The City as God’s Invention
This is the picture that the Bible paints for us of the city. God instituted and established the idea. In fact He gave directives to Adam and Eve to create culture and build a proto-city. The Fall brought disastrous effects upon the city, largely because of the corruption of man who would now use God’s good gift for sinful purposes. But God has not abandoned the city (even while the “great-white flight” from American cities seems to suggest He has). Rather God has a plan to see the city brought back to its original intent and design, to be a place of culture, safety, and gathering where men worship together the one and true living God forever. Timothy Keller writes that the New Jerusalem is “the Garden of Eden, remade. The City is the fulfillment of the purposes of the Eden of God. We began in a garden but will end in a city; God’s purpose for humanity is urban!”[1] He reminds us that the city was God’s invention, not man’s! This was the same impression that Dr. Meredith Kline, commentator/theologian, got. He writes:
The city is not to be regarded as an evil invention of ungodly fallen man…The ultimate goal set before humanity at the very beginning was that human-culture should take city-form…there should be an urban structuring of human historical experience…The cultural mandate given at creation was a mandate to build the city. Now, after the fall, the city is still a benefit, serving humankind as refuge from the howling wilderness condition into which the fallen human race, exiled from paradise, has been driven…The common grace city has remedial benefits even in a fallen world. It becomes the drawing together of resources, strength and talent no longer just for mutual complementation in the task of developing the resources of the created world, but now a pooling of power for defense against attack, and as an administrative community of welfare for the relief of those destitute by reason of the cursing of the ground.[2]
The City was part of God’s original creation and design for the world, and particularly a gift given by God to men. And today the city continues to be a place where God protects and provides for His people, and where men gather to work, defend, and indeed glorify God. Let’s look, in our next study, at some of the ways that the city did these things in Scripture and how they still can do them today.
[1] Keller.
[2] Meredith Kline, “Kingdom Prologue.” Quoted in Keller.
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