If a garden was the image of a perfect relationship with God before sin entered the world and a city (New Jerusalem in Rev. 21) is the image of that harmonious relationship restored in Christ, is the Bible encouraging the building of cities? Is urbanization a means by which we further the Kingdom on earth?
hmmm...
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I've heard this argument before... it's def. an interesting idea :).
The strength of is I think it encourages community. The danger is that I think if we're not careful we'll develop a picture of western industrialized cities as a picture of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is not going to look like New York or Seattle... or at least I hope it won't.
We need to remember that the image John had in his mind of a city is very different from our contemporary picture of a city.
Additionally, we need to keep in mind that our current conception of "city" is tainted by sin and our cities themselves are tainted by sin and so we need to be really careful in applying contemporary images of the city to the New Jerusalem.
On the bright side, it's definitely a good thing to keep in mind in light of the mass migration away from cities and to suburbia amongst evangelicals. It'd be interesting to see this idea get developed a little bit more... What traits of our contemporary cities might we reasonably expect to find in the New Jerusalem? What traits will almost certainly not be present?
Def. a cool thought, thanks for posting.
Jake,
Although John's concept of a city would have been different, remember that this city in Rev. was different than he had ever seen with gold streets, jewels, etc. These are almost certainly poetic images of the new city, but it was not the kind of city we would have seen 2000 years ago. And who knows, maybe it will look like Seattle.
But the main points I was driving was the community aspect of cities and the buildings. Of course, homelessness, rental problems, starvation and the like will be eliminated in the new earth.
With those gone, we are free to conceptualize a clean, problem free city where every tongue tribe and nation can freely dwell and build a perfect community to the glory of the father...the restoration of all things.
That makes sense, and I hadn't thought about how even John's concept of a city would be different from what he saw in Rev.
Now the interesting thing is trying conceptually to grasp what that kind of city looks like and how we pursue that here and now... good post :).
I think its interesting that your conceptions of cities contrasted chiefly in cultural models and technological sophistication. So, this lead me to think thusly: at the establishment of the New Jerusalem, what will be the level of technological sophistication? I've often envisioned something that falls close to first century standards, but that still requires a degree of technological improvement since the garden.
Garden-to-City is a theme I've seen developed in some of James Jordan's stuff. Stop by my office in the new digs sometime, and I'll show you a book or two.
(jsut let me unpack them first ...)
Micah,
My mind immediately falls to first century standards as well, but I don't think this is necessarily right. We often think that technology is somewhat anti-God. God could work in technology in the new heavens and the new earth. And, as you have already pointed out, there were technological improvements even in the 1st century.
I feel that we need to be careful with taking this idea too far, however. I don't want to take a sort of dispensational reading of prophecy and say that all of the poetic images refer to modern day technology (as in Tim Lahaye's use of the image of grasshoppers in biblical prophecy to be the appache helicopters of judgement).
Gostei muito desse post e seu blog é muito interessante, vou passar por aqui sempre =) Depois dá uma passada lá no meu site, que é sobre o CresceNet, espero que goste. O endereço dele é http://www.provedorcrescenet.com . Um abraço.
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