Yet the christian does not hope only for God, as though God’s glory were detached from the good of his creation. . God’s glory is not curved in on itself but is in his commitment to the redeeming of creation. Since the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, a christian may hope for all of God's good creation.
“In proclaiming the the resurrection of Christ, the apostles...proclaimed the renewal of creation with him.. The resurrection of mankind apart from creation would be a gospel of a sort, but of a purely gnostic and world denying sort which is far from the gospel that the apostles actually preached”
Oliver O'Donovan .
Since God’s goal is to sum all things up in Christ, and has promises of the end “Behold, I make all things new” , the christian may join the creation in groaning and hoping for it’s redemption. Nothing in the creation, human or otherwise is immune from this hope. Christian hope may not be restricted to the ‘spiritual’ or the individual.
”We must ... acknowledge that modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation. In so doing it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognise sufficiently the greatness of its task”
Benedict XVI
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3 comments:
Since the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, a christian may hope for all of God's good creation.
But what is it that we hope for God's good creation? And what is it in this life that we hope for God's good creation? I assume these and more will be answered soon. :-)
Look, my essays' not that much different to Mikes but I engage with different people (slightly) so it should helpfully continue the thoughts on hope.
I was allowed to preach my essay as a sermon last year. An interesting esperience of tightening what i thought was already a tight paper. It also made me think hard how to simplify the concepts. I enjoyed it and felt excited to preach because I really felt I glimpsed a little bit more at the breadth of God's lovw thinking what we hope for in THIS life!
Matt
@byron, assume away. I dont know that I do really answer these questions for the good creation (like I said, not that great an essay). I guess the new heavens and new earth, kingdom, shalom kind of images come to mind. The thrust of the essay is you hope for these at the end and the end can come now, even before 'the end'.
So our hope for the creation is that it would share in the peace of Jesus for his glory. What does that mean? I don't know, what does your phd say?
On a strange level, I thimk it is ok to hope that the lions in the arena will miraculously refuse to eat me, to the glory and praise of jesus.
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