Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Who Said This?

"The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing which happens by chance on a lost planet. It is the motive for everything, the motive for creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist – the encounter between God and his creature. In this sense, salvation history, the covenant, precedes creation. During the Hellenistic period, Judaism developed the idea that the Torah would have preceded the creation of the material world. This material world seems to have been created solely to make room for the Torah, for this Word of God that creates the answer and becomes the history of love. The mystery of Christ already is mysteriously revealed here.... One can say that, while material creation is the condition for the history of salvation, the history of the covenant is the true cause of the cosmos."

Two questions:
What do you think of the statement?
Who do you think said it?

3 comments:

John said...

It's a good quote from a surprising source. I have to agree with the writer: "the history of the covenant is the true cause of the cosmos." I won't answer number 2 because I cheated to find out.

Kyle said...

I cheated on the source, too(I couldn't resist!). I've found myself thinking something along these lines (though my inner monologue isn't quite as eloquent as this). I'm not completely convinced that it is correct to say that "the history of the covenant is the true cause of the cosmos," but I can't say for sure why.

I'm more comfortable saying that God's pursuit of his own glory is the true cause of the cosmos, and leaving the details of that as a mystery.

Stéphane K said...

Is the covenant the true cause of the cosmos or is it God's glory? I won't be original. Warnings go on in my head when you make broad statements like this quote.
Is man central or God central?

Now, regarding author…
As I read this, I'm thinking: "if this is some hot dude like Piper and I say its a nutjob, I'll appear a fool…"

Nonetheless, this is not the language of Reformed evangelicalism. My guess is that it's Rob Bell.
It's the whole "During the Hellenistic period, Judaism developed the idea…" that tipped me off. "The mystery of Christ" is not Rob Bellish, but hey, I had to make a guess.

I'm French, so I should have guessed the source, now that I've looked… Hint hint!