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Comment: What is Reconciliation?
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From the Director: Ireland is changing and so are we!
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The Whole Gospel for the Whole World (and beyond...)
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The Hard Gospel
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Interview with Robin Eames: RECONCILIATION - A View from Armagh
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Interview with Sean Brady: RECONCILIATION - A View from Armagh
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Review: Bitter Fruit
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Review: The Colour of Darkness
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Review: The Lost Message of Jesus
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Review: The Futures of Evangelicalism
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Review: Evangelicals in Ireland: An Introduction
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THE WHOLE GOSPEL FOR THE WHOLE WORLD (AND BEYOND...)

OUR VISION of reconciliation is often too restricted and narrow. Living as we do in a shrinking world, a network of global villages, and at the same time in an ever-expanding universe, we are one planet in a galaxy among millions of galaxies, our vision of reconciliation needs to seriously stretch its horizons. We are exploring cosmic dimensions, including a larger than cosmic perspective on God. Reading the Bible in this context provides us with imaginative and mind-stretching possibilities.

Book-end Theology
I admire bookends, though I do not own any. They hold together a little collection of books. The Bible is a collection of books and it has fascinating bookends. The two bookends are creation and new creation, a significant biblical perspective. The story or stories of faith, and often anything but faith, are mainly stories of human beings. It is a very human story and sometimes a story about very particular humans. But the Bible begins and ends not with humanity but with the bigger picture of creation. The story of faith and the struggle for faith is set in the larger context of creation/new creation. The bookends, holding together the library of books we call the Bible, provide us with the big picture. We humans are part of and live within a universe, a whole creation, of which we know only a very small part. The bookends perspective or bookend theology is highly significant, because it challenges a popular perspective.

Many of us live out of an anthropocentric, or human centred, view of things. We hold a very human centred view of the world. We hold that humans are at the centre of the world, the most important beings in creation and things around us only have value and worth if they serve human needs. This anthropocentric perspective has become the key lens through which we see the world and history. We view the rest of creation from our human centred and human dominant perspective. Anthropocentrism has also become the lens through which we perceive salvation and reconciliation. We interpret the Bible and its themes of salvation and reconciliation from an anthropocentric perspective. That really means a very narrow, self-centred perspective, that is too restricted. The Bible’s bookend theology is not anthropocentric but cosmocentric. We begin and end with the much bigger picture of the cosmos, the universe, the whole creation. We are to read, imagine, experience and understand from a cosmocentric perspective.

Does a cosmocentric perspective make a difference to our living the faith story? What difference does it make?

Living the Cosmic Vision
Between the bookends there are other writings that provide us with cosmic vision. Because of our anthropocentrism we have often missed the bigger picture. Two good examples are the letters to Colossians and Ephesians.

Both of these cities were located in Asia Minor. They were important cities in the Roman Empire, a context that needs to be taken seriously in trying to understand what these letters were attempting to say to their small faith communities. The people of Colossae and Ephesus lived under a domination system. Life was dominated by a military superpower which was also an oppressive economic superpower. Reality was defined by imperialism and colonialism. It was characterised also by Greek/Hellenistic culture with strong oriental colouring. The vocabulary used in these letters reflects the imperial and cultural experiences. Both cities were metropolitan melting pots with populations drawn from many countries and not a few people without a country.

Culturally the perspective was cosmic. The cosmic view or belief systems were centred on cosmic powers or elements of the universe which controlled life. Everything was programmed, predetermined or fixed by Fate. People were also very aware of a cosmic fault, a cosmic catastrophe or the belief that there was a deep fault line between the higher and lower worlds. Living out of this kind of cosmology their ultimate concerns and deepest questions were around meaning and meaninglessness. These were the key experiential or existential questions.

Salvation was a common word in their vocabulary and understood from a cosmic perspective meaning the restoration of cosmic unity. Colossians uses these thought forms and in a remarkable text, Colossians 1:15-20, offers a vision of the cosmic Christ at the heart of creation and through whose life, death and resurrection there is the reconciliation of the cosmos. It is a breathtaking vision of Christ and reconciliation in cosmic context.

Ephesians also offers a vision which is cosmic in scope (Eph. 1:10). God’s dream, purpose, plan is to bring together the parts of the cosmos which are scattered, fragmented, divided and separated. God’s cosmic intention is to reconcile, make peace, break down dividing walls of hostility, bring all things in the universe into a cosmic unity in Christ. Again, a staggering vision of cosmic reconciliation, or unity in all its incredible diversity which stretches far beyond what we humans have ever dared to imagine or think.

Cosmic Reconciliation
Much of our vision of reconciliation is limited by our human perspective. In other important New Testament texts reconciliation is visioned in particular contexts as reconciliation between God and humanity and between humans. The Romans 5 and 2 Corinthians 5 texts are significant in their Pauline contexts of human alienation and division, vertical and horizontal in Rome and Corinth. In Colossians and Ephesians reconciliation is cosmic. It is the reconciliation of ‘all things’. In Romans 8 though, Paul is also concerned with the restoration and liberation of nature/ creation. Indeed, he sees no liberation or restoration for humans without that of all creation and vice versa. In Romans the life, death and resurrection of Jesus disarms or defeats the principalities and powers, the domination systems of the world. Reconciliation and victory are key motifs. The same imagery and word pictures are also found in Ephesians and we need to remember that we are dealing here with word pictures and metaphors. All of this suggests that the cosmic reconciling work of Jesus transforms creation, institutions and people.

In the thought forms and word pictures of Ephesians Jesus is Cosmic Lord and this is developed into a missiology and responsibility with cosmic scope. A key phrase in Ephesians is ‘the all’ which means the entire cosmos. The Lord of the cosmos is also portrayed as the Lord of the Church, a subversive title and role given that the Imperial Emperor was acclaimed as Lord. Much of the New Testament vocabulary is the language of the superpower intentionally being used to subvert and critique the idolatrous claims of the 1st century superpower and every superpower.

The Lord of the cosmos and church defines the responsibilities of the faith community in the face of all domination systems. The cosmic concerns of the Lord, the real and radically different emperor, are shared by the church. The church in Ephesians is therefore to be a sign and agent of reconciliation and peace in the world and cosmos. The church is also in a servant role making visible the loving presence of God (Eph. 2:7; 3:10; 6:10-20; 4:12). The church is not to be another domination system, oppressing, controlling, exploiting or behaving in a triumphalist or imperialist manner. The church is a servant community, especially a servant of God’s purpose of the reconciliation and unity of all things. The church in its prophetic/servant role is to ‘stand against’ and ‘resist’ the powers or systems and institutions that are violent, oppressive and dominating (Eph. 4:12; 6:13-14). The church therefore has a world/cosmic reconciling responsibility (Eph. 2).

Key Question for discussion
This leads us to a key question. If bookend theology and the faith story offer us a cosmic vision of reconciliation, then what are the ethical implications, ie for faithful living, in the face of the great ethical challenges of our time?

Three of the major ethical challenges affecting the cosmos and all of life at the beginning of the 21st century are:
1 the world dominating culture of violence and war, including weapons of mass destruction on earth and in space;
2 the environmental crisis and destruction of creation, planetary and stratosphere;
3 inter-faith dialogue and the need for a shared ethic of eco-human well-being and eco-human justice.

DR JOHNSTON McMASTER is Lecturer and Programme Co-ordinator of ‘Learning Together: Education for Reconciliation’ – the Continuing Education programme in Northern Ireland at the Irish School of Ecumenics.

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