CLOCKWORK THEOLOGY
27/04/24 12:21
‘But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse! Gal 1.8 NIV.
In John 17, Jesus urged that we ‘know God by knowing God and Jesus Christ whom God has sent.’ God cannot be known like a packet of chewing gum. Everything about God is infinite and eternal. As we engage in the adventure of knowing God and discovering the limitless realm of infinite love, we come across the amazing fact that that the Door to knowing God is Jesus Christ.
CREATION IS CONDITIONED BY REDEMPTION.
Our redemption was not panic stations for God and not an afterthought. Redemption was woven into creation. This is the fact that throws a proper light on predestination and removes from it the fraught nature and sense of arbitrariness it can provoke.
HIS ADVANCE PLAN
‘Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan’ Eph 1.12 NLT.
NEW CREATION ANNOUNCED
The prologue to John is the introduction of the new creation – the new dawn that is not separate from the original plan but a continuation of it. Similar in effect is Paul’s declaration in Col 1.15-23. ‘The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him…’ JESUS IS THE NEW CREATION.
NO INVERTED CROSS
Separation - is the culture of the knowledge of good and evil. Perichoresis is the fabric of the trinity and hence of God’s Plan for the healing of you and the Togetherness of us. Belonging and inclusion is God and what we have been gifted in Christ. This is why the law that is innately separatist leads up to and gives way to the Christ who draws us into union with God. It is why Christ does not lead us into the law – unless we have a false christ.
‘For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect’ Matt 24.24 NIV.
THE UNIVERSAL CHRIST
Myk Habets observes “In the Incarnation redemption intersects and overlaps with creation in such a way that Christ and his Kingdom encompass all of history. Purpose is deliberately built into creation from the beginning and, as with the theosis of human beings so with creation itself, perfection is anticipated from the very creation, yet this perfection will not come about mechanistically or ‘naturally’, but rather through divine grace.” (1) This is the grace of Christ for us, Christ in us and Christ our life.
NOT A CLOCK
Speaking from experience, I have found that surgeons of a fundamentalist stripe can step out of their authority in ‘body health’ to re-invent themselves as theologians - or so they think. They then, in line with their craft, promote the mechanical concept of ‘being’ that the law suggests: The clockwork orange.
CHRIST ENFOLDS US IN GOD
There is nothing mechanical, abstract or legalistic about the salvation formed and implemented by the trinitarian God. Nor can there be, seeing that theosis* is about the ‘divinisation’ of humanity. To partake of the divine nature is to partake of God’s nature of trinity. Clarity in this is ours, when our lens is not the law but the Christ Himself as a member of this trinity. When Christ is our life we will never walk in darkness. When the law is our self-evaluation and obsession, we will specialise in confusion.
INCARNATED IN THOSE WHO BELIEVE
We are not advocating deism. We are affirming that God incarnated Himself in the creation and in Israel and then specifically revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ – God incarnated among us and now God incarnated by the Spirit of Sonship in you and those who believe. God is not a generality. God is infinitely personal and it is in the person of Jesus that we encounter God’s fullness and agency.
ONENESS WITH LIFE
“This same theme [communion of redemption with creation] echoes within the theology of Athanasius .. who repeatedly emphasised the connection between creation and redemption.” (2)
Thus, the who of God is woven into the what of what God has done in drawing us into Himself. This explains why, in Christ and oneness with Him, we are alive with spirit and life when Christ is our life because in Him we have been made one with God. Now we have departed a mechanical mode to enter a ‘union with God life.’ This is the difference between the Gospel of Paul, Christ and John and the un-gospels of legalism and religion clockwork aberrations.
* Theosis - Theosis is the belief, that Christians can experience a union with God and become like him so much that they participate in the divine nature. Retrograde ‘gospels’ see this as accomplished through the law. Classical Christianity sees it as a result of the atonement/incarnation.
** One of the best books written on the relevance of the trinity to grace and a lived spirit and life where Christ’s is our life is Patmos: Patmos: Three Days, Two Men, One Extraordinary Conversation, by C Baxter Kruger. It makes Torrance more readable.
(1) Myk Habets in Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance.
(2) Ibid.
