Kinship Theology
One Sheet
Kinship Theology is the theological view that, since God, in his essential nature of truth, goodness, and beauty, lives always and only in that one essence by his personal, communal activity of faith, hope, and love, he necessarily interacts with his creation on the basis of love relationship.
KT’s Seven Foundational Principles:
#1: God (Theism): God is the eternal, infinite, self-conscious being. He exists as one essence of truth, goodness, and beauty. He exists as three persons operating according to his essence in faith, hope, and love, with love as his principal attribute.
#2: Creation (Anthropology): Creation is God’s conception and formation of all that is not God. Creation is divided into (1) the heavenly host (angelic beings) and (2) God’s image-bearing beings along with all that physical reality generated to support those image bearers. God created for the purpose of everlasting love relationship with his image bearers.
#3: The Fall (Hamartiology): The Fall occurred when Adam chose relationship with physical creation rather than relationship with God as the more desirable means to satisfy his own passion for truth, goodness, and beauty. Adam was of the first pair of image bearers to whose spirits were given possession and rulership of physical creation. Therefore, by his choice, Adam effected the separation of physical creation from God, causing (1) it to be cursed by God and (2) his spirit, along with all human spirits, to become enslaved to their shared cursed physical essence.
#4: Atonement (Christology): God’s restoration goal is the return to love relationship with his image bearers. Restoration requires forgiveness: (1) in mercy—grace extended to human spirits individually guilty of sin and (2) in redemption—the reclamation of cursed human physical essence from its status in sin to return to image bearers the spirit dominion over their essence initially received at creation. God purchased redemption, first, by coming as human in cursed flesh to bear God’s image perfectly, despite its influence, and put that flesh to death, conquering its dominion, and second, by having Jesus reclaim, through his resurrection, the then sinless flesh—conquered physical essence—the firstfruits of the still-to-come full redemption of all physical creation.
#5: Salvation (Soteriology): Restoration participants are those elected on the basis of faith (also called faith electionism). God does offer mercy and redemption to sinful humans to restore love relationship; however, since love relationship is the desired result, God’s absolution can be applied to only those who desire that relationship. Love is not true love if coerced; thus, the faith of the human is necessary to receive forgiveness—both mercy, absolving individual guilt, and redemption, the rescue from the cursed status of human’s shared physical essence in separation from God.
#6: Last Things (Eschatology): The restoration result necessarily includes full redemption—the application of Christ’s victory removing the curse and restoring all physical creation to its first and intended place. In this redemption, the Christian’s hope is realized (Ro 8:23b–24a). Because all physical essence is restored together, the gaining of our new bodies, the start of the new heavens and earth, and the judgment of the wicked must all occur together at the coming of Christ (Tit 2:13).
#7: Community (Ecclesiology): In the kingdom of the world, hierarchy and authority are used to control people to prevent wrongdoing. In the kingdom of Christ, image bearers live according to God’s truth, goodness, and beauty held as a matter of the heart (Jer 31:33) and expressed through love (John 13:34). Interaction of the restoration community is characterized by relational strengthening. We uphold each other and the oneness of our essence through the submission of selfish desire in favor of the good of the whole. We do so by reciprocally using our God-given strengths for the benefit of those who are more vulnerable in those areas. By doing so, we knit our lives in mutual joy and fulfillment.