Just as Pluralist has quite usefully given a thread to discussion of the "how do we know?" of the Resurrection, so it also seems that the "what does it mean?" of this mystery has outgrown the threads in which it began to be mentioned. Of the several meanings that have been found in the Resurrection, one seems to me to be especially worth exploring further-- the inaugurated eschatology, or even collaborative eschatology, by which "church" is the creation itself being ordered, governed, or healed in Christ according to God's intended marriage of heaven to earth. Comments in several of our threads have approached this idea since last summer, but it has not been directly examined in any of them. Likewise, it lies just under the surface of the threads that are most active now. I hope that we can discuss this topic with minds and bibles open.

It strikes me that 'the Church' is a pretty rotten version of any Kingdom that was imagined, hardly the same utopia.

Thank you Bowman for starting this timely thread on the ontology and eschatology of the 'church' as the new creation in Christ.

This new creation is essentially Trinitarian in its formation and continuance.  Further, one of its integral aims is to restore and develop our true humanity, at the same time offerig us a new language to articulate, not least in prayer and worship.

As Rowan Williams puts it, 'Where there is salvation, its name is Jesus; its grammar is the cross and the resurrection.  The Spirit which names Jesus as Lord and God as Father names the world as Christ's Kingdom, and the humanization of mankind as Christ's salvation.  The resurrection of Jesus, in being a restoration of the world's wholeness, is equally a restoration of language; what is created in the community of the resurrection is not only a vision of humanity before God and with God, but a vision capable of being articulated in word and image, connmunicated, debated and extended' (Resurrection, pp.65-66).

Secondly, this new creation is in continuity with the 'old' creation, which is, in turn, being restored and redeemed.  For St Paul, this creation 'waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God' since it is subjected in hope that it 'will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God' (Romans 8:19-21).  This seems to tie in the humanization of humankind in Christ with the renewal of the created order.

For Tom Wright, 'The created order, which God has begun to redeem in the resurrection of Jesus, is a world in which heaven and earth are designed, not to be separated, but to come together.  In that coming together, the "very good" which God spoke over creation at the beginning will be enhanced, not abolished.  The New Testament never imagines that, when the new heavens and new earth arrive, God will say, in effect, "well, that first creation wasn't so good after all, was it?  Aren't you glad we've got rid of all that space, time and matter?"  Rather, we must envisage a world in which the present creation, which we think of in those three dimensions, is enhanced, taken up into God's larger purposes no doubt, but certainly not abandoned' (Surprised by Hope, p.271).

DavidW-- The main value of the recent studies of the Resurrection accounts for Christians is that they help us toward a more scriptural understanding of the meaning of what we do (and, importantly, what we fail to do) as the Church. They can also help others to see something of how Christians reason about such things, but it is beyond their scope to enable insight in those not graced with faith.

Roger-- Thank you for making more clear than I have done the connexion between the Resurrection and the everyday being of the Church in time.

In contrast with some in the village who see this as a time of inevitable decline, I cautiously see this as a seedtime for much better things. The mere fact that evangelicals now publish well in areas that were known only to specialists just a generation ago gives hope that we have entered an immensely fruitful period for the sort of thinking that we need to live the gospel in the years ahead.

22 The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
   the first of his acts of long ago.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
   at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
   when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
   before the hills, I was brought forth—
26 when he had not yet made earth and fields,
   or the world’s first bits of soil.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there,
   when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 when he made firm the skies above,
   when he established the fountains of the deep,
29 when he assigned to the sea its limit,
   so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30   then I was beside him, like a master worker;*
and I was daily his delight,
   rejoicing before him always,
31 rejoicing in his inhabited world
   and delighting in the human race.

For later discussion-- Wisdom describes her part in it in the Creation in Proverbs 8:22-31.

Thanks Bowman for pointing us to the celebratory perspectives of Proverbs 8, including her declaration that she was beside the Creator, 'like a master worker' and 'was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.'

Here the Creator God delights in his handmaid Wisdom, and she in turn rejoices in the created world, delighting in the human race.  Within the new creation Christ 'became for us the wisdom of God' and, extraordinarily, that wisdom was decreed by God 'before the ages for our glory', confirming the perspective of Proverbs 8 (see 1 Corinthians 1:26-2:1-13).  We human beings are celebrated by the Lord God and have an assured destiny in Christ.

Overall, I think we can see the ontology of the Church as new creation in at least three ways:

1. Actualization: a New Essence.  Forgive the ugly word 'actualization' but it seems useful as indicating the arrival at a new identity that the people of God have in Christ.  A classic statement that supports this is that of 2 Corinthians 5:17: 'So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!'  Such a profound claim is worth an exclamation mark!
2. Anticipation: a New Hope.  Although there is a givenness about this new essence, there is still a journey to continue with.  There is process as well as a new status.  Here both cross and resurrection make possible a dying and rising again in the life of the Church, both at the corporate and individual level.  This forward impetus is strongly expressed in Philippians 3:7-16, especially in vv. 10 and 11: 'I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead'.
3. Realization: a New Heaven and Earth.  The Church's new identity, and identification with Christ's death and rising again, and its new journey in hope, are ultimately to be realized in a new heaven and new earth.  As in Proverbs 8, the Wisdom that delights in humanity and the whole created order is to witness creation's setting 'free from its bondage to decay' and its obtaining 'the freedom of the glory of the children of God' (Romans 8:21).  This new heaven and new earth will be marked positively with the loving companionship of a God who is 'at home' with his people and, negatively, by the banishment of death, mourning, crying and pain (Revelation 21:1-4).

I'm sure there are many other aspects to our new being in Christ.  Any other suggestions?  And also, what understanding to contributors have for the figure of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 and her link, if any, with the new creation in Christ?

Your Resurrection Is Too Small. Wise Roger has yet again established a context and shown connexions more quickly than I was able to do it. Indeed, his comment can be read as a map for future discussion. For those readers not quite seeing the point of this thread, I offer herewith my own version of what Roger anticipates.

Over the past half-year, I have noticed that the "infracanon" of familiar scriptures through which we collectively read the whole "canon" of the scriptures does not include the scriptures from the Old Testament that are most relevant to the "inaugurated eschatology" of recent studies of the New Testament that several of us admire. Thus, when villagers have discussed a range of topics related to the life of the Christian in the new aeon, they have had in mind only the most reductive readings of a few New Testament texts that rely on Israel's understanding of the Creation. For unhappy example, one can read pages of a certain thread that says much about a certain NT passage, and never see an informed discussion of the dense OT references that shaped both the writing of it and the reading of it. The cost of this limitation for pastors, teachers, preachers, godparents, and counselors who follow these threads is that the rather rich ethical wisdom of the scriptures as a whole have been reduced to just the few ideas of them that have been most useful to the proclamation and apologetics that have aimed at evangelical conversion. For the challenges that we now face, both online and off, that is not enough. And anyway, without a fuller understanding of the Creation locus, one's Resurrection is just too small for a full Christian life.

One cannot remove this sort of limitation with prooftexts. Rather, one has to study substantial chunks of the relevant OT scriptures in a way that respects the canonical logic of their composition, assembly, translation, post-Resurrection interpretation, and eventual canonisation. Within the limits of these threads, we cannot write a commentary on all this, of course, but we can try to do a tour d'horizon of the canonical creation narratives of ancient Israel that facilitates insight into the way the first generations of Christians understood the discovery of Easter morning. A thorough survey would have more to cover than even the villagers of Fulcrum could endure, but a brief tour might introduce most of the themes we are missing with substantive chunks of Proverbs, Isaiah, Job, Genesis, Wisdom, and finally, a bit more Genesis.

A few personal declarations-- (1) It will not long escape the notice of villagers that an expanding acquaintance with these scriptures reframes some arguments about which a few are quite passionate. Indeed, there will be fresh controversies in the months ahead. I myself will simply ignore them all and comments about them. Patience... (2) Similarly, villagers who see the way image/likeness operates in Eastern Christian thought where nature/grace operates in our native tradition may feel tempted to "sail to Byzantium" on this thread. Here, I myself will stick to the tour. (3) The proposed tour does not directly include two other bodies of missing scriptures-- the Psalms and the prophetic texts usually classed as apocalyptic-- that are also important for an understanding of inaugurated eschatology. Why not? One cannot do everything at once, and the creation tour makes both of these later tours easier. (4) While there is no reason for villagers to ignore NT texts that are usefully juxtaposed (e.g. Proverbs 31: 10-31 and Ephesians 5:21- 6:9), my own posts here will march through the tour, which it would be best to conclude before Holy Cross, if not St Mary the Virgin. (5) I claim no special expertise in the OT, and welcome the insights of other readers of the sacred texts. Of several books likely to influence my own posts here, the most important is William P. Brown's 1999 study The Ethos of Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible. Brown, an OT professor at Union Theological Seminary (Richmond, Virginia), discusses the creation texts of the OT as descriptions of the ethos created by God for the flourishing of the ethical human being. (6) With rare exceptions, I discuss general hermeneutics on the Common Courtesy thread. See, for example, Phil Almond's thoughts there. (7) Everything is promised Deo volente and subject to the usual review of Fulcrum moderators, of course.

Proverbs 8:22-31. The canonical reader will note that two feminine personae-- Wisdom and the Good Wife-- are the bookends of a long stretch of proverbs collected in the middle of this work, and that whilst Wisdom explains the sort of self that can understand the proverbs, the Good Wife exemplifies the sort of self that is formed by the practise of virtue. In the book as a whole, we are concerned with right conduct as a reflection of the cosmic order known by Wisdom from the beginning, dependent on resistance to false perception and understanding, and leading to an intrinsically delightful form of human flourishing. God's word is mentioned here as his creative word, which is, in this creation account, not so much differentiating being as fending off the forces of chaos from the family, community, and world where the love of Wisdom is cultivated. In the human order, such chaos is seen in the violence against which a father warns his son, and in the allure of the Strange Woman against whom his mother warns him. In its insight into divine creativity, awareness of the psychological requisites for right conduct, and contrasting visions of human flourishing and destruction, we see right conduct related to acquired wisdom rather than positive law.

The Christian reader will note--

vv. 22, 23, 24, 25, 27: Wisdom existed before the Creation began (cf. the "little cosmogony" of 3:19-20).

vv. 22, 23, 24, 25: Wisdom was generated (Brown: 22 had, 23 woven, 24 engendered, 25 brought forth) not constructed (Brown: 24 ladened, 25 anchored, 26 made, 27 established, 27 circumscribed, 28 secured, 28 stabilised, 29 assigned, 29 carved) as the creation was.

vv. 27, 28, 29: Despite obvious similarity to the cosmogony in Genesis, this narrative acknowledges the possibility that the primal waters could, but for a limit established by the divine word, engulf the world in chaos. Creation is less a work of differentiation of kinds of being and more an ordering of what is disordered so that a habitation can endure. Water is also the central image in 5:15-20 about eros.

v. 29: A difficult Hebrew construction on which commentators differ. Brown 1999: When he carved out the foundations of the earth, I was beside him growing up.

v. 30: Before God, Wisdom is active in the cosmos, and this "play" (alt: laughter) occasions "delight" in God. This delight in the play of Wisdom accompanies all of God's creative acts.

v. 30: Is God's delight with the play of Wisdom his purpose in the Creation?

v. 30: With vv. 22, 23, 24, 25, the play of Wisdom before God unfolds as a familial scene.

v. 30: Elsewhere in Proverbs, Wisdom is a member of human families (7:4).

v. 31: Compare Brown 1999: playing in his inhabited world, delighting with the offspring of 'adam. The cosmos is seen as a habitation shared with humanity. The play of Wisdom is occasioned by "delight" with humanity.

v.31: Entry into Wisdom's "house of seven pillars" is a privilege reserved to the wise (9:1-6), and her play is the model for the inauguration of new dwellings (24:3-4).

v. 31: "Delight" is the same word in both 30 and 31. If humanity delights Wisdom as her play delights God, how does it do this (cf. 8:32-36; 14:21b; 16:20b; 20:7; 28:14a; 29:18b).

v. 31: The theme of delight is not mentioned in the cosmogony in Genesis.

vv. 32-36: How is the happiness of those who "keep [her] ways" related to Wisdom's own delight with humanity, and the delight of God in her play?

The habit of reading poetry is helpful to the interpretation of this book.

Many thanks Bowman for your further postings, amplifying William P Brown's perspectives on Proverbs 8 and sharing a few of your 'personal declarations' and your bid for 'patience' in the coming months with regard to this thread.  Like you, I claim no special expertise in the OT and would welcome other contributions to this discussion on the new creation and its roots in OT theology.

Trying to piece together a range of random thoughts that are buzzing in my mind, I would like to put forward the following:

1. The Creation and Wisdom.  God's wisdom is woven deeply into the stories of creation.  In Proverbs 8, as we have seen, the personification of wisdom is likened to a 'master worker' who was 'beside' the Creator and 'daily his delight' (v.30).  This is God's work, made more explicit in Proverbs 3:19: 'The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens'.  The inextricable interweaving between creation and wisdom was well expressed by W Zimmerli in 1904 in the Scottish Journal of Theology: 'Wisdom thinks resolutely within the framework of a theology of creation'.
2. Personified Wisdom.  How are we to understand the female personification of wisdom in Proverbs, Sirach and Wisdom?  In Proverbs 8:35, she says, '...whoever finds me finds life and obtains favour  from the Lord'.  In Wisdom we meet once more the female figure of wisdom and, again as in Proverbs 8, she is alongside the Creator God: '...she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness' (7:26).  Similarly, in Sirach 24, wisdom declares herself as closely aligned to Yahweh: 'I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist' (v.3).  This range of images is well summed up by Robert K Johnston in Studies in Old Testament Theology: 'At times Woman Wisdom is a characteristic of the Lord's creative activity, at times the divine secret resident in creation, at times a creature of Yaheh with special status, and at times a metaphor of God'.  Although the Book of Job doesn't seem to include the female personification of wisdom, it once more links wisdom closely with God.  In Chapter 28 the answer to the question, 'where shall wisdom be found?' (v.12), is in the Lord: '"Truly the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding"' (v.28).
3. New Creation and Wisdom.  The powerful imagery of Woman Wisdom in the OT can be seen to resonate with the Logos of John 1:1-18, with the One who 'was in the beginning with God' and through whom 'All things came into being'.  The incarnate Son is described in Luke 2:40 as a child who 'grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.'  And this Christ, in the new creation, has become for us 'wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption' (1 Corinthians 1:30).  As in the early chapters of Proverbs this 'wisdom from above' is closely tied to a godly life and is portrayed as 'first pure, then peacable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality and hypocrisy', sowing 'a harvest of righteousness' (James 3:17,18).

I believe we can argue that God-given wisdom, consequent on 'the fear of the Lord' and bearing the fruit of the Spirit, is a cardinal hallmark in the ontology of the Church as God's new creation in Christ.

To nudge our discussion forward, what relationship do we see between the Church and the Kingom of God?  How do we respond to Don Cupitt's comment, 'What Jesus preached was "the kingdom"; what he got was the church!'?

Since writing the earlier post, I have now read Mari’s lovely new article.  And surely, the tension of the Church’s ministry in the entire field of justice has to be undergirded by a richer appreciation of Resurrection/New Creation/the Spirit as arrabMn/the Church’s identity.  Our theology has very concrete consequences (for better or worse).  That way we may minister in hope and patience, with both ‘success’ and ‘failure’, offering “signs” of the “first-fruits” indeed.  Even if the wretched weeds/darnel persist ...!