Andrew -

Your essay clearly states a position that’s consistent with Scripture as I understand it. Can you clarify a couple points, neither of which affects the thrust of what you’ve written in the article?

First, you note that God set Israel apart as His people among the nations, promising them Canaan as a world within the world. The Jewish microcosm collapses, but Jesus gathers to himself a remnant from which a new creation would arise. You continue to use the world-within-a-world language with respect to God’s new people. Do you propose that, like Israel, the new people are promised a land of their own that’s a microcosm of the physical earth? Is it the same place that the Jews were promised?

When in Romans 9-11 Paul talks about grafting new branches into the olive tree that is a type for Israel, he refers to “the Gentiles,” or ethnos in Greek. Ethnos is a collective term referring to a tribe, a nation, or a people. The term is usually reserved for nations other than the Jews, which is clearly Paul’s intent. By implication, Christ assembles a new people through the ingrafting not heathen individuals but entire heathen nations. Presumably this is in fulfillment of God’s promise to make Abraham “the father of many nations” in Genesis 17:5 (Paul translates “nations” as ethnos when quoting this promise in Romans 4:17).Other nations have lands other than the land promised to Israel. So if the new people of God are promised a new world-within-a-world, where is it? Wouldn’t it the cumulative territory of all ingrafted nations; i.e., the microcosm = the macrocosm? However, the new people are a remnant, a subset of every ethnos, including Israel. Are the remnant expected to gather themselves into physical communities that constitute microcosms, separating themselves physically from territories controlled by those portions of the ethnoi that have not been grafted in? Or is the physical inheritance a promise to be fulfilled “in that day,” when the whole world comes under Christ’s dominion?

Second, you speak of the world-within-a-world as occupying the margins of our societies, “like grass and weeds growing through cracks in the pavement.” I appreciate the cogency of a green metaphor for your article’s target audience. I wonder, though, whether there is any sanctified and redeemed pavement in the new creation as you imagine it. You cite Babel as the kind of creation that fallen man tends to construct – a creation that God would chose to destroy rather than remodel. On the other hand, Genesis 1 says that man collectively is made in the image of God, which as I read the text means that man, like God, is capable of creating. God saw that the creation was good – which presumably included man’s creatorliness.

Man has certainly been a busy creator over the millennia. Art, architecture, science, technology, economics, agriculture, language, mathematics – the entire apparatus of human culture constitutes an ongoing collective human creation. Will all of it be swept away like Babel, or is at least some of it redeemable in the new/renewed creation? Can God use all of it for good for those who love Him and who are called according to his purpose? I don’t think there’s a definitive Scriptural position on this issue, which leaves plenty of room for speculation. Or does it?