Relocating To Elfland

Some months ago I read this remarkable passage in John Webster’s Confessing God:

“The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is to be the ‘head and pattern’ of theological thinking about space, above all because that doctrine articulates the utter gratuity and contingency of created being . . . . Space is therefore not absolute or unoriginate, some sort of pre-existent medium; nor is it simply a register of acts and attitudes on the part of creatures who make space for themselves by disposing of themselves in the world. In both cases . . . space has become detached from God’s acts of creating and maintaining the creaturely realm and reconciling it to himself. In effect, space is secularized . . . .” (pp. 104–105)

Subsequent dabbling in Oscar Cullman’s Christ and Time and in the work of Rosenstock-Huessy has convinced me something similar must be said of the time-dimension of creaturely existence. Space and time are not “simply there” any more than anything else in creation is “simply there.” The concept of “space” articulates God-ordained dimensions and relations; the concept of “time” articulates God-ordained dynamics and developments. To think or speak of time and space apart from God is secularism: it surrenders to pagan unbelief things over which He claims absolute ownership and authority.

So what? Well, to begin with, this means the sacredness of space is the result of creation, not the Mosaic Covenant; and so what I do with space God has entrusted to me matters. I may not have been given a specific plot of land in Canaan which I am not free to sell in perpetuity (as was the case for my Israelite fathers), but it is still the case that where God has placed any space under my jurisdiction, the call to holiness comes with it. No less in the New Covenant than in the Old, if “anyone comes . . . and does not bring [the teaching of Christ], do not receive him into your house” (3 Jn 10), because your house is holy space. Territory under the jurisdiction of a disciple of King Jesus is territory claimed by the King in His dominion-taking work in the earth, and the disciple stewarding it (we may call him a king-priest) will have an eye open for serpents. One must ask also if there is not something in the old epigram, “cleanliness is next to godliness.” The homemaker who keeps picking up toys and putting up curtains is obeying the gospel, because the Spirit doesn’t just order God’s space, He also beautifies it.

In the time-dimension, leaving aside the obvious significance of the centrality of Christ in history (powerfully expressed, among others, by Lesslie Newbigin in his Finality of Christ), we must look square in the face the sheer sinfulness of modern piety that is so unaware of the past and so unconcerned about the future. Not to know history is to ignore the glory of God and to deafen ourselves to what He has been teaching His church for generations. Not to prepare for the future (perhaps because we are hunkered down hoping He will return tomorrow, and can see little point in anything so this-worldly) is to come dangerously close to hiding His deposit in a napkin. Such chronological obliviousness extracts our lives from His lordship over all time, and in doing so secularizes (however unwittingly) the present. My present life is part of God’s working out His purposes in the earth; what possible hope do I have of doing His will now if I have no idea what He has been doing or plans to do? “Knowing the time,” says the apostle (Rom 13:11), we take up the mantle of our fathers, and give ourselves for things we will never live to see. If our sons and daughters are wise, they too will take up the deposit in time, and serve the Lord their God in their generation. And so on until He comes.

A lot more needs to be said about all of this . . . .