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Wednesday with Wright: Creation as a Project

N.T. Wright on Creation as a Project:

“Creation, it seems, was not a tableau, a static scene.  It was designed as a project, created in order to go somwhere.  The creator has a future in mind for it; and Human—this strange creature, full of mystery and glory—is the means by which the creator is going to take his project forward.  The garden, and all the living creatures, plants and animals, within it, are designed to become what they were meant to be through the work of God’s image-bearing creatures in their midst.  The point of the project is that the garden be extended, colonizing the rest of creation; and Human is the creature put in charge of that plan.  Human is thus a kind of midway creature: reflecting God into the world, and reflecting the world back to God.”  (After You Believe, pp. 74-75, bold added)

I don’t know if you ever thought or think in these categories.  But this is really what it’s all about: creation as a project, spreading the glory of God so that it covers the earth as the waters cover the sea (Hab 2:14).

At any rate, we know that the project is still moving in that direction even though it suffered a momentary setback.

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TC Robinson

BIO. I’m Thomas “T.C” Robinson, a Christian by conversion and an ordained minister in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). Let’s talk faith and culture in light of Scripture, tradition, and reason, which are gifts to the Body of Christ. “For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” -Paul the Apostle, Romans 11:36 NIV

25 responses to “Wednesday with Wright: Creation as a Project”

  1. Kyle Phillips Avatar
    Kyle Phillips

    I like Wright’s dynamic rather than static expression of creation. In our ILI (International Leadership Institute) training we emphasize the vision attribute of humanity. Only we can see beyond what is into what ought to be and then order our resources to head in that “ought” direction.

    I gather your “momentary setback,” you mean the fall. Even as we work with the Lord in his redemption, we also press on in the broader scheme of co-creation, creating beauty to God’s glory throughout the world.

    Reply
    1. T.C. R Avatar
      T.C. R

      Kyle,

      I value the ILI vision. Yeah, I was referring to the Fall. But now, to echo Wright, the new has already been inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Messiah, thus creating a new, if you will, eschatological people (Romans 5-8).

      Reply
  2. Scott W Avatar
    Scott W

    TC-
    You need to broaden your theological horizons!:) In essence, what Wright alludes to in definitely in concert with the Eastern Christian theology regarding creation. In terms of historical theology, the legacy of Augustine and his take on Genesis 1-3 looms over the Western theological tradition in regards to creation and its relation to human destiny and construals of how humanity govern themselves “between the times”. You must remember that Augustine went against the grain of traditional Christian theology to that point, which is still the theology of Eastern Orthodoxy. Elaine Pagels book ‘Adam, Eve and the Serpent’ did a masterful job of showing how the exegesis/understanding of Gen. 1-3 was reflective of (and central to) these differing theological worldviews. One can read Maximos the Confessor to see the developed theology of humankind as the microcosm of Creation which is tied to theosis (divinization) and the New Creation.

    The following excerpts are taken from a book review of ‘Adam, Eve and the Serpent’.
    http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/serpent.html

    20) “Where earlier generations of Jews and Christians had once found in Genesis 1-3 the affirmation of human freedom to choose good or evil, Augustine, living after the age of Constantine, found in the same text a story of human bondage.” page 97, my comment: That Augustine lived after Christianity was firmly established as the state religion of the Roman Empire seems significant. Once Christianity became the state religion, it needed to cease being a revolutionary force opposing the state and to become a conservative force supporting the state.

    21) “Instead of the freedom of the will and humanity’s original royal dignity, Augustine emphasizes humanity’s enslavement to sin. Humanity is sick, suffering, and helpless, irreparably damaged by the fall, for that “original sin”, Augustine insists, involved nothing else than Adam’s prideful attempt to establish his own autonomous self-government. Astonishingly, Augustine’s radical views prevailed, eclipsing for future generations of western Christians the consensus of more than three centuries of Christian tradition.” page 99

    22) “The political and social situation of Christians in the early centuries had changed radically by Augustine’s time. Traditional declarations of human freedom, forged by martyrs defying the emperor as anti-Christ incarnate, no longer fit the situation of Christians who now found themselves, under Constantine and his Christian successors, the emperor’s “brothers and sisters in Christ.” But Augustine’s theory conformed to this new situation and interpreted the new arrangement of state, church, and believer in ways that, many agreed, made religious sense of the new political realities.” page 100

    23) “Excessive wealth, enormous power, and luxury, Chrysostom charges, are destroying the integrity of the churches. Clerics, infected by the disease of “lust for authority,” are fighting for candidates on the basis of family prominence, wealth, or partisanship. Others support the candidacy of their friends, relatives, or flatters, “but no one will look to the man who is really qualified.” They ignore, Chrysostom says, the only valid qualification, “excellence of character.” Pagans rightly ridicule the whole business: ” “Do you see,’ they say, ‘how all matters among Christians are full of vainglory? And there is ambition among them, and hypocrisy. Strip them,’ they say, ‘of their numbers, and they are nothing.’ ” ” page 104 by the way, Chrysostom in Greek means golden-mouth and Chrysostom earned this nickname by his powerful oratory

    24) “The traditional Christian answers to the question of power no longer applied by the later fourth century, when not only Constantine but several others, including Theodosius the Great, had ruled as Christian emperors. Augustine’s opposite interpretation of the politics of Paradise – and, in particular, his insistence that the whole human race, including the redeemed, remains wholly incapable of self-government – offered Christians radically new ways to interpret this unprecedented situation.

    Whereas Chrysostom proclaims human freedom, Augustine reads from the same Genesis story the opposite – human bondage.” page 105

    25) “Augustine knows that most of his Christian contemporaries would find this claim incredible, if not heretical. John Chrysostom, indeed, warns the fainthearted not to blame Adam for their own transgressions. . . . That Adam’s sin brought suffering and death upon humankind most Christians, like their Jewish predecessors and contemporaries, would have taken for granted. But most Jews and Christians would also have agreed that Adam left each of his offspring free to make his or her own choice of good or evil.” page 108

    26) “How can one imagine that millions of individuals not yet born were “in Adam” or, in any sense, “were” Adam? Anticipating objections that would reduce his argument to absurdity, Augustine declares triumphantly that, although “we did not yet have individually created and apportioned forms in which to live as individuals,” what did exist was the “nature of the semen from which we were to be propagated. The semen itself, Augustine argues, already “shackled by the bond of death,” transmits the damage incurred by sin.” page 109

    27) Summary of page 111: Augustine believes that man is enslaved by his uncontrollable ability to be sexually aroused. Specifically, when a man wants an erection, he cannot always have one. Also, when a man doesn’t want an erection, often one comes anyway.

    “That each of us experiences desire spontaneously apart from our will means, Augustine assumes, that we experience it against our will.” page 112

    “For Augustine, ‘lust is an usurper, defying the power of the will, and tyrannizing the human sexual organ.” page 112

    Augustine appeared to have an exceptionally strong sex drive – one so strong that he could barely control it.

    “Augustine agreed with his predecessors in delineating two distinct modes of relationship – one motivated by impulses of domination and submission, the other by mutually affirming love. But what sets Augustine’s mature position apart from that of his predecessors is his refusal simply to identify the first with the state and the second with the church. As he redefines them, the “city of man” and the “city of God” cut across both categories. Even baptized Christians are not exempt from either the war of conflicting impulses or the need for external government.” page 116

    “If Christians cannot even be trusted to govern themselves, how are they to approach church government? Later in his life Augustine came to endorse, for the church as well as the state, the whole arsenal of secular government that Chrysostom had repudiated – commands, threats, coercion, penalties, and even physical force.” page 117

    28) Eusebius was Constantine’s court theologian. page 118

    29) “For if the fifth-century state no longer looked so evil as it once had, the church, in turn no longer looked so holy. Chrysostom, holding to his by now essentially sectarian theory, deplored what had happened to the church since imperial favor shone upon Christians: first, the massive influx of nominal converts; and second, the way that a shower of imperial privileges had radically changed the dynamics – and raised the stakes- of ecclesiastical politics. . . .But what Chrysostom could only denounce, Augustine could interpret. . . .Augustine’s theory of original sin could make theologically intelligible not only the state’s imperfections but the church’s imperfections as well.

    Secondly, while changing the way Catholic Christians understood the psychological and religious meaning of freedom (libertas), Augustine’s theory bore the potential for changing as well their understanding of, and relationship to, political liberty. Throughout the Roman republic men of wealth and power tended to agree that libertas meant living under the rule of a “good governor’”, that is, an emperor of whom the senate approved.” page 119

    Summary of page 123: Augustine’s version of Christianity won because the political powers that be supported it. They supported it because it was in their best interests to support it.

    30) When Chrysostom was made bishop of Constantanople, a position second in ecclesiastical power only to the bishop of Rome, in 397, he became the spiritual advisor to the imperial family. “Chrysostom was so impolitic, so concerned with his responsibilities as moral advisor to the powerful, advocate for the destitute and oppressed, and austere guardian of clerical discipline, that within three years he had offended virtually everyone who had once welcomed his appointment. His acts of social conscience turned powerful people among the court and clergy against him.” He was forced out after 6 years. pages 121-122

    31) “The church that Augustine chose to join, as Peter Brown pints out,” was not the church of Cypria” – not, that is, the select community of the holy, willing to risk persecution and death or, lacking the opportunity for martyrdom, eager to leave the world; it was the new, expanding church of Ambrose, rising above the Roman world “like a moon waxing in its brightness.” It was a confident, international body, established in the respect of Christian emperors, sought out by noblemen and intellectuals, capable of bringing to the masses of the known civilized world the esoteric truths of the philosophy of Plato, a church set no longer to defy society but to master it.” page 123

    32) “Yet Augustine abandoned the policy of toleration practiced by the previous bishop of Carthage and pursued the attack on the Donatists.” page 124

    33) “Yet far beyond his lifetime, even for a millennium and a half, the influence of Augustine’s teaching throughout western Christendom has surpassed that of any other church father. There are many reasons for this, but I suggest as primary among them, the following: It is Augustine’s theology of the fall that made the uneasy alliance between the Catholic churches and imperial power palatable – not only justifiable but necessary – for the majority of Catholic Christians.

    Augustine’s doctrine, of course, was not, either for him or for the majority of his followers, a matter of mere expedience. Serious believers concerned primarily with political advantage, could find in Augustine’s theological legacy ways of making sense out of a situation in which the church and state had become inextricably interdependent.” pages 125-126

    36) “What about death? Doesn’t Genesis teach that death is punishment for sin? Certainly, Julian [of Eclanum] responds, but not physical death. He insists that the death one suffers as punishment for Adam’s sin is different from the universal mortality natural to all living species. Although the Genesis account says that God warned Adam that “on the day” of his transgression, “you shall surely die,” Adam did not die physically. Instead, Julian says, Adam began to die morally and spiritually from the day he chose to sin.” page 132

    37) “Ever since Augustine, the hereditary transmission of original sin has been the official doctrine of the Catholic church.” page 134

    “Why did Catholic Christianity adopt Augustine’s paradoxical – some who say preposterous – views? Some historians suggest that such beliefs validate the church’s authority, for if the human condition is a disease, Catholic Christianity, acting as the Good Physician, offers the spiritual medication and the discipline that alone can cure it. No doubt Augustine’s views did serve the interests of the emerging imperial church and the Christian state, as I have tried to show in the preceding chapter.

    For what Augustine says, in simplest terms, is this: human beings cannot be trusted to govern themselves, because our very nature – indeed, all of nature – has become corrupt as the result of Adam’s sin. In the late fourth century and the fifth century, Christianity was no longer a suspect and persecuted movement; now it was the religion of emperors obligated to govern a vast and diffuse population. Under these circumstances, as we have seen, Augustine’s theory of human depravity – and, correspondingly, the political means to control it – replace the previous ideology of human freedom.” page 145

    38) “If Augustinian theology, or that of the rabbis or shaman who have also attributed suffering to sin, served only as a means of social control, why would people accept such sophistry? Why do people outside religious communities often ask themselves, as if spontaneously, the same questions, and give similar answers, blaming themselves for events beyond their power as if they had caused – or deserved – their own suffering?

    The “social control” explanations assume a manipulative religious elite that invents guilt in order to dupe a gullible majority into accepting an otherwise abhorrent discipline. But the human tendency to accept blame for misfortunes is as observable among today’s agnostics as among the Hopi or the ancient Jews and Christians, independent of – even prior to – religious belief.” page 146

    “Augustine would, I suspect, take it as evidence that human nature itself is “diseased,” or, in contemporary terms, neurotic. I would suggest, instead, that such guilt, however painful, offers reassurance that such events do not occur at random but follow specific laws of causation; and that their causes, or a significant part of them, lie in the moral sphere, and so within human control.” page 147, my emphasis

    Reply
    1. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
      irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

      Before we can make a judgment of Augustine, we certainly must read the man himself. And perhaps the first place would be Augustine’s own ‘Confessions’ . . . “The Confessions , of course, are Augustine’s answer to such reflections…[of himself]; ‘In these behold me, that you may not praise me beyond what I am; in these believe what is said of me, not by others, but by myself; in these contemplate me, and see what I have been, in myself by myself…. For “He hath made us and not we ourselves”, indeed, we had destroyed ourselves, but He who made us has made us anew…” (Augustine Of Hippo, A Biography, by Peter Brown, page 427).

      And in theology, the one volume work: Augustine through the Ages, An Encyclopedia, General Editor Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A. (Eerdmans, 1999).

      Reply
      1. Scott W Avatar
        Scott W

        Fr Robert:
        The book was not an indictment on Augustine as a human but sought to put his thought and acts in their socio-historical context. No theology is socially and politically innocuous;there are consequences to certain way of viewing humanity. It’s a matter of history that he was a theological innovator in the Church.

        But the point of this is that the West has inherited some very powerful ideas about creation, humanity, salvation and eschatology which are taken as “gospel” but themselves are reflections of the legacy of the theological musings of principally Blessed Augustine. Many are ignorant of the richer (and better) theological tradition, in my opinion, which runs from the the Apostolic Fathers to Irenaeus, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, John the Golden-Mouth, John of Damascus and Maximos the Confessor to Gregory Palamas and beyond.

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  4. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
    irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

    Scott W

    Yeah I love the East also, though they as a whole will only called Augustine “Blessed”. But I confess I don’t care for the work of Elaine Pagels. And the West is not only with Augustine, but the Greco-Roman world and philosophers. In my opinion, here St. Paul is closer, with his own Greco-Roman Hellenism.

    Reply
  5. Scott W Avatar
    Scott W

    Fr. Robert:
    I agree with you about Elaine Pagel as NT scholar and her neo-gnostic theological musings; but she is “spot on” in describing the history of the “politics of paradise” as it has to do with the differing theological visions of East and West, as seen in Blessed Augustine and St John Chrysostom. In a sense, Augustine is the chief architect of theology and theopolitics of Christendom while John the Golden-Mouthed held down the legacy of Jesus and his Kingdom vision as Christian theology and the theopolitics of Christian praxis for the Church as counter cultural entity within a “Christian” or pagan society. In this I think the latter is more important.

    This has nothing to do with personal feelings about Augustine, who like this writer and all humanity was complex and conflicted. (And St John the Golden-Mouthed today is criticized for his reputed anti-semitism.) This is about historical judgments and the theological legacy of of these Fathers as they played themselves out in the realms of culture and politics, and the impact it has had on the Christian imagination.

    Reply
    1. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
      irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

      Scott W,

      Yes the East/West divide is historical. But the later Reformation was a biblical renewal to the Pauline Gospel itself, rather than the culture and the cultural “hermeneutics” or interpretation. An Erasmus like, adverse to metaphysical speculations, and medieval scholatic norms. It of course is not an end in itself, but was a true Humanist approach, in a biblical vision and idea. And later too the Puritan heritage, Edwards, even Wesley. And the forgotten Luther always! (Luther had a huge effect on Wesley) So theology does not stop with the East/West divide, but moves along itself…Schleiermacher, Barth, etc.

      Reply
      1. Scott W Avatar
        Scott W

        TC-
        To get back to the orginal point of the post, below is a summary, from an Evangelical source, which outlines an Orthodox understanding of creation which is broadly accurate. It is reflective of Fathers reading of Genesis 2-3 and its implications for soteriology and easchatology, which is somwhat different from the Augustinian-based theology which most Western Evagelical Christians are schooled and which what is in the popular imagination of our culture. Again, this bears resemblance to Wright’s musings in some way.

        “Doctrine of Creation

        According to Eastern Orthodoxy, the universe was created by a loving act of God. God created that which is not God. The creation possessed a nature distinct from God’s. Yet, God’s creation was blameless and deserving of His love.

        God not only gives created beings their structure and variety, but He also gives them their energy. Through the process of creation, God has given His creatures their own energy. These beliefs form the basis of the Orthodox hypothesis of the “double movement.” According to the double movement theory, God moves toward creation through the incarnation of the divine Logos. Creation naturally moves toward, not away from Him. In time, this movement toward God will end in creation partaking in the energies of God. As a result of moving toward God, perfection or deification is attained.

        Eastern Orthodoxy believes that Adam was created as a child. They believe he was not a mature being and only possessed the capacity for perfection. Because of this view, Orthodoxy does not view the fall of humanity as seriously as evangelicals do. For the Orthodox, the problem of sin is not as grave as Western Christians assert. Orthodox theologians support this notion of sin by differentiating between person and nature. They reason that though humanity possesses the freedom to sin through an act of the will, humanity’s nature is to be in communion with God. Because of this nature, people naturally proceed toward fellowship with God.

        According to the Orthodox, the sin of Adam and Eve affected only themselves. Their descendants inherited no sin or guilt because of the fall of the first parents. The fall resulted in their descendants becoming mortal and subject to physical death. This mortality resulted in an increased tendency to sin, but only because humanity was subject to physical needs. Humanity’s mortality makes people prone to sin. The sin of Adam and Eve created a barrier of mortality between God and humanity. Only God could do away with this barrier. God removed this obstacle through the incarnation of Christ.”

        http://www.4truth.net/Eastern_Orthodox/

  6. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
    irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

    Scott W,

    You have given that most important element theologically that has kept me out of Orthodoxy, i.e. the lack of imputation of both Adam and Christ (in Orthodox Theology). I can see a certain doctrine of theosis, in God’s grace & sanctification, which is a life process in constant tranformation “In Christ” alone.

    There are many things about Orthodoxy that I like, Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity. But the incarnation must be seen redemptively in Christ, and not some aspect of natural theology, in itself. Once again the doctrine of sin.

    Reply
    1. Scott W Avatar
      Scott W

      Fr Robert:
      So, in essence, you are a secularist. God is extrinsic from humanity and all creation in activity? What about a real Logos/Wisdom Christology a la teh Johannine Prologue and the Carmen Christi which reflects the coinherence of Creator and Creation as the foundation of the salvific work of Jesus Christ. There is no nature vs. grace dichotomy or “supernatural”. Everything that exists, seen and unseen, has its being (reality) and is given life by God. Grace is not a thing or substance; grace is the working of God Almighty in and through Jesus Christ by the Spirit.

      What you have in the degraded theologies of the Reformation, in the popular imagination ( I see the Finnish school is trying to rehabilitate Luther in this regards), is ultimately a secular conception of humanity and creation, where God has to work from without. Salvation is conceived of in juridical categories and Paul suffers the mangled the most in this scheme. The goal of salvation is “glory,” the transformation of humanity and all creation so that deiform character of the created order is manifested in and through Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel, God’s Son, the divine Wisdom/Logos. This is the true nature of humanity, which the Fall brought death and bondage of humankind and creation through the Devil. The task of humanity is just as Wright said to mediate God to the creation in Christ as image-bearing,God-realized beings which is our true nature, which all creation is to share in also (Romans 8). Salvation is cosmic/individual, grounded in the Messianic mission of Jesus, who restores true life to humanity to all creation. In this Divine Logos is the second Adam.

      Wright is Reformed but he is grounded enough in the Holy Scriptures to see the true big picture and not the truncated, distorted version which is passed as Pauline theology in Evangelical Protestantism.

      http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith8045

      Reply
      1. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
        irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

        Scott W,

        Your argument is ad hoc, and just favors the Orthodox line. So we should leave it, I am not against everything Orthodox, as you are the Reformation. But I would ask you to reflect on the doctrine of the Immutability of God. Perhaps the best book I have read on this subject goes back to 1990, and Gerard O’Hanlon’s: the Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar (Cambridge Univ. Press). We should note his trinitarian distinctions and sin. His terms of “distance”, “diastasis”, “separation” and “alienation”, and “abyss”. The point is that though there is perhaps no ontological negativity posited in God, we must see the death of Christ as very real in His experience of the ‘second death’ of the sinner and hell. It is here that the theology of Luther is very Pauline and real, the Incarnate God really died on the Cross, and bore the ‘wrath of God.’ Again the issue is sin and it’s judgment! Which only Christ ‘the Lamb of God’ could bear.

        BTW, if you ever see the book by O’Hanlon? The second chapter is excellent, Creation and God’s immutability. Here we see the great doctrine of the Covenant of God. And we should note here too, that Pope Benedict has written on this profound subject. See also Scott Hahn’s book: Covenant and Communion, The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI.

      2. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
        irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

        BTW, love those older Finn’s, I just dug up my copy of, Reformation and Catholicity, by Gustaf Aulen. We should have some aspect of respect for our differences! A quote from the book: “Antoine Kartachoff maintains that to regard anything in the church as absolute and to eliminate everything relative and human is “de facto” to fall into Monophysite heresy.” “It is high time that we gave up using the divine nature of the Church to cover up the sins and defects of Church life.” “The Church has a kernel of infallibility and a foundation which is impeccable, but certain aspects of it are subject to sin.” “The Church must realize that it is diphyste (dual in nature).” “It must must have the courage to recognize its sins in history, its human weakness, the errors in its life and work, and must make an effort to correct them.” (page 14)

      3. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
        irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

        Kartachoff is Orthodox.

      4. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
        irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

        Scott W,

        Just a friendly question, but have you read the old classic: Protestant Biblical Interpretation, by Bernard Ramm? It is still a good and simple read! Sometimes we all need to go back to the basics.

  7. T.C. R Avatar
    T.C. R

    Scott W,

    Thanks for the orientation of much of Western soteriology as owing to the work of St. Augustine.

    I do understand that I need to broaden my gaze. Rightfully so. But I have trouble accepting your Eastern Orthodox explanation, and I hardly see the “resemblance to Wright’s musings in some way” of which you speak.

    But I will broaden my gaze by reading some Eastern Orthodox theology. 😉

    Reply
    1. Scott W Avatar
      Scott W

      TC-
      The “resemblance” is the notion that creation is a ‘project,” thus, it is in process. It is moving towards a goal, in which humanity is God’s agent to bring it to its goal which is the Trinitarian embrace of God, through Jesus by the Spirit, leading to its God-realized transformation. This is Paul (Rom 8) and the Eastern Fathers, which Wright, in his own way, definitely reflects.

      Reply
      1. Scott W Avatar
        Scott W

        TC-
        Romans 8, 🙂

      2. T.C. R Avatar
        T.C. R

        Scott W,

        Now I see the “resemblance.” 😉

      3. Scott W Avatar
        Scott W

        TC-
        A quote from Met. Paulos Mar Gregorios of the Orthodox Church regarding St. Basil the Great’s sermons on the six days of creation (Hexaaemeron), which exemplifies this understanding:

        “The Christian teaching prefers the word ktisis (creation) to physis (nature) to refer to the whole world. The three classic passages in the NT are John 1:1-18, Col. 1:15-20, and Heb. 11:3. In speaking of the created order, the NT always insists that it is held together in and by the second person of the Trinity, without whom it would be nothing. The biblical tradition not only insists that the created order has its beginning in God but also affirms that without God the world has neither present nor future. The Eastern Fathers of the church continued this tradition. The classic patristic writing is Basil’s nine homilies on the Six Days of Creation, the Hexaemeron. Most of the key doctrines whose origin is wrongly attributed to Augustine in the Western tradition can be found in Basil and Gregory of Nyssa two generations earlier. The world does not begin in time, but in God’s will and word (Hexaemeron, 1:5ff). The six days of creation are not 24-hour days (caused by the sun, created on the fourth day) but long epochs. There is no “three-storey universe” as in Rudolf Bultmann’s caricature of patristic teaching. The created order is unfinished, dynamic, moving towards its fulfillment. Heaven is not a place but an order of many-dimensioned reality closed to our senses.”

        Because the goal of creation is to be flooded with the energies of God (the resurrection power of God in Christ) and thus brought to its created potential, the Incarnation, the means by which the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, effects the divine exchange of the glory of God to creation through humankind by taking our human nature, was not necessitated by the Fall. It was the divine plan from the beginning.

  8. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
    irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

    TC,

    You might find this link of interest?

    A review of Blomberg’s review of NT Wright on Paul

    Reply
    1. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
      irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

      But note too, R. Scott Clark’s…

      http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/blomberg-on-wright-christs-obedience/

      Reply
      1. irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert Avatar
        irishanglican ~ Fr. Robert

        TC,

        Last one (link) promise, but a must read I think..
        http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2009/05/15/on-distinction-between-christs-passive/

  9. T.C. R Avatar
    T.C. R

    The created order is unfinished, dynamic, moving towards its fulfillment. Heaven is not a place but an order of many-dimensioned reality closed to our senses.”

    Because the goal of creation is to be flooded with the energies of God (the resurrection power of God in Christ) and thus brought to its created potential, the Incarnation, the means by which the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, effects the divine exchange of the glory of God to creation through humankind by taking our human nature, was not necessitated by the Fall. It was the divine plan from the beginning.

    Scott W,

    Outside of issues with proper attribution and caricatures, I do appreciate your quote, as reflected in my excerpt of the same.

    Reply

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