Re: Eschatology and The Beginning

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Miller" <kbmill@ksu.edu>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: Eschatology and The Beginning

> David Opderbeck wrote:
>
>> Still, my "spiritual DNA" is unsettled by many TE ideas in particular,
>> not so much for how they interact with various creeds and confessions
>> (being raised in an independent dispensational church, we didn't deal
>> much in confessional statements), but for how they interact with the "big
>> picture." The "creation-fall-restoration" paradigm seems like the right
>> broad outline, however one envisions the timing and details of the
>> restoration. But what is being "restored" if Adam was pretty much just a
>> regular neolithic guy living a regular neolithic life?
>
> I am not a theologian and have had no theological training, so my comments
> need to be taken in that context. I don't see a future "restoration" of a
> past state. Rather, what God is and will do is a "new" thing. The
> history of God's interaction with his creation, and with us as
> individuals, means something. It makes the future different than it
> would have been had not those particular events occurred. Our own sin
> will make that future different. Jesus still bears the marks of the
> cross.
>
> Responding to another issue discussed earlier, I believe that it is
> important theologically that the resurrection is a physical bodily
> resurrection. It may by more than physical, but it is not less. The
> physical resurrection, as well as the incarnation of the Christ, validate
> the eternal value of the physical creation. God embraced the physical
> creation that he made and took it upon himself. We are physical beings.
> We are not merely spiritual beings temporarily dressed in bodies. This
> issue is also tied with the future of the non-human creation -- which also
> has the promise of future redemption. Creation yearns for our redemption
> in which it will participate. There will be a new heavens and a new
> Earth.

I have been resist the temptation to get into what could become a very
diffuse discussion but want to endorse what Keith says here. 1st, a
Christian understanding of creation includes the belief that God intended
the universe to have a history - that time & change are parts of God's
purpose for the creation. This differs from religions whose purpose is to
provide an escape from what Eliade called "the terror of history" by having
everything eventually come back to the way it was in the beginning. The
very fact that humanity is told to "be fruitful & multiply" in Gen.1 shows
that God indended for things to change.

Resurrection is indeed the resurrection of the body - a "spiritual body" as
Paul says in I Cor.15 but a body. As Keith says, it is more than physical,
not less. If Christ is "the first fruits of them that sleep" & if his
resurrection was bodily then ours will be.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Wed Apr 19 12:17:00 2006