Kruse Kronicle

Imago Dei and the Material World (Part 4)

I closed my last post with the question, "How then does our work in this time of the Kingdom "already but not yet" have an eschatological impact?"

The first way our work has an eschatological impact is through our daily work. Through our work, we are formed and transformed. We come into the world with certain innate abilities and proclivities, but the relationships and experiences of our lives also form us. When we are resurrected and enter the New Creation, we enter as beings formed by the Old Creation. That which is righteous and whole within us is carried forward. That which is sinful and broken in us is burned away in the refiner's fire or transformed into that which is holy. Darrell Cosden and Miroslav Volf have both suggested that when we die, somehow God holds the "pattern" of who we are in his memory and rematerializes us transformed in the New Creation. Scripture doesn't explain how this work is done but calls upon us to trust God to make it so.

What does seem apparent is that our present selves carry forward into the New Creation. Work is basic to our ontology as God's image bearers. Our work shapes us. Therefore, though the physical results of our work may be transient, our work has eschatological value. This is true even for work that may not best match our gifts and abilities. Even work done as a slave can have eschatological meaning. (Colossians 3:22-24, Ephesians 6:5-8, 1 Peter 2:18-21)

A second way our work has an eschatological impact is that it images in the here and now the nature of work in the New Creation. When we work with the heart and mind of God, we give holistic witness to the nature of humanity in the age that is to come. We are called to be proleptic (i.e., living as though the future is in the present) communities of Jesus' disciples, and only a Gnostic-like dualism would permit us to interpret that to mean that our daily work, both what we chose to do and how we do it, has no bearing on proleptic living.

Finally, there is a way in which our corporate economic behavior as humanity carries over into the New Creation. Once again, that which is righteous and whole carries forward, and that which is sinful and broken is burned away in the refiner's fire or transformed into that which is holy. While material artifacts may or may not carry forward in some way, concepts like the wheel, with its many contributions to economic advancement, surely will. What Lee Hardy describes as "the fabric of our world," our accumulated knowledge and patterns of interaction somehow carry forward. I suspect that if indeed God is holding these things in his memory for re-materialization in the New Creation, the wisdom and contributions of lost cultures (including those of the oppressed) will also be incorporated into this fabric.

This fabric metaphor highlights something else that must be noted about the imago Dei. While individuals are the imago Dei, there is an equally important sense in which humanity, taken collectively, is the imago Dei. Our work has eschatological meaning for us as individuals, but our work is also incorporated into an organic and interconnected reality of the corporate imago Dei. The symbolization of the New Creation as a city, the New Jerusalem, suggests that something of our corporate cultural structures are to be redeemed and incorporated into God's eternal New Creation.

I began this series of four posts with the following:

“What are we to make of the world we live in? What is our relationship to the created order? Many Christians in recent years have reevaluated the significance of the material world in light of the biblical narrative. Recovery of eschatological and teleological frameworks has become central to this renewed interest.”

I've focused on the material nature of human existence, but God pronounces non-human materiality as good and therefore has value. "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." (Romans 8:22) Non-human nature is also part of God's redemptive plan. And since our stewardship includes bringing all of creation to fruition, care and provision for the natural world are incorporated into the fabric of our world. Indeed, the vision of the New Jerusalem is a city but a garden city.

Some Christians are regaining a better integration of ecology into their understanding of the mission of God. Regrettably, many still view human work as peripheral and instrumental. In fact, someone recently used the phrase Great Commission utilitarianism to describe the prevailing view of work within the Church. Work has no intrinsic or eschatological significance except insofar as it promotes evangelism. Some types of work are esteemed because they are deemed to contribute to personal care for people, but people who work in the marketplace are viewed at best with ambivalence and frequently with hostility. It is time to lose our dualistic conceptions and reintegrate work into our missional understandings. When people see and experience their daily activity as something directly connected to God's eternal things, watch out!

[Index]

Imago Dei and the Material World (Part 3)

Throughout most of history, the Church has taken an instrumental view of human work and economic activity. There is no question that work has such value. Through our labors, we provide food, clothing, and shelter. Work sustains us so we can do those distinctly human activities like worship God, meditate on who God is, educate our minds, and enjoy community with others. Our work gives us resources to share with others in need and invest in the lives of others. Within the context of the Church today, our work environment is often characterized as a staging ground for evangelism and a context where we can exhibit Kingdom principles of living. Work is also frequently valued because of the funds it provides for the Church's institutions, programs, and ministries.

In addition to the instrumental view, there has been teaching that values work in an ontological sense. It tends to be grounded in the creation narrative. Human beings were created to be stewards over the earth. Human labor is seen as a way to glorify God by dutifully caring for the created order, keeping the status quo until Christ's return when the pre-fall order of things will be restored.

These instrumental and ontological views express much of what the Church has taught over the centuries. There is little wrong with either of these views as far as they go. The problem is what they are missing: an eschatological view.

My shorthand observation for the eschatological view is this: The narrative of the Bible begins in the garden (Eden) and ends in a city (New Jerusalem). Many Christians today (especially postmodern deconstructionists) falsely attribute the idea of material progress to the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers appropriated the idea of progress from Christianity and wedded to the idea of human self-autonomy achieved through reason. The biblical narrative is pregnant with the idea of progress, including material progress, under God's direction.

Judaism introduced the idea of linear type. Ancient cultures had cyclical notions of time. Religious rituals celebrated the cycles of nature and sought to earn the gods' favor by honoring nature's cycles. Judaism postulated a beginning to creation. Humanity was created and instructed to multiply and fill the earth. Humanity was instructed to till and keep the Garden, but humanity was also instructed to "subdue" (kabash) and exercise "dominion" (radah) over the earth. The Hebrew words here are powerful and violent. They mean "to tread down; hence, negatively, to disregard; positively, to conquer, subjugate, violate" in the case of kabash and "to tread down, i.e., subjugate; specifically, to crumble off" in the case of radah. (Strong's Concordance)

Contrary to ancient notions of worshiping and conforming to nature, the Genesis account envisions humanity filling the earth and reshaping it, bringing creation to fruition. There is a linearity to the presentation of events. (It is beyond my scope here to give a fully qualified presentation of "subdue" and "dominion," but just for clarity's sake, I'm not suggesting the natural world has no intrinsic value and that it may be exploited for any purpose. I emphasize that passive preservation of pristine creation is not in sight in the Genesis account.)

After the fall and expulsion from Eden in Genesis 3, we see something new emerging in the Old Testament. From Noah, Abraham, and Moses, we see an unfolding vision of restored shalom (peace, security, prosperity, physical health, and healthy relationships.) God establishes a people to be a light to the world, and at the end of time, God will bring the entire world into his Kingdom and restore shalom. (Isaiah 25:6-10) As we know from other Old Testament writings, a messiah will lead people into this eschatological reality. This coming shalom unquestionably had material implications. Please revisit the listing of the blessings for obedience to God's covenant with Israel in Deuteronomy 28:1-14. Resist the temptation to spiritualize them in some Gnostic way or to explain them away because of prosperity gospel heresies. Material prosperity for all God's people is linked with shalom.

Christianity is where we see the idea of progress fully emerge. Rodney Stark points out that while Judaism had a linear timeframe, it tended to see the people of Israel processing through time instead of progressing through time. They were oriented to the past and keeping the Mosaic Covenant in anticipation of something God would do in the future. (Stark notes a similar orientation with Islam toward the writings of Muhammad in anticipation of a future reality.) Jesus comes announcing the Kingdom of God. He declares it is here but not yet consummated. Consummation will be accomplished upon his return.

Meanwhile, Christians are told to live as if the Kingdom is already here. (i.e., proleptically) The orientation shifts from compliance to a legal code in the past toward realizing a vision of a coming future. Christians are to be yeast in the dough of the world, causing it to rise and come to fullness, all the time aware that true fullness will not happen until Christ returns.

The physical image of the new order in its completeness is instructive. The new order is not a protological return to the Garden of Eden. The image is of a magnificent and abundant garden city called the New Jerusalem. Cities in ancient cultures were the highest symbols of human commerce, government, art, and culture in general. The image communicates that that made of human labor is incorporated into the coming New Creation and becomes the dwelling place of God with humanity. It suggests that progress in the development of human culture, including in economic and material well-being, is part of the unfolding vision.

Jesus is the prototype for the new humanity, the firstborn of the new creation. (Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, Colossians 1) And, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." (Romans 8:22-23, NRSV) Christ is ushering in the New Creation, and we are united to Christ as his body and his temple on the earth. Therefore, we are also participating proleptically in his work of redemption and transforming creation (human and non-human). Few Christians have problems subscribing to the idea of a spiritual "leavening" occurring over time because of Christ working in the world but many Christians, in a dualistic split, are resistant to the idea of "progress" in human culture, including economic transformation.

How does our work in this time of the Kingdom "already but not yet" have an eschatological impact?

(Continued)

[Index]

Imago Dei and the Material World (Part 2)

Yesterday I presented the "spirit/mind versus material world" dualism within Christianity. I showed how it impacts our understanding of the imago Dei, the image of God. This dualism is not a recent development. It extends back to the beginning of the Church. The Hebrew world knew little of these dualisms, but once the Church entered the Greco-Roman world, biblical anthropology became corrupted with Greek anthropology. The Greeks viewed work as something fit only for slaves. Pursuits of the mind were the highest expression of humanity and could not be troubled with the cares of daily work.

Early in the life of the Church, scholarship and administration of the sacraments were elevated as the highest forms of Christian service. Later the Enlightenment elevated reason (matters of the mind and spirit) above all else, including God. Two competing forms of foundationalism emerged. They presumed that autonomous objective individuals could, through reason comprehend universal truths. One approach sought to identify elemental and universal truths upon which all other truths are based. (We see this strongly evidenced in the meticulous systematic theologies of Conservative Christianity.)  Another approach searched for universally shared experiences and sought to build unity around these common experiences (We have seen this well evidenced in much of Liberal Christianity). In both cases, work and human economic action have been peripheral concerns.

Yet work and economic action are precisely where most people spend their time. Because of the Church's dualistic formulations, it has been unable to speak intelligibly about economic issues except in the most inane ways. When the Church speaks to such issues in the West today, it tends to either assume the legitimacy of the present order without theological reflection or engage in "prophetic" critique framed more by Enlightenment/Modernist communitarianism than the biblical narrative. Miroslav Volf says it well in his book Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work. I quote him at length (emphasis is in the original.):

Given the paramount importance of work in both liberal and socialist economic and social theory, it is remarkable that in our world dominated by work a serious crisis in work had to strike before church bodies paid much attention to the problem of human work. Theologians are to blame for the former negligence. Amazingly little theological reflection has taken place in the past about an activity that takes up so much of our time. The number of pages theologians have devoted to the question of transubstantiation – which does or does not take place on Sunday – for instance, would, I suspect, far exceed  the number of pages devoted to work that fills our live Monday through Saturday. My point is not to belittle the importance of correct understanding of the real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper but to stress that a proper perspective on human work is at least as important.

One might object that the most basic things in life are not necessarily the most important, and that is hence superfluous to spend much time reflecting on them. Breathing is rather basic to life, but we do it twenty-four hours a day without giving it a second thought – until air pollution forces us to do so. Working, one might say, is much like breathing: its point is to keep us alive, and we need not bother with it until its function is hindered.

The parallel between breathing and working makes sense, however, only in a theology that subordinates the vita activa completely to the vita contemplativa. As Thomas Aquinas’ reflection on work illustrates, in such a theology the only real reason to work is to make the contemplation of God possible, first by providing “for the necessities of the present life” without which contemplation could not take place, and second, by “quieting and directing the internal passions of the soul,” without which human beings would not be “apt [enough] for contemplation.” But apart from the fact that work is necessary to provide for the necessities of the body and to quiet the passions of the soul, work is detrimental to human beings, for “it is impossible for one to be busy with external action and at the same time give oneself to Divine contemplation.” When a person inspired by the love of God does the will of God in the world, she suffers separation from the sweetness of Divine contemplation. Where the vita activa is fully subservient to vita contemplativa, there is no need to reflect extensively on human work since, as a mere means to a much higher end, it is in the long run accidental to the real purpose of human life.

The complete subordination of vita activa to vita contemplativa that has been basic to much of Christian theology throughout the centuries betrays an illegitimate intrusion of Greek anthropology into Christian theology. Faithfulness to our Judeo-Christian biblical roots demands that we abandon it. I am not suggesting that we should follow the modern inversion of the traditional order between vita activa and vita contemplativa and subordinate vita contemplativa completely to vita activa. I am not even suggesting that we should place them on an equal footing. I do propose, however, that we treat them as two basic, alternating aspects of the Christian life that may differ in importance but that cannot be reduced one to another, and that form an inseparable unity.

As soon as we ascribe inherent and not simply instrumental value to the vita activa (and thereby also to human work) we have answered the question of whether theological reflection on work is fundamental or marginal to the task of theology. … (69-70)

(Continued)

[Index]

Imago Dei and the Material World (Part 1)

What are we to make of the world we live in? What is our relationship to the created order? Many Christians in recent years have reevaluated the significance of the material world in light of the biblical narrative. Recovery of eschatological and teleological frameworks has become central to this renewed interest.

Until recently, most mainline groups had all but abandoned consideration of eschatology. Reflection on creation in light of eschatology had disappeared as well. Leaders had instead focused on achieving justice in the here and now.

For many fundamentalists and conservative Christians, Dispensationalist teaching and pessimistic attitudes in the wake of major changes during the twentieth century led to eschatologies where the material world is annihilated in a fiery apocalypse and "the elect" are raptured into an ethereal heaven. Personal salvation became everything, and the material world was of little consequence.

The prosperity gospel has also emerged in many charismatic streams of the church. Wealth and possessions are viewed as indicators of someone's spirituality. Prosperity is a reward for good behavior and trusting God, but the material world is unimportant.

These three twentieth-century responses reflect a duality of spirit (or mind) versus the material world. Concern about ecology has been one of the driving forces in recovering a theology that helps us interpret our relationship to the material world. Many prominent theologians now emphasize that the scriptural narrative presents a radical transformation and renewal of the old creation instead of replacing an annihilated old creation with a wholly new one. Therefore, what we do with the material world in the present has a bearing on the new creation that is to come. While I welcome the attempt to rectify dualism that deprecates creation, I've generally found that many champions of this less dualistic perspective on nature leave a substantial dualism in place about human anthropology. To see how this happens, let us ask what it means to be the imago Dei, the image of God.

I recently read Darrell Cosden's A Theology of Work: Work and the New Creation. He discusses substantive, functional, and relational views of what it means to bear God's image. The substantive view interprets the image of God in a couple of ways: ontological and comparative. Ontologically we are a spirit of the same substance as God. Comparatively, we are like God and unlike nature in some ways, but unlike God and like nature in other ways. Where we are like God and unlike nature, we exhibit the image of God. That tends to come down primarily to matters of the mind, like reason and volition.

These are the predominant views of imago Dei in Western Christianity. They have led to damaging dualisms of spirit vs. body and mind vs. body. Personhood becomes understood as one's spirit/mind. The body and material issues, including work and economic action, are merely instrumental to the spirit/mind half of the dualism.

The functional view observes that we were created as material beings for a material world. We were placed in the world to be co-regents and stewards over it. We are here to "work the garden" and bring creation to completion. There is eschatological importance to this. We will be raised on the last day with new bodies to work a new creation with Christ. Christ is the firstborn of all creation, bringing all creation to its fullness. As his body in the world, we are participants in that work. As restored eikons, we will be co-regents and stewards of creation once again. Work and economic activity related to the material world is not incidental or instrumental. It is central to our anthropology and teleology.

But the danger with the functional view alone is that it does not sufficiently locate us within the cosmos. It can lead to a low view of nature. The relational view maintains that we exist only in relationship to others. "Others" includes God, fellow human beings, and the material world. We have a dual relationship to the material world. The material world is both the object of our work and the habitat in which we live. It was created good, but it is not complete. God owns it, yet we are stewards of it. (The very word "economics" comes from the Greek word oikonomos, meaning "household manager," the one who looks after an estate in the absence of the head of the household.) Thus, while we have a functional mission, we have that mission within the context of right relationships.

While many who advocate concerns about ecology rightly seek to eliminate the dualities concerning nature, there is a large blind spot about dualities concerning human action. Human action in the material world and economic activity are not merely instrumental. The human mandate is to fill the world and to make it fruitful and productive. The biblical narrative begins in a garden and ends in a city. The city symbolizes human creativity, commerce, government, and human habitat. As Miroslav Volf, Darrell Cosden, and others have pointed out, there is something of fallen human creation that is redeemed and passes forward into the New Creation.

There is a strong strand of thought among those reflecting on faith and ecology that takes a "Matrix anthropology" view of human action in the world. The Matrix movie trilogy featured artificial intelligence that viewed human beings as a destructive planetary virus. This thinking tends to cast economic activity, beyond certain basic subsistence levels, as idolatrous. Nature takes on a deeply "spiritual" quality as opposed to the "profane" quality of that which is manmade. Economic activity is purely utilitarian. It sustains us in a romantically pristine and spiritual natural order so we may engage in the higher pursuits of spirit/mind. In other words, there is a continuation of the spirit/mind versus matter duality in understanding human existence.

(Continued)

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