Tag Archives: eschatology

Earth Day in the Bible

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Today is Earth Day, when we attend to the health of our earthly environment. The first Earth Day was observed in 1970, when the environmental movement was born in the wake of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

The Original Earth Day

But there’s a sense in which Earth Day goes back to Genesis 1, when God looked at what he made and saw that it was good. We could say that was God’s “observance” of Earth Day.

But then came human sin, which brought ruin to the world. We today can understand very well how human evil can taint our earthly environment. But it’s quite an achievement for the ancient author of Genesis to understand how inextricably humans are bound to the earth.

We see the human effect on the earth when we read on in Genesis.

Take the contrast between Genesis 1 and 6. Whereas God had looked at the initial world he made and saw that it was very good (Genesis 1:31), later we are told that when God looked he saw something quite different—that human evil was great on the earth (Genesis 6:5), and that the earth had as a consequence become become corrupted or ruined (Genesis 6:12).

Later, in the New Testament, Paul can talk about not just human beings, but creation itself, groaning in bondage to futility and yearning for liberation (Romans 8). This is something we today can understand with perhaps other levels of meaning than first-century Christians could—we who live in a world of global warming, melting icecaps, toxic waste, bleaching coral reefs, and rapid species extinction due to habitat erosion.

The Pain that Plagues Creation

Just yesterday I was listening to an old song (from the eighties) by Mark Heard, called “The Pain that Plagues Creation.” It’s very appropriate for Earth Day.

Mark Heard was what we might call an alternative Christian singer/songwriter, who was not quite in the mainstream. He died young, and Bruce Cockburn wrote and recorded a song about him called “The Strong Hand of Love” for a tribute album.

Here’s a recording of “The Pain that Plagues Creation,” and you can follow along with the lyrics below.

As this planet falls around the sun
Trapping us in the orbit
Creation groans in unison
Like a race of frightened orphans

The darkness of this raging storm
Is covering up our portals
But a yearning for the light is borne
In the heart of every mortal

Day to day we ache
With the pain that plagues creation
Night to night we lie awake
And await its restoration

Heaven knows our lonely ways
Heaven knows our sorrows
And Heaven knows things that we don’t know
And the joy of eternal tomorrows

But through this glass we dimly see
This world as it was made
Oh and the good we know must surely flow
From the heart of a kind Creator

Refrain

So hold on in this restless age
And do not fear your shadow
Your alternating tears and praise
Are prayers that surely will matter

Refrain

Mark Heard, “The Pain that Plagues Creation”
From the 1983 album Eye of the Storm
© 1983 Bug ’n Bear Music

New Earth Day

Yes, there is a pain that plagues creation—both human beings and the earth and its varied lifeforms. But the Bible envisions a great change coming, an end to pain when tears will be wiped away.

In the book of Revelation, John tells us: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth” (21:1). He sees the New Jerusalem (representing the renewed community of believers) descending from heaven, and he hears a voice from the throne declaring God’s permanent dwelling with us on earth, since the curse is removed.

Then comes the amazing announcement: “Behold, I am making all things new” (21:5).

For those (ancient or modern) who know the ruined earth, its hard to take this seriously; so the voice adds: “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

Since I’m preaching this Sunday at Community of the Savior (my home church), I’m aware that Revelation 21:1-6 is one of the scheduled lectionary readings, along with Acts 11:1-18, Psalm 148, and John 13:31-35.

It isn’t exactly clear how all these texts fit together—and it isn’t every week that those who organized the lectionary intended all four assigned texts to mutually illumine each other.

But in this case I think the lectionary texts fit together remarkably well.

And that’s what I’m going to try and communicate in my sermon for this Fifth Sunday of Easter (a.k.a. Earth Day Sunday).

And for my Jewish readers this Friday afternoon, Shabbat Shalom!

___________________________

Click here for the audio of my sermon (“Enlarging Our Vision: God’s Plan for All Creation”), and click here for the written text.

 

Appointment as a Theology Fellow for BioLogos

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I’ve recently been appointed a Theological Fellow for BioLogos, along with two other theologians—Oliver Crisp (a Brit teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary) and Bethany Sollereder (a Canadian working at the University of Oxford). Given that I’m a Jamaican teaching at Northeastern Seminary in Rochester, NY, the international mix here is interesting.

BioLogos is an evangelical Christian organization founded by Dr. Francis Collins, the famed Director of the Human Genome Project. Their mission (taken from the BioLogos website) is to invite “the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation.”

Jim Stump of BioLogos

I was first approached about becoming a Theological Fellow by Jim Stump, a philosopher, who is currently the Senior Editor at BioLogos. I met Jim in the summer of 2014 at a conference sponsored by three sister organizations—the American Scientific Affiliation, the Canadian Scientific and Christian and Affiliation, and Christians in Science (UK). The conference was called “From Cosmos to Psyche: All Things Hold Together in Christ” and was held at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON.

Through my conversations with Jim, I discovered that he is from the Missionary Church, the same denomination I was a member of in Jamaica. In fact, he knew folks at Jamaica Theological Seminary, where I did my BTh degree, and he had even taught there (the Seminary is sponsored by the Missionary Church in Jamaica).

I met Jim again at three other conferences on science and faith (in Chicago, San Francisco, and Buffalo), during which Jim explained BioLogos’s need to have professional theologians engage the public on matters of science and faith. While many scientists affiliated with BioLogos had been writing articles on the BioLogos website on various issues, one of the criticisms, he explained, had been that very few were experts in theology or biblical studies.

So BioLogos decided to formally appoint some Theology Fellows, initially for 2016. You can read the BioLogos announcement here. Each of the Theology Fellows will write at least six blog articles for the BioLogos website over the course of the year or so.

My Proposed Blog Posts for BioLogos

I’m considering doing a series of posts on the overall theme of Evolution and Biblical Faith: Loving the Questions. The subtitle suggests that I may not have all the answers (in fact, I’m pretty sure that I don’t), but I want to explore what the important questions might be.

My projected articles will be on the following topics (this is just a projection; we’ll see how they actually turn out):

  • Methodology and approach – how should we think about relating the Bible and theology to contemporary science, including evolution?
  • Cosmic creation – how might we relate the Bible’s vision of the cosmos as a temple (creation as sacred space) to an expanding universe over deep time?
  • Human nature and the imago Dei – what does the Bible’s understanding of the human vocation to image God have to do with what we know of the evolution and cultural development of Homo sapiens (and other hominins)?
  • The Fall – how do we relate the story of the primal transgression in the garden to the origin of moral and religious consciousness and (un)ethical behavior in Homo sapiens?
  • Suffering, chaos, and “nature” – how does the Bible’s understanding of God’s providential activity in the natural world and human history relate to the suffering and death that seem rampant in both “nature” and history?
  • The incarnation – how does the Bible’s understanding of Christ as God-with-us, the Word made flesh, speak to the evolutionary history of the cosmos and of living species?
  • Eschatology – how should we think of the Bible’s vision of new creation, including resurrection and immortality, in relation to a finite universe characterized by entropy?

I realize that I’ve set myself a pretty big agenda. But go big or go home, right?

Update on My BioLogos Posts

I ended up writing posts on the first four of my proposed topics, as well as some other topics I hadn’t planned on doing, but that BioLogos asked me to do.

Here are the posts I actually wrote (with links):

“Why Christians Don’t Need to Be Threatened by Evolution” (2016)

“The Ancient Universe and the Cosmic Temple” (2016)

“Humans as Imago Dei and the Evolution of Homo Sapiens” (2017)

“Evolution and the Historical Fall: What Does Genesis 3 Tell Us About the Origin of Evil?” (2017)

“What Is the Relationship between the Creation Accounts in Genesis 1 and 2?” (2018)

“Why Is the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Important for Christian Faith?” (2018)

“Why Are There Multiple Accounts of Jesus’s Resurrection in the Bible?” (2018)

The Origins of BioLogos

The origins of BioLogos go back to the 2006 publication of Francis Collins’s book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, in which he argued for the compatibility of science and Christian faith, including on the question of evolution.

Collins supervised the decoding the human genome and wrote as an evangelical Christian, so a lot of people were interested to read the book. Based on its enormous popularity (it was on the New York Times bestseller list for sixteen weeks) and the flood of email questions Collins received from people in the scientific and religious communities, he started a website to address questions of science and faith. Collins then founded The BioLogos Foundation in 2007, with Karl Giberson (a physicist) as Executive Vice President and Darrel Falk (a geneticist) as Executive Director. BioLogos launched their own website in 2009.

I heard Karl Giberson lecture on “The Question of Origins” when he was the featured speaker at the 2011 Barnes Science and Christian Faith Symposium, sponsored by Northeastern Seminary and the Division of Mathematics and Science at Roberts Wesleyan College.

And I’ve had the privilege of working with Darrel Falk on a multi-year project called Re-Imagining the Intersection of Evolution and the Fall, sponsored by the Colossian Forum, where I’ve been one of ten scholars on an interdisciplinary team (led by Jamie Smith and Bill Kavanaugh). We presented our research at a conference in Chicago in 2015, and a book of essays called Evolution and the Fall, written by members of the team, will be published by Eerdmans (2017). My essay is called “Reading Genesis 3 in Light of Evolution: Beyond Concordism and Non-Overlapping Magisteria.”

It was actually this presentation at the 2015 Chicago conference that led to Jim Stump inviting me to become a BioLogos Theology Fellow; and I’ve also become a member of BioLogos Voices, available for speaking engagements with interested groups on topics related to the BioLogos mission.

 

It’s Been a Crazy Semester for Papers, Talks, and Blogging

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This has been an extremely busy semester.

I’ve been working hard on preparing various talks and lectures, and also a number of essays for publication (not to mention teaching four courses). So I’ve fallen behind in my original goal (made nearly two years ago, when I began this blog) to post something new about once per week.

I’m afraid this will be the case until the end of the semester, when I hope to complete most of this writing.

So, in the meantime, I thought I’d share a bit about what I’ve been doing, and also post some of the pieces I’ve been working on.

Holistic Eschatology

Near the end of summer I wrote a short meditation on holistic eschatology for an online newsletter for United Methodist theological students, called The Catalyst. Then in September I expanded this piece into a longer talk for the Asian-American IVCF group at Cornell University (co-sponsored with Chesterton House). Both pieces were called “To Love What God Loves: Understanding the Cosmic Scope of Redemption.”

Imago Dei and Evolution

In October I gave a lecture at Regent College (Vancouver, BC) on humanity as imago Dei in a symposium on what it means to be human in light of hominin evolution (this was part of a series of four events on evolution in relation to the imago Dei and the fall for Evangelicals and Catholics, held in different regions of Canada, organized by Paul Allen of Concordia University, Montreal). My lecture (which had three respondents) will be revised for publication (probably next year) in a volume of essays edited by Allen. An audio of the lecture is being made available by Regent College.

Creation and Fall in Genesis 2-3

Roberts Wesleyan College (where I’ve been teaching since 2002; at the seminary since 2011) is having their 150th anniversary next year, and will be producing an anthology of essays in honor of B. T. Roberts, the founder of the College. My contribution to this volume is a close reading of the Garden of Eden story in Genesis 2-3 for what it teaches us about God’s original intent for work and male-female relationships, including how these ideals are distorted by sin. I presented a short version of this paper in October at the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association conference at Tyndale College and Seminary in Toronto. The published volume should be available by Fall 2016.

Evolution and the Fall

I’ve also been working on another essay on Genesis 3, exploring how the account of the fall might be related to what we know about human evolution and the origin of evil. I gave an lecture on this topic at Roberts Wesleyan College in October 2014 and then again at a conference organized by the Colossian Forum in Chicago in March of this year. This essay will be published in 2016 by Eerdmans in an anthology entitled Re-Imagining the Intersection of Evolution and the Fall, edited by James K. A. Smith and William Cavanaugh.

This past week I presented four papers at conferences that were being held in association with the large American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) meetings in Atlanta.

Eschatology Session at the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS)

I presented an invited paper for a special session on my eschatology book at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (November 19). My paper, entitled “A New Heaven and a New Earth: For God So Loved the World,” was followed by an appreciative but critical response to the book by Greg Beale of Westminster Theological Seminary, and then by an immensely practical paper by Victor Cortez of Food for the Hungry, on “Landing the Biblical Theological Plane” of eschatology, in which he vividly showed what difference a holistic vision of the future makes for transforming people’s lives in Latin America and the Caribbean. The papers were followed by a panel discussion on the topic.

Paper on Psalm 51 for the Institute for Biblical Research (IBR)

I then presented a paper on Psalm 51 as a critique of David’s inadequate repentance, in one of the research groups of the IBR at their annual meeting (November 20). This was a precis of a longer essay I wrote for a volume sponsored by IBR called Explorations in Interdisciplinary Reading: Theological, Exegetical, and Reception-Historical Perspectives, ed. Robbie Castleman, Darian Lockett, and Stephen Presley (to be published by Pickwick Publications in 2016). A draft of the essay is available on the IBR website.

Paper on Bob Marley for the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL)

The following day (November 21) I was scheduled to give a paper on the reggae band Third World for the Islands, Islanders, and Scriptures program unit of the SBL. But due to elder care family issues, I wasn’t able to get this done. The organizers therefore allowed me to present a short version of a previous paper I had written on Bob Marley and the Wailers (complete with music clips).

Paper on Genesis 22 for the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL)

The next day (November 22), in the Genesis program unit of the SBL, I presented a paper on the Aqedah (the “binding” of Isaac) in Genesis 22. I explored a reading of the text that did not automatically take Abraham’s silent attempt to sacrifice his son as exemplary, given the normative example of lament or protest prayer in the Bible. This paper was part of my initial work on reading Genesis 22 and the book of Job in light of biblical lament prayer, which will be the topic of my research for a new book during my upcoming sabbatical (in 2016-17).

Given all the above, I haven’t got a lot of blogging done recently. Hopefully, this post will somewhat make up for that.

Future Posts

Once I finish editing the final two of the above essays, I hope to be able to turn more wholeheartedly to blogging in the new year. In fact, I’ve just been appointed a Theological Fellow for BioLogos, so you can expect a variety of posts on the Bible and evolution (among other topics) during 2016.