Last week, I discussed the first half of a talk Biblical scholar and philosopher Richard Middleton gave for FiSch a few weeks ago. I will pick up where we left off. This week I’ve included quite a few Biblical references, because his talk linked a lot of concepts and elements of the overarching storyline of the Bible together. I would encourage you to take some time to study these, and pray this would deepen your understanding of God and your role in his creation.
We saw that God created the cosmos as his temple, and that we as his image have an important task in developing his creation. But a question immediately arises. Why does God dwell only in part of creation – i.e. heaven and also, when it was there, the Temple? Why does he not dwell on earth, and why is the eschaton, the fulfilment of all things, sometimes described in the Bible as a time when God’s glory ‘will fill the earth’ (Is. 11:9, Hab. 2:14, Rev. 21:3, 22-23)?
The answer is as obvious as it is stark: it is because of human sin. Instead of filling the earth with God’s image and glory, humans misuse the power they have been given and are filling the earth with violence (Gen. 6:13). Note, though, that humans continue to produce culture (Gen. 4), although cultural innovations are often put to the service of oppression, preventing God’s presence from permeating the cosmos. Furthermore, the image of God is not completely obliterated (Gen. 5:1-3, 9:6).
Yet regardless of the destruction we have wrought, God still loves the world he has created, including human beings, and he longs to redeem it (Acts 3:12, Rom. 8:21, 23, Eph. 1:10, Col. 1:19). He does this firstly by sending his perfect image, Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:4, Col. 1:15, Heb. 1:3), into the world, to restore the image of God in us. Last week we saw a parallel with Israel as a royal priesthood. Here we find another parallel with Israel (see Ex.2): Israel was in bondage and needed to be redeemed, to be restored to their ‘garden’, the land of the promise. This parallel of bondage can be applied both to creation as a whole, longing to be redeemed from its human oppressors, and to human beings specifically, enslaved to sin.
And so, if we trust in Christ, he redeems us, breathes his Spirit into us once more (Acts 2:1-4, cf. Gen. 2:7) and renews our humanity so that we can become God’s temple again (1 Cor. 3:16, Eph. 2:21, 4:24, Col. 3:10) – the locus of his presence on earth. We reign with Christ in the kingdom of God as his body.
The new Jerusalem comes down from heaven, and God will come to dwell with us. Our calling as the renewed humanity, conformed to the image of Christ (Phil. 2), is to embody an alternative culture to the violence and injustice that now fills the earth. As scholars in particular, our aim is to do our work faithfully so that we will be able to bring the glory and honour of our scholarship into the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:26).
This is both a challenge and a great calling. How does your research aim to extend God’s presence in his creation?
- Evolution and epistemic humility - January 14, 2019
- Jesus, virtue and the university - September 4, 2017
- Welcome to the University of Babylon! - August 21, 2017
