The Outrageous Idea of the Missional Professor. Paul M. Gould
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living creature that moves on the ground’” (Gen 1:28). As God beheld his work he proclaimed it good: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen 1:31).
In this opening scene of the biblical story, we learn about God and man. For example, there is one God, not many gods as some of the other creation stories from this time teach, God is before/apart from creation (i.e., God is transcendent), and the creator of all reality distinct from himself. In fact, the phrase “heaven and earth” is meant by the biblical writer to encompass all reality distinct from God: God is creator; all else is creature. Thus, God is sovereign: everything depends on God and God doesn’t depend on anything. God alone exists a se (is self-existent); everything else exists ab alio (through another). Further, we learn in Scripture that this creator God is not absent from the world; rather his presence fills the universe. We live in a God-bathed universe (i.e., God is immanent). As Paul proclaims in Acts, “For in him we live and move and have our being” (17:28). Finally, God is orderly and purposeful (not capricious, random). Listen to the poetic cadence, repeated over and over in the creation account in Genesis: “And God said” . . . “and there was” . . . “God saw that it was good.” God has called into being an ordered world—a world full of promise, potentiality, purpose, and design. As Augustine cries out when considering a newborn infant, “you give distinct form to all things and by your law impose order on everything.”15
As we read the creation account in Genesis chapter one, we settle into this rhythmic cadence (noted above) until we arrive in verse 26 at day six. The rhythmic cadence is broken: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (1:26). Something new is taking place, something unique. Plants and animals were made “according to their kinds,” but God made humans according to his own kind (his likeness or image). We are like God, and on earth we represent God. As C. S. Lewis once stated, “there are no ordinary people.”16 Because we are created in God’s image, each person has great dignity. Each human being is literally priceless, so beyond worth that a monetary value cannot be placed on him or her.
Moreover, God created man for a twofold purpose (as seen in Gen 1:28): (1) to protect what has been given, and (2) to be fruitful and multiply. This two-fold purpose only makes sense in light of the fact that man is created in God’s image. Why are we to protect what has been given? Answer: as God’s image bearers, our rule over the earth should parallel or reflect God’s rule over us. Our part in the creation story is to care for the earth and all that is in it: its people, its cultures, and its animals. We are called by God to be stewards of the created order in ways that embody God’s own care and delight in the created order. Why are we to be fruitful and multiply? Does God just want us to multiply like rabbits for the sake of numbers? No, it is because we alone are image bearers. We alone reflect the glory of God, and God wants his glory to be multiplied. As we fulfill this God-given purpose and reflect his glory, we extend the image of God, and hence his glory, throughout all the earth. As John Piper states, “Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”17 Part of our God-given purpose in life is to extend the reach of worshipers throughout all of creation, so that all people give God glory.
It is important to understand that the first humans did not come into the world flawed. Rather, the first humans originally experienced life as it was meant to be. The Garden of Eden was literally a garden of delights. The biblical world for this wholeness that God intends for us is shalom. As Cornelius Plantinga states,
Shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be (italics added).18
We were created to flourish. God wants us to function properly. And the creation account gives us a picture of what human flourishing—shalom—looks like: intimacy with God, harmony with self, others, and the created order as we live out our God-given purposes.
God is there and God acts. This creation account is incredibly subversive with respect to the two other dominant stories of the west. Naturalism tells us that there is no God and man is the product of blind evolutionary forces. Postmodernism says there is no ready-made world. There is no way things are supposed to be, or if there is, we can’t know it. Both views present a God-absented world.
What are the implications of the creation story for the Christian scholar? First, because God is creator of all things, all things (including all things known) somehow point to and illuminate the divine. And since knowledge of God is an intrinsic good, in fact the noblest, greatest good of all, then theoretical knowledge is intrinsically good and worthwhile as well. As John Henry Newman, writing in 1873 states:
God “has so implicated Himself with [the creation], and taken it into His very bosom, by His presence in it, His providence over it, His impressions upon it, and His influence through it, that we cannot truly or fully contemplate it without in some aspects contemplating Him.”19
As a scholar, patiently look for these connections between the object of your study and God. As a scientist, look for the hand of God in the molecule, in the laws of motion, in the rhythm of a hummingbird’s flutter. In literature, listen to the voice of God through the text: How does Jane Austin’s Mr. Darcy reflect the heart of God? What does Dante’s Inferno or The Divine Comedy teach us about the justice of God? Maybe the connections aren’t always so obvious, but they are there. Go find them and then proclaim them in ways appropriate to your discipline.
Since all knowledge can illuminate the divine, it follows that the pursuit of knowledge is intrinsically worthwhile and valuable. In today’s market-driven culture, the university is struggling to justify its existence in any terms other than productivity, efficiency, and usefulness.20 But if the pursuit of theoretical knowledge is justified solely based on some non-cognitive benefit, then large parts of the university (most notably the humanities) will continue to struggle to justify their existence. In the biblical account and its shalomic view that all reality is rightly ordered, theoretical and (so-called) practical knowledge are both intrinsically valuable—illuminating the divine and fulfilling human purposes.21
Second, since God is the creator, human life is inherently religious and communal. We have been created by God to respond to him, to love him, to worship him, to delight in him and to enjoy him. Thus, at its core, human life is inherently religious. All of human life is lived in response to God in either communion or rebellion. Further, as image-bearers of the triune God, we are essentially communal. We were created to live in community with God and with others. Recall Genesis 1:31: all that God made was proclaimed “very good.” But then, in Genesis chapter 2, we find these startling words: “It is not good for man to be alone” (2:18). Think about this for a moment. Adam had the Garden of Eden; he had a guilt-free, shameless relationship with the God of the universe, yet he was lonely. The point is this. We need each other. It is not just, “Jesus is my personal friend and I don’t need anyone else.” Don’t let your ability to thrive on solitude as a scholar result in isolation both inside and outside the academy.22 We need the community to thrive; it is how we have been hardwired.
The final implication is related to the second: since man is inherently religious, there is no such thing as neutrality. Recall Paul’s speech to the Areopagus in Acts 17. His entry point with the Athenians was his observation that they were very religious. We can rephrase this statement by observing that in the academy, there is no such thing as neutrality. Every discipline has its own control beliefs, faith presuppositions, and axioms (we’ll talk more about this in chapter 8). Part of our