THE THREE WORDS OF THE LORD.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a creative and thus daring mind. Yes, it takes ‘daring’, courageous tinkering, to be different. Well, he was unique, and, in the end, it cost him his life, at the age of 39, when his valiant opposition to Hitler’s treacherous ways, led to his execution weeks before the end of WW (World War) 2.
Bonhoeffer was also very gifted. At one point he had to choose between becoming a concert pianist or a biblical scholar. Fortunately, he followed the urging of the Holy Spirit, resulting in double doctorate in theology before he was 25. (His father was a professor at the Berlin University.)
His writings are insightful and unorthodox. In an essay ‘Your Kingdom Come’ (Dein Reich Komme), he writes: “We are Christians at the expense of the earth…. We disdain the earth, we are better than it….. We have fallen into secularism, and by secularism, I mean pious Christian secularism. Not the godlessness of atheism or bolshevism (or today of Trumpism) but the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the earth.” He saw Creation as ‘The word of the Lord’.
He is not alone.
Dr. Stefan Paas of the (Amsterdam) Free University, says essentially the same. Here is my translation: “A personal relationship with Jesus was for Protestants the nucleus of the Gospel. But this is not near enough. In addition to the vertical ‘contemplative’ line, there also is a horizontal, active dimension, outlined in Peace on Earth (Vrede op Aarde). That ‘active’ dimension refers to hands-on love for creation”.
He too, sees Creation as God’s Holy Word.
And then there is Bavinck’s Radical Kingdom Vision.
J. H. Bavinck, in his book, Between the Beginning and the End, in the chapter “The Kingdom”, writes, “It is God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules forever.”
Bavinck’s summation: “Salvation of the person and salvation of the cosmos, go hand in hand. You cannot have the one without the other”.
The Belgic Confession indicates: The Means by Which We Know God.
We know God by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book
in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:
God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.
Yes, we have no excuse.
These four quotes are striking examples of Creation being God’s Holy Word.
The Cross also symbolizes these multiple Words.
Look at the striking image of the Cross! It too illustrates the comprehensive outreach of redemption: on the horizontal bar, Jesus, with open arms – literally – embraces our entire Whole Wide World, while the vertical beam is deeply vested in the earth, and from there reaches to the heavens and God’s throne.
And the Church? Does it too embrace these multiple Words?
When in a church-service, the gospel is read, it often is concluded with the phrase: ‘This is the Word of God’, as if there is only one Word: the Scriptures. Yet, the Gospel of John opens with the wonderful words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God and with God. He was with God in the beginning.”
The “He” there is Jesus, as Colossians 1: 15-20 affirms. That points to Jesus being The Word become Flesh, assuring that we ‘bodily’ will live forever in God’s world.
The question: “How do we make these words alive for us?”
Psalm 24 simply states that “The Earth is the Lord’s”. Psalm 115:16, tells us: “The Highest Heaven belongs to the Lord, but the earth he has donated to us”.
God gave this earth to us to beautify and improve it. Think about this, and ask ourselves how to live this. After all, the world we live in, is a personal gift from God to us. God wants us to treat it as holy, a near impossible task today when almost all of human life depends on climate-destroying, creation-poisoning, carbon-based, fuels, now impossible to reverse.
If salvation is both vertical, God-honoring, and horizontal, creation/divinely ordained, then Jesus’ words are truly prophetic: Matthew 22: 14: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”; and also, Luke 18: 8: “Will I find faith on earth when I return?”
Jesus, only Jesus, has the overall view, from creation to uncreation, from beginning to end.
I am starting to see that our present – pollution-dependent world – is making genuine – horizontal/vertical – Christian living, impossible. I try, and, in spite of conscious, intentional efforts, my sins against creation, and thus my efforts to live up to, what I see as my God-given goal in life, is no longer possible.
My deep faith tells me that God will renew this world: Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. (Revelation 21:1)