Middleton on the Empty Temple

Posted on September 10, 2014 by J Richard Middleton

This is a post by Jon Garvey on his blog called The Hump of the Camel, where he interacts with a recent post of mine on humans as God’s image. In that post I argued that God’s intends humanity to be the locus of divine presence in the temple of creation. The Hump of the Camel is a fascinating website that addresses questions of theology and science, especially in the area of origins. In the course of his post Jon asks a number of questions for clarification. I will shortly post my answers to his questions.

Those helpful chaps at Academia.edu alerted me recently to an interesting piece by J Richard Middleton. Richard has commented here, and is one of the scholars doing good work on the science-faith interface. He’s written a book, Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (which unfortunately is still on my “to-read” list) on the image of God, and this new article updates and extends that thesis.

He notes that the idea, which I’ve discussed here quite often, that the image of God in man implies the ANE concept of a royal image that manifests the presence of a king (cf Daniel 3), is in fact now the dominant opinion of OT scholars. That’s significant, because it gets relatively little mention in origins discussions at, for example, BioLogos, where biological attributes like intelligence still guide the thinking, perhaps because of BL’s bias towards a scientific mindset.

Richard has, since the publication of his book, increasingly stressed the ANE ritual equivalent of that concept, namely the way in which the image of a god in a temple manifests the presence of the Deity. This, too, is encouragingly consistent with the line I’ve taken here, based on the work of John Walton and G K Beale, especially. It resonates well with the “cosmic temple” approach I’ve taken to the Genesis creation story in particular, and the biblical concept of creation in general, most recently in my waving a cautious flag for one of the less influential patristic writers on cosmology, Cosmas Indicopneustes. Richard too integrates his concept of the imago dei with the temple imagery used throughout Scripture.

I am very comfortable with the way his thought has developed, and intrigued by one new insight. That is his observation that, whilst in the Old Testament’s coverage of temple/tabernacle themes the concept of God’s glory (Heb. kabod) filling the sacred space is a recurrent motif (eg Ex 40.34-35, 2 Chron. 5.13-14, Rev 15.8), the Genesis 1 creation account, in which the cosmic temple is inaugurated, lacks any reference to God’s glory coming to dwell in it.

As you’ll read in his article, he links this fact to the Genesis 2 story of Eden, in which God later comes to dwell with his “authorised image”, Adam, in the sacred space of the garden:

When read against this ancient Near Eastern background, Genesis 1 and 2 are in profound harmony with each other, despite their genuine differences. In both texts humanity is understood as the authorized cult statue in the cosmic temple, the decisive locus of divine presence on earth. This understanding of the human role means that God never intended his presence to fill the cosmic temple automatically. That is precisely the vocation of humanity, the bearer of the divine presence.

The human race was created to extend the presence of God from heaven (the cosmic holy of holies) to earth (the holy place) until the earth is filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (combining Numbers 14:21; Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14); or, to use Pauline language, when God will be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28).

This first expression of the “glory” theme comes through the breathing of God’s own breath (Heb ruach) into his earthly human creation. Remember how in my discussion of Athanasius’s concept of the creation of man, it was in his view the very life of the Son, as Logos and presumably as “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact image of his being” (Heb 1.3), that was breathed into man. “Image” and “glory” certainly appear to be linked by this.

Richard’s insight integrates with such ideas wonderfully, providing an interpretive framework for the entire biblical revelation. We can see the image damaged by the Fall, and restored in the salvation history culminating in Christ himself. The idea is present at the various stages along the way, in response to the faith of Abraham, Moses, or Israel, or Solomon, as God’s “glorious presence” (known to later Judaism as shekinah), in the burning bush or on Sinai, in the tabernacle and in the temple. In Christ, the Church becomes the bearer of God’s glory, helping to achieve what Adam failed to do, by their lives and cultural impact on the world.

This glory theme is, ultimately, eschatological (as Richard spells out), its final fulfilment coming in the “fusion” of heaven and earth illustrated in Revelation as the New Jerusalem (a concept encompassing both people and communal culture) coming down from God, and his eternal dwelling with redeemed mankind. Thus the creation of Genesis 1 is only finally completed by Revelation 22.

What I find most exciting in this idea is that it makes the transformation of the cosmos, the change into something beyond the merely physical (Romans 8.18-22), part of what was planned in the original creation. It gives weight to the suggestion that the role originally intended for Adam’s line was the completion of creation by bearing God’s shekinah into every part of it.

Now, two points for discussion occur to me in this. The first is to ask whether the author of the Pentateuch could really have seen things this way? Was he really implying that God’s resting on the seventh day, without overtly filling his creation, is a significant foundation to the rest of the Pentateuch and the biblical story? If not, it would seem to be reading a unifying biblical theology into an fortuitously omitted detail of one stand-alone creation myth.

I’m helped here by my recent reading of John Sailhamer’s work on the authorial intent of the Pentateuch. His overall thesis is that the Pentateuch, both in its original and final forms, was already fully committed to a Messianic and universalist understanding of the covenant, responding to the historical failure of Israel’s relationship to God through the Law. There are many good indications that the coming of God’s glory to dwell in Israel’s tabernacle, through their faithful obedience, was from the start seen as just one step of a process that would finally involve all of humanity and, indeed, the whole cosmos.

If we concentrate on the “glory” theme, one Pentateuchal passage provides a clue that the author of the Pentateuch did have such a view. Nu. 14 is a “compositional seam” (Sailhamer) of the Pentateuch, in which Israel’s rebellion threatens the whole covenant. Moses’s intercession is seen as pivotal in God’s not casting off Israel altogether. Vv20-22 say:

So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word; but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. (NASV)

The implication is that the earth is not yet filled with God’s glory, but that this is his firm intention whatever the outcome for Israel. NIV and some others translate a present tense here, but that would make v21 almost unique amongst a number of prophetic parallels that speak of the coming of God’s glory eschatologically.

There are a couple of passages that seem to paint a different picture. I don’t think they negate Richard’s analysis, but I’d quite like to hear his comments on them (if you’re around, Richard?). The first is the vision of Isaiah in ch6, in which the prophet has an experience of God’s shekinah in the temple, and the seraphim call:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The second is the vision of Ezekiel, in which God’s “chariot”, a kind of mobile temple in which God is seen in “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” I take it this vision was, at least in part, to show Ezekiel that God’s presence, influence and glory was not restricted to the distant and doomed Jerusalem temple but covered the whole earth. How, though, do these two passages fit the “future glory” theme?

This brings me to my second point for discussion, and that is the relationship of this “delayed glory” to the present natural creation, which does not appear to have been stressed in Richard’s article but would be, I’m sure, of relevance to his research interests as well as The Hump’s concerns. I’ve hitherto taken the sabbath rest of Day 7 of creation in Genesis 2.1-3, following John Walton, to imply God’s taking up divine residence in his temple, governing it for the good of mankind, for its own blessing and for his own glory. Apart from anything else, that treatment makes good sense of the Bible’s scattered but important teaching on “sabbath”.

Clearly, if Richard is right in saying that God’s glory was (and is) yet to fill the earth, some adjustment to my understanding is necessary. But “glory” aside, the whole biblical teaching on creation is one of God’s intimate involvement, which temple imagery represents very well. Heaven may be God’s throne, but earth remains his footstool, and all that is in it remains ontologically dependent on him, not simply an artifact of one initial burst of creative activity now governed purely by lawlike secondary causes (see my last article here).

The content of the temple and image themes Richard Middleton has brought to life is so rich that I’m convinced it’s valid, and especially in the way it unites salvation and creation – surely highly relevant to the origins question in which “natural science” and “supernatural religion” are often kept absurdly apart. It’s so rich that I have no doubt it has room for both the transcendence and immanence of God in nature. In one comment under the Patheos posting of his article Richard mentions that it is the dwelling of God in heaven that allows for his immanence in the world – but I’d like to hear more about how that works and, in particular how it relates to the Bible’s pervasive temple imagery.

It surely can’t be the case that the cosmos is altogether empty of God apart from the Church, though it is manifestly the case that we look forward to a time when it is full of him in a new way.

Click here if you want to see this post in its original context, with comments and discussion.

In the above post, Jon Garvey raises some important interpretive questions; I have responded to these questions in a follow-up post.

Further Thoughts on the Imago Dei: After The Liberating Image

Posted on August 5, 2014 by J Richard Middleton

A blogger on the Jesus Creed website who goes by the initials RJS recently posted a series on my book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. This is my guest post response, in which I describe how my thinking on the imago Dei has developed since the book was published. It is posted at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/08/05/richard-middleton-after-the-liberating-image-rjs/

Blogger Jon Garvey responded positively to this post here and raised some interpretive questions, which I then answered here.

Richard Middleton: After The Liberating Image.

I’m honored that RJS has posted a nine-part series on my book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Brazos, 2005). The exposition and analysis of my argument in these posts has been totally accurate (something I have only rarely found in book reviews). In this post I am responding to RJS’s invitation to share some of my more recent thoughts on the topic of the imago Dei.

My Purpose in The Liberating Image

In The Liberating Image I was primarily concerned to bridge the gap between Old Testament studies and systematic theology on the topic of the imago Dei. So I took pains to justify a royal-functional interpretation of the image (the mainstream view among Old Testament scholars), the view that humans are God’s royal representatives on earth, charged with manifesting his rule through the range of their cultural activities. I attempted to do this by interpreting Genesis 1:26-28 in its immediate literary context (Genesis 1:1-2:3), in the wider symbolic world of the Old Testament, and against the background of ancient Near Eastern (especially Mesopotamian) royal ideology and creation myths. And I tried to show that this interpretation made sense of Genesis 1-11 as a coherent narrative meant to shape the worldview of ancient Israel (and, by implication, the church today). To that end I addressed some of the ethical implications of the imago Dei especially concerning the legitimation of violence.

Topics Omitted from The Liberating Image

There was, of course, much more that could be said. I had originally planned to include an analysis of the critique of idolatry and monarchy in the Old Testament prophets, and I had wanted to address Jesus as imago Dei, the renewal of image in the church, and the fulfillment of the imago Dei in the eschaton. This ended up being beyond the scope of the book.

I had, however, touched on some of those topics earlier—in The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View (a 1984 book co-authored with Brian Walsh) and in “The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago Dei in Context” (a 1994 article in Christian Scholar’s Review).

My Recent Writing on the Imago Dei

Since writing The Liberating Image, I have developed my ideas further about the meaning of the imago Dei. I wrote a short piece on “Image of God” for the Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics (Baker Academic, 2011) and a slightly longer piece for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). But I’ve also been working on a new book entitled A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Baker Academic, 2014). Although the topic of this book is God’s desire to redeem this world, rather than taking us out of it to “heaven,” my latest thinking on the imago Dei is central to the book’s argument.

A New Focus to My Exposition of the Topic

In these recent writings, as in my current teaching on the subject (in courses on the biblical worldview), I have nuanced my presentation beyond what is found in The Liberating Image, and have begun to highlight what we might call the cultic-priestly (or sacramental) dimension of the royal-functional interpretation of the image. This dimension of the imago Dei was mentioned in The Liberating Image at various points (especially in chapters 2 and 3), but is now central to my exposition. I typically begin with creation as a cosmic temple and God’s intent to fill the cosmos with his presence or glory (which Jewish writers later called the Shekinah); this eschatological filling is anticipated in the wilderness tabernacle (Exodus 40:34-35) and the Jerusalem temple (1 Kings 8:10-11; 2 Chronicles 7:1-3), which were both filled with God’s glory upon completion.

I have come to see that temple theology (and humanity as God’s image in the cosmic temple) is an important way of developing a biblical theology that unifies both Old and New Testaments.

The Conceptual Unity of Genesis 1 and 2

Although the Spirit (rûaḥ) of God was hovering over the unformed earth at the start of Genesis 1, as if God were getting ready to breathe his presence into the cosmic temple of creation, when creation is complete and God rests from his work (Genesis 2), there is no mention of any filling with the divine presence. Interpreted in canonical context, this Spirit-filling is delayed until the garden narrative of Genesis 2. There God, having molded the human being from the dust of the ground, breathes his breath (nišmâ) into the inanimate creature, which results in the creature’s becoming a “living being.”

The creation of the first human in Genesis 2 reflects many aspects of a Mesopotamian ritual known as the mïs pî (the washing of the mouth) or pït pî (the opening of the mouth). Known from Assyrian and Babylonian writings, this ritual typically took place in a sacred grove beside a river (see Genesis 2:10, 13-14). The purpose of the ritual was to vivify a newly carved cult statue so that it would become a living entity, imbued with the spirit and presence of the god of which it was an image. The image was thus transformed from an inert object to a living, breathing, manifestation of the deity on earth.

It was God’s purpose, from the beginning, to bring the cosmic temple to its intended destiny by human agency, in cooperation with God. So humans (as image of God) were to fill the earth with descendants (Genesis 1:28) who would represent God’s rule in their cultural pursuits and flourish in accordance with God’s wisdom. The human race was created to extend the presence of God from heaven (the cosmic holy of holies) to earth (the holy place) until the earth is filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (combining Numbers 14:21; Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14); or, to use Pauline language, when God will be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28).

The Imago Dei after Sin

Humans, however, have filled the earth not simply with their descendants but also with violence (Genesis 6:11 is an ironic comment on Genesis 1:28). And whereas in the beginning God looked at all he had made and saw that it was “very good” (Genesis 1:31), God later sees that the “evil” of humanity has become “great” on the earth (Genesis 6:5). These ironic statements follow from God’s earlier assessment that humans, created to be God’s image, had indeed become “like one of us” (Genesis 3:22)—though not in the appropriate sense.

From this point on, Scripture tells a story of God’s purposes for the restoration of flourishing in earthly life in tension with the human propensity to misuse the vocation of imago Dei (which clearly continues after sin; see Genesis 5:1 and 9:6).

Since violence has impeded the human calling to be God’s image on earth, the Bible narrates God’s intervention in history to set things right, initially through the election of Abraham and his descendants as a “royal priesthood” (Exodus 19:6) to mediate blessing to all families and nations (Genesis 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14). Israel’s vocation vis-à-vis the nations is analogous to the human calling as imago Dei vis-à-vis the earth. And the redemption of Israel constitutes the beginning of God’s renewal of the image, a process meant to spread to the entire human race.

The Imago Dei and Idolatry

One aspect of human sin is idolatry (the construction and worship of false images of the divine). It is significant that Israel, as representative of humanity, is portrayed in Ezekiel as God’s true image in the world, in contrast to idols. Much of the language in Ezekiel 16 describing Israel’s turn to idols (see verses 15-19) is first used by God to portray his relationship to Israel; he washes them, clothes them, and adorns them with gold and silver (Ezekiel 16:8-14). Israel (like humanity, generally) is God’s own cult statue in the world.

The imago Dei theme recurs in Isaiah 40-55; where the presence of God’s Spirit (rûaḥ) on the servant of the LORD enables him to accomplish justice for the nations (Isaiah 42:1-4). This is in contrast to the images of the nations, which are “empty wind” (rûaḥ vatohû), according to Isaiah 41:29. But God gives “breath” (nišmâ) and “spirit” (rûaḥ) to humanity (Isaiah 42:5). This contrast between idols and humans in Isaiah echoes the statement in other prophetic texts that the images of the nations are false precisely because they have no rûaḥ in them (Jeremiah 10:14; 51:17; Habakkuk 2:19). Unlike humans, idols are not living images and have no power to act in the world (Psalm 115:4-8).

Incarnation and Imago Dei

A cultic-priestly understanding of the imago Dei not only clarifies the human vocation, both in its created dignity and in its tragic corruption, it also provides a basis for understanding the New Testament claim that Jesus is God-with-us (Matthew 1:22-23), the Word made flesh (John 1:14), the paradigmatic imago Dei (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3; 2 Corinthians 4:4-6). Humans as God’s image had failed in their priestly vocation to be the bond between heaven and earth. This vocation was faithfully fulfilled by Jesus, the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22, 25), the one who completely manifested God’s character and presence in his life (John 14:9). Through the obedience of Jesus, even to death on a cross, humanity’s tragic failure has been reversed (Romans 5:17-19); and those who share in Christ’s death will also share in his resurrection and rule (2 Timothy 2:11-12a).

The Church as Imago Dei and Temple

A cultic-priestly interpretation of the imago Dei also grounds the Pauline notion that the risen Jesus has become the head of an international community of Jew and Gentile, indwelt by God’s Spirit. The church is thus the “new humanity” (a better translation than the “new self” found in most modern translations), renewed in the image of God (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:9-10) and called to live up to the stature of Christ, whose perfect imaging becomes the model for the life of the redeemed (Philippians 2:5; Ephesians 4:13-16, 24; 5:1-2; Colossians 3:13). Indeed, the church will one day be conformed to the full likeness of Christ (1 John 3:2), which will include the resurrection of the body (1 Corinthians 15:49).

The Imago Dei in the Eschaton

Whereas the church is presently God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:21) indwelt by the Holy Spirit as a foretaste of the promised future, the day will come when the curse is removed from the earth (a reversal of Genesis 3:17). Then God’s dwelling will no longer be confined to heaven. Instead, God’s throne will permanently be established on a renewed earth (Revelation 21:3; 22:3), and those ransomed by Christ from all tribes and nations will reign as priests forever (Revelation 5:9-10; 22:5). This climactic fulfillment of the imago Dei is portrayed by the New Jerusalem, which (paradoxically) is both redeemed people and holy city (that is, the renewal of humanity in all their concrete, cultural—even urban—reality). Furthermore, the city is described as a cube (Revelation 21:16), which is the distinctive shape of the holy of holies in the Jerusalem temple (1 Kings 6:20; Ezekiel 41:4). Thus the city-as-people is the center of God’s presence in a renewed cosmos.

While there is much more that could be said on this topic, the cultic-priestly understanding of the imago Dei provides an interpretive lens that unifies the entire canonical story from creation to eschaton; and it can shape our understanding of the church’s mission as we live between the times.

If you want to respond to this post you can post comments here or you can add your comments to those already posted at the Jesus Creed website: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/08/05/richard-middleton-after-the-liberating-image-rjs/

For Jon Garvey’s response to this post click here; for my answer to his questions, click here.

A Bunch of “Shout Outs” from Wright: The Tom Wright Connection, Part 3

Posted on April 21, 2014 by J Richard Middleton

This is part 3 of a four-part post on my connections to N. T. Wright, the prolific New Testament scholar. For part 1, click here. For part 2, click here.

A Bunch of “Shout Outs” by Wright

Back in 1992, before Wright had achieved his present international stature, Brian Walsh and I were already excited by his work and quite taken with his newly-released The New Testament and the People of God, which he conceived as the first volume of a project entitled “Christian Origins and the Question of God.” We were therefore honored that Wright used our four worldview questions from The Transforming Vision as a tool for his analysis of first-century Judaism in that book (pp. 122-23). Brian is also mentioned in the preface, where Wright thanks him for his extensive feedback on the manuscript (p. xix).

We repaid the honor when we used Wright’s conception of the biblical story as a five-act drama (and added a sixth act) in the last chapter of our book Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be (1995). In fact, our book is indebted to Wright’s ideas at numerous points. Wright then wrote an appreciative blurb for the cover of the British edition of the Truth is Stranger book (published by SPCK).

With the second volume in Wright’s project, Jesus and the Victory of God (1996), he again thanked Brian (also p. xix). This time Wright added a fifth worldview question (p. 138, n. 41) and used the five questions to structure an entire chapter (chap. 10: “The Questions of the Kingdom,” pp. 443-74).

More recently, in the fourth and final volume (which is itself two volumes!), Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013), Wright once more acknowledged his debt to the Walsh-Middleton analysis of worldviews (pp. 27-28).

I know this sounds like boasting; but I’m only just getting warmed up.

It was 1992 (or possibly 1993), soon after The New Testament and the People of God had been published. Brian Walsh and I were attending the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). It was lunchtime and we were wondering around one of the big hotels that hosted the SBL meetings. We spotted Tom Wright giving a lecture to a group of scholars seated at tables having lunch. He looked up, interrupted his lecture, and called out: “There are my friends Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton!” Then he went back to his lecture. I was stunned.

Some years later at another SBL meeting (2009, New Orleans), Wright was giving an evening lecture on his new Justification book to a group of about 700 (the hall was packed). I was sitting beside Keith Bodner, an Old Testament scholar from Crandall University in New Brunswick. I had given a paper that afternoon on the role of humanity in Psalms 8 and 104 (plus another paper the previous day in a session Bodner chaired). I was beginning to relax, now that my “duties” were over. To my surprise, near the start of the lecture Wright made mention of my Psalms paper that afternoon and said he would like to have heard it since he was sure it would have been as helpful as my analysis of the imago Dei in The Liberating Image. At that point, Bodner leaned over incredulously and said: “You got a shout out from Tom Wright!?”

But I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. I had come to know Tom Wright as a generous person, who invests his time and energy in the building up of others. This goes well beyond his prodigious writing and speaking. After all, he had accepted my invitation to have dinner with a dozen of my past and current students the previous year, at the 2008 SBL in Boston. He and Maggie graciously spent an evening with our group, eating Italian food and engaging in stimulating and heart-felt conversations about Scripture, theology, and the church.