This is an email correspondence between a professor of mine about the relationship between God and the nations and our role in saving the world and why missions needs a more dynamic and inexhaustible view of God's glory that is not only transcendent but also...
Nathan,
Thanks for your note, especially the expression of your aspirations. It is great to love people, and don't forget that you have to have seen the glory of God since to love God, so you have to see the glory of these nations to love them.
Warmly,
Dr. VanGemeren
Dr. VanGemeren,
If I can remember, I would love to speak to you about what you just wrote. How much do we allow the dignity of Creation to be our motivation for redeeming it alongside of God as participators in the Kingdom of Heaven? Mother Theresa always served people because she literally saw them as Christ and so she was serving Christ. I don't agree with this and think that we should see the glory of creation and that God receives glory when the dignity of ourselves, others, and the creation is restored. I also believe that God made a "good" Creation but that He put us in the world and gave us the creation mandate to make the world better by spreading over the whole earth. Since we are inherently image bearers, we would spread his glory just by our presence in different sectors of the globe among other reasons. Jonathan Edwards had a view of the God-World relationship like this and having read that and some other thoughts that I have had, I sensed that the reason for the missional mandate in reaching the nations is to go and unearth the God given dignity of these nations and to let them encounter Christ in the way they are supposed to. And that when they encounter the Gospel, there will be flavors and nuances of the Gospel that will come to life that have never come to life before and it will reflect another prism of the radiance of God's glory from within that culture, language, ethnic worship expression, etc... I feel that we are only to introduce the Gospel through Scripture, service, our presence and ultimately our love and then let them encounter the Spirit and take hold of Christ, Scripture and then leave it in their hands and hearts after some time with a guiding hand for some time after but not to interfere, only to warn and give counsel. This way they will appropriate faith in YHWH in a very contextualized and unique way. Once that takes place it seems that they will begin doing theology for themselves and the flavor that their culture and language has will be infused with the Gospel and in turn bring the Gospel to life in a way that it has not before. The Gospel therefore has a reciprocal relationship to culture and people group distinctives, one that allows each to come to life more than before they encountered each other. It won't be a new teaching but the Gospel instead is a dynamic life giving message of transformation that has central teachings to its core but that as it encounters different cultures and languages that it will be unfolded more and more and we will be able to learn more of who God is through that new prism being uncovered. So ultimately, there is so much more to dynamically discover about God as He encounters different cultures and even generations as they encounter Him for the first time.
This is one way in which the glory of God is radiated from within the nations. It is in their encounter with Him and their embrace and appropriation of His Gospel. So ultimately the Gospel grows in its ability to be expressed and illuminated as it encounters different nations, tribes, people groups, etc... As "Wisdom" is a vast and complex idea/approach to life with and under God's reign that can never be exhausted, so also is the "Gospel" as an approach to redeeming all things (Col. 1:19:20) and it's definition will never be able to be reduced because it is also alive and continually dynamic as it receives its source from within the Trinity.
So when one culture encounters another culture with the Gospel the point is to call the receiving culture to encounter the Gospel with as little cultural baggage from the culture that has brought the Gospel so that the receiving culture can appropriate the Message of Scripture as succinctly and closely to their cultural/linguistic/geographical/historical/emerging/ethnic identity as possible while still maintaining that which is helpful from the culture of those who brought the Message. To impose one's own culture in any way then, is a indirect or direct denouncement of that which God has called good in Creation. I don't assume that all of culture is good, but that the core identity of each culture within a people group is good as it related being a part of the created order. We were all created the same but when God confused the languages at Babel and separated the nations, I believe that He always meant to make an array of different people groups to display his creative diversity.
Therefore culture isn't completely holy but it should be redeemed and allowed to be an expression of the God's character and desire to reveal the intricate complexity and diversity of his Self revelation to all flesh. Therefore I assume that God's glory is latent or at least truncated and unexpressed as freely as it could be as of yet in the life, language and culture of unreached people groups. As a result, when we go out on mission, we are actually going to uncover aspects of God's prismic glory as the Gospel uncovers and unleashes it in the people groups it encounters. The call of the prophet Isaiah demonstrates this in Isaiah 6 where God proclaims that His glory fills the whole earth.
I hope this makes sense. I want to write on this and it fits with what you wrote to me about seeing the glory of the nations in order to love them. That glory I believe was given to them by God so that it could be unraveled and unleashed through redeemed human connections and an encounter with the Word of God, the life of Christ and the Spirit in the life of a community. Blessings!
Blessed to be a blessing,
Nathan Smith
