Serving the soil for the glory of God

1. God as creator has absolute sovereignty over the environment. We must use it only in accordance with His will; and we shall answer, collectively as well as individually, for all our decisions in this area.

2. Theologically, the primary function of the Creation is to serve as a revelation of God. To spoil the Creation is to disable it from performing this function.

3. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition there is an intimate link between man and the soil. He is taken from the ground; his food is derived from it; he is command to till and to keep it; and he returns to it. This implies a psychological as well as theological bond. Although such facts should not be used to endorse naked territorialism, they do raise the consideration that rape of the environment is rape of the community itself.

4. The precise responsibility of man to his environment is defined very precisely in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

4.1 Man has to 'keep' it (Genesis 2.15). This is not simply an insistence on conservation. It designates man as guardian and protector of the ground.

4.2 Man is the servant of the ground (Genesis 2.15). This is the usual meaning of the Hebrew word popularly rendered to us as to till. Christian theology has largely failed to recognise this emphasis. Any insistence on the more widely perceived notion of man's dominion (Genesis 1.28) must be balanced by the less familiar but equally important concept of man as servant. [...]

6. Man's relationship with his environment has been disrupted by the Fall. One primary symptom of this is that he is always tempted to allow economic considerations to override ecological ones.

- Donald Macleod, excerpt of testimony to Harris superquarry public inquiry,
quoted in Alastair McIntosh, Soil and Soul (London: Aurum, 2001), 233-34.

This is a brief example of a theological case for our responsibility towards the earth as God's good creation. It is not attempting to be exhaustive and was for a particular polemical purpose, but I thought I'd post it as an example. Thoughts?
Image by Celia Carroll.

The Word became flesh: looking again at Jesus IV

A sermon from John 1.1-14: Part IV
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. From the start, before anything else, God is vocal. He is expressive. He relates to one other than himself, and yet one who is so intimately tied to him as we are to words we breathe out. Sometimes we can say that we are our words; when my words threaten, or promise, or apologise, I threaten, promise, apologise. This Word is God himself in action. Yet this action is happening even before there is anything made to act upon. God in himself is dynamic, is expressive, is communicative. He is relational from the start.

Now already, one verse in, we face a threat to our comfortable ideas of God. We like to think of God as beyond words, as indescribable, as so great and mysterious and other and beyond, that he is safely unknowable. But in the beginning God put himself into words, he articulates himself. He is not silent. He is not beyond speech. He is dangerously discussable.

Yet this is also generosity. We come to know someone else primarily through their words. Tim will look at this in more depth next week, but from the start, even right back in the beginning, God gives himself in his Logos, his Word. He opens himself up for relationship, for a conversation. In the beginning was the Word. We are being invited into a conversation we did not begin. We are being invited, individually, communally and as the human race, into a conversation we did not begin - a conversation with the one who made us, who made all things, who made us and all things by speaking, and now invites us to converse with him.

And here is another shock to our idea of God. God is on the front foot; he takes the initiative; he takes the first step towards us. He starts the conversation, before we were even around, in the beginning was the Word. We might sometimes think of him like the teacher in a busy classroom, whose attention can only be gained by our being either exceptionally good, or exceptionally bad. We might think of him as the distant father, working into the night in his study. If we want to talk with him, we need to gather up our courage, marshall our excuses, thicken up our skin, creep to the door and knock, hoping our interruption will not be too much of an annoyance. But no, he’s not the overstretched teacher in a chaotic classroom or the distant father locked working in the study. He starts the conversation. In the beginning was the Word – before we’ve had a chance to make up our minds, to do anything good or bad to get his attention, before we can draw breath, in the beginning was the Word. This is a gift, a free gift we couldn’t earn and which we have no right to ignore as though God were merely a unwanted phone call to offer us a new mobile deal, or a piece of spam email promising to unbelievably enlarge our wallets or body parts. What a gift: God speaks to us. Are we listening?
Fifteen points for guessing the Sydney location.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X.

The non-Barthian Barth

There is – amid the complete dissimilarity of divine and non-divine - a similarity between the eternal Word of God and the world created by this Word, but also and still more a similarity between the eternal, natural, only-begotten Son and those who are through Him God's adopted sons, who by grace are His children. In this similarity between Him and us we recognise the possibility of the revelation of God.

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, 34.

It seems here as though Barth concedes the main point of contention between himself and Emil Brunner in their debate over natural theology. Of course, Barth has just spent the last twenty or so pages arguing that it is only possible to "see" this possibility based on the prior reality of God's gracious initiative.