World Without End? A Theological Playlist

Last year I spent a lot of time sitting with 2 Peter, particularity 3.5-13. I translated and re-translated the Greek. I analysed every textual variant in the passage. I slowly exegeted the text. I read every commentary and journal article I could find on 2 Peter 3. I tried to understand Peter's eschatology as a whole. I worked my way through the theological and ethical implications of the passage. The result was a 15,000 Moore College Project: World Without End? Continuity and Discontinuity in 2 Peter 3:5-13.

I spent a lot of time digesting 2 Peter 3. It is a difficult passage, which has sparked several debates in over the last two centuries over the substance of the world to come. Yet in spite of these controversies, 2 Peter 3 has a simple message: Jesus Christ will return to judge the whole earth. Using vivid language, Peter depicts the lid being ripped off human affairs so that every human activity is evaluated and scrutinized from God's perspective; and every human eye sees how God intends life to be lived.

It is, quite frankly, a fairly positive image of evil removed and a transformed created order. In a world where justice is not always done, and then not always seen to be done, 2 Peter 3 describes a world set to rights, a world where justice makes its home. With this future in view, Peter fuels our imagination for life now, since 'holiness and godliness' are the apparent obvious responses to a world set free from sin and malfunction desires; they are the habits befitting creation perfected.

Whilst the piles of books felt never-ending, one of the things that sustained my writing was the 2 Peter 3 playlist I curated throughout last year. In the spirit of my fourth year project, I gravitated towards songs of dissonant eschatologies and apocalyptic themes, the playlist becoming an extension of the conversations that were happening around me. In recognition of this, here are a few notable mentions:

Sufjan Stevens - The Transfiguration

It was inevitable that Sufjan was going to feature on this playlist; but at the start of 2015 I did not realize the significance of this song. Central to my argument is that 2 Peter 3's description of the Parousia is a theophany, the paradigm for which Peter had previously established in his own account of the transfiguration 1.16-18. 

The eerie beauty of this song easily captured something of the confusion and wonder of that moment when Jesus was manifested in full magnificence. Hearing this each time on the playlist was always a distracting moment, but a welcome one as it reminded me each time that the true object of my task last year was not knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but worship.

Bon Iver - Bon Iver
Yes, I decided to include the whole album on my playlist. When I was re-listening to the playlist at Easter, Alison asked me why I had included Bon Iver, since it doesn't seem particularly apocalyptic. The reason was quite simple: the whole album is about place and space, people and time. Given that each of these four elements are significant features of creation, it felt quite fitting to include the whole. It was a constant reminder to me that what I was writing about eschatology needed to connect somehow with a doctrine of creation.

With 2 Peter 3 serving as the locus classicus for those who want to argue for the total destruction of the world and a second creatio ex nihilo, the epic scale of songs like Perth and Minnesota, WI stopped that from conversation from being just theoretical, but for me at least kept my thinking focused on actual places.

Paul Kelly - Meet Me In the Middle of the Air
Like 2 Peter 3, 1 Thessalonians 4 is passage which is used in curious ways to explain various eschatological schema. What is often missed is Paul's employment of a Roman custom to comfort the Thessalonians with the hope of resurrection and the glory awaiting the living and the dead. I'm not sure if Paul Kelly is Christian, but his song perfectly brings together 1 Thessalonians 4 with Psalm 23. There's an amazing Christology involved in this, which provides a picture of his provision and care as our good shepherd.



Talking Heads - Heaven
This is one of the songs which originally featured on a playlist Alison created about clashing eschatologies. Talking Head sing 'Heaven is a place/A place where nothing/Nothing ever happens', and a little later 'It's hard to imagine that/Nothing at all/Could be so exciting/Could be this much fun'. Heaven is beautiful but tedious - perhaps purposefully so. Which stands in such contrast to the picture of the new heavens and new earth described by 2 Peter. The future envisioned by Peter, which Christians begin to inhabit at least behaviorally now, is far different from the bland nothingness of Heaven. It is instead one of beauty and justice, one which inspires the imagination and praxis of people today.


The National - Fake Empire

Whilst 2 Peter 3.10 is about every thought and deed of humanity being disclosed, Fake Empire is about 'where you can't deal with the reality of what's really going on, so let's just pretend that the world's full of bluebirds and ice skating.' It speaks of a generation disillusioned and apathetic. The soaring but simple poly-rhythm of the song inspired the Obama campaign in 2008 to use an instrumental version of the song - ironic given that the song decries modern America.



Dvorak - New World Symphony 
There's nothing like a late-romantic European symphony combined with the optimism and passion of America. Whilst Dvorak drew on several influences (such as Native-American and African-American) for his ninth symphony, it's the possibilities of the dawning age of America that he seems to capture. From the wide open planes to rising industrial might, the opening brings it all together.



It's hard not to listen to this symphony and not be caught up in the idealism, the Hegelian romanticism. Surely the Christian gospel has the resources to respond to this appeal of our imagination and desires? Herein lies the significance of articulating not just the right kind of eschatology, but also teleology, which longs indeed for a new world, but one from freed from the sin and corruption we see around us.

Michael Nyman - MGV: Musique à grande vitesse
To be honest, I only discovered this piece this year after the Australian Ballet's performance of DGV©: Danse à grande vitesse. But I like to imagine that it would have made the list last year. In many ways MGV is not too dissimilar to Dvorak's New World Symphony. Commissioned for the opening of the TGV Paris-Lille train line in the early 1990's it's hard not to get swept up in the ambition, the movement, the progress of Nyman's creation, And having traveled on a TGV last year, this is music that's as irresistible in its energy, speed, and sheer noise, as any journey by TGV.


I like to think that with a century between, MGV is perhaps more chastened in it's optimism than New World Symphony. Nonetheless MGV is still hopeful, and that hope is inextricably tied via the TGV to the advancement of society through technology. I found myself appropriating the composition though; as the music captures journeying through landscapes I imagine myself not progressing towards modernity, but travelling through a world made new. It's the challenge of interacting with the narrative modernity - of maintaining hope without equating that hope with the story of progress. To do so we need to not lost sight of the apocalyptic, that God will intervene in history to establish his new heavens and new earth.

My Brightest Diamond - In the Beginning
I think that it is fair to say that there was a particular flavour to the posts on this blog in 2015: holding together God's work in creation and redemption as two distinct but united realities (i.e. here, here, here, and here). Shara Worden manages to achieve that in this song. She begins with slow, but majestic recounting of Genesis' account, which calls to mind the poetic insights of Tolkien and Lewis in their own creation accounts in The Silmarillion and The Magicians Nephew. 


But before long the song moves to 'This glorious day the earth is shaking hallelujah/And I will join the unending hymn hallelujah'. Bringing creation and eschaton together is brilliantly insightful, for the Christian doctrine has more to say than the opening chapters of Genesis. It has a distinct eschatological shape which is determined at the center by Christology. For it was for Jesus that all things were created, and through him by God's power and sovereignty the creation in bound for resurrection glory. As Calvin wrote in his commentary on Romans 8: '‘No part of the universe is untouched by the longing with which everything in this world aspires to the hope of resurrection.'

The Decemberists - 12/17/12
This song takes it's name from President Obama's national address in December 2012 after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I'm writing this in the wake of the latest gun tragedy in Orlando. The final lines of the song lend their name to the album: 'And O my god, what a world you have made here. What a terrible world, what a beautiful world. What a world you have made here'.



The Decemberists manage to capture the fragility of life in the fragility of 12/17/12. And the background to the song adds to the emotion of the piece - perhaps all the more so as we continue to see such tragedies in America. The challenge for me coming out of this song is not to rest satisfied with shallow answers about suffering and evil. 2 Peter 3 envisions the total removal of evil from the created order; God does not sit idly by in the face of such wickedness and tragedy, and his patience should not be mistaken as such. Instead, the terribleness of this world we be held to account when it is overwhelmed with Christ's righteousness.

Five Iron Frenzy - World Without End
Five Iron are more Alison's band than mine. But having listened to them on countless car trips over the last decade, they have grown on me. And with the phrase World Without End appearing in my project title, this song was always guaranteed to be on this list. A translation of Ephesians 3.21, and based on the Latin phrase in saecula saeculorum, world without end as it was used in English liturgy was connected to the idea of eternity - forever and ever. Connected with God's creation, human or not, the phrase speaks not of our immortality, but God's election to be our God forever, not only God with us, but God for us. It was this conviction which lead the church over 1800 years to read 2 Peter 3.10 in light of other passages such as Romans 8, and hope that this travailing world would be transformed and renewed rather than annihilated and destroyed.

In the soundless awe and wonder,
Words fall short to hope again.
How beautiful,
How vast Your love is,
New forever,
World without an end.

Other honourable mentions:

• Garage Hymnal - Father's World
• Young Oceans - Come Holy One
• Portishead - Wandering Star
• Arcade Fire - Spawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
• Sufjan Stevens - Chicago, and most things from The Age of Adz.
• R.E.M. - It's the End of the World (As We Know It)
• The Welcome Wagon - The Strife is O'er
• The Oh Hellos - Soldier, Poet, King

Athanasius: The First Thing You Must Grasp

I hope you will forgive another post concerning creation and redemption. During Christmas I had opportunity to revisit The Incarnation by Athanasius. As I read, one theme kept reappearing in Athanasius as much as it had in other Patristics that I have read (particularly Irenaeus and the Cappodocians). That is, the centrality of the renewal of creation in early Christian theology. For the great defender of the Nicene faith, the connection between creation and redemption is essential to grasp.

You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been made manifest in bodily form. He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning. - The Incarnation, 1.1

From the outset of his short meditation on the redemption won through Christ's incarnation, Athanasius is able to hold together the coherence between creation and salvation. Rather than running from anything physical, Athanasius maintains that physicality is not the problem, but rather a venue of God's glory in redemption. It's a coherence which is surely instructive for us today.

Cross and Creation

A question I have been pondering over the last few days has been, ‘if you are weak on the doctrine of creation, does that lead to a weakness on the doctrine of the atonement?’ The doctrine of creation has increasingly become a hot button issue amongst evangelicals, and not just in the traditional areas of gender and marriage. Vocation and work, aesthetics, culture, ecological care, questions of continuity and discontinuity between the present creation and the new creation; these issues and more have been recently re-examined in light of a strong doctrine of creation.

What is a strong doctrine of creation? Merely that the doctrine is non-negotiable for the church. It is a creedal belief which is part of the fabric of Christian response to God's revelation. But more than this, a strong doctrine of creation would hold that this world which God said was ‘very good’ was made as a project – with a telos – which it will be brought to in Christ Jesus, through whom and for whom it was made. A strong doctrine of creation is complemented by a vigorous doctrine of new creation, both of which are bound together a doctrine of redemption which holds what God accomplished through his Christ was rescue his world from sin, death, and evil so that it might flourish as it was originally intended to.

I’ve been pondering my original question because I am increasingly getting the impression – from blogs, sermons, and conversations – that the doctrine of creation is seen to be a distraction from the priority of the gospel. On this line of reasoning, issues such as vocation and work, culture, ecology, aesthetics, and so on are also seen as a nuisance; a distraction from the center.

I’m not sure what quite motivates this line of thinking – perhaps it’s a fear that these other issues will mitigate evangelistic zeal, or that a strong creational line of thinking along these issues hasn’t adequately wrestled with the rupture of sin in creation. Suffice it to say that I don’t either of those hold to be true.

Instead I’m concerned with thinking through these issues which arise out of creation because I believe submitting every aspect of my life under Christ warrants it. What we find in scripture is that on the cross the Lord Jesus was atoning for the sins of the world, reconciling to God all things, by making peace through the blood of his cross. The re-ordering of creation away from destruction and death towards its divinely ordained end only takes shapes in so far as Jesus makes peace through the blood of his cross.

“The reconciliation of all things to God can be achieved only by him who is at once Christ the creator and a human being who restores the project of creation to its proper destiny by what he does.” -Gunton

God created this world through and for the Son, so that it might be perfected in him, that the created order might under human dominion flourish and offer back to God the praise of our lips and the thanks of our hearts. Instead that order was inverted, as creation offered thanks and praise to itself, and directed itself towards death. On the cross we see the Son overcoming the forces opposed to creation’s flourishing through his cleansing of the pollution which had infiltrated and subverted creation as a result of human sin, that the world might be reconciled to God the Father. It is the resurrection of the crucified Christ which, according to Gunton, “realizes and guarantees that this man is the mediator of the reconciliation of all things.”

The point is this: if you divorce the cross from creation, you are at risk of missing what God was doing in the propitiatory death of his Son. Christian thinking on work or culture is all undertaken in light of this reality, that God made the world good, and having liberated it in Christ, he will bring it to completion in him. And as we live in this now/not yet phase, we look forward to that end, that telos, and live now in its light. For the Word has come in the flesh to renew the face of the earth.

A Real Establishment

'For since there are real men [sic], so must there also be a real establishment (plantationem), that they vanish not away among non-existent things, but progress among those which have an actual existence. For neither is the substance nor the essence of the creation annihilated (for faithful and true is He who has established it), but “the fashion of the world passeth away;” that is, those things among which transgression has occurred, since man has grown old in them. And therefore this [present] fashion has been formed temporary, God foreknowing all things; as I have pointed out in the preceding book, and have also shown, as far as was possible, the cause of the creation of this world of temporal things. But when this [present] fashion [of things] passes away, and man has been renewed, and flourishes in an incorruptible state, so as to preclude the possibility of becoming old, [then] there shall be the new heaven and the new earth, in which the new man shall remain [continually], always holding fresh converse with God. And since (or, that) these things shall ever continue without end, Isaiah declares, “For as the new heavens and the new earth which I do make, continue in my sight, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.”' - Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 5.36.1

Irenaeus was a significant leader of the church in the second century. He learnt the faith from bishop Polycarp, who - it is said - learnt the faith from St. John. His influence was recognized widely by his contemporaries, and this was in large part built upon his writing responding to the threat of Gnosticism. In many senses, Irenaeus was the church's first biblical and systematic theologian. This forms part of the significance of the quote above. The issue of the continuity of creation is often dismissed as being the product of modern ecological concerns. Yet from the quote above it is evident that the Christian hope for new creation was not a 21st century invention or innovation, but in accord with the faith that was deposited with to the saints. Our hope is in the resurrection, the raising of our bodies, just as Jesus was raised, And an embodied existence requires - necessitates - a world to inhabit.

The Substance of the City of God

The Christian doctrine of creation is of primary significance to the church which confesses its faith in "God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth". That God made all things is part of the fabric of a Christian response to revelation. For this basic (though not uncontested) reason Christian doctrine relates creation to eschatology: this good but presently broken world which God made will be re-made, freed from its warped and corrupted nature, freed once more for its God-given purpose to exist for Jesus Christ. 

One current debate in the theological world is how to relate the two doctrines. Is the future such a breach from our current existence that the new creation bears little to no correlation to creation? The proposed solution in our previous approach was to relate the two Christologically, so that the eschaton is the perfection rather than the breach of creation.

The implications of this debate touch a whole range of areas: work, culture, the environment, and so forth. What is clear though is this issue is not an innovation of the third millennium and its present ecological crisis. A century ago the Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck also reflected on this issue. Following on from Paul's description of the σχῆμα of the world - the outward form, appearance, and way of life according to BDAG - passing away, the substance of the creation is redeemed and renewed in the new creation. Bavinck at times is carried along with the poetry of his language, but nevertheless do not let that detract you:

"All that is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, and commendable in the whole creation, in heaven and on earth, is gathered up in the future city of God-renewed, re-created, boosted to its highest glory. 

The substance [of the city of God] is present in this creation. Just as the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, as a carbon is converted into diamond, as the grain of wheat upon dying in the ground produces other grains of wheat, as all of nature revives in the spring and dresses up in celebrative clothing, as the believing community is formed out of Adam’s fallen race, as the resurrection body is raised from the body that is dead and buried in the earth, so too, by the re-creating power of Christ, the new heaven and the new earth will one day emerge from the fire-purged elements of this world, radiant in enduring glory and forever set free from the ‘bondage to decay’ (…Rom. 8:21). More glorious than this beautiful earth, more glorious than the earthly Jerusalem, more glorious even than paradise will be the glory of the new Jerusalem, whose architect and builder is God himself. The state of glory (status gloriae) will be no mere restoration (restauratie ) of the state of nature (status naturae), but a re-foration that, thanks to the power of Christ, transforms all matter . . . into form, all potency into actuality (potentia , actus), and presents the entire creation before the face of God, brilliant in unfading splendor and blossoming in a springtime of eternal youth. Substantially nothing is lost."

The Honour of God

"[Only...] a renewal of the world...accords with what Scripture teaches about redemption. For the latter is never a second, brand-new creation but a re-creation of the existing world. God’s honor [sic] consists precisely in the fact that he redeems and renews the same humanity, the same world, the same heaven, and the same earth that have been corrupted and polluted by sin." - Herman Bavinck

This year I enter my fourth and final year of studies at Moore Theological College in Sydney. The past three years have, I believe, been fruitful for my heart and mind in growing in the knowledge and love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

In this final year of study, I hope to spend some time reflecting on the connection between Christian eschatology and the doctrine of creation. This seems to me a profitable area of research, as rightly correlating the two necessarily involves relating them both to God's work in Jesus Christ. Without this connection, the relatedness of creation and new creation is abrogated from the person and work of Christ, resulting in an unbalanced and distorted gospel more akin to Gnosticism and the fantasy of 19th century liberal Protestantism. As the great Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck noted, the gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus is God's "YES" to his good but ruptured world, realigning creation away from death and annihilation and towards its ultimate end. God's work of creation and redemption are not two separate works, but united in Jesus Christ, the firstborn over his creation.

A Christian Doctine of Creation

“That God is the Creator of the world is accepted even by the those very persons who in many ways speak against Him, and yet acknowledge Him, styling Him the Creator...all men, in fact consenting to this truth.” – Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 2.9.1

In the first chapter of his book The Triune Creator, Colin Gunton argues that Christian theologians have often claimed that belief in creation is universal in the human race. Cultures throughout have history have given account of why there is something instead of nothing, why there is a meaningful universe.

There is a common idea of creation. However, Gunton argues that the Christian account of Creation is distinctive. Unlike other explanations, such as Plato’s Timaeus, which describe the creation of something out of ore-existent reality, what we find in the pages of scripture is different.

“Far from being one ancient myth among many, this was unique in saying things no other ancient text was able to say.”

Partly this is an awareness within Christianity not only of the universality of creation accounts amongst humans, but also a universal inability to know God through his creation:

“...pagan thought totally fails to understand the true nature of things. Its chief mistake is in confusing the creature with the creator, but there is also a general human to recognise God for what he truly is”.

As Calvin would put, we are idol factories. Humans exchange the truth about God for a lie; we cannot truly comprehend ourselves and the world around us.

For Gunton, the Christian account says things that have not elsewhere been said because the doctrine of creation is ‘bound up with beliefs about Christ and redemption’. Firstly, for Christians the doctrine is creedal, and hence ‘part of the fabric of Christian response to revelation. This doctrine is not self-evident or attainable through cold reason, but only is revealed by ‘God the Father, maker of Heaven and Earth.’ Secondly, although is not unambiguous within the scriptures, the unique contribution of the Christian doctrine is that God creates out of nothing (cf here). He is not one of the primordial gods of other creation myths who makes out eternal matter, and is then worn out by the process.

“In general, Greek though held that matter was both eternal and inferior to mind or spirit. The intellectual breakthrough of second-century Christian theology came from contending against both these doctrines, in teaching that matter both had a beginning and, for that reason was not inferior but intended by a good creator.”

Thirdly, creation is the work of the whole Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

After these three concepts, Gunton then offers seven distinctive features of the Christian doctrine of creation that set it apart from other creation accounts:

1. Creation was out of nothing. God relied on nothing outside of himself to create the world, which makes the world an act of personal willing that there be something other. Creation is an act of divine sovereignty and freedom. It also means the cosmos is neither eternal (as it has a beginning), nor infinite.

2. Therefore, creation was not arbitrary. It derives from the love of God, not simply its will. And it was designed with a purpose. Which is where the Trinitarian shape of the Christian account is important; creation is contingent. Preexisting creation in a communion of persons existing in loving relationships, we are able to say God wills the existence of something else simply for its own sake, and is given a value as a realm of being in its own right. The created order is itself ‘very good.’

3. Creation remains in close relation to God, and yet is free to be itself. The created order is not overwhelmed by God; it is not god itself. Here we are able to understand how God works in and towards the world, through what Irenaeus called the two hands of God: Christ and the Spirit. Creation is structured to and through Christ, the very one who became incarnate and remains in loving relation with it. And for Basil of Caesarea, it is the Holy Spirit who enables the created order to be truly itself; he is the perfecting cause of creation.

4. As God work in and towards creation through Christ and the Spirit, our understanding of the divine work of creation is not limited to its beginning and end. God continues to uphold and care for his creation – he is not the god of deism who leaves the work of creation half finished. And God also provides for the needs of the creation, and enables it to achieve the end that was purposed for it from the beginning.

5. Because all that God creates is good, that means that evil must be something ‘extraneous to or parasitic upon creation as a whole.’ If the world was created good and with a telos in view, then evil is what thwarts the divine purpose for it. Central to this problem is human sin, which is some way involves the whole created order in evil.

"Its existence [evil] means that creation's purpose can be achieved only by its redirection from within by the creator himself...Given the all-polluting power of evil and its centre in human sin, redemption can be achieved only by the one through whom the world was created becoming incarnate, dying and rising as the way through which the creation can be redeemed (brought back) from its bondage to destruction."

Within the Christian tradition there have been a range of views of the relation between creation, the fall and redemption.

a) Restoration: For Origen and Augustine, the creation was so completely finished in the beginning, that the fall is a move away from perfection, and redemption can then only mean a return to that perfection.

b) Evolution: A more recent view shaped by Hegel and Darwin would see the fall either as minor impediment or an essential step on the way to perfection. The fall then becomes the means by which creation reaches its perfection. But this view tends to minimise the problem of evil, and the achievements of Jesus’ death.

c) Transformation: Gunton’s preferred view is that creation was made to go somewhere, but that goal can only be reached through a radical redirection, because sin and evil have reshaped its direction. This is the movement towards an end greater than the beginning, and redemption is the defeat of evil and the restoration of the created orders original direction.

6. No theology of creation is complete without giving an account of humanity. Humans are created in God’s image, and for Gunton this is humans existing in relation to God, other humans and the rest of the created order. The relating to the created order is described as dominion:

“...a calling to be and to act in such a way as to enable the created order to be itself as a response of praise to its maker. However, the distinctive place of human creation cannot be understood apart from Christology. Genesis makes the human race both the crown of, and uniquely responsible for, the shape that creation takes. By speaking of Jesus Christ as the true image of God, the New Testament shows that this responsibility is realised only in and through him.”

7. If God’s purpose is for the redemption and perfection of the whole creation, "then all [italics original] human action" will involve the human response to God we call ethics. Ethics encompasses not simply principles of action but a whole way of being in the world, which makes it integral to a Christian doctrine of creation. This will be shaped by both how we view the world, and our eschatology.