What did you think of The Big Story? Leave your thoughts here. A special welcome to those commenting for the first time!
Enjoyed watching it. I was wondering why the future of humanity is called a restoration if it isn’t a returning or restoring of creation to qn earlier state. What I mean is, before human sin there was death, predation, disease and pain. After human sin, the same. So, why would we expect a restoration of humanity to a pre-Fall state to include a lack of any of the things that were characteristic of life before the Fall?
I hope that doesn’t come across as argumentative. I understand there are biblical references to the New Creation. I guess my big question is why God would wait until later to initiate an era of peace with lack of decay, death and pain, if He didn’t do this beforehand, when humanity was in its infancy.
2 Likes
Hi @Bernie_Addit! Thanks so much for leaving a comment, and welcome to the Forum.
You are absolutely right that language of a “restoration” is ambiguous and potentially confusing. I think in the context of the Big Story, Pastor Len is mostly talking about two things: 1) restoration of human relationships with God, and 2) the healing of God’s creation from the negative effects of human sin. But no, he’s not talking about a “Paradise Lost” where the death did not exist. As long as life has been around, death has been around too. Death and life exist together in the same way that darkness and light exist together.
Why didn’t got create the new creation in the first place? I think we get the following hints from the Bible:
- The incarnation of Christ (for which all things were made, Col. 1:16) requires that God create a material world in which he can be incarnate.
- The nature of a material world is dynamic change. We see this even in Genesis 1. Light and darkness, sea and land live in dynamic tension.
- Another purpose of this world is for God to call a people to himself who will love him and participate in his mission. This requires beings with free choice to follow him or not. So this reality is designed in such a way that people are given real choices to believe in God and follow him.
- The suffering of creation has some sort of mysterious value in bringing the Kingdom closer. We see hints of this in John 12:24, 1 Corinthians 15:36.
What do you think?
I thank God for you guys. This is a wonderfully poetic and majestic video. I really liked it. The way you wove all the Scripture in with the book of nature is fantastic.
Now regarding the imago dei, do you think it’s possible that consciousness and spirit could be one and the same? Vander Zee says, “And God’s breath, the Holy Spirit, breathed into these conscious creatures, and they knew God, the creator of all.” I guess it could be a matter of semantics, as to what exactly is meant by the word consciousness. But I take it as a uniquely human trait. Naturalists will disagree, but they will also deny classical (i.e. immaterial) spirituality.
The reason I ask is that I’m concerned with when human (spiritual, imago dei people) history actually begins. One of my favorite apologetics is to point out that all the history in the Bible lays claim to eyewitness accounts. None of it is revealed by angels or visions–in the way, for example, that the Quran or the Book of Mormon both claim to reveal history through angels and visions. (You can only accept such revelations by blind faith.) Now the Bible has many revelations from angels and visions, but they are always about the future, never the past. When it comes to the past, that lays claim to testimonies. (It still takes faith to believe to believe them, but it’s not blind faith.) Now obviously Genesis 1 and 2 have to be given to us and that’s fantastic. But if, for example, Genesis 3, is figurative, when do we say that literal history begins? How do we distinguish between the two?
1 Like
Not all Bible scholars equate the biblical imago dei with consciousness or moral awareness. You may like this blog series by Pete Enns: https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/series/what-does-image-of-god-mean
1 Like
Thank you, Christy. I will take a look.
This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.