Adiaphora

Heavenly Participation by Hans Boersma: A Serial Conversation

If you have never heard of it, Ken Myers’s project called Mars Hill Audio is a wonderful gift to the Christian church in the modern age. I continually am stimulated to think about topics and in ways I previously would not have. The recent issue, no. 108, included an interview with Regent College theologian Hans Boersma, discussing the ideas presented in his new book, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry. 

This conversation was right up my alley since I have been asking similar questions to Boersma ever since a 2008 course on Medieval theology at Bethel Seminary. The wonders of Amazon.com had the book in my hands in less than 72 hours. I am going to attempt (!) to faithfully report on each chapter as I read. 

Pt. 1: Introduction

The Introduction to the book is actually very helpful since Boersma sets out not just critical reasons for his pursuing this topic, but also personal ones. This book is a popular version of his scholarly study called Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology, and he describes it as, “a plea for a retrieval (ressourcement) of a theology of heavenly participation” (3). By this he means the premodern Christian idea that, “created objects found their reality and identity in the eternal Word of God. It is this link between heaven and earth that allowed premodern Christians to see God’s own truth, goodness, and beauty in the world around them” (x). A motivation for this recovery is that it is only this “other-worldliness that guarantees an appropriate kind of this-worldliness.”

The theologian sees a need to aid the church in this modern/postmodern age in which the world has been “desacramentalized.” First, Boersma cites the Apostle Paul’s repeated descriptions of Christians’ past, present, and future participation in the heavenly reality as counters against the current trend of “this-worldly”emphases in Christian eschatology (e.g., that of N. T. Wright in Surprised by Hope). Second, and much more controversially these days, he points the reader to St. Augustine and his City of God as one to follow in our important recovery of proper “heavenly-mindedness” in the church. 

It is not merely Augustine that is controversial, but Boersma’s rather unapologetic acceptance of his “Platonist-Christian synthesis” (and that of the Patristic and Medieval ages). As a Dutch-born Protestant theologian, it will be very interesting to see how Boersma retrieves this worldview not only from this early church era but from the Roman Catholic Nouvelle theologians whom he claims have spurred him on to his beliefs. Thinkers like de Lubac, Danielou, von Balthasar, and Congar are his sources, being like them “convinced that the vision of sacramental participation was the only viable answer to the secularism of the modern age” (16). 

The questions raised in my mind by this Introduction include: how does Boersma see the historical development of nominalism affecting both Protestant and Catholic theology in and after the Reformation? how does he propose to keep up the Creator–creature distinction? how does his proposal differ from that of, e.g., Radical Orthodoxy? how can one hold to _sola Scriptura_ properly and also adopt part of the Platonic worldview into one’s ontology? what definition does Boersma give to the Pauline, Johannine, and Hebrews’ use of “spirit/flesh” and “heavenly/earthly” language?

All these questions must be answered well if the project is to succeed and result in a truly Protestant worldview in which the being of creation is not devoid of any connection to the supernatural, one that is not only good and beautiful, but one that is true in relation to Scripture as a whole. Nevertheless, it is an exciting beginning to an intriguing book.