Gardening with God
Number 97 • September 15, 2009

Introduction

This issue of Ekklesia Then & Now is a work-in-progress. In a sense, everything I write (or anyone else writes or speaks, for that matter) is a work-in-progress. As human beings, we are always changing as different elements of God's creation impact our beliefs on a journey, we can hope, toward maturity (Greek, teleios, complete, mature, perfect).

Paul wrote of our individual journeys toward maturity in the context of God's gift of leadership roles (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers) in the church, a passage to which I will return shortly. Many people (as well as events) intersect with our journeys to enhance or, in unfortunate cases, impede our progress. My vicarious encounters with N.T. Wright are having a significant impact, the implications of which I am as yet uncertain, which is why I specifically label this issue of ET&N a work-in-progress. Perhaps by sharing my current location on the map of my journey with all of you, the resultant discussion will provide more clarity to all of us.

Wright, Anglican bishop of Durham, is an extravagant thinker, an assiduous researcher, and a prolific writer, arguably but perhaps hyperbolically the greatest theologian of our time, the 20th/21st century equivalent of Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. Like these men, Wright is not without his critics and dissenters, but his work is solidly based in biblical and historical scholarship. His primary contribution lies in his understanding of the future hope of humanity, one that challenges the prevailing winds of Western Christianity.

My primary hesitation in writing about this right now is that I will mis- or under-represent Wright's ideas. If I do, I offer a pre-emptive apology to both Wright and my readers.

As I mentioned in the previous issue of ET&N, there are two overriding truths in the great creation poem of Genesis 1: God created (v. 1) and his creation was "very good" (v. 31). Moreover, there are two dimensions to this creation: the earth and the heavens.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do not view the biblical creation story (or stories)—Genesis 1-3—as either scientific or historical documents. The scientific observations God has made it possible for humanity to make must surely disabuse us of any claim of thorough scientific truth in Genesis 1. Creation of the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day, after the creation of vegetation, is sufficient evidence. But acknowledging the flawed science of Genesis in no way contradicts the claim of divinely designed creation and consequent sovereignty.

The Place and Purpose of Man

Similarly, I understand Genesis 2-3 as the story of humanity, not necessarily two individuals. It is a profoundly accurate portrayal of our rebellion against our Creator and the consequences.

...then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed...
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:7-8, 15)

From these verses, I glean three important points:

1. Human beings are a special creation of God, made "in the image of God" (Genesis 1:27). All living creatures have "the breath of life" (Genesis 1:30; 6:17; 7:15, 22), but only humans are image-bearers. This fact carries profound significance, but I'll address that more fully some time in the future.
2. We are made of matter, represented by dust in the Genesis account. (In a gloriously meaningful sense, we are in fact made from dust—stardust, another topic for another time.) We are not, as the Gnostics and others maintain, inherently spiritual creatures who find ourselves in the "wrong" place, but will return to the "right" place some day.
3. God placed Man in a setting in which humans would serve as stewards or, more specifically, God's gardener ("to work and keep it"). We are not a race designed to reside in heaven—that's God's territory; we are designed for and given purpose on Earth.

The Ultimate Destination of Man

With the backdrop, let's jump from the first chapters of the Bible to the last, a juxtaposition which is surely not accidental.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Revelation 21:1-4)

Read John's vision carefully: the new Jerusalem (sans Temple) envelopes the Earth, restoring and recreating our planet. God dwells with us! Not we dwell with God. John's testimony of the vision given to him by Jesus' messenger is in direct and absolute contradiction to misguided Left Behind theology. We are not taken up to live with God; He comes to us:"the dwelling place of God is with man."

John's vision is precisely what Jesus taught his followers to pray for! "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10; cf Luke 11:2). Jesus didn't teach them to pray, "Take me to heaven." It is God's will that the earth be restored and that He live here with us in a merged creation, when heaven and earth become one and where Jesus is literally present in his transformed physicality and we will see him face to face!

Parenthetically, based on the presence of the Tree of Life in both "Eden" and the new Jerusalem, I suspect heaven and earth originally overlapped; they were split apart as a consequence of human rebelliion against God; and they will be reconnected at the end of history, but Scripture does not seem to support that idea clearly.

Between Genesis and Revelation

Between Genesis 1 and Revelation 21-22 we see "the devil in the details"—how our rebellion causes every sort of evil (along with some good), whether that devil is a real person working at counter-purposes to God or whether that devil is a manifestation of our own brokenness. In the meantime, we see God working to subvert or destroy our rebellious inventions, most notably at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:4-9), but more often more subtly.

Skeptics and cynics love to point out the rampant injustice and immorality found in the Old Testament, in particular, as evidence belying the inspiration of Scripture and/or the goodness of God. But when one really takes the time to explore the Bible, one finds God routinely undermining human culture. For example, God frequently overturns the prevailing cultural practice of primogeniture (exclusive male inheritance rights) by favoring younger sons. Polygamy, another cultural norm in O.T. times, frequently leads to serious consequences. Apologists often counter skeptics merely by pointing out that the presence of such forms of injustice or abuse does not imply God's approval, but a more profound insight lies in the many instances of God confounding such human behavior.

In addition to God's attempts to correct human culture in between Genesis and Revelation, we also find voices calling us higher, to stewardship, justice, and compassion, revealing God's own heart (see, for example, Amos 5:21-23 and Micah 6:6-8, passages I cited in the previous ET&N).

God also pointed toward the future final restoration of the world through the prophets, most notably Isaiah:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 25:6-8)

To embrace an eschatology of disposal—God throwing away his "very good" creation and simply teleporting us all to some exclusively spiritual realm implies at least one of three things:

1. Man's activities are more powerful than God's, in the sense that God is unable to undo our destructive behavior. Moreover, that would not be the defeat of death.

2. Placing Mankind in a flawed creation, full of decay, suffering, violence, and death (rather than some other place we're "supposed" to be) renders God decidedly unloving or, at best, disinterested—the clockwork god of deism.

3. God views his creation like modern product packaging—just something to be tossed into the cosmic landfill when the product it contains is consumed; i.e., God himself is a very good steward, If so, why should we be?

Sojourners, aliens, strangers

In response to the previous issue of ET&N (Not Just a-Passin' Through), one subscriber accused me of "blatantly disregard(ing) the very biblical affirmation that we are sojourners." By no means! We are indeed sojourners, strangers, and aliens. We are intended to live in a world where there is no death, crying, mourning, or pain, but we sojourn through a world where these things are ubiquitous. We are aliens from the world as God intends it to be living in a world transformed by human rebellion.

"Sojourner" describes our condition, not our role. On the surface, an ordinary sojourner has no particular responsibilities in an alien land, but Christians have a number of jobs, not least that of ambassador (2 Corinthians 5:20). There is a world of difference between a disinterested sojourner and an effective ambassador, even though both live in an alien land.

The Kingdom of God

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:15)

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (Luke 4:18-19)

At the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, he proclaims the coming of the kingdom of God, a kingdom which is good news to the poor, where justice prevails, where the blind are healed. He comes, in short, as the ultimate revelation of God. Throughout his ministry, Jesus challenged every misguided human assumption about God, he critiqued his own religious establishment, he gave comfort to the oppressed, and he opened the door between heaven (God's abode) and earth (Man's), as dramatically symbolized in the tearing of the Temple veil (Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45).

His miracles are primarily material--he changes water into wine, expands a small amount of food to feed thousands, stops a storm in its tracks, restores a withered hand, dramatically increases a catch of fish, stops internal bleeding, heals the blind, replaces a severed ear, and raises a man from the dead. These are all foretastes of the kingdom of God, when none of those things will plague mankind.

Jesus' Life and Resurrection

The 2nd century heretic, Marcion, viewed the Jewish god as a petty deity who could not possibly be related to Jesus Christ. Consequently, he rejected the Jewish Scriptures and invented a new, previously unknown good God who intervened to thwart the nefarious schemes of the Jewish God. But Jesus directly claims to have come not to abolish the Law (of the Jewish God), but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). Too many today are pseudo-Marcionites, unwittingly tossing the faithfulness of God aside in favor of a private piety, but by living the human side of the covenant (a faithful Israelite), Jesus not only fulfilled it but also served to renew the Abrahamic covenant.

In Jesus' resurrection, God defeated humanity's literally mortal enemy. He returned from the grave, from death, in bodily resurrection, an unprecedented and unthinkable event, and the empty tomb is evidence this resurrection body was made up of the matter in his pre-resurrection body. His resurrection body was transformed in some remarkable ways—some almost magical (passing through walls), others seemingly more mundane (being mistaken, interestingly, for a gardener - see John 20:15).

Those who claim Jesus' resurrection was old hat as, for example, Robert Wright does in The Evolution of God, are simply and unequivocally wrong. This Wright's suggestion that the Egyptian deity Osiris preceded Jesus in rising from the dead shows he understands neither Egyptian paganism nor Christianity. Osiris was never human and in his supposed life after death, he wasn't human! As N.T. Wright authoritatively demonstrates, no one expected nor even considered human bodily resurrection. When humans died, people knew they stayed in the grave.

Our Resurrection

Jesus' resurrection is important, among many other things, as a model for Christian resurrection (ours), but before I move on to that topic, I need to underscore the vital importance of the sequence in which to consider and discuss resurrection. God's ultimate plan is not primarily about personal salvation (as important as that may be, particularly to the individual), but rather about rescuing the whole of creation from transience and decay. Only by understanding the grand project does our place in it become eternally meaningful.

Nevertheless, our resurrection is profoundly important—the hope, as N.T. Wright puts it, "that is a more rich and exciting and challenging and invigorating hope than that which we have often lulled ourselves into believing."[1]

Jesus' resurrection is the example, the foretaste, the firstfruits of the dead who will rise, as Paul writes (1 Corinthians 15:20), and the entire point of firstfruits is that there will later be more fruits of the same type. Our resurrection will be precisely as Jesus' was (see Philippians 3:20-21), which involves a passage through death followed by resurrection in a transformed body, what Wright calls "life after life after death." God isn't going to pluck believing humans out of a misbegotten world, he is going to restore the cosmos and return restored people onto the new earth.

In many Christian circles, the idea of bodily resurrection has been ignored, marginalized, or even rejected in favor of some exclusively spiritual existence, manifested by the often-used phrase:"going to heaven after I die." Yes, we will go to heaven if we die before Jesus returns, but only as a period of rest before being restored to full humanity and returning to the restored earth.

Or, as Paul originally explained:

For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened--not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5:1-4, emphases added)

In other words, resurrection is not a taking away of anything, but rather an adding on of something extraordinary.

Some of you may want to cite 1 Corinthians 15:44 or 15:50 in rebuttal, but in The Resurrection of the Son of God, Wright exhaustively explains these Pauline verses can only be fully understood in the context of 1st century language and culture. When Paul writes, "It is sown a natural [psychikon] body" (or worse, a "physical body" in the RSV); "it is raised a spiritual [pneumatikon] body," he not referring to what the body is composed of but rather what it is animated by. A better translation is therefore, "It is sown a body animated by the ordinary breath of life (as Adam), it is raised a body animated by the Spirit of the living God (as Jesus)," which is precisely what Paul explains in the verses following 15:44.

Paul and the Church

Paul wrote of the need for Christians to grow up, to gain an understanding of the full significance of Jesus as creative agent, faithful Israelite, Messiah, and Lord:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature [teleios] manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up [auxano, literally to enlarge] in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow [auxesis, increase] so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:11-16)

It seems clear that Paul views each individual journey not as an end unto itself, but rather as its contribution to a greater end; that is, each individual's role in the church, so that the church grows, exhibiting love, justice, and stewardship as a reflection of the Gospel.

The role of the church, Paul teaches, is not so much promoting individual salvation, not "going to heaven." That is not to contradict the Great Commission nor to suggest evangelism is unimportant, Evangelism is, after all, announcing the good news, which was not "Be happy! Just believe in Jesus and you can escape this lousy place" (that's Gnositicism). Rather, the role of the church is more (again) acting out stewardship, compassion, and justice as a foretaste of the coming merger of heaven with the newly restored world, born of the womb of the old:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Romans 8:19-22)

Which leads me to one final verse: "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:58). As the summation of his great exposition on resurrection earlier in the chapter and in light of the Romans passage cited above, Paul cannot simply be saying, "Don't worry if you have troubles or don't convert everyone you meet; it'll all have been worth it when you're rewarded in heaven."

No, there is a deeper, more cosmic overtone. In some mysterious way, our kingdom work here—promoting responsible use of the created environment, correcting the injustice that thousands of years of human "evolution" has created, caring for the most vulnerable among us—has a lasting impact on the new earth to come.

Ultimately, only the church (the called-out people) will inhabit the new earth, and there will be deeply fulfilling work to do. Certainly, the nature our new earth work is a subject we can only see dimly, if at all. God will restore the universe to a perfect state, so what work would there be in a perfect world? Perhaps God's conception of a perfect world is one which is not complete, in which there are tasks his children can work on in partnership with the Creator.

I am, however, certain of one of those tasks: when history ends and the Kingdom of God is fully restored, the world will again be the garden of God, and he will need gardeners.

Many Christians unfortunately assume that in Jesus' ascension he ceased to be human, but Scripture carries no hint of that. That belief arises out of Platonic idea that heaven is a non-material place that precludes a human resident. N.T. Wright and others suggest rather that heaven is simply a different dimension of creation, relating tangentially to earth. Hence, Jesus the god-man, already Lord of the world, "can be present simultaneously anywhere and everywhere on earth" (Surprised by Hope, pg. 111). No where does the Bible describe heaven as a purely spiritual, non-material place.

Furthermore, far too much of Christianity has even given up on Jesus' bodily resurrection itself, preferring some kind of purely spiritual resurrection (he's with us in spirit), but this is certainly not the Easter story told in the Gospels. More importantly, if Jesus did not bodily rise, he didn't defeat death, he merely passed on to some other state while his body remained quite dead, and we couldn't hope for anything more.

Personally, I have never found the popular portrayals of heaven to be terribly appealing. To me, floating among the clouds clad in a white robe and singing for the rest of eternity leaves something to be desired. It's not bad, mind you but it's not, well, heaven.

In the last issue of ET&N, I cited 1 Peter 3:15 ("...in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you"). Before we can be prepared to make a defense, we need to understand just what that hope is that Christ Jesus announced.

In a nutshell, Wright teaches "God intends in the end to fill all creation with his own presence and love," (Surprised by Hope, pg. 101) through the "drastic and dramatic birth of new creation from the womb of the old," (pg. 104), where "the redeemed people of God in the new world will be the agents of his love going out in ways, to accomplish new creative tasks, to celebrate and extend the glory of His love" (pg. 105-106).

Now that's a hope we should all be able to celebrate and embrace!

The well-meaining focus on "personal salvation," Jesus as our "best friend," and the like is true as far as it goes, but Christian salvation only has meaning in the broader context of the role of the entire restored human race with God's restored creation.

[1] The Resurrection: Jesus' and Ours, N.T. Wright. Lecture delivered at Asbury Theological Seminary, October 12, 1999. "Available through iTunes or as mp3 at :http://media.asburyseminary.edu/exam/audio/chapels/10122001.mp3

While I do not intend to make ET&N an N.T. Wright mouthpiece, I am now digging into more of his voluminous work. I suspect the things I learn from Wright, as well as others, will increasingly serve as a lens through which I can read Scripture (and perhaps see the world contained within that Scripture) more clearly. There may be future issues of ET&N that specifically address Wright's views, but for the next issue or two, at least, I'm returning to more "standard" fare.

Most ET&N discussion occurs through the ET&N blog (etandn.wordpress.com), but on occasion, I'll highlight a blog discussion here. NOTE: If you want to make a comment, please do not respond through inJesus.

In response to Not Just a-Passin' Through (ET&N 96), John J. Wright claimed I ignored the concept of sojourners. I hope I've adequately responded to that above, but there is one other aspect to which I want to respond at the risk of sounding defensive to some of you.

John (to distinguish him from the two Wrights already mentioned in this issue) referred to that issue of ET&N as a "rant" and called it "shamelessly disrespectful to (Albert) Brumley" (the writer of This Home is Not my Home. Frankly, I fail to see any disrespect whatsoever; in fact, I acknowledged Brumley's faith. Is John suggesting that challenging Brumley's eschatology is somehow disrespectful and worthy of shame.

Was Jesus disrespectful when he challenged the actions and motives of some Jewish leaders? Was Paul disrespectful when he challenged Peter's racism? Were the Bereans disrespectful when they insisted on confirming Paul's preaching?

It seems to me that historic Christianity has gotten in its deepest troubles when it has set up "sacred cows" that demanded unflinching respect regardless of Scripture. The eschatology Brumley implies in this and other hymns is wrong, perhaps even dangerously wrong. Failing to challenge such biblical errors is disrespectful to someone more important.

While I would call John's characterization of my comments as a "rant" disrespectful, I still welcome his challenge, as I do anyone else's.

Unsure about or don’t agree with something in Ekklesia Then & Now? First, be a Berean (Acts 17:10-11). If you still disagree, comment on the ET&N blog so we can all share in the discussion!

NEXT ISSUE: Designed for Science (September 29)

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