Embracing Creation: God’s Forgotten Mission … New Book by Hicks, Valentine & Wilson
Author: Bobby Valentine | Filed under: Bobby's World, Books, Christian hope, Contemporary Ethics, Culture, Environment, eschatology, Gnosticism, Grace, Heaven, Hermeneutics, Mission, resurrection
Embracing Creation explores the entire biblical canon revealing the centrality of creation and God’s aim to redeem all of it.
Embracing Creation: New Book by John Mark Hicks, Bobby Valentine & Mark Wilson
“Embracing Creation: God’s Forgotten Mission” is a new publication by John Mark Hicks, Bobby Valentine & Mark Wilson available on ACU Press/Leafwood.
Embracing Creation: God’s Forgotten Mission tells the story of the relationship between God, humanity and Creation … Recalling the original story of Creation, the authors retell the story of Israel, Jesus and the Church in light of God’s love for the cosmos. Through the resurrection of Jesus, God redeems humanity and Creation from the bondage of death.”
The book’s fourteen chapters are divided into two parts: The Biblical Narrative and Living the Narrative. The chapters are:
Introduction: An Invitation to Hear the Story
1) What Will Happen to God’s Creation? Nature of Christian Hope
Part 1: Biblical Narrative
2) A Cathedral of Praise: God, Creation & Human Vocation
3) Praise Him, Sun and Moon: Creation and its Praise of God in Psalms
4) Wisdom and Creation: Delight in Beauty; Agony in Chaos
5) Dreams of Eden: Death and Resurrection in the Prophets
6) The Christ Event: Creation and New Creation
7) God’s Shofar: The Jubilee Mission of Jesus
8) The Gospel of Promise: Resurrected Lord, Resurrected People and the Resurrected World
9) Our Inheritance: New Heaven and New Earth
Part 2: Living the Narrative
10) Practicing Resurrection: Living God’s New Creation
11) Creation, New Creation & the Sacraments: Baptism, LS & Assembly
12) The Most Ancient Order: Proper Stewardship of God’s Creation
13) Exemplary Creation Stewardship
14) God’s Restoration Movement: Revisioning the Restoration Plea
Appendix: Curiosities and Supposed Countertexts
What others have said:
“The authors combine their expertise in the fields of theology, restoration history, and wildlife biology to provide readers with a fresh and long overdue look at a biblical theology of creation. As they take us through Scripture, they demonstrate definitively the centrality of that theology and the truth that God is in the process of redeeming all of creation … One will leave the reading of this book with a deeper appreciation of the physical world and a renewed commitment to embrace God’s forgotten mission.” (David Bland, PhD, Harding School of Theology)
Walter Brueggemann & Bobby Valentine 2015 Pepperdine Bible Lectures
“Everyone now knows about the deep seriousness of our environmental crisis. These authors make a vigorous, compelling response to that crisis with acute theological probes. They mobilize the entire witness of Scripture and make clear that the well-being of creation is no incidental matter to the gospel. That well being, as they show, is a primary gift and intent of the creator and a primary human task. The good news pertains to all of creation, so the argument goes, or it is no good news at all. (Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary)
Embracing Creation is not a difficult read and is intended to be a message directly to the church, her ministers, elders, teachers and all who make up the body. In essence it is an exposition of why God created the world in the first place and what it means to be redeemed. Thus it is the story of salvation (that multifaceted term) from Genesis to Revelation and what that means to live out that story in our day and our time.
The book can be presently obtained directly from ACU Press at 1-877-816-4455 or www.acupressbooks.com and Amazon.com does have copies left of the first printing.
It is our prayer, that this book fuels lots of prayer, lots of study and more than anything, lots of missional living in light of God’s long forgotten mission.
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