What ties together this whole trajectory from Genesis 1 to the New Testament is the consistent biblical insight that humanity from the beginning-and now the church as the redeemed humanity–is both gifted by God with a royal status and dignity and called by God actively to represent his kingdom in the entire range of human life, that is, in the very way we rule and subdue the earth. If Genesis 1 focuses on the gift of imago Dei (although not to the exclusion of the call), in contrast to dehumanizing ancient Near Eastern alternatives, the New Testament makes both gift and call crystal clear. In gratitude for God’s gracious mercy in gifting us with salvation, the community of faith is called upon by Paul in Romans 12:1-2 to stop mirroring passively the culture in which it lives (“conformed to the world”) and instead to mirror God in and to the culture. But a mirror, although a traditional symbol for the imago Dei, is too flat to capture the full-orbed character of the human calling to be God’s royal representatives in creation. A more adequate symbol might be the prism. Humanity created in God’s image–and the church as the renewed imago Dei–is called and empowered to be God’s multi-sided prism in the world, reflecting and refracting the Creator’s brilliant light into a rainbow of cultural activity and socio-political patterns that scintillates with the glory of God’s presence and manifests his reign of justice.
Middleton, J. R. (1994) “The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago Dei in Context”, Christian Scholars Review 24(1) pp. 8-25
Some highlights from his Freedom and Framework, Spirit and Truth: Recovering Biblical Worship.
We note that the purpose of God is not to save humans from the world but to save them for the world, to enable them to be his kings and priests ruling and redeeming creation.
Christian worship stands firmly within the Jewish tradition, but claims by its very nature to be the new-covenant version of it.
Christian worship is designed to be the primary means by which the project of Genesis 1 is taken forward. One of the primary spiritual laws is that you become like what you worship, and you reflect what you are worshiping not only into different parts of your own life but to the people around you and the world where you live. Thus one of the purposes of Christian worship is that we not only become like the God we see in Jesus Christ, but that we reflect this God in our own lives and to the people and places where we are placed. And this of course means, as many have insisted, that in our worship we are precisely living and acting “in Christ,” making real what is true of us through baptism and faith, whereby we become living members of the Jesus Christ who in his perfect manhood offers to the Father that love, obedience, and loyalty which is the true human vocation.
We must, then, resist the culture-driven pressures to informality. Informality has its place, but it is not the be-all and end-all, and of itself has nothing specific to do with the gospel.
Christian worship is dramatic, performative, setting out and celebrating God’s story with the world; to tamper with it on a whim is a form of arrogant vandalism. The biblical story from Genesis to Revelation is a great drama, a great saga, a play written by the living God and staged in his wonderful creation; and in liturgy, whether sacramental or not, we become for a moment not only spectators of this play but also willing participants in it. It is not our play; it is God’s play, and we are not free to rewrite the script. We cannot read the whole Bible in each worship service, but the selections we choose, whether through a lectionary or not, should reflect the larger story and remind us of its full sweep and flow.
what we wear, where we stand, how we move (vesture, posture, and gesture) all matter, not because we are ritualists but because this is God’s drama and we can easily get in the way. When those leading worship stand to one side, this makes the point dramatically; when worship-leaders, including musicians, assemble directly in front of a congregation like a rock group at a concert, this can make exactly the wrong point. There is, no doubt, a sense among many modern worship-leaders that this does not matter; but, precisely because worship is about human integration, it matters very much indeed. What you do with your body says something about what you are doing with the rest of you. Of course kneeling down, raising your hands in worship, crossing yourself, taking up particular positions, can all become rituals and turn into magic. But to insist on sitting down to pray — the one posture the Bible never mentions in connection with prayer—because kneeling is “ritualistic” is cutting off your nose to spite your face. To insist on a free-flowing succession of worship songs at the whim of one leader is not to strike a blow against ritualism, but to put that leader precisely in the place where the Reformers saw the mediaeval priest, coming between the worshipers and God. Good liturgy preserves us from personality cults whether Catholic or Protestant.
The gospel of Jesus Christ was seen from the beginning not merely as the way by which sinners could escape judgment, but the way by which, through that salvation, faulty humans could be re-humanized so that they could be God’s agents in bringing his love, his wisdom, his creative delight, to bear afresh on the world…We live in exciting and dangerous times, and the gospel of Jesus Christ summons us to live in them as kingdom-people, reflecting God’s image into the world. The way to that goal is worship: worship of the true, sovereign, creator God, Father, Son, and Spirit. May the Lord open our lips, so that our mouth may show forth his praise.
Enjoy!
Dave Crofts has a good post where he challenges the appropriateness of WWJD? as being a valid question and offers WHJD?. Personally I’d suggest a tripartite question: What did Jesus do (WDJD) [or What has Jesus done?], what is Jesus doing (WIJD) and what will Jesus do (WWJD)? Jesus has died and risen again for our justification. Jesus currently interceeds for us in heaven. Jesus will one day return to put all things right. Let us live with all that in view!
Jason Stellman has a brilliant post entitled From Eternity to Here: Baptism, Eschatologically Considered. Do go and check it out.
Joseph Kelly thinks not…
Do check out Enns’ Introduction to the NIVAC volume on Exodus as well as his essay entitled “Exodus, Historiography, and Some Theological Reflections”. Good stuff!
The book of Exodus has become one that, over the past twelve months or so, I have grown to love for a whole host of reasons; not only does it contain some areas for deep theological reflection it also challenges me on canonical and text issues.
This afternoon I picked up Judith E. Sanderson’s An Exodus Scroll from Qumran 4QpaleoExod^m and the Samaritan Tradition from the local library which I ordered a while ago via ILL. It looks rather interesting!
The following are the top five books that have affected my thinking in 2009.
1. Romans by N. T. Wright.
2. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible by Eugene Ulrich.
3. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible by Emanuel Tov
4. Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches by David M. Carr.
5. Covenant and Eschatology by Michael Horton.
I am looking forward to get into the following for 2010:
1. The Torah’s Vision of Worship by Samuel E. Balentine
2. The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 by Mark S. Smith
3. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible by Karel Van Der Toorn
Well I’m glad that caught your attention! I have been reading up on 1 Corinthians 7 recently and I’ve been listening to a sermon on how this applies to single Christians. I wasn’t wholly convinced by the exegesis though. I confess I remain confused about how what St. Paul teaches here is consistent with the view of marriage in the Old Testament and elsewhere in the NT.
Some questions
1. Are single Christians in view in 1 Corinthians 7? Of course he may have single Christians in view in the section beginning “Now concerning virgins” and yet I think those he speaks about are those who are bethrothed.
2. What is the import of “I have no command of the Lord”? Is this simply St. Paul’s opinion or a timeless truth? What about “I think that I too have the Spirit of God”?
3. What is “the impending crisis”? Is St. Paul’s opinion merely advice for a temporary situation?
4. What is the import of St. Paul’s pointing out that the reason he says this is “For the present form of this world is passing away”? Paul is indeed correct that the present form of this world is passing away but it has been passing away for 2000 years since Paul so if Christians heeded his advise our Churches today would be pretty empty…I certainly would not exist (mourn or rejoice as you see fit!).
So…
The Old Testament seems to see marriage as the ideal (“It is not good that the man should be alone”) so does St. Paul contradict the Hebrew view of Marriage in 1 Corinthians 7?
