Christ's Agency in creation: Terraine Exploration of a still waiting Metaphor

If classic dogmatics places the discussion of new creation at the end of its lesson, the old and new creation appear to be two different spheres of Christian life. However, where Christian faith is lived faith, the language of new creation proves to be life-affirming orientation. Beginning with the teaching of the goodness of creation, emphasized in the first creation story, and with the help of Rudolf Bultmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jrgen Moltmann, this article strives to show that the theological problem of the unity of old and new creation, and of linear-chronological and eternal-transcendent time, lies in the failure to consider the timeless nature of Christ's divine agency in creation. According to traditional understanding, old and new creation are created and preserved in Jesus Christ, from whom the genuine perspective of theological thinking is opened to perceive creation in its wholeness. Therefore, it is the argument of this article that only from a change of perspective such as this is it possible at all to speak in a biblically based way of the form and formation of the Kingdom of God and, above all, of createdness generally. Accordingly, the (modern) intransigent thought of Christ's agency in creation receives the function of suspending our linear-chronological understanding of time in order to recognize the connection between old and new creation and to be aware of God's faithfulness to his creation.