Wednesday, May 17, 2023

There's an order here, and it matters

This can be seen from the order of the statements about the Imago Dei and the mastery of Nature. The former must come first; the latter follows naturally from it. Man does not become human through culture and civilization. But civilization and culture become human when the man who creates them is truly human. The true human quality of man, however, is rooted in his relation to God, in the acceptance and realization of his destiny for love and for eternal life. When, instead of this, man seeks his supreme end in culture and civilization, and puts this in the place of God, and turns it into an absolute, the germ of inhumanity has been introduced into his life. A civilization and culture which has severed its connexion with God, and thinks more of achievement than of persons, necessarily becomes inhuman. It loses its true centre, and thus disintegrates into sectional spheres and sectional interests, each of which comes into conflict with the others, and tries to develop itself at the cost of the rest. True civilization and true culture can only develop where the cultural creation and activity is directed and ordered from a centre which transcends culture. A culture or civilization which is indifferent to morals and religion is bound to degenerate. Religion and morality, however, are identical, where the God of Holy Love is known as the foundation of all being, and His will as the norm of all morality; that is, where man knows himself to have been created by God for love, and for communion with the God of love, in faith in Jesus Christ.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 68

<idle musing>
Boy. He's certainly describing out culture right now, isn't he? But the antidote is right there: We were created in the image of God in order to love God, who created us for that purpose. And out of that love, all the rest flows.

And that doesn't mean culture wars! That means self-emptying sacrificial love, just as he's been saying throughout the book so far. Creation began by God's self-limiting of Godself; how can we do any less? "Unto the least of these…"
</idle musing>

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