July 26, 2010

Love is the Language of God's World and Our Future

"Love is the language they speak in God's world, and we are summoned to learn it against the day when God's world and ours will be brought together forever. It is the music they make in God's courts, and we are invited to learn it and practice it in advance. Love is not a 'duty', even our highest duty. It is our destiny.

"...Here is the goal, the telos, the state where we are to share in to teleion, 'the perfect,' 'the complete', 'the mature'. One day the whole cosmos will attain 'perfection,' 'completeness', 'maturity.' Within that renewed cosmos, human beings will attain the 'perfection' proper to them, the 'maturity' which will enable them at last to be the royal priesthood, mediating God's wise stewardship to the world and the world's glad worship back to its maker. And if that is the goal, here are the 'virtues', the 'strengths', the habits of the heart, mind, and life which will form you into the person you need to be for that day, and will anticipate, even within the present partial and incomplete world, something of the new and complete one. Virtue, for Paul, is part of inaugurated eschatology, part of the life of the future breaking in to the present. That is why it is both hard and glorious work."

N. T. Wright in After You Believe

Jul 26, 2010 2:24:08 PM

1 Comment

Cammie Novara

"It is the music they make in God's courts, and we are invited to learn it and practice it in advance." I completely agree with that.

Posted by: Cammie Novara | August 01, 2010 at 06:00 AM

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Glenn Packiam

Lead Pastor, new life DOWNTOWN, New Life Church, Colorado Springs, CO. Author and songwriter.

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