the Holy Spirit to new creation.

Other things that seem to be happening in John’s narrative that are worth mentioning:

As I said in the last post, Jesus is mistaken for the Gardener, which seems to be another link back to Gensis 1. This time with Jesus as the true human who is to steward creation as manking were commisioned to do.

Also, we see John hinting at the unravelling of the fall:
* In Genesis 3 we are in the context of the great act of disobedience: a woman is deceived and her ‘eyes are opened’; God comes into the garden looking for the couple, but they are hiding.
* In John 20 we are in the context of the great act of obedience: God comes into the garden and finds Mary; Mary is ‘un-deceived’ and sees clearly (she recognises Jesus).

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?

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.

… 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.)

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…

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.

Of course, by turning to the Bible at all we are making a statement about how God and culture relate — the Bible is a cultural object (albeit a unique one). It is not a dropped-from-the-sky set of writings, but uses, for example, poetic forms from a particular culture and time, references aspects and event of particular cultures, etc. etc.

But, leaving that aside, let’s look at the content and start of the story — creation. One of the key parts of the biblical account is that man is made in God’s image. Taking the approach of, e.g., Middleton & Walsh (in Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be), we can compare this to the action of ancient rulers who placed images of themselves in lands that they conquered; this reminded the inhabitants who was in charge. With this context in mind, man being God’s image implies a role as God’s representatives within creation. And it starts to introduce the theme of mankind as steward of creation on God’s behalf.

Of course, the command by God for man to ‘rule over’ and ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ pushes this theme further. Douglas Moo makes the point that

The Hebrew verbs behind ‘rule over’ and ‘subdue’ are strong ones and not only justify but mandate a significant degree of human intervention in the created world.

And what is culture? Surely it is the way that we interact with the created world and others around us? Kevin Vanhoozer suggests the following:

Culture refers to the expressive work of human freedom in and on nature.

So, perhaps we can say that culture is what we do with the freedom that God gives us in our role as stewards and divine representatives. Consequently, culture is intrinsic to what we do as God’s image.

If we take this approach then it is clear that culture in itself is good. In fact, it is part of the our role as humans within God’s creation. Whether all forms are good is, of course, the next question.

Perhaps we can start by describing things like this: a properly functioning creation is what brings glory to the Creator, God, and mankind has a significant role in that proper functioning. We routinely accept this on a personal level — I bring glory to God by living my life in accordance with His intentions; i.e. when I, as part of creation, function properly. But it also applies on corporate and cultural levels. We have a wider responsibility as God’s image.

So, the implication is that culture is good, but it needs to be culture that fosters or is part of a properly functioning creation.

All this is pulled together by Richard Middleton

While various psalms call upon all creatures (humans included) to worship or serve God in creation, the distinctive way humans worship or render service to the Creator is by the development of culture through interation with our earthly environment (in a manner that glorifies God).