I had to write a short “This I Believe” statement for a wonderful “Seminar on Mission” that I’m participating in at Seton Hall’s main campus.\u00a0\u00a0 My statement is way too theological-ish.\u00a0 It was interesting, though, how many of the participants structured their statements in reference the Creed, as I did:<\/p>\n
I believe in the God who is in His undivided essence the fullness of every perfection.\u00a0 He is fully good; fully merciful; fully holy; fully just; fully beautiful; fully wise; fully love; all of these, without division, without lack, without tension or contradiction \u2013 \u201csimple,\u201d and complete.<\/p>\n
I believe the God of perfection is the Triune God.\u00a0 He is Father, Son, and Spirit, three persons in one essence, undivided yet distinctly personal, coinhering in each other in the perichoretic dance of eternal fellowship.<\/p>\n
I believe in creation.\u00a0 The God of perfection and Trinitarian relationality created a universe that flows from, but is distinct from, His own nature and being.\u00a0 Goodness, mercy, holiness, justice, beauty, wisdom and love inhere in the fabric of the cosmos because the cosmos is the craftwork of the Divine logos.\u00a0 The logic of creation is a word of blessing imbued with a Divine origin — \u201cGod saw all that he had made, and it was very good\u201d (Gen. 1:31) \u2013 and a word of promise imbued with a Divine future \u2013 \u201cSo that God may be all in all\u201d (1 Cor. 15:28).\u00a0 And the adamah<\/em>, the human creature, is imbued with the Divine neshemah<\/em> the \u201cbreath of life,\u201d breathed by the Divine ruach<\/em>, the Spirit that \u201cwas hovering over the waters\u201d of primeval chaos before structuring life (Gen. 1:2; 2:7).<\/p>\n
I do not \u201cbelieve\u201d in evil, or sin, or death, though I know they threaten the creation God called \u201cvery good,\u201d not least the adamah<\/em> who can choose or not choose the good.\u00a0 Evil, sin and death are nothing \u2013 no \u201cthing\u201d \u2013 no kind of essence or being in the ontology of the very good creation of God.\u00a0 Yet evil, sin and death invade, deprive, corrupt, distort, and we of the adamah participate in its deprivations continually.<\/p>\n
I believe in revelation, incarnation and redemption.\u00a0\u00a0 The God who in His essence is transcendent of creation and thus unknowable is immanent in creation in His energies, and therefore can in a manner be known.\u00a0 The same God has disclosed Himself \u2013 \u201cI am that I am\u201d (Exodus 3:14) \u2013 and called a community of justice and redemption in Israel.\u00a0 And the same God, the very Logos, who created, entered into the suffering of creation as a human peasant and took on all the power of evil, sin and death as a suffering servant executed by an imperial power.<\/p>\n
I believe in resurrection.\u00a0 The Christ who suffered and died on the cross rose again, defeating evil, sin and death.\u00a0 By the power of his victory all of creation will be renewed.\u00a0 The creating Logos who is also the suffering Christ who is also the victorious Christ will pronounce the final verdict by which all that could threaten the very goodness of creation will be banished forever (Rev. 20:11-15), and every tear will be wiped away from the eyes of his people (Rev. 21:4).<\/p>\n
I believe that in this time in between times, the life of a teacher and scholar is a life in participation in grace.\u00a0 It is ideally a life of participation in goodness, mercy, holiness, beauty, wisdom, justice, love, a product of the Divine energies, a breath of Divine spirit, a vehicle of redemption.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had to write a short “This I Believe” statement for a wonderful “Seminar on Mission” that I’m participating in at Seton Hall’s main campus.\u00a0\u00a0 My statement is way too theological-ish.\u00a0 It was interesting, though, how many of the participants structured their statements in reference the Creed, as I did: I believe in the God […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-AE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}