One cool thing about the blogosphere (at least the part of it where I hang out) is that, at this time of the year, many list the books they’ve most enjoyed during the previous year.
I ordered the below after reading Tullian Tchividjian’s list – – I have not been disappointed.
Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living
Plantinga reminds us that there is continuity between this space and history and the New Earth:
What we do now in the name of Christ – striving for healing, for justice, for intellectual light in darkness, striving simply to produce something helpful for sustaining the lives of other human beings – – shall be preserved across into the next life. All of it counts, all of it lasts, none of it is wasted or lost. All of it acts like salt that eventually seasons a whole slab of meat, or a seed that grows one day into a tree that looks nothing like the seed at all.
For there is both cultural continuity and transformation in the link between this world and the next.”[1]
[1] Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 137-138.
I agree. I found it at Eerdman’s several months ago, and liked it so well that I quoted him in a sermon and then loaned the book to someone who wanted a better understanding of the Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative. Several things he said have stuck with me since I read it.
John