Concordia Journal COncordia Summer 2010 Journal volume 36 | number 3 Summer 2010 volume 36 Caring for God’s Groaning Earth | number Yahweh Versus Marduk: Creation Theology in Isaiah 40–55 3 Good Stuff! The Material Creation and the Christian Faith Getting Our Bearings: Wendell Berry and Christian Understanding COncordia Journal (ISSN 0145-7233) publisher Faculty Dale A. Meyer David Adams Bruce Hartung Paul Raabe President Charles Arand Erik Herrmann Victor Raj Andrew Bartelt Jeffrey Kloha Paul Robinson Executive EDITOR David Berger R. Reed Lessing Robert Rosin William W. Schumacher Joel Biermann David Lewis Timothy Saleska Dean of Theological Gerhard Bode Richard Marrs Leopoldo Sánchez M. Research and Publication Kent Burreson David Maxwell David Schmitt EDITOR William Carr, Jr. Dale Meyer Bruce Schuchard Travis J. Scholl Anthony Cook Glenn Nielsen William Schumacher Managing Editor of Timothy Dost Joel Okamoto William Utech Theological Publications Thomas Egger Jeffrey Oschwald James Voelz Jeffrey Gibbs David Peter Robert Weise EDITORial assistant Melanie Appelbaum assistants Carol Geisler All correspondence should be sent to: Rev. Travis Scholl Joshua LaFeve CONCORDIA JOURNAL Matthew Kobs 801 Seminary Place St. Louis, Missouri 63105 [email protected] Issued by the faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, the Concordia Journal is the successor of Lehre und Wehre (1855-1929), begun by C. F. W. Walther, a founder of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Lehre und Wehre was absorbed by the Concordia Theological Monthly (1930-1972) which was also pub- lished by the faculty of Concordia Seminary as the official theological periodical of the Synod. 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Postmaster: Send address changes to Concordia Journal, Concordia Seminary, 801 Seminary Place, St. Louis, MO 63105-3199. © Copyright by Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri 2010 www.csl.edu COncordia Journal CONTENTS EDITORIALs 208 Editor’s Note 210 The Cathedral of Creation Dale A. Meyer 216 Together With All Creatures: An Introduction Charles P. Arand ARTICLES 220 Caring for God’s Groaning Earth Charles P. Arand 234 Yahweh Versus Marduk: Creation Theology in Isaiah 40–55 R. Reed Lessing 245 Good Stuff! The Material Creation and the Christian faith Mark P. Surburg 263 Getting Our Bearings: Wendell Berry and Christian Understanding Joel Kurz 276 HOMILETICAL HELPS 302 BOOK REVIEWS Getting Up to Speed: What Might I Read? Charles P. Arand and Beth Hoeltke Summer 2010 volume 36 | number 3 editoRIALS COncordia Journal Editor’s Note Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. —Wendell Berry, “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself )” My last semester of college I decided to take an environmental philosophy class, more to have one last chance to take one of my favorite professors than because I real- ly cared about the issue. Matter of fact, the last thing I wanted to become was a tree- hugger. But it was in that class that I was first introduced to Wendell Berry through his book, The Unsettling of America. That book profoundly changed the way I viewed, literally looked at, the world around me: the land on which I walked, the groceries I bought, the food I raised to my mouth. In so many ways it brought me back to my grandparents’ farm and the hills that I would run as a child. Great books do that to us. They challenge us. They change the way we view the world. They bring us back to reality. And they can cause us to view even our own memories of life and loved ones with greater depth and clarity. It was a couple years later that I came around to Wendell Berry’s poetry, which can be just as powerful, although he considers himself an amateur poet. One of his enduring routines, to this day, is to take Sabbath walks of his Kentucky farm, and then to write Sabbath poems, the fruit of his non-labor. Many of those poems have been collected into books, and they read like psalms. This issue of Concordia Journal is devoted to the fruits of the labor—and perhaps a little of the Sabbath non-labor—of Professor Charles Arand. He is its guest editor. Its theme is the theology of creation and the environment, issues he has been working on for quite awhile. It is literally, and figuratively, our “green issue.” I will let Professor Arand’s editorial introduce the issue. But I will point out that the cover art is adapted from his “Together With All Creatures” blog. You can go to the “Commons” page of ConcordiaTheology.org to see his blog posts, or go directly to www.togetherwithallcreatures.com. In many ways Professor Arand’s work, which also has gone into the Synod’s CTCR document “Together With All Creatures: Caring for God’s Living Earth,” is a challenge to all of us. His work reminds us that if we truly believe God created the heavens and the earth, then “there are no unsacred places … only sacred places and desecrated places.” But whether this issue of Concordia Journal becomes a book to challenge our sen- sibilities or deepen our view of God’s world has more to do with whether we are will- ing to “stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in.” Travis J. Scholl Managing Editor of Theological Publications Concordia Journal/Summer 2010 208 Quentin F. Wesselschmidt February 3, 1937 – May 12, 2010 A Special Note: It is with profound sadness, and yet deep gratitude, hope, and the joy that only comes with our faith in Christ’s resurrection that we note in these pages the passing of Concordia Journal’s longest standing editor, Quentin F. Wesselschmidt, who was also professor of historical theology at Concordia Seminary from 1977 to 2009, and chaired that department for 14 years. In addition to his teaching expertise in early church history, Dr. Wesselschmidt guided Concordia Journal as chairman of the editorial committee for 25 years. To honor his great leadership, diligence, and collegiality, we have republished the encomium that was given on the occasion of his retirement at ConcordiaTheology.org. 209 The Cathedral of Creation In the last issue of Concordia Journal I raised the question, “Why go to church?” There are enduring and eternal answers to the question but our post-church culture isn’t as ready to accept those answers as previous generations were. We are challenged to lead both parishioners and prospects to put a premium on attending the divine service, and to do so we will need to apply the evangelical doctrine with emphases upon articles of that doctrine that we may have used less in the churched culture. For example, the people who used to join our churches came from a biblically literate American culture that accepted authority. When a prospect confessed the truth as we do, he joined the congregation and entered into fellowship with us. In today’s culture that doesn’t know the Bible and doesn’t readily accept absolute truth, people are often drawn to a church because of relationships they have formed and only then, second- arily, do they learn the doctrine. What is there in our confessional understanding of the church that will permit us to know that we are still being faithful in our pastoral practice? “Why go to church?” is a narrow question that needs to be set in the context of culturally imposed ways of thinking and living. In these few lines I will try to contex- tualize the question with reference to time and space. “Why go to church?” can be misleading because of our Western understand- ing of time. We view time as a commodity, a thing to be used. We measure time. We manage it. We use it efficiently or—shame on us, our peers think—we waste it. In this culture we cannot escape thinking and acting on the assumption (a questionable assumption I might add) that time is a commodity. “Do you have time?” “I’m running out of time!” “I can meet you at 10:30 but only for 20 minutes.” We assume we need better “time management.” We have sliced and diced a holistic understanding of time into countless, competing parts. That fragmented understanding conditions us to think that an hour in church is an hour we have given to God; pretty much leaving us on our own to manage competing claims for our time during the other 167 hours of the week. Of course, the pastor hopes the parishioners will remember the word they have heard and act on it. But postmoderns don’t necessarily look for such consistency in life the way peo- ple did in churched culture; the examined life is largely no more. So people today may do the God-hour but not think about its application to their work and family relation- ships, to business ethics, and to their social and sexual lives.