Monday, September 24, 2007
creation and re:creation
What is the difference between creation and re:creation?
Is it that God starts with creation. Human sin meant that God could have decided to start again (creation again). But instead, through Jesus, God enters into re:creation. This is not a starting over, but a continuity between the old and the new.
Posted by steve at 10:19 PM
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is it re:creation or restoration? i suppose he says he does make all things new. so there is a sense of re:creation. but at the same time it seems like a going back to what should have been. my 2 cents.
peace.
Comment by joe — September 25, 2007 @ 2:41 am
I’ve wondered about this too. Isaiah is a ‘restoration’ mandate. Revelation speaks of a new creation. Tom Wright is helpful on this in “Simply Christian”, essentially saying, it is restoration unto new creation. God will create anew, out of what is being restored. In other words, what we do now, sows into the future new creation. It’s not then, either or, but both and.
Comment by Rich Johnson — September 25, 2007 @ 9:43 am
yeah, this struck me most forcibly reading romans recently, esp romans 8.
the start of romans is a bit like the pre-noah days- all have sinned. yet after the flood God promises never to destroy. so God can’t wipe it all out and start again. the response is Jesus, who Paul calls the new Adam. brilliantly creative theological move actually. Jesus as fully human is old creation. yet in resurrection, that old, fully human creation is continued. sure, shot through with stardust, but still eating, consuming body.
so this says something profound about how God deals with us. not starting over, but working with what is and what’s inside. does it say something about how we approach humans and churches?
steve
Comment by steve — September 25, 2007 @ 9:53 am
Have a think about this? Robert Alter, A professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, translates Genesis 1:1, When God began to create . . .” The word began” is key: Creation, for God, is a work in progress. How might it (re)shape a discussion on creation re-creation?
What if a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21:1) simply means completion or consummation? In other words, what if it is not a literal new heaven and a new earth (which suggests that somehow something ended to the old creation)?
Re::mix with Romans 8s metaphor of birth with Genesis 1:1 When God began to labour (through time); to bring into the full light of day his dream and longing for creation centred on Jesus, suggests to me this God-creating labour continues, and is being worked out in the midst of the everyday realities of life and living. Is it therefore helpful to talk of old and new creation in a literal sense?
Comment by Paul Fromont — September 25, 2007 @ 12:43 pm