The New Creation

Church History Made Accessible, Relevant, and Personal

Robert P. Vande Kappelle

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532662621
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Christianity is essentially a historical religion. It cannot be understood merely through a set of dogmas, a moral code, or a view of the universe. Through the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the developing church, Christianity acknowledges the revelation of God in action.Augustine, the great medieval theologian, envisioned human society as composed of two "cities, " distinguished by two loves: the love of God and the love of Self. He viewed these cities as universal in scope and operative throughout human history. This perspective raises questions about the church's nature, its role in society, and whether the church has lived up to its nature and destiny as God's new creation.The New Creation defines the church as "the people of God, " related but not equivalent to Israel or the institutional church. This text provides a clear and concise survey of the church as God's instrument for the providential care of the earth and its human family. The story of the church begins with Abraham in the second millennium BCE, long before Jesus or the birth of Christianity, and it proceeds through three epochs: 1.Formation (c. 1850-4 BCE), 2.Transformation (4 BCE-1500 CE), and3.Reformation (1500 CE-present).Ideal for individual or group study, The New Creation divides church history into nine units, each discussed as a phase in the church's organic growth and development. In addition to the narrative, each chapter includes three features for that epoch of church history: 1) a significant event, 2) a turning point or decisive moment, and 3) study questions.

Part 1

Formation

(c. 1850–4 BCE)

Chapter 1

Phase 1: Beginnings (1850–1200 BCE)

Myths, Sagas, and Epics

Significant Event: Jacob’s encounter with God, which resulted in his election as Israel, father of the twelve tribes.

Turning Point: Abraham’s migration to Canaan and his subsequent call to covenant faithfulness.

The prologue to the Fourth Gospel begins memorably with a declaration of cosmic and historical import: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:1–5).

Scholars disagree over the meaning and interpretation of this passage, particularly its use of the term logos, for the term is practically untranslatable. “Word” is one way to translate the original Greek term logos, though it is certainly not the only possible translation. Other meanings, in addition to personified Wisdom, include concepts such as “conversation,” “discourse,” “telling a story,” and even “a rationale for a way of living.”

The first three words of John’s prologue are the same words that open the book of Genesis. John makes this connection intentionally, for it suits his purpose and creates a bridge for his audience. Notice the parallels: in Genesis God creates by speaking; in the Gospel God creates through the Word. In Genesis God’s first creative act results in the emergence of light from the darkness; in the Gospel the Word is associated with light that shines in the darkness. In both cases the light is distinguished from darkness. In this regard, John’s prologue clearly functions as a commentary on the creation account in Genesis 1. John, like Genesis, takes readers back to the beginning of time, to the relation between time and eternity. By making this connection with Genesis, John begins church history where Genesis begins: In the beginning.

From the beginning, the writer of John makes clear that the words of Jesus are meaningless apart from their relation to their essential underlying meaning in the Word, much as the apostles are insignificant apart from their relation to Jesus, and that Jesus profits little unless he be the incarnate Word of God. However, this Word is not an abstraction; it must be understood in relationship to this world, for it is incarnated in flesh—infinity to time, eternity to history. The world is where the Word of God is recognized, believed, and known. Because this Word is beyond time and space, it is timeless and spaceless and hence belongs to every epoch in time and to every race on earth. It is this logos, like the Priestly writer’s (the author of Genesis1) “wind from God” sweeping over the primordial waters of history (Gen. 1:2), that drives not only church history but world history as well.

As we address the origins of the church in the pre-Israelite period, the following concepts, epochs, and events helped shape the Israelite identity:

1. God, time, and history

2. The formation of an Israelite epic

3. The primeval period (Genesis 1–11)

4. The patriarchal period (Genesis 12–50)

5. The election (the “call”) of Abraham

6. The covenant with Abraham

7. The testing of faith

God, Time, and History

Ancient people viewed time as circular, or cyclical. Their reality was nature, to which everything was related. Even their gods, related to nature as personifications of natural forces or human ideals, were enmeshed in this cyclical series of events. Like a dog chasing its tail, history was going nowhere. Belief that human life was destined only to repeat itself and never to achieve any unique meaning or purpose led to a sense of futility. The early Greeks, like many of their predecessors and contemporaries, had a pessimistic view of history. Because they viewed nature as governed by the seasons, caught in repetitive patterns, they also viewed nature and time as eternal. For that reason, they had little concerns with origins or destiny. Greek philosophers such as Parmenides and Plato saw reality in the timeless and abstract ideals of beauty, goodness, and truth. Aristotle regarded the passing of time as destructive. Truth lay in unchanging universal ideas, not in unique and particular events in history.

The ancient Hebrews were the first to produce a comprehensive and accurate historical narrative. The modern conception of history, which views history as linear and historical events as unique, has its roots in the biblical writers, who viewed history as the arena of God’s activity. Because God controls all events, history has a religious significance, and because God is guiding history toward a consummation, history has unity and meaning. It is in history, rather than in natural phenomena, that clues to God’s nature are found. The Bible presents events such as Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the Assyrian destruction of Israel, and the Babylonian captivity of the Jews as unique events that reveal something of the divine plan. They are not mere cyclical recurrences.

While concerned with history, the Hebrew scriptures provide more than a national history of Israel. They show God as the Lord of all peoples, involved in their victories and triumphs but also in their pain and suffering. It is in time and history that God enacts the global plan of salvation through dramatic confrontations.

If Christianity is a historical religion, it follows that all history is God’s history. The succession of the years is not merely a tangle of events without general meaning. History witnesses to a divine purpose and is moving toward a divine goal, what Charles Kingsley called “the strategy of God.” Because of the Hebraic concept of time, Christians have a reference point by which to judge the particulars of history.

In tracing God’s continued activity in history, however, we must take care to avoid naïve arguments about power and its relation to goodness and truth, as if the great national and imperialistic victories by Christian armies somehow “prove” the righteousness of their cause or the truth of Christianity.

The Formation of an Israelite Epic

Those who read the Bible canonically, beginning with Genesis (Creation) and ending with Revelation (Consummation), do so to gain literary and theological perspective. They are not, however, reading the Bible chronologically, for the sources and books that comprise the Bible were not written in that order.

Biblical scholars customarily date Israel’s first national epic as the product of a literary awakening that occurred during the reigns of David and Solomon, a period known as the United Kingdom. In this view, an unknown author in Judea known as “the Yahwist” (or Jahwist) composed a masterful prose epic using preliterary units of tradition to create Israel’s first written source. This source, called J, was written about 950–900. He (or she) was interested in personal biography and in ethical and theological reflection. E, the second source, was composed between 850–750 BCE in the Northern Kingdom of Israel by an unknown author identified as the Elohist. This source is more objective than J, being less interested in theological reflection. About 715 BCE an unknown editor combined J and E into what is known as the Old Epic or JE.

While the period from Abraham to Moses to David was one of oral tradition, this does not mean that beginning with David (1000 BC) oral tradition was superseded by literary records, or that before David there were no written records. What it means is that the Yahwist was the first to record the all-Israelite epic, a core story that up to that time had survived orally through stories, poems, songs, and other “memory units.” Some units of oral tradition were non-Israelite in origin and were later taken over by the Israelites. For example, the stories of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22) and Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Gen. 28) could have been Canaanite cult legends whose original cultural meaning is now lost to us. These independent units of tradition were not simply borrowed but rather were appropriated by Israel and given new meaning.

The compositional approach used by the Yahwist is fascinating. Rather than starting chronologically with creation, adding accounts of the patriarchs, the exodus, the conquest, the tribal confederacy, and finally, the monarchy, the J writer worked backward, “viewing earlier stories through the prism of the crucial historical experiences that created the community of Israel.”1 Starting with the Mosaic tradition (the material that extends from the oppression in Egypt to the entrance into Canaan), the Yahwist linked it with the Patriarchal tradition (the pre-Mosaic material found in Genesis 12–50), and finally with the Primeval tradition (the early material in Genesis that extends from the Creation, through the Flood, to the new beginning after the Flood).

The all-Israelite epic, read chronologically through its three movements or “acts,” begins universally (with fundamental human experiences), continues with Israel’s ancestors, and culminates in the Mosaic tradition. The Yahwist, it appears, was the first author to link the Mosaic tradition to a universal and cosmic context. It is to that broader context we turn.

The Primeval Period (Genesis 1–11)

The Primeval History belonged to Israel’s basic narrative even in the period of oral tradition. The motifs of Creation, Paradise, the Flood, and the deliverance of humanity (Noah and his family) from total destruction are common in ancient Near Eastern legends and myths. An ancient Sumerian list of rulers makes a sharp distinction between the period “before the flood” and the period “after the flood” (see Gen. 10:1). Furthermore, Israelite narrators probably appropriated the ancient view of a “Golden Age” at the beginning of history, while inserting the notion of violence (sin) emerging on the earth.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:4b—3:24) is filled with images found in ancient folklore, such as the Tree of Life and the cunning serpent. This story once circulated as an etiology, the storyteller’s explanation to social and sexual conventions such as the attraction of males and females to one another, the fear of snakes, the wearing of clothes, the pain of childbirth, the misery of hard work, the experience of guilt, the fear of divine retribution, and the presence of evil. While neither the later writings of the Old Testament nor Jewish tradition placed great emphasis on the expulsion account in Genesis 2–3, that story has been read by Christians for centuries as the paradigmatic story of a fall from grace, a Paradise Lost that accounts for the origin of sin, human estrangement from God, and death for all humanity. As indicated in Genesis 3:14–19, the primeval revolt against God is an act of violence that disrupts all relationships—with God, human beings, and the earth. In Genesis 3:15 the early church found a messianic prophecy, namely, the final victo...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1: Formation
• Part 2: Transformation
• Part 3: Reformation
• Epilogue: Awakening
• Bibliography