The Constant Gardener Joe Boot

GARDENER The Constant

The value of reformational thinking

REFORMATIONAL THOUGHT IS DISTINCTIVE

The Ezra Institute is a confessional Christian think-tank engaged in scholarship and intensive biblical worldview teaching and training, exploring cultural apologetics, Christian philosophy and mission theology as they each grow out of that worldview – all in intimate relation to the central thrust of Scripture, the kingdom of God. As such, I am often asked about what characterizes or distinguishes our thinking about these issues within the broad rubric of evangelicalism. Why would someone invest their time or finances in our programs and resources in view of so many more readily familiar choices? This is a fair question and one that I hope to answer in this article.

The term we have chosen that best describes the orientation of our thought is reformational due to our debt to the leading thinker of the sixteenth century Reformation, John Calvin and the many who built consistently on that foundation – especially the Dutch Kuyperian and English Puritan traditions – and our conviction that Christian thinking must always be in reform in terms of God’s Word and geared toward cultural reformation within God’s world.

I have never tired of observing that the word ‘culture’ shares a common root with such earthy words as ‘cultivate,’ and shows up in words like ‘agriculture,’ ‘horticulture,’ and so on. When it comes to human culture, the question is not whether we will shape culture, but what kind of society will we cultivate. That is to say, as imagebearers of God, we are inescapably cultural creatures. We have been placed in this world as in a garden, to tend, develop and care for it. It only remains to be seen whether we cultivate it in a godly or a rebellious way. In what follows I hope

to show how reformational thinking understands and pursues the human cultural task in imitation of the original Gardener and as an offering of praise to the living God.

REFORMATIONAL THOUGHT IS MORE THAN THINKING ABOUT THINKING

It is of primary importance to point out that reformational thought is not simply concerned with analytical thinking as such, but with what living life to the full is all about – for that is why Christ, who is at the root of our thought, was made manifest (John 10:10). Consequently, reformational thinking is not interested in a narrow, intellectualized faith or scholastic, rationalistic apologetics. Though we must obey Christ’s command to love God with all our mind (Mark 12:30), it would be a mistake to regard intensive and focused reflection on the full implications of God’s Word-revelation as an abstract, speculative intellectual exercise bearing little relationship to life in the real world and the everlasting matters of Christ’s kingdom. Christian thinking worth the name does not terminate with tweed jackets, dusty libraries, pipes and slippers or high-brow essays crafted for bohemian scholars living in academic echo chambers. On the contrary, our view of reality is very much concerned with every aspect of real life as God has created and is redeeming it through His Son. Rigorous, philosophically oriented thinking in the grip of Scripture is an act of faith and obedience directed toward the reconciliation of all things to God.

REFORMATIONAL THOUGHT SHUNS IDOLATRY AND OBSERVES THE LIMITS OF THOUGHT

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JOE BOOT

JOE BOOT is the founder and President of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and the founding pastor of Westminster Chapel in Toronto. Before this, he served with Ravi Zacharias as an apologist in the UK and Canada, working for five years as Canadian director of RZIM. Joe earned his Ph.D. in Christian Intellectual Thought from Whitefield Theological Seminary, Florida. His apologetic works have been published in Europe and in North America and include Searching for Truth, Why I Still Believe and How Then Shall We Answer. His most noted contribution to Christian thought, The Mission of God, is a systematic work of cultural theology exploring the biblical worldview as it relates to the Christian’s mission in the world. Joe serves as Senior Fellow for the cultural and apologetics think-tank truthXchange in Southern California, and as Senior Fellow of cultural philosophy for the California based Centre for Cultural Leadership. Joe lives in Toronto with his wife, Jenny, and their three children, Naomi, Hannah, and Isaac.

Greeks, Christians frequently tend to be suspicious of anything that smacks of philosophy (lit. “love of wisdom”) as indicative of man’s effort to trust ultimately in his logical-analytical thinking as an alternative source of certainty to faith in Christ and His Word. This suspicion of pagan philosophy is well justified. The intellectualism of the classical Greeks saw man’s reasoning capacity (and indeed thought itself) in almost divine terms, to the point that intellectual contemplation was regarded as the highest kind of life, manual work was despised and the abstract ideas of the philosophers qualified them, in their minds, to be philosopher-kings governing the unsophisticated masses.

In contrast, our perspective is that the most fundamental and foundational questions of life cannot be answered by man’s theoretical reasoning alone. Confronted with the great ‘boundary’ questions of life (i.e. the origin of all things, the nature of the cosmos, the basis of truth and meaning, the ground of the relationship of unity and multiplicity in reality etc.,) our analytical capacities alone are helpless. We stand in need of revelation and the kind of certainty that is rooted in faith in Christ and His Word. That Word concerns all of life in all its meaning-sides, diverse relationships and structures which come to focus in the heart of the human person – the religious root of our being. So, reformational thought is oriented toward the totality of life and is not restricted to any one function of it (such as analytical thinking), while recognizing the limitations of human understanding in grasping that totality.

One of the wisest men who ever lived, king Solomon, well understood the inadequacy of human theoretical inquiry:

Who is the wise person, and who knows the interpretation of a matter?... When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the activity that is done on the earth (even though one’s eyes do not close in sleep day or night), I observed all the work of God and concluded that man is unable to discover the work that is done under the sun. Even though a man labors hard to explore it, he cannot find it; even

if the wise man claims to know it, he is unable to discover it (Eccl. 8:1, 16-17).

What this inspired Hebrew philosopher seems to be describing here is the human inability to fully comprehend, to grasp in a manageable concept, the unity and totality of God’s work; which is to say, we cannot intellectually tie neatly together the meaning-fullness of all of God’s works in creation and human culture by mere logical inquiry. As Solomon writes again, “I resolved, ‘I will be wise, but it was beyond me. What exists is beyond reach and very deep. Who can discover it” (Eccl. 7:23- 24)? We simply cannot independently discover the work God has done from beginning to end (Eccl. 3:11). This is because, from a scriptural standpoint, we are creatures fully embedded in the creation we are investigating. We cannot lift ourselves out and above it. The root and transcendent unity of meaning lies beyond creation in the triune God. The origin, purpose and significance of our abiding yet changing cosmos in the fullness of its meaning is not uncovered by analytical human inquiry, it must be revealed to the heart by the living God. As a result, our reformational thought is rooted in the power of God and His revelation.

REFORMATIONAL THOUGHT RECOGNISES A PRIMARY RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE

This does not mean we cannot have a total view of life that is all-encompassing. The grand narrative of the Christian faith revealed in Scripture is indeed a total story rooted in the creation of all things by the living God. But this comprehensive view is not humanly constructed from analytical thought. Rather it is grounded in the givenness of primary faith knowledge which contains true, inescapable and irreducible ideas that we cannot manage without because they form the indefinable categories of all our thinking – life, love, beauty, energy, motion, logical distinguishing and more. This intuitive ‘idea’ knowledge is like a skylight shedding light upon life from above even when we can’t fully comprehend that revelatory knowledge in comprehensive concepts. This faith knowledge includes biblical ideas like the human heart as the invisible centre of our person; God’s eternal relationship as trinity; His creation

of all things from nothing; His providential government of all things by His law-word at every moment in all creation; His covenantal love for and redemption of His creation; His everlasting truth and justice; the realm of heaven and angels and demons. We cannot fully comprehend these truths and they are not inferred from other beliefs but are part of the givenness of God’s revelation to us and in us.

This real knowledge goes beyond our ability to fully grasp in simple concepts. Yet this primary, practical, religious knowledge given in creation and in Scripture is the real foundation for every other kind of knowledge. So reformational thought is not a form of ‘rational theology’ for a Christian intelligentsia, constructing an independent knowledge of God and the world from theoretical inquiry. It is founded in acknowledgement of God’s revelation of Himself.

REFORMATIONAL THOUGHT IS CONFESSIONAL

This recognition means that reformational thought is confessional, because its foundation is the Christian confession of faith as it seeks to answer the big questions of life. Stated broadly as a world-and-life-view, that confession can be summarized as the creation, fall (in Adam) and redemption of all things in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the language of Scripture, we confess the all-pervasive reality of the kingdom of God. This knowledge is not a development of professional theologians but constitutes the first principles of Christian life and thought.

The coherence of the rich diversity of creation we experience every day is given to us in the divine order of creation (Gen. 1:20-31), and the unity of that coherent diversity in creation is the transcendent fullness of all things given and created in Christ Jesus (Col. 1:15-17; John 1:1-3). Christ is the origin who contains all things (Eph. 1:23; 1 Cor. 3:19-23; Eph. 2:10) so that the rootedness of creation in Christ is the most important feature of the creation in its essence. This same Christ is the destination of all creation, for He is reconciling all things to Himself (Col. 1:19-23) and will one day liberate the totality of creation, which

holds together and consists in Him (Col. 1:17), from its subjection to futility (Rom. 8:19-23). To abstract our thinking from this faith foundation in any area of life is the essence of secularization and the spiritual uprooting of reality.

At the same time, reformational thinking emphasizes that every other worldview is, by definition, equally characterized by a religious confession, because all answers to questions of origin, meaning, unity and destination within creation are answered by a conscious or unconscious non-Christian or Christian faith perspective. All worldviews are inescapably religious and a conscious articulation of an attitude to life or ‘ethos’ at the spiritual root of human existence. The Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd called this ethos a religious ‘ground motive.’ This means that in Christian apologetics, the contest is not between ‘science’ and Scripture, or ‘reason’ and faith – with Christians struggling on the backfoot to show that despite their faith they are still ‘rational.’ Rather, faithful apologetics recognizes a confrontation between religious worldviews, between different philosophies of life. The task of apologetics in reformational thinking is to show that in every area of thought and culture, apostate faith is destructive of meaning, truth and life because it takes a meaning aspect(s) or entity within creation and absolutizes it to divine status as a substitute origin and root of meaning. This produces hopeless contradictions and antinomies, making human experience unintelligible and unlivable if consistently applied. All sciences and human thinking is undergirded by one religious motive and worldview or another and only the Christian standpoint is one that does not self-destruct under its own weight. “...this primary,

practical, religious knowledge given in creation and in Scripture is the real foundation for every other kind of knowledge.”

REFORMATIONAL THOUGHT IS NOT ABOUT MAKING EVERYONE A THEOLOGIAN

This confessional basis does not mean that reformational thought tries to privilege the science of theology or apologetics over other disciplines and vocations. Theology is an important subject and vocation but is only one among many equally im

portant fields in which to study, work and serve God in terms of a Christian world-and-life-view grounded in a scriptural confession. Theology as a science is the human theoretical interpretation of revelation and faith, it is not revelation itself. God’s revelation is God revealing Himself in creatures – that is, in creation, in the Bible, in man himself (Rom. 1:19) and supremely in Christ who is the firstborn of creation, both God and man. His revelation is the norm and normative content of our faith.

Biblically, to have true faith is to believe, trust and serve God with the whole of our being (Heb. 11:4-12; Luke 10:27; John 14:15). Without revelation, there is no possibility of faith because faith, the function of believing (Heb. 11:1), is always oriented in response to divine revelation. As such, faith is actually a constitutive aspect of being human. Those who reject God’s norm for faith have not stopped putting their faith somewhere, nor have they lost their faith function, they have simply reacted to revelation by placing their faith elsewhere. Faith remains the guiding function in all of our lives. It gives form and shape to all we are and do because it refers us to the religious root of life, concentrated in the heart. “...all of us, not just the theologian, have access to God’s revelation to guide our believing, thinking, acting and living.”

Now, while reformational thought is not seeking to turn everyone into theologians, it is concerned with authentically understanding and expressing our faith in all disciplines and areas of life in terms of God’s scriptural norm for faith. True faith is worked out and developed by practicing faith (not just hearing lectures or sermons) because believing grows by doing, by applying, by testing, trial and error (Jas. 1:22; 2:18-26). This means that whether we are bankers, butchers, homemakers, heart surgeons, midwives, truck drivers, carpenters or investors, our life and work is shaped and directed by our faith as we respond to God’s revelation in obedience or disobedience. We have a response-ability by virtue of our humanity, and all of us, not just the theologian, have access to God’s revelation to guide our believing, thinking, acting and living.

REFORMATIONAL THOUGHT SEES MAN AS GOD’S IMAGE-BEARER WITH A CULTURAL TASK

The scriptural distinctives of genuine faith make it abundantly clear that human beings have a real-world task as God’s image-bearers, called to reflect His will, purpose and character back to the rest of creation (Gen. 1:26-27). In the biblical world-and-life-view, a certain dynamic has been written into creation because all things are created from, through and unto God (Rom. 11:36; Acts 17:28). Everything is oriented toward the maker (origin) of all things in total dependency, the One in whom everything consists and is brought to its destination (Rev. 22:13). This includes man himself who occupies a unique and royal station within creation.

This privileged position is rooted in Christ. Man is an image of God and of Christ (in whom he is created). The first man, Adam, was created as head of the race and in himself represented and comprehended the unity of all human beings who would come from him. Scripture is clear that we were in Adam who was ‘son of God’ (Luke 3:38; Rom. 5:12). Thus, in an important sense, we are royal representatives of God the Son and we too were in paradise and fell into sin in Adam. It was here we fell from our original unity in Christ.

It was and is man’s creaturely bond with the human nature of Christ (the last Adam) in the depth dimension of the heart which brings us into His central position in creation (Ps. 8). As Andree Troost explains concerning this mystery, “In Christ man participated in Christ’s unitary and root position, of which the revelation of Col. 1:15-17 says that Christ is the first creature and that all things have been created in Him and also exist in Him.” Redeemed humanity’s royal role is thus bound to Christ’s identity for we are joint heirs (Rom. 8:16-17; 1 Pt. 2:9; 1 Cor. 15:22). If we fail to recognise this, we entirely miss the religious root of cosmic reality and our place in it (Heb. 2:10-12). We then end up living much of life as though Christ did not exist, as though we are not in Him, and as if He is not of central relevance to our life in the world and every discipline.

Reformational thought further recognises that the task given to us in Christ is to participate in His ministry of reconciliation (John 20:21-23) – the reconciliation of all things to God. If we truly are in Him, not just by virtue of creation, but also of redemption by rebirth and faith, this ministry is inescapably bound to us (John 14:12; 2 Cor. 5:17-18; Eph. 2:6-7). Christ is the true vine, God is the gardener, and we are the branches called to remain in Him and bear fruit (John 15:1-8). In a broader sense the whole world is God’s garden (Matt. 13:38) and He is restoring paradise and glorifying His creation through the renewing work of Christ (2 Cor. 5:17; Rev. 21:5).

The cultural task is thus illustrated beautifully for us in Scripture in light of creation as the garden of God. For the Son was there from the beginning (Prov. 8:22-31) and walked with the man He had formed in the cool of the day in the world’s first garden that the Lord Himself had planted (Gen. 2:7-8). Adam and Eve’s task was to tend and keep the garden and to have dominion in the earth (Gen. 1:28; 2:15; 2:18, 21-24). This meant working in and watching over what God had made, turning creation into a God-honoring and glorifying culture. Because of sin and rebellion our first parents were forced to leave the garden the Lord had planted to struggle in a creation now subjected to futility. But at the same time, God made a promise to send the Son of man, the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15), the root of Jesse, the true vine, the last Adam, to restore the garden and fellowship with the divine gardener. To that end (Gal. 3:16), He called a royal-priestly people in Abraham (Ex. 19:6) and promised them a taste of paradise restored in Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey (Ex. 33:3), if they were obedient. But due to rebellion that garden was also forfeit.

At last, the first Gardener, the Lord of the vineyard enters His garden again to walk with men – this time as a Son of Adam, born of a virgin. He entered the garden of Gethsemane and yet His disciples slept, once again leaving the divine Gardener alone in His garden as He knelt and offered up prayers and supplications with strong cries and tears (Heb. 5:7). There He confronted the

death which He had pronounced on His loved ones in the first garden and then went out to taste the bitterness of death for everyone (Heb. 2:9).

At the cross a remarkable exchange occurs concerning God’s garden, the restoration of paradise. One of the criminals crucified next to the Lord, now under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit asks, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replies, “I assure you: Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42- 43). Here, the kingdom of God and paradise are synonymous. Christ explicitly reveals that on this very day the paradise, lost in the garden of Eden by the first Adam, is being reinstated by the last Adam. Soon thereafter Jesus cries out, ‘It is fulfilled’ (John 19:30). It is at this very time that all of the Father’s requirements for redemption and the restoration of creation are fully met and Jesus’ specific promise to the converted criminal is realized. At that very instant, in Christ, all God’s people in history had their passports stamped for resurrection life in paradise restored. Scripture records that at this precise moment, the curtain of the temple (itself an image of the garden of Eden) was torn in two from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51), ensuring the believers direct access to God, even as Adam and Eve had enjoyed direct access to Him. Paradise is thus again accessible to the people of God, the children of faith. As a result, we are given the assurance, “I will give the victor the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in God’s paradise” (Rev. 2:7). Near the place our Lord was crucified was another garden with a new sepulchre in which no-one had ever been placed. There He was buried alone. On that glorious morning of death’s defeat, Mary wandered into the garden tomb and mistook the Lord for the gardener as He walked there in resurrection power (John 20:15)! Now, the great Gardener has been exalted and is seated at the right hand of God, pruning his vines and bringing all things into subjection (Ps. 8; Heb. 2:5-12). Yet there is more. Reformational thought recognises that in Christ, we are raised up and seated in the heavens, participat“He entered

the garden of Gethsemane and... There He confronted the death which He had pronounced on His loved ones in the first garden and then went out to taste the bitterness of death for everyone.”

ing in Christ’s ministry, rule and authority as He subordinates everything to Himself (Eph. 2: 6, 10). As such, the same Lord walks with us again as His people, by the Spirit. God is in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself and we are in Him restored to our calling to cultivate creation into the garden of God. Jesus called this cosmic garden the Kingdom of God, and we are entrusted with the gospel (good news) of this kingdom. Reformational thinking is therefore enthralled with the marvel, mystery and privilege of our royal-priestly calling to represent the covenant love, will and purpose of God to all creation, in every sphere of life and thought, delighting in the Lordship of the constant Gardener. “On that glorious morning of death’s defeat, Mary wandered into the garden tomb and mistook the Lord for the gardener as He walked there in resurrection power.”