The final chapter of Al Wolters' Creation Regained (1, 2[1], 2[2], 3, 4, 5-6) is a postscript that was added for the second edition of the book in 2005, 20 years after the first edition was published. It is authored jointly by Mike Goheen and Al Wolters, with the title Worldview between Story and Mission. The reason it was added was to set the worldview themes of the book in the context of the broader biblical narrative, and to spell out some of the implications for the mission of the church.

Throughout the main body of the book, I had been understanding the themes of creation, fall and redemption primarily as elements of the biblical narrative, rather than as abstract worldview categories. So I couldn't quite understand why the idea of the biblical narrative was being introduced almost as though it was something the book hadn't mentioned so far. But, regardless of that, the postscript provides an excellent articulation of the big story of the Bible, through creation, rebellion, Israel, Jesus and the church to the final judgment and renewal of the entire creation.

As well as unpacking the biblical narrative, the postscript provides lots of helpful material on the mission of the church, linking it with themes from earlier in the book. Here are a couple of quotes picking up on the book's major themes of structure and direction:

The life of the church is to be a billboard broadcasting the good news that the kingdom is coming. This announcement comes in the extraordinary ordinariness of our daily lives—extraordinary because of the renewing power of the Spirit, ordinary because of the common creational stuff of our daily existence. Or to put it another way: directionally extraordinary, but structurally ordinary (p.132).

In every cultural product, institution, and custom is something of the good of God's creational structure. At the same time all of it, to some degree, is misdirected by a shared cultural idolatry. The mission of God's people is to discern and embrace the good creational insights and structure, and at the same time to reject and subvert the idolatrous distortion (p.137).

The final few sentences provide a good summary:

For followers of Jesus Christ, their place in the [biblical] story is to make known the good news that God is healing the creation from the brokenness of sin. This will mean conflict and suffering. This will demand a deepening spirituality and dependence on the Spirit. This is the context in which we must understand what it means to elaborate the most basic categories of the biblical story. Worldview articulation can play a mediating role between the gospel and the missionary calling of God's people. To that end "Creation Regained" is offered to the church to equip her in a world that desperately needs to see and hear the good news that God's kingdom has come: God is renewing the creation and the whole of human life in the work of Jesus Christ by the Spirit (p.143).



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