Sep222014
Book excerpt

“In order to bring our existence in this world under the discipline of God’s love in Christ, which is the life of the world, the church must understand itself as culture. The way that we use the stuff of creation for our life as church is training us in this-worldly existence. And most of that existence seems so natural and commonplace that we take it for granted.

“The ways that we use the stuff of creation in architecture, music, painting, food, money, books, cars, water, and more reflect our convictions about creation and teach us convictions for thinking about and living in creation. If we see the things of this world merely as instrumental to the salvation of spirit or saving souls, then we have truncated the good news of Jesus Christ. That is, if we see music or banners or other visual presentations merely as a means to move people more effectively to faith in Christ, then we are unfaithful to the gospel. There is a fine balance to observe here. Since creation is fallen from the good, it has become the world that must be and is being redeemed. Therefore, we must not be naive or undisciplined in our cultivation of church culture. At the same time, however, creation is not instrumental to salvation in Christ; it is the very substance of salvation in Christ. It is not enough that we have the arts in the life of the church; we must have them in the life of the church in the right way: as our celebration of and participation in the reconciliation of all things visible and invisible to God through Christ. The stuff of creation is what God the Son redeems through his becoming flesh, bearing our sin, enduring death, and rising to life. When we have a truncated doctrine of creation, we have a truncated understanding of salvation. With a more robust doctrine of creation, we may enter more fully into the life of the redeemed as witnesses to and servants of the only hope of all creation.”

— from Jonathan Wilson, God’s Good World: Reclaiming the Doctrine of Creation (BakerAcademic, 2013)

Related reading and listening

  • The confident optimism in true Christian asceticism — Philosopher Étienne Gilson on the essential goodness of Creation
  • Festivity and the goodness of Creation — Drawing on Josef Pieper’s ideas, Ken Myers explains why the spirit of festivity is the spirit of worship, and that “entertainment” is ultimately an artificial, contrived, and empty effort to achieve festivity. (25 minutes)
  • Unmasking claims of “secular neutrality” — Lesslie Newbigin on the Church’s prophetic duty concerning public life
  • The kingdom of God has public consequences — Lesslie Newbigin on the subversiveness of the Church’s message to the world
  • Forms as portals to reality — Ken Myers explains the ancient classical and Christian view that music embodies an order and forms that correspond to the whole of created reality, in its transcendence and materiality. (54 minutes)
  • Sports in America —
    FROM VOL. 21
    Robert Higgs looks at the history of sports in American experience and at how organized religion has interacted with that history. (12 minutes)
  • Creation’s goodness and human faithfulness — J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael R. Stevens on Wendell Berry’s understanding of how Creation is a gift with certain givenness
  • Farming and our primal vocation — Shawn and Beth Dougherty make a theological case for biomimicry, or fulfilling our original vocation of tending the earth by working according to the nature of Nature. (68 minutes)
  • A theology of eating —
    FROM VOL. 113
    Theologian Norman Wirzba examines the relationship between food and faith. (24 minutes)
  • Honoring the pigness of pigs —
    FROM VOL. 137
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  • An account of God’s relatedness to time and space — Colin Gunton on the trinitarian conception of the divine economy in St. Irenaeus
  • 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)
  • Divorcing the spirit of the age — Thomas C. Oden on overcoming the theological faddism of the late twentieth century
  • Developing a Christian aesthetic — In the inaugural lecture for the Eliot Society, titled “Faithful Imaginations in a Meaningful Creation,” Ken Myers addresses the question of the relationship between the arts and the Church. (59 minutes)
  • Creation as beauty and gift —
    FROM VOL. 67
    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)
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  • 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)
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  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 161 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Wilson, Kyle Edward Williams, Andrew James Spencer, Landon Loftin, Esther Lightcap Meek, Andrew Davison
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    FROM VOL. 150
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    FROM VOL. 108
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  • 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)
  • Eternal seeds, temporal fruit — Henri de Lubac on how the Church should (and shouldn’t) make a difference in the world
  • 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)
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  • 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)
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  • 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)
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  • 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)
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  • In Him we have our being — E. L. Mascall on the meaning of creation
  • Not just a counterculture — Peter J. Leithart on the public (and prophetic) mission of the Church
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