“The enquiry [in a chapter in Colin Gunton’s book] begins with a consideration of the concept of economy, though not that understood in the dismal and reductionist sense that characterizes so much of modernity. An interesting account of an early theological use of the concept has been given by Frances Young and David Ford in their study of the Second Letter to Corinth. From its simple and original meaning of the management of the home, the word comes to be used in the New Testament, particularly by Paul, as an explicitly financial metaphor to express forms of both human and divine action. Christology is the heart of the matter: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor. . . . (2 Corinthians 8.9). Paul uses the idea of an economy of divine generosity to overcome human conceptions of economy based on mere reciprocity and prudence. Above all there comes into view ‘the central, generative exchange of Christ’s sufferings and death’. Through the divine economy a new human way of being in the world is realized: ‘The exchange of Christ, his costly work, which involved suffering the most intractable realities of sin and death, has generated “the power of Christ” (12.9), a new creation, a new currency which can, through the downpayment of the Spirit, be spent now in living the sort of life which Christ’s pattern of humility and weakness laid down.’ [Frances Young and David F. Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians (London: SPCK, 1987), p. 175.]
“After such a beginning, it happened that a household word, along with its transferred application to the organization of finances and the running of the state, was commandeered for theology by some of the early Fathers — Ignatius, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, for example — to express aspects of the divine dispensation. The concept of economy became a way of integrating a plurality, of maintaining the richness and diversity of the ways of the one God towards and in the world. Irenaeus has a rich conception of the divine economy. Against the gnostic divorce of creation from redemption, he argued that the different aspects of God’s agency formed a unity through time and space: from beginning in creation to the final eschatological completion, which was, however, anticipated in Christ and in life in the Spirit. Creation, fall, redemption and eschatology all therefore had due part, thought together in their distinctness, but not separateness, and interrelatedness. By means of his trinitarian conception of the divine economy, Irenaeus was able to allow history to be itself, by virtue of its very relation to God. Because all that God does is achieved by means of his two hands, the Son and the Spirit, it is done both effectively and in due recognition of the integrity of created being. Von Balthasar, who sees that in Irenaeus there is a kind of aesthetic of the divine economy — one of the sections of his chapter on this theologian is entitled ‘God’s Temporal Art’ — comments that ‘there is no extraction of a permanent content from lost time as in the Platonists; recapitulation gives time itself validity before eternity’. Putting the matter otherwise, we may say that Irenaeus is able to give a remarkably coherent and satisfying account of the divine constitution of and involvement in the created world’s time and space. Time and space are given their distinctive dynamic of interrelatedness by God’s creating, upholding, redeeming and perfecting activity.
“It is arguable that few later theologies have achieved so adequate an integration of time and eternity, the one and the many, as Irenaeus. His work should not be idealized, for he also bequeathed problems to the tradition, but in general we shall not go far astray if we use him as a measure against which to assess prospective accounts of the economy. In contrast to him, some theologies are in danger of emphasizing creation at the expense of redemption, and the reverse. The typical Western theology, for example, tends to stress salvation to the neglect of creation, and this accounts for the fact that much recent discussion of christology — for example, in connection with the quest of the historical Jesus — abstracts it from its broader context. This is important, because different conceptions of the divine economy bring in their train different ways of understanding God’s relatedness to time and space. Those different emphases in their turn bring varying accounts of what it is to live in the world.”
— from Colin E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Our bodies, our selves — Douglas Farrow on the insistence of St. Irenaeus that the Ascension of Christ means that our bodies — not just our souls — are beneficiaries of redemption
St. Irenaeus against the Gnostics — In this reading of an essay by theologian Khaled Anatolios, St. Irenaeus is remembered for his synthesis of faith and reason. (52 minutes)
What does it mean to be a creature? — Canon-theologian Simon Oliver explains how and why the doctrine of Creation is cardinal and must frame all theology. (62 minutes)
“Reading Lewis with blinders on” — Chris Armstrong explains how C. S. Lewis’s work is grounded deeply in the Christian humanist tradition. (45 minutes)
The Life was the Light of men — In a lecture from 2018, Ken Myers contrasts the Enlightenment’s understanding of reason with the Christocentric conception of reason. (57 minutes)
Discerning an alternative modernity — In a lecture from 2019, Simon Oliver presents a summary of the cultural consequences of the comprehensiveness of the work of Christ. (28 minutes)
Lessons from Leviticus — The book of Leviticus may be assumed to be irrelevant for charting a way through the challenges of modernity. Theologian Peter J. Leithart disagrees. (22 minutes)
A theology of active beauty — In a 2010 lecture, George Marsden examines a few ways in which the distorting effects of Enlightenment rationalism were resisted in the work of Jonathan Edwards.(64 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 161 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Wilson, Kyle Edward Williams, Andrew James Spencer, Landon Loftin, Esther Lightcap Meek, Andrew Davison
Making peace with the land — Fred Bahnson challenges us to consider how we might honor our created and redeemed relationship with the earth as God’s stewards. (48 minutes)
This world is now my home — Belden Lane describes several approaches to understanding how we experience the sacredness of earthly places and how we learn to see God manifest in His Creation. (48 minutes)
Living in a meshwork world — Theologian Norma Wirzba believes that Creation is the “material manifestation of God’s love” and that this fundamental teaching affects everything, especially our understanding of the meaning of modern environmental crises and climate change. (17 minutes)
For the beauty of the earth — Dietrich von Hildebrand on how the love of God deepens our love for the beauty found in Creation
In the house of Tom Bombadil — C. R. Wiley explores the mysterious, “allusive” figure of Tom Bombadil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. (17 minutes)
Sneaking past watchful dragons — Junius Johnson describes how Hans Urs von Balthasar’s understanding of Creation resonates with that of C. S. Lewis and Bonaventure, all three of whom served as mentors in his thinking about beauty. (18 minutes)
Faith born of wonder — Theologian Andrew Davison echoes a theme in the work of G. K. Chesterton, describing the work of apologetics as awakening a sense of wonder in the reality of Creation as a beautiful gift. (23 minutes)
Theologian and priest Andrew Davison believes that retrieving the historic doctrine of participation is vital to help Christians escape from the default philosophy of the age. (32 minutes)
Why “Creation” is more than “origins” — In this archive interview from Volume 121 of the Journal, Michael Hanby talks about why we shouldn’t assume that science can ever be philosophically and theologically neutral. (32 minutes)
Creation, natural law, and ecological concerns — Christopher Thompson discusses our need to grow in wisdom and humility, that we might flourish in this ordered cosmos in which we live. (16 minutes)
St. Thomas and the wisdom of Creation — Christopher Thompson offers a renewed vision of “the human person [as] an embodied, spiritual creature dwelling in a cosmos of created natures, intelligently ordered by God and capable of being intelligibly grasped by human reason.” (16 minutes)
Hans Boersma on For the Life of the World — Drawing from Alexander Schmemann’s book, Hans Boersma asserts that a recovered understanding of the relationship between God and Creation is essential to addressing a host of modern cultural crises. (17 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 139 — FEATURED GUESTS:
W. Bradford Littlejohn, Simon Oliver, Matthew Levering, Esther Lightcap Meek, Paul Tyson, and David Fagerberg
What they saw in America — Sociologist James Nolan describes the perception of American culture of four distinguished foreign travelers: Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G. K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb.(5 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 137 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Gilbert Meilaender, James L. Nolan, Joel Salatin, Michael Di Fuccia, Robin Leaver, and Michael Marissen
Simon Oliver: Creation, Modernity, & Public Theology — Simon Oliver examines the traditional understanding of the doctrine of Creation and explains how some of our modern divisions and disputes are the products of an insufficient framework for Creation that developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (71 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 129 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Nicholas Carr, Robert Pogue Harrison, R. J. Snell, Norman Wirzba, Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski, and Peter Phillips
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 120 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Douglas Rushkoff, Phillip Thompson, Jonathan Wilson, James Bratt, D. C. Schindler, and Paul Elie
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 116 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stratford Caldecott, Fred Bahnson, Eric O. Jacobsen, J. Budziszewski, Brian Brock, and Allen Verhey
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 109 — FEATURED GUESTS: Douglas Coupland, Charles Mathewes, William T. Cavanaugh, William Dyrness, Steven Guthrie, and Susannah Clements
Hans Boersma — author of Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry — explains why Christians should reject the modern separation of Heaven and Earth and recover a “sacramental ontology.” (26 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 102 — FEATURED GUESTS: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Lew Daly, Adam K. Webb, Stratford Caldecott, James Matthew Wilson, and Thomas Hibbs
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 92 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jake Halpern, Stephen J. Nichols, Richard M. Gamble, Peter J. Leithart, Bill Vitek, and Craig Holdrege
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 85 — FEATURED GUESTS: C. John Sommerville, Catherine Albanese, Christopher Shannon, Michael G. Lawler, Gilbert Meilaender, and Matthew Dickerson
David Bentley Hart describes how the Christian understanding of Creation as beauty and gift, as the outward expression of the delight the Trinity has in itself, reveals a vision of reality different from the pagan or fatalist vision of reality. (12 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 67 — FEATURED GUESTS: Eric O. Jacobsen, Allan C. Carlson, Terence L. Nichols, R. R. Reno, David Bentley Hart, J. A. C. Redford, and Scott Cairns
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 53 — FEATURED GUESTS: Lawrence Adams, Dana Gioia, Elmer M. Colyer, R. A. Herrera, Margaret Visser, and Joseph Pearce
