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Jesus and Time: Creation Comes After Easter
God’s Hands in the Dirt
A few years ago I noticed that there are a many of passages in Scripture where God has his hands in the dirt. He’s a working-class God, not afraid to get his hands dirty. This is one of the ways in which he differs from other gods of antiquity.
When I started looking into these passages I noticed that every time God “plays in the dirt” he seems to be up to the same thing.
The first passage sets the theme. Genesis 2:7 says, “…then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
It turns out that Irenaues of Lyons, a second century church father, was way ahead of me.
“Just as, from the beginning of our formation in Adam, the breath of life from God, having been united to the handiwork, animated the human being and showed him to be a rational being…For never at any time did Adam escape the Hands of God, to whom the Father speaking, said, ‘Let us make the human being in our image, after our likeness’ [Gen. 1:26]. And for this reason at the end, ‘not by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man’ [John 1:13], but by the good pleasure of the Father, his Hands perfected a living human being, in order that Adam might become in the image and likeness of God” (Against the Heresies, 5.1.3)
Adam and Christ
Notice, though, that Irenaeus is suggesting that Adam was not made in the image and likeness of God immediately from beginning. He seems to be suggesting a process. Adam was made from the dust of the ground by the Hands of God, but throughout his life he never escaped those Hands. The Hands kept molding. It is only “at the end” that the Hands of God “perfected a living human being.”
Irenaeus is drawing on Paul’s comparison between Adam and Christ. Adam is the man made at the beginning, Jesus is the perfected human being at the end. Jesus is not made in the image of God but is the image of God.
The mystery of the incarnation, as the Council of Chalcedon has it, is that our Lord Jesus Christ is truly God and truly human. To know who God is we must look at Jesus. But if we want to know what it means to be truly human we also look at Jesus.
The mystery deepens. Chalcedon says that this one–Jesus of Nazareth–is both begotten by the Father before all ages and also born of the virgin Mary. In other words, this man Jesus—“Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim”—is eternal. There is a human being in the Trinity, and his name is Jesus.
So, while it seems that Adam comes before Jesus, in a truer sense he comes second. In Romans 5:14 Paul says that Adam is a “type” of the one who was to come. The word for “type” here is the Greek word for the impression left in wax by a signet ring. The type comes second, the signet ring comes first.
Like Irenaeus, many theologians have picked up on Paul’s point. Nicholas Cabasilas, writing in the 14th century, puts it like this:
“The old [Adam] was not the paradigm for the new, but the new Adam for the old…To sum it up: the Savior first and alone showed to us the true human, who is perfect on account of both character and life and in all other respects as well.”
And here’s Karl Barth (20th century) nodding in agreement:
“Man’s essential and original nature is to be found, therefore, not in Adam but in Christ. In Adam we can only find it prefigured. Adam can therefore be interpreted only in the light of Christ and not the other way round…Christ who seems to come second, really comes first, and Adam who seems to come first really comes second.”
To say Jesus of Nazareth comes before Adam is to say that something that happened in the middle of time is also before all time. To try to say what Paul (and the rest of the NT) is claiming about Jesus we are going to have to question our typical conceptions of what time is and how it works.
Jesus: Plan A or Plan B?
In Colossians 1:15—20 Paul makes more audacious claims about the man Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is “the firstborn of all creation.” All things were created by him, through him, and for him. But he is also “the firstborn from the dead.”
In other words, Jesus is both the first principle through whom all things were made (the Alpha), and the end of all things (the Omega).
Jesus has always been Plan A not Plan B. Put like that, everyone would agree. But surprisingly, the way we typically tell the story of the gospel makes Jesus Plan B. The story goes something like this: God created a world and made human beings in order to be in communion with them. But Adam and Eve rebelled against God, and God had to kick them out of the Garden. What was God to do? God devised a new plan to rescue humanity through his Son Jesus Christ. In this telling God’s Plan A was derailed, so he opted for Jesus as Plan B.
Apart from this being heretical, it doesn’t take Paul’s claims about Jesus seriously. Jesus was always Plan A. He was always the goal and intention of creation.
But we are left wondering: How is it that Jesus of Nazareth—a human being who lived in the middle of time—is simultaneously the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End?
Eternity and Time
In order to grasp the identity of Jesus, what’s required is a revisioning of time and eternity. Rather than starting with our own conceptions of how time works and then shoehorning Jesus into those conceptions, we need to start with Jesus and let him show us how time works. The Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson helps us do just that. Jenson’s theology was a relentless attempt to make Jesus of Nazareth the starting point for all our theological thinking.
Typically we start with our own categories and definitions as if those are just true and then we try to figure out how Jesus fits inside them. (This is precisely how we end up with a “Jesus as Plan B” theology.) Without realizing what we are doing, we think that God is in heaven the way we are on the earth and that God is in eternity in the way we are in time.
As Chris Green puts it, we think that heaven/eternity are conditions for God just like space/time are conditions for us. He is bound to them. He has to work from them and inside of them. But God has no conditions. God is not in eternity. Eternity is in God. God is not in heaven like we are on earth. God created heaven just like he created earth. He is his own space and his own time. He isn’t in heaven/eternity, heaven/eternity are in him.
With our typical categories and definitions of time and eternity we end up suggesting that the incarnation is a change in God that happens in the middle of time. In eternity past there was God the Father and with him was God the Son—but he wasn’t Jesus yet. He wouldn’t become Jesus until the middle of the story.
We are tempted to ask: What were things like in God before the incarnation? But here’s the point: there is no such a thing as before the incarnation in God. Remember what the Chalcedonian creed claims: Jesus is the one who is begotten of the Father before all ages. There is nothing before him. He is the Alpha and the Omega.
We assume that in the first century God dropped into our timeline and became Jesus (Plan B thinking!). But scripture is telling us that this life of Jesus–from his conception to his tomb–is the eternity of God. That’s what the resurrection means. God raises the man Jesus of Nazareth to be the form and content of his eternity.
This sort of breaks open our brains and shakes everything up. But that’s usually what happens when God is around. We need to let our brains be broken open right at this point.
Karl Barth can help break our brains open:
“In Jesus Christ it comes about that God takes time to Himself, that He Himself, the eternal One, becomes temporal, that He is present for us in the form of our own existence and our own world, not simply embracing our time and ruling it, but submitting Himself to it, and permitting created time to become and be the form of His eternity.”
Or more succinctly (as usual) here’s Robert Jenson:
“God took time from our time to be His eternity…”
“This God’s eternity is itself a temporal event: the resurrection of Christ.”
(This is not easy to think, but we shouldn’t be surprised. If we were talking about quantum mechanics or neurosurgery we would all expect it to be hard. We are talking about God and eternity! Of course it isn’t easy.)
The incarnation is not a change in God. As the book of Hebrews puts it, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” The life of the man Jesus turns out to be the Alpha and Omega.
Just think of what Jesus says about Abraham: “Before Abraham was, I Am” (John 8:58). Notice it is Jesus who says this.
The Gospel of John tells us that Isaiah saw Jesus’ glory (John 12:41). In Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up, seated upon the throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Who was he seeing? The crucified and risen Jesus!
The book of Revelation says that the crucified Jesus is “the beginning of God’s creation” (Rev. 3:14). How is that possible? It is possible because Jesus Christ is “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).
So, as Jenson points out, the way scripture tells the story of Jesus reveals to us that all time spirals around the risen Jesus “like a helix.”
The incarnation is not merely another tick on the timeline of history, it is the foundation of all history. It is the ground of the timeline itself!
Or, to put it as boldly as possible: “Creation comes after Easter.”
Baptizing Time
The story the Gospels tell about Jesus forces us to baptize our conceptions of time. Jesus occupies a strange relationship to time and space. He appears and disappears by coming through locked doors to meet the disciples. He appears to Isaiah! This is all just another way of saying that Jesus is the Lord of time and space.
And if this is so, then why can’t it be the case that it is the resurrected Jesus who walks with Adam in the cool of the day? Why can’t we even say that the voice that says. “Let there be light” is a voice that Mary would’ve recognized?
And if it is the hands of God that formed Adam from the dust of the ground, why can’t we say that those hands bore the nail scars?
Don’t we find this in scripture? Romans 4:17 says “[He is] the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.”
Jenson thinks the order here is important and that it is “a single concept.” God gives life to the dead man Jesus, and then calls all things into being out of nothingness. Or perhaps better: it is by raising Jesus from the dead that he calls things into being.
Creation comes after Easter.
We worship a strange God. Why shouldn’t our conceptions of time be fully baptized by the strange gospel of Jesus Christ?
History and creation have a purpose, but it cannot be discerned by sight. It is only by faith that we know that Jesus of Nazareth is the true Alpha and Omega of all creation.
The one who ate with prostitutes and tax collectors, the one who opened blind eyes and healed lame legs, the one who said, “Let the little children come to me,” the one who loved every human being he crossed paths with—that one is truly God. And he is also truly human. He is God as human.
This is the deep mystery of the incarnation: We look to Jesus to know who we truly are. But it is also true that God looks at Jesus to know who he truly is.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com
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By Cameron CombsGod’s Hands in the Dirt
A few years ago I noticed that there are a many of passages in Scripture where God has his hands in the dirt. He’s a working-class God, not afraid to get his hands dirty. This is one of the ways in which he differs from other gods of antiquity.
When I started looking into these passages I noticed that every time God “plays in the dirt” he seems to be up to the same thing.
The first passage sets the theme. Genesis 2:7 says, “…then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
It turns out that Irenaues of Lyons, a second century church father, was way ahead of me.
“Just as, from the beginning of our formation in Adam, the breath of life from God, having been united to the handiwork, animated the human being and showed him to be a rational being…For never at any time did Adam escape the Hands of God, to whom the Father speaking, said, ‘Let us make the human being in our image, after our likeness’ [Gen. 1:26]. And for this reason at the end, ‘not by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man’ [John 1:13], but by the good pleasure of the Father, his Hands perfected a living human being, in order that Adam might become in the image and likeness of God” (Against the Heresies, 5.1.3)
Adam and Christ
Notice, though, that Irenaeus is suggesting that Adam was not made in the image and likeness of God immediately from beginning. He seems to be suggesting a process. Adam was made from the dust of the ground by the Hands of God, but throughout his life he never escaped those Hands. The Hands kept molding. It is only “at the end” that the Hands of God “perfected a living human being.”
Irenaeus is drawing on Paul’s comparison between Adam and Christ. Adam is the man made at the beginning, Jesus is the perfected human being at the end. Jesus is not made in the image of God but is the image of God.
The mystery of the incarnation, as the Council of Chalcedon has it, is that our Lord Jesus Christ is truly God and truly human. To know who God is we must look at Jesus. But if we want to know what it means to be truly human we also look at Jesus.
The mystery deepens. Chalcedon says that this one–Jesus of Nazareth–is both begotten by the Father before all ages and also born of the virgin Mary. In other words, this man Jesus—“Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim”—is eternal. There is a human being in the Trinity, and his name is Jesus.
So, while it seems that Adam comes before Jesus, in a truer sense he comes second. In Romans 5:14 Paul says that Adam is a “type” of the one who was to come. The word for “type” here is the Greek word for the impression left in wax by a signet ring. The type comes second, the signet ring comes first.
Like Irenaeus, many theologians have picked up on Paul’s point. Nicholas Cabasilas, writing in the 14th century, puts it like this:
“The old [Adam] was not the paradigm for the new, but the new Adam for the old…To sum it up: the Savior first and alone showed to us the true human, who is perfect on account of both character and life and in all other respects as well.”
And here’s Karl Barth (20th century) nodding in agreement:
“Man’s essential and original nature is to be found, therefore, not in Adam but in Christ. In Adam we can only find it prefigured. Adam can therefore be interpreted only in the light of Christ and not the other way round…Christ who seems to come second, really comes first, and Adam who seems to come first really comes second.”
To say Jesus of Nazareth comes before Adam is to say that something that happened in the middle of time is also before all time. To try to say what Paul (and the rest of the NT) is claiming about Jesus we are going to have to question our typical conceptions of what time is and how it works.
Jesus: Plan A or Plan B?
In Colossians 1:15—20 Paul makes more audacious claims about the man Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is “the firstborn of all creation.” All things were created by him, through him, and for him. But he is also “the firstborn from the dead.”
In other words, Jesus is both the first principle through whom all things were made (the Alpha), and the end of all things (the Omega).
Jesus has always been Plan A not Plan B. Put like that, everyone would agree. But surprisingly, the way we typically tell the story of the gospel makes Jesus Plan B. The story goes something like this: God created a world and made human beings in order to be in communion with them. But Adam and Eve rebelled against God, and God had to kick them out of the Garden. What was God to do? God devised a new plan to rescue humanity through his Son Jesus Christ. In this telling God’s Plan A was derailed, so he opted for Jesus as Plan B.
Apart from this being heretical, it doesn’t take Paul’s claims about Jesus seriously. Jesus was always Plan A. He was always the goal and intention of creation.
But we are left wondering: How is it that Jesus of Nazareth—a human being who lived in the middle of time—is simultaneously the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End?
Eternity and Time
In order to grasp the identity of Jesus, what’s required is a revisioning of time and eternity. Rather than starting with our own conceptions of how time works and then shoehorning Jesus into those conceptions, we need to start with Jesus and let him show us how time works. The Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson helps us do just that. Jenson’s theology was a relentless attempt to make Jesus of Nazareth the starting point for all our theological thinking.
Typically we start with our own categories and definitions as if those are just true and then we try to figure out how Jesus fits inside them. (This is precisely how we end up with a “Jesus as Plan B” theology.) Without realizing what we are doing, we think that God is in heaven the way we are on the earth and that God is in eternity in the way we are in time.
As Chris Green puts it, we think that heaven/eternity are conditions for God just like space/time are conditions for us. He is bound to them. He has to work from them and inside of them. But God has no conditions. God is not in eternity. Eternity is in God. God is not in heaven like we are on earth. God created heaven just like he created earth. He is his own space and his own time. He isn’t in heaven/eternity, heaven/eternity are in him.
With our typical categories and definitions of time and eternity we end up suggesting that the incarnation is a change in God that happens in the middle of time. In eternity past there was God the Father and with him was God the Son—but he wasn’t Jesus yet. He wouldn’t become Jesus until the middle of the story.
We are tempted to ask: What were things like in God before the incarnation? But here’s the point: there is no such a thing as before the incarnation in God. Remember what the Chalcedonian creed claims: Jesus is the one who is begotten of the Father before all ages. There is nothing before him. He is the Alpha and the Omega.
We assume that in the first century God dropped into our timeline and became Jesus (Plan B thinking!). But scripture is telling us that this life of Jesus–from his conception to his tomb–is the eternity of God. That’s what the resurrection means. God raises the man Jesus of Nazareth to be the form and content of his eternity.
This sort of breaks open our brains and shakes everything up. But that’s usually what happens when God is around. We need to let our brains be broken open right at this point.
Karl Barth can help break our brains open:
“In Jesus Christ it comes about that God takes time to Himself, that He Himself, the eternal One, becomes temporal, that He is present for us in the form of our own existence and our own world, not simply embracing our time and ruling it, but submitting Himself to it, and permitting created time to become and be the form of His eternity.”
Or more succinctly (as usual) here’s Robert Jenson:
“God took time from our time to be His eternity…”
“This God’s eternity is itself a temporal event: the resurrection of Christ.”
(This is not easy to think, but we shouldn’t be surprised. If we were talking about quantum mechanics or neurosurgery we would all expect it to be hard. We are talking about God and eternity! Of course it isn’t easy.)
The incarnation is not a change in God. As the book of Hebrews puts it, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” The life of the man Jesus turns out to be the Alpha and Omega.
Just think of what Jesus says about Abraham: “Before Abraham was, I Am” (John 8:58). Notice it is Jesus who says this.
The Gospel of John tells us that Isaiah saw Jesus’ glory (John 12:41). In Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up, seated upon the throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Who was he seeing? The crucified and risen Jesus!
The book of Revelation says that the crucified Jesus is “the beginning of God’s creation” (Rev. 3:14). How is that possible? It is possible because Jesus Christ is “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).
So, as Jenson points out, the way scripture tells the story of Jesus reveals to us that all time spirals around the risen Jesus “like a helix.”
The incarnation is not merely another tick on the timeline of history, it is the foundation of all history. It is the ground of the timeline itself!
Or, to put it as boldly as possible: “Creation comes after Easter.”
Baptizing Time
The story the Gospels tell about Jesus forces us to baptize our conceptions of time. Jesus occupies a strange relationship to time and space. He appears and disappears by coming through locked doors to meet the disciples. He appears to Isaiah! This is all just another way of saying that Jesus is the Lord of time and space.
And if this is so, then why can’t it be the case that it is the resurrected Jesus who walks with Adam in the cool of the day? Why can’t we even say that the voice that says. “Let there be light” is a voice that Mary would’ve recognized?
And if it is the hands of God that formed Adam from the dust of the ground, why can’t we say that those hands bore the nail scars?
Don’t we find this in scripture? Romans 4:17 says “[He is] the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.”
Jenson thinks the order here is important and that it is “a single concept.” God gives life to the dead man Jesus, and then calls all things into being out of nothingness. Or perhaps better: it is by raising Jesus from the dead that he calls things into being.
Creation comes after Easter.
We worship a strange God. Why shouldn’t our conceptions of time be fully baptized by the strange gospel of Jesus Christ?
History and creation have a purpose, but it cannot be discerned by sight. It is only by faith that we know that Jesus of Nazareth is the true Alpha and Omega of all creation.
The one who ate with prostitutes and tax collectors, the one who opened blind eyes and healed lame legs, the one who said, “Let the little children come to me,” the one who loved every human being he crossed paths with—that one is truly God. And he is also truly human. He is God as human.
This is the deep mystery of the incarnation: We look to Jesus to know who we truly are. But it is also true that God looks at Jesus to know who he truly is.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com