A man slowly
becoming a wolf, in Charles Williams, 'The Place of the Lion', seeks his prey.
He snarls, “Slowly, Lord, slowly! I’ll make sacrifice—the blood of the sacrifice,”
and at that a sudden impatient anger caught [another] young man.
“Fool,”
he cried out, “There’s only one sacrifice, and the God of gods makes it, not
you.”
I was reminded of this scene as I studied the fifth lesson in
the Presbyterian Women’ Bible Study, “Reconciling Paul.”
Starting with the Shaker song, “Simple-Gifts,” lesson five
of the Presbyterian Women’s Horizon Bible study barely begins with Scripture
before skipping much of the text. The author, Hinson-Hasty, uses some of the
text to supposedly prove that humanity is called to strive to bring about the
new creation; not through proclamation of the good news of redemption but by
less consumption and a sense of interdependence with nature.
She simply skips over the important meat of the text to
write about what she refers to as “ecocide.” Jesus Christ and his redemptive
work are only explained as they fit within ecological problems. This is how
Hinson-Hasty puts it as she writes about 2 Corinthians 5:20:
God and human beings are
understood here as working together, co-groaning, co-travailing, in the process
of giving birth to a new creation. “New creation is being birthed not only within
individuals, but within the whole cosmos. In this lesson, you will explore in
greater depth Paul’s understanding of new creation, consider the whole creation
as an interdependent reality, and begin to think about the work of
reconciliation as a partnership between people and planet earth.
The lesson, “Reconciliation and the Whole Creation,” covers
2 Corinthians 5:11-6:10, which includes rich promises. God reconciles us to himself through Christ
Jesus. We are made new and promised a place in God’s new creation. The
apostolic witness is the call to proclaim God’s reconciling act in Christ.
Therefore
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away;
behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled
us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation,
namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting
their trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the word of
reconciliation.
Therefore,
we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us;
we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made him who knew no
sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God
in him. (2 Cor. 5:17-21)
Hinson-Hasty correctly insists that the new creation in Paul’s
writing includes more than the individual, and many scholars agree with her
that ‘new creature’ may be translated ‘new creation.’ Still by simply ignoring
the redemptive parts of these particular verses, ‘not counting their trespasses,’
and “He made him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf, so that we might
become the righteousness of God in him,” Hinson-Hasty, has turned the meaning
away from its Christological center.
The reconciling is to God through the work of Christ. The
work the Christian is to do in this case is to call sinners to the gift of
Christ that they might be reconciled to God. Does this preclude being concerned
about the health of the earth? Absolutely not, but the author is reading more
into the text then is there. And not only is she adding her own political views
to the text, she is taking away the importance of the good news of Jesus’ redemptive
work.
Hinson-Hasty also uses some of the text of Romans 8:19-23 to
explain Paul’s meaning of 2 Corinthians. She writes:
In Romans 8:19-23 the whole
creation is groaning and travailing together in pain like a woman in labor. In
a sense, the whole creation gets caught up in a larger process of bringing
something new into being, co-groaning and co-travailing, in the ongoing acts of
creativity and redemption.
But, this isn't the meaning of the Roman’s text; the
groaning of creation is not bringing something new into being, but creation and
the redeemed are waiting for the new in the midst of pain. The acts of
creativity and redemption belong to God alone. The pains are like childbirth,
but the action is God’s final act of resurrecting the bodies of his adopted
sons and daughters. Then creation will be free.
F.F. Bruce writing of this chapter in Romans notes the glory
of the whole event which includes not only the redeemed but also fallen creation:
When the day of glory dawns,
the glory will be manifested on a universal scale in the people of God, the
glorified community of Christ. Something of the glory is already visible: Paul
elsewhere sees a special splendor in the church as the fellowship of the
reconciled, and thinks of it as being displayed even at this present time to celestial
beings as God’s masterpiece of reconciliation: ‘that through the church the
manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers
in the heavenly places’ (Eph. 3:10). But
what is now seen in limited and distorted fashion will be seen in perfection
when the people of God at last attain the goal which he has ever had in view
for them—complete conformity to his glorified Son.
Bruce goes on to speak of a transformed universe which
occurs when the redeemed are completely transformed. But this is God’s work; creation,
including redeemed humanity waits. And speaking of the groaning, and waiting, Archibald
Thomas Robertson in his Word Pictures in
the New Testament, writes, “This mystical sympathy of physical nature with
the work of grace is beyond the comprehension of most of us. But who can
disprove it?”
Robertson goes on in several places to show that both the
children of God and nature are waiting for the coming of Christ.
The Horizon’s
lesson begins with a song, Simple Gifts, written by Shaker founder, Ann Lee, who
believed she was the second coming of Christ, yet the lesson fails to lift up
the hope of the Christian, the true second coming of Christ and the bodily resurrection
of those who belong to Christ.
4 comments:
I simply do not understand the connection between Hinson-Hasty's lesson #5 and the scripture references. I will be using other material to teach the scripture. As a lay person trying to be a moderator for a circle I do not like teaching this material.
Anonymous thank you for commenting, and may the Lord bless your leading and give you his wisdom.
I gave Lesson Five at our Circle meeting at church this past Thursday. Like you, I thought that the author not only missed the mark, but continued to use the Scripture as a jumping off point to advance her own political agenda; in this case, "creation" = Environmentalism. The other women in our Circle are also dismayed, for instance, when the Israelite's flight from Egypt is equated with illegal immigration, and other such ideas.
Yes using a biblical story to do contemporary politics can too often miss the whole point of what God is trying to say to his people. In this case God does later tell the Israelites to take care of the foreigners among them because at one time they were mistreated in another land. But not every contemporary problem matches perfectly with today's problems.
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