Can
I have a "do over"? In my last blogpost, I wrote that Hall's book
didn't seem to me to have a "direct connection to my audience," so I
chose not to blog about it. Well, ... I'd like to re-consider my decision. I
will say this much, that as difficult as I found the read from a technical aspect,
very few among my audience will find the read (and cost of the book itself- $26
on Amazon... ouch!) worthwhile. So, in that sense I suppose, there isn't a
"direct connection." In addition to the technical aspects of the
book, I also listened to Hall as he brought into question the entire
interpretative process the western church has undergone for the last 2000 years
resulting in Hall's mind, in a neglect of a robust understanding of the created
order and God's purpose for it. As Hall writes near the end of his book,
"A faith that is theocentric is at the same time anthropocentric and
geocentric…. we mirror the sovereignty of the divine love in our stewardship of
earth" (p. 200). As someone who has a high view of God's providential action in history and someone who essentially "trusts" that there is much the Church has gotten "right" over the years, this was a difficult critique for me to receive at first but as I kept reading (and praying), I found some fundamental value in Hall's writing; here's one of the things I found helpful ...
I
remember a number of years ago listening to a series of tapes by R.C. Sproul on
this term "theocentric" which means "God-centered." He made
the case that evangelical people tended to be "anthropocentric"
rather than "theocentric." Anthropocentric comes from the Greek word anthropos
and means "man-centered." Sproul made the case for why, if you
listen to evangelical praise choruses, they are often written in the 1st
person, "I, me, us" rather than the 2nd and 3rd, "You, Thee, Lord."
I appreciated Sproul getting me to think more intentionally about having a
God-centered faith, rather than a man-centered faith. A few years later, I think some of my
seminary professors brought a different kind of corrective; they helped me to
see that we can become so God-centered, that we forget that there is a sense in
which God Himself is "man-centered." Think Psalm 8:4- "what is
man that you are mindful of him?" This was a great corrective to help me
to remember that "God so loved the world" and also that Jesus Himself
became a man (Jn. 1:14) for our salvation. I once again found a place in my
theology for a healthy kind of anthropocentricism. Also, my seminary professors helped me "come back down to earth" so that I wasn't so "theocentric" so as to find value in being a jerk to others who didn't share my thoughts on God.
Now
Hall brings a new idea to mind, to work into my theological paradigm, ... the notion of "geocentrism." What does it mean as
a Christian person to care for God's created order (geo referring to the
natural order), the world that God made or what Hall calls "extrahuman
creation"? In our discussion on theocentrism vs. anthropocentrism, can we neglect or have we neglected entirely the geocentrism of God? Quoting from two authors named Birch and Rassmussen, Hall writes
regarding Psalm 104:
God is praised as creator and all sorts of things in creation are enumerated as witnesses to God's glory as creator: the heavens, the seas, the valleys, the mountains, wild asses, cattle, trees, birds, goats, badger, moon, sun, and lions. Then in v. 23 almost casually it states, Man goes forth to his work and to his labor until the evening." Verses 27-30 then conclude of all God's creatures: These all look to thee, to give them their food in due season...
Is the redemptive activity of God and the redemptive work of Christ directed and limited to the human? Many would say so, but it hardly seems possible biblically. Unless we see human life lived in a vacuum, redemption must involve the rest of nature as well because redemption is precisely God's effort to restore the whole network of relationships that have been broken by sin. This is why new creation is such a helpful image of God's redemptive work. pp. 170-71
Birch and Rassmussen then go on to discuss passages such as Isaiah 55:12-13, Romans 8:21, Colossians 1:15 and Isaiah 11:6-9.
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