Tag Archives: Jamaica Theological Seminary

The Bible’s Best Kept Secret

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I remember once, on a climbing trip to Blue Mountain Peak, the highest point on the island of Jamaica, watching a breathtaking sunrise at seven and a half thousand feet above sea level. After some minutes of silence, my friend Junior commented wistfully, “This is so beautiful; it’s such a shame that it will all be destroyed some day.” I still remember the dawning awareness: I don’t think it will be. It did not make sense to me that the beauty and wonder of earthly life, which I was coming to embrace joyfully as part of my growing Christian faith, could be disconnected from God’s ultimate purposes of salvation.

Tracking a Worldview Shift

This basic intuition or theological insight was confirmed by my study of Scripture during my undergraduate studies at Jamaica Theological Seminary.

Most contemporary Christians tend to live with an unresolved tension between a belief in the resurrection of the body and an immaterial heaven as final destiny. Many also have in the back of their minds the idea of the new heaven and new earth (from the book of Revelation), though they aren’t quite sure what to do with it.

I myself started my theological studies with this very confusion. But as I took courses in both Old and New Testaments, and tried to understand the nature of God’s salvation as portrayed in the various biblical writings, it became increasingly clear that the God who created the world “very good” (Genesis 1:31), and who became incarnate in Jesus Christ as a real human being, had affirmed by these very acts the value of the material universe and the validity of ordinary, earthly life.

More than that, I came to realize that the Scriptures explicitly teach that God is committed to reclaiming creation (human and non-human) in order to bring it to its authentic and glorious destiny, a destiny that human sin had blocked.

It was especially the writings of New Testament scholar George Eldon Ladd who most helpfully clarified for me the interconnectedness of what the Bible taught on the redemption of creation, and he explicitly contrasted this teaching with the unbiblical idea of being taken out of this world to heaven. Ladd’s work on biblical theology prompted me to do my own investigation of the theme of the kingdom of God in the Bible in relation to what we euphemistically call the “afterlife,” to see what role there was for heaven and/or earth in God’s ultimate purposes.

As a result of this investigation, while still an undergraduate student, I came to the startling realization that the Bible nowhere claims that “heaven” is the final home of the redeemed. While there are many New Testament texts that Christians often read as if they teach a heavenly destiny, the texts do not actually say this. Rather, the Bible consistently anticipates the redemption of the entire created order, a motif that fits very well with the Christian hope of the resurrection—which Paul calls “the redemption of the body” (Romans 8:23).

It was after this startling realization that I first challenged an adult Sunday School class I was teaching at Grace Missionary Church (my home church in Jamaica) to find even one passage in the New Testament that clearly said that Christians would live in heaven forever or that heaven was the final home of the righteous. I even offered a monetary reward if anyone could find such a text. I have been making this offer now for my entire adult life to church and campus ministry study groups and in many of the courses I have taught (in Canada, the U.S., and Jamaica); I am happy to report that I still have all my money. No one has ever produced such a text, because there simply aren’t any in the Bible.

 The Bible’s Vision of Cosmic Redemption

Central to the way the New Testament conceives the final destiny of the world is Jesus’ prediction (in Matthew 19:28) of a “regeneration” (KJV, NIV) that is coming; Matthew here uses the Greek word palingenesia, which both TNIV and NRSV translate as “the renewal of all things,” correctly getting at the sense of cosmic expectation in Jesus’ prediction.

Likewise, we have Peter’s explicit proclamation of the “restoration [apokatástasis] of all things” (in Acts 3:21), which does in fact contain the Greek for “all things.”

When we turn to the epistles, we find God’s intent to reconcile “all things” to himself through Christ articulated in Colossians 1:20, while Ephesians 1:20 speaks of God’s desire to unify or bring together “all things” in Christ. In these two Pauline texts, the phrase “all things” (tà pánta) is immediately specified as things in heaven and things on earth. Since “heaven and earth” is precisely how Genesis 1:1 describes the world God created, this New Testament language designates a vision of cosmic redemption.

This cosmic vision underlies the phrase “a new heaven and a new earth” found in both Revelation 21:1 and 2 Peter 3:13. The specific origin of the phrase, however, is the prophetic oracle of Isaiah 65:17 (and 66:22), which envisions a healed world with a redeemed community in rebuilt Jerusalem, where life is restored to flourishing and shalom after the devastation of the Babylonian exile. The this-worldly prophetic expectation in Isaiah is universalized to the entire cosmos and human society generally in late Second Temple Judaism and in the New Testament.

This holistic vision of God’s intent to renew or redeem creation is perhaps the Bible’s best-kept secret, typically unknown to most church members and even to many clergy, no matter what their theological stripe.

The Logic of Redemption in the Bible

While this is not the place for a full exposition of the biblical teaching about the redemption of the cosmos, some clarification may be in order. It is particularly helpful to trace the roots of the New Testament vision in the Old Testament, in order to understand the inner logic of the idea.

A good starting point is that the Old Testament does not place any substantial hope in the afterlife; the dead do not have access to God in the grave or Sheol. Rather, God’s purposes for blessing and shalom are expected for the faithful in this life, in the midst of history. This perspective is grounded, theologically, in the biblical teaching about the goodness of creation, including earthly existence. God pronounced all creation (including materiality) good—indeed “very good” (Genesis 1:31)—and gave humanity the task to rule and develop this world as stewards made in the divine image (Genesis 1:26-28; Genesis 2:15; Psalm 8:5-8).

The affirmation of earthly life is further articulated in the central and paradigmatic act of God’s salvation in the Old Testament, the exodus from Egyptian bondage. Not only does Israel’s memory of this event testify to a God who intervenes in history in response to injustice and suffering, but the exodus is manifestly a case of sociopolitical deliverance, whose fulfillment is attained when the redeemed are settled in a bountiful land and are restored to wholeness and flourishing as a community living according to God’s Torah.

Indeed, the entire Old Testament reveals an interest in mundane matters such as the development of languages and cultures, the fertility of land and crops, the birth of children and stable family life, justice among neighbors, and peace in international relations. The Old Testament does not spiritualize salvation but understands it as God’s deliverance of people and land from all that destroys life and the consequent restoration of people and land to flourishing. And while God’s salvific purpose narrows for a while to one elect nation in their own land, this “initially exclusive move” is, as Old Testament scholar Terence Fretheim puts it, in the service of “a maximally inclusive end,” the redemption of all nations and ultimately the entire created order.

Although the Old Testament initially did not envision any sort of positive afterlife, things begin to shift in some late texts. Thus in Ezekiel’s famous vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37) the restoration of Israel is portrayed using the metaphor of resurrection, after the “death” they suffered in Babylonian exile. But this is arguably still a metaphor, not an expectation of what we would call resurrection.

Then, a proto-apocalyptic text like Isaiah 25:6-8 envisions the literal conquest of death itself at the messianic banquet on Mt. Zion (where God will serve the redeemed the best meat and the most aged wines); this text anticipates the day when YHWH will “swallow up death forever” (cited in 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54) and “wipe away all tears” (echoed in Revelation 21:4).

But the most explicit Old Testament text on the topic of resurrection is the apocalyptic vision of Daniel 12:2-3, which promises that faithful martyrs will awaken from the dust of the earth (to which we all return at death, according to Genesis 3:19) to attain “eternal life.”

It is important to note that this developing vision of the afterlife has nothing to do with “heaven hereafter”; the expectation is manifestly this-worldly, meant to guarantee for the faithful the earthly promises of shalom that death had cut short.

The Wisdom of Solomon, chapter 3 is particularly helpful here. This text (which is in the Septuagint, though not in the Protestant canon) specifically associates “immortality” with reigning on earth (Wisdom 3:1-9, esp. 7-8); that is, resurrection is a reversal of the earthly situation of oppression (the domination of the righteous martyrs by the wicked, which led to their death) and thus is the fulfillment of the original human dignity and status in Genesis 1:26-28 and Psalm 8:4-8, where humans are granted rule of the earth.

These ancient Jewish expectations provide a coherent theological background for Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God, which he construed as “good news” for the poor and release for captives (Luke 4), and which he embodied in healings, exorcisms, and the forgiveness of sins (all ways in which the distortion of life was being reversed).

These expectations also make sense of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that the meek would “inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5) and later in Matthew that “at the renewal of all things” the disciples would reign and judge with him on thrones (Matthew 19:27-30).

Paul’s description of Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead as the “firstfruits” of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20) signifies that the harvest of new creation has begun, the expected reversal of sin and death is inaugurated. This reversal would be consummated when Christ returns in glory climactically to defeat evil and all that opposes God’s intent for life and shalom on earth (1 Corinthians 15:24-28). Then, in the words of Revelation 11, “the kingdom of the world [will] become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah” (Revelation 11:15). At that time, explains Paul, creation itself, which has been groaning in its bondage to decay, will be liberated from this bondage into the same glory God’s children will experience (Romans 8:19-22).

The inner logic of this vision of holistic salvation is that the creator has not given up on creation, but is working to salvage and restore the world (human and non-human) to the fullness of shalom and flourishing intended from the beginning. And redeemed human beings, renewed in God’s image, are to work towards and embody this vision in their daily lives.

In a follow-up post (“Singing Lies in Church”) I examine how the hymns of the church have contributed to an other-worldly hope.

Creation to Eschaton—And the Kitchen Sink?

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You may be wondering about the title I’ve chosen for this website, “Creation to Eschaton.” Or, to put it in ordinary English, “Beginning to End.” What sort of topics will I cover with an expansive title like that?

Woody Allen commented ironically that the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote a book about everything, called Being and Nothingness. You can’t get more comprehensive than that, he noted.

Well, I won’t be quite as comprehensive as Sartre, though my interests are pretty broad. The title I’ve given this website indicates that I’m interested particularly in theological matters of origins and endings. But I’m also interested in what comes in-between.

In the course of giving a heads-up about what sorts of topics you can expect in this blog in the weeks ahead (I expect to post about once a week), I thought I’d take the opportunity to first look back. What unites the diverse topics I’ve covered in my past research and writing? This is a question I’m often asked.

Unlike some biblical scholars who focus on one particular block of material (such as the Johannine literature, the Pauline epistles, the Pentatuch, or the Book of the Twelve), I seem to have dipped into Scripture at multiple points (and I’ve often gone beyond biblical studies per se, into theology and cultural analysis).

So I’ll try and clarify the rationale for what I’ve been doing.

Then I’ll look ahead.

Creation Theology

Much of my previous work has explored biblical creation theology, including a book on humanity created as the image of God (The Liberating Image), which is dependent on an earlier article of the same title.

Creation theology is also central to essays I’ve written on:

In all cases I’ve been interested in the ethics associated with creation theology. How might understanding God’s original intent for the world direct us to live in the present? This emphasis is found in pretty much everything I’ve written on the topic of creation, but it’s the explicit focus of a short entry on the “Image of God” that I wrote for the Baker Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics.

Eschatology

In theology, attention to endings is typically known as “eschatology” (eschaton is Greek for “end”). In contrast to creation, I’ve written only one article focused on this topic (“A New Heaven and a New Earth”), which has since become the basis of a book with the same title.

But like creation, my exploration of eschatology is driven by an ethical passion. How might understanding God’s telos or goal for the world shape our lives today?

In Scripture, the beginning corresponds to the end, a motif that German theologians have called Urzeit and Endzeit. Thus the eschaton is God’s new (redeemed) creation; it is the fruition of the Creator’s purposes from the beginning, after evil has been overcome.

Creation-to-Eschaton as a Normative Framework

I have found that the narrative arc from creation to eschaton (the biblical metanarrative or macro story) provides crucial orientation for approaching the manifold complexity of particular texts in Scripture (especially problematic texts). And by framing the meaning of human life in the present, the macro story of Scripture provides guidance for thinking about, and living in, the contemporary world.

This creation-to-eschaton framework (the biblical worldview) is central to the first book I coauthored with Brian Walsh—The Transforming Vision, though the narrative character of this worldview wasn’t fully clear to us at the time.

The narrative character of the biblical worldview became more explicit in the later book I wrote with Walsh—Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be (an attempt to contextualize biblical faith in postmodern culture)—and it is central to our stand-alone essay that articulates the core argument of that book.

The creation-to-eschaton framework is especially prominent in my forthcoming A New Heaven and a New Earth, which has a section explicitly entitled “From Creation to Eschaton.”

But, in one way or another, this framework grounds almost everything I’ve written. It would be tedious to list each case, but a recent example is the article I coauthored with Michael Gorman on “Salvation” for the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.

Evil and Suffering

My interest in the ethical implications of creation and eschaton (God’s purposes for the cosmos) has led me to reflect on the problem of evil and suffering—both in human life and in the Bible. Undoubtedly, my own life experience has lent an existential edge to these reflections.

Awareness of evil and suffering is most explicit in an essay in which I contrasted approaches to theodicy (the problem of evil) in the western theological tradition and in Scripture.

A focus on suffering is evident in an essay on Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn that Brian Walsh and I wrote, and it motivated my proposal for moving beyond a naive reading of Psalm 23 (through interaction with a Cockburn song).

The awareness of evil shaped my analysis of violence in the David and Goliath story and the abuse of power in the narrative of Samuel’s relationship to Saul; both essays anticipate a book for Eerdmans on 1 Samuel plan to work on in the future, where the focus is on human responsibility.

Concern with evil and suffering is also the basis of some shorter pieces I’ve written—on Herod in the Christmas story, on the lament psalms, and on “Violence” (for the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible). And it guides my interest in working on a new book (which is now complete) on Abraham and Job.

Caribbean Theology

One other area of interest that deserves mention is the Caribbean. I grew up in Jamaica and did my undergraduate theological studies there. In the years since, I have continued to visit family and friends and kept professional connections with Jamaica Theological Seminary (my alma mater) and the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology.

My Jamaican heritage has motivated me to explore theology from and for the Caribbean. Thus I’ve written on a spirituality of cultural resistance in the music of Bob Marley and the Wailers, and I’ve advocated the need for creation theology in Caribbean life; the latter essay appears in an anthology of works by Caribbean scholars that I edited with Garnett Roper, on behalf of Jamaica Theological Seminary.

Looking Ahead

I plan on continuing to explore topics in creation theology and eschatology and much that is in-between.

Look for blog posts on the nature of the world as a cosmic temple, on creation themes in Isaiah, and new light on humans as the image of God—especially what I’ve learned since my 2005 book on the subject.

I plan to post on various topics associated with my new book on eschatology, including:

  • why holistic eschatology (the renewal of the earth) is important for the church;
  • the meaning of “heaven” in Scripture;
  • New Testament texts that seem to contradict the renewal of the earth;
  • what the Bible intends by its description of cosmic catastrophe (including stars falling from heaven);
  • and the loss and recovery of the idea of the “new earth” in the history of Christian thinking about eschatology.

I hope to post my thoughts on various topics connected to the interpretation of Scripture, such as:

  • why I love (and hate) theological interpretation of Scripture;
  • my understanding of Abraham as morally deficient in Genesis 22;
  • the possibility that the book of Job might be an answer to Abraham;
  • the meaning of Sabbath beyond the sacred/secular split;
  • and my assumptions for studying and teaching the Bible.

Other topics I may post on include:

  • why I am neither conservative nor liberal (and loving it);
  • the best way to read an academic book;
  • and the most important questions I’ve learned to ask in my intellectual journey.

Also expect to see my responses to various articles and books I’m reading in biblical studies and theology, including works by Caribbean authors.

And one more thing—which might be just a little bit controversial (for some).

I recently joined a three-year interdisciplinary research project with nine other Christian scholars, focusing on the relationship of the evolutionary origins of humanity to the doctrine of the fall and original sin. We plan to produce a conference, then a book, on the subject.

Given that the entire research team is a bunch of orthodox, trinitatian, Nicean Christians who take both science and the Bible seriously, we’re approaching the topic in humility, but without fear.

As the only Old Testament scholar on the project, I expect to post some of my thoughts on Genesis 3 in light of hominin evolution and the origin of Homo sapiens sapiens. These posts are meant to be exploratory, preliminary to writing an extended essay on the topic.

And the kitchen sink?

Thankfully, I’ll leave that out.

Blogging—An Introvert’s Dilemma

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I’m a teacher by vocation and temperament. I love to explore ideas and share them with others.

But I’ve never blogged before. The basic reason is that I’m an introvert.

Of course, as most people now realize, introversion isn’t the same thing as shyness.

I used to be shy. I was so shy as a kid growing up in Jamaica that some of the teachers in my first school thought there was something wrong with me. Through my teenage years I was the person other teens described (if they were kind) with the phrase “silent waters run deep.”

I was so shy I had a visceral reaction if I was asked to make an announcement in my church youth group; my throat would constrict and my body would tremble.

Teaching is in my blood

Yet by seventeen I was leading Bible studies in my home church and even preaching from time to time. Yes, I was nervous to stand in front of a congregation and deliver a sermon. But if I prepared well and so had something to say (and breathed slowly at the start), I could overcome my nerves.

As an undergraduate student at Jamaica Theological Seminary, I soon found myself invited to speak at other churches throughout the island, both to youth groups and in Sunday worship.

During my undergraduate years I would often meet with fellow-students to help them figure out the class material and think through the significance of what they were learning. For my senior-year internship I requested (and was granted) two non-credit courses to teach, which were sponsored by the Seminary for the wider community.

Then in Canada during graduate school I taught multiple non-credit courses through campus ministry groups at various universities in South-Western Ontario (University of Toronto, McMaster University, University of Guelph, Brock University). When I came to study in the United States I taught similar courses in upstate New York (Syracuse University, University of Rochester, Cornell University).

I also served as teaching assistant for philosophy courses at the University of Guelph and for theology courses at Colgate Rochester Divinity School.

Throughout my graduate studies I continued to preach and lead Bible studies, and often spoke at campus ministry events at different universities, including chapels, workshops, retreats, and camps in Canada and the U.S.

The upshot is that long before I ever taught my first official credit course as an adjunct lecturer (at Redeemer University College, in Hamilton, Ontario), I knew that teaching was in my blood.

Teaching and learning intertwined

While working on my PhD at the Institute for Christian Studies (Toronto), I taught graduate courses in the Masters program (nine in all). By this time it was simply inconceivable that I not teach. Teaching and learning had become inextricably intertwined for me.

The synergy of teaching and learning continued after I got my first full-time teaching job at Colgate Rochester Divinity School (now Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School).

During my graduate teaching at Colgate, followed by teaching mostly undergraduates at Roberts Wesleyan College, and now back to graduate students at Northeastern Seminary, I have found that the discipline of interacting with others around important ideas and texts has shaped and honed my own learning profoundly.

A great deal of my motivation (and delight) as a teacher comes from seeing students rise to the challenge and join me on the journey of exploration that I’ve invited them on.

But blogging is different

But teaching is one thing. Blogging is quite another.

For years friends and colleagues have encouraged me to blog. Now my Seminary has encouraged me to set up a blogging site.

But its hard to blog when you’re an introvert.

Today I am no longer shy (how that change happened is a story for another time). I haven’t been shy for a while.

But I am (as I always have been) definitely an introvert on the Myers Briggs scale.

This means that I need lots of private, solitary time to thrive.

Introverts need time to recharge their batteries between times when they’re with people.

So I tend to lay low for as long as I can, and only surface for connection with people when needed. This connection includes more than just teaching courses; there are meetings with students outside of class, there are faculty and committee meetings, and sometimes just having a cup of coffee with a colleague or friend.

Truth be told, I love people and get a lot out of social interaction.

But it also takes a lot out of me. I find spending time even with good friends leaves me needing solitude so I can be recharged emotionally.

But blogging—that puts you in public view all the time. And you have to be constantly sharing bits of yourself. And I’m a very private person.

How I came to blog

I’m not sure I can do this. That’s what I told the friends and colleagues who have been challenging me to join the human race (a.k.a enter the Blogosphere).

But they kept encouraging me: You don’t have to expose your every thought. You can post your reflections at discrete (and discreet) intervals.

And you can keep the blogs short.

Which sounds good, since it means that I don’t have to spend too much time blogging. But which might be a problem, since once I get hold of an idea, I tend to have a bit of a go at it (hence the length of this first blog).

Alright, I said; I’m willing to try. After all, I do have things to say, ideas to explore.

Just so long as no-one expects me to tweet too.

Oh, didn’t we mention that?

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My next post will explain the name of this website and what sorts of posts you can expect.