Bringing "Our Father" Into Today's Church

Eddie Fernandes

The mission given to the church remains the same as the one
first given to the early believers by the Lord Jesus Christ 2000 years ago:
“to go and make disciples of all nations (people)” (Matthew 28:19,20).
For a church like Riverside
International Church, in Lisbon, Portugal, to discover how to carry out its
mission in the fragmented, unique and complex world it is planted in, it must
first come to grips with the God who gave the mission it is trying to carry out.
The Bible does not give us a comprehensive definition of God. We know that He is
Spirit (John 4:24), but in truth none of us can fully comprehend all that is
implied in that Biblical teaching (I Cor. 2:16). Being Spirit does not simply
mean that He does not have a physical or material body. Some of the things that
are given to us to know about God are revealed in the Holy Bible. By reading it
we understand that Our Almighty God is loving, caring, personal, plural,
omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, unique, immutable, the self-existent
Creator of the universe and everything in it. These are but a few
characteristics God chooses to reveal about Himself to His people. The Bible
also reveals a God who is paradoxically transcendent and immanent.

So how does a church present such a wonderful and awesome God to
this generation? How do we deal with the paradox of a close yet distant God? We
are all called to be His witnesses to our generations (Acts 1:8). I truly
believe that every single person that walks through the doors of any church, on
any given Sunday, does so to try and find out about this incredible God. They
come seeking, inquiring, longing for, hoping and even desiring to meet with Him.
While some are not completely convinced there is such a God – often Christians
turned them off Him – they come because deep down they hope there is, and that
He will reward them by making Himself known to them. I am convinced that the
deepest cry of the human soul is for help – help from something or someone that
is infinitely greater than we are. God has placed eternity in the heart of every
human being (Eccl. 3:11).

When seekers enter churches all over the world, I submit that
they are presented either with a picture of a God that is primarily or
predominantly transcendent, or with a picture of a God that is primarily or
predominantly immanent. The goal of the church should be successfully to
embrace, present and live within the tension of both these pictures of God.

In churches predominantly focusing on the transcendence of God
the liturgy, the apparel of the “holy man”, the imagery, the structure of the
buildings, the ritual and ceremony – in short the whole approach to Him –
communicates that He is so great and so mighty that He is almost as inaccessible
as the crow perched on the high steeple outside (Is. 55:9). It has been my
observation that a large number of people in these types of churches struggle to
come to enjoy a personal, warm, real, living and intimate relationship with the
Lord God. Having visited scores of such churches I have sensed very little joy,
enthusiasm or excitement in these beloved believers. Everything about the
environment of these churches communicates distance: from the position of the
lofty richly decorated altar to the unusual ornamented robes of the clergy.

On the flipside of the coin we have churches that focus
predominantly on the picture of an immanent God (Col. 1:27). The picture of
Christ living with and in believers is strongly pursued whilst the picture of
transcendence makes everyone feel uncomfortable. The church buildings are
normally stripped of all imagery, meetings take place in all kinds of places,
the services have a relaxed feel to them, the dress of both “holy man” and
congregant is casual and whatever is considered “normal” in the societal
context; the music, message and format of the service is relaxed, contemporary
and, in some cases, relevant. Seekers feel more comfortable entering these
churches because they can relate to many things they see and hear. Yet too
often, the reverence, the holiness, the “fear of the Lord”, the “otherness” of
God so prevalent in the pages of Scripture is lost. God is reduced to the status
of a “buddy” living next door. We are encouraged in Hebrews 12:28 to “be
thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe.” The way God
is treated by many believers in so many of these types of churches today would
offend the vast majority of Christians who lived just 30 years ago. I am further
convinced that the patriarchs and saints of old would cringe at the disrespect
shown towards “the Ancient of Days” in so many of our more charismatic churches
today. The reverence and awe is replaced by disrespect for the holy.

Of course these observations are not intended as a blanket
statement. There are many exceptions on both sides of the pendulum. There are
many wonderful and healthy churches that correctly balance both pictures of God.
They are “walking in the fear of the Lord (transcendence) and in the
comfort of the Holy Spirit (immanence)” and as a result they too are being
multiplied! (Acts 9:31).

We cannot box God in. Everything about Him will always be
infinitely greater than what our finite mind will be able to grasp. The combined
knowledge and wisdom of the whole Riverside community I serve as pastor, indeed
of all the churches in Lisbon and beyond, will not even begin to scratch the
surface of the greatness of our God. The challenge ever before us is how we can
we present a balanced and objective picture of God.

The Bible clearly teaches that He is simultaneously transcendent
and immanent. There is no one correct way to approach Him. There is no one right
way to serve and worship Him. When all is said and done whatever we do to
minister to Him will always be infinitely less than what He really deserves. As
the Psalmist wrote “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the
earth! You have set your glory above the heavens…When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for
him?” (Psalm 8:1, 3, 4). Whatever methods we mortals use, whichever way we
“design” our church services and ministries, all that we do to reach out to Him
and to His lost creation, will always be the results of our imperfect
attempts to serve a perfect God. Our comfort and our strength is the
fact that He helps us along the way by His Holy Spirit. But at the end of the
day we are still imperfect beings struggling with all of the imperfections that
so easily war against us.

The greater part of my past experience with God was one that
focused almost exclusively on His immanence. Some years ago when things began to
change I found myself criticizing and judging less what others were doing. I
started entering church buildings and attending services in churches that those
who experienced God the way I did had always labelled as: traditional, archaic,
outdated, conservative, boring, irrelevant, dead! I stopped pointing out the
“wrong way” others were trying to serve Him and their communities. I began
instead to be open and to observe what God was – and is – doing in the world in
the most diverse places. With eyes wide open (in amazement) as a silent
observer, I began seeing for the first time God at work in people who were more
ready than I had ever thought. I began to pray more, listen more and
speak less. I started hearing and seeing Him at work more than I had
ever done. The blinds I had worn had filtered out His obviously manifest
presence. Today I am a learner. There is sheer enjoyment observing God at work
in His universal church… with all of its flaws and shortcomings! Whereas in the
past I avoided those “dead” churches, now I am a student of the traditions,
rituals, liturgies, forms, images, writings and symbols. I am reading again, but
from a different angle, the history of my beloved church. Fascinated, I
fellowship with priests, canons, bishops, reverends and vicars. My hope is to
understand, to learn what can be learned, to build bridges, to open hearts and
to see God at work in people and places I had totally ignored!

Many of my fellow ministers misunderstand me. Sadly, as often
happens when one tries to unite instead of divide, they are shunned and cut off.
We seem to love our sectarianism and therefore we polarise towards division.
Strange how we continue to ignore the gut-wrenching, heart-cry of our dear Lord?
How do we continue to disobey this plea? “I have given them the glory that
you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May
they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and
have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:22-23). We don’t have to
agree with everything. I am not advocating in any way that we should
embrace everything that is out there. We will continue to disagree over
belief, teaching, doctrine, practice and conduct. Unity does not mean
uniformity. Does a husband always agree with his wife? Does a parent
always see eye-to-eye with his teenage son or daughter? Does a brother argue
with his siblings? Division destroys our ranks. Satan’s work is facilitated. He
need not waste his energy doing battle against the church when the church is
successfully going to war against itself! Unity builds bridges, love opens
hearts, Christ mends the broken walls, and the Spirit takes care of differences
and fixes wrong conduct and doctrine (cf. Zechariah 4:6).

Mistakenly when we look at churches that focus predominantly on
the transcendence of God with all of their rituals and traditions, we, in the
immanent camp, believe they have missed the point by relegating God to a remote
place in the universe. Erroneously we believe that the rituals are but feeble
attempts to bring this distant God into their present reality. We struggle with
the fact that they do not understand that God is all around them, in fact,
desires to live in them! Today, I am beginning to understand that many, not all
but many, do believe that. Their approach to Him is not because of His distance
and isolation but rather due to a more correct understanding that He is distinct
from, separate from, and above everything known to man. For many the ritual has
nothing to do with His remoteness but rather His “otherness”. Many of these
believers have correctly grasped God’s incredible vastness and greatness.
Howbeit, the truth is that many still need to press further in order to discover
His nearness. They need to discover a God that desires to live inside each one
of His children and enjoy the fruit of such a personal and immanent relationship
(cf. Rev. 3:20).

The word immanent comes from the Latin word “in” and “manere”
which means to remain. God, the infinite Spirit, created everything and is
present in every part of His creation. He is not to be confused with His
creation. He is not the creation itself as Pantheism teaches. He is, however,
intimately linked to everything. With regard to mankind, the creation He loved
so much He died to redeem, He not only wants to surround, he wants to envelope
and “remain in” every human being! He actively permeates the entire universe.
Incredible as it may sound He is so close to each one of us that He will
never be nearer or further to each one of us than He is right now! He
is never safely out of range that He will not intervene to deal with our sin. He
is never so far removed that He cannot instantly help those who call on His
name. He is always just one prayer away from any and all who sincerely seek Him
(Rom. 10:9, 10). To those who have believed in Him and invited His Son to be
Lord of their lives, He has entered their finite and mortal bodies and has set
up residence in them by His Holy Spirit (I Cor. 3:16).

Yet as close as He is, as intimately connected to us as He is,
He is still God Almighty, High and Lifted Up, Holy and to be respected. He
should be feared by all of His creation (Job 28:28). What a wonderful God we
 serve!

Jesus taught the simultaneous transcendence and immanence of God
in everything He did. When He taught the disciples how to pray He said, “Our
Father (immanence) who art in Heaven (transcendence)…” (Matthew
6:9-15). Who can be closer than a father? Who is more intimately connected with
a child than a truly loving, caring and providing father whose very seed the
child is made from? Yet, where is heaven, yes even the highest heaven and who
can know the dwelling place of God? Which one of us can reach up into heaven and
see the place where He has established His throne? A million galaxies are but
the beginning of His universe. Truly we must agree with Job: “How great is
God - beyond our understanding! (36:26).

May we all become bridge-builders, peacemakers and promoters of
unity within Christianity so that the world may discover our magnificent,
incredible and truly awesome God who is unquestionably transcendent and
paradoxically immanent! It is not by our conceit, arrogance and haughtiness that
people will come to know Him. Isn’t it amazing that we all claim to have the
“inside scoop” on God, but the Bible teaches: “No-one has ever seen God; but
if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us”
(I John 4:12). May we love the world as God did, even to the point of giving our
lives for others we don’t really agree with… should it ever come to that! (John
 3:16).

(All passages from the New International Version of the
 Bible)

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Celtic Exuberance in the Maybes

Wesley W. White
October, 2002

Roguery or Miracle?

Nuala Dhomhnaill lives in Dublin with her Turkish husband and four children.
She writes poetry; poetry that blatantly exposes the heart of Celtic Christian
spirituality. Here is one of her best.

Annunciations

She remembered to the very end
the angelic vision
in the temple:
the flutter of wings
about her –
noting the noise of doves,
sun-rays raining
on lime-white wall –
the day she got the tidings.

He –
he went away
and perhaps forgot
what grew from his loins –
two thousand years
of carrying a cross
two thousand years
of rows that reached a greater span
than all the spires of the Vatican.

Remember
O most tender virgin Mary
that a man came to you
in the darkness alone,
and roguery swelling in his eyes.1

This is a piece that wrestles with humanness and divinity. Was the
impregnation of Mary miracle or base roguery? Was it the one? Was it the other?
Was it both? How are we to account for the fruit of his loins: two
thousand years of carrying a cross, two thousand years of smoke and fire?

The opening of the poem recalls the annunciation in terms of an “angelic
vision.” By the end, the act itself is in view, and is purposefully ambiguous.
The phrase, “that never was it known,” could refer to the ugly truth (hidden
to all but Mary) that rape is the honest explanation. Or it could invoke
Christian history that has never treated it as such, but has accredited it the
grandest miracle of all. Either way, the poet leaves us in the curious
(sometimes uncomfortable) domain of “maybe.”2
Maybe it was the one. Maybe it was the other. Maybe it was both.

Maybe is often where the transcendent God and human imaginings meet. Maybe
does not disdain ambiguity. It happily probes into the mysterious and
willingly acknowledges the limitations of human finitude.3
And maybe is a realm that Celtic Christian spirituality freely enters and
happily embraces, even if, in so doing, it sometimes slips beyond the boundaries
of orthodoxy.

Maybe God Appreciates Maybe

Transcendence is, after all, an aspect of God that we must take seriously if
we are to do justice to the Bible. God is beyond us. The preacher of wisdom
(Ecclesiastes 11:5) reminds us that, “Just as you do not know the path of the
wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not
know the activity of God who makes all things.” The truth of the matter…that
we do not know everything, especially in terms of God, throws us into the domain
of maybe. Transcendence, among other things, invites us to speculate
possibilities and invites us into the freedom of simply saying, “maybe.”

The world of maybe is not afraid of the Infinite. People who embrace maybe
are happy to reside in “the middle of things,” as long as they are free to
contemplate the extremes of “Nothing” and the “Infinite.”4
In so doing, God is all the more honored as the true subject of knowing; not
merely the object of human scrutiny. People who enjoy the region of maybe
are glad, rather than reluctant, to concede that such a subject is progressive.
They are not satisfied with static epistemology, but are forever asking more
questions with an eschatological purpose in mind. In the end, God delights in
the air of provisionality with which certain doctrinal formulae are thereby
entertained, for in certain respects, such an attitude does greater justice to
his immensity and more fully recognizes how far beyond the finite he actually
is.5

Celtic Christianity celebrates the reality of the maybe by
accentuating the mystery of God. It does not turn to certainty as the only, or
even the most reliable benchmark of orthodoxy.6
Rather, it resorts to riddle, to ambiguity, and to imaginative approaches to a
God who cannot be restricted to the finite. The Celtic knot is perhaps the most
obvious example. Infinity, perpetual motion, eternity, inter-connectedness, and
Trinitarian theology are all evoked by artistic design, not by propositional
statement.7
St. Brendan (484-577) creatively referred to these ideas as “the music of
heaven” that finite musicians could only imitate.8

Mystery is, in fact, incumbent in any serious journey toward God, according
to Celtic sensibility, because there are substantial qualities of God that are
hidden. Pascal undoubtedly intones a vibrant Celtic conviction when he writes,
“If there were only one religion, God would be clearly manifest. If there were
no martyrs except in our religion, likewise. God being thus hidden, any religion
that does not say God is hidden is not true, and any religion that does not
explain why does not instruct. Ours does all these.”9
Isaiah 45:15 is behind it all: “Truly, You are a God who hides Himself, O God
of Israel, Savior!”

For this reason, in the Celtic mind, God must be sought out. “You will seek
Me and find Me,” says Jeremiah (29:13), “when you search for Me with all
your heart.” Furthermore, such seeking is not so much demanded as it is
pleasing to God. “Without faith it is impossible to please Him,” says the
writer of Hebrews (11:6), “for he who comes to God must believe that He is and
that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” The Celtic conception of
a literal journey, a pilgrimage to find and experience God, is based on a text
like this.10
The journey is meant to be arduous and adventuresome for the pilgrim. It is
meant to be pleasing to God. Maybe God delights in being somewhat mysterious.

The Human Side of Maybe

Perhaps, then, faith itself is better conceived of in terms of an ongoing
journey, rather than static propositions that are argued and won. Maybe
invigorates an attitude of seeking, from the human perspective, even though
besieged by unknowns. It has little to do with winning and losing. The journey
is more about seeking itself, and may include as much pain as pleasure.11
For the Celtic pilgrim, the journey must include the exacting requirements of
repentance, but it also moves toward resurrection and rebirth. Coming to the “sure
things and true” evokes an ascetic quality that is equally as vigorous as any
mental subjection to God’s sometimes perplexing ways.12
Both are necessary as part of an expanding, seeking faith.

One question which must be entertained, then, is how does faith grow? The
human side of maybe answers by daring to risk everything to God’s
providential care. For the Celtic adventurer (faith as adventure?), even the
likelihood of death is not too high a risk and should not be approached in a
calculated way. Dallas Willard’s description of the “sea of trust” is a
prime example. Hermits shoved off into the sea in curraghs without oars, or any
provisions, trusting the winds and currents of God to take them where they
would. If death was the outcome, what of faith? Under such conditions, the
ultimate sin of unbelief was unearthed and brought to the fore.13
Maybe thus heightens an awareness of sin on the human side of the
equation. “God give me a well of tears,” cries the pilgrim, “my sins to
hide; for I remain while no tears fall unsanctified.”14

On the other hand, maybe liberates the imaginative elements that ought
to accompany the journey of faith, and so increases pleasure. Celtic
spirituality gives full license to the power of imagination, and prefers
expressions of faith that lean heavily upon the use of symbol, metaphor, and
image, as opposed to philosophical and logical explanations.15
Appeal to the imagination was historically necessitated, no doubt, by common
Celtic respect for oral tradition, creating a dependence on memory.
Nevertheless, the fine arts, liturgical expressions that appreciate all the
bodily senses, and especially poetry flourish in such a fertile environment 16

Even serious sacramental practices can be subjected to creative imagining.
Nuala Dhomhnaill, again, describes an occasion in which the priest is guilty of
dropping the blessed host to the ground, from which emerges “a patch of
marvelous grass.”17
“Those who eat the god,” writes Brendan Kennelly, “digest the god’s
language to increase their substance, deepen their shadows, and the eaten god is
happy, finding Himself in blood.”18
If nothing else, imaginative freedom of this kind raises some doubt as to the
advances of Reformation and even Counter-Reformation history, both of which tend
to reduce mystery to academic formulae and foment tragedy rather than joy. Even
when it hints at myth, Celtic spirituality, on the other hand, exults in mystery
and freely explores it with all the tools of human imagination.

Further, although the journey of faith in pursuit of God often embraces the
pain of loneliness, it need not and should not be undertaken alone. There
is no discrepancy here. The human side of maybe freely acknowledges the
reality of loneliness without falling prey to the incipient theological dangers
inherent in strict individualism. The believing community in Celtic perspective
is indispensable in the way it directs pilgrims to certain paths and not to
others.19
Kenneth Leech, in fact, suggests that the believing community is tangibly
involved in the progress of pilgrims in the person of a “soul-friend,” who
acts as navigator, counselor, confessor and mentor.20
“A man without a soul-friend,” said St. Comgall (516-601), “is like a body
without its head.”21
Soul-friends need not accompany, but they do guide and they do represent the
core convictions of an entire community that always hovers in the background no
matter how remote the terrain.

Maybe in the Balance

It should not be thought, however, that maybe is the only or last
word. Such a notion would leave us all adrift in the equally dangerous oxymoron
of absolute uncertainty in terms of God. Celtic sensibilities are likewise in
tune with the real presence and action of God in both mundane and supernatural
circumstances that are at the heart of the Incarnation itself.22
Immanence is not only attractive, but an essential part of the story of God.
Stanley Grenz reiterates the distinctively Christian concept of the relational
God who is “active within the universe, involved with the natural process and
in human history.”23
The Apostle Paul could, in the same breath, speak of the unknown God who is yet
“not far from each one of us,” and in whom “we live and move and have our
being.” (Acts 17:23-27)

Acknowledging the mysterious God, therefore, need not deteriorate into simple
mysticism. Postmodernism rightly reacts against the meaninglessness of what
Francis Schaeffer refers to as “a level of mysticism with nothing there.”24
Mysticism of this type (not mysticism generally) ends up exacerbating an already
great degree of existential despair and simply promotes faith in faith, rather
than faith in God who does have mysterious qualities.25
Schaeffer is correct to warn against this type of “manipulated semantic
mysticism.”26
Meaning, on the other hand, can be had in grappling with the unavoidable (and
wonderful) mysteries of God as he actively involves himself in all the affairs
of humanity and in all the perplexities of his creation.

The Christian scriptures themselves, especially various passages in the New
Testament, demand the maintenance of a proper balance between the transcendent
and immanent aspects of God. This balance is suggested in the comparison of
several critical theological arguments contained in the Pauline epistles.
Following a typically lengthy discussion, for example, of the reasons behind the
hardening of Israel (described as a “mystery”) in Romans 11 (verses 25-34),
the Apostle appeals to the unsearchable judgments and unfathomable
ways of God, and concludes with an astounding quotation of the Old Testament
prophet Isaiah (45:15), “For who has known the mind of the Lord?” In
contrast, however, the Apostle cites the same quotation (for quite different
purposes) in I Corinthians 2:16, but there includes a crucial addendum: “For
who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have
the mind of Christ.” The grammatically emphatic haymeis (“we”)
must be noted. The preceding argument infers those who are “spiritual,” as
opposed to those who are only “natural.” But the essential question is, “What
does it mean to have the mind of Christ?” If nothing else, it must include
some insight into the ways and purposes of God.27
Beyond that, the debate properly ensues. Mystery and insight. Both are included.
Both have their place.

Keeping Maybe in Mind

What new worlds (or perhaps old worlds re-discovered) can the world of the maybe
open up for the church generally, and for new church-planting ventures in
particular? Maybe invokes something of the transcendent, the mysterious
qualities that heighten our awareness of all that necessarily distinguishes the
Creator from creation. What does this world say to the emerging culture—a
culture which is increasingly hesitant about foundationalist approaches that
leave at best an unappetizing taste in their mouths? Celtic spirituality,
perhaps, offers some suggestions.

Firstly, Celtic traditions amplify the attractiveness of that ring of honesty
that resounds when communicators of the Christian message freely admit that God
is not easily known. There is, conversely, a hollowness to evangelical
pronouncements that infer that such an undertaking is simple and undemanding.
Communicators gain solid ground when they happily balance what can be known of
God with what is mystery. They gain even more when communication becomes less of
a monologue and more of a dialogue in which wrenching questions are welcomed,
even in public forums, and in which differing opinions are respected.

Celtic approaches might also challenge us to encourage high-risk ventures in
the journey of faith. Literal pilgrimages may be in order, even pilgrimages that
run the risk of ascetic extremes. The “sea of trust” need not be disdained
as foolhardy or assessed in terms of tempting God. In some ways, authenticity is
affirmed when the bar is set high. Postmodern inquirers are far less
convenience-oriented than their forbearers, and rise to the challenges of
seeking. There are biblical certainties and answers, to be sure, but perhaps
people get to know God better in the seeking itself. Especially when it asks
something of them.

And what of resurrecting a Christian appreciation of an imagination set free?
Can we become children again (Matthew 18:3), delighting in the possibilities of
“Elfland”, as Chesterton suggests, rather than defaulting to the ethical
commandeering so rampant in the adult world.28
Celtic spirituality gives as much credence to the poet, the artist, the dancer,
and the bard as it does to the theologian. It unabashedly entrusts the message
of the gospel to the powerful resources of the fine arts and does not hesitate
to appeal to all the senses even in liturgical contexts. Celtic spirituality
trusts that God is sovereign even over the highly subjective realm of the
 imagination.

Finally, as we pay attention to Celtic Christian ideas, we will work hard to
cultivate communities of faith that abound with “soul-friends.” In the midst
of the loneliness that ensues in seeking the sometimes hidden God of the Bible,
we will nevertheless experience the joy of discovering that we need not “go it
alone.” There is someone beside us. A real person. A real body with a soul
that resonates with our own. Churches can hardly program this, but they can
cultivate an environment in which soul-friends flourish. And they can advocate
that such a friend is essential in anyone’s journey toward God. They will read
much into Jesus’ statement, “No longer do I call you servants, but friends.”
(John 15:15)

Maybe then, the world of the maybes need not be approached with fear.
The place of unknowns can be entered and explored with anticipation, and not
alone, but with friends, fellow pilgrims on the journey to know and love God.
This community of friends can liberate our imaginations, motivate high-risk
steps of faith, and set us free from the tyranny of manufacturing easy answers
to hard questions about God. We can adventure on in the journey together, not
timidly, but with great exuberance.

Notes

1 Oliver
Davies and Fiona Bowie, Celtic Christian Spirituality: An Anthology of
Medieval and Modern Sources (London: SPCK, 1995), 217-18.

2 The
idea of a “world of the maybe” is suggested by Erwin Raphael McManus in, An
Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God had in Mind
(Loveland, Colorado: Group, 2001), 58-59. “Hypermodernism,” says McManus,
“is the world of the maybe. Not just objective maybe, but the
subjective maybe. Not the maybe of the outside world, but the maybe
of the inside world. Too many of us have subdivided the world into what exists
outside of us and what exists within us. So many of the philosophical
discussions around postmodernism address the issue of objective truth and
reality. Is it noble? But I think that in some ways we’ve been naïve. The
objective maybe is born out of the subjective maybe. The loss of
confidence in knowing the outside world is a result of a loss of connection to
our inside world. We don’t simply see the maybe, we live the maybe.
For those whose lives are secured in a sense of absolute truth, whose most
comforting metaphor is that God is our rock and our foundation, this can be
extremely frustrating. And frankly, the church sounds so certain about
everything. There seem to be no maybes at all. We act as if we have it
all down. We’ve got all the answers. If you’re confused, just come to us
because we have it all mapped out. Sometimes it’s as if there is no mystery
to God or the gospel, yet Paul speaks of it as a mystery. And last time I
checked, the God of the Bible is still the invisible God.”

3 Andrew
Marvell (See, Andrew Marvell, The Complete Poems [Middlesex,
England: Penguin Books, 1972], 103-104) superbly expresses the frustrations of
finiteness in his work entitled, A Dialogue between the Soul and Body.
Here is but the first stanza.

O, who shall from
this dungeon raise
A soul, enslaved so many ways,
With bolts of bones, that fettered stands
In feet, and manacled in hands.
Here blinded with an eye; and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear,
A soul hung up, as ‘twere, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins,
Tortured, besides each other part,
In a vain head, and double heart?

It could be argued,
of course, that this is but an harkening back to the old (and ever-present)
gnostic heresy that ridicules the corporeal and lauds the spirit. In the end,
however, Marvell dispels such fears by bringing the two together in a doxology
of holism. It is a brand of holism that finds joy in perplexity and delights
in mystery.

4 The
importance of appreciating the extremes of the nothing and the infinite is
suggested by Blaise Pascal: “For in fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in
comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean
between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from
comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are
hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable
of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is
swallowed up. What will he do then, but perceive the appearance of the middle
of things, in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their
end? All things proceed from the Nothing, and are borne towards the Infinite.
Who will follow these marvelous processes? The Author of these wonders
understands them. None other can do.” (See, Pascal’s Pensees,
trans. W.F. Trotter [Everyman, 1947], 17-18.) Bryan Appleyard, in Understanding
the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man (New York: Doubleday,
1993), 14, relates the lack of appreciation of the infinite to the way science
has left the human self emaciated: “This exclusion of the self from
explanations of science is a complex and profound matter that has implications
that will surface again and again in this book. Here I will simply say that it
cuts scientific man adrift from his moorings. Artistic expression over the
past 400 years, the age of science, persistently returns to the man alone,
lost and searching for something, though he is seldom sure precisely what.”

5 For
an excellent treatment of the importance of differentiating between God as
subject an object, see Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of
God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 49. The relationship between a
progressive theology and eschatological concerns is likewise addressed by
Grenz. See his, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a
Post-Theological Era (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 197, 343.

6 This
kind of emphasis on transcendence, therefore, rightly points up the inherent
weakness in what Grenz refers to as “foundational epistemology,” that
postmodern thinkers have been questioning for some time. We must, indeed,
question the way in which notions of transcendence can square with “grounding
the entire edifice of human knowledge on invincible certainty.” See, Stanley
J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in
a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001),
30, and W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous
(Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), 78-79.

7 The
significance of ambiguity, fluidity, and abstraction in Celtic artistic design
is highlighted by Oliver Davies and Fiona Bowie, Celtic Christian
Spirituality, prev. cit., 5. A brief explanation of the Celtic knot is
offered by Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way (London: DLT, 1993), 5.
For an engaging plea for the resurrection of imagination, see Thomas Howard, Chance
or Dance? (New York: Lippencott, 1969).

8 Brendan
Lehane, The Quest of Three Abbots: The Golden Age of Celtic Christianity
(New York: Lindisfarne Press, 1968), 99.

9 Blaise
Pascal, Pensees (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 74.

10 Ian
Bradley, The Celtic Way, prev. cit., 80-83, captures the essence
of the Celtic pilgrimage: “The Celts themselves were well aware of the
difference between genuine peregrinatio and escapism to which they were
prone as race. The Book of Lismore, a medieval Irish compilation of the lives
of the saints, distinguishes three kinds of pilgrimage. The first, leaving one’s
country in a physical sense but with no inner change of heart, is dismissed as
a waste of time and energy. The second, earnestly desiring to leave everything
familiar and comfortable behind and embark on a life of pilgrimage but being
forced by pressing duties to remain at home, is recognized as a worthy
calling. The third, leaving one’s country for God and forsaking a life of
comfort and ease for one of austerity and virtue, is regarded as the highest
calling of all. This stress on the importance of the inner journey of
repentance, resurrections and rebirth brings us to the heart of the Celtic
idea of pilgrimage.”

11 Pleasure
and pain are both components of the pilgrim’s journey. Mortification is
necessarily unpleasant, but it yields a spiritual and bodily sensitivity that
is fully commensurate in the payoff. Brendan Lehane highlights loneliness
as one of the more common experiences of the Celtic pilgrim. But it is in
loneliness that she or he finds God. See, Brendan Lehane, The Quest of
Three Abbots, prev. cit., 70.

12 St.
Columbanus (543-615) understood the journey as a hastening towards death in
which “the sure things and true” come into focus. See, T. Finan, ‘Hiberno-Latin
Christian Literature,’ in J. Mackey (ed.), An Introduction to
Celtic Christianity (Edinburgh: 1981), 73. There is a sense in which
the journey is as much an inner reality as it is material. The repeated act of
repentance is critical to both if resurrection and rebirth are to be more than
doctrinal. See, Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way, prev. cit., 80. The
one thing Brendan, Columba and Columbanus had in common was the commitment to
the search; the search for the unworldly, for refuge, for the place of
blessing, for purification, for God. For all of them it entailed traveling
through the desert. See, Brendan Lehane, The Quest of Three Abbots,
prev. cit., 3.

13 Dallas
Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes
Lives (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1988), 129. Brendan Lehane also
draws attention to this practice in the Celtic tradition. See, The Quest
of Three Abbots, prev. cit., 73. He notes, however, that St. Brendan
considered this practice foolish and unnecessary. It should be noted that a
similar type of forced exile was mandated as a severe civil punishment for a
serious crime. The hermits, however, likened it to the criminal treatment of
Christ himself. See, The Quest of Three Abbots, 110.

14 Quoted
in, “The Impact of Christianity,” in Early Irish Society,
ed. Myles Dillon, trans. James Carney (Nottingham, Nottingham University
Press, 1968), 113.

15 Ian
Bradley contends that this preference is essentially “the ability to invest
the ordinary and the commonplace with sacramental significance, to find
glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words,
signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to
eternity.” See his, The Celtic Way, prev. cit., 84.

16 Stress
on oral tradition no doubt points back to pre-Christian druidic influence and
to the highly respected role of the bard in Celtic history. It resulted in “an
indebtedness to poetry, mythology and imagry.” See, Oliver Davies and Fiona
Bowie, Celtic Christian Spirituality, prev. cit., 6, 12. It also
bespeaks an approach to the transcendent nature of God. Mysterious aspects are
subjected to very human means of expression, in imaginative use of words, in
artistic design, and in exciting the physical senses in a liturgical context.
Davies and Bowie (ibid., 12) go so far as to contend that “the poetic
tradition, then, was one of the principal ways in which a distinctive
spiritual sensibility was maintained in Wales.” For more on this, see also,
George G. Hunter III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 2000), 70-74.

17 Nuala
Ni Dhomhnaill, “Marvelous Grass,” from her Selected Poems: Rogha
Danta, trans. Michael Hartnett (Dublin: The Raven Arts Press, 1992).

18 Brendan
Kennelly, “Sculpted From Darkness,” in his, Breathing Spaces: Early
Poems (Belfast: Bloodaxe Books, 1992).

19 According
to Stanley Grenz, the one presupposition that may be basic to Christian
theology is the backdrop of the believing community. It satisfies a hunger for
family values (in the open rather than restrictive sense) that is both
non-foundationalist and a “decidedly postmodern” hunger. But it also
shapes “conceptions of rationality,” and, in a sense, accounts for the “loss
of certitude,” as it is happy in the realization that “various communities
may disagree as to the relevant set of paradigm instances of basic beliefs.”
See, Stanley J. Grenz, Renewing the Center, prev. cit., 201.

20 Kenneth
Leech, Soul Friend (London: DLT, 1996), 116. For a good
description of the Celtic role of the soul-friend, see Ian Bradley, The
Celtic Way, prev. cit., 73.

21 Brendan
Lehane, The Quest of Three Abbots, prev. cit., 107. Some contend
that this statement is better attributed to St. Brigid (450-525).

22 John
Macquarrie refers to this aspect of Celtic spirituality as “an intense sense
of presence.” Human beings have the potential of being God-intoxicated, “embraced
on all sides by the divine Being.” See, John Macquarrie, Paths in
Spirituality (London: SCM Press, 1972), 122-24. Celtic Christian
belief, according to Bradley, also emphasizes Incarnational theology to the
degree that the presence of Jesus can be tangibly experienced, “encircled by
him, upheld by him and encompassed by him.” See, Ian Bradley, The
Celtic Way, prev. cit., 33.

23 Stanley
J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2000), 81. Pannenberg’s description of God as “the power of the
future” may serve to counter atheistic criticism, but it does little for
contemporary Celtic practitioners. See, Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Idea of
God and Human Freedom, trans. R.A. Wilson (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1973), 110.

24 Francis
A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, IL:
Inter-Varsity Press, 1968), 56. Schaeffer disparagingly discusses such an
approach to mysticism in terms of “the jump on the new theology,” that is
“no more than a jump into an undefinable, irrational, semantic mysticism.”
I deliberately turn to Schaeffer, not because I concur with all his
conclusions, but as a premier example of thoughtful evangelicalism in the
modern era. It must be kept in mind that he is also an exemplary product of
strict foundationalism which postmodern thinkers rightly continue to
 challenge.

25 Schaeffer,
The God Who Is There, 62.

26 Schaeffer,
The God Who Is There, 84.

27 Gordon
Fee suggests that, contextually, Paul has in mind, “the thoughts of Christ
as they are revealed by the Spirit,” noting the Apostle’s use of the LXX
in which “mind” translates the Hebrew ruah, most often referring to
“spirit.” Fee, as well, notes the importance of the emphatic “we.”
See, Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 119-20.

28 See,
G.K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” in Orthodoxy (Wheaton,
IL: Harold Shaw, 1994), 45. Chesterton suggests that Elfland is the world in
which the imagination is free to envision possibilities within the seemingly
impossible. It is a world in which faith is ignited by imagination.

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Eden and God's Transcendence

by Al Dyck

Remember the early 80’s, when ‘awesome’ was the word for anything that impressed us? The overuse of the word may have diminished its meaning somewhat, but how often do we stop to ponder what this word means when applied to our God? How often do we dwell on His absolute transcendence? He is far above us and rules over all of creation. “…for you created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.” (Rev. 4:11).

We only have to look at the first sentence of The Bible to see this. First we see, “In the beginning God…” When we go all the way back, there was nothing and no one but God. He alone existed, and this fact places Him over and above anything and everything. Jn 1:1-3 testifies In the beginning was the Word… All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being…”

The completion of that first Biblical sentence is, “God created the heavens and the earth.” Have you ever built a house, made a clay pot, sewn an outfit, crafted a nice wooden table, or even created a beautiful garden out of a pile of dirt and weeds? We as humans like to make and create things; some of us are more creative than others. Yet, we always start with materials, a plan, or help from someone else – we don’t go it alone. But God needed none of this; all the necessary resources – the inventive design and the materials – were within Him alone.

The phrase, “God created”, and the subsequent verses in Genesis 1 reveal the extreme power of God, enabling Him to create everything we experience in our world (and all that we have yet to discover). Acts 17:24 says:

The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.

He made everything in all of its uniqueness and majesty – galaxies, lions, cobras, lilies, and humankind. Here in Acts Paul is saying that this great God does not dwell in temples made by “measly human hands”. He’s so far above us and all that we create – how could we even think to restrict Him to a human temple in a single place on this earth?

How did God create? Well, that remains a mystery and a debate. But, what we can see from Genesis 1 is that “God said, God separated, God called, God made, God placed, God created, God blessed,” and so on. He did these things by himself (although the Trinity is revealed in v.26, “Let Us make man in Our image”) and of his own initiative. How can we miss his transcendence? He is so great and powerful that He literally spoke creation into existence with the power of His word. God stands far and above us in his creative power. Who can begin to come up with anything as beautiful, vast, and awesome as God?

By rights, He is the Lord of Creation and its ruler – even of humankind. It’s not a popular view today that we have to give accountability to our Creator (in fact, “creator” isn’t a popular idea either). Yet popular or not, if anyone desires to be a Christ-follower, she must choose to yield herself to the Lordship of Christ. A man must choose to submit himself to follow his Creator’s design for his life.

Though we’re focusing on the transcendence or the whole “otherness” of God, creation shows us that we cannot separate the intimate relationship between God and humankind. In the midst of His creativeness, power and majesty, we see in Genesis 3 that God came near to the man and the woman, apparently “to hang with” them. He wasn’t “so great” that He couldn’t be known to Adam and Eve – instead, He sought them out, walking and reflecting with them in the cool of the evening.

Even today we can know God and share this intimacy. Yet at the same time, He still remains totally other than us. Adam and Eve help us see that though He comes close, we cannot “blow off” His commands. When we do that, part of the consequence is that there is a distance put between God and us – it’s the consequence of sin. It’s a reminder that we must fear God and stand in awe of Him.

In the Genesis story, we see that His creatures’ rebellion didn’t thwart His plans. Satan was and is still unable to rise up greater than God. The event of the Fall of Adam and Eve, and their banishment from Eden, demonstrates both His greatness and closeness: while He bans and forbids, He continues to open the way for us to come close in Christ. (John 14:6 & Romans 3-5)

How can this help us relate the gospel to post-moderns? First, we should regularly point out His power and majesty in creation. We can facilitate people connecting with God through helping them to see that His character is exhibited in the world He has made.

Second, we ought to be creative ourselves because God is living in us. We need to release creativity in our day-to-day ministry, especially in the communication of God’s Word.

Third, though God is all-powerful and calls us to yield ourselves to His Lordship, He doesn’t force it on us. He beckons us to come. The intimacy He sought with Adam and Eve shows that He wants to be near us. I think the popularity of some recent literature like Journey of Desire, Sacred Romance, Wild At Heart and others shows us that people genuinely crave this intimacy. There is real value in focusing on this ‘romantic’ or ‘friendship’ aspect to God’s intentions of relating to His creation.

Fourth, in these early chapters of Genesis, God gave humankind responsibility for the earth. It seems as the world is going more and more green-conscious, that Christians should lead the way in caring for God’s creation! We can fulfill His mandate and at the same time have an effect in helping post-moderns see that we take God and His creation seriously.

Fifth, we must consciously work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12) maintaining the tension of a transcendent and immanent God. He is at work in us, and in His world.

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Find and you shall seek

Andrew Perriman

The distinction between transcendence and immanence is one of a number of analytical criteria that theologians commonly apply to the definition of God. It belongs essentially to an ontological theology - that is, we typically make use of it in our attempts to describe the divine being. It commonly forms part of a systematic grid of perfections and paradoxes by which we attempt to map the contours of this supreme idea that we call God.

From a biblical perspective, however, the primary distinction is probably the more practical and experiential one between worship of the true God and worship of false gods. The issue in this regard is one not of ontology but of identity and is usually settled with reference to such concretely identifying characteristics as the name of the god, his actions, and prominent individuals who have associated themselves with him. This is immediately apparent, for example, in the opening lines of the decalogue, which establish the name of the god (yhwh), a decisive action, his connection with a particular group, and his relation to other gods: ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me’ (Ex.20:2-3).

Once the identity of the true God has been determined, other distinctions come into play and become, potentially, the source of religious controversy. The divine presence may be encountered as a localized manifestation, limited to a particular place and time, or in more abstract universal terms. God may be encountered as an external reality, revealed in a burning bush or in the form of an angel of the Lord, or he may be discovered in the complex depths of the human spirit. He is a God who both reveals and conceals himself, who is both predictable and unpredictable.

This pattern suggests, however, that we should be careful not to deal with the question of God from an entirely abstract or universalized perspective. The various oppositions are explored and applied, for the most part, within a well-defined covenantal framework. Identification of the true God leads naturally to a corporate commitment to that God, validated and managed in the Old Testament by the Law of Moses and in the New by the experience of the Spirit (cf. 2 Cor.3:4-18). The covenant carries an assurance of the indwelling or immanence of God - the glory of the Lord in the Holy of Holies or the Spirit of the Lord in the heart of the believer - for those who are members of the covenant community.

So although our engagement with the indwelling presence of God is by no means a straightforward matter, it should be qualitatively, that is theologically, different from the experience of the person who is outside the covenant, who has not received the Spirit of Christ. The spirituality of the believer is essentially a pneumatic spirituality. The term ‘pneumatic spirituality’ is virtually a tautology: a spirituality of the Spirit. But it points to the fact that Christian spirituality is locked in to the activity of the Spirit of God. To have the Holy Spirit, which is integral to the identity of the disciple of Jesus, is to express in oneself the particular character, purpose, energy, of the somewhat narrowly defined God of the Bible.

The question that interests me at this point is this: What happens if, as members of this covenant community, for the purpose of missional engagement with the emerging culture, and perhaps in order to restore balance to our own souls, we step outside the confines of an unambiguous evangelical spirituality? Having found what we were looking for, can we become seekers again? Can we begin to define a more ambiguous, alternative spirituality for the space outside the church where emerging culture mission must take place? I have some tentative answers to this question.

1. We are bound to find that we must develop a different terminology, a different set of categories, for defining spiritual experience. The forms of religious life that we have learned from late twentieth century evangelicalism are the product of a particular construction of faith, which we have come to characterize broadly as ‘modern’ but which I think may be better understood as the result of an inadequate, narrow and nervous reaction to modernism. In any case, once we step outside the boundaries of a secure spirituality, we will discover, for example, that much of our language (‘personal salvation’, ‘getting to heaven’, ‘a passion for the lost’, etc.) has become questionable or meaningless. There will be a shift in priorities; answers will give way to questions; we will exchange linear, purpose-driven forms of spiritual behaviour for metaphors and practices of space and wandering.

2. Metaphors of space suggest exploration rather than the pursuit of a known, pre-determined objective. This hybrid spirituality will be hesitant, doubtful, reflective, inquisitive. But it will also be an active rather than passive spirituality, less dependent on an environment of intense, emotive, charismatic worship, less dependent on thoughtless dogmatic formulations.

3. If we remove ourselves from the enclosed sphere of covenant spirituality, we will become more acutely aware of the limitations and failings of our humanity. As Mike Riddell has written, ‘Because the church has become inhuman, the task before it is one of humanization’ (Threshold of the Future, 123). We will recognize the inadequacy of the human mind to grasp infinite truth, we will be less inclined to suppress the murmurings of doubt and disillusionment that arise within us, we will have to become more comfortable with our petty, commonplace sinfulness.

4. We will find ourselves having to come to terms more directly with those dimensions to the experience of God disclose his transcendence. The indwelling of the Spirit, which is determinative for the spirituality of those who are members of the new covenant community, is an expression of the immanence of God: “because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir” (Gal.4:6-7). Outside this community, then, we must deal with God prior to any experience of the sort of intimacy expressed by the metaphor of sonship.

In order to give shape to this more complex spirituality, it may be possible to draw on strands of religious experience from outside the biblical tradition. But the forms of Old Testament spiritual life may offer the most appropriate starting point. Under the old covenant the Spirit is a more elusive phenomenon. There are encounters with the mysterious otherness of God (the burning bush, for example; Moses’ glimpse of the back but not the face of the Lord (Ex.33:18-23)) that would seem out of place in the New Testament context, where the fulness of the godhead has been revealed in Christ (cf. Col.1:19; 2:9). In the spiritual struggles of the psalmists, in the soul-searching of Jeremiah, in the agonized reasoning of Job, we glimpse something of the dark night of the soul that has been obliterated by our easy evangelical spirituality.

5. I made the point earlier that in the context of a polytheistic religious environment the question of identity is more important than the more abstract puzzles that have preoccupied the minds of theologians in the era of the church. It is interesting that today we again find ourselves having to make sense of faith in God in a pluralistic context, where other gods, other ideologies, and other stories abound. Perhaps we need to go through that process of rediscovering who this God is, of learning again how to identify him, how to connect him with people and events and traditions. Perhaps this is the challenge: to help people connect their perception of a mysterious transcendent God with the stark landscape of history.

Postscript: How will this ambiguity be maintained in practice?

i) To some extent in the ambiguity of our own spiritual lives: in a transitional period we cannot escape the tension between the familiar old and the disturbing new.

ii) in the spiritual complexity and diversity of the community of faith: a postmodern community ought to be able to embrace different spiritualities. A charismatic or traditional conservative evangelical spirituality need not be branded as hopelessly ‘modern’ as long as it is able to interact creatively and fruitfully with other less confident spiritualities: we regard our different spiritualities as gifts that we bring to the community.

iii) in our use of scripture: we need to resist the drive to reduce the diversity of biblical types of spirituality, to view all things through the monochrome filter of our own experience of God.

iv) in mission: it ought to be mission that most powerfully alerts us to the inadequacies of our spirituality, both as individuals and as communities. Our spiritualities have evolved to function within a very narrow corridor of human life, and for the most part within the church: mission forces us to leave that corridor and enter a confusing and dangerous world, for which we will need a very different set of responses.

If spiritual life in the Court of the Gentiles is much more like Old Testament spiritual experience - externalized, materialistic, holistic, dramatic, creative, problematic - we may perhaps think of the baptized community as functioning within this positive and intrinsically worthwhile spiritual environment as a priesthood of the Spirit.

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Ramblings from One Slightly Homesick Sojourner

Dan Steigerwald

“I want to tell you that I really liked what was said this morning. I agree with you that
we can have deep spiritual experiences through nature, art and beauty. I like
that this church believes that people everywhere can feel the things you’re
talking about, not just people in the church.”

The words of Robin, a spiritual wanderer (and wonderer), after his second visit to
Crossroads. A man trying to make sense out of his own deep longings for meaning
and connectedness with something higher. A man who “meant” only to take a swim
at a local sports center one Sunday morning, but who ended up in a chair at a
Crossroads’ service (the pool was not to his liking; he saw our church sign by
the entrance to the sports center; and curiosity won the day…).

Robin’s comment
came on the heels of a relaxed talk about my own observations on how the beauty
of such things as nature, love, music, art and poetry often so deeply touch us
that we’re temporarily carried away in ecstatic moments. In those short-lived
“spiritual” experiences, I noted that we catch glimpses of perfection, of
something higher and better than the shadow world in which we live. But then we
experience a rapid descent into the ordinary; and our hearts are left sighing,
longing to re-capture those moments and revel in their glory.

“Nostalgia”, as
I intimated that Sunday morning, is a helpful concept to use in explaining that
involuntary response of our hearts when we encounter exquisite beauty in
nature, art or music. The word is derived from the combination of two Greek
roots: nostos, meaning “a return home”, and algos, meaning
“pain”. When put together, nostalgia becomes, literally, “a pain to return
home”. When faced with the imperfect world in which we live (where sickness,
death, decay, strife and loneliness taint the many “divine reflections” that
are observable), I believe that every human being knows nostalgia in a
spiritual sense. As John Eldredge puts it, we know, deep-down, that we were
designed “to live in a world of beauty and wonder, intimacy and adventure
all our days”. Where we now live, however diversely beautiful it may be,
can only rightly be described as “shadowlands” (as C.S. Lewis called it).

Every human
being feels to some degree a pain to return home, because God “has set
eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). A time-bound, mundane,
mortal existence just won’t do. This realm is a lesser expression of what God
intended for us, only an echo of an ancient perfection for which we were
designed. We can enjoy and sing about the ways it communicates the glory of
God, as David did in Psalm 19:1-4. But what it is broadcasting is a unified
message about another home where the beauty is unspoiled, a home where the perfection
of the Author of beauty is mirrored in unrefracted glory.

My contention
is that every person, postmodern or otherwise, feels the nostalgic ache for his
or her true home with God. As the Apostle Paul put it, we, along with creation,
groan “to be liberated from [our] bondage to decay and brought into the
glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:25). All the glimpses of
a higher perfection that we catch through beauty in art and creation and the
creativity of man only increase our longing to return home. The human spirit
keeps crying out, give me Eden restored - the only place where my heart can
finally come to rest.

Our capacity to
be deeply moved by finer transcendent pulses from a home beyond may indeed be
anesthetized by our fallenness and the sensory overload of consumerist culture.
And yet, most of us who sojourn upon this earth do now and then still
experience a sense of awe, pain and longing when encountered with a dazzling
sunset, a hauntingly beautiful piece of music, or an exquisite work of art.
What we who know Jesus can do as an act of love toward those who do not is
this: help our fellow homesick friends set these experiences within the context
of what we believe God has made known about Himself and His plans for
humankind. Let them explore the possibility that these flash moments of ecstasy
could be stepping stones to hope. Their fleeting nature testifies to the
reality that this life is a beautiful but withering autumn which will one day
break forth into eternal Spring.

I personally
live as an optimist, and I am able to accept (most of the time) the
complexities, mysteries and even the unfulfilled nostalgic longings I have; I
can live this way, for I am confident that my true home awaits me. This hope
helps me live as an agent of redemption in this present order: a person
motivated to steward and draw attention to the reflections of God’s beauty in
nature, in art, and in the symbols, rituals and dramas of the historic Church;
a person there to remind people that these reflections are not ends in
themselves, but signposts to provoke gratitude and groaning (of a good kind).

This hope also
arouses my heart to a sometimes-intense anticipation about the glorious freedom
of paradise to come. If what I occasionally feel or experience in ecstatic
foretastes is even the slightest indicator of what lies ahead, I know I am on a
trajectory toward a joy unspeakable! If you feel the way I do (homesick), may
God help us to live and love so as to further swell the ranks of those who, in
Christ, are joyfully homeward-bound.

1Now we know that if the earthly tent we
live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven,
not built by human hands. 2Meanwhile we groan, longing to be
clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3because when we are clothed, we
will not be found naked. 4For while we are in this tent, we groan
and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with
our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5Now
it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as
a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. 6Therefore we are always
confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from
the Lord. 7We live by faith, not by sight. – II Cor. 5:1-6

“If you find
God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found.” – Thomas Merton

Some practical implications for postmodern ministry

1. Music and the creative arts can be wonderful bridges in our interaction with postmoderns,
as they communicate a transcendent beauty that we all long to capture and live
within. We can help each other to not get focused on the lesser expressions of
glory (Acts 17:24-31). They are not the end as simply objects of appreciation,
but they are signs pointing to a perfection and beauty far greater – and one
that will ultimately be sustainable for those who give themselves to God.

Some Vehicles:
church-sponsored art galleries; events at cathedrals which exude artistic
beauty and mystique; music concerts with exceptional artists; poetry readings;
trips to art museums….

2. Creation can
be a great teaching platform, because it speaks its own unceasing language as
the backdrop for our sharing about God’s reality, presence and desire to be
known. Its song puts people in the frame of mind and heart to speak of higher
things. It helps disarm heady rationalizations, and keep us framed in the realm
of experience.

Some Vehicles:
Group nature tours, shared vacations, environmental cleanup efforts, star-gazing
events in the Summer; visual multi-media events featuring stunning natural
scenes; retreats in beautiful areas; non-competitive sailing, canoeing and
kayaking adventures….

3. Most people
I’ve ever talked to can identify with nostalgia. At the end of their musings
about the past, they sigh just like I do – wishing that they could get more
tastes of what once was. It’s not that big a step to refocus their attention on
the future, on the idea of “foretastes” of a better place that is coming. Maybe
there really will one day be what Bruce Coburn calls “the festival of friends”.

Some vehicles:
pub sharing; just being friends who don’t fake hope but really have it; growing
in the art of recognizing the good and beautiful in this world and expressing
gratitude to God for it wherever we are; prayer for those we know who feel no
 hope….

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The Meaning of Transcendence in the Postmodern World

Rogier Bos
Voorburg, The Netherlands, November 9th, 2002

INTRODUCTION

Our discussion of transcendence runs two risks. First, there is the possibility of the miscommunication that arises when we use the same word, but mean different things. Second, we run the risk of trying to answer questions the world is not asking. We have concluded that our world displays a quest for transcendence, and so have decided to make this the topic of our discussion. But what are the questions the world is asking? What lies behind this quest? As John V. Taylor’s son told him, when he had decided to leave the church: ‘Father, that man [the preacher] is saying all the right things but he isn’t saying them to anybody. He doesn’t know where I am, and it would never occur to him to ask!’ My intention in this paper is to outline the different uses of the word ‘Transcendence,’ to ask where people ‘are’ in regards to transcendence, and to pursue one or ways forward.

THE DIVINE SEE-SAW; TRANSCENDENCE AND IMMANENCE

When Christians use the word ‘transcendence’ they usually refer to that attribute of God that describes his difference and distance from the world. Transcendence is what we mean when we say that God is ‘wholly other,’ or beyond our world. He is self-sufficient from the world and the reality we experience. He is separate from and independent of nature and humanity.

This attribute of God is always paired with that other attribute that describes his closeness and involvement in reality, his immanence. Together transcendence and immanence form a royal pair which always needs to be kept in balance, and always runs the risk of falling out of balance. Indeed, suggest Grenz and Olson, where such balance is lacking, serious theological problems readily emerge.

Hence an overemphasis on transcendence can lead to a theology that is irrelevant to the cultural context in which it seeks to speak, whereas an overemphasis on immanence can produce a theology held captive to a specific culture.

In their opinion the 20th century offers an interesting case study: the pendulum swung to and fro as different theologies emerged, each disturbance of the equilibrium producing a counter-reaction to the opposite side ? something perhaps useful to consider as we discuss transcendence.

This, in a nutshell, is how theologians think about transcendence, and some of the papers contributed to our forum speak of God in this way. It is here that we speak of God?s awesomeness and majesty, and this produces worship and perhaps a healthy fear. Here we also speak of mystery, as we come to understand that God does not subject himself to our categories and systems, and that He, and indeed life itself, do frequently not behave in the way expected.

TRANSCENDENCE AS A DESIRED EXPERIENCE

When people without theological baggage speak of transcendence they are usually unaware of the concepts of immanence and transcendence as attributes of God. Yet usage of the term is popular today ? albeit in a different manner.

It would seem that the word transcendence is used in two ways, and both ways need to be understood against the backdrop of the transition from the modern to the postmodern era.

In its most popular use of the term, transcendence seems to refer to what can best be described as an experience or a temporary state of mind. Transcendence is what we experience when we achieve a (usually quite brief) sensation that we are out-of-the-ordinary, and that we have somehow entered the extraordinary. It may be achieved through music, silence, visual stimulation or chemical stimulation. It is a feeling of ecstasy, oneness, rapture, awe, energy, in short an experience that is out-of-this-world. It is what opera does to Inspector Morse, or what Rave music and Rave parties do to thousands of partygoers every weekend (sometimes, though not always aided by chemical stimulants). It is what I experienced when I attended the evensong service at St. Paul?s Cathedral some time ago, and the high voices of the boy choirs filled that immense space, echoing left and right. It is also what millions of evangelicals experience when they come together for a time of worship and praise.

I believe that for an experience to be transcendent, four conditions need to be met

1. There needs to be a sense of peace. A transcendent experience does not come until we allow ourselves to forget our momentary struggles, and find a way to leave them ‘outside.’ It also depends on us ceasing our striving, forgetting our anger, and rising above our petty differences.

2. There needs to be a sense of connection. This can be a sense of connection to the crowd we are part of (such as in a football stadium or a disco), a tradition (such as a school of thought, a musical genre or a religious order), or simply ‘the whole’ (be it the universe, God or the Goddess, or the cosmic consciousness). Whatever it is, a sense of belonging is created, and belonging transcends the aloneness that for many is part of everyday life.

3. Part of a transcendent experience is also the feeling of being carried along. Whether it is by the music, the rhythm, the scenery, the cheering of the crowd, the serenity or the Spirit, in a transcendent experience something we experience as bigger than ourselves carries us along for the duration of the experience.

4. Lastly, a transcendent experience requires a sense of surrender. Somehow, the individual needs to give permission for the emotions and feelings to be impacted by the contextual elements.

This need for transcending experience can be understood when we consider that much of our life is concerned with survival, routine, chores, frustration and anxiety. In this way, the yearning for transcendent experiences could be interpreted as mere escapism, but I believe it is much more than that: it is the desire for life as we feel it should have been. John Eldridge explains that within the human heart there lies an awareness that life as we experience it is not the life that we were created for ? and this creates a yearning that Dan Steigerwald has described as the longing for home.

In this respect the longing for transcendence is often explained as the longing for ‘a reality that is more real than the one we live in’. The latter is a phrase I encountered when interviewing some rave party attenders. Surprising as I found the phrase, its sentiment is consistent with C.S. Lewis’ idea of the grass in heaven being harder than our feet are used to (The Great Divorce), or the movie What Dreams May Come, in which the colours of heaven are deeper and richer than the colours on earth ? somehow there seems to reside in the human heart an awareness that reality as we experience it is but a drab reflection of what it should be. The desire for transcendence then is the desire for life as it should have been: real, whole, peaceful, exciting, awesome, beautiful, and majestic.

TRANSCENDENCE AS A BELIEF ABOUT REALITY

There is another reason people in our world desire experiences of transcendence. It is a reaction against the rationalism of the enlightenment, which rejected any sense of mystery, choosing instead to break any whole down into subparts so that it could be controlled and tweaked logically and without emotion. This rationalism cured us (for a while) of dreams of life as it should have been, and focused our attention on that which we can explain and categorize and predict.

But rationalism alone does not feed our souls, and over time the vacuum created by the enduring emphasis on reason could not do anything else but implode. As Richard Holloway said, ‘We are more than our rationality. We have depths to our nature ? emotional, aesthetic and spiritual, and if we lose touch with them we diminish and distort our humanity.’ Albert Einstein agrees with him when he says:

The most beautiful experience is to meet the mysterious. This is the source of all true art and scholarly pursuit. He, who has never had this experience, is not capable of rapture and cannot stand motionless with amazement, is as good as dead. His eyes are closed.

The transition to the postmodern world in this respect is an awakening. All over the Western world people are waking up to the notion that there is more to life, and they are going after it with a vengeance.

Unfortunately, the church has proven to not be immune to the rationalism of the preceding age, and so it now finds itself at odds by and large with a world longing for transcendence. Mark Oakley describes this well:

Part of me worries that the contemporary Church is losing aspects of its wide and generous memory and therefore condemning itself to become a ‘swimming pool Church’ ? one that has all the noise coming from the shallow end. In such a paddling pool it will be easy to say ‘easy’ and mysterious to say ‘mysterious.’ It will also be a place where those who say that they are having trouble seeing, will not feel welcome at all ? Such a Church will never be able to help teach souls to fly.

The amazing paradox is that such a Church can talk of Transcendence, but only as a cognitive concept. By definition God defies categorization and predictability ? but a Church that allows empirical thinking to govern its theology, cannot do anything but attempt to categorize and predict God. Armed with such a worldview we become able to answer virtually any question, but in the process God himself ‘loses’ transcendence, and becomes ‘small’.

You have made God small,
setting him astride
a pipette or a retort
studying the bubbles,
absorbed in an experiment
that will come to nothing

I think of him rather
as an enormous owl
abroad in the shadows,
brushing me sometimes
with his wings so the blood
in my veins freezes, able

to find his way from one
soul to another because
he can see in the dark.
I have heard him crooning
to himself, so that almost
I could believe in angels,

those feathered overtones
in love?s rafters, I have heard
him scream, too, fastening
his talons in his great adversary,
or in some lesser
denizen, maybe, like you or me.

The problem is now twofold. First, the church is uncomfortable with transcendent experiences for fear that reason should loose its governing influence on our behaviour. Second, the church presents a concept of a God she claims to be transcendent, but the concept leaves little room for mystery, wonder and the unknown. It was this tendency (among other things) that caused Einstein to reject Christianity. Said he: ‘My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.’ Somehow, Einstein could not harmonize the ‘illimitible superior spirit’ with the God put forth by Christianity.

Postmodern people reason much the way Einstein did. Their observation is that ‘if indeed there is a God behind reality, responsible for it all, and upholding it all, He must be so awesome and so ‘other’ that there must be a great deal of wonder and mystery involved in his worship.’ Transcendence is something postmoderns have come to believe about reality: the complexity of ecosystems, the flow of energy through the universe, the size and age of the cosmos and the interdependence of subatomic particles have taught us one thing: reality transcends any possible explanation.

TRANSCENDANCE AS A DESIRED STEP IN THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS

There is a fourth use of the word Transcendence, and it is probably the concept that most Christians tend to be least familiar with. Nevertheless it is a concept that is gaining popularity and becoming increasingly influential in the worlds of art, politics and education.

This use of the word is best explained by Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel, in his lecture ‘The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World,’ which he delivered July 4th 1994, at Independence Hall, Philadelphia.

Havel puts forward the current political and historical situation, which he calls ‘the postmodern world,’ and says we have come to a crossroads in history. Here a fundamental change in human being is desired. Mankind must transcend itself. If the human race is to survive on planet Earth, it must ‘create a new world order,’ one that is carried and supported by a new kind of human Being. The alternative is extinction.

Self-transcendence in Havel?s understanding is the ability to rise above our present condition and to collectively embrace and practice a faith in the oneness of all creation. Inspiration for this idea come what Havel calls ‘two transcendent ideas’: the Anthropic Cosmological Principle and the Gaia Hypothesis. Havel explains both, starting with the Anthropic Cosmological Principle:

Its authors and adherents have pointed out that from the countless possible courses of its evolution the universe took the only one that enabled life to emerge. This is not yet proof that the aim of the universe has always been that it should one day see itself through our eyes. But how else can this matter be explained?

I think the Anthropic Cosmological Principle brings to us an idea perhaps as old as humanity itself: that we are not at all just an accidental anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tine particle whirling in the endless depth of the universe. Instead, we are mysteriously connected to the entire universe, we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us.

Until recently, it might have seemed that we were an unhappy bit of mildew on a heavenly body whirling in space among many that have no mildew on them at all. this was something that classical science could explain. Yet, the moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science reaches the outer limits of its powers. Because it is founded on the search for universal laws, it cannot deal with singularity, that is, with uniqueness. The universe is a unique event and a unique story, and so far we are the unique point of that story. But unique events and stories are the domain of poetry, not science. With the formulation of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, science has found itself on the border between formula and story, between science and myth. In that, however, science has paradoxically returned, in a roundabout way, to man, and offers him - in new clothing - his lost integrity. It does so by anchoring him once more in the cosmos.

The second example is the Gaia Hypothesis. This theory brings together proof that the dense network of mutual interactions between the organic and inorganic portions of the earth’s surface form a single system, a kind of mega-organism, a living planet - Gaia - named after an ancient goddess who is recognizable as an archetype of the Earth Mother in perhaps all religions. According to the Gaia Hypothesis, we are parts of a greater whole. If we endanger her, she will dispense with us in the interest of a higher value - that is, life itself.

It will be evident that this concept of transcendence is inspired by Social Darwinism in that it sees this next development of the human being as the logical and necessary next step in evolution.

A modern philosopher once said: “Only a God can save us now.”

Yes, the only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, in the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respects for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well.

It logically follows that, in today’s multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies - it must be rooted in self-transcendence:

· Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe.
· Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world.
· Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction.

I have given so much space to this concept of Transcendence, because it is becoming an increasingly influential idea, with powerful adherents in many strategic places in society. Transcendence in this way of thinking borrows indeed from the Christian concept of the transcendence of God, but augments it quickly with insights from many other ways of thinking (in true postmodern fashion) to end with a concept of transcendence that is really about evolution and human development.

CONCLUSION

My paper has sought to put forward four ideas. First, there are four distinct ways in which people understand Transcendence. Secondly, Christians tend to use the word Transcendence different from non-Christians, raising the chances of miscommunication. Third, the way non-Christian use the word sheds some interesting light on what they believe about life and reality, and this in turn presents some healthy challenges to Christian thinking. Fourth, the rationalism of the Enlightenment has severely impacted our way of thinking, and it is necessary to understand the extent of the damage, and make appropriate changes. As we do we encounter the Transcendence of God in a new and fresh way, and this changes our manner of speaking about him and relating to him. In Mark Oakley?s words, we become people who do not seek resolve the mystery of God, but rather ‘deepen’ it.

I shall now risk making a sweeping generalisation. On the whole, religious people fall into two basic categories. First, there are those who want to resolve the mystery of God, to teach and preach it clearly, to spell out the facts as they are believed, to be like a reporting journalist and relay information in black and white to those not in ‘the know.’ On the other hand, there are those who, instead of wanting to resolve the mystery, seek to deepen it. Such people are uneasy with words as ‘simply’ or ‘easily,’ they are willing to get tongue-tied, to say ‘I don’t know,’ to embrace the evocative languages of poetry and music in their search for God. They have come to believe that truth is not the same thing as the elimination of ambiguity.

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The weight of glory

the weight of glorysome reflections of an amateur

Lammert Vrieling

You should never start a paper – even a short one – with an apology, so I won’t. I do however point to the fact that an amateur is someone who loves a particular topic but not necessarily has the credentials:-). That’s me.

Because I do not have any original thoughts on transcendence – as far as I know – I read the weight of glory by C.S. Lewis. On page 36 he describes himself as a “typical modern” and states that the word glory suggests two things to him, of which one seems wicked and the other ridiculous… While Lewis continued to write about glory in a passionate manner – much unlike a typical modern? – I started wondering whether the topic of transcendence (that I reluctantly replace with the term glory) landed well with his fellow modern readers. Lewis’ conclusion had a surprising (modern?) bent to it in the end as he emphasized the burden of our neighbour’s glory – instead of our own. Today’s wider interest in the transcendence of God and linked to that interest in symbols, rituals and mysticism seems to be induced by the desire to meet a God who is beyond us, loving yes, but awesome, holy and especially much bigger than our tiny lives. This paper will provide a summary of Lewis’ argument (if nothing else this might at least benefit us:-) and a couple of reflections of a self-proclaimed postmodern.

the argument

Lewis starts the weight of glory with the statement that nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we follow Christ contains an appeal to desire. An appeal to desire for our own good opposes “most modern minds” but Lewis argues that “our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak”… and that “we are far too easily pleased”.

He continues there are different kinds of rewards (3):

- reward with no natural connection (marrying a woman for the sake of her money) —> makes you a mercenary;
- reward with natural connection (marriage as the proper reward for a real lover) —> the activity itself in consummation;
- “unknown reward” with the potential of being natural and proper (a schoolboy studying greek cannot look forward to enjoying greek poetry)—>heaven as the very consummation of our earthly discipleship but we have not yet attained it nor can we know it.

So, we desire something we do not know of: “we cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.” Sometimes we feel it closely like a foretaste through a sunset, books, music or memories but these are not the real thing. “It was not in them; it only came through them, and what came through them was a longing.” Many try to find this on earth but in the end all die and all is nothing and what we are left with is that we remain conscious of a desire no natural happiness will satisfy. That fact that we have a desire for heaven does of course not prove that we shall one day enjoy it, but it is a pretty good indication that something like that exists and that some will enjoy it. “A man may love a woman and not win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called ‘falling in love’ occurred in a sexless world”.

Lewis then moves on with the promises of Scripture. It is promised:

1. that we shall be with Christ;
2. that we shall be like Him;
3. that we shall have “glory”;
4. that we shall be fed or feasted or entertained;
5. that we shall have some sort of official position in the universe.

This is Lewis’ question about these promises: “why any one of them except the first? Can anything be added to the conception of being with Christ?” The first promise seems much less symbolical than the other promises for it suggests proximity in space and “concentrates on the humanity of Christ to the exclusion of His deity”. “God is more than a Person, and lest we should imagine the joy of His presence too exclusively in terms of our present poor experience of personal love, with all its narrowness and strain and monotony, a dozen changing images, correcting and relieving each other, are supplied.” The latter long quote points – I think – to the heart of the matter regarding our discussion of transcendence; we need transcendence to do some justice to the awesomeness of God.

Initially Lewis is shocked by the fact that many “great” Christians take heavenly glory in the sense of fame with God, approval, good report or “appreciation” by God. After he saw that this view was scriptural (“Well done, thou good and faithful servant”) a good deal of his old thinking fell down like a house of cards. No one can enter heaven except as a child and a child revels in being praised. If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself.”

“To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness… to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son – it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

Now, what practical use is there in Lewis’ speculations… He points to the fact that we might think too much of our own glory hereafter but it is hardly possible to think too often or too deeply about the glory of our neighbour. “The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.”

surprised by conclusions

Although I agree with Lewis’ practical use of “his speculations” about the weight of glory, I am also surprised by this conclusion as I did not anticipate it. The conclusion I expected – but hey who am I? – would have emphasized the implications of an overly human view of God and how this would limit God (and overstates humanity). The weight of glory could be realizing that God is so much bigger than us; the air can be so “pregnant” and heavy with his Spirit that we would have to fall on our face before him. Today’s wider interest in the transcendence of God and linked to that interest in symbols, rituals and mysticism seems to be induced by the desire to meet a God who is beyond us, loving yes, but awesome, holy and especially much bigger than our tiny lives. However, Lewis’ conclusion that we should be focused on our neighbour’s glory would be our natural response when meeting an awesome God like ours. At least, I hope so.

C.S. Lewis. The weight of glory (pp. 25-46)
1949. HarperCollins

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What is the gospel: summary of contributions

I suggest that we take as a starting point the distinction between two tasks.

The first task is that of defining as well as we can the historical-eschatological narrative that has given rise to a ‘gospel’ that needs preaching. The primary reason for doing so is to ensure that we are telling the right sort of biblical story, but this approach may also prove especially helpful for defining a postmodern ‘orthodoxy’. Michael’s paper offers important guidelines for exploring these questions further, but this summary will concentrate on our attempts to answer the particular question about the gospel.

There seemed to be agreement in our discussions that the thinking and agenda of modern evangelicalism have created distortions in the core narrative of Christian faith and that these distortions have in turn forced us into certain doctrinal positions with which we are personally uncomfortable and which are especially unhelpful for the purposes of emerging culture mission. There is a need, therefore, to revisit the biblical texts and reconstruct the story in the light of an historical-critical hermeneutic (Andrew). We are likely to find, as a result, that much of the language of eschatology and salvation, by which we define the gospel, relates specifically to the fate of second temple Judaism and the emergence of a renewed people of God in the pagan world. How this works out in detail still needs to be clarified but it is already evident that this sort of retelling of the story will have important implications for how we understand the gospel.

The second task has to do with determining how we interpret and apply this gospel within a postmodern cultural context.

A useful distinction was made between an essential ‘kerygma’ and the secondary teaching that safeguards the integrity of the kerygma and expounds its implications for mission and the life of the church (Dan). We recognized the possibility that the secondary teaching might have to be adjusted in response to social and cultural change.

However, we also identified at least two respects in which the gospel has to be shown to be more than a set of abstracted beliefs or propositions. First, the gospel should not be separated from its narrative context, which helps us to keep in touch with the historical-eschatological
story behind the gospel; secondly, the gospel should always be embodied, communicated, lived out, in relationship and in the life of the community. One way to ensure this relational aspect would be closely to identify the gospel with the
person of Jesus (Hud).

The emphasis on community here also has implications for how we understand conversion. We found Kallenberg’s suggestion helpful that conversion should be understood as ‘naturalization into community’ (Rogier). This way of thinking corrects the individualism and epistemological reductionism of traditional evangelical models of conversion. It also agrees with the argument that in a ‘post-eschatological’ situation salvation should be understood not as gaining life after death but as entering a community of the Spirit in which we experience the life of the age that has come.

This ‘new life’ also needs to be understood in creational terms (Wes). If in certain respects the gospel is the product of the narrow and particular story of Israel, it must also be fitted within a wider creational or cosmic narrative. This expansive, holistic outlook resonates with postmodern hostility to reductionist intellectual strategies, but at the same time there is an inherent optimism in it which challenges the scepticism and pessimism of postmodernism, offering not another way to announce the demise of the modernist project but an authentic new beginning. Again there is a significant connection here with the ‘post-eschatological’ emphasis on the ‘worldly’ orientation of the renewed community of God.

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A progressively better gospel

The gospel is indeed the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. But what is it that must first be believed on for this salvation? And how is that “good news” assimilated over time and further reinforced in the hearts of those believing? By observing Luke’s account of Paul and Barnabas’ first missionary journey (late 40’s AD) from Syrian Antioch into the multi-cultural terrain of Cyprus and Asia Minor, I believe we can gain a fresh appreciation into what I would call the gospel’s progressive or cascading impact upon responding audiences.

At the outset of that famous trek recorded for us in Acts, chapters 13 and 14, Paul and Barnabas were commissioned by the early church at Antioch to communicate this gospel not only to practicing Jews and God-fearing Gentiles, but to Gentiles who had little or no connection at all to Judaism. As they encountered these two primary audiences throughout this journey, the two itinerant preachers used various means to access each. The former was strategically approached via the established synagogues, where Paul integrated his gospel presentation into the normal flow of the Sabbath service. The platform for the latter group involved such events as power encounters or larger, more eclectic gatherings pulled together after this preaching duo’s unusual message leaked out to the general populace from earlier synagogue preaching.

As we consider what Paul and Barnabas proclaimed in the towns visited in this particular journey, we see the presentation of a very basic kernel of gospel material - a “kerygma” which was apparently nuanced according to the audience encountered.[1] For example, among the Jews and God-fearing Gentile proselytes in Pisidian Antioch, we see Paul proclaiming what some have called an updated “Old Testament kerygma”.[2] A similar presentation may have been made in the synagogue at Iconium. In Lystra, among the Gentiles not practicing Judaism, Paul appears to be in the act of presenting the “Veggie-Tails” super-basic version of the gospel (turn from your worthless gods to the living God, the Creator who shows His care for you in his many providences and…). But then suddenly he appears to be tripped-up by the crowd’s desire to pay homage to his godhood rather than listen to his message. One gets the idea that more content might have been shared (probably not of the Jewish kerygma variety - what sense would that have made to most of them?) had the crowd not been so busy trying to worship them (and then later to stone them!).

Among a similar kind of Gentile audience earlier on in the towns of Cyprus, we read that one proconsul, Sergius Paulus, was “amazed at the teaching of the Lord” (which may have included some redemptive acts in Jewish history, but probably included the object lesson of God’s power in blinding the proconsul’s sorcerer attendant). In Derbe we’re told only that Paul and Barnabas “preached the good news and won a large number of disciples.” What was included as part of that good news we’re not told.

So, what seems to be the picture in the Lukan account of this missionary trip is a series of gospel presentations that included selective emphasis on certain aspects of a broader pool of “good news”. How much content was shared and to what degree varied according to the audience encountered.[3] Some contexts afforded a more opportune and hence thorough gospel presentation, while others only allowed certain bare essentials to be brought forward before the opportunity was truncated.

As the good news was proclaimed within a given locale, and people were won to Christ, we recognize a further interesting dynamic on this missionary journey (a dynamic which is arguably germane to most gospel presentations in the New Testament). It seems over time, in subsequent contacts with given responding audiences, additional primary and secondary material needed to be introduced to supplement what was shared in the initial proclamation. That additional material might constitute an extra dose of core material missing in the first-round proclamation; or it might involve further essential teachings to under-gird the gospel to which they had earlier converted. In some instances it probably involved both. In any case, over time a fuller proclamation of the basic kerygma seemed to regularly involve supplementation with essential doctrine. Without this additional secondary material, the original gospel could conceivably not root in someone’s life. This subsequent teaching, probably equivalent to Paul’s “good deposit” (II Timothy I:14), helped foster an environment in the heart conducive to growth in the gospel. It’s not that the gospel was in any way deficient; it’s just that the assimilation of it seemed to involve ongoing reminding, processing and wrestling with further complementary teaching (including core gospel material). One’s understanding and appreciation of the good news was thereby deepened by this further “washing with the Word.”

Looking back to that 1^st missionary journey, we see evidence of this dynamic. As the missionaries backtracked through the cities they just visited, we’re told they engaged in “strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith” (14:22a). I imagine in those re-visitations Paul and Barnabas stressed certain deeper teaching (perhaps showing converts “the way of God more adequately”, as Priscilla and Aquila did for the Jewish preacher Apollos in Acts 18). They may have also highlighted the aspect of suffering as a more subliminal yet very important part of this gospel (in 14:22b, we see Paul and Barnabas returning to the towns and informing the new disciples of that additional heavy reality they face: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God”).

What I’m getting at is this: we cannot rightly talk about the “gospel” in isolation from the necessary follow-up ministry of under-girding that gospel. It trails behind but is still part and parcel to the kerygma seating itself in people’s hearts and lives. As Paul noted to Timothy, sound doctrine is in accord with or “conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God” (I Timothy 1:11). This suggests that the good news is ideally shared in a multi-layered fashion over time, with an outer prominent kerygma, but also with accompanying layers of deeper material. These layers complement and further enrich it as good news.

At this point I’d like to expand this discussion beyond this 1^st missionary journey and briefly explore the makeup of both this “good news” and this “good deposit”. When we observe Paul in action, he seems to have a firm grasp of a basic kerygma, and he and his close cohorts appear to have had a uniform grasp of a broader doctrinal good deposit. So, what was the composition of that core gospel? And what about the good deposit – what did that constitute? C.H. Dodd and many others have argued that Peter’s speeches represent the kerygma ideal in terms of the inclusion of certain bare essentials. The ancient kerygma as summarized by Dodd from Peter’s speeches in Acts was:

1. The Age of Fulfillment has dawned, the “latter days” foretold by the prophets.
2. This has taken place through the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
3. By virtue of the resurrection Jesus has been exalted at the right hand of God as Messianic head of the new Israel.
4. The Holy Spirit in the church is the sign of Christ’s present power and glory.
5. The Messianic Age will reach its consummation in the return of Christ.
6. An appeal is made for repentance with the offer of forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, and salvation.

These key elements or something close to them, Dodd argues, would have been part of the primary repertoire employed to elicit faith in the hearer, whether that hearer heard the full scope on round one, or whether they heard that full scope over time in successive presentations of the good news.[4] (I find it surprising that Dodd’s summary excludes any obvious reference to the aggressive inclusivity we see exhibited by Paul in locales such as Pisidian Antioch, and emphasized so prominently in letters like Galatians and Romans. This was a huge part of what made the gospel good news for the Gentiles – that they were actually included and united into one people of God).

Whatever primitive kerygma the Apostles drew upon in their missional preaching, Dodd contends that within the Apostolic era and beyond, into the history of the early Church and its liturgy, a mature, more evolved kerygma emerged:

“As the Church produced a settled organization of its life, the content of the kerygma entered into the Rule of Faith, which is recognized by the theologians of the second and third centuries as the presupposition of Christian theology. Out of the Rule of Faith in turn the Creeds emerged. The so-called Apostles’ Creed in particular still betrays in its form and language its direct descent from the primitive apostolic Preaching. At the same time, the kerygma exerted a controlling influence upon the shaping of the Liturgy. While theology advanced from the positions established by Paul and John, the form and language of the Church’s worship adhered more closely to the forms of the kerygma. It is perhaps in some parts of the great liturgies of the Church that we are still in most direct contact with the original apostolic Preaching.”[5]

Has the Church over the ages unnecessarily complicated matters by moving away from a simple kerygma employed by the original Apostolic preachers? Have we as a Body, historically, been guilty of elevating secondary material into the realm of primary gospel? And do we thereby obstruct the way to faith in our missional preaching, by making the gospel overly complex or a matter of cognitive ascent to a list of doctrines? Should we rather provide a very simple gospel message that even the most unsophisticated could manage to grasp? A lowest-common denominator kerygma which might be comprised of only the following: God has made a way to Himself through Jesus’ death that involves the pure gift of His acceptance and the wiping away of our sins, offered apart from anything we have done or could do to earn or obligate that acceptance, and conditioned upon our endurance in trust (through the encouragement and inspiration of the Scriptures and the ongoing kindness of God in the Holy Spirit).[6]

Whatever we conclude ought to be part of a bare-minimum kerygma, we do need to keep the focus on Jesus Christ resurrected, given as the Savior of the world to all who will believe (Romans 1:2-4). Along with this, we need to offer the community of Christ an ongoing immersion in the stories and instruction of Scripture (the good deposit will thereby continually touch us to help insure that the primary gospel remains alive in our hearts). This good deposit, as Paul envisioned it, is admittedly difficult to pinpoint with precision. And it may have included 1^st century cultural elements which have over the centuries been superceded (e.g. the role of women, slaves, etc.). I suppose this is where our confidence in the ministry of the Holy Spirit is called upon. As we let the Scriptures master us in our community studying to show ourselves approved, we can be assured that the Spirit of God will shore up the gospel in our hearts.

In the Modern era the Church has, as the argument goes, overemphasized the gospel as content to be believed, rather than as encounter with the living Person, Jesus Christ. So as to avoid any conclusions that what I’m suggesting thus far is skewed too far toward content or assent to doctrinal formulations, I want to underscore this other key facet integrally wed to our gospel proclamation and under-girding – the ministry of the Holy Spirit. In his letters to the Ephesians and the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul mentioned another “good deposit” left to the church – “the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:14; cf. II Corinth. 5:5). We cannot fairly talk about the “good news” if we leave out the prospect of a long term, increasingly deeper and satisfying interaction with BOTH good deposits that point us to Jesus (and what true life in Him means). In the gospel we meet Christ, and we continue to find encouragement in the living Word of God along with the active presence of the Spirit (also ministering in power, not just revealing the Scriptures). This dual interaction is the only way that we too, like an aging Paul, might be disposed to say at life’s end “bring the scrolls, especially the parchments” (II Timothy 4:13). Still intrigued by God’s Word to the very end. Still looking for how the Spirit might yet make this good news even better.

To put a wrapper on this discussion, I want to re-iterate my belief in the simplicity of the gospel. It is first and foremost encounter with Jesus Christ Himself – He is the embodiment of the good news (which can be understood and eventually articulated by its recipients in concrete words – even if that means a person only initially knows inside that God has forgiven and accepted them in Christ). As well, I would add that before the Apostle Paul or any gospel proclaimers from his day on, down to the present, ever muttered a word about Jesus into a given context, the Spirit was active preparing the ground to receive the seed of the Word. This advance work of the Spirit, including His confirming signs and wonders in certain cases, along with the personal meeting of Christ (Spirit to spirit), sets the stage for the deeper ministry of the washing with the Word over time. The kerygma and the “good deposit” and the “Good Deposit” all harmoniously over time increasing our appreciation and understanding of the wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This leaves room for a “belonging before believing” perspective (which was arguably also present in Paul’s day among the newly forming church communities where the gospel was first going out), where we value giving normal people adequate immersion in the body of Christ. This community immersion enables them to feel and experience Jesus Christ in people who “embody” that gospel and good deposit, and hence fosters openness to receive the forgiveness, acceptance and hope that Christ offers.

—————————————

Some afterthoughts as they pertain to postmodern ministry:

1. Exegeting our audiences is as important as exegeting the Word we bring to them, if we hope to have the gospel heard as good news.

2. Missional preaching is not primarily about one-shot unloading of the kerygma on unsuspecting people. In whatever opportunities God allows for sharing these words of life, may we be ever prayerful and discerning about how best to share (what to include; what to hold back on). An ongoing relationship with our hearers helps insure that the gospel gets a fuller hearing (in which we are ideally over time able to pass on the good deposit).

3. However we view Scripture and theology, we must not tire of pursuing fresh, creative, multi-dimensional ways of interacting with the good deposit, toward the under-girding of this wonderful gospel in our lives. May we break out of the mono-lithic manners in which we promote that interaction.

4. See that growth in the gospel involves a commitment to remain missional and to live out the gospel together like we really believe it.

5. In Pisidian Antioch, Paul clearly laid out a warning for those Jews rejecting the gospel. This was part of his proclamation. Does any warning fit in our presentation of the gospel today, or do we not feel there is any place for that?

6. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God”, Paul told the churches in Asia Minor as he backtracked through. What does this mean as it pertains to the good news? Is it part of that, and if so, does it make it less good or even better?

7. One way we effectively under-gird the gospel is through the repetition of the drama of Communion. Jesus knew we needed to remember and keep remembering this enacted kerygma, so that we might keep it alive in our hearts and communities.

---

[1] C.H. Dodd popularized this term “kerygma” in a series of lectures given in 1935, which are bound in the book, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments (Harper and Row, 1964); I’m using the term in a more generic sense to describe the essential kernel of truth, the core gospel content. Dodd viewed kerygma much more narrowly, as the content of the good news proclaimed in order to introduce a person to Christ and to appeal for their conversion. He saw as a separate category the doctrinal and ethical teaching of the church (“didache”) a person needs to be grounded in once they become a Christian. Kerygma and didache could of course overlap (e.g. Jesus’ atoning death having a key role in both), but didache was broader in thematic content and not strictly ‘kerygmatic’ as it was used in edifying the body.

[2] In Acts 13:17-22 Paul’s speech before the Jews at the synagogue (not unlike Peter and Stephen’s famous speeches recorded in Acts 2 and 7, respectively) seems to contain a confessional summary narrating certain great redemptive acts of God (e.g. God’s choice of the Patriarchs, His blessing of the children of Israel in Egypt and their favored Exodus; God’s securing of Canaan; His provision of Judges and choice of David to be Israel’s king). To this list Paul adds John the Baptist’s ministry pointing to the coming Saviour, and, most importantly, Jesus’ “unnoticed” arrival, death and resurrection. These events become the sequel to God’s dealings with His people, and ultimately the grand fulfillment of all the Scriptures have promised - in essence, a more updated or developed kerygma. See Tyndale NT Commentary on Acts, by E.M. Blaiklock (IVP, Leicester, England; 1977), pp. 105-106.

[3] This seems to have been standard practice for gospel-proclaimers in the book of Acts. If we look more broadly to Paul’s preaching on other missionary journeys, or at significant gospel-sharing situations (like Peter’s and Stephen’s speeches), we see a corroborating pattern of proclaimers tailoring their first-round gospel presentation according to audience. Certain aspects of an overall kerygma are included or excluded according to their hearers’ pre-understandings about God (e.g. In Acts 2 before a Jewish audience Peter presents what many call the most thoroughly developed kerygma; In contrast, Paul before the Athenian philosophers presents only key aspects about a living Creator God who is calling people everywhere to repent, and who one day will judge the world by His appointed One whom He raised from the dead).

[4] A slight alteration of Dodd’s kerygma: the apostolic kerygma was “a proclamation of the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus that led to an evaluation of His person as both Lord and Christ, confronted man with the necessity of repentance, and promised theforgiveness of sins” (R. H. Mounce. The Essential Nature of New Testament Preaching, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960, p. 84).

[5] Quoted from the third lecture in The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, by C. H. Dodd (Harper and Row, 1964).

[6] This might be equivalent to the kerygma Paul urged Titus to stress among the new converts on the island of Crete (see Titus 3:4-8). Most commentators argue that this kernel in verses four to seven is a quote from an early church hymn sung at baptisms. In this case there seems to be a direct correlation between their holding this kerygma in steady view and their success in aspiring to holy living (“This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things [the kerygma just mentioned], so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.”).

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Centrism: Re-examining the New in the Good News

Centrism: Re-examining the New in the Good News

Wes White

Wes White pastors a Christian Associates church community in Glasgow, Scotland, called Mosaic.

Introduction

New sights and sounds and smells are infiltrating the Mosaic community. In the past month we have welcomed the arrival of two babies, the first generation in Mosaic’s short history. Amidst the mirth and challenge, which naturally arise out of such joyous occasions, additions of this kind also instigate a subtle appreciation for the “new birth” terminology of Jesus (John 3:3). Unfortunately, it is on the basis of this singular text that some (notably, evangelical traditions) subscribe to a very individualized gospel that is essentially understood as the offer of being “born again.”[1]

But new babies also reawaken a sense of beginnings in the community which is so fortunate as to welcome and receive them. Church-planting, by its nature, accentuates the unique sensation of beginnings, and physical births only adds to its luster. Beyond that, however, we may wonder whether this sense of radical beginnings is the broader concern at the heart of such an earthy concept as being born again.[2] It may, in fact, be the broader idea suggested by the New Testament’s proclamation of “good news” as well.
Beginnings as an Attractive Alternative to the End

When the parameters of the gospel are broad enough so as to be understood in terms of a radical beginning, it can be received (in one sense at least) as a welcome contrast to the postmodern predilection to define itself negatively as the “end” of modern constructs. “Postmodernism” as a label is already overwrought, if for no other reason than it is couched in the language of reactionary pessimism. We speak, after all, not of “pre-idyllic” (or an other “pre-” designations), but simply “post” modern. Thus, for example, Walter Anderson demonstrates (rightly so) the end of an objectivist outlook in the light of the constructing games that have evolved out of the hermeneutics of language and the implications of global politics.[3] Similarly, Jean-Francois Lyotard refers to the end of any sort of meta-narrative, and Robert Matthews discusses the end of dependable science.[4]

Given these cultural/philosophical developments, Karl Barth’s treatment of the gospel as divine optimism is refreshingly relevant. It is the announcement of a new beginning in Christ that is backed up with a hearty “Yes,” rather than “No.” Over and above all, it is “the wise and intrinsically powerful Yes which God has spoken to His creature and which He will finally execute and reveal.” “The presence of this divine Yes,” according to Barth, “is the new and glorious message which is entrusted to the Christian community and which it is commissioned to deliver on earth.”[5]

The allusion to Second Corinthians, chapter one, verses eighteen to twenty, is necessarily poignant. In the context of affirming the integrity of his own apostolic ministry, Paul resorts to the grand affirmation of God. The hapex legomen of the Apostle’s choice of title (“Son of God, Christ Jesus”) underscores the unique person who is the core of what is preached, i.e. the God-Man. The emphatic gegonen (perfect) in verse nineteen suggests the historical reliability (unchanging) of the divine affirmation, leading Barrett to add the adjective “final” in his English translation.[6] But the critical concern in the text is the relationship between Christ himself and such divine optimism that is demonstrated in the exclamatory “Yes,” as opposed to “No.” All the promises of God culminate in “Yes” when they are realized by being “in” Christ. It is God’s “Yes” to a new beginning inaugurated in Christ.
Beginning…of What?

Beginnings, however, can come in diverse spheres and settings and sizes. The beginning of a movement in a symphonic work is different in scope and sphere that the beginning of a social movement. The beginning of a football match is likewise different in setting and scope than the genesis of a family. The question remains, therefore, in terms of a new beginning inaugurated in Christ. What beginning does the New Testament have in mind?

Nothing less than a comprehensive (centrist) biblical theology may be in view. In a compelling argument, Greg Beale contends for a “defensible centre for New Testament theology” that is wholly focused on new creation.[7] Jesus is the foundation stone, which makes the building of the new creation possible.[8] More specifically, Beale suggests that all the major theological ideas of the New Testament flow out of (and into) God’s intent of a new creation for His own glory that has already seen its genesis in the Christ-event.[9] I find a lot to commend itself in Beale’s arguments, and go further by suggesting that the pronouncement of this beginning is, in fact, the heart of the good news.

The Apostle Paul’s direct use of such new creation vocabulary further on in his Second Letter to the Corinthians is one reason why.[10] “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,” we read in 5:17, “a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold new things have come.” Again, the critical idea is being “in Christ.” What comes of it? New creation, understood personally, socially, cosmically? Paul’s language knows no limits. Simply the sudden (even the syntax suggests it) eruption of the new! It is a beginning, but it is historically rooted and eschatologically oriented. “These pivotal events in Christ’s life, death and resurrection,” according to Beale, “are eschatological because they launched the beginning of the new creation.”[11] Furthermore, the Apostle’s direct allusion to Isaiah 65:17 in 2 Corinthians 5:17 only serves to broaden its scope.
New Creation and Related Concerns

An eschatological understanding of the gospel, then, is inherent in new creation centrism. It does not refute, but rather refines the contributions of those who have espoused inaugurated eschatological views by suggesting that the overarching concern in New Testament eschatology is the realization of new creation. All the major New Testament doctrines, including missiology, Christology, pneumatology, regeneration, sanctification, justification, reconciliation, law, ecclesiology, and final tribulation can be seen to reflect it.[12] In fact, Beale goes so far as to offer that the title of a biblical theology of the New Testament could read, “New Testament Theology as Eschatology.”[13]

New creation centrism must also account for the New Testament’s obvious allegiance to notions of the Kingdom of God. The message of Jesus unquestionably equated the gospel itself with God’s reign over all things, as Matthew’s account (4:23; 9:35; 24:14) particularly highlights. The genre of the kingdom (rule, power, authority, monarchy, etc.) essentially provokes the awareness of “God in strength” in the midst of all that He has subjected to human dominion.[14] “Your kingdom come…on earth,” Jesus encourages us to pray. But how does it relate to new creation eschatological concerns? Beale maintains that Christ, as the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45-47) administrates (reigning vicegerent) all life as befits new creation, ultimately accomplishing the subjection of all things (1 Corinthians 15:20-28), which the first Adam should have done, but failed to do because of sin.[15] The first and last Adam Christology of Paul brings kingdom and new creation eschatological concerns together as one.

Finally, it should be clear that new creation centrism promotes what Stanley Grenz wonderfully describes as a “dynamic ecclesiology.” The good news, thus understood, is not only an announcement, but an invitation into community that is defined eschatologically as it “pioneers in the present the principles that characterize the reign of God.”[16] To the degree that the church humbly demonstrates the real presence of the kingdom, it offers the world a foretaste of a completely new heavens and earth (Isaiah 65:17). It is a harbinger of re-creation realized.
The Resonating and Challenging Gospel

When the good news is understood as embracing the breadth of a biblical theology of new creation, it has a great deal to offer the emerging (emergent?) postmodern western world. It is a gospel that can be seen as both resonating with and challenging postmodern distinctives and concerns. It fully resonates with the sense of tiredness bequeathed by modern categories of epistemology, hermeneutics, the trustworthiness of historical facticity, and objective social constructions. It resonates with the need to seriously question the reliability of Enlightenment thinking generally, by remembering the reality of marred creation.

But, at the same time, this is good news that challenges the postmodern proclivity for simple skepticism by recovering the heart of divine optimism. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16), not the disgust of God unto nihilism. In fact, perhaps one of the ways this good news can most effectively be preached is by challenging all the ends postulated in postmodernism with the beginnings proffered in new creation centrism. The end of science only points to that which lies beyond science in the supernatural configuration of new creation. The end of meta-narrative only suggests a new and better story, which is all about re-creation. The end of the world only instigates a desire for a whole new world.

This is the gospel the church can preach without hesitancy or ambivalence, for in so doing we are welcoming others into a dynamic community that is beginning to experience what it means to be “in Christ.” Behold, new creation!

[1] It is, minimally, ironic that evangelicalism has turned to this text as the essential expression of the gospel, given the paucity of such terminology in the New Testament.

[2] I have long contended that women who have actually given birth need to do the bulk of the exegesis of John 3:3. I interviewed five women in Mosaic who thus qualify. Their thoughts all turned to the radical nature of the birthing process and, of course, the birth itself for the baby. They spoke of the radical intimacy of sex, the radical changes in the mother’s body, the radical delivery procedure, the radical pain, and the radical life-change thereafter for both baby and parents.

[3] Walter Truett Anderson, Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-To-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Post-Modern World (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 8.

[4] Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Benington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1984), p.xxiv. Robert Matthews, Unraveling the Mind of God (London: Virgin Books, 1992), 148-49.

[5] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, authorized English translation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), III, 4, pp.506-508. Barth contends that when the gospel is understood in this way, it does not allow it to be interpreted as a means of simply helping humanity do something itself, but is premised on “the truth that God has already begun something for them and that He will also complete it in spite of their opposition, outbidding all attempts which spring form this opposition, overlooking and bypassing all their perversity and futility.”

[6] C.K. Barrett, The second Epistle to the Corinthians (London: A&C Black, 1973), 77.

[7] Greg Beale was Professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary from 1993-2000. He is now chair of the PhD program in New Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, Illinois. For a summary of his ideas reviewed here, see his, “The Eschatological Conception of New Testament Theology,” in Eschatology in Bible & Theology: Evangelical Essays at the Dawn of the New Millenium, ed. Kent E. Brower and Mark W. Elliott (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 11-52.

[8] The notion that the building of the new creation begins when Christ, as the foundation stone, “has come into position,” is suggested by William Manson, “Eschatology in the New Testament,” Scottish Journal of Theology Occasional Papers No.2 (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1953), 6.

[9] Understanding new creation as the centre of New Testament theology “is supported by the broad sweep of canonical thought,” says Beale, “wherein the Bible begins with original creation which is corrupted, and the rest of the Old Testament is a redemptive-historical process working toward restoration of the fallen creation in a new creation. The New Testament then sees these hopes beginning fulfillment and prophesies a future time of fulfillment in a consummated new creation, which Revelation 21:1-22:5 portrays.” See, “The Eschatological Conception of New Testament Theology,” p.44. Similarly, William Dumbrell understands the story of the Bible to be the movement “from creation to new creation by means of divine redemptive interventions.” See, William Dumbrell, The End of the Beginning (Australia: Lancer, 1985), 196.

[10] The phrase kainay ktisis occurs only in 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 6:15. Beale, however, rightly reminds us that paraphrastic variants of it appear six times in the New Testament, and the same theme occurs in numerous passages. See, “The Eschatological Conception of New Testament Theology,” 23, footnote number 24.

[11] Beale, Ibid., 18.

[12] Beale, Ibid., 28-42.

[13] Beale, Ibid., 18.

[14] Bruce Chilton coins the phrase “God in strength” as the self-disclosure of God, which is inherent in Jesus’ ubiquitous use of kingdom terminology. See, Bruce D. Chilton, “God in Strength: Jesus’ Announcement of the Kingdom,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1987, 287-88.

[15] Beale, “The Eschatological Conception of New Testament Theology,” p.25.

[16] Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 478-79.

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Conversion converted

Rogier Bos

One of the chief goals of preaching the gospel is conversion. This article seeks to demonstrate that our understanding of conversion has been influenced by the modern philosophical context of the enlightenment. It then puts forward a new paradigm for conversion. The underlying thought is that the way we preach the gospel will change if our understanding of conversion changes.

This article outlines the ideas put forward by Brad J. Kallenberg, as they first appeared in an article by the same name in
Evangelical Quarterly,[1] and later in Live to Tell - Evangelism for a Postmodern Age.[2]
A MODERN VIEW OF CONVERSION

Kallenberg’s argues that the doctrine of conversion is in need of a re-assessment. Modern formulations of the doctrine have presupposed modern philosophy, and are deficient to the extent that they have done so. To demonstrate this, Kallenberg examines the doctrine as put forward by American conservative theologian Louis Berkhof, and then outlines three ways in which this formulation is deficient.

Berkhof’s understanding of conversion is soteriological in nature. In his analysis conversion is the second of the three phases that together make up the process of salvation. It follows regeneration, and comes in two parts: active conversion in which God turns the sinner to him, and passive conversion, in which the sinner turns to God.

Kallenberg sees the influence of modern philosophy in three ways.

First, Kallenberg argues that Berkhof’s understanding of conversion is guilty of metaphysical reductionism. This refers to the fact that Berkhof can only see the whole as the sum of its parts. For Berkhof a church is nothing more but the sum of its members: “a believing community is incidental to, and really nothing but, the sum of the individual members.”[3] In a group there is really nothing more than individuals, and so the individual is always logically prior to the group. Kallenberg says this places undue emphasis on the parts and overlooks the objective reality and causal powers of the whole.

If Modernism sought to break things apart to study their function in the whole through analysis, then Postmodernism seeks to study the whole, and how it determines or influences the behavior of the parts. In this mode of thinking, called metaphysical holism, there is a community-aspect to the behavior of the individual that needs to be considered.

[To put it simply, the modern concept of conversion is faulty in that it looks only at the individual. The role of the community in the conversion experience is ignored. Furthermore, a person may be born again, but he is not necessarily born into community. Berkhof’s formulation does nothing to emphasize community, and may in fact encourage individualism.]

The second deficiency in Berkhof’s understanding of conversion is Linguistic Reductionism. Berkhof adopts the modern emphasis on the rational part of human life. Repentance and faith have strong cognitive elements to them. Conversion is the act of believing that certain propositions are true. Thus modern theology falls prey to representationalism, the idea that language is nothing but a picture of the world. Kallenberg does not argue there is no representational element in the truth claims of scripture. He argues that linguistic reductionism fails for what it ignores: that is, the power of language to create experience.

[To put it simply, in the modern world a person was converted if he could agree intellectually to central Christian doctrines formulated in clean propositional statements. This is problematic because it fails to recognize that language has a degree of ambiguity, and it disregards its experiential aspect. Language does not only convey meaning, but can also create feelings and emotions. Berkhof’s formulation, however, ignores these aspects of language, and as a result his understanding of conversion is high on reason, and low on emotions and experience.]

The third deficiency is epistemological absolutism. In Berkhof’s view of the world beliefs are statements about the way things really are. To believe requires absolute certainty. In Berkhof’s thinking such certainty is possible, as Scripture contains the truth of God, and the theologian merely needs to unearth it. What Berkhof fails to take into account, says Kallenberg, is that in the process of unearthing it, the theologian brings his own set of historical circumstances, which are going to color his conclusions. The certainty Berkhof presupposes is in fact not possible, says Kallenberg: the theologian’s historical circumstances are always going to play a part in the formulation of the essentials. As an alternative to Berkhof’s epistemological certainty Kallenberg proposes a distinction made by George Lindbeck between first-order doctrines (historically contextualized formulations) and second-order doctrines (ideas that remain unchanged in successive formulations).[4]
A POSTMODERN VIEW OF CONVERSION

Kallenberg recognizes that Berkhof’s concept of conversion was very helpful in the modern era, and that he cannot really be blamed for defining conversion in what can in hindsight be called a modern fashion. Likewise, Kallenberg recognizes that the understanding of conversion he is about to put forward is also not the new and eternal truth, but will also be impacted by the socio-historical circumstances of our time. His proposal is not meant to replace Berkhof’s concept, but rather to complement Berkhof by making up for the deficiencies.

Where Berkhof’s definition of conversion deals mainly with the transaction between God and man, Kallenberg’s proposal looks at the human or sociological side.

In Kallenberg’s proposal conversion is a process that has three identifiable elements to it. First, Kallenberg seeks to overcome metaphysical reductionism by proposing that conversion is the naturalization into community. In the postmodern world faith is not something you hold, or arrive at, individually; rather faith is held by communities. No community demonstrates this more clearly than the Christian community. To come to faith, it is necessary to enter the community at some level. There is a causal relationship between a person coming to faith and the community where this happens; the community is both the context and the cause for process of conversion.

The second issue, linguistic reductionism, is overcome by proposing that conversion involves the process of language acquisition.

Every community has its own vocabulary or language, and in order to understand the community and belong to it, understanding that vocabulary is important. The Christian community is no exception; it in fact has a well-developed language that can seem like complete nonsense to the outsider. Hence language acquisition is a necessary element of entering the community and starting to understand the community’s beliefs. A person entering the Christian community will need to learn a whole new conceptual language, where words like ‘grace’ and ‘sin’ -to name only two- play a major role. Kallenberg’s proposal overcomes the linguistic reductionism he sees in Berkhof’s teaching by emphasizing the fact that language creates experience, and therefore language-acquisition is a key element in the process of conversion.

Mere translation is not enough. It is no use ‘dumbing the language down,’ says Kallenberg, because in the process you sacrifice much that is of value to your community. Instead, it is necessary to help outsiders who are making their way in understand what is meant by your unique vocabulary. Since language actually creates experience and ‘embodies’ meaning, a word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase translation won’t do: a person needs to acquire the language and make it his or her own.

Kallenberg overcomes the third deficiency; epistemological absolutism or foundationalism, by suggesting that conversion involves a paradigm shift. Following Kuhn and Quine Kallenberg suggest that knowledge can best be regarded as a web of interdependent beliefs that are subject to change. A paradigm is a ‘constellation of group commitments, and in a paradigm-shift one such constellation is exchanged for another. Conversion is such a paradigm shift; as a person enters a community and acquires the language of that community, he also starts to understand the paradigm of that community. If he or she chooses to stay he will have to accept that paradigm, and make it his or her own.

All of the above leads Kallenberg to the following conclusion: Conversion is the emergence of a new mode of life occasioned by the self-involving participation in the shared life, language and paradigm of the believing community.[5]
CHANGING EVANGELISM

Kallenberg suggests that this approach to conversion has implications for how we do evangelism.

First of all, evangelism must be incarnational. The community of faith becomes the bearer of the message. It is through that community that outsiders encounter Jesus.

Secondly, evangelism must be pedagogical. Outsiders who accept the invitation to take a closer look at our community must learn both the language (‘what we mean when we say…’) and the story or beliefs we share. In a day and age in which the general understanding of vital Christianity in the secular world is ever decreasing, teaching others what we belief and how we express that is of vital importance.

Lastly, evangelism must become dialogical. Reducing our faith to a set of formal propositions may have helped us systematize our beliefs, but in the process we loose sight of the fact that every individual is impacted differently, and that every individual is a potential ‘tradition-bearer,’ from our community to the world. Evangelism must take this into account by encountering the individual where he or she is.
WHY I LIKE KALLENBERG’S PROPOSAL

Kallenberg’s proposal is attractive to me for a number of reasons. It emphasizes process rather than event. I find this more consistent with the experiences of conversion I see around me.

It also recognizes the uniqueness of every process. The modern formula provided the same answer regardless of the question: “you must be saved by believing in Jesus.” Kallenberg’s approach recognizes that people come into our community at different places in their life, and the Christian story meets them in different places. I saw this illustrated in the conversion of a friend of mine: he had been a believing Christian for 9 months before he came to understand that he too needed forgiveness.

There is an important role and appreciation for community. Conversion happens not without the community, but within.

The evangelist or preacher becomes a teacher or coach, who gently leads people into the faith over time. This is in marked contrast to the one-stop evangelist as turn-or-burn shock therapist. Evangelism takes time. Says Kallenberg: “the persuasiveness of the gospel must be delivered in a patient dialogue that seeks to inculcate the language by the telling, retelling, and reretelling of the story.”[6]

The proposal further takes into account that we live in a cultural context where less and less people have any knowledge of the contents of the Christian faith.

Kallenberg does not negate the old soteriological paradigm that Berkhof and others have proposed. Rather, Kallenberg’s understanding of conversion as a sociological phenomenon complements the soteriological understanding. This adds a dimension to our understanding and hopefully makes our preaching more effective.

Lastly, Kallenberg is not blind to the fact that understanding of conversion presented is a postmodern approach, which will in time be replaced by ‘the next best thing.’ Kallenberg resists the temptation to come up with a new ‘timeless truth,’ and instead recognizes that ‘any drat (of the doctrine) we generate will be filled with historically conditioned phrases and philosophical assumption.’
 SUMMARY

The modern understanding of conversion is deficient because it looks only at the individual and ignores the role of the community; it ignores the complexity and power of language, and it reduces faith to intellectual assent to a few propositions.

Kallenberg, recognizing that every philosophical context brings its own ideas and assumptions, proposes a postmodern view of conversion. He suggests that conversion is a process whereby a person enters a community of faith, learns the language of that community, and adopts the story of that community.

[1] Brad Kallenberg, “Conversion Converted,” Evangelical Quarterly, EQ 67:4 (1995), 335-364.

[2] Brad Kallenberg, Live to Tell - Evangelism for a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 2002). Kallenberg is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton (Ohio), and received his Ph.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

[3] Brad Kallenberg, Live to Tell - Evangelism for a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 2002), 16.

[4] George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1984) 33, 81.

[5] Brad Kallenberg, “Conversion Converted,” Evangelical Quarterly, EQ 67:4 (1995), 358.

[6] Brad Kallenberg, “Conversion Converted,” Evangelical Quarterly, EQ 67:4 (1995), 361.

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Thoughts about the 'gospel' we teach

Hud McWilliams

‘The devil hath the power to assume a pleasing shape.’William Shakespeare, Hamlet

As I have mused about this question that we are focusing on, I believe that it will aid the reader if they know what meaning I am assuming with certain terms, really only one, the ‘gospel’. After looking and reading some variety of sources and then checking all 99 references in the NASB 1995 (New Testament only), my definition of the gospel is, Jesus. Now what I mean by this is, I believe that the relational aspect of this message / truth is bound up essentially in the call to relate (if you will) directly with/to the Christ. How this takes place is as unique as each individual person.

In a recent review of a book by Lauren Winner, Girl Meets God, the author tells of reading Lewis’s Mere Christianity in high school. She said she really didn’t like it. ‘One of the reasons spiritual memoir has been popular throughout the last decade is that there are a lot of people who aren’t asking the Enlightenment questions that the more standard apologetics texts like Mere Christianity strive to answer. Having Lewis, however brilliantly, explain the logic and rationality of Christianity didn’t speak to me where I lived.’ She continues to reflect ‘Christians have, for a very long time, lived very much as Enlightenment people. We talk about knowing God through our minds. In fact, I think Christian tradition offers something much richer than that.’

Since the claims of Jesus are startling, the focus of personalness / relationalness seems to be the stumbling block for most throughout the last 2000 years. Christianity is inherently communal/relational. The Body of Christ isn’t language that lends itself to individualism. We seem to want to contain this ‘Gospel’ and domesticate it/him. This I believe is what drives the entire concept of religion and essentially sets the Christian message starkly apart. Jesus came (into this world) to give life. This life is the core message of the ‘Gospel’, that Jesus is the guarantor of eternal life. In contrast to this, is the driving piece of all religion that is, it strives to somehow escape this world by earning / figuring out / laboring , in order to get out of here (find eternal life) or descend into some form of escape / despair. Buried in the midst of this is the exclusive claim that causes so much difficulty when the ‘gospel’ is presented/broached. It is with this in mind that I would like to discuss the whole concept of tolerance as it relates to the pomo.

Paired with Girl Meets God is another small book written by a friend of mine, Daniel Taylor, Is God Intolerant? Here, Taylor challenges us to think hard through this very contemporary issue. Tolerance is seen as one of the few universally commended values in our society. One of those values is the autonomy of the individual. My individual judgments and behaviors should not be suppressed in the name of something higher, because there is nothing higher. Being autonomous, my responsibility is to maximize my potential, without harming others. Furthermore, this all is in keeping with a third contemporary value-diversity. In a world where there are countless different cultures, all expressing different values, and attitudes and behaviors, it is not only necessary that we be tolerant, but it is morally incumbent upon us to celebrate those differences and all that diversity. To do any less is to be intolerant.

Context is everything when it comes to questions of tolerance and intolerance. And the single most important thing to understand about the context in which the current tolerance debate takes place is the concept of relativism. Relativism is the view that all truth claims are rooted in opinion, not in fact or the nature of things. If I say, ‘This is true or this is wrong’ I am stating a personal opinion. My opinion has been formed by my society and my personal experience. The result has authority for me, for the moment at least, but no necessary authority for anyone else. Relativism is related to but not the same as pluralism. Pluralism is based on the clearly observable fact that there are many different views and values and practices in this world. Pluralism is an observation, not an evaluation. Relativism absolutizes pluralism. It takes the fact of diversity of outlooks - pluralism-and draws the illegitimate and illogical conclusion that because there are many views no one of them is better than any other. From the clear fact that we cannot agree on what is true, it wrongly deduces that there is therefore no truth-only opinions. Maybe best stated: ‘Everything is right somewhere and nothing is right everywhere.’

A handy working definition of tolerance is ‘putting up with the objectionable’. Central in that statement is the necessary fact of moral judgment. If by tolerant, someone means a healthy notion of tolerance as a willingness to get along , then I want to be tolerant, in fact, I want to affirm most of the diversity in the world, especially since I believe most of it was created by God. If by tolerant, however, one means unable or unwilling to make moral judgments or to believe in truth, then I must decline to be tolerant. This diseased understanding of tolerance is as dangerous as a diseased kind of intolerance, perhaps more so.

There are three relational applications of this, I believe. First, the relationship between God and humanity, where God does not affirm us in our sin, nor is he indifferent to our sin. He loves us despite our sin. Second, there is the relationship between believers. The goal of this relationship is captured in the word shalom. It is a word whose concept is nothing less than God’s vision for his entire creation, especially as it manifests itself in human well-being: individual, interpersonal, and social. Shalom appears more than 250 times in the Old Testament and many more times in its Greek counterpart in the New Testament. A shortened definition is peace that comes from everything being right in the world, each thing and person in its proper place doing that which it was created to do. (Of course, if you do not believe there is such a thing as ‘proper’ or ‘created’ then you will not believe in or seek shalom.) Understanding shalom provides a paradigm for understanding how Christians should conduct themselves regarding present-day calls for tolerance. The third relationship is between believers and the larger world. Tolerance in the New Testament is more often a question of Christians needing to get along with each other than it is a question of how believers relate to a pagan culture. God’s love is the starting point. It’s the master theme of creation and no amount of sin and brokenness can erase it. There is nothing weak about God’s love and nothing harsh about his justice.

The bible establishes love not tolerance as the standard by which we relate to all people - both within and without the community of believers. See Romans 5:8. An intolerant God would destroy us in our sin. A tolerant God would merely put up with our sin. A loving God dies for our sin.

There are many telling biblical story examples of how this might work in our everyday lives. Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-9, or being a neighbor in Luke 10:30-37.

As so often in the bible, we are called on to hold two different but complementary ideas in tension together. This is but one example. The dual commands, you must love the lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. Too often these commands are separated and distorted. ‘Love the lord your God’ is used as a rationale for condemning people for their sinfulness, and ‘love your neighbor’ is distorted into a call for accepting sinful behavior. In one case, love is used as an excuse for condemning, in the other as an excuse for enabling. It is instructive that we find ourselves turning to stories to understand what the bible has to say about love and tolerance and righteousness. Stories move us away from theory to the everyday world in which we must live. So look at John 8, where we see one of the most enlightening stories about God’s attitude toward tolerance. In short Jesus does not dismiss her sin, nor does he dismiss her!

‘Speak the truth in love’ (Eph 4:15) Here is where we find the first casualty of relativistic tolerance is truth. The first casualty of legalistic morality is love. The one who can hold onto both at the same time is a true follower of Jesus, truly in relationship.

What we know for certain is that we must be loving (read relationship), and that is a far greater challenge than being tolerant, with far greater dangers and rewards. Our calling is not to be popular but to be witnesses to the truth to a society that profoundly doubts there is any such thing and is disgusted by anyone suggesting he or she knows what the truth might be.

We must avoid the twin errors of arrogant, authoritarian condemnation on the one hand and relativistic moral paralysis on the other. Between these lies a third way: loving faithfulness. We are called to live the gospel as well as to proclaim it, Jesus has provided us the model and the possibility of relationship: Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

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What was Jesus' gospel?

This is a very broad-brush attempt to understand the gospel within the context of first-century Judaism. It is very incomplete as it stands - a fuller version can be found here. I’ve also no doubt it is mistaken in some of its details - but I think we need to get back to this sort of story before we can properly define a gospel for the emerging church.

Let’s start with a summary of the traditional evangelical gospel. It’s going to look something like this: we are all sinners; God sent his Son from heaven to die for us; if we repent of our sins, believe in Jesus, invite him into our hearts, we will be saved and will receive the Holy Spirit as an assurance that we will have eternal life with God when we die; if not - though we rather play down this aspect - we will go to hell.

What the heck, let’s deconstruct it!

What is wrong with this? There are a number of things that we might mention. The language can sound trite and complacent - certainly to the ear of the jaded evangelical but surely also to most people who are conscious of the fact that they live in a post-Christian culture. The argument takes no account of how problematic or irrelevant notions of sin, God, and heaven may be for people who do not already share basic Christian presuppositions - ironically, it only really sounds like ‘good news’ to believers. It fails to acknowledge the difficulty and mysteriousness of spiritual experience; it describes salvation in highly individualized and even self-centred terms.

Failings such as these have generally been recognized by the emerging church movement and much has been done to alleviate their effects. What I want to suggest in this essay, however, is that there is a more fundamental problem with the traditional evangelical gospel, which may well prove to be at the root of these distortions. It is that a synopsis such as this fails to take into account the landscape of history. It is played out instead against the backdrop of a simple existential requirement - the plight of the sinner who needs to be reconciled to God in order to be certain of eternal life. It is the ‘good news’ reduced to the terms of a universalized, standardized contract, almost entirely disengaged from its original narrative and historical context. If New Testament stories feature at all in the announcement of this gospel, they serve merely as illustrations for general spiritual truths. In effect we take as our frame of reference the over-refined end-product of a long process of interpretive rationalization rather than the raw material of the original historical narrative.

There are reasons why this has happened. i) Real history (rather than the processed history of popular piety) is difficult, messy, ambiguous, and controversial: it is poor material out of which to construct a system of universally applicable truth. ii) Being a pragmatic form of faith evangelicalism has always stressed the immediate relevance of the gospel whereas history creates intellectual and cultural distance: a thoroughly Jewish Jesus, embroiled in the religious and political conflicts of first century Israel, speaking the strange language of Jewish apocalyptic, appears as a daunting and inaccessible figure. iii) Post-enlightenment rationalism has persuaded us that absolute truth is better communicated in formal abstract categories than in story. iv) Various social and cultural factors have contributed to the production of a highly individualised and simplistic restatement of the gospel. These include: the evangelical reaction against religious formalism and the need to emphasize a personal relationship with God; the disintegration of community and the shift towards a culture of personal fulfilment; and the pressures of a mass-marketing ethos.

If we are to recover a gospel that is both biblical and credible, however, the message about Jesus must be relocated in the tumultuous landscape of first century Jewish belief and experience. There must be some conscious rediscovery of the fact that the gospel is the product of the narrative logic of Jewish eschatology. This approach relates closely to two recent developments in New Testament studies: the ‘Third Quest’ for the historical Jesus (Vermes, Borg, Sanders, Wright) and the ‘New Perspective’ on Paul (Sanders, Dunn, Wright).

At first glance this appears a very unpostmodern exercise: we have come to doubt that history can be told objectively or neutrally; we understand that the writing of history is always a political activity, a means by which a group justifies its behaviour or asserts its identity. I want to suggest, however, that the attempt to recover - to bring to the surface of ordinary Christian discourse - the historical dimension to the gospel in fact constitutes an intrinsically postmodern manoeuvre. Indeed, a proper historical understanding of the gospel may be found to confirm and reinforce many of the conclusions that postmodern Christians have already reached on intuitive or philosophical grounds.

Some general points are worth mentioning briefly, though they need development. i) Postmodern theology recognizes that one of the most effective antidotes to the formulaic propositionalism of modernist evangelical thinking is narrative. There is a real danger, however, that the emerging church will simply repeat the mistakes of modernism and subordinate the narrative - or worse, odd bits of disconnected narrative - to its own philosophical and cultural agenda. Only a consistent commitment to an historical hermeneutic, no matter how imperfectly conceived, offers us any real prospect of not simply repackaging the gospel according to a new set of prejudices. ii) The story about Jesus that is derived from this process of historical contextualization appears to correct, or at least reconfigure, many of the traditional notions that postmodern Christian thinking has reacted against. The language of judgment, forgiveness, salvation, mission, etc., makes better sense when restored to its original narrative context. iii) A return to history inevitably brings into view the limited concrete ‘particularity’ of the story, offering us a legitimate means of deconstructing our own meta-narrative: history gives us the narrative prior to the meta-narrative, the story before it is interpreted by faith, the disconcerting humanity of actors who have been transformed by tradition into quasi-mythical figures. Perhaps it is as simple as going back to the beginning and setting out again with a new set of interpretive tools.

The gospel of Jesus First the bad news

The story begins with bad news. Israel had failed to realize the potential inherent in its religious institutions and traditions, in its national identity and in its calling, to be a righteous, God-centred people and an authentic and effective ‘light’ to the peoples of the earth. This alienation from YHWH was apparent in various ways: creeping Hellenization, Roman occupation, the fragmentation of religious leadership and community, the loss of any prophetic voice, and the awareness that the return from exile in Babylon remained tragically incomplete.

This state of religious failure, however, would not continue indefinitely but would culminate in a devastating act of judgment against the people of Israel. John the Baptist first gave voice to this conviction: ‘Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’ (Matt. 3:10; Lk. 3:9).

The renewed people of God

John the Baptist is also interpreted by the Gospel tradition as the messenger who cries in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’ (Mk. 1:2-3; Matt. 3:3; Lk. 3:4-6). The quotation from Isaiah 40:3 invokes a declaration of ‘good news’ to Jerusalem that the punishment of the exile is coming to an end, that her sins have been forgiven, and that the Lord God is about to return to Zion. Central to this prophecy is the description of a righteous ‘servant’, who is both an individual and ideal Israel, who will suffer, but who will be ‘a covenant to the people, a light to the nations’ (Is. 42:6).

This is the context in which Jesus begins his ministry. Like John he puts before the people two paths: one that leads to destruction, another that leads to life (Matt. 7:13-14; Lk. 13:24). This is not to be read as a universal religious choice: it was simply Israel’s choice at that moment. Jesus foresaw an appalling fate for the nation: foreign armies would invade, Jerusalem would be beseiged, many Jews would be killed or scattered, the temple would be destroyed, the religious life of the old covenant would be terminated. This would be the end of the age, a catastrophic ‘day of the Lord’; the weeds within Israel would be separated from the wheat and burned, the bad fish would be sorted from the good and thrown away (Matt. 13:40-42, 47-50); in the suffering and destruction was the gehenna of fire.

The pressing question was whether in the aftermath anything would be left of the ‘chosen people’. Devastation on this scale inevitably threatened the existence of the small, vulnerable ‘sect of the Nazarenes’ (Acts 24:5) who were to be the nucleus of a restored people of God. Salvation, in the first place, therefore, was simply the survival of this community: for Israel to be ‘saved’ there had to be an historical continuation into the age to come. The flight of the disciples from Judea before the ‘end’, their steadfastness in the face of extreme opposition, and the preaching of the gospel throughout the known world were the practical means by which this salvation was assured.

The renewed community of God - Israel redeemed, forgiven, made righteous, rescued from destruction - was defined by a new covenant which recognized the significance of Jesus’ death for the formation of the community. Membership was no longer restricted to Jews but was open to all who were willing to be incorporated into this reconstituted people: a movement that took the death of Jesus in the place of the people as its starting point could hardly impose a system of religious apartheid. ‘Religious’ life would be determined not by Torah but by the Spirit of God manifested in the life of each believer. The plethora of rules and restrictions that made up the law of Moses was replaced by the single command to love. And where there was a real prospect of suffering and death, there was also the hope of sharing in the glory of the one who suffered before them.

The coming of the Son of man

The Old Testament motif of the restoration of the people following exile and the return of YHWH in glory to a rebuilt Zion determined the shape of the church that would emerge after the fires of judgment had died down. But this was never going to be a painless, uncontroversial process: the emergence of a renewed, energetic, missionary people of God was bound to provoke opposition not only from ‘old Israel’ but also from the wider pagan society: other very powerful forces claimed absolute sovereignty in the world. A second Old Testament motif is drawn upon, therefore, to give warning of this conflict and present the eventual vindication of those who would choose the path of life.

Daniel’s visionary drama of the conflict between the fourth beast with its little horn and the figure like a Son of man is, I think, of central importance for our understanding of the ‘gospel story’. These ‘prophecies’ originally depicted the crisis that was provoked in Israel by the intervention of Antiochus Epiphanes, who installed an abomination of desolation in the temple. In the New Testament they are reapplied to the situation of the community of Jesus’ followers facing hostility, first from Judaism then from Rome. Jesus repeatedly identifies himself with the Son of man figure who will suffer but will in the end receive ‘dominion and glory and kingdom’ so that ‘all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him’ (Dan. 7:14; cf. 7:27). This is the meaning of the ‘coming of the Son of man’ on the clouds of heaven - the righteous one who is oppressed but is vindicated by God.

But the ‘Son of man’ is also the community: the saints of the Most High against whom a powerful and godless ruler will make war (cf. Dan. 7:24-26). In addition to the concrete ‘salvation’ of the community, therefore, there is the ‘mythical’ salvation (‘mythical’ only in the sense that this was not an historically observable event) of those who during this period suffer with Christ and are exalted with him. The belief surfaces at a number of points in the New Testament. For example, those who continue with Jesus in his trials will also be assigned a kingdom and will ‘sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Lk. 22:28-30). Paul assures the Thessalonians that by their suffering they are ‘made worthy of the kingdom of God’ (2 Thess. 1:5). In the ‘first resurrection’ those who were killed ‘for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God’, are raised to life and ‘reign with Christ for a thousand years’ (Rev. 20:4-6).

At his ‘coming’, therefore, the Son of man, who is in the first place Christ but also those who suffer with him, receives the kingdom from the Ancient of Days. We should not make the mistake of assigning this vindication to an as yet unreached future: it is an eschatological event but it has taken place within real history. In this way, the restored kingdom of God centred on Zion has been transformed into the kingdom of the Son of man who reigns at the right hand of God.

The gospel that we preach

The church has passed through the eschatological crisis of the end of the age. On the rough ground of history this transition was marked by the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, the spread of Christian communities beyond Palestine, periods of intense persecution by Rome, and the eventual displacement of the imperial cult by a gospel that proclaimed Jesus as messiah and Lord. At the same time, it is the fulfilment of a prophetic narrative about judgment on Israel, judgment on Israel’s enemies, the restoration of the people of God under a new covenant, and the vindication and enthronement of one like a Son of man who comes with the clouds of heaven. What are the implications of this reconstruction for the gospel that we preach today?

In a post-eschatological situation the emphasis shifts from the apocalyptic notion of salvation as gaining life after death to ‘salvation’ as participation in a community of the Spirit that has been ‘chosen’ by God to fulfil the purpose originally given to Abraham (cf. Acts 3:25-26). The terminology of ‘saved’ and ‘lost’ has become less relevant; much of the imagery of ‘hell’ is seen to have historical rather than eternal application. What becomes significant instead is the idea of a ‘holy’ community and the question of its purpose. The point of ‘election’ for Israel was not that this nation was ‘saved’ whereas other nations were ‘lost’. The descendants of Abraham were chosen for the sake of an orientation towards the world, not out of the world: Israel was a holy nation in the midst of ordinary nations, to be a light and a blessing.

The purpose of the new community is not to be a holding pen prior to transhipment to heaven. Heaven hardly comes into it. Salvation in the Bible generally is a very worldly notion: it is enacted on the plane of history. It describes God’s intervention to rescue the people from a difficult or dangerous situation and restore them to wholeness: salvation is health, safety, peace, military victory, deliverance; it is the continuing well-being of the people. Only in extreme instances does salvation require rescue beyond death in the form of resurrection. The eschatological crisis that marked the transition between the old Israel and the new brought salvation as resurrection to the fore because the continuation of the community required faithfulness and steadfastness to the point of death. We should not lose sight of the fact that salvation is the response of God to a particular set of concrete circumstances.

The primary purpose of the new community is to be advocates of, propagandists for, exponents of a God-centred righteousness in the world. The invitation to be part of this community, which takes its identity from Jesus Christ, remains, and with it the prospect of sharing in the abundant life of the Spirit, which is the life of the age that has come, eternal life. But what I think we may need to make clear is, first, that we ‘win’ people (not the ‘lost’, just people) not so that they will go to heaven rather than to hell but so that they may be part of the people of God rather than not part of the people of God; and secondly, that membership of this community cannot be separated from the missionary task of embodying Godness and goodness in the world.

Christ died in the place of Israel - as a substitute, a final sacrifice for the sins of a persistently rebellious nation - so that there could be a continuation of the people of God, so that the covenant community did not have to be finally exterminated. The benefit that we have by grace, through faith, is that we too, as Gentiles, may inherit the promise of Abraham - we may share in the ‘richness of the olive tree’ (Rom. 11:17), we may experience the life of the age to come (cf. Acts 13:46-47). The assurance of reigning with Christ in glory, however, belongs to the ‘first resurrection’ of those who suffered for the sake of Christ. We may enjoy the goodness of God here and now as members of the covenant community; we are witnesses to that goodness in the world. But in the end we face judgment on the basis of what we have done (Rev. 20:12-13), which reintroduces a crucial ethical component into our understanding of the gospel. In fact, the distinction between entry into the community and final judgment may help us to resolve the long-standing tension between faith and works.

How do we talk about it?

The next step to take would be to consider how we might begin to preach this story. What sort of language do we need? What forms of discourse? How do we make sense of it for ordinary people today? How do we overcome the distance that we have created? I will make only one suggestion here. One way to connect the present with the past would be to say that we are a community of faith with a history, a community that has emerged from a story. Part of that history is where we are coming from as church-planters, as movement-makers, as Christian Associates, as evangelicals in transition; part of it is the long and not always glorious history of the church. But the key to understanding who we are as a community is the extraordinary period of crisis and reconstruction in the national life of Israel that is recounted in the New Testament, central to which was the death of Jesus and his vindication as the Son of man.

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A look at Walter Brueggemann on biblical authority

From the outset I would like to add a personal note about Walter Brueggemann’s background. Brueggemann indicates that Psalm 119:105 is his life text: “Your word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Interestingly, it was handed down to him at his confirmation from his father, who taught him “the artistry as well as the authority of scripture”. What a beautiful legacy for a father to leave his son. Aside from his dad, an evangelical pastor who himself loved the Word, Brueggemann’s approach to Scripture was strongly influenced by a number of liberal theologians (of the German variety). His association with this latter group has nurtured in him both a special longing for unity in the broader body of Christ (including non-evangelicals), and a penchant for championing the cause of the underprivileged and marginalized elements of society. That association has also reinforced his love for the literary brilliance and divine nature of the Scriptures. All these formative influences are apparent in such statements as this one made in the address he gave at the particular conference on biblical authority under review: “The Bible is essentially an open, artistic, imaginative narrative of God’s staggering care for the world, a narrative that will feed and nurture into obedience that builds community precisely by respect for the liberty of the Christian man or woman.”

Now, enough background. Let’s move on to Brueggemann’s framework for approaching interpretation of the Bible. A base assumption, and two derivative “learnings” (as he labels them) vital to this discussion, are as follows: “How we read the Bible, each of us, is partly a plot of family, neighbors, and friends (a socialization process) and partly the God-given accident of long-term development in faith.” From that Brueggemann concludes that: “The real issues of biblical authority and interpretation are not likely to be settled by erudite cognitive formulation or appeal to classic settlement, but live beneath such contention in often unrecognized and uncriticized ways that are deeply powerful, especially if rooted (as they may be for most of us) amidst hurt, anger, or anxiety.” And further, “Real decisions about Biblical meanings are mostly not decided on the spot, but are long-term growth of habit and conviction that emerge, function, and shape, often long before recognized. And if that is so, then the disputes require not frontal arguments that are mostly exercises in self-entertainment, but long term pastoral attentiveness to each other in good faith.”[2]

Brueggeman’s six facets of biblical interpretation

Beyond these qualifying assumptions, Brueggemann identifies six “facets of biblical interpretation” which he believes are operative (or ought to be) among all those who would maturely attempt to unpack the bible’s meaning and application for today. These he captures in six “I” descriptors: 1) inherency, 2) interpretation, 3) ideology, 4) inspiration, 5) imagination, and, 6) urgency (importance). I will very briefly lay out my understanding of what he is implying with each of these facets, and then I will respond with some of my own commentary on the value and some dangers I personally observe in the application of these.

Let’s start with the first facet. This is not an easy one to articulate, but I’ll give it a try. By inherency, Brueggemann means God’s word is not fixed or frozen - it is the “live word of God.” That authoritative word is embodied in the text of Scripture, but refracted through many authors who were not simply “disembodied voices” but who were speaking the inherent faith into their given context and circumstances. Because of this refraction, and because of the living, active divine breath behind it, the locus of authority is the Bible’s good news and “main theological claims”, and these are what the church at large must base its unity upon. I get the idea that inherency is an acknowledgement that the divine is lurking within the text, but it’s not easy to pinpoint exactly where (beyond that gospel corpus & such main claims as creation, redemption, the consummation of all things, etc.).

With the facet of interpretation, Brueggemann argues that the Bible requires and insists upon “human interpretation that is inescapably subjective, necessarily provisional, and as [we] are living witnesses, inevitably disputatious.” Beyond the baseline of main claims or affirmations of Apostolic faith, we must attach only “tentative authority” to interpretations on almost all questions. He claims that Reformed interpretation too often has involved “a slight of hand act of substituting of our interpretive preference for the inherency of Apostolic claims.”

This process of interpretation that avoids absolute resolution on almost everything the Bible teaches (beyond the most basic of Apostolic claims) is self-evident, Brueggemann claims, in the Bible itself. For example, when God re-iterates the law given at Sinai for a new generation, Moses claims “Not with our ancestors did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today” (Deuteronomy 5:3). The original instruction from Sinai is applied in a fresh manner for a new circumstance. He claims that God actually overturns in some instances some decrees that were in their historic context binding for the people of Israel. He cites God’s original ban from inclusion in community anyone practicing distorted sexuality. In Isaiah 56:3-8 he claims this is overturned for a more inclusive, tolerant perspective. A similar dynamic is observable, he claims, in Deut. 24:1 where it is declared that marriages broken in infidelity cannot be restored. Later in Jeremiah chapter three, Brueggemann sees God actually overturning this original decree in light of new circumstances (where restoration despite infidelity is possible).

The third facet Brueggemann mentions is imagination. In seeking to understand and apply Scripture we ought to employ this faculty of creative imagining to envision “a movement of the text beyond itself in fresh ways.” It takes a measure of fantasy or imagination to “transpose ancient voices into contemporary voices of authority.” Brueggemann claims that we do this all the time in interpretation; for example, he says “those of us who think critically do not believe that the Old Testament was talking about Jesus [what?!!!], and yet we make the linkages. And we make “a huge leap to imagine that an ancient Purity Code in Leviticus 18 bears upon consenting gays and lesbians in the twenty-first century…” (although gay people find supposedly more sound argument in Brueggeman’s earlier idea of situational - perhaps, more accurately, evolutional – abrogation of earlier biblical decrees). I love (and fully concur with) the following summary statement of Brueggemann’s view on imagination in interpretation: “Imagination can indeed be a gift of the Spirit, but it is a gift used with immense subjective freedom which we would do better to concede, even if that concession makes it unmistakably clear that our imaginative interpretations cannot claim the shrillness of certainty but only the tentativeness of our best extrapolations.”

Ideology is Brueggemann’s fourth “I” which is operative as we approach the biblical text. By ideology he means the bias we all bring to the text out of unique design and experience. Our passions, self-interests, anxieties, fears and pains represent a complex filter through which an individual or a group or a culture, filter her/his/their understanding of the Bible. We are essentially context-bound by our unique individual and group filters that we are in some ways permanently marked or skewed in our comprehension and application of certain texts. This introduces a distortion in our perspective that can only be remedied by submitting our convictions to others who interpret out of a much different filter (i.e. a different context and life experience). “There is enough truth in every such interpretive posture and strategy….to make the posture credible and to gather a mass of constituency in order to maintain a sustained voice.” But no posture can rightly be given absolute veracity or claim. None of us can claim to be “innocent” (without vested interest) in this regard.

By the fifth facet of inspiration, Brueggemann does not mean the traditional view of the inscripturation of God’s revelation (i.e. recording in written form). What he means is that the Spirit of God actively breathes through the text and “blows past all our critical and confessional categories of reading and understanding…so that the text yields something other than an echo of ourselves.” This happens as we approach the Bible in prayer and study, or even in times when we may not expect it, when the living Word strikes a special chord in us, individually or corporately. “The script of the book is a host and launching pad for the wind among us that the world cannot evoke and the church cannot resist” - what a powerful statement!

The last “I” in Brueggemann’s hermeneutical repertoire is urgency, or importance (as he puts it, to maintain consistency). Biblical interpretation is not primarily done in order to seize control of the church, but rather to give the world access to the good truth of the God who creates, redeems and consummates. This truth is not to be reduced to formula or technique, or trivialized to solve certain problems or correct certain social inconveniences. We must keep in view that “reading Scripture is for the sake of the missional testimony of the church” - good news that is, first and foremost, for the world.

What I feel is to be gained (or lost) by adherence to Brueggemann’s view of Scripture

On this issue of inherency, the word of God is seen to be lodged within a text that sprang forth from fallible human sources. We are challenged to resist too much familiarity with that text lest we close ourselves to being surprised by what new things God might want to bring out through it. In the language of Karl Barth, it ought to be endlessly “strange and new” to those seeking to encounter God’s living voice through it. I really like that idea of remaining ever open to be surprised by the Word of God – for it to be “rhema” over and over again. But, beyond that, I find this concept an inadequate accommodation for the rigidity of inerrancy. It seems to me it creates more problems than it solves (in terms of helping the Church understand how to bring its life in congruence with sound doctrine).

Brueggemann gets into hot water when he takes this a step further and argues that some biblical witnesses succeeded more effectively than others in bringing out this inherent word. If that is true, then on what basis do we determine where the more authoritative material lies? (Although, if we’re honest, most of us do not attach the same authority to II or III John or even Jude, as we do to other NT epistles – which may well be a step toward the accuracy of Brueggemann’s point). I personally would put more confidence in God’s involvement in insuring that the distortion in transmission to written text was minimized[3]. Otherwise, it seems like the game of telephone, where God’s clear revelation gets all cluttered up in human fallibility; and the best we can hope to find when turning to Scripture is an authoritative gospel nucleus surrounded by a lot of spurious teaching and opinion.

As far as interpretation is concerned, Brueggemann makes a statement which I believe endangers (if embraced) any hope of finally resolving what is authoritative and what is not in the Bible’s teachings: “Interpretive humility invites us to recognize that reading in a particular time, place and circumstance can never be absolute, but is more than likely to be displaced by yet another reading in another time and place, a reading that may depart from or even judge the older reading…The Spirit meets us always afresh in our faithful reading, in each new time, place and circumstance.”

This is a slippery slope, obviously. There is no doubt some truth to certain older teachings being abrogated or overturned by later teachings. But, it seems to me that where there are clear cases of such abrogation, we must be very careful not to overextend that principle and let current political or ideological agendas overturn longstanding interpretations of the text. How Brueggemann actually applies the biblical examples of abrogation cited in his address I find questionable at best. For example it is true, as he argues, that foreigners among the Israelites were in Moses’ day excluded from worship, and then later in Isaiah’s day Israel were given a promise that this was to be overturned in the new covenant God was making. But it is a leap to suggest that this actually meant God was overturning this in Isaiah’s day, and that it might be changed even again in days to follow. This change is set within the context of the promises of the new covenant age, not necessarily that specific moment.

This idea of later biblical teaching replacing earlier teaching has apparently been used to justify arguments for inclusion and acceptance of gay lifestyles within the fold of the church. The Isaiah 56 text appears to be fuel for that justification (I’m not sure that Brueggemann himself espouses that, by the way). In that text eunuchs, a previously excluded group, are shown to now be included in the worship of Israel. What was earlier viewed as a “distorted sexuality” (being a eunuch) in Moses’ day is now to be embraced in Isaiah’s time. The homosexuality of old which was viewed as a distorted sexuality ought to also nowadays be embraced as being sanctioned by more current teaching in the Bible. These sorts of applications strike me as huge interpretive leaps, where certain Scripture is used to justify a present ideological bias.

Brueggemann’s quote above (the one about no reading in any time, place and circumstance holding absolute authority) makes me nervous. But I do realize that many postmoderns do not share my concern (i.e. they would not feel at all concerned whether particular parts of the Bible are authoritative in an absolute sense or not); And they might even honestly ask, why do we as Christians even need to have a text that is absolutely authoritative? Rather than deriding such thinking as naïve, we would do well to ask ourselves how much our quest for certitude is really in itself God-ordained. Having said that, I must confess that my personal motivation to make a stand for and strive to internalize certain Scriptural teachings is very much negatively affected when I perceive a given text or passage as not having a timeless authoritative ring to it. For example, the Apostle Peter urges us to “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith…” (I Peter 5:8-9). If I do not see this as an absolute command having authoritative sway over my life (e.g. maybe I think the devil is a dated concept), I am apt to drop my guard and act like we as Christ-followers really are not in a serious battle against evil. Or maybe I hear no absolute ring in Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God. I might believe it, but if another church does not, that’s acceptable because who is to say what is absolute? Absolute authority means it’s more than my truth, or only binding because I believe it’s important. It means it is true for anyone because God has revealed that general reality as an anchor in this stage of human history.

I think Brueggemann makes some excellent points on the operation of imagination in interpretation. Indeed, we would do well to own up to that faculty we all employ – and further, see the good in it. The Spirit can and does enliven our imaginations, and no doubt takes us farther than our familiar interpretations (if we apply our creative mind’s in the light of God’s Spirit). But, as Brueggemann rightly asserts, “we must regularly, gracefully, and with modesty fall back from our best extrapolations to the sure apostolic claims that lie behind our extremities of imagination…” This call to “fall back” is reassuring, but does Brueggemann have a sense of what those specific apostolic claims are? Don’t we get back to creeds and confessions, when we start talking in those terms (Were these not an attempt to determine that authoritative “main claim” pool Brueggemann cites?)?[4]

Ideology, or the power of those filters which are the product of our exposure and experience in life, is truly a powerful interpretive force. Brueggemann makes an excellent point here, as there are indeed many Christians who confuse their political leanings with biblical Christianity (e.g. I suppose consumer Capitalism would be a major one for too many American evangelicals, who have adopted this as the uncontested norm for societies). There is great danger in any segment of the body of Christ which allows itself to remain ideologically naïve’ in the face of technology’s shrinking of the world (with its associated easy dissemination of diverse cultural expressions). The consequences of an entrenched narrowness are detrimental to the cause of Christ, as nonbelievers end up rejecting an ideology (even with its merits as far as truth) rather than the gospel itself. As well, it is important to recognize that ideology can be “enshrined in longstanding interpretation” until it is [viewed as] absolute and trusted as decisive authority.

While I agree with Brueggemann’s general point about each of us (including our given group or culture) being context bound, resulting in some distortions in biblical interpretation, I am hesitant to fully embrace his belief that “every such ideological passion…may be encased in scripture itself”. On some levels this may indeed by true of the biblical writers, but how in the world we sort out where and with whom this is evident is certainly a highly subjective determination. Accepting that God has used fallible people (where specific word-choice is not necessarily Spirit-driven, but the inspired or revealed concepts put in the heads of the writers are), I believe we still have other clear didactic material in the NT to help us maturely decide what may have been ideologically-driven (and hence, not necessarily given as timeless truth).

On the point of inspiration as a key facet of interpretation, I think Brueggemann also has good insight. The Scriptures are indeed “the breath of God”, and we must have this overarching appreciation for and humility toward the Bible as we approach it. This posture enables us to catch the “shimmerings” of the text, so that at times we breathe in just what we need to sustain us at the moment. Inspiration helps me resolve the tension of not being able to determine the “good deposit” I am supposed to guard as a leader in the church (recall that the Apostle Paul urged Timothy to “guard the good deposit” – a deposit which Timothy had the prerogative of getting clarification on, but which I don’t). We may find it is impossible to know exactly what constituted the good deposit in Timothy’s mind back then (and what might constitute that exact deposit for us today). But, we can be assured that as we immerse ourselves in the Scriptures, God will see that we come to greater and greater personal and corporate resolution over what that good deposit to be guarded means for ourselves and for our group.

This last facet Brueggemann mentions of urgency or importance is particularly relevant to our times. We see the text of Scripture dissected and trivialized in evangelicalism’s nauseating penchant for pragmatism. The Scripture is distilled down to a formula and proposition handbook, with “precious moments” theologies (God’s promise-a-day, like a one-a-day vitamin) and a Prayer of Jabez prosperity-driven Christianity. May we not let the missional thrust of the Bible get submerged under the avalanche of technique, systematic theologies, and whatever else aimed at mastering the text so that we can “use” it. But, equally, may we not let missional urgency drive us to a quest for more techniques alone; may it also inspire us to be persons who live out the missional testimony (making it visible, and in some cases, more powerful and visible than the stories and words we bring).

In summary, Brueggemann’s contribution to helping us better understand the place of Scripture in the community of faith is substantial. He helps us acknowledge the rallying point for unity in the body of Christ around a simple core of Apostolic claims; the reality of subjectivity in interpretation beyond those simple Apostolic claims; the presence and limits of creative imagination in drawing out meaning from the text; the power of our own ideological filters to distort as we come to the Bible; the all-important role of the Spirit in breathing freshly upon us through His living Word, time after time, as we look to God to help us sense that breath; and, finally, the importance of how all these sum together to produce a message that is crisply and clearly urgent for our world.

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[1] All quotations attributed to Brueggemann in this paper are taken from the transcripts of his Address to the 2000 Covenant Network of Presbyterians Conference, which took place on 3 November, 2000, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

[2] These three statements above are well-worth pondering, because they are so pregnant with insight!

[3] Brueggemann’s idea seems to suggest that God breathed into the minds of the biblical writers but left them to their own devices in expressing that. This feels a bit too loose - a hit and miss transmission process which lets some revelation through but obscures other aspects of it. I guess by faith I believe the Spirit was not so passive in that process of transmission of revelation to text.

[4] I think Brueggemann would acknowledge the value of an authoritative core of essentials binding for all churches that claim to follow Christ and His teachings. How much deviation should be tolerated on certain main claims, and how ought we to relate to churches that alter or ignore those main claims, is a subject for ongoing discussion in the Church. Teachers may well “incur a stricter judgment” where they as representatives of the Church permit too much freedom in belief and practice, or alternatively, where they make secondary issues binding essentials (and hence grounds for impeding fellowship with non-adherents).

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A love letter? The Bible and C.S. Lewis

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As I reflect on the place Scripture has had in my life and in
the communities of faith I’ve been involved in, I come up
with a wide spectrum of practices. I think back to my ordination
exam and a phrase I used that grabbed one of the men sitting on
the review board. I said: “I believe God’s Word is
His love letter to the human race.” Some years later I
still hold that to be a valid and telling statement of my view of
Scripture. I think it has a significant bearing on what the place
of Scripture should be in our communities of faith today.

I’ve seen Scriptures used as a doctrinal book to
substantiate systems of theology; to take verses to show that God
is leading one way or another; and, as a lab rat to be dissected
and analyzed. Encouragement, empowerment, and exaltation have
been ways that it has had a prominent effect in the communities
of faith. One gentlemen I worked with referred to it as merely a
history book and others have referred to it as a book of
literature in the category of mythology. Communities have used it
to guide their organizational procedures, to punish offenders of
the book, as a template for doing church and on goes the list.
Followers of Christ have been encouraged to have intimate time in
the word, to memorize, meditate and master the Bible as a core
part of the community of faith.

No mistake should be made many of these are viable ways of
God’s Word having a place in the community of faith but
many fall far short. I start this paper with the raw belief that
Scripture is to be central in our communities of faith and that
it is God’s inspired Word. What I want to wrestle with is
HOW and to some degree WHY?

Let me share a handful of Scriptural verses that resonate in
my heart as I prepare, verses that I memorized as a young man and
which still impact me and ring in my soul to this day:

2 Timothy 3:16 & 17 – “All Scripture is
God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be
thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Ps 119:11 – “I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.”
Hebrews 4:12 – “For the word of God is living and
active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even
to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the
thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Joshua 1:8 – “Do not let this Book of the Law
depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you
may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be
prosperous and successful.”
1 Timothy 4:13 – “Until I come, devote yourselves
to the public reading of the Scripture, to preaching and to
 teaching.”

Acts 17:11 – The Bereans examined the Scripture to see if
what Paul said was true…

The list could go on but as I look at these verses, they
represent almost ever genre of Scripture. They help shape my
thinking and action as I engage this Love Letter. It is given by
God himself as He inspired people through the ages and saved it
in written form for us today. He knows that our love, my love
would be tested so he gave us His revelation and encouraged us to
treasure it inside our hearts, minds and soul so that we
wouldn’t be enticed to other lovers and so sin against Him,
the greatest lover of all. This love letter is like no other love
letter in that it isn’t just words on paper; it is alive
and active somehow. Then again, if we were to go away from our
lover for say a year and receive letters, they would also be very
much alive I suppose. But, there is a uniqueness to the
Scriptures in that it is also very penetrating and it will catch
my tricky emotions and deceptions. It will expose me for who I
am. It sounds odd to say it, but this is a good thing, a very
good thing. Even more, when I’m really meditating on it
often, like day and night, I begin to do what it says. There is a
supernatural power to it that is changing me – I’m
sure in concert with the Holy Spirit whom the lover has sent to
be a constant presence and helper. Further, when I do what is
written in it, I am prosperous and successful. That is never to
be the reason for loving God or cherishing His revelation.
Another unique thing about this love letter is that I’m
supposed to share it, it isn’t just for me. I think if my
wife would share love letters from our early days, I might be
highly embarrassed. But we/I am to give it away and give public
attention to it.

Most recently, having read John Eldridge’s book
Waking the Dead, I am more convinced than ever about the
need to guard our hearts. Prov. 4:23 says “Above all else,
guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” Keeping
Scripture at the center of our lives and treasuring it in
our heart puts us well along the way of taking care of our
 hearts.

C.S. Lewis and the inspiration of Scripture

I was encouraged down this thought of a love letter as I read
C.S. Lewis on Scripture by Michael J. Christensen. I
gained a lot from reading this work which is an evaluation of
Lewis’ position on Scripture. Lewis never considered
himself a theologian and deferred such difficult subjects to
theologians but he comes at it from a literary perspective which
is helpful in many respects. While I don’t necessarily
resonate with all the conclusions either Christensen or Lewis
arrive at, I find some of the thoughts beneficial.

Lewis held Scriptures as “human literature, divinely
inspired and authoritative, but not verbally inspired or without
error.” (11) He viewed some parts as “more
Inspired” than others. “The kind of truth we demand
of Scripture, Lewis remarks in conclusion to this letter,
‘was, in my opinion, never even envisaged by the
ancients.’” (19) It becomes difficult to tell
where Lewis fit in the debate over Scripture. Liberals and
conservatives alike had problems with his views. “Lewis is
sometimes charged with being an occasional friend of higher
criticism.” (34) “It makes little difference to
Lewis whether the story of Ruth for example, is historical or
not. ‘I’ve no reason to suppose it is not,’ he
says. Either way, the truth of the story is inspired and acts on
us as the Word of God. Nor does he have any theological
difficulty in accepting Genesis as ‘Derived from earlier
Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical.’ But because
the creation story has mythic qualities does not mean it is
untrue. Myth can be truer than historical fact.”
(34) “Lewis’ discovery of Christianity was
plainly a rather momentous event for him. But he seems not to
have been converted to a theological scheme at all, and he
refused all his life to think that an understanding of
Christianity would necessitate that he adopt an elaborate
theology.” (41)

One area I was challenged to think differently in is the area
of myth as Lewis talks about it. Myth as he defines it is
“the primary mode of imagery, the highest form of
symbolism.” (59) I think the word myth as understood by
the common person today is that myth is not a true story but more
of made up story or legend. He does not mean lie, error, illusion
or misunderstood history. Lewis of course used myth quite
extensively in his writing like the Chronicles of Narnia and
“believes ‘we come nearest to experiencing as a
concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an
abstraction.’” (59) We find that to be true today
as imagery inundates us from all sides and virtually becomes
reality for us. We should not shy away from that but draw heavily
from the imagery that God gives us in the Bible.

Who are the best teachers/preachers you’ve ever heard?
For me they are the ones that make the imagery come alive and
make me feel like I’m involved in the story. It
usually isn’t usually the one who gives me four
propositions to leave with. As Lewis looks at myth he
doesn’t see it as falsehood and even distinguishes it from
allegory. “Far from being less than true or factual, myth
puts us in touch with Reality in a more intimate way than by
knowing what is merely true or factual.” (61)
“Reality is received through the imaginative embrace of
pictorial patterns made romantically and spiritually real…
the images evoked through myth register beneath the surface of
the mind, allowing us to actually experience Reality and grasp
eternal truths which might baffle the intellect and confuse the
mind.” (64) In Lewis’ own writing, he allowed
truth to unfold mythically. As we embrace this love letter in its
fullness of truth I believe we would do well not to simply see it
as propositional or objective truth (not to lose sight of it
either), but to see it as great divinely inspired literature
which comes alive (Heb 4:12).

“The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a
fact, Lewis insists … to be truly Christian, Lewis
admonishes, we must both assent to the historical fact and also
receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same
imaginative embrace we accord to all myths.” (pg 76)
“It can be concluded at this point that Scripture for Lewis
functions as myth, as well as historic fact.” (76) We
mortals often suffer from an either/or mentality. This has been
particularly evident in the rationalistic, reasoning, logical
side of modernity. Is God not after all an imaginative and
creative God?! Does God really want us to relegate Him or His
revelation of Himself to proposition and systematic? Must it take
away from the authority and inspiration of the Scripture if we
allow the “myth” of Scripture to impregnate our
minds? Yet, we must not remove some of the anchors that have been
put in place by modernity. Can we not also benefit by studying
from a systematic way? Does proposition and principle not come
loudly through God’s Word at times? Have we not learned and
experience much good in the Scriptures from the likes of Francis
Schaefer and others. This should drive us to find a medium point
rather than allowing the pendulum to swing the other direction.
Strive to find the point of tension in this issue!

Scripture as Inspired Literature

“Lewis, though he never used the term, holds a literary
view of inspiration. The Bible is inspired literature carrying a
divine message. Human in its origin, biblical literature has been
raised by God above itself, qualified by Him to serve purposes
which of itself it would not have served.” (pg 90) Perhaps
Lewis was very postmodern in his outlook when he “insists
that the issue of inspiration is far less important than
evangelicals often make it out to be. Our real task, Lewis would
say, is not to focus on life’s “pointers” and
“signposts” to God and His kingdom, but to get on
with the journey at hand.” (91) Christenson uses Lewis
for a case in point “that one can be a dedicated
evangelical, accept the full authority of Scripture, yet
disbelieve in inerrancy.” (91) Personally I get
uncomfortable with tossing out inerrancy at this point but I
think there is something to be said about some in the evangelical
world making this out to be the whole point rather than preaching
 Christ.

I don’t want to be guilty of insinuating that Lewis did
not hold a high view of Scripture for he did. He believed
“the Holy Bible as we have it today, can be accepted as
fully inspired, reliable and authoritative … The Bible is
fundamentally a sacred book, and ‘demands incessantly to be
taken on its own terms,’ says Lewis. ‘Stripped …
of its divine authority, stripped of its allegorical senses,
denied a romantic welcome,’ it cannot achieve its
function.” (93)

This love letter has so much that inspires us and give us
hope. We need only look a prophecy that has been fulfilled and
those that are waiting to yet be fulfilled that we are perhaps
right in the middle of. Scriptures give us hope that our creator,
lover, and friend is coming back for us and will restore us to
what he originally made us for – perfect and complete
relationship with Him. Another detail that makes the love letter
concept helpful to me; it’s about relationship, not a
book.

We must keep in mind; God’s love letter is not confined
solely to Scripture. He revealed Himself in Christ, He’s
sent the Holy Spirit to indwell us, and He’s revealed
himself in creation for which I am praising him especially today
looking out at trees that are vibrant and alive with color. The
hues of orange, yellow, red, brown and green are alive against
the deep blue sky and bright sunshine. Wow, how God must love us
to have revealed himself so magnificently to us!

Conclusion

I conclude where I started, the Bible is God’s love
letter to us. Not a love letter conveyed in one systematic
context but one that comes through a diversity of times, places,
people, experiences and stories that make it so rich –
something that MUST be treasured.

Some practical ways to cherish Scripture

Correction – restoration – I so often need
restoration on my spiritual journey. Scriptures serve not only to
correct me but to restore me and fill me up. In our grace
oriented communities we must figure out how to allow Scripture to
play a key part in the correction process of our communities thus
keeping away from a primarily punitive approach.
Treasure it in my heart and let it reverberate through my
soul again and again. This takes time to really reflect and
meditate even memorizing it so it sticks like glue.
Allow the penetrating power of God’s Word to confront
people where they need to be confronted. Don’t shy away
where Scripture doesn’t shy away but do be creative and
imaginative in presenting God’s Word.
Lead people to appreciate the value of imagery used in The
Bible. Somehow we move away from that when we get out of Sunday
School and into the teen age years. All of a sudden the Bible
becomes more objective, propositional, and something to be
mastered rather than a story to find ourselves in or be engaged
with.
In public, use creative or dramatic readings, responsive
readings, reflective readings, and congregational reading.
Scripture comes alive through music and the church has only begun
to tap this I believe.
Lead people to examine Scriptures together and alone like the
Bereans who were commended. It is a sad thing when people come to
our church communities and only encounter the Scriptures on
Sunday. Thought must be given to how we can provoke or stimulate
each other to examine Scripture and probably more appropriately
to let it examine us. Bible study is not bad though it seems we
tend to shy away from that word these days.

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Embracing Christian community as social agency

There is nothing new about the societal conflict which forms the backdrop for those attempting to be and do church in the inaugural years of the twenty-first century. What is new is its volume and intensity. Some social analysts go so far as to describe it as ubiquitous.[1] This level of conflict may or may not be the result of what Charles Taylor distinguishes as the “politics of difference,” but it no doubt explains the resurgence of tribalism that, in part, defines the postmodern situation.[2]

Such a situation has all the more serious implications when people of faith, particularly Christian faith, like to think of themselves as a “community.” In the midst of conflicting tribal loyalties, can the church truly be a community that adequately addresses the longings of people for personal and cultural identity? Can it honor cultural contexts, sustain individual distinctiveness, and promote unified goals and objectives all at the same time?[3] I want to suggest that it can if it can tap into the power of the embrace that is inherently its own when it conceives of itself as a fully social agency. In the end it is, once again, an ecclesial question that looms largest when faith and practice are taken seriously.[4]

Demonstrating Sociability

Various ecclesial models are not infrequently proposed as more conducive to the holistic concerns of authentic community. Feminist interpreters, for example, have recently argued against the patriarchal tendency to highlight “rule,” opting instead for the wholesomeness of a “household where everyone gathers around the common table to break bread and share table talk and hospitality.”[5] Other limiting factors aside, it seems to me that such a proposal plays into the very gender-biased stereotypes it seeks to eradicate. There is much more at stake on the social field than the pastoral image of home (soothing as it is) can account for.

Perhaps more encouraging is the renewed interest in trinitarian formulations as the basis of ecclesial communities of all shades and varieties. New queries into the communal implications of the doctrine of God have been prompted by Jurgen Moltmann’s seminal work, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, though it is inordinately occupied with issues of hierarchy and equality.[6] What is of greater importance is how sociability in broader terms is demonstrated within trinitarian distinctives.

Social analogies between the Trinity and the church have a longstanding history in the tradition of the Eastern church with its emphasis on triplicity.[7] Though not at odds with, it is certainly a healthy counter-balance to the priority of psychological analogies which seem to be the preference of the West. If nothing else, it might explain the exaggerated focus on therapeutic concerns that flow out of European and American ecclesial bodies that cannot help but promote a notable level of narcissism. Triplicity, on the other hand, is more concerned with the social arrangements within the Godhead and so gives primary attention to issues of person, role, partnership and relationship, among others.[8]

Scripture itself, it must be said, suggests as much. The high-priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17 is as didactic as it is personal and daringly invites us (verse 21) into the very social fabric of trinitarian relationships. Jesus’ concern with “oneness” is at once ontological and eschatological and humanly communal if we treat the opening hina clause with any degree of seriousness. The final hina clause adds a compelling missional component as well. The correspondence between the Trinity and ecclesial communion is more than implied; it is direct, and suggests that “the relations between the many in the church must reflect the mutual love of the divine persons” if theological consistency is of more than casual interest to us.[9]

A trinitarian model of sociability, therefore, impacts key ecclesial notions in a number of ways. Defining and validating personhood is perhaps the most basic. It must be understood that “person” and “communion” in the ecclesial realm can only aspire to the analogous in their reference to the Trinity. This sets definite limits to what Gordon Prestige has defined as “perichoresis,” or reciprical interiority in which mutual internal abiding and interpenetration is affirmed.[10] At the same time, however, it does commend the complementary nature of persons in communion and is perhaps most visible in the acts of giving and receiving modeled in the Trinity. Moltmann offers that the “reciprical self-surrender to one another within the Trinity is manifested in Christ’s self-surrender in a world which is in contradiction to God; and this self-giving draws all those who believe in him into the eternal life of the divine love.”[11] In the simple acts of complementary giving and receiving the church confirms itself as the community where deindividualization and personalization can best occur.

Implications for issues revolving around questions of the one and the many grow out of the radical nature of giving and receiving when they are honestly entertained. Hence, a serious political theology also falls within the purview of trinitarian discussions.[12] Dominance of the one over the many is precluded when relations within the Godhead are deliberately modeled. (See Philippians 2:9, I Corinthians 15:28, and John 16:14 for examples of trinitarian non-dominance.) Since the one God is a communion of the divine persons, unity and multiplicity must be the preferred objective in a communal environment that prizes freedom and equality.[13] Inferences for dismantling strong distinctions between clergy and laity naturally follow, and while some would maintain that they ought to be retained for purely organizational reasons, I would suggest that even these are biblically suspect.[14]

Finally, it becomes all the more apparent how trinitarian theology can (and must) infuse the local community of faith with an eschatological edginess. Relationships within the differing styles of local faith communities should correspond (as far as possible) to the Trinity because they anticipate an eschatological community that more fully approximates the community that is God himself.[15] This demands an honesty and vulnerability that are graciously pushy and are demonstrated in a sociability that is far more significant and potent than that which merely empowers human beings to get along. Rather, its eschatological embrace is nothing less than a new creation in which the wolf dwells with the lamb (Is.11.6), and swords are hammered into plowshares (Mic.4.3), and every knee bows at the name of Jesus (Phil.2.10).[16]

Producing Social Agents

Although it is extremely helpful to consider the way in which social arrangements play themselves out in a trinitarian context, something more overt is needed when we are bounded in a communal context by the restraints of human limitations. Tinkering with social structures (although involvement in existing structures is noteworthy) is simply not enough when: 1) the postmodern option of radical autonomy is producing what Volf calls “wayward and erratic vagabonds, ambivalent and fragmented, always on the move and never doing much more than making moves;”[17] and 2) the historical tendency of such tinkering results in separatistic styles of community which increasingly distance themselves from the naked public square and so end up offering nothing worthwhile in terms of social structure anyway.

What is needed is communities of faith that empower individuals and groupings of individuals to become social agents capable of infusing light and salt into dark and tasteless environments. Nicholas Wolterstorff, for example, has argued persuasively for theological communities to envision themselves primarily as helpmates, whose purpose is to encourage economists and philosophers and scientists and artists and educators and homemakers and all the varied service providers, with all the theological resources at their disposal.[18] One critical role of faith communities of this kind, therefore, is to inspire and release a creative energy that is sparked in a trinitarian context. They become, in effect, social agencies that allow social agents to thrive.

At the heart of communities of this sort is a deep reverence for the level of solidarity that is divinely represented in the Cross. It is the extreme example of self-donation in the midst of not only violence, but rejection as well, and so is aptly termed in the gospels a “scandal.” But the scandal, as Moltmann has rightly emphasized, is not in the selfless self-donation of Jesus, nor even in his solidarity with suffering, but it is in the resulting abandonment; “abandoned by those who trusted him and by the God in whom he trusted.”[19] “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34). The implications for Christian community, of course, are staggering. To become the kind of social agencies described above, we must not only be willing to identify with the abandoned, but to entertain abandonment ourselves. Our communities of faith must be willing, in other words, to become cruciform.

Further, the Cross has obvious bearing on the communal form in which Christian faith can be authentically received and effectively transmitted. That is to say, it directly implies a vibrant missional aspect that identifies, sustains, and expands the community in the interest of the eschatological objectives that belie its role as a social agency and apart from which the Christ-event as a whole is biblically meaningless. It cannot be a community, in other words, that is apologetic about the manner in which eschatology informs mission. But it must be so humbly, honestly receptive to what Paul Tillich called “reverse prophetism,” in which those around us are encouraged to inform our views, share our experiences, and call us to live up to the very ideals we ourselves espouse.[20] Those ideals are themselves informed, once again, by trinitarian doctrine, and so minimally include the validating of personhood, a political theology of unity and multiplicity, and the making of disciples in the fulfillment of Jesus’ own commission (Mt.28.19).

Examining an Embrace

The question remains, how can Christian community best adhere to trinitarian concepts in a socially and eschatologically productive way? A metaphor has recently been proposed that, in my opinion, brings the demonstration of sociability and the production of social agents together in just such a desirable symmetry: the metaphor of embrace.[21] It is an embrace that is so intimate and yet so large as to encompass both the inner-communion of the Trinity and the socially-provocative embrace that extends through the faith community to the world. It personifies a word of “welcome” that deliberately seeks truth, and justice, and beauty in others and for others.

Adding the setting of a drama, Miroslav Volf describes four structural elements in what he calls the “movement of embrace” that are helpful in understanding the power in both the physical and metaphysical use of the metaphor.[22] Opening the arms is a gesture of the body reaching for another with a sense of welcome and openness. It indicates that I have created space for more than myself alone. Waiting for a response from the other recognizes that reciprocity cannot be forced, but simply hoped for and possibly anticipated. It shows respect for the integrity of the other. The goal of the embrace is the closing of the arms. Gurevitch suggests that we envision how “each is both holding and being held by the other, both active and passive.”[23] It requires gentleness in which free and mutual giving and receiving take place. Finally, the opening of the arms again speaks of the transforming power of relationship and the release of that power in order to benefit the surrounding community. The other must be let go so that boundary-making does not preclude the embrace of yet others.

The metaphor of embrace, of course, seeks to confront the ugly reality of exclusion that is the more frequent experience of many. Anne Lamott reminds us that faulty theology is behind most forms of exclusion when she writes, “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”[24] Weak theology, in fact, can often account for what Volf understands as the two critical transgressions that erupt in exclusion: 1) “Cutting the bonds that connect, taking oneself out of the pattern of interdependence and placing oneself in a position of sovereign independence;” and 2) “Erasure of separation, not recognizing the other as someone who in his or her otherness belongs to the pattern of interdependence.”[25] A clear example is the biblical narrative of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4), in which Cain’s violent act is essentially anti-communal as it calls into question God’s intended design that human community reflect the trinitarian community by sharing a common social space and taking responsibility for the other.

The theology of embrace more fully requires a Hebraic hermeneutic (as opposed to Western readings that are situated in dominance) that naturally and happily reads the texts of Scripture from below rather than above. It is, moreover, only this approach to biblical texts that ensures an honest appraisal of the ugly dynamics of exclusion and generates a deep appreciation for the experiences of embrace. Latent within readings of texts in this manner is a strong current of grace that offers a new embrace to those who have been excluded and a forgiving embrace to those who guilty of excluding, so that mimetic violence need not be perpetuated.[26] It is the same grace that gives the Cross its power, not only to draw in the innocent, but even to embrace the wrongdoer.[27] As Volf concludes, it is the emblem of the Cross, in fact, that is center stage in the welcoming drama of embrace, for in it is depicted the mutuality of self-giving love in the Trinity (the doctrine of God), and the outstretched arms of the Savior (the doctrine of Christ), and the open arms of the father receiving the prodigal (the doctrine of salvation).[28]

It is only faith communities empowered by the Spirit that have the potential to so mirror the Trinity that they can become purveyors of sociability and agents of social welfare in the same context. Only then can the church be conceived of as a social agency in the fullest sense of the terms I have been using here to describe it. But in order for that to happen, we are invited, first, to embrace the embrace that is the welcoming of God into the community that he is in himself. We could argue that the successful transmission of faith depends upon it, for the entire tone of the community’s mission changes when it is pictured as an embrace. It is by nature welcoming. The arms open, they wait for a response, they encircle the other, and release them, transformed, to embrace another.

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[1] See, for example, Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 5.

[2] Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, edited by Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25-73, discusses a political emphasis on equal dignity as opposed to that which focuses on individual distinctiveness. Michael Walzer suggests that the latter inevitably leads to an unhealthy form of tribal identity in the postmodern situation. See his, Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 81.

[3] Derrida reflects on personal identity that is shaped by cultural identity by being fully “a part,” but not “in every part” of its own culture. See, Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, trans. P.A. Brault and M.B. Naas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 82.

[4] Ongoing debate about the ecclesial question continues to proceed out of the well-known dictum of Cyprian: “Regardless of where one begins, one always gets back to the church.” Quoted in G.L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: S.P.C.K, 1956), 34.

[5] Letty M. Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 42.

[6] Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God: The Doctrine of God (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 200. Direct questions of sociability are better addressed in Pannenberg in which the correspondence between the Trinity and the church are overt. See, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol.1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991-97), 259-336.

[7] For a good examination of this history, see Soriu Dumitrescu, Dimineti and Staniloae (Budapest: Anastasi Press, 1992), 186 ff. It should be said that some Roman Catholic theologians have more recently been suggesting that faith is communally oriented because its object is the Triune God and therefore involves entering the “divine community.” See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 176.

[8] For example, John D. Zizioulas has suggested that God as father “is not constituted relationally; rather his fatherhood is necessarily expressed and confirmed relationally.” Thus, Zizioulas considers that human community is only effective as it draws on the Trinitarian personal communion. See his, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 42.

[9] Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 195. Volf offers further that “because churches, in the power of the Holy Spirit, already form a communion with the triune God, ecclesial correspondence to the Trinity can become an object of hope and thus also a task for human beings.”

[10] G.L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, 296. The Greek idea of perichoresis suggests “co-inherence in one another without any coalescence or commixture.” The limits of perichoresis in human terms can been seen, as Volf suggests, when “even a relation as close a pregnancy does not involve the phenomenon of personal interiority. Although the child is a person (in the theological sense), it has as yet no subjectivity, and exists not in the self of the mother, but rather in her body (which she admittedly not only possesses, but rather is as well).” See Volf, After Our Likeness, 211.

[11] Stephen Webb goes so far as to suggest that economies of exchange and excess can find their impetus in the giving modeled in the Trinity. See his, The Gifting God: A Trinitarian Ethics of Excess (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

[12] Copleston engages in a good discussion of how theology is made destitute whenever it attempts to be non-political. See Frederick Copleston, Religion and the One: Philosophies East and West (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 13.

[13] Various studies have demonstrated the correlation between the rapid spread of Christianity and particular communions that extol the dynamics of freedom and equality. One of the better of these is Hatch’s examination of populism and Christian teaching. See, Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

[14] The German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann, argues for the ongoing need of clear clergy/laity divisions in the interest of social order and harmony. See his, The Function of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 234.

[15] The subjunctive grammar here is intentional because we are still dealing in the realm of human limitations. Stephen Brachlow, for example, highlights the necessity of obedience within effective Christian communities, and reminds us that obedience is straightforwardly subjunctive. See his, The Communion of the Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Ecclesiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 21.

[16] The compelling relationship between ecclesiology and eschatology is masterfully treated by Jurgen Moltmann in The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).

[17] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 20.

[18] Wolterstorff goes on to suggest that when Christian communities fulfill this kind of mandate they are not simply adding a social component to an emasculated gospel, but they are emancipating the spark of creativity that is likewise at the heart of trinitarian concerns. Communities that appreciate the Trinity are exuberant about displays of creativity. See, Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Public Theology or Christian Learning,” Unpublished paper, 1996.

[19] Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 101.

[20] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University if Chicago Press, 1967), vol.3, 214.

[21] The use of the picture of “embrace” was possibly first offered by Z.D. Gurevitch as a purely sociological metaphor in his article, “The Embrace: On the Element of Non-Distance in Human Relations.” The Sociological Quarterly 31 (2 1990). Charles Taylor alludes to it in “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann, 25-73. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. However, the most extensive and helpful, and more than likely the only one to approach embrace as a theological metaphor, is Miroslav Volf’s, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996).

[22] Ibid., 140-145,

[23] Z.D. Gurevitch, “The Embrace: On the Element of Non-Distance in Human Relations,” 194.

[24] Anne Lamott, interview in World Magazine, September 20, 2003, page 28. Lamott offers insightful, and sometimes scathing criticisms of Christian community in her two best known books, Traveling Mercies and Blue Shoe.

[25] Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 67 (emphasis mine).

[26] Renee Girard discusses how God’s mark upon Cain is obviously a gracious gift to protect him from copy-cat violence and to potentially break the cycle of violence. See his, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. Trans. S. Bann and M. Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 146.

[27] Thiselton maintains that the self-giving love as modeled in the Trinity is particularly brought into focus on the Cross. He suggests that it is necessarily projected into relations between the human self and the other. See, Anthony C. Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 153. Elaine Pagels argues that the Christian tradition is largely about the struggle between “otherness” as evil and Jesus’ example of divine reconciliation for all. While it is weak Christologically, it is worth considering on the social level. See her, The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995), 184.

[28] Exclusion and Embrace, 29.

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Strange but true: the irrelevance of Scripture for the church today

A living language never stands still, and translators and rewriters of the Bible are always running to keep up with the latest shifts and mutations in the vernacular. We are highly conscious of the gulf that exists between these ancient religious texts and contemporary western culture, and instinctively we feel the need to reduce that gulf by repeatedly updating the Word of God so that it speaks more clearly to people today. Rob Lacey’s much acclaimed hip, edgy Street Bible is a recent example (see also this article at telegraph.co.uk):

Day three: God says, ‘Too much water! We need something to walk on, a huge lump of it – call it “land”. Let the “sea” lick its edges.’ God smiles, says, ‘Now we’ve got us some definition. But it’s too plain! It needs colour! Vegetation! Loads of it. A million shades. Now!’ And the earth goes wild with trees, bushes, plants, flowers and fungi. ‘Now give it a growth permit.’ Seeds appear in every one. ‘Yesss!’ says God. (Gen.1:9-13)

It is obviously necessary to update our English translations: if we are going to read the Bible, we should be able to read it in a language that is transparent to us, not opaque like the grimy stained glass of the King James Version. But I suspect that what drives the production of these paraphrases is not so much the need to communicate clearly but the desire to be relevant. It is here that we may discern a peculiarly ‘modern’ failing: the extreme intolerance of ambiguity, contradiction, and irrelevance.

i) I would question the assumption that Scripture ought to be immediately accessible, easily intelligible, to the modern reader. The problem is that the Bible is not a modern text: it is an ancient text, written to address ancient circumstances, constructed out of the peculiar thought-forms of an ancient worldview, and it should seem strange and irrelevant to us. Although we may want to construe it theologically as the Word of God for his people today, always pertinent, always meaningful, this understanding of Scripture is unavoidably at odds with its intrinsic literary nature. In my view this contradiction between real identity and perceived identity accounts for much of the misinterpretation of Scripture – and indeed the bad theology – that has sustained modern evangelicalism.

ii) The modernizing approach reinforces the belief that form can be separated from content. It works on the dualistic premise that the Bible is made up of an abstract body of timeless truth, on the one hand, and a package of culturally determined words and images, on the other. On that basis relevance is achieved essentially by repackaging the timeless content.

This dissociation of form and content has serious consequences.

i) It discourages any reassessment of the content of Scripture. We assume that we know what the Bible teaches, we simply need to find a more effective way of enticing people into reading it: it becomes an exercise in marketing rather than understanding. In that respect, it is a form of denial, a way of not facing up to the problem of Scripture. The real need, I would argue, is to determine exactly what is this ‘story that we find ourselves in’. A jazzy respray and go-faster stripes are not the answer.

ii) The separation of form and content also underpins the modernist confidence in an overarching meta-narrative. The modernist instinct is to possess and control truth, to sequestrate meaning for ourselves. This is much easier to do if we can, so to speak, disconnect truth from the historical matrix in which it was birthed and assimilate it into our own unquestioned worldview.

It is also made easier by isolating the Bible from other contexts of reading: historical-critical, scientific, sociological, religious, etc. An awareness of the interaction between these various reading contexts may help us to resolve the basic problem of maintaining a proper tension between a more or less ‘authoritative’ reading of Scripture and a postmodern hermeneutic that insists on a plurality of readings.

It may be more consistent with a postmodern ethos, therefore, at least as a matter of principle, to reverse the persistent modernizing agenda and instead to de-modernize the Bible, to relocate it in its ancient context so that it surprises us with its strangeness. Primarily this is an act of the critical imagination – it has to do with how we recreate the world of the texts as we read; but there are some de-modernizing tricks that we might deploy in order to catalyze the emergence of such a method of reading.

Just as there are other contexts of interpretation that may call into question the prevailing modernist-evangelical reading, there are other means by which we may make Scripture appear unfamiliar. By adopting alternative contemporary points of view – feminist, Marxist, Islamic, for example – we will find that we see the Bible in a rather different light. But these positions are all extrinsic to the Biblical tradition. There is always the problem that we only have indirect access to a first-century worldview, but it is difficult to see how the struggle to recover an ancient reading can be denied some sort of hermeneutical priority over other readings.

How to make Scripture strange

i) It makes for an interesting thought experiment (see also ‘Can we teach an old dogmatism new tricks?’) to consider what would have happened if the early Jewish Christians had been driven from Jerusalem into the desert. What if, under threat of destruction from an invading Roman army, they had concealed their writings in caves and then, like the sectarians of Qumran, had disappeared off the screen of history? And suppose that nineteen hundred years later those writings were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd boy and fell into the hands of a culture that had never known the Christian church. What would that culture make of them? We can hardly subtract the influence of Christianity from modern Western culture, even from modern secular rationalism. But this is only a thought-experiment: how would people react to these writings and their claims about a Jewish teacher called Jesus without all the intellectual baggage of Christian tradition, without the preconception that this a definitive story about God, perhaps without much of an idea about God at all?

ii) The Bible might be published in a form more appropriate to an ancient text, without those physical and typographical features that mark it out as sacred Scripture: double columns, the numbering of chapter and verse (which reinforces the typical atomistic reading), cross-references, pious annotations, gold type, red type, the zipped leather jacket, and so on. What if the Bible had the physical appearance of a Penguin Classic? It will be interesting to see whether the use of Aramaic and Latin in Mel Gibson’s The Passion has this sort of distancing effect.

iii) We might break the books of the Bible apart – quite literally deconstructing the canonical form of Scripture, setting the documents on the same level as the writings of second temple Judaism (Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Josephus, etc.) and the early church, so that a distinctive and coherent narrative is allowed to reemerge, re-establish itself, from a complex and disordered body of historical documents. A strong case could be made for placing the synoptic Gospels at the end of the Old Testament; Paul’s letters and the Johannine writings might be published as separate collections.

iv) Here’s a really radical and irresponsible suggestion: why not take the Bible out of circulation for a while, forget about it? It seems to me that there is a lot of important ‘forgetting’ going on at the moment in the church.

The process of de-modernizing Scripture leads in two directions.

Deconstruction

In the first place, it offers an effective means of deconstructing the Bible as a modern cultural-religious phenomenon. The Bible has been so central both to Christian thought and spirituality and to Western culture generally that we are faced with a huge problem of over-familiarity. Paraphrases such as The Message and the Street Bible may have a temporary defamiliarizing effect: the reader accustomed to the elevated language of the King James Version or the blandness of the NIV is likely to be taken aback by the bold colloquialisms of these modernizations. But this impact is gained at the expense of further dissociating the reader – and the act of reading – from the texts and the narrative-historical context which generated them. The effect is somewhat iconoclastic and in certain contexts, such as corporate worship, may be highly appropriate; but it does not address the fundamental problem of how we develop a persuasive reading of the text in the face of a pervasive postmodern hermeneutic.

By recovering a sense of the antiquity of the text we subvert our easy notions of what the Bible is; we lose our sense of ownership; the process of understanding becomes much more difficult; we are forced to rethink what we believe and how we relate to the story out of which the church emerged. By loosening the grip of the meta-narrative on our hermeneutic, we bring back into view the multiplicity and diversity of the stories and arguments out of which Scripture is constructed; we see more clearly how biblical eschatology hugs the fractured landscape of distant history; we learn that this is someone else’s truth; we regain a sense of the incompleteness and open-endedness of Scripture; we find ourselves in a place where we need constantly to think and imagine and create because not all the answers have been given.

A critical-realist hermeneutic

Secondly, the de-modernization of Scripture opens the way for a consistent critical-realist hermeneutic, which I think will be crucial in the development of a theology that will sustain emerging church.

i) A critical-realist hermeneutic looks for a prospective rather than a retrospective reading of Scripture. It endeavours to read forward from within the world-view and time-frame of the texts; it does not read back into the texts from the position of the modern church. It looks, therefore, for an intrinsic rather than an extrinsic theology.

ii) A critical-realist hermeneutic would restore the priority of narrative and argumentation, on which the integrity of any reading of Scripture must hang. These are the structures of biblical discourse that principally connect the text with its ‘rhetorical context’ – that is, the conditions and circumstances directly addressed by the text. This stands in contrast to a hermeneutic that reduces Scripture to a compendium of propositions, promises and proofs.

An example of how a narrative hermeneutic can affect interpretation: we will often read the transfiguration story (Matt.17:1-8) according to an incarnational or trinitarian interpretative framework: the event is seen as a disclosure of Jesus’ true divinity. But it could also be read according to a narrative-eschatological framework as a visible representation of the promise that immediately precedes the transfiguration in all three synoptic gospels: ‘there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom’ (cf. Matt.16:28). The transfiguration would then reiterate in physical form the conviction that within a generation they would see what it means for the Son of man to come on the clouds of heaven to receive the kingdom from the Ancient of Days.

I put forward this de-modernizing approach to Scripture not because I think it will necessarily furnish us with a more objective and assured statement of the truth but because it minimizes the space between text and interpretation; it stops interpretation getting carried away with itself. There is less room to generate those grand modern ‘mythologies’ that seek to give a totalizing account of the world. We are less likely to mistake the metaphors and myths that we produce – the synthesizing meta-narratives that we construct out of Scripture – for objective truth. The text itself will always have the capacity to subvert our reductive, trivializing orthodoxies. We are forced to approach the question of God from a more fragile and human perspective.

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Telling the Stories of Scripture

Historically the Bible has been told as a story. The Scriptures are the story of God and His relationship to creation and have been told as such throughout Jewish and even much of Christian history. Even within the Scriptures, storytelling has a powerful role. However, recently the importance of telling the stories of Scripture has been overlooked. The ability of the story of Scripture to affect people’s lives is too powerful to ignore. Telling Scripture as a story can evoke a deep and lasting transformation of the community of faith.

Story influences worldview

All communities have a worldview. All individuals have a worldview. A worldview is how people understand the world or what gives all phenomena around them an orientation (Wolters, 2). It can be analogized to the glasses that they look at the world through. However, everything—self, others, world, god, work – is seen through these glasses that cannot be removed. Although most people cannot articulate their worldview, it is how they answer the questions, “Who am I, how did I get here and why?” “What is wrong with the world?” “Is change possible and how?” For example, believing that people evolved from mud and are here to eat, drink, and be merry is a simplified example of worldview. Another simplified example might be that all of the world’s major problems, such as disease, crime, communication, famine, war, will be resolved by technology.

However, worldview does not stay deep inside of us, instead, it affects our beliefs, our values, and ultimately our actions. In 1997, B.J. van der Walt developed a “cultural onion” showing how culture’s many layers, like an onion, can be peeled down eventually to a core of worldview. Beliefs and values are the second layer of the onion and are based directly on worldview. Institutions, the third layer, are based on worldview and beliefs and values. Actions, the fourth layer, are based on all preceding layers. In other words, everything in a person’s life and culture is based on her or his worldview. For example, let’s look at a potential cultural onion issue of first century Jews. Assume Jewish people saw the world divided into two kinds of people: the blessed Jews and the wretched Gentiles. Because their beliefs and values are based on this worldview, they valued Jewish people and scorned Gentiles. They believed that Jews would mostly act in an honorable way and Gentiles were incapable of doing good. Their institutions, such as family, education, and transportation were set up in such a way as to separate Jews from Gentiles. Their actions followed suite; they attacked or avoided Gentiles and loved Jews. While a somewhat simplistic rendering, it shows how everything in life is based on worldview.

Most people join the community of faith with a broken worldview. We do not have a biblical understanding of who we are, who God is, and what gives this life and world meaning. As a result of our broken worldview, we also have broken beliefs, values, and actions. Although Christ penetrates deep into who we are as people, all the way to the core of our worldview, He often works through others in our community to be His agent of healing (Ephesians 1-4). However, as a Christian community we have not often been getting deep inside to worldview. George Barna writes

“The vast majority of Christians do not behave differently because they do not think differently, and they do not think differently because we have never trained them, equipped them, or held them accountable to do so. For years we have been exposing Christians to scattered, random bits of biblical knowledge through our church services and Christian education classes. They hear a principle here and read a truth there, then nod their head in approval and feel momentarily satisfied over receiving this new insight into their faith. But within the space of just a few hours that principle or truth is lost in the busyness and complexity of their lives. They could not capture that insight and own it because they have never been given sufficient context and method that would enable them to analyze, categorize, and utilize the principle or truth.”

Another possible explanation for why the “scattered, random bits” on Sunday do not evoke permanent change in Christians’ thought processes is because these bits only affect actions or beliefs – they do not challenge the worldview of these redeemed people. They are not confronted with the alternative worldview of the Bible. In order for people’s beliefs and actions to be deeply changed, their worldviews need to be changed. Jesus did not just admonish his Jewish audiences beliefs by saying Samaritans can be nice people too. He addressed the underlying worldview: who is my neighbor (Luke 10)? By transforming people’s worldviews, their beliefs, values, and actions will likewise be “taken captive for Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

In order to bring deep healing, we need to get at the source of the brokenness, at the source of the worldview. Just as with leukemia, healing the other sicknesses such as pneumonia will not heal the disease. Instead treatment needs to go to the source, the very bone marrow needs to be transplanted to heal the leukemia. N.T. Wright argues that one of the sources of worldview are the stories people tell themselves and each other (38). Scholars refer to humans as homo narrans because of their innate need to tell stories (Nielle). When stories are constructed to organize the experiences people have, these stories shape and reinforce their worldviews (Koki, 1). Not only do our own stories shape our worldview, but others’ stories are also powerful in reaching inside of who we are. First, stories engage us. They are immensely interesting and hold our attention (Koki, 2). Second, stories address the whole of human experience: emotion, thought, feeling, heart, head, action, imagination (Chronological Bible Storying). Third, empirical evidence shows that stories have a strong impact on judgments and understanding (Rughase). Also, cognitive research shows that memorable information is more like to be effective, and stories are very memorable (Haghirian and Chini, 6). Fourth, the use of stories in all cultures through all of history shows their power to affect humans. Finally, stories are used in all areas of the Bible to illicit change within people (c.f. Nehemiah’s leadership, Jesus’ parables, and Paul in Athens).

Because worldview is shaped and reinforced by telling stories, one of the most powerful ways to challenge and transform the worldviews of the community of faith will be by telling the stories of Scripture. When the community hears and tells stories that are different than their own interpretations for experiences, they will wrestle with the truths in God’s living word and in time change their understanding to match His (Chronological Bible Storying). Jesus’ stories would often challenge His audience’s worldview. For example, when He tells a story about a man who has been seriously injured lying on the side of the road He calls into question the Jewish understanding of piety and who qualifies as a neighbor. The most pious of the community are unable to carry out simple care and the most “un-neighborly” are the religious leaders. Instead, the social outcast or enemy provides care. Jesus allowed His listeners to draw their own conclusions in telling a story that seriously challenged their worldview (Luke 10).

The overall story of the Bible and the individual stories all provide a God-honoring holistic worldview for people. For example, the creation account and the story of Job tell the story of a God, who created, loves, respects, and upholds this world, including human beings. The stories of Noah and Abraham are about a world that has turned its back on its Creator, but is being pursued by Him nonetheless. The Kings and the Prophets are heart-wrenching accounts of a jilted Lover who never stops seeking those He loves and is willing to take any measures to bring them back to Himself. The Gospels tell of the true measures He was willing to go. Within these broad-stroke stories are all the small stories that make them up; like Hosea acting out God’s desperation by taking Gomer the prostitute as his wife, or Jesus crying over the city of Jerusalem. Scripture stories tell the community of faith about the character of God, about where this world and its meaning comes from, about who humans are and what their purpose is on this earth, and about what happens after it all. These are stories that shape worldview. As the community of faith hears these stories, their worldviews will be impacted by the truth being presented to them.

Another Biblical example of how story can challenge worldview and so affect beliefs and actions is when Peter is presented with a vision of animals in a large sheet (Acts 10). Although Jesus already told him two years earlier that it is not what goes into a man, but what comes out that makes him unclean (Mark 7:15), Peter’s worldview has not yet changed. Now he is given a vision, a story, that makes it clear. “Kill and eat these animals.” God is telling him that this world is not divided into clean and unclean, whether they are discussing animals or people. Now that Peter has this story, he visits the Gentile Cornelius, agrees with Paul bringing the gospel to the Gentiles, and tells his story to the other Jewish believers, thus challenging their worldviews (Acts 11, 15). The transforming of worldview initiated by a “new” story soon affects beliefs, institutions, and actions. Peter had a new worldview, so he no longer believed in the separation of Jews and Gentiles, he wanted the church to be inclusive, and he acted by going to Cornelius’ house.

Stories creating community

In addition to the important work of transforming worldviews, stories also preserve people’s connection to history and to each other (CISA). Stories are never known or told in isolation, they inherently involve a group, a community. In the television series Friends, the stories the group shares are very important (Series 5). When five of them go to London, but the character Phoebe isn’t able to, she cannot stand to listen to the London stories, because it makes her feel like an outsider. Stories are shared by a group of people and often stories define the group. An acquaintance of mine recently said, “You can’t really become friends with someone, until you’ve shared an experience with them.” It’s these shared experiences that provide the basis for friendship and community. When the story of Scripture is told, it becomes the shared experience of the people listening—their history. They are now connected to each other and the church through history by these shared stories. Similar to the process in which a person feels a part of their family by “knowing how Grandpa and Grandma met,” or “this is what it was like when you were born,” people feel a part of God’s family by knowing how the church began or what happened when Jesus was born.

Stories reinforcing values

Stories can also be used to convey and reinforce the values of a group of people (Dunnery). By telling the stories of Scripture, the community of faith learns the values of the biblical community. For example, from the stories of David, the community learns about the value of being a people after God’s own heart. They can hear about when he crept up to his enemy Saul in the cave and only cut the hem from his coat instead of killing him showing his trust in God’s timing or when he repented of his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah. When the story of Ruth gleaning from the fields is told, the community learns the value of providing for the poor. When the story of Peter having a dream about animals in a bed sheet and going to the Greek Cornelius’ house, we learn the value of embracing diversity. Telling these stories connects the community “to what was most essential about being [them], what was most essential to them as a people, and that rooting allow[s] them to develop positions and make choices that clearly aligned with the values that they hold” (Korton).

Stories allowing meaningful faith conclusions

Finally, storytelling Scripture allows people to have a deep faith in God’s love. By hearing about God’s love as a story, the listeners are allowed to draw their own conclusions and people will trust their own conclusions more than others (Simmons). Stories allow for different interpretations or different understandings, so people do not feel manipulated, but can take time to come to their own conclusions (Wright, 77). Once people hear a story and begin to take it as their own, they will have faith in the story that will outlast logical arguments. Simmons writes, “Faith needs a story to sustain it – a meaningful story that inspires belief in you and renews hope that your ideas, do indeed, offer what you promise.”

Here is an illustration of the difference between hearing a belief statement and hearing a story. Larry might tell Tara “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Tara must then decide whether or not she believes this statement. Or Larry might tell Tara the story of Joseph. Through hearing the story, Tara might continue to think about the story and conclude that God loved Joseph, was with him through all the hard things in his life, and had an amazing plan for saving his family and ruling Egypt all in one. Maybe another time Tara hears the story of Jacob and might conclude again that God had amazing plans for Jacob, but Jacob often seemed to sabotage them by trying to do his own thing. Over time and by thinking through these stories, Tara comes to the conclusions that God loves people and has amazing plans for their lives. She will now believe these conclusions much deeper than if she had just decided to believe the statement that “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”

Storytelling Scripture in the community of faith can be a powerful tool. It will evoke deep change in the worldviews of the community and so result in transforming their beliefs, values, and actions. Storytelling will allow Scripture to become deeply rooted in people’s hearts as they accept these stories as their own and allow them to form their identity as individuals and as a people.

 

Works Cited

Barna, George, The Second Coming of the Church, Waco: Word, 1998.

Chronological Bible Storying, A Description of Chronological Bible Storying with Missiological Considerations, 29 Oct. 2003.

The CISA Storytelling Festivals and Symposia 2003-2004: Building Cultural Bridges, CISA: California Indian Storytelling Association. 19 Oct. 2003.

Dunnery, Steve, Alicia Korten: Core Value Stories. Introduction by Steve Denning, Smithsonian Associates. 21 Oct. 2003.

Friends, “Series 5” Warner Bros. Television: 1998.

Haghirian, Parissa, and Tina Claudia Chini, Storytelling: Transferring Tacit Corporate Knowledge in Different Cultures. European Academy of Management. 13 Sept. 2003.

Koki, Steven, Storytelling: The Heart and Soul of Education, PREFL Briefing Paper, Nov. 1998. 13 Sept. 2003.

Korten, Alicia, Stories & Values, Smithsonian Associates. 21 Oct. 2003.

Nielle, Caren, Storytelling for Peace, International Storytelling Center. 22 Oct. 2003.

Rughase, O. G.(2002), “Linking Content to Process,” in A. S. Huff, M. Jenkings, Mapping Strategic Knowledge, Sage Publications, London.

Simmons, Anne, The Six Stories You Need to Know How to Tell, excerpt from The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion Through Storytelling. International Storytelling Center. 22 Oct. 2003

van der Walt, B. J.(1997), “Afrocentric or Eurocentric? Our task in a multicultural South Africa”, Potchefstroom University, South Africa; Institute for Reformational Studies

Wolters, Albert M. (1985), Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview.

Wright, Nicholas Thomas, The New Testament and The People of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press (1992).

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A Patient Pursuit

Having grown up as a Christian and having been on a quest to “be spiritual” and draw close to God for some 30+ years, I find myself still struggling with how to get there. New forms of spirituality are evolving every day as our world tries to figure out how to get to God.

I was very enthusiastic and driven to let God be the Lord of my life as a young man. I remember reading two books by Jerry Bridges that had a profound impact on me, The Practice of Godliness and The Pursuit of Holiness. I was also involved with The Navigators in my early adult years and they had a significant influence on my spiritual growth. My spirituality was built around the disciplines, a life that could admittedly have become legalistic and mainly focused on what I can do to become spiritual. The topic of holiness is something that has started bouncing around my head once again. Working in a more grace/freedom oriented culture these days, I struggle to figure out holiness in this context. And, as I attempt to engage an emerging postmodern culture, I wrestle with the question of how does holiness fit in? What might it look like today? How does one pursue holiness in a world where every part of holiness is being assaulted?

For me, ‘Emerging’ in emerging culture has at least two purposes: I believe the whole Church needs to ‘emerge’ into the present and the future, and I believe that both old and new forms of Church have treasures that they should share with each other. I say this because I’m reminded that “there is nothing new under the sun.” And, I’m not clever enough to think of anything new anyway. I believe that as we strive to figure this out in a postmodern, emerging culture context, we need to draw on the treasures of those who have gone before us. For instance, John Wesley was a key proponent of the holiness movement which has had a profound impact on church history and numerous lives in church history. Or, we could trace it all the way back to some of the early Christian Ascetics.

Perhaps it is helpful to try to define holiness before I go further. In the Greek New Testament, the root hag is the basis of hagiasmos, translated “holiness,” “consecration,” “sanctification.” The hag words, translated by the Hebrew qadosh, literally mean “separate, contrasting with the profane.” Separation is a major concept and a dynamic dimension of holiness. When God calls us to be holy, He is calling us to be separate from sin, separate from the unclean things of the world, separated unto Himself.

The holiness taught in the New Testament and exemplified in the life of Christ is that state in which the devil is defeated and sin is shunned; in which our will is in harmony with the will of God; in which the Holy Spirit rules the life in motive, affection, and action; in which we may be beset by temptations but have the mastery over them. Holiness is not so much an experience to be sought for itself, but rather is a byproduct of a life fully consecrated to Christ. It is God at work in our lives: shaping our characters, purifying our hearts, tutoring our minds, strengthening our wills, actualizing our highest spiritual potential.

Christ, who came to us clothed in our humanity, declared, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father.” In Christ, holiness comes alive, not merely as a definition, but as a visible incarnation. In Christ we see all the fruit of the Spirit come to perfect fulfillment in humanity. Jesus Christ is our highest definition and declaration of holiness. There can be no better definition for holiness than, Holiness is Christlikeness. Because of his power at work in believers, we are freed to become like Christ – imitators of Christ.

This journey of holiness isn’t about simply trying hard to stop doing bad things, (i.e. stop sinning) as much as it is cultivating the disciplines in our life that will facilitate holiness, or Christ-likeness. I’m not a very disciplined person in that I don’t stick with good eating habits long, nor do I consistently exercise, nor do I do a lot of other things I’d really like to do. I actually get tired of trying to do the same thing all the time like reading my Bible every morning though I know it is genuinely good for me. We must appreciate that holiness is not only about doing or not doing certain things. It is about God’s grace. It is a “dependant discipline” as Jerry Bridges calls it.

I’d like to propose a few essentials of this pursuit of holiness:

Dependent Discipline is required

We want a recipe for righteousness and sanctification, not to be told if we believe in Jesus it is done. In Christ, I have been made holy, set apart. Yet this isn’t the full reality I experience in daily living. “Disciplines help us pay attention to the Holy Spirit!”[1] Most believers desire to hear God but don’t do what it takes to put themselves in the position to hear God. A common misperception of pursuing holiness or exercising disciplines is using them to try to get God’s attention but it is really more about trying to help me pay attention to God. I’m reminded of Psalm 127:1 that says “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builder’s labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.” Paul labored and toiled probably harder than anyone yet it is he who said “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13) Just before this verse, he says “I have learned to be content.” Life is hard. Living a Christ like life is harder; in fact it is impossible without the help of God. Our spirituality must be a constant combination of action and reliance on the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. A common mistake that many of us have made is to just put a stricter regimen of spiritual exercise together instead of relying on His Spirit. Jerry Bridges says it this way: “It is precisely because we are not endowed with a reservoir of strength that we need to pray daily for the Spirit’s enabling work in us. Holiness requires continual effort on our part and continual nourishing and strengthening by the Holy Spirit.”[2] Dependence on the Holy Spirit should permeate every discipline we practice and every step we take toward holiness. There’s no room in holiness for the “self-made man.”

Preach the gospel to yourself every day!

An old spiritual habit I had was that of reminding myself of the gospel every day by quoting Galatians 2:20 which says: “I am crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and this life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me!” I realized in this process that I need to renew this practice. We face condemnation and ridicule every day from not only the enemy of our souls, the devil, but often from our very own self. The truth that “there is now no condemnation for those who in Christ Jesus” seems to allude us. Jerry Bridges says “when you set yourself to seriously pursue holiness, you will begin to realize what an awful sinner you are. And if you are not firmly rooted in the gospel and have not learned to preach it to yourself every day, you will soon become discouraged and will slack off in your pursuit of holiness.”[3] It is vital that we not only have a grip on the gospel but that it has its grip on us before we entertain even the first ounce of effort. Only when we understand God has rescued us and has made us holy can we then patiently pursue holiness which is really a process or patient pursuit of becoming who we already are!

Patiently pursue holiness.

Want to be countercultural? Integrate patience into your lifestyle! Gary Thomas says “Impatience is a far more deadly enemy of spirituality than most of us realize! …If we spend ten, twenty, or even thirty years pounding a sinful habit into our lifestyle, we shouldn’t be surprised if the residual elements take a long time to be rooted out.”[4] Putting habitual sins to sleep takes time. Scripture leads us to wait: “But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.” (Galatians 5:5) Our pursuit of holiness should be a patient pursuit. Transformation takes time.

It’s our story being written

We hear a lot about people’s journeys and stories are a strong vehicle of communication to a truly postmodern person. We should see this patient pursuit as a process, as the unfolding of my story as I journey to become like Christ. It’s not a spirituality of performance. Holiness calls us to be real, transparent and honest. The journey of holiness isn’t about us doing what’s right only when others are looking. The pursuit requires introspection and honest candor from ourselves, the Holy Spirit and others. Jerry Bridges says “there will always be conflict within us between the “flesh,” or the sinful nature, and the Holy Spirit. This conflict is described by Paul in Galatians 5:17 “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.”[5] Romans 7 also shows this honest tension quite well. Bridges also says “what honest Christian would not admit to the frequent gap between his or her spiritual desires and actual performance?”[6] This pursuit, this life long process is our story unfolding as we morph into Christlikeness! It is a story that will have many high points, low points, surprises and bumps along the way.

Disciplined by Grace

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” (Titus 2:11-12) Grace teaches us! It teaches us to say no to ungodliness, things like gossip, immorality, lying, greed, etc. It also teaches us to say no to worldly passion like “the inordinate desire for and preoccupation with the things of this life such as possessions, prestige, pleasure, or power.”[7] Grace also teaches us to say YES! Often holiness gets the bad rap of all the “don’t do’s” or only being prohibitive. But, it also has to do with the positive expression of Christian Character like the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22 (love, joy peace, patience, etc). Paul talks in Ephesians 4:22-24 about both “putting off” and “putting on” as key to patiently pursuing spirituality. It’s kind of like cutting and pasting to use a modern computer analogy! That is cutting out the unholy and pasting in the holy. This quote about John Bunyan sums up what I think Paul meant when he said grace disciplines:

Run, John, run. The law commands
But gives neither feet nor hands.
Better news the gospel brings;
It bids me fly and gives me wings.[8]

“We must be utterly convinced that there is nothing we can do to increase God’s love for us! Our role is to ‘hoist our sails’ and position ourselves to be open to God’s Spirit. God’s role is to propel us on the path of transformation.”[9] The moment we think we have to earn God’s love or favor, we’ve slipped over the edge into a performance and self-assuring spirituality.

Don’t go it alone!

Where I really start to grow toward holiness and develop is when I practice the disciplines in community. “The athletes of God: Ancient Christians from many cultures and walks of life, they gathered in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East beginning in the third century. They created communities where they could train themselves in godliness (1 Tim 4:7) and run together ‘the race marked out for them’ (Heb 12:1).”[10] Maybe to us this means forming some form of an urban monastery; maybe triads of life-transformation groups; maybe it means taking retreats together to focus on the journey toward holiness; maybe it means getting on line regularly with a mentor or fellow journeyman and so on . . .

Don’t get stuck in a rut.

I like to employ a diversity of disciplines in my life. It’s easy to say it’s not working, so I’ll just stop doing them. Or, it is easy to get bored with practicing disciplines. We must patiently pursue holiness and that comes through incorporating a variety of means/disciplines. “If we think of the disciplines as spiritual food (another analogy popular with ancient Christians), then we should view them as a MENU not a recipe. We must choose from the menu according to our present spiritual hunger rather than stir them all together like ingredients into one big casserole.”[11] There is still a need for repetition and practice of disciplines to achieve progress and growth. One way to do this might be to take a whole season of time to focus on one discipline. The menu of disciplines is vast but a few would be disciplines of freedom to help us get unencumbered are the discipline of abstinence, simplicity, or stillness (solitude). To help us develop further spiritual heath we may choose Scriptural meditation, prayer or reticence (the control of the tongue). Crucial to this patient pursuit is focus. Practicing disciplines of thankfulness, contentment and worship can help us keep our eye you Jesus. Christ likeness is after all, our goal!

Going the Distance

There is a lot of talk today about finishing well. All of us long to hear the words “well done!” Remember, everything is gift! It is also helpful to observe moderation in taking up our pursuit of holiness through discipline. “Excessive discipline, the elders insisted, only leads to discouragement and giving up.”[12] Take the disciplines in bites size pieces and pace yourself for a marathon! More doesn’t mean better and sometimes slower is faster. Though you stumble, don’t give up. Though you may falter His grace can take you on.

We must live holy lives if we are to be Missional. It will tarnish the image of Christ on the world if they see us being inconsistent and hypocritical. As we take the good news to the world, that good news must have a solid grip in our lives. It is only as we experience Christ’s transformational power that we can become agents of transformation to a needy world. As Christ truly transforms us, we become free and we become passionate for His glory. This holy passion and freedom is attractive to the world looking for something to grab onto!

I conclude this by saying that in case you’re still wondering – we’ll never be perfect. But that doesn’t mean we can never be holy! Though the desert father’s standards of holiness were high, they recognized that the spiritual race requires distance runners, not sprinters. Let’s all commit to stay in the race, even if for just one more day.

Al Dyck

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[1] Stacey Patrick, Taking the “Ugh” out of Spiritual Disciplines, Discipleship Journal Issue 143, 50.
[2] Bridges, The Discipline of Grace, (Colorado Springs, Co, Navpress, 1994), 141.
[3] Jerry Bridges, 60. (This book does an excellent job of first helping us get our hands on the power of God’s grace and how only then can we rightly pursue holiness. Bridges clearly and concisely lays out the gospel and practically how we can preach it to ourselves daily in chapter 3. I can not do it justice in this short paragraph!)
[4] Gary Thomas, Authentic Faith, (Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 2002).
[5] Bridges, 100.
[6] Bridges, 101.
[7] Bridges, 83.
[8] Bridges, 90.
[9] Patrick, 50.
[10] Paul Thigpin, Soul Building, Discipleship Journal Issue 143, 55.
[11] Thigpin, 56.
[12] Thigpen, 66.

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A generous spirituality

Evangelical responses to the paradigm shift we are currently experiencing in the western world have focused for the most part on the deconstructionist tendencies of postmodernism. Led by philosophers such as Foucault and Derrida postmodern thinkers have challenged reigning paradigms for the past forty years, demonstrating the inconsistencies and difficulties in many of our most basic assumptions. In evangelical circles deconstruction also played it’s role: we ‘deconstructed church’ and ‘deconstructed faith.’ Critics have noted the negative or reactionary tone in the conversation, and this has caused no small amount of frustration: evangelical writers on the subject (many of whom seem to band together under the name Emergent) have articulated what is it they dislike about the old paradigms and why, but have struggled to articulate what they would like to replace it with.

It would seem though that Deconstructionism seems to have played a very functional role. In deconstructing many things it seems to have created a void, space for new dreams and visions. Now that both Foucault and Derrida have died, perhaps it is time for other people to step into the created space and outline new approaches and to present new proposals.

One person who has been wanting to do so is Brian McLaren, and his latest book, a Generous Orthodoxy, is really the first constructive proposal that is presented into this by Emergent. Albeit on a popular level, A Generous Orthodoxy is really Emergent’s first theological proposal, covering a wide range of topics including how we view God, the world, evil, history, unchurched folk and the future.

Theology breeds spirituality. The two can not only not be separated, but there is a direct causal relationship between the two. What is preached by the one is practiced by the other. Theology, if you will, is to spirituality what orthodoxy is to orthopraxy. McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy is not only a theological proposal, but very much a proposal for a different kind (or, following one of his other titles, a new kind) of spirituality.

The title of the book is taken from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. McLaren seeks to present a version of the Christian faith that is orthodox - but rather than arriving at his version by ways of reductionism (i.e. casting away anything that is non-essential), McLaren seeks to find unique contributions from many different theological streams (as well as the green movement) that will enrich our faith, community, worship and experience, while adhering to orthodoxy and orthopraxy. This is where McLaren’s orthodoxy becomes generous: the table is large, though we come from different experiences and emphases, the party is better with all of us there. Says McLaren: without the Anabaptists, Catholics, protestants, etc., the party is hardly worth having.

The spirituality McLaren proposes is open and welcoming. It seeks to invite others in, rather than keep them out. It is a spirituality of invitation and participation. It is historically informed and culturally deepened, leaving behind insular attitudes and approaches. The Kingdom of God, which Jesus came to announce, and which the gospel is ultimately about, is too broad in scope, too open to all, and too wild to control, for any one movement or tradition to claim all of it.

Here is a brief overview of some of what McLaren proposes. Orthodoxy for McLaren starts with Jesus, but he lists 7 different approaches to Jesus he has encountered. The Jesus from the Sunday school flanel board taught him that Jesus loves all children, regardless of colour. The Conservative Protestant Jesus comes to die for us individuals. Where he is distant, the Jesus presented by the Charismatics and Pentecostals is close and intimate. Still, he doesn’t have much to say to the rest of the world. The Roman Catholic Jesus has more to say to the world: he sends the church to the world to announce freedom. Next to this the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity focuses on how Jesus enters into the world, and then allows the world to enter into Him. To them, Jesus is not just saviour of the saved, but of the whole cosmos. The Liberal Protestant Jesus sends the church to the world, not just to individuals, bit also to impact societal and political structures. Lastly, the Anabaptist Jesus convenes a community of disciples that commit to being his people and doing his work. As one will understand: a spirituality that is broad enough to embrace all these perspectives on Jesus, will place emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus, forgiveness of sin, a process of sanctification, a daily walk with Christ, a missionary zeal for the world, a concern for the weak and the poor, a desire to see the Kingdom advance in every area of life, a desire to follow Jesus’ example in daily life, and an understanding that community is core to all that we do.

McLaren’s contrasts two views of God. One view is heavily impacted by modern thinking, and presents a God that is single, solitary, dominant and all-powerful. The other view, McLaren says, is more in keeping with how God reveals himself: God is a unified, eternal, mysterious, relational community/family/society of saving Love. Our view of God impacts our spirituality: the first view leads to a spirituality that is closed and seeks to be strong; the second view results in a spirituality that invites and welcomes, builds community and appreciates beauty and mystery.

Christ is at the centre of Christianity, but McLaren wonders if evangelicals at the start of the 21^st century really understand Him. He seems to have so little impact on our daily lives. Have we domesticated Jesus and made him a mascot rather than Lord? McLaren explains what it means to call Jesus Lord. A spirituality that understands Jesus as Lord is not self-centred, appreciates giving more than receiving, cares for one’s neighbour, and willingly pays a price in the process.

Salvation for McLaren is not a purely individualistic event, and it’s purpose is not just focused on the after-life. In his proposal, salvation is also for this life. In saving us Jesus restores us to do this life better. For this reason not only judgment and forgiveness are central elements to the gospel, but also Jesus’ teaching, which encourages us to leave our old ways behind and adopt the new ways of his Kingdom.

A Generous Orthodoxy expresses itself in a mission to the world. Now that we have received the love of Christ and have become part of a healing community, we are sent out to invite others into it as well. This sits in stark contrast with much of the spirituality present in churches today: rather than an understanding that we blessed to be a blessing, our behaviour reflects a belief that we are blessed and need to hard what we have received.

Generous Orthodoxy in McLaren’s mind is evangelical but not Evangelical. Evangelical (capital E) refers to a group of people who are entrenched in the culture wars, committed to seeing their agenda set the political landscape. This is an attitude McLaren does not find consistent with Christ’s attitude. Evangelical with a lower case ‘e’ refers to an attitude of passion, and readiness for action that doesn’t wait for permission to carry out the love of Christ. It is strategic and intentional in doing so, going where it has never gone before, and often where others say it can’t. It is creative and liberal in its methodology. If there is a party, says McLaren, let the evangelicals bring the passion!

Because salvation is also for this life, McLaren affirms the creative methodology Whitefield and Wesley applied to help people pursue sanctification in a lay-led movement. His hope is that we can do the same on our day and age, and says there is much in Methodism that is waiting to be rediscovered.

There is of course more that can be said about Generous Orthodoxy, but this article is not intended to be a summary that negates the need to read the book. McLaren continues to construct his Orthodoxy by combining many beautiful elements from such streams as Anglicanism and Anabaptism, Protestantism (the readiness to protest what is nor right), the Charismatic Movement, Calvinism, Catholicism (yes, including Mary), and the environmentalist (or green) movement (God’s salvation applies to God’s creation).

Lastly, McLaren presents an understanding that he calls emerging. Rather than just taking the good and jettisoning the bad from all these movements, McLaren proposes we embrace the good with the bad. He presents a ring model that develops much like a tree. Every year a tree develops new ring that envelops all this is good and bad with in – and than expands upon it. McLaren’s view is that a Generous Orthodoxy inspires a spirituality that develops and embraces, and is in turn ready to be embraced again by another wider ring in due time.

Two challenges

Let me make a couple of comments about the type of spirituality that emerges from McLaren’s proposal. McLaren presents a wide range of subjects, and looks at these subjects from a wide range of perspectives. He affirms what to appears to him to be the real thing, and assembles a faith mosaic comprised of stones from many different directions.

Critics might argue that McLaren sees faith as a Smorgas board, where one can pick and choose as one likes. This might lead to custom-made spirituality (“choose the spirituality that best fits you!”), instead of a spirituality that is traditionally and historically developed, maintained and guarded. McLaren presents such a wide array of elements that one is almost forced to choose. Churchplanters already struggle in selecting the right values for their project, as there are so many good values to choose from, and so many ways to express them. Now churchplanters have an additional challenge: which elements of this proposed spirituality are they going to prioritize over others? Or is it possible to develop a community that actually pursues all that McLaren proposes?

The challenge of McLaren’s proposal is putting it into practice. Spirituality is, to a large degree, learned behavior. Changing external behaviors (introducing candles and substituting synthesizers for guitars) will be hard enough. But the real challenge in our communities is to change the heart behind it. McLaren will no doubt reap much criticism with his proposal – and chances are those who try to introduce his thinking will as well.

Rogier Bos
November 2004

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History and Spirituality

Keven Macnish

What, therefore, have we to do with questions of philosophy? He to whom the Eternal Word speaks is free from theorizing. Far from this Word are all things and of Him all things speak – the Beginning Who also speaks to us. Without this Word no man understands or judges aright. He to whom it becomes everything, who traces all things to it and who sees all things in it, may ease his heart and remain at peace with God.

Oh God, You Who are the truth, make me one with you in love everlasting. I am often wearied by the many things I hear and read, but in You is all that I long for. Let the learned be silent before You; You alone speak to me.

The more recollected a man is, and the more simple of heart he becomes, the easier he understands sublime things, for he receives the light of knowledge from above. The pure, simple and steadfast spirit is not distracted by many labours, for he does them all for the honour of God. And since he enjoys inner peace he seeks no selfish end in anything. What, indeed, gives more trouble and affliction than uncontrolled desires of the heart?

Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

This paper does not seek to answer the question, what does spirituality look like in an urban post-modern environment. To be honest, I have considered this for a long time and don’t have the first idea as to how to answer that question, and that is partly why I am here this weekend, to learn from you. Nor is it a tightly-argued philosophical tract – I have written too many of those over the last couple of years and felt like a break. What this paper does seek to address is one potential aspect of assessing how to determine the answer to the question.

In considering spirituality, I believe, it is important to keep it in the context of history. It is tempting in times of post-modern experimentation and in the spirit of seeking the new to reject history outright. Even the word “post-modern” suggests a rejection of that which has itself rejected the old, not in a reactionary fashion, but in a sense of moving even further beyond the new than the new itself.

Importance of History

Christianity today, indeed since the Reformation, is usually considered as a first-century faith, pursued in a contemporary manner. Nearly 2,000 years of history are ignored as we talk about an “ancient-future faith” (the name of a conference held in the UK last summer with Tony Campolo and Jackie Pullinger) or attempts to resurrect the first century church.

History, though, is more than a mere comparison of the “now” with the “then.” It is a continuum, in which there are clear developments as thoughts and theories are rejected, put into action, or carried to their logical conclusions by later theorists. An obvious example would be the relation of Marxism as spelled out in Das Kapital and that imposed on the Soviet Union for 75 years. The latter simply could not have preceded the former (were Marx to have had his way, it would not have succeeded it either, but that is a different story). Similarly, our understanding of astronomy can be seen to have developed from circular planetary orbits around the earth, to elliptical orbits around the sun, as better theories are discovered to account for weaknesses in their predecessors. Of course, there are anomalies, strokes of genius and luck, and unique characters throughout history. But even these were forced to react to the circumstances in which they found themselves, and were themselves the initiators of actions that would affect the lives and thoughts of those to come. In short, history tends to be a map of cause and effect relationships between people.

In this, Christianity is no different. The Bible is itself a history of man’s relationship with God, focussing on the Jewish nation, but just because the canon is now closed, it does not mean that God has ceased in His communications with people. As history has continued, so has the most important relationship, and so we ignore history at our peril. To assume that we can draw on what God has to say to us today solely by referring back to what He said to the disciples 2,000 years ago is at worst arrogant, at best cutting off our noses to spite our faces. We simply do not need to reject the history of Christianity in our understanding of the Lord’s guidance. To do so risks failing to understand why in many cases we believe what we believe, why and where we differ from other Christians, and why certain heresies are considered such. We also rob ourselves of the continuing story of God’s work with His people, where we fit into that story, and where we can learn from others.

Secondly, it is worth remembering that history is not simply a matter of progress. Not that I would for a moment want to endorse Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science with its inherent notion of incommensurability, still less apply it beyond its intended realm of the physical sciences, but it is true nonetheless that we are not always moving forwards. There may be times, periods of history, in which we stagnate or even regress, depending on which standpoint one takes. Personally, I believe that philosophy reached its zenith in the thirteenth century and has been on a downward slope ever since. Medicine, by comparison, has to my mind undoubtedly progressed such that we are now performing triple heart bypasses on a routine basis. Human nature, however, has as far as I can see remained pretty much constant since the dawn of history.

Thirdly, I do believe that those who don’t consider the past are condemned to repeat it. This is popularly noted in Hitler’s invasion of Russia coming undone through the long winter, as had been the case with Napoleon a hundred years earlier. It is also apparent in the course taken by most violent revolutions though (moderation followed by extreme response to the horrors that provoked the revolution, followed in turn by a dictatorship of sorts to bring order out of the chaos), and perhaps most obviously in our continued failure to trust a loving God in the same way as an entire nation doubted his benevolence following the exodus from Egypt.

Hence history is important and we run the risk of throwing a very mature baby out with the bathwater if we ignore it. To illustrate this, I want to consider two case studies. The first is a very broad overview of the history of philosophy from around 500BC to the present, while the second is a more focussed consideration of the role of the image of the desert in spirituality.

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Incarnational Spirituality: Taking Downward Mobility Seriously

On 29 September, 2004, the British Labour Party received a jolt. Bono (Paul Hewson) of U2 fame called upon the party to credibly bear the “weight of expectation,” and do something historic with the Prime Minister’s Africa Commission.[1] He urged them to replace verbal wrangling with money, lots of money, in response to the 6,500 Africans who are dying every day of treatable and preventable diseases. He called it not a cause, but an emergency. It was unnerving because it challenged a spirituality that “makes a fool of our idea of justice, mocks our pieties, doubts our concern and questions our commitment.” It is not about charity, he said, but justice.

The Journey Down

Introducing his own involvement in the plight of Africa, Bono rehearsed what he described as “a journey” that began in 1984 when he spent a month in Ethiopia. It culminated at an orphanage where a man handed him his baby and said, “Take him with you.” This father was desperate that his child have a chance of survival. It opened up an entirely new and different world to Bono.

In so many words, I think Bono is describing a journey down. The journey down is, in part, taking up and owning the reality of 6,500 Africans who die every day of measles and small pox, without even touching on the numbers who die of AIDS. It owns some sort of responsibility for the short-lived existence of people who “don’t have a pound a day to pay for the drugs that could save their lives.”

Bono’s speech jarred me as well, so I conducted an informal survey of twenty random individuals at Glasgow University whose only qualification was that they had watched the bulk of the Labour Party Conference on television. Six of these were students between the ages of 18 and 25. Eight of them were PhD students between the ages of 30 and 40. The remaining six were professors of one stripe or another. I asked them only one question. “What, if anything, made the biggest impact on you as you watched the conference?” Sixteen of them said the speech by Bono.

Why? It is a question that raises the specter of the spiritual. I think there is a type of spiritual resonance that occurs in the heart of people who care when they are subtly, or not so subtly challenged to embark on the journey down. The journey down invites people to willingly bear the weight of expectation by promoting a spirituality that takes the dreams of the marginalized seriously and offers them hope for the future. It is a joyful descent in order to identify with the least of these (Mt. 25:40), rather than pander to cultural hegemony. The invitation to step down gives notice to something latent. It may be universal in dimension. It harkens of spirituality nonetheless.

Cruciform Spirituality

Spiritual formation that genuinely entertains a model of downward mobility will necessarily fly in the face of a mentality that is more apt to envision the franchise potential of ardent faith in the interest of personal and corporate aggrandizement. This brand of faith development lauds ascendancy in ways that are so thoroughly utilitarian that it cannot help but ignore the faceless mass of the marginalized.[2] Ascendancy, after all, is the much more natural inclination of human nature regardless of latent resources that would lead in the opposite direction. Apart from some counteracting model, such resources remain in genuine, yet unproductive latency.

An alternative model is happily supplied in a Christian spirituality that is not apologetically, but rather deliberately and thoroughly Christocentric. As such, it promotes the paradoxical nature of the incarnation by insisting that the strength of God (especially as it points forward into the future) be demonstrated in the fully contradictory terms of weakness. Bruce Chilton, for example, considers this model to be inherent in any language of transcendence or immanence, contending that the incarnation (inclusive of the cross) displays divine action and presence “through weakness, humiliation, and renunciation of power.”[3] Forms of spirituality, therefore, that follow these contours necessarily assume a similar model of the rejection of manipulative power in the concordant interest of the powerless. It is a spirituality, in other words, that takes on a decidedly cruciform shape and thinking.

The specifically downward mode the cross invokes is blatantly in view in the well-known Pauline kenosis passage recorded in Philippians 2:5-11. The capacity for broad application is surely intended in the hymn’s sweeping introduction with the emphatic imperative, touto phroneite, “Have this frame of mind…in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” Moreover, the purpose of Paul’s inclusion of the hymn here goes far beyond a spirituality of niceness within interpersonal relationships (as some have suggested with reference to 2:3[4]) but has the much grander goal of proposing that the very identity of God can only be detected commensurate with the self-abnegation of Jesus.[5] In Richard Bauckham’s terms, therefore, we are talking about a frame of mind and a form of life predicated upon the implications of God Crucified, who is (by virtue of the cross and proceeding out of the incarnation generally) “the God of the lowly and the humiliated, the God who hears the cry of the oppressed, the God who raises the poor from the dust.” It is this God who “dwells in the depths, not only with but as the lowest of the low.”[6]

In a sociological sense, I am advocating a way of living that does not shrink from contradicting the common proclivity towards ascendancy and its concurrent disdain for the radical demands of dwelling with and as the lowest. In essence, it entertains the life-situated reality of what Barbara Babcock understands as symbolic inversion, defined as “any act of expressive behavior which inverts, contradicts, abrogates, or in some fashion presents an alternative to commonly held cultural codes, values, and norms be they linguistic, literary or artistic, religious, or social and political.”[7] Intrinsic to inversion of this kind is the dialectic of power and weakness which is theologically grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The inversion inherent in the cross (see 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 and 13:10), therefore, negates acceptable standards of evaluation (for Paul, Greco-Roman values) and insists on the transcendent value of love in action.

Furthermore, the inversion we see in the cross of Christ must obviously move away from the merely symbolic and into the realm of transformative power that has the capacity to foster a spirituality that displays (active) incarnational love.[8] It is in this context that Paul’s preoccupation with “the word of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1:18) is primarily aimed at those who are more susceptible to modes of ascendancy. Gerald Hawthorne rightly asserts that Paul’s approach in the Corinthian correspondence is essentially a reinterpretation of Old Testament texts (specifically, Isaiah 43:3-23 and 52:13-53:12) in order to advance an ethic of incarnational service on the Corinthian congregation.[9]

Rather than incidental, the contextual background of the Corinthian correspondence, in fact, proves to be highly significant when considering how the word of the cross informs spiritually determined behavior. Graham Tomlin, for one, argues convincingly that the “some” (tines) referenced by Paul at significant points throughout the letters make up only one faction of those who oppose him and, more importantly, can be characterized as nouveaux riches whose chief ambition is to rise to the top of the social pile.[10] Such a reading only adds to the starkness of the contrasts invoked by Paul in 1 Corinthians 4:8 (and also in 4:10), which serve to highlight an unhealthy attraction to satiety (kuros), wealth (ploutos) and power (basileus). It is indicative of an elitism predicated upon superior status.[11] Marshall likewise concludes that this terminology is couched in the rhetoric of status against which the apostle deliberately accentuates his own social inferiority.[12]

The logical question, of course, is what the word of the cross was intended to communicate in this context? In contrast to an elitist spirituality displayed in satiety, wealth and power, Paul offers the inversion of contradiction by confidently exhorting a spirituality premised on imitating him (4:16) because his “ways” are “in Christ,” wholly cruciform in shape and thought and action (1:17-18). Thus, Bauckham concludes that this is a healthy example of the apostle’s deliberate conformity to a movement of identification with the least, rejecting the image of the eminent traveling philosopher and refusing to pander to the wealthy.[13] The word of the cross projects a reversal into the midst of social clamoring, “turning the prevailing notions of weakness and power, and honour and shame upside down.”[14] The implications of this kind of inversion for a broader social context are noted by Stephen Barton who contends that the cross, then, becomes “a potent symbol for community formation” as it inspires “a basis for individual and communal identity…quite at odds with contemporary social classification.”[15]

Any serious approach to spirituality, therefore, that attempts conformity with what might be described as cruciform ought to be grounded in truly incarnational realities as displayed in vulnerability and weakness. It is, however, contradictory weakness that has the power to be provocative and creative and transformative.[16] It is an ongoing expression of what Tomlin refers to as theologia crucis that “presents an alternative understanding of power by grounding it in an understanding of God as one whose character and economy are revealed in the scandalous choice of the Christ crucified as the means of salvation.”[17] It is paradigmatic not only for Paul, but for all who are followers of the way of Jesus.

Responding to the Collapse of Self in Postmodernity

Ludwig Feuerbach (1967) took the Christian community to task by raising the objective question, “What distinguishes the Christian from other honourable people?” His answer was a harsh though honest indictment. “At most a pious face and parted hair.”[18] Behind it is the failure of the Church to adequately account for and respond to the rise of a culture benighted by suspicion and characterized by the casting aside of Enlightenment categories. A spirituality of surface piety simply does not have the resources, let alone the authenticity to interact with a culture in which the self is increasingly distrustful of any form of hierarchical order.

The self of postmodernity, both individual and corporate, as a genuine agent of decision and hopeful destiny, feels preempted by management theorists, economists, political agendas and religious programs. It is utterly suspicious of anything, in other words, that requires it to function as a performer in pre-determined roles. The result has been a collapse into what Thiselton refers to as an “imposed functionalism” that is inbred in social and symbolic systems.[19] In personal terms, what it leaves in its wake is fragmentation, indeterminacy, and whole scale and overt suspicion of any forms of totalizing discourse.[20]

Unfortunately, rather than interacting with and appropriately responding to a questioning and critical culture, Christian thought has historically contributed to the sense of collapsed selfhood by erroneously encouraging the disembodied self. In so doing, it blindly bought into Greek ideals of dualism that gave a disparaging look at organic existence and thus was disdainful of human delights, drives, needs and capacities.[21] This is all the more unfortunate as it ignored the plea of Barth that true selfhood is derived from being addressed by the creator, so that “our life as Christians is our life as organic constituents of the crust of this planet.”[22]

In the absence of an alternative agenda, the postmodern self has stumbled headlong into a fray that is epitomized by severe disconnectedness and a slew of uncomely social consequences. Foremost among these is the total repudiation of truth claims (seeing them as having become absorbed into both structures and spheres of power), to the point that healthy argument and reasonable reason have likewise collapsed into a rhetoric of force.[23] The dominant tone of dialogue in this context deteriorates into persuasive technique and, more heinously, coercive pressure. Alasdair MacIntyre rightly reminds us that the measurement of not only the rational, but the moral as well is only effective in the context of some commonly held tradition. Apart from it, accusation and blame and ultimately conflict ensue.[24]

I am endeavoring to promote an approach to Christian spirituality that is adequately equipped to offer a socially effective (formidable, in the right sense of the word) alternative. What might be the outcome if communities of faith were empowered to energize spirituality to such a degree that a rhetoric of force were countered with demonstrations of service? If, for example, communities of faith were peopled with many who not only articulate but also pursue downward mobility, could they not renew the current self, now in evident collapse? Could rhetorical jousting be replaced with renewed life in a fashion that satisfies those who legitimately question the postmodern hunger for diversity, plurality, and freedom from totalizing narratives (all concerns only viable to those with measurable levels of leisure and luxury) while disproportionate numbers of human beings struggle for daily survival?[25] The collapsed self, as Moltmann reminds us, in terms of actual human suffering, is neither modern, nor post-modern, nor ultra-modern, but simply a “protest against the surface progress of civilization.”[26]

It is all the more urgent given the urban context that has become the cauldron of postmodern insecurities. Recent statistics suggest that eighty per cent of the population of Western Europe is now unquestionably urban.[27] City sprawl of this magnitude raises questions of self-identity and social standing that could potentially lie dormant in other more pastoral settings. In the concentrated confines that defines city as city, however, the lament that generates them cannot be muffled. They are questions prompted by the unique problems associated with international blending, as well as the stark and persistent reminders of economic disparity that make up the unofficial boundaries in any city. Faith communities in this context have the opportunity to live out what Orlando Costas calls “true communion” (demonstrable spirituality) in order to contravene various representations of self-incapacitating systems that are endemic in urban situations.[28] Among other things, it is an opportunity that requires the church to descend in order to be the church for the poor.[29]

It is, moreover, a context in which to laud hermeneutical suspiciousness rather than quarantine it. This is especially the case when suspect readings of texts (far from being benign) generally and generously produce panaceas and utopias that only exacerbate already existing social disparity. Arne Rasmussen, in fact, encourages a hermeneutic of distrust, particularly with regard to “ecclesial theological politics” which fail to meet the compelling needs of the city by limiting Spirit empowered social transformation to categories that are largely passive.[30] A vision of broad transformation in urban affairs evolves only under the auspices of the captivating Spirit whose goal is always emancipation (2 Corinthians 3:17), especially as it might relate to social constructions that demonstrate the presence of God and the freeing of the communal imagination to envision it.[31]

Spirituality as Eschatological Practice

The capacity of the Holy Spirit to captivate and invigorate a communal imagination has clear eschatological implications. It is only the empowering work of the Spirit that enables the altering of perceptual conceptions of what is fully possible (future) in present actuality. Amos Wilder refers to this as a theopoetic that involves a spiritual battle for the hearts and wills of people via the imagination.[32] The emancipation of imaginative power is best located in the context of Christian eschatology where the “inventive imagination of love” serves as an anticipation of all the possibilities of God’s open future in such a way that it can transform the present.[33] It is dependant, in other words, on the Spirit’s role in stimulating a creative imagination in order to envision alternative (downwardly mobile) ways of participating in the world with a clear picture of the future in view. Trevor Hart thereby concludes, “Imagination is thus a vital category in eschatology as in theology more generally.[34]

We must not forget, however, that the goal of Spirit-released creativity includes and highlights real living (spirituality) in terms of God’s vision of the way things will be. Bauckham explains it as the “concrete, day-to-day world seen in heavenly and eschatological perspective.”[35] It is a perspective fully capable of impacting the entirety of the Christian experience, including notions of conversion and rebirth.[36] But its objective is to invoke a spirituality that anticipates, demonstrates and projects the future into the present. Hart’s metaphor of musical modulation is a helpful one in this regard. Modulation is a simple technique that involves using a chord belonging to an old key, but in such a unique way that it anticipates the eventual arrival of a new one. In the process, it completely transforms the present melodic moment, but always with a view to pointing ahead of itself to the new which is soon to be heard.[37]

Eschatology so embraced contributes to the notion of inversion by contradicting the baser elements of the present world which corrupt all that is meant to bear the image of God. Spirituality, likewise, has the potential to embrace the contradiction of corruption when it is motivated (at least in part) by the tension that is generated by the call of God to live in the here-and-now shaped by the power of God’s future actively at work in communal settings.[38] As such, it becomes incarnational as it portrays the life of God and preserves His image in the present world. It is a spirituality that is fully aware of present corruption, but stands in contradiction to it, inspired by the God of promise.

In this sense, then, the potency of truly Christian eschatology is measured by its ability to erupt in and energize social practice that is genuinely transformative. Among other things, it ought to generate what Yoder refers to as “a posteriori political practice” which lends social activism its sincerely evangelical eschatological significance.[39] Furthermore, an eschatological vision adds impetus to a spirituality of transformative social practice by highlighting the importance of temporal plot in such a way that the promised future is always in view.[40] The Christian story, after all, is one that promises a definite and exhilarating conclusion.

How the Story Winds Down

Narrative-theory has, indeed, reinforced the centrality of plot in any storyline that is worth the read. The question that is now up for grabs, however, is which story is being developed and which storyline should we follow? Postmodernity’s disdain for any sort of meta-narrative cannot be swept under the carpet, but must be contended with and explored for reasons why. In his discussion of “white myth,” for example, Jacques Derrida echoes Nietzsche in viewing metaphor (evidence of a creative storyline) as generally concealing values and power-bids under the guise of promoting truth-claims.[41] When religious narratives play into bids for power, they limit the scenario to only winners and losers and are justifiably suspect. On the other hand, perhaps it is appropriate (while happily conceding revulsion toward will-to-power episodes) to question whether there is not a healthier and more exciting storyline available.

When, in fact, the narrative is theologically credible it alludes to a storyline that is profoundly and distinctively different. Moltmann suggests that it “is grounded not in the will to dominate, but in love to the future of things” and engaged in a process that calls forth “practical movement and change.”[42] I am contending that in order for movement to genuinely assume practicality, and in order for love to replace the domination of the will, downward mobility must be seriously considered as the general direction our storyline takes. By its nature, I suggest, spirituality that demonstrates itself in descending rather than ascending modes always honors localized stories even in the midst of a new creation metanarrative that cannot (biblically) be surrendered.

The storyline I am suggesting explicates a critical directional theme Bauckham considers essential to the broader theological story that he refers to as “to all by way of the least.” It is a good news story that “engages with the injustices of the world on its way to the kingdom of God. This means that as well as the outward movement of the church’s mission in geographical extension and numerical increase, there must also be this (in the Bible’s imagery) downward movement of solidarity with the people at the bottom of the social scale of importance and wealth. It is to these – the poorest, those with no power or influence, the wretched, the neglected – to whom God has given priority in the kingdom, not only for their own sake, but also for the rest of us who can enter the kingdom only alongside them.”[43]

Among other things, taking this downward direction as we follow the narrative flow of the story allows us to answer the question, “How can the rich be saved?” It is a pertinent question given the priorities of the Bible in general, to say nothing of the warnings of Jesus in particular. As Bauckham contends, it is only as they come alongside the poor and the marginalized. After all, the personalized stories of the rich are worthy (perhaps we should say they have the potential to be worthy) as well. How? Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-10) is their (our) model of conversion and ensuing spirituality, not by reason of his stature, but by virtue of his wealth. Jesus declares that he must (dei) stay at the home of this overly prosperous tax collector. This Christological “must” is the only hope of the rich. It means their story has a future. Jesus does stay with him and the aftermath is radical. Zaccheus immediately offers half of his possessions to the poor and whomever he has defrauded he offers to pay back four times over. What is Jesus’ evaluation? “Today, salvation has come to this house.”

At the heart of the Zaccheus account is a hermeneutic of justice that must inform true spirituality and is especially provocative for those in positions of privilege. Similarly, James 1:27 suggests that visiting widows and orphans is indicative of pure religion. The prophet Amos (5:21-24) declares that worship is no more than noise if it does not solicit a flood of justice. The eschatological Christ (Matthew 25:31-46) metes out judgment based on what has been done to the least of these and avows that in so doing true homage has been rendered to him. And Isaiah (58:6-8) calls for fasting (spiritual fervor) that produces freedom for the oppressed and food for the hungry and homes for the poor.[44] Beyond this, as Wolterstorff contends, a biblical understanding of justice is not limited to a basic sense of rights, but is intended to insure the “enjoyment” of shalom (completeness) and so requires an ethical community that freely acknowledges God’s priority for those who have been relegated to the margins, whether economically, socially, racially or culturally.[45] Behind it is a hermeneutic that understands the world itself as sacrament.[46]

And yet, there is more to the story. Given the overarching biblical narrative that looks forward to and anticipates the creating of all things new (Revelation 21:5), there is a sense in which the paradoxical becomes reality, inversion itself is inverted, and so down is up. As the story winds down, in other words, it is really only winding up.

The rectifying of inversion is certainly in view in texts that generally laud paradox: James 4:10, “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and He will exalt you;” 1 Peter 5:6, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time;” 2 Corinthians 12:10, “…when I am weak, then I am strong;” and Matthew 10:39, “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” The journey down, therefore, is not pessimistic, but joyful because we are moving toward the renewal of all things when inversion is no longer necessary and every paradox has proven itself true. Likewise, as inversion comes full circle, either side of paradox is equally valid so that we can credibly maintain that the way up is also the way down. Then, as Walter Wink rightly asserts, the real issues that infringe upon communal spirituality are not so much epistemological as they are ethical.[47]

Furthermore, inversion come full circle makes room for the rich when their resources are deployed in the interest of justice for the marginalized who are often at their very doorsteps.[48] Saint Paul, after all, does not decry money itself (1 Timothy 6:10), but improper attachments to it. Pragmatic compassion must be resourced, and people of privilege are critically situated to provide for it. Healthy eschatological practice, therefore, requires of the rich a loose attachment to their wealth for the sake of a piety that entertains a hermeneutic of justice as much as anything else.

Story and journey are but two metaphors for a potentially engaging spirituality. The one suggests plot developing toward conclusion. The other prescribes movement in a descending direction. But each of them begs the question as to whether or not missional communities (in the interest of mission) can afford to aspire to anything less than a spirituality of inclusiveness for all by the way of the least. Apart from this, evangelical attempts at “postmodern ministry” will continue to foster elitism and cater to middle and upper classes who are already upwardly mobile, educated, detached and white. We will continue to populate faith communities with people who can afford to argue over the mere aesthetics of spirituality. Mission itself will suffer for it.

I am urging, on the other hand, that Spirit-captivated imagination can paradoxically empower us toward a spirituality that propels us in an entirely different direction. I think it has the capacity to re-engage the shrunken self of postmodernity by replacing a rhetoric of force with demonstrations of service. It is also invigorated by a clear vision of the promised future that puts eschatology into social practice with transformative goals. And, fundamentally, it is spirituality that is cruciform in thought and behavior and attitude. Thus, it beacons us in an inverted way to deliberately aspire to downward mobility which is above all incarnational. And mission will be the beneficiary as we live in the storyline of God, for all by way of the least.

Wesley White
Scottish Universities Theological Forum

 

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[1] For the complete text of Bono’s speech, go to www.labour.org.uk/ac2004news?ux_news_id=ac04bono.

[2] For examples of this, see John Drane, The McDonaldization of the Church: Spirituality, Creativity, and the Future of the Church (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000), 89-95. Drane suggests that a biblically robust spiritual development will, on the contrary, challenge utilitarianism on all fronts. Stuart Murray denotes the same inclination towards utilitarian interests in terms of the current phenomena of pax Americana which is suspiciously similar to the pax Romana that so engulfed the mindset of the New Testament era. See his, Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2004), 287.

[3] See, Bruce D. Chilton, God in Strength: Jesus’ Announcement of the Kingdom (Freistadt: Plochl, 1979), 98.

[4] See, Toward Moral and Religious Maturity, ed. James Fowler (New York: Silver Burdett Co., 1980), 60-61. Fowler argues for an approach to constitutive-knowing of others in a social context that focuses on the identity of worth of another, appreciates how this can be religiously maximized by passages like Philippians 2:3, and produces nice relationships in which all are worthy.

[5] That the identity of God is critically in view in the kenosis hymn is readily apparent when we note its insistence on Jesus’ equality with God. N.T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), 58-66, reminds us that there is no question as to Christ’s equality with God. The point of the apostle is simply His attitude towards it.

[6] Our identity with God’s identity, according to Bauckham, turns on Christ’s pouring out of himself, incarnationally, in living and in dying. “He did not understand his equality with God as a matter of being served by others,” he writes, “but as something he could express in service, obedience, self-renunciation and self-humiliation for others. Therefore he renounced the outward splendor of the heavenly court for the life of a human being on earth, one who lived his obedience to God in self-humiliation even to the point of the particularly shameful death by crucifixion, the death of a slave.” See, Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998), 57-77.

[7] See, Barbara Babcock, The Reversible World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 14.

[8] The notion that symbolic inversion is inadequate unless it is capable of propelling adherents into action that has a transformative effect is suggested by Alexandra Brown, The Cross and Human Transformation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 150-57. Brown’s concern rightly gives expression to some feminist’s fears that certain uncritical theologies of the cross merely perpetuate the acceptability of suffering and the justifying of injustice.

[9] See, Gerald F. Hawthorne, Tradition and Interpretation in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 195-215.

[10] In determining the demography of the Corinthian situation, too much weight can be attached to the description supplied in 1 Corinthians 1:26, which suggests that certainly some were considered wise, powerful, and noble, or at least wanted to be considered so. Tomlin, to his credit, is quick to recognize this. See, Graham Tomlin, The Power of the Cross: Theology and the Death of Christ in Paul, Luther and Pascal (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999), 41-46.

[11] Some have suggested that such terminology of elitism was part and parcel of a much more widely spread Greek hybristic tradition in which excessive behavior along this order was valued. See, S. Pogolov, Logos and Sophos: The Rhetorical Situation of 1 Corinthians (SBLDS; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 228-30.

[12] See, Peter Marshall, Enmity in Corinth: Social Conventions in Paul’s Relations with the Corinthians (Tubingen: Mohr, 1987), 210. Further corroboration of the validity of Marshall’s conclusions is to be had in B. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981), 25-35, wherein attention is drawn to the importance of honor and shame in the Mediterranean world. Pickett argues against any eschatological approach to 1 Corinthians 4:8, in favor of a purely sociological one that suggests a situation in which certain factions were intent upon clamoring up the social ladder. See, Raymond Pickett, The Cross in Corinth: The Social Significance of the Death of Jesus (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 45, 181-82.

[13] See, Richard Bauckham, Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003), 52-53. Bauckham suggests that “the powerful people and the upwardly mobile people had to take Paul as they found him, just as they had to take the crucified Christ as God’s radical contradiction of their values.”

[14] Pickett, The Cross in Corinth, 211.

[15] Symbolic behavior, as it relates to Paul’s focus on the word of the cross in the Corinthian letters, is legitimated by the Christ who was “crucified in weakness” (1 Corinthians 13:4). See, Stephen Barton, “Paul and the Cross: A Sociological Approach”, Theology 85 (1982), 17. Paul’s call for mimesis (4:16) is seen contrarily by Elizabeth Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), 129, as simply imposing repressive hierarchical models of power. This analysis, however, fails due to lack of contextual astuteness.

[16] This is precisely what John Howard Yoder understood as “evangelical” social practice. It is a mode of spirituality that communicates news, and it is news that is attested to be good. Yoder describes it as adhering to the primordial way that has the power to “transform culture.” See, John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 373.

[17] Tomlin, The Power of the Cross, 100.

[18] Ludwig Feuerbach, ‘Epigrams’, in Thoughts on Death and Immortality (Eng. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1980), 214, 205. Feuerbach argued that theism invariably reduces the humanness of humanity by allowing it an easy route to escapism.

[19] See, Anthony C. Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), 122.

[20] The reaction to these developments, according to David Harvey, has been an inordinate preoccupation with self-protection, self-interest, and desire for power and the recovery of control. These are fostered by a sense of loss of stability, loss of identity, and complete loss of confidence in whatever purports to be norms of a global scale. See, David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 2^nd edn., 1989), 101.

[21] For a very helpful review of this sad history, see Nancey Murphy, ‘Emodied Selfhood’, in James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Witness: Systematic Theology, vol.3 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), 124. Murphy also offers a more appropriate response by suggesting a healthy Darwinism and the insightful findings in the advances in Neuroscience.

[22] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III, Trans. G.W. Bromiley et al (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark), 42.2.

[23] Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self, 134.

[24] See, Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (London: Duckworth, 1990), 57. MacIntyre is cautioning as to the dangers inherent in sociality when only internal criteria are turned to when addressing moral sensibilities. When such is the design, it is always the underprivileged who pay the price for postmodern disconnectedness.

[25] Moltmann is a case in point. In his estimation, the preference for the local over the global aspires well, but still ends up with free market uniformity that caters to “Coca Cola-ized” and “Macdonald-ized” stories. Talk of pluralism, he suggests, is obscene when diversity is, in reality, an expression of the extremely diversified existences of the rich and poor. See, Jurgen Moltmann, ‘Can Christian Eschatology Become Post-Modern?’, in God Will Be All In All: The Eschatology of Jurgen Moltmann ed. Richard Bauckham (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 263.

[26] Moltmann, God Will Be All In All, 261.

[27] See, Robert Calvert, City Snaps: Pastoral Resources from Isaiah (Edinburgh: Saint Andrews Press, 2003), 19.

[28] At stake is the credibility of the message of love. Demonstrable spirituality, according to Costas, must provide communal models that give visibility to the real possibility of social relations that do not conform to classist, racist, or sexist divisions. They are able to construct a “vision of a far better future.” See, Orlando Costas, Liberating News: A Theology of Contextual Evangelization (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 139-40.

[29] A priority for the poor specifically and the marginalized generally cannot be overlooked in the Bible. Karl Barth, ‘The Christian Community and the Civil Community’, in Against the Stream (London: S.C.M Press, 1934), 36, suggests the ecclesiological implications of this with typical lack of restraint. “The church is witness of the fact that the Son of God came to seek and save the lost. And this implies that, casting all false impartiality aside, the church must concentrate first on the lower and lowest levels of human society. The poor, the socially and economically weak and threatened, will always be the object of its primary and particular concern.”

[30] Rasmussen has in view an inadequate praxis that is made so by restrictive rather than interactive and radical piety. Because of it, the marginalized remain marginalized, only more so because of stricter and more defined alienation. The backdrop to his thought is the revolutionary notion that Spirit empowerment must be socially provocative if it is to be understood as spiritual at all. See, Arne Rasmussen, The Church as Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as Exemplified by Jurgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 375-82.

[31] The congruence of significant transformation, social and personal, with particular pneumatological nuances is a major contribution of Moltmann, It effectually locates the power of the future in the present via the Spirit of the resurrection, and as such is nothing less than a paradigmatic anticipation of the new creation within the old. See, Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation Tr. M. Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1992), 153.

[32] See, Amos Wilder, Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 122. Such a notion must be seen in contrast to the purely sociological approach of, for example, George Steiner, who referred to “axiomatic fictions” in which language serves to energize our living towards tomorrow. In the sense that Steiner conceives it, a hopeful reality is simply a social, linguistic construct. See, George Steiner, After Babel (2^nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 167.

[33] See, Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implications of Christian Eschatology Tr. J.W. Leitch (London: SCM Press, 1967), 34-35.

[34] See, Trevor Hart, ‘Imagination for the Kingdom of God? Hope, Promise, and the Transformative Power of an Imagined Future’, in God Will Be All In All: The Eschatology of Jurgen Moltmann ed. Richard Bauckham (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 75. Eldin Villafane, A Prayer for the City: Further Reflections on Urban Ministry (Austin, TX: AETH, 2001), 18, likewise contends for the liberating Spirit’s (italics mine) desire to free from all enslavement. This is distinct from Freedom/Liberation as defined by liberal and enlightenment heritage, but as Biblical promise.

[35] See, Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 8. Here, of course, Bauckham’s point is how an eschatological perspective serves to counter the imperialistic program of Rome which was the contextual framework of John’s revelation.

[36] Moltmann contends that the eschatological notion of the future made present is radically demonstrated in the Christian experience of conversion and rebirth, for “mere interruption just disturbs; conversion creates new life.” See, Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology Tr. M. Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1996), 22.

[37] See, Trevor Hart, ‘Imagination for the Kingdom of God?’, 73-74.

[38] For a more detailed explanation of the concept of contradiction of corruption, see Trevor Hart, Faith Thinking: Dynamics of Christian Theology (Gospel and Culture) (London: SPCK, 1995), 107. Hart’s idea of contradiction of corruption resounds with echoes of Moltmann’s theological approach in which the present “stands in contradiction” with what God has promised. See, Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 103.

[39] Spirituality is in view here, as well, as Yoder uses posteriori in reference to the political impact of Jesus and those who follow the way of Jesus. Adherence to the way of Jesus defines what it means to be evangelical. See, John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 360.

[40] The idea of “temporal plot” borrows from recent innovations in narrative-theory. For a fuller examination of these innovations, see Mark Stibbe (ed.), The Gospel of John as Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 156. The critical nature of temporal plot is likewise argued by Pannenberg. See, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology (London: SCM, 1970) vol.I, 96-136.

[41] Cited in Anthony C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 141. Renewed attention to will-to-power themes is evident throughout the sensibilities of the mosaic generation, and they are justified in treating harbingers of it as suspect.

[42] Without resorting to the vernacular of narrative-theory, Moltmann nonetheless offers theological concepts that can only contribute to a compelling story as they “do not limp after reality”…”but they illuminate reality by displaying its future.” See, Theology of Hope, 36.

[43] All of the critical lines in the biblical story, according to Bauckham, are assumed under the broad directional focus of moving from the one to the many. This approach, he suggests, allows us to read the narrative holistically without sacrificing commitment to the metanarrative. See, Richard Bauckham, Bible and Mission in a Postmodern World (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003), 49-54. R. Fung suggests that the biblical emphasis on the least of these calls the church to a “spirituality of involvement.” See, Raymond Fung, The Isaiah Vision: An Ecumenical Strategy for Congregational Evangelism (New York: WCC Press, 1992), 48.

[44] Brueggemann understands Isaiah 58 to be promoting a spirituality marked by lowered standards of living so that the needs of the underprivileged might be met. See, Walter Brueggemann, Using God’s Resources Wisely: Isaiah and Urban Possibility (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1993), 67.

[45] Shalom primarily has to do with completeness in relation to God, self , others, and nature. See, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 69-71. God’s siding with the poor is intoned in the now-famous statement of Barth: “…God always takes His stand unconditionally and passionately on this side and on this side alone: against the lofty and on behalf of the lowly; against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied and deprived of it.” See, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics Tr. T.H.L. Parker et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1955), vol.2, 1:386. Similarly, Julio de Santo Ana, Towards a Church of the Poor (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981, 3: “In a world of scarcity in which everyone is in want, poverty would be a common challenge to everybody. But in a world of abundance in which many people are poor in order that a few others stay rich, poverty – or better, wealth – is an infamy. Where the rich refuse to give up their privileges and share their plenty, their situation asks for reproach.”

[46] The world in a sacramental sense is more common in the Eastern approach to orthodoxy. It is helpful when considering what is an appropriate response to the needs of the world. Schememann suggests that under the weight of this sacramental view an informed spirituality is not optional but ineluctable. See, Alexander Schememanne, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 118.

[47] For example, Wink suggests that in dealing with the powers in control, we are invited into a “journey toward spiritual awareness” enacting that “the way up is the way down” in ethical dimensions. See, Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 143-45.

[48] For example, New Haven, Connecticut, in the American context, though situated amidst the Ivy League class of Yale University, is now the fourth-poorest city in the United States. As far back as 1990, poverty rates ran as high 40 and 50 percent. William Finnegan suggests that relational supports suffer the heaviest toll in the wake of this kind of social breakdown. “There’s more to downward mobility than decreased purchasing power. No dollar figure can be placed on the loss to individual members when a community declines, or a family breaks up, or a closely knit village must be left behind.” Because of relational loss of this magnitude, entire neighborhoods fall prey to “the profusion of quasi-tribal arrangements generically known as gangs.” See, William Finnegan, Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country (New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1998), xxii-xxiii.

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The Gift of Spiritual Friendship

A Story to Set the Stage

The life streams of Bill, Albert and Derek have once again converged on this dreary Monday evening. The three leaders have gathered to connect and share their experiences of God’s presence and activity over the previous week. After a round of lighthearted jabs at Albert (Al, for short) over the results of the U.S. presidential election, Derek suddenly shifts the mood to a more serious note. He is visibly troubled. He takes the initiative and shares that earlier in the week he has had a serious run-in with his boss over the re-assigning of a colleague to a different departmental team (on the grounds that the colleague is “ill-suited to the challenge at hand”). Derek is still reeling from what he perceives as a hasty, slap-in-the-face decision handed down to one of their team’s most respected participants.

As Bill and Al listen to Derek’s emotional recounting of this incident, Bill proposes that the three pause and pray. “Let’s invite God’s presence into this evening”, Bill urges in earnest. “I sense that Jesus may not only want to unburden Derek, but may well want to minister to us all in some special ways tonight.” After a refreshing dose of silence before the Lord and a heartfelt prayer for the Spirit to guide their time together, Bill invites Derek to be the first “speaker” for the evening. He also suggests that he himself assume the role of “listener”, while Al takes on the role of “observer.” The three know the routine well and settle into those postures without hesitation. Bill opens this “attending exercise” by inviting Derek to tell a little bit more about his journey this past week. For nearly twenty minutes Derek unfolds the story of his tense interaction with his boss, with Bill occasionally interjecting poignant questions. Derek’s pained facial expressions betray his ongoing agitation over this incident. Bill’s probing questions help Derek to explore his reactions to his boss. They also help him to get in touch with what Christ may be speaking to him through this conflict.

As Derek processes his week aloud, he notes in himself something he has not seen earlier (even though he has already gained some insight through reflectively journaling that heated exchange with his boss). Thanks to a well-placed question by Bill, Derek begins to see that he is highly critical of his boss and overly sensitive to his fast-moving leadership style. Derek seems surprised to note that he has indeed reacted out of some unresolved hurt in his own life. This hurt he realizes is related to a painful incident in his previous job, when he felt misunderstood by his boss and hastily “relieved” from an important project. Derek sees that he has been unfairly projecting his own experience into this recent conflict, and in turn has been drawing some harsh conclusions about his boss’s motives and “reckless” decision-making pattern.

After a fifteen minute barrage of reflective processing about his week, Derek has become more self-aware and less burdened emotionally. He notes God putting His finger on the critical spirit he tends to exhibit when relating to his boss. He sees that he has been moving in mistrust, rather than honestly seeking to assist and under-gird his boss’s decision-making. Al closes this round of the attending exercise by sharing his own perceptions of what he senses God may have been doing or saying in the unfolding of Derek’s story this evening.

This sort of exchange is repeated for the next 40 minutes. Bill and Al each take on the role of the speaker for a 20 minute segment, with the other two men rotating in the roles of listener and observer. Like Derek, both men also find useful gleanings from this communal attempt at discerning God’s presence and activity in their lives over the previous week. The three men end the evening together by taking time to pray over some of the issues which have arisen through their interaction. After some more last-minute jabs at Al for voting for George Bush, the three close the evening over good beer and cheap-imitation Cuban cigars. They rejoice once again over their decision to journey together as spiritual friends.

From Simple Friendship to “Spiritual Friendship”

The longing for relational connectedness in community is often heralded as the single greatest heart-cry of the emerging culture of Europe and North America. But any “communing” of souls eventually falls short in its capacity to positively change us unless the Spirit of God is actively and collectively sought as the most highly-desired Party. When that hunger and expectancy for God to “show up” or “move” is present among a gathering of Christians, large or small, the Spirit’s presence and activity is often experienced in dynamic, life-changing ways.

While I believe the above to be true, I am also convinced that we in the Body of Christ often overlook one of the most consistently powerful expressions of Spirit-enlivened community - the realm of Christ-centered friendships. Here, the power of the Spirit is often released in great measure to effect deeper joy and transformation in our lives. I am not referring here to a friendship defined by a simple sharing of common interests; I am talking about a special wedding of hearts, where two or more people covenant together to foster each other’s spiritual development (i.e. awareness of and response to God’s presence and work in their lives). This covenanting for growth aspect makes these relationships more than simple friendships; they are “spiritual friendships”, representing another class of relationships altogether. In our opening story, Derek, Bill and Al had in their relationship entered this realm of transformative friendship.

(Okay, male readers, if my opening story felt a bit artificial to you, I invite you not to run away from possibility-thinking here. Dr. Hud McWilliams notes that being open and vulnerable is not natural to human beings – especially men. That means when men first come together and begin engaging in deep heart-to-heart sharing and accountability, it is not unusual for that interaction to feel somewhat artificial (initially). If most men are not used to that depth of personal or intimate relating, it’s not surprising that it might feel strange or awkward or somehow less than genuine. Dr. McWilliams contends that if men are willing to push through those early awkward feelings, they can find friendships that may prove deeper and more long-lasting than what they ever imagined possible).[1]

Just so we are clear about what is meant by a spiritual friendship, I offer a couple of brief definitions by two contemporary authors who have delved deep into the subject. Douglas Rumford, in Soul Shaping, defines a spiritual friendship as a Christ-centered, intentional relationship between at least two people, where these individuals focus on the nurture of each other’s spiritual life.[2] According to Rumford, this sort of friendship does not require one to be an expert, but simply to be spiritual peers who regularly come together and commit themselves to growing in Christ. David Benner, taking the lead from the spiritual writer, Margaret Guenther, adds more to this by defining spiritual friendship as “a gift of hospitality, presence and dialogue” given to another[3] Although he uses this in the context of a relationship between a spiritual director and the one he directing, Benner sees the aim or “task” of spiritual friends as helping the parties involved “discern the presence, will and leading of the Spirit of God.”[4]

In our day and age we tend to dilute our definition of significant friendship by making it hinge upon companionship and the simple holding of certain interests in common (e.g. similar hobbies, club allegiances, or business or social endeavors, etc.). Too often this is as far as two or more “friends” might ever choose to go together. It’s interesting that the ancients viewed friendship as the very crown of life. C.S. Lewis saw friendship as one of the four human loves, rich in its capacity to bring out the multi-faceted beauty of God in an intimate circle of relationship among “kindred souls”. So much is lost when we settle for the safety of “hang-out buddies” who never enter our souls, who never challenge us to grow, who never allow God’s glory to be reflected through genuine humility, sacrificial love and an enduring commitment to our well-being and growth.

The biblical storyline is replete with beautiful examples of what friendship can mean, the classic example being the relationship between David and Jonathan. That story begins in I Samuel 18:1 (NLT) with these words: “After David had finished talking with Saul, he met Jonathan, the king’s son. There was an immediate bond of love between them, and they became the best of friends.” Fourteen chapters later that story comes to a tragic end as Jonathan dies an honorable death at his father’s side. David laments the loss of his closest friend: “How I weep for you, my brother Jonathan! Oh, how much I loved you! And your love for me was deep, deeper than the love of women!” (II Samuel 1:26 - NLT). What a beautiful example of a deep relationship between two men, unobstructed by any impure or inferior desire like homosexuality, or any need to impress or manipulate another in order to meet one’s own needs.

In the Old Testament book of Ruth we find the account of another remarkable friendship - the relationship between Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi. When Ruth loses her husband, Naomi invites her to come back to her homeland and seek another husband. Ruth vows to sojourn with Naomi, and to follow her wherever she goes - even calling upon Yahweh to see that the two of them might one day be buried in the same place.

In the New Testament, the classic example of friendship is the relationship between Jesus and his disciples (and in that circle, we have yet another classic friendship in the relationship between Jesus and John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”). These friendships are significant, of course, because Jesus expresses God’s heart for being at the center of our human friendships. Just as God in Christ called his disciples to journey with him as friends, he calls us to the same and offers the assurance that he will never leave us alone. Friendships are able to reach their greatest potential when Christ is the bonding Agent.

On the Road toward Meaningful Spiritual Friendships

Both the Bible and history attest to the power and beauty of the unique bond of spiritual friendship. But how do we reconcile this vision for what friendship can be and the reality of a Church where deep, transformative relationships are the exception rather than the rule? How do we, particularly as this pertains to men, address the phenomenon of the “friendless male” so prevalent in Western society?

There’s no simple or satisfactory single answer to these questions. Probably the best starting point is for us is to recognize our God-given need for deep friendships. This requires us to combat Modernity’s prideful illusion of the self-sufficient individual. It requires us to humbly accept that our dependence on certain people (and they on us), for the sake of spiritual growth, is indeed a good thing. When we recognize our need for deep abiding friendships, and when we see how rich life can be with such relationships, we are prepared to receive those friends the Lord longs to give us. We ought to regularly pray and request such relationships as a pathway to joy and whole-life development.

As we pray and look to develop spiritual friendships, it is important that we come to understand some of the essential qualities required in us to be this sort of friend to another. One of the most renowned works on spiritual friendship, historically, is a little booklet called “Spiritual Friendship”, written by the monk, Aelred of Rievaulx in the twelfth century. Aelred devoted much of his life to developing, modeling and encouraging spiritual friendships. Here is his time-tested advice on the qualities needed in a spiritual friend:

There are four qualities which must be tested in a friend: loyalty, right intention, discretion and patience, that you may entrust yourself to him securely. The “right intention”, that he may expect nothing from your friendship except God and its natural good. “Discretion”, that he may understand what is to be done in behalf of a friend, what is to be sought from a friend, what sufferings are to be endured for his sake, upon what good deeds he is to be congratulated; and, since we think that a friend should sometimes be corrected, he must know for what faults this should be done, as well as the manner, time, and the place. Finally, “patience” that he may not grieve when rebuked, or despise or hate the one inflicting the rebuke, and that he may not be unwilling to bear every adversity for the sake of his friend.

There is nothing more praiseworthy in friendship than “loyalty”, which seems to be its nurse and guardian…A truly loyal friend sees nothing in his friend but his heart…loyalty is hidden in prosperity, but conspicuous in adversity. A friend is tested in necessity…Solomon says, ‘He that is a friend loves at all times, and a brother is proved in distress’.[5]

We can look for people exhibiting these qualities, AND we can work on becoming such people ourselves. It is important to realize that it takes time to test our relationships to see which ones might grow into spiritual friendships. Chemistry with another person is certainly a prime indicator of one who might well become a spiritual friend over time, but even that sense of kindred affinity must be tested.

Implicit in Aelred’s qualities above, and no doubt one of the most salient features of a spiritual friendship, is commitment. True spiritual friends exhibit a high degree of intentionality in their relationship. It is that higher commitment and focus that makes spiritual friendship different from many other friendships. Two or more people are meeting for the expressed purpose of giving attention to their spiritual development. This does not preclude companionship or non-directed “hang-out” time to simply enjoy one another’s presence or to engage in some mutually-pleasing activity or endeavor. But this relational connecting is supplemented by a greater priority of fostering each other’s spiritual development (which ultimately makes hanging out with each other all the more enjoyable!).

Some find it helpful to actually agree together on a basic covenant. This helps define the relationship, ensuring from the start a sense of common direction and seriousness about the relational commitment. In a book by Dorothy C. Devers, entitled Faithful Friendship, I found such a covenant beautifully framed:

A sample covenant of spiritual friendship

In accepting the challenge of the great enterprise [of spiritual friendship], our endeavor is three-fold:

1. We commit ourselves to enter into a more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ than we have ever before enjoyed.

All of life is relationship - relationship with God the Father through his son, Jesus Christ; relationship with self; relationship with others; relationship with material things; and relationship with events and circumstances. Relationship with God through Jesus Christ is the most important for it governs all other relationships. Therefore, we will endeavor to steep ourselves in meditation on Jesus Christ - we will endeavor to make such meditation a growing and strengthening habit, a habit which will ever be an essential part of life.

2. We purposely endeavor to become a faithful friend to one another depending on Jesus Christ who is a Faithful Friend to each of us.

In this endeavor we are being present to, praying for and with our friend; listening for and to him/her; discerning what he would say if he could articulate all he feels; comforting him; confronting him when confrontation is called for; requiring of him and giving to him accountability. Thus does one strengthen the other, help him to grow spiritually, pick him up when he falls down, support him, trust and encourage him, foster hope in him – and in turn is comforted, confronted and strengthened by the other. To be a faithful friend in this humble, helpful way is to give and to receive spiritual direction. We do what we can with what we have where we are in the moment – with the help of God.

3. Earnest endeavor to fulfill 1 and 2 above prepares us to live among all our associates – from the intimate members of our immediate family to the persons we meet only fleetingly – in a more and more affirmative manner, more and more in the Spirit of Christ. [6]

Devers notes that in staying true to the above covenant,

“We exchange autobiographies. We keep journals. We learn to listen - to listen in prayer, to listen to one another, practicing being truly ‘present’. We learn to grow through communicating with another. We are enabled to develop certain attributes - humility, trusting attitude, capacity to love. Our daily life is the laboratory where we test and practice what we have studied and pondered in our daily quiet time and in our times with our faithful friend.” [7]

Making This Very Practical

I have included in the following pages an appendix which has very practical advice on initiating and growing spiritual friendships, as well as a more thorough explanation of what spiritual friends generally “do” in their cultivating of friendship. Also included in this appendix are some guidelines for establishing a spiritual friendship triad, where three men or three women regularly meet to help one another become more attentive to the Spirit’s presence and work in their lives (i.e. engaging in an “attending exercise” similar to the one being practiced in the opening story of this paper). Finally, I have included some teaching on what spiritual friends actually do as part and parcel of their journey together. All of this practical material in the appendix has been composed by Pastor Brian Rice (Director of Leading Edge Ministries at Living Word Community Church in York, Pennsylvania), and it is used with his permission. I am grateful to Brian for allowing me to use his material.

Closing Comments

On the road to closing I think it is important to make a few qualifying comments about friendship in general, lest I be found over-valuing this particular kind of friendship. In this paper I am focusing on a special kind of friendship that has as its primary goal the nurture and development of our relationship with Christ. When friends aim to move together (intentionally) towards Christ, their lives cannot help but intersect at deeper and deeper levels. Like the spokes on a wagon wheel which grow increasingly closer as they approach the center hub, so it is with spiritual friends who together set their sights on moving toward Jesus.

While this “wagon-wheel” dynamic is observable in spiritual friendship, I do not want to suggest that normal, less-intentional, friendships are less “spiritual”. All friendships ought to be received as a gift from God. It is perhaps healthy to have common friendships (where we simply enjoy one another’s presence because of common background, ideas, values, interests, etc.) and friendships in which we covenant for one another’s growth in God (what I’m calling spiritual friendships). And, it is important to add that in given seasons we may not find spiritual friendship an appropriate or life-giving approach to growth in Christ. They might best be viewed like any spiritual practice or discipline that fosters intimacy with God. For certain seasons a given practice serves us, in others we do not find life in it. This may well be the case with spiritual friendships.

Now, on to my closing comments: I personally have found spiritual friendships to be among the most rewarding and enjoyable relationships I have experienced (few can outshine the relationships I enjoy with my wife and kids, but I have known certain friendships to be nearly on par with these). In the safety of authentic, Spirit-enlivened friendship I have been able to share my deepest joys and passions, along with my darkest secrets and sins. I have found not only great healing in my life through such relationships, but a seemingly bottomless pool of encouragement, wisdom and insight. From within the circle of spiritual friends, I have also found the motivation to consistently practice basic disciplines (e.g. journaling, spiritual reading, solitude, prayer). These help me attune my soul to the presence and activity of God, as well as enable me to weather those times of hardship and tragedy when God seems far away.

For all the reasons stated above and more, I am convinced that spiritual friendship is one of the most profound and powerful ways the Spirit of God communicates his presence and power to us as human beings. These relationships give us a taste of that circle-dance of intimacy enjoyed within the Trinity, which we will one day experience in its blazing glory. They are not easy to come by, nor can we produce them on demand. They are truly a gift of God given on occasion to hungry souls who keep asking and seeking.

Dan Steigerwald

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[1] These comments were gleaned from a private conversation with Dr. Hud McWilliams at the “Thinklings Gathering” for which this paper on spiritual friendship was prepared. Dr. McWilliams has been a licensed psychologist in Texas since 1975 and has been in private practice for 35 years. He also served for nine years as a professor of psychology at Texas Wesleyan University.
[2] Rumford, Douglas J., Soul Shaping (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1996).
[3] Benner, David G., Sacred Companions (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 46. Soul Friends show hospitality by making space in their lives for others. When we become people who are quiet and still inside, we are able to invite others to come and rest there. Soul hospitality is also a gift of safety.
[4] Ibid., 27.
[5] Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship (Trans. By Mary Eugenia Laker, Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1977), 105-106. Aelred used Cicero’s definition of friendship as a provisional working model: “Agreement on [all] matters human and divine, with charity and good will” where Aelred saw “good will” to mean a rational and voluntary choice to benefit someone, and by “charity” the enjoyment of our natural affection toward someone. Aelred dropped the “all” from Cicero’s definition. He also took friendship to a higher sphere by tying it into a relationship where God is seen as central.
[6] Devers, Dorothy C., Faithful Friendship (The Church of the Savior, Washington D.C.: Forward Movement Books, 1986), vii - viii.
[7] Ibid., vii.

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Towards a theology of public presence

This paper is largely drawn from a discussion of public presence on this website.

The contours of a metro-spirituality

People use the term ‘metro-sexuality’ to define the distinctive blend of sexual choices that are being made as part of an urban lifestyle. Analogous to that we see a distinctive blend of spiritual options emerging – if you like, a ‘metro-spirituality’. Metro-spirituality is not an exclusively Christian spirituality: it is simply the way of being ‘spiritual’ that becomes possible within a complex, creative, pluralistic, postmodern urban environment. But there must be a set of pathways – spiritual practices – that will take us out as followers of Jesus into that spiritual landscape and allow us to journey alongside others there.

I want first to set out in very general terms the sort of commitments that I think would shape an authentic and effective Christian engagement in a metro-spiritual culture.

Creational: we take our eschatological bearings not from the prospect of heaven and the abandonment of creation but from the conviction that God intends to renew creation; this will entail a commitment to justice, to personal and communal well-being, and so on.

Relational: we consistently prioritize relationships and relational values over institutional and organizational requirements.

Inclusive: metro-spirituality is cosmopolitan and eclectic. A clear sense of covenantal identity and missional purpose on the part of the community of believers should allow for a radical openness towards all others: the one must learn to merge with the other without losing itself.

Contextual: a metro-spirituality should be developed and applied locally, taking into account the immediate social and spiritual environment.

Integrative: we seek to integrate the various aspects of our personal and communal lives for the sake of integrity; with this goes a commitment to transparency and openness but also a willingness to articulate core spiritual and moral convictions.

Reflective: we would need to develop and encourage habits of reflection upon ourselves and upon our social context, particularly through formal and informal conversations.

Creative: creativity in all forms (not only artistic creativity) is at the core of an agenda that is aimed towards the renewal of creation.

Celebrative: in a metro-spirituality grace and gratitude show up as celebration. To quote Dwight Seletzky:

A person who is metro-spiritual enjoys people and parties in fact they feels just at home in a pub as in a church. Moreover, she or he discovers, enjoys, and even celebrates community wherever it is found. For a Christ follower who is metro-spiritual there is recognition that real community in some way reflects God’s three in oneness, so can be celebrated, embraced, and encouraged when it is found.

There is, however, a more fundamental commitment that needs to be made if these undertakings are to have any lasting value, which is simply to be there.

Being there

What I want to suggest is that at the heart of a missional metro-spirituality there should be something like a theology (more precisely a missiology) of ‘public presence’. For me this line of thought has developed over the last year less as a matter of abstract theological reflection than as a response to a practical necessity. We have been meeting each week in a local pub, and we’ve had to ask ourselves: What are we doing here? What’s the point of being here rather than somewhere else? In the last few weeks, with the departure of the Seletzkys and a couple of other frustrations, I have been forced to reassess the rationale behind what we are doing.

Behind this immediate practical concern are some more general questions about mission: On what basis can the church, which in many respects has found itself to be persona non grata in the brave, new post-Christian world, expect to reconnect with society, make friends again, win respect, gain a hearing? How should we exist, where do we position ourselves, what mode of being community should we adopt in order to be effective as the people of God in the world? And as we dig through these issues, we come to another layer: What do we mean by ‘salvation’? What is it for the world to be ‘blessed’ through us?

These are some preliminary thoughts…

1. We have tended to understand the metaphor of the church as ‘temple’ or ‘priesthood’ either as a statement about the community’s relation to God or as a figure for certain aspects of inward behaviour (worship, for example). But the temple was the place of God’s dwelling not for its own sake or for the sake of the priests, but for the benefit of those on the outside. If we accept Tom Wright’s dictum, ‘As Jesus to Israel, so the church to the world’, we are bound to regard the believing community as the dwelling place of the Spirit of God for the sake of those who are not part of the community.

2. A theology of public presence inverts the conventional missionary objective of getting unbelievers to be present in church. The operative principle is not invitation but infiltration – the word carries overtones of subversion that are not inappropriate, but it must be a subversion that aims to recreate, restore, heal, bless.

3. Whereas evangelistic activity has tended to be spasmodic (bursts of frantic and often fruitless zeal in the run-up to a mission or an alpha course), presence is slow, patient, continuous, persistent. Presence is a matter of taking up residence in the midst of the world; it is simply our way of being; it is a garden which we painstakingly and lovingly cultivate in the hope that understanding and trust will take root and grow there.

4. Presence is relational rather than programmatic; it is communal rather than institutional; it is conversational rather than presentational. The church, in attempting to engage with the world, has usually put on ‘events’ in the hope that they will generate relationships. This should be turned around: whatever events we put on should arise out of being already community; they should be integral to the life of the community; they should be motivated by internal needs and ambitions.

5. The sort of presence in the world that I have in mind needs to be differentiated both from the presence of a believing individual in a secular environment, who struggles to ‘witness’ to his friends and colleagues, and the beleaguered presence of a group of believers who feel threatened by the world around them. We are looking for the presence of an active community, a relational nucleus, that is confident that it has in itself the resources of spirit, wisdom, and love to be able to contribute something of enormous value to the lives of people in its vicinity. A community of the Spirit generates a community of blessing around itself.

6. A properly embedded presence will provide a more credible, more honest, and more sustainable basis for a prophetic, priestly or pastoral function. There may even be a sense in which the world may come to relate to God vicariously through the life of these priestly communities in its midst. Whereas some traditional theologies have, in different ways, made the individual priest a mediator between God and the church, a theology of public presence may make the believing community, as priesthood, a mediating body between God and the world. Should the church perhaps take the view that it has been entrusted with a responsibility for the spiritual well-being (understood quite holistically) of the world?

7. This perhaps points in the direction of a relativized and contextualized notion of ‘salvation’ as the process of being ‘healed’, of being made whole – creation being renewed – as a result of living in proximity to the ‘temple of God’, where the Spirit of God is active. This process may arrive at the critical juncture of baptism in the name of Jesus, at which point a person exchanges the spirit of the world for the Spirit of God in order to become not only a receiver but also a giver of grace – but this is not the sole object of the exercise.

8. If you pour a bottle of red ink into the sea, it will become ‘present’ but it will also very quickly lose its distinctiveness as red ink. A theology of public presence will also need to establish some boundaries. What is poured out into the world must be gelatinous enough, viscose enough, gooey enough not to lose all shape and identity. The nature of any priestly ‘mediation’ will need to be defined. Presence, for all its slowness, still needs a sense of direction.

The ‘B’ word

If that was all largely theoretical, here are some more practical suggestions for how we live out a theology of public presence.

Be there: it may simply be that we have had to learn the hard way by going right back to square one, but I think that we must get it into our heads that being there is far more important than doing things; we have tried to arrange ‘events’ that haven’t come off and as a result we were simply left there with nothing to do – except buy a few drinks and talk to people.

Be consistent: I don’t think we will get very far if we regard this as a means to an end; it may be that church-like gatherings will emerge out of this sort of public presence, but I would suggest that the long-term objective is still just to be there, a puzzling, godly presence in people’s lives. In my view, the overriding need at this point is for the church to regain trust (relationally, ethically, intellectually) – which means that the church must become trustworthy (relationally, ethically, intellectually), and this takes time.

Be accessible, open, friendly: again, we have sometimes felt torn between doing something that we had planned and responding to whatever happens relationally on the night.

Be honest: this is hard – Christians can get very secretive and underhand in their relations with the world. We are looking for a ‘discourse of faith’ that works both amongst believers and between believers and non-believers. We don’t want to be perceived as having ulterior motives, a hidden agenda. As it is, I feel uncomfortable writing even in such very general and vague terms about what we have been doing: I don’t really want to treat these friendships as an experiment in mission, create a meta-dialogue around them from which the people themselves are excluded.

Be underwhelming: we have rarely had more than ten or twelve of us round a table: I would like to see it grow, and there may also be ways of bringing a larger group (from an established church, for example) into this sort of environment on a regular basis, but for now I suspect a larger group would disturb the fine balance between inward and outward relationships: either the group would close in upon itself and become a clique (get too many Christians together and they will stop talking normally and start speaking their own peculiar religious language) or it would become a rather overbearing, disruptive Christian presence. Perhaps we just need fragments of Christian community that will feel incomplete until they have connected with people around them.

Be creative: we are always on the look out for creative ways of stimulating thought, engaging people in conversations, discussions: for example, we passed round some questionnaires on personal happiness that elicited some interesting responses, opened some windows into people’s lives; we’re thinking about planning an evening of short entertainment items with some of the regulars. This will be a big part of the challenge – finding the paths that will get people walking across a spiritual landscape.

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Kings and prophets

Rogier Bos

INTRODUCTION

Much has been written on the subject of leadership in the last few decennia. Our language has been filled with associated jargon; words such as vision, strategy, structures, roles, and long-range planning have become normal for us, even in the context of church planting. We borrow models and concepts, because we deem them helpful. Since leadership is part of God’s created order, the thinking seems to go, good thinking about leadership will apply across the board.

One can wonder about this assumption. To what extent is the leadership-thinking of the last few decades consistent with a Biblically-inspired worldview? Whatever the answer to that question may be – the intention of this paper is to introduce an idea one will not quickly find in secular leadership-thinking. This paper is about the divine intention for leadership (‘kingship’) to have a partnership with a prophet. My thesis is that the leadership of God’s people lies both with leaders and with prophets. In the old testament there is a common association of kings and prophets: Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, Elisha – these are but a few names of the well known prophets who delivered the word of the Lord to the Kings of Israel. In the New Testament we see the leadership of the church again lies with leaders – apostles, church-leaders – and with prophets. My thesis is furthermore that where we narrow our view of leadership by excluding the role of prophets in the church, the church is impoverished as a result. God is a speaking God, and his desire is to speak to his people. Leadership, whether it is kingship, pastoring, or apostleship, without the aid of a prophet, functions in a vacuum.

This association between kings and prophets can be clearly seen throughout scripture. The need for a counter-partner for a king in the form of a prophet, can perhaps be best observed in the story of Samuel, and his uneasy relationship with Israel’s first king, Saul. My intention is to support my thesis and draw out a number of related principles out of this story.

THE WORD OF THE LORD

The story of Samuel begins with his calling. After two opening chapters, which set the stage for the story that is about to take place, we come to the well-known story of the calling of young Samuel in the middle of the night. The story starts with an amazing statement: “in those days the word of the Lord was rare, there were not many visions (I Samuel 3:1).’ With these two simple lines the author paints a picture of an Israel that has lost contact with its God.

Then the Lord calls Samuel. At this point Samuel is a young boy, left alone in that big temple. The author makes especially clear where Samuel sleeps at night. There is no reference to where Eli’s sons sleep, except for an earlier reference to them ‘sleeping with the women who served at the entrance to the temple’ (2:23). There is a reference to where Eli sleeps, ‘in his usual place’ (3:2). But Samuel ‘was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was’ (3:3). “Then,” writes the author, “the Lord called Samuel (3:4).”

The story is of course familiar – particularly to those who attended Sunday school classes when they were younger. But it ends with a statement equally amazing to the one it started with – and no doubt the author meant for the reader to understand the connection: after his initial statement ‘In those days the word of the Lord was rare’ he now adds ‘And all of Israel from Dan to Berhsheeba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word (3:20).’

The implication is obvious. God acts to lift the vacuum that exists. He is not happy with the situation. There needs to be a place where the people of God can go to ‘enquire of the Lord.’

There is a little phrase at end of the passage that offers some insight into the way Samuel functioned in his prophetic office: “the Lord was with Samuel, and he let none of his words fall to the ground.” The statement about God honoring Samuel’s words must have something to do with the extent to which Samuel honors the word of the Lord that comes to him. Samuel honors that word, and treats it with respect. He is careful to relay all the words the Lord has spoken to him to Eli, even the words of judgment. We read a similar thing in v. 8:10: “Samuel told ALL the words of the Lord to the people.”

IN SEARCH OF A KING

The role of the prophet in the search for a king is pivotal. The people of Israel, wanting to look more like the nations around them, approach Samuel and ask for a king (8:5). At this point Samuel is the judge of Israel (7:15). “It is not you they reject, Samuel,” says the Lord. “It is me they reject as their King. Give them what they want” (15:7-10). Samuel relays all the words of the Lord.

The people are determined in their desire for a king. Samuel sends the people home, and a little while later God leads the man to Samuel He has selected for the role. He reveals his choice to Samuel: “about this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin. Anoint him as leader… I have looked upon my people, for their cry has reached me (9:16).“‘The next day Samuel meets Saul, and anoints him.

THE FIRST OF ISRAEL’S KINGS

As far as leadership stories in scripture go, Saul’s story is one of the saddest the Bible has to offer. It’s the story of a man who shows much promise early on, but who finishes his life and role in the worst way possible. In the beginning the Holy Spirit comes on him, and he removes all witches and diviners from the country. At the end he is tormented by an evil spirit, and consults a witch. In this context it is interesting to note what it is it that Samuel says to him as he announces the end of Kingship: for rebellion is like the sin of divination…” (15:23).

Interesting also to see how well Samuel ends his reign over Israel in the same passage. “If I have wronged you in any way,” he says, “step forward and I will make it right.” But no one does. “You have not wronged anyone,” say the people. The passage is clear: Samuel has been a faultless leader over Israel. It is almost as if the author puts the passage of Samuel’s confirmation of Saul as king, and Samuel’s farewell-speech so close together to attract special attention to it. As well as Samuel ends his ministry to Israel, so poor is the end of Saul’s reign. The contrast between the two is stark, and enhanced by proximity.

The difference between Samuel and Saul is further illustrated by their different responses when a different leader is selected in their place. When Saul is selected to replace Samuel as leader over Israel, Samuel’s response is ‘as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you! (12:24).’ When Samuel tells Saul the Lord will replace him with another, Saul’s response is ‘come and honor me by coming in with me so the people will see us together.’

THE DEMISE OF A KING

Every leader would be a David – a man after God’s own heart – but too many turn out to be like Saul. Where does Saul go wrong?

When Samuel first anoints Saul as King, Saul is not very impressed with himself. “Am I not a Benjaminite from the smallest tribe, and do I not come from the smallest clan? (9:20)” When the day comes for Saul to be inaugurated, the people find him after the Lord has told them ‘he is hiding among the luggage. (10:20)’ But the Lord confirms the calling miraculously in a number of ways, and soon all of Israel recognizes Saul as King.

Saul’s first error is that he offers the burnt offering (13:10), whereas Samuel had told him a few chapters before to wait: “Go down ahead of me to Gilgal. I will surely come to you to sacrifice burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. But you must wait seven days until I come to you and tell you what you are to do (10:8).” But on the 7^th day Saul sees the people are starting to scatter and Samuel has still not arrived. So he offers the burnt offerings.

Samuel arrives just as Saul finishes. “What have you done?” asks Samuel. Saul’s answer sounds spiritual and mature – but Samuel sees right through it, and announces that as a result of Saul’s impatience, the throne will be given to one outside his family line.

Saul’s error is twofold, and is illustrative for our discussion. First, Saul disregards the clear instruction that the Lord has given him through the prophet. Had a prophet not been present, how would instructions about the war have come? What if the word of the Lord had still been rare? The prophet is an essential part of the people of God, and the King needs him.
Secondly, Saul’s action seeks to merge the role of the king and the role of the prophet into one. And that is where Samuel confronts him. It is Saul’s responsibility to lead the people, but he is to wait for the instruction the prophet will give him. If the book of Samuel makes anything clear, it is that wars are never won because of human strategy or military power; wars are won because the Lord is on our side – and he is on our side when we follow his instructions. Yet Saul looks at his people and the upcoming war with human eyes and realizes the people are scattering. Any 20th century leadership guru, upon seeing that the people were starting to scatter, would be the first to tell Saul: “we need to do something now,” but that is precisely where God’s people are different; they wait for the word of the Lord, and that is what they obey.

Saul’s second error, and the one that will cost him the Kingship, is another occasion of blatant disobedience of the word of the Lord as it has come through the prophet. Again, from a human or 20th century perspective, Saul makes a good decision. Samuel has instructed him to attack the Amalekites and to completely destroy them. God’s hatred of the Amalekites after their evil attack on his people while they were traversing through the desert is explained by Samuel to Saul as part of the operating instructions.

But Saul refuses. Why kill the good, the strong, the beautiful? ‘But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and the cattle and lambs – everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that despised and weak they completely destroyed (15:9).’

If a prophet had not been present, Saul might well have gotten away with it. But the word of the Lord comes to Samuel: ‘I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and not carried out my instructions (15:10).’ The reason why God is grieved is important: Saul has not carried out God’s instructions. How would those instructions have come without the presence of a prophet? The presence of the prophet is what helps the King know the Lord’s instructions.

In the morning Samuel goes to find Saul. He learns that Saul has left the battlefield and has erected a monument for himself at Carmel. When he finds him, Saul’s first words are: ‘the Lord bless you: I have carried out the Lord’s instructions (12:13).’ This is where the difference between an advisor or counselor on the one side, and a prophet on the other side, becomes most clear. Without special revelation of God, Saul’s lie would have sounded great: excellent – Saul has carried out the Lord’s instructions…! But the person opposite Saul is no mere friend or advisor. He is a prophet, and God has revealed to the prophet what has really happened.

Fascinating also, how Saul’s lie centers exactly around the issue that most troubles the Lord: “he has not carried out my instructions” meets “I have carried out the Lord’s instructions.”

Samuel’s response shows he understands the lie. ‘What then is this bleeting of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle U hear (15:14)?’ No doubt the bleeting and lowing is not just a reference to the presence of the conquered cattle, but also to Saul’s feeble lie.

Saul immediately starts to blame everyone except himself: “the soldiers brought them… they spared the best… but WE totally destroyed the rest (15:16)!”

“Stop!” Samuel says to Saul. “let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.”

Then Samuel proceeds to remind Saul of his humble origins. ‘You were once small in your own eyes.’ The message is straight forward. Don’t you remember how you got here? Who made you king? Don’t you understand where your loyalty should lie?

Saul changes his story: ‘but I brought the best of the cattle here, to sacrifice them to God (15:21).’ And that is when Samuel explains that obedience is better than sacrifice. God prefers simple listening to anything that we can give. “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as King (15:23).”

ABOUT THE PROPHET

What can we learn from Samuel? In what ways is Samuel an example to us of a good prophet? What does Samuel model for us?

• The prophet is someone who lives in the presence of the Lord. As a young boy he sleeps near the ark of the covenant. One of his responsibilities is to open the doors to the sanctuary every morning, and he opens them from the inside out. Later, when Samuel joins Saul after Samuel has announced the Lord’s rejection of Saul as king, Samuel kills Agag, king of Amalek, ‘in the presence of the Lord (15:33). Everything Samuel does, is in the presence of the Lord. And the people of Israel know this. When Samuel goes to Bethlehem to anoint a new king, the elders of the town tremble when they meet Samuel. “Do you come in peace,” they ask (16:4). The presence of Samuel is not necessarily a good omen: Samuel dwells in the presence of the Lord, and the presence of the Lord dwells with Samuel.
• The prophet is sometimes a friend, sometimes a foe. God raises up prophets and he raises up kings. The alliance between them is often at best an uneasy one. The prophet challenges, confronts, asks questions, unravels our excuses and defenses, picks holes in our stories, and announces God’s verdict. His or her alliance is first of all to God, and only second to the King.
• The prophet can distinguish between himself and God’s word. Time and again we see Samuel operating out of an understanding that He and God each have roles to play in the relationship with the King. Samuel succeeds in distinguishing his own role, voice and emotion from God’s role, voice and emotion. The Lord tells Samuel not to take the rejection personal when Israel comes to ask for a king. “It is not you they have rejected – it is me they have rejected as king,” says God (8:7). Next, when God rejects Saul as king (15:10), Samuel cries to the Lord all night (15:11). Then, when Samuel delivers the news to Saul that God has rejected him as king, Saul asks Samuel “I have sinned. But please honor me before the elders…” at which point Samuel goes back with Saul (15:31). We see Samuel’s ability to perfectly distinguish his own voice from God’s voice finally when God sends him to anoint David, son of Jesse; each time Samuel thinks ‘this must be the one’ on the impressive line-up, God’s voice is clear in his ear. He even has to ask Jesse ‘is this all there is?’ because the line-up has come to an end, and he seems to have run out of options! Over and over Samuel demonstrates he understands he and God are not the same, and he doesn’t identify himself with God and make the same error Moses did (Numb 20).
• The prophet is an intercessor. He prays for the people, and he prays for the king. When his role as judge over Israel comes to an end he says to the people ‘far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you (12:23).’ When the Lord says to Samuel He is grieved that He has made Saul king, Samuel is troubled, and he cries to the Lord all night (15:11). Even after Samuel has told Saul the Lord has rejected him as king, Samuel mourns for him (15:35).

THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN KINGS AND PROPHETS

My thesis is that all kings need to form an alliance with a prophet. God wants to speak and give direction to his people. Scripture demonstrates that such an alliance is never easy. The story of Samuel and Saul is a clear example of this, but also in many other places in scripture the alliance between leaders and prophets is uneasy. Even in the New Testament Paul has to navigate his relationship with prophets. In Acts 20 we read how Paul writes that in every city the Holy Spirit forewarns him of what will happen to him if he returns to Jerusalem. In Acts 21 a prophet named Agabus takes Paul’s belt and ties himself up with it as a sign of what will happen. There is skill involved in navigating the relationship with a prophet. Yet, if navigated successfully, such a relationship can have profound benefit for both the people and the leader. Those benefits include the following.

• The prophet speaks the word of the Lord. Scripture demonstrates in many places that it is not God’s desire that leadership should function in a vacuum. Decisions may be made in his presence and informed by his dynamic word. Certainly God speaks to us through scripture, but it would also seem that God wants to speak into specific situations and occasions through special spokesmen and -women. This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that leaders need not function in a vacuum. The bad news is that the presence of a prophet who speaks the word of the Lord raises the bar of accountability – as the story of Samuel and Saul illustrates.
• A division of roles. In this story there is a division of roles between the king (the ruler), and the prophet. This is interesting, because it seems to me we often try to combine the two roles into one. In doing so we are perhaps inspired by secular thinking on leadership, where it is the responsibility of the leader to know where the organization needs to go and how it needs to get there. But in God’s kingdom rulership and the ability to receive spiritual guidance are not combined in the same person. If anything, there seems to be a balance of powers, a Trias Politica, with God, the prophet and the ruler each part of the balance.
• The prophet asks questions of conscience. We see Samuel do this again and again. “What have you done,” he asks after Saul has sacrificed the burnt offering. “What is the bleeting that I hear?” The bleeting refers to the sheep Saul refused to slaughter, but probably also to the sheepish lie Saul tells Samuel. Samuel’s response is a confrontational “get real!” and “stop lying to my face.” In asking these questions, the prophet keeps the king close to the truth, and helps him stay on track. He refuses the excuses, and finds the heart of the matter.
• The pivotal role of the prophet in leadership-selection. At the start of the 21st century we have devised along and elaborate processes to select new leaders. We use tests and profiles and references to determine who should lead. How different leadership selection happens in scripture. I am not arguing that all these tools and processes are of no use. But is it possible that we have lived in a time when the word of the Lord ‘was rare in the land’? Is it possible that God would want to raise up prophets who can speak into the process of leadership selection with God’s word?
• The prophet helps us remember our own story and our place in God’s story. After we have been leaders for a while, and enjoyed a few successes it is easy to forget our humble beginnings, or the sense we had at the start when we felt unfit for the task. Also, our close involvement makes it harder to see the big picture or the grand storyline of the people of God. Both tendencies can be observed in Saul’s life. Samuel helps Saul see his own story. He reminds Saul of his past, and of what he has said in the past. The presence of a man like Samuel helps us remain in touch with who we are as leaders. The prophet helps us remain humble. Without Samuel, Saul has gone to Carmel to build a monument for himself. With Samuel present, Saul is confronted with who he really is.
  Samuel also helps Saul understand the larger story of the people he is leading. The people of God have a mission against the people of Amalek, and the prophet instructs the king with a short reminder of history.
• The prophet helps us know how the war must be fought. At the start of the 21st century our wars are matters of strength and of strategy. He who has the most soldiers and chariots wins. Yet not one of the wars in the story of Samuel is a matter of strength or strategy. All of them are either won or lost through obedience to God. The size and strength of the enemy seem completely immaterial. Looking at the warfare Christian leaders are involved in at the start of the 21st century, is it not entirely spiritual? But, if so, then where are our prophets?

CONCLUSION

At the start of the 21st century we live in a time in which ‘the word of the Lord’ is rare. This creates a vacuum for leadership. It is not the situation God desires. Leadership should function in coalition with prophets. The story of Samuel gives us helpful insight into the benefits the presence of such a prophet brings to us, the type of person he or she should be, and how leaders should relate to them. Could it be that God wants to raise up prophets who can deliver to us the word of the Lord, help us know how to fight our battles, and who can keep us accountable and on track?

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New Images for New Conversations

April Te Grootenhuis Crull

I was recently having a conversation with a ministry consultant who does leadership development with tribal groups in developing countries. Instead of bringing in his own images, he begins by asking the tribes what images come to mind when they think of a good leader and then helps them to expand on those images. In this way, the leadership styles he promotes are based on tribal values and concepts, not on outside values and concepts.

In the globalized context of 21^st century ministry, a larger variety of people are being ministered to in one group. In the international context of Christian Associates, this mixture has long been an issue. However, as tribalism is one of the marks of the emerging culture, the identity and mixture of groups will increasingly need to be addressed in leadership development as well (Rohde). One of the ways in which this can be addressed is through expanding the definitions and images of leadership. Traditional images of leadership have been based on scholarly definitions whose studies have generally been relegated to middle and upper class, white males (Porter, 18). As culture as a whole acknowledges and deals with the way that certain populations have been left out of important discussions, the church needs to lead the way in acknowledging how it has disenfranchised people groups, such as different ethnicities and women, in important discussions, such as theology and leadership definitions, and provide opportunities for those discussions to happen again with new language and images available.

In this paper, I will be explaining the images that Jeanne Porter, Ph.D. develops in her book, Leading Ladies. Porter is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, IL, and a consultant in the areas of multicultural communication and leadership development. She says that the current understanding of leadership is expanding, but there are not images and language that gives space for that change, in other words, people need new images (24). According to research, the language and images people use, not only describe reality, but also shape it (Pauwels). The images that come to mind when thinking about leadership and the language used to describe leadership form the understanding of who leads and how leadership happens (Porter, 23). Porter suggests that rather than using the new images to replace older images, both can be retained in a way that provides a broader base of models and styles for a multitude of people, both male and female, to understand leadership. By elevating and empowering female language and images without discarding male language and images, the definition of leadership can be liberating for all people (19).

Porter’s intent is to provide images that encourage transformative leadership. Transformative leadership is defined as a “movement of people toward collective and mutual goals of spiritual growth, higher purpose, and empowerment” (14). A transformative leader helps individuals to see who God has called them to be and frees them to lead out of that calling. In addition, transformative leadership envisions and calls forth people as groups and individuals to accomplishments they would never have dreamed of on their own (16).

In Leading Ladies, Porter develops four images of transformative leadership based on women who led in the Bible. She looks at Miriam and the analogies that can be drawn from a choreographer as leader. Second, she explores the leadership of Puah and Shiprah, the midwives of Egypt, and the image of a leader as a midwife. Third she studies Deborah and compares her leadership style to a weaver. Finally, Porter explores and develops Esther and her role as intercessor.

Miriam: Choreographer as Leader

Miriam was clearly a leader along with her brothers in bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. One of the first explicit examples of her leadership is after the miracle and destruction at the Red Sea; she led the women in a dance of praise and celebration (Exodus 15). She provided an opportunity for the Israelites to acknowledge the end of the old way of life, of slavery and Egypt, and to look forward to the new future they were walking towards (Porter, 69). Later, as the Israelites were wandering through the desert, Miriam and her brother Aaron got angry and possibly jealous and challenged Moses’ leadership (70). God punished Miriam with leprosy that banished her from the Israelite camp for a period of time. This was probably a very humiliating experience for Miriam and also possibly a time of remembering that she was human and that God had created her for His purposes (71). Miriam’s story shows that God uses people at different times, in different ways, according to who they are, and even though they stumble, His grace allows them to dance (73).

The image of a choreographer as a transformative leader has a lot to do with vision. Choreographers “dance their vision of life, develop dance routines that enable others to dance the vision, translate the significance of the dance steps, and free people to dance” (77). The vision of choreographers can develop out of their awareness of the circumstances around them and the need for change (78). Part of their role is creating space for people to do their own dances (82). As a leader, the choreographer shows why each step is significant and helps the dancers understand that significance for their own lives (82). In addition, the choreographer helps include the spirit- the heart, joy, grace, and love into the vision and the steps (84).

To provide people with the freedom to dance and to move to their own rhythms and heart, the choreographer reinforces success, not failure and listens carefully to both the verbal and nonverbal communication of the dancers (87-88). She or he helps people move past their barriers of fear, mental blocks, emotional issues, or shame so that they can dance on their own (88).

In addition to the vision for the dance, choreographers also realize how to transform the “independent actions of individuals into a collective, orchestrated, purposeful movement” (89). They can find simplicity and clarity while at the same time appreciating syncopation and complexity (80). By being able to hold both of these together, they can synchronize the activities and rhythms of individuals (89).

Finally, the choreographer recognizes the power of celebration in life (77). Celebration of all victories, no matter how small or large, provides an opportunity to breathe between battles. Celebration also provides the chance to reflect back on the old and look forward to the new. It provides closure and a new start. It “gives us permission to see the old for what it was and motives us to look ahead to what might be” (69). Celebration both evokes and celebrates transformation in people’s lives.

Puah and Shiprah: Midwife as Leader

Puah and Shiprah were most likely the leaders of more than 500 midwives in the country of Egypt (Porter, 33). They were the ones called to Pharaoh when he decided to instigate methodic genocide by killing all male Israelite babies (Exodus 1). However, through sharing one of the most intimate times of life with the Hebrew women, they learned to fear the Hebrew God, and through using their knowledge of the birthing procedure, planned a strategic way of resistance to Pharaoh by arriving at the end of the birth (Porter, 37-38). In this way, they were unable to quietly dispose of the male babies without the Israelite families interfering. Puah and Shiprah were women who knew their profession well and were able and willing to risk the anger of Pharaoh to obey God (40).

Building on not only the actions of Puah and Shiprah, but also on the roles and responsibilities of a midwife, Porter explores the transformative power of this image. The leader as midwife is able to recognize pregnant possibilities and nurture this potential to achieve goals (47). This may be in the field of business as an entrepreneur or with new products, as a teacher seeing potential in students, or in recognizing potential leaders in a church or civic setting. In addition recognizing pregnant possibilities, midwives provide the important conditions for birth – a safe space, a nurturing care, an encouraging word. Some births would end in death without the care provided by a midwife (48). Midwives also understand the timing and process of birthing. They recognize the patterns: they know when to wait, when to push, when more time is needed, when action must be taken immediately. They also realize that although a general pattern of birthing exists, each person and each birth is different and ultimately the development and success is in God’s hands (52). And finally, midwives are often present and most needed during the pain of birth. They know pain is worth it, they have lived through pain before, they know both how to manage pain, and when pain is helpful. Most importantly, they know how to encourage and lead a person in pushing through pain (55).

Deborah: Weaver as Leader

Deborah led Israel through relationship. She carved out a space, an actual location under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel, where people could share their concerns and learn to trust her judgments (97). Later she partnered with another leader, Barak, to accomplish what God had called them to do (Judges 4-5). She was called the mother of Israel (Judges 5:7) and was able to genuinely hear the people, discern their deepest needs as well as the broader issues, and envision a new future that was better than their present reality (Porter, 98, 104). She demonstrated that when leaders lead, people follow and change happens (102). In addition, she remembered to thank and praise those who helped her and to remember that ultimately, all power for transformation comes from God (102).

Porter compares Deborah’s leadership style to a weaver. A weaver in leadership starts with a dream and weaves together the necessary people and tasks to produce that dream (108). The weaver needs to start with creativity given from God. Creativity that is able to envision something that will be created from nothing. The weaver sees that which does not yet exist and realizes how it can be brought into being (110). A part of this process for the weaver, particularly for the leader as weaver, is to spend time hovering and brooding in the Spirit of God as the original Creator also hovered over the waters before creation (Genesis 1:2, Porter, 110).

Weavers need to have an in-depth knowledge of their materials. They need to understand the strength and skills of their team members as well as understanding their needs and motivations (108, 114). In addition to understanding the materials, a weaver needs to know the best way to pull them together, including the fact that different patterns will require different weaves (109). In this way, the weaver is able to transform nothing into something while simultaneously transforming the lives of those involved to achieve something they never would have been able to on their own.

Esther: Intercessor as Leader

Esther was most likely one of those people who fell into a position of high leadership and power without intending to and through a series of events she had little control over (Esther 1). However, once she was in that position, she took the opportunity to be an advocate and spokesperson for her people, an intercessory leader (Porter, 123). Yet, she was not really able and willing to tell her people’s story until she took time to realize that the story of her people was also her own story (125). As a leader she recognized her very clear purpose, sought spiritual direction, and waited for God’s timing (126, 127). Through her uncle’s prodding, she was able to recognize the opportunity that her position gave her to speak into two worlds – the Jewish and the Royal (125). She learned the language of both worlds and was able to translate the story of her people into the language of those in power, and through doing so drastically affected the course of history (130).

An intercessor is often overlooked as a leader. In leadership, an intercessor can mean someone who mediates reconciliation efforts, or someone who appeals on behalf of someone else, or someone who accompanies someone to provide support and strength (133). Often the role of intercessor is uncomfortable because this person needs to live in the tension of contradictions, paradoxes, and the realization that she or he has access to power, information, and resources that others do not (134).

In the midst of this tension, the primary gifts of the intercessor are to tell the story of others in a way that moves the hearts of those in power and to enable those with no voice to gain a voice (134). This often occurs through four actions. First, intercessors must listen so that they truly understand the powerless and can help those in power make decisions “with” the powerless, not decisions “for” them (138). Second, intercessors needs to connect with both the powerful and the powerless to realize the similarities to themselves and to recognize the different kinds of knowledge people have to offer (139). Third, intercessors translate by learning to speak the language of both parties and how to transfer meaning and experience (140). Finally, intercessors help people to gain their own voice by providing a space to speak and training them to participate (141). Ultimately, intercessors realize that they have been placed “in-between” for a reason and seek to transform the lives of those around them from that place (143).

Conclusion

In Leading Ladies, Porter provides brief and evocative new images for transformative leadership. She provides plenty of stories from ancient and modern women in leadership, in addition to many though-provoking personal challenges and questions to help one recognize these images in oneself.

Porter creates a starting place for developing new images and new language to talk about leadership. These images provide a broader base for everyone to understand leadership. However, the challenge doesn’t stop with her, it continues. As we grow in our understanding of leadership during the 21st century, we need to ask for more images from a larger variety of sources.

We can learn from the process the ministry consultant used and instead of trying to impose leadership styles on individuals or groups of people, we can ask them for their own images of a good leader, and then help them to expand and explore those. In this way, not only is leadership transformative, but hopefully even the process of discovering that leadership and talking about it is culturally relevant and transformative.

Bibliography

Pauwels, A. “Gender, Power, and Communication in a Transnational World.” Ed. Anne Pauwels. 18 April 2005. Transcultural Englishes and Gender-Inclusive Reform of Language. 28 April 2005.
Porter, Jeanne, Ph.D. Leading Ladies. Philadelphia, PA: Innisfree Press, Inc., 2000.
Rohde, Ross. “Practical Considerations for Postmodern Sensitive Churches.” Written 2000. Posted March 2005.

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Re-Envisioning the Leader as Seer: A Phenomenology of Optics

Wesley White

(Scottish Universities Theological Forum, April, 2005)

My wife and I sat through the predictable routine of the graduation ceremony not unlike many we had attended in the past. Nothing roused us from our camouflaged stupor until the keynote speaker, Seona Reid, principle of the Glasgow School of Art, began to describe the manner in which artists can or should engage the world. “Artists,” she said, “are simply people who are passionate enough to imagine things that do not yet exist.”[1] In pondering her statement, its significance has become only more profound. As art is inherently dependant on a visual experience, it requires, I suggest, among other things, an imaginative vision if it is to entertain any capacity to move us beyond the boundaries of what does or does not exist.

In this way, artistry shares properties with recent concepts of leadership which seek to reinvest in Seer qualities that condition healthy and vibrant collective direction. These properties correlate to both verb and noun distinctions of a Seer as they apply to the action of seeing and to a level of wisdomthat turns sight into imaginative vision. The leader as Seer in this sense promotes what David Michael Levin refers to as visionary thinking that is both diagnostic and critical, “attentive to closures and even the smallest opportunities for some opening.”[2] It is interested not only in what we see, but how we see, and in answering the question as to whether or not vision can motivate action. The Seer is one who is capable of exercising wise seeing that is imaginative if it is nothing else.

The need for Seers is underscored by a palatable ambiguity of vision that is the unfortunate progeny of some who want to so distance themselves from “totalized views of the world” that they end up with no view at all.[3] The fear itself is understandable. Storied histories abound with examples of how human uniqueness is easily subscribed as unnecessary whenever all-encompassing visions are espoused.[4] And yet some visual perception of the world and its future is mandatory if challenges to the status quo are to be in any way legitimised. Without it, we are not only left with a hopeless point of view, but we must likewise succumb to what Heidegger characterises as a “standpoint of standpointlessness.”[5]

On the other hand, when leaders explore again the role of Seer in a communal context they are simply making possible an expansion of what they see and what others see as well. They are encouraging a community to imagine what does not yet exist. In so doing, leaders serve as deliberate receptors of what Paul Churchland refers to as the truly vast amounts of information “contained in our sensations, that goes blissfully unexploited by our conceptually benighted selves.”[6] Perception, in other words, can either limit horizons or broaden them, and would-be Seers are called upon to reject conceptual benightedness and give specific attention to a phenomenology of optics.

Leadership and the Reality of Ocularcentrism

An acceptance of phenomenological categories begs the question of why all the fuss over visual capacities? The answer, of course, is fairly plain to see. Ocularcentrism (fascination with the power of vision, both in physical and mental or imaginative dimensions) may be challenged for its extremes, but it cannot be denied. Symbols of visual dependence are all around us. Understanding is often described in terms of seeingthe difference. Comprehension of specific concepts finds expression in the words, “I seewhat you mean.” When we gain clarity we call it insight. Even moral distinctions are frequently referred to in ways that depend on the perceptual shadings of darkness and light.

There is, no doubt, good reason to approach ocularity with a reasonable level of caution. How we see what we see does not escape subjective weakness any more or less than any other aspect of human selfhood. Appeals to the inherent objectivity of the visual sound increasingly hollow as soon as discussion ventures into the realm of the significance of what is seen. “The eye,” says Arthur Danto, “is tainted by the original sin of cognition, and we may as well be conscious of the fact.”[7] The outworking of tainted vision, so described, may account for the tendency of perception toward a mode of top-down processing in which bias for superior forms prejudices the value assigned to what is merely seen.[8]

Historical developments play a part in our sense of caution as well. Renaissance confidence allowed for an entire change of focus (gazing in a new direction) determined by the primacy of a visual metaphor that soon became known as the Enlightenment. As Levin suggests, it promoted a new way of seeing “derived from an egological and essentially anthropocentric vision of reason.”[9] The potential of a glorified self-gazing vision allowed for but another sphere of hegemony, privileged in various ways, so that suddenly or gradually perceivingdifferentlythan one sees became more and more critical to discerning reflection.[10] It was due to the fact that even sight, now, was and is under suspicion. It is little wonder, then, that Sartre should decry how human identity is born in the “objectifying gaze” of the other in ways that are invariably limiting as anything is restricted when its value is relegated by its role as an object for observation.[11]

Ocularcentrism, however, is not without reasonable accolades. Vision of various types and modes is regularly the impetus behind all manner of thoughtful reflection that eventuates in progressive ideology. Phenomenologically, it accounts for the interplay between what might be seen, what is mentally considered, and what can be dreamed. “The mind has gone,” writes Jonas, “where vision has pointed.”[12] This is born out, minimally, in human conceptions that are defined in terms of ontology, epistemology and behaviour. In other words, reality is construed on the basis of how we see ourselves and thus how we know what we know and thus why we do what we do.[13]

Furthermore, honesty compels us to distinguish between two essential modes of gazing upon the other. Sartre, perhaps, was overly pessimistic in assigning the gaze of one upon another a purely hegemonic role. Levin, for example, rightly differentiates between the assertoriclook, which is largely “ego-logical” and thus inauthentic, and the alethetic look, based in truth, and thus non-objectifying, chastened, and humble.[14] Are we so far fallen that we could not encourage the latter and discourage the former? Levin is forthright enough to suggest that vision is generally ruled over by an ego-logical subject. Even so, he raises the spectre of what vision could become “when it is committed to overcoming this rule.”[15]

Perhaps it is precisely in the midst of discourse of this kind that wilfully differentiates between the assertoric and the alethetic that Christian theology has the most to say in proffering what we might refer to as the human potential to render a gaze of grace. Is it possible to cultivate a culture that disdains the self-serving look and opts, in stead, for the look that is gift-oriented? Bakhtin suggests as much when he likens the gaze of another on “me” to “a gift, like grace, which is incapable of being understood and founded from within myself.”[16] It offers me an objective viewpoint in the interest of clarity rather than rule, and thus is empowering rather than disempowering.[17] It is the highest mode of vision which can only be selflessly entertained when it is approach as a spiritual vocation.

Ocular language, therefore, need not be prohibitive, but rather reinforcing of personhood, especially when it attests to critical theological perspectives. Jonas, for example, demonstrates how the most experiential features of physical vision inevitably suggest the broad theological concepts of eternity, objectivity, and infinity.[18] Examples from biblical narratives only make it more specific. Human suffering is rendered unacceptable (Ex.2:25) in a story that affirms how “God sawand took notice of them.” God’s seeing of Hagar (Gen.16:13: “You are the God who seesme.”) displays divine concern for the marginalised. It is Jesus’ seeing of the crowd (Mk.6:34) that inaugurates his compassion. Seeing the hungry, the poor, the stranger, the sick and the imprisoned (Mt.25:37ff), according to Jesus, is tantamount to seeing him. “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.” (Mt.6:22) Ocularity of this sort undergirds a story in which “God’s loving gaze and his liberating action are inseparable.”[19]

Seers of Truth

Giving attention to theological perspectives ought to give rise to questions of truth. Leaders who aspire to the role of Seer as a spiritual vocation must be able to exert both wisdom and foresight (and, perhaps, hindsight) in responding to differing narratives of truth. Postmodern ambivalence toward various truth-bearing stories, while understandable, is ultimately unsatisfying and lacking in courage.[20] If, indeed, the mind goes where vision points, then the difference between assertoricand aletheticmotivations in looking at anything at all is critical. Aletheia emphasises the beneficent nature of truth, as Abraham Heschel has rightly distinguished it, by likening it to that gaze which wishes to know what it sees, rather than seeking to see what it already knows.[21] It results in a posture of humility that extols the circumspective quality of good hermeneutics.

One reason that truth in this mode is properly circumspective is that it is called upon to bring together the related questions of ontology and formation of character. Foucault maintains that, to a large degree, this a matter of those practices that shape the self and advance self-forming activities as they take place within personalised histories.[22] Seers of truth, therefore, understand the need for foresight that actually acts in ways that enlarge ontological givens via the paradox of circumspection such that character formation is actualised and ongoing.[23] In simplified terms, truth is demonstrated in character, not correctness. Correctness seeks to rule, while circumspective aletheia seeks the ongoing growth of persons.

Seers, themselves, are called upon to prove the validity of truth at work, not by their expertise with correctness, but in the demonstration of an enlarged and ever-growing character. This can hardly be accomplished apart from the ocular metaphorics that explicates what is commonly referred to as the dark night of the soul. Apart from it, the Seer herself or himself remains in the paradoxical need of having their eyes opened. Apart from it, leaders may continue in the seemingly impressive mode of performance, but eventually effectiveness wears thin because they have essentially become blind Seers. The night of the soul experience, on the other hand, rests upon the ontological significance of the absence of lightand is “open to learning from the greatness, even the terror, of the night.”[24]

It is only in the aftermath of such experiences that the more pragmatic dimensions of truth-seeking, that which aims at promoting freedom and justice, can be entertained. Seers who have been so schooled have had their own eyes opened so as to see the Transcendent in none other than the human face. This, then, illicits a vision of divine justice such that we are enabled to see in the other the biblical priority for the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.[25] It calls for a renewed gaze at issues of justice that does not allow for things to go unchanged. Or, as Walter Benjamin puts it, “That things remain as they are: it is that which is catastrophe.”[26] In the end, Seers who are concerned with biblical priorities seek to answer the question, “Where is the redeeming vision?”

Eschatological Optics

Redemptive themes, when approached with optical considerations in mind, necessarily steer us theologically toward an eschatological vision. Among other things, movement toward the radically new(envisioned in Is.65:17; 62:22, and Rev.21:5, to cite but a few texts) compels us to seriously embrace the visualising capacity of catalytic imagination. This is a hopeful demand simply because, as Moltmann suggests, the world “cannot bear” the new creation.[27] It must be imagined as the preface to making it real. It is a sighting of a hopeful future which is, as Bauckham and Hart maintain, “not imaginary,” but “irreducibly imaginative.” It is, at the same time, catalytic as such imagining serves the activity of living in the here and now.[28] Catalytic imagination thus visualises the future in such a way that new ways of thinking are empowered with the intent of purposeful behaviour and action.[29]

The renewal of imagination allows us to happily entertain what others might derogatorily refer to as the fantastic. Fantasy, however, ought to intrude into eschatological visions in the manner of encouraging transgression of given boundaries that are so bounded by the limitations of fact.[30] Seers whose imaginations have been eschatologically emancipated can envision the fantastic to such a degree that they are able to deliver what the French scholar Bellemin-Noel refers to as “the rhetoric of the unsayable.”[31] They do not balk at pursuing eschatological realisation that seeks nothing less than personal and social transfiguration.[32] Fantasy thus functionally shares some of the better qualities of the artistic (creative) by providing distance and identity. It allows us to step outside of the present and identify what can be.[33]

Both fantasy and imagination call forth the childwithin us, suggesting that healthy Seers maintain childlike qualities of perception that are propelled by an abiding sense of wonder. The eschatological dimension of this kind of visionary capacity is plainly attested to by the prophet Isaiah (11:6) : “And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child will lead them.” Nietzsche was correct in estimation that there are things the reasonable man “does not see which even a child sees; there are things he does not hear which even a child hears, and these things are precisely the most important things.”[34] The leader as child is needed when eschatological optics are in view exactly because they are not refrained by common sense; they expand a vision for the future, rather than attempting to explain or reduce it.[35] Nor is this in the interest of restoring childhood utopia in guise of innocence and trust, but, as Levin suggests, it is “a hermeneutical movement in response to our present needs, both individual, or biographical, and collective, or historical: a movement which ‘goes back’ in order to ‘go forward.’”

The Seer as child exercises a joyful wisdom that Chesterton playfully referred to as “the ethics of elfland.” It is wisdom that is happy to live in the land of the nursery where both religious stricture and secular rationalism are abnormal, and the “old epics and fables” of the supernaturalists are appreciated and honoured.[36] The wisdom of nursery-land pokes fun at the whimsical laws of science rather than allowing itself to be satirised by the predictable trajectories of cause and effect. The stories of elfland are more often than not fairy tales where what is considered impossible never has the last word and which distinguish themselves by creating worlds that end up being but a step away. Not a very far or unrealistic distance at all.[37] Seers who embrace a model of childlike leadership promulgate stories that revel, with laughter and mirth, in the fabulous.

Another critical sighting that should come into view when an eschatological vision is coming more and more into focus is its communal nature and framework. It is a radical picture that deliberately butts up against what Levinas maintains is an extreme individualism premised on an ontology of self-confirmation that must be “interrupted” by a spirituality that begins “in the for-the-other.” “The great event,” says Levinas, “and the very source of of its affectivity is in the other.”[38] This vision is, in Marcel’s words, choral rather solo, and even then is not intoxicated with its own collectivity, but always seeks the other, both within and without the community.[39]

It is in this communal framework, moreover, that human beings have the sustainable opportunity to discover and create and re-create meaning. This is due to the particularly communal phenomena that Susan Felch calls an “excess of vision,” in which the give and take of perspective and insight is afforded freedom and honour.[40] Healthy eschatological community prefers exorbitant displays of the give and take in what can be envisioned, joyfully making up for what might be lacking individually. Levinas rightly offers that this kind of “ethical hermeneutic” presupposes the validity of theistic religion, for only religion, so defined, can “articulate an ethical ontology in which human existence is defined by its independent dependence on the other.”[41]

One of the benefits of communal experience of this nature and in this framework is its capacity to encourage seeing in metaphysical dimensions. The good Seer, I propose, will laud and explore this, rather than discourage it in the interest of managerial control. Such seeing, however, is more often threatening to many who find it difficult to escape the confining parameters of Western ideology. Levin, for example (though I have extolled him in most other points), advocates an “hermeneutical phenomenology, whose method trains us in the discipline of critical perception: the meticulous, exacting, discipline of attention to our life-world, to what we are experiencing in the course of our daily lives.”[42] Although our understanding of leadership can appreciate the hermeneutical phenomenology that Levin aspires to, it must still critique it as short-sighted, since Levin locates such a phenomenology in contradistinction to all metaphysical concerns. Metaphysical concerns, I would contend, need not work in opposition to the hermeneutical phenomenology that Levin espouses, but can, rather, greatly enhance it with the incalculable aid of a supernatural point of view.

The classic biblical narrative that highlights the benefit of this dimensional viewpoint is the story of Elisha and his servant boy, recorded in 2 Kings 6:8-17. The dialectic of imperial power and supernatural reality comes to bear on the (significantly) tiny village of Dothan, in which the prophet and his one servant have taken refuge. The odds, to all outward appearances, are heavily stacked in favor of imperial success and a tragic demise for the man of God and all those who adhere to him. The cry of the servant boy is the voice, perhaps, of overcome metaphysics, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” But Elisha sees what the boy cannot. Furthermore, he knows that the servant’s eyes are only half open. And so Elisha prays that he “may see” what is really real, and when the prayer is answered he is enabled to behold that the mountain was “full of horses and chariots of fire all around.” The prophet in this story, it might be said, offers us the paradigmatic picture of the Seer. He does not succumb to an overcome metaphysic, but embraces the other-worldly in all its richness.

In Pursuit of Beauty

Leadership in the current of emerging culture, I contend, has more to do with the artistic, and less to do with managerial skill or executive personality. As such it exhibits a yearning for beautyin all its many and varied forms, which is as much a part of the wisdomof the Seer as anything else and defines, in large measure, the whatof what the Seer sees. It is not blind to all that mars the beautiful in the world as it is, but nonetheless always moves toward that which can accentuate beauty and that which removes ugliness in whatever form it takes. It requires, I suggest, Seers who are wise to the holistic properties of both ugliness and beauty in the world today.

An appreciation for the multidimensional aspects of beauty (and all that transgresses it) is minimally premised on the validity of the aesthetic. This assumes, of course, a rejection of the insidiousness of Western dualism that assigns greater and lesser meaningful valueto differing modes of perception. It opts, in stead, for what John O’Neill calls, “a phenomenological psychology” that “retrieves an ontological and epistemological unity prior to the disjunctions of natural science,” and so promotes the holistic properties of beauty to include all that lends to making life more meaningful.[43] This is what Wittgenstein intended by declaring that “meaning is physiognomy,” for it is not afraid, nor embarrassed, to include the sensuous as an important conduit of meaning.[44]

Highlighting the aesthetic, therefore, advocates the discovery of broad levels of meaningfulness in life and thus is an essential part of a theological response that mitigates against a culture of death. Marcel reminds us that Western thought is overcome with various nuances of “the end of the power to be,” and how it “delimits and determines the possible completedness of Dasein.” It is epitomised, offers Marcel, in philosophical despair echoed in the starkness of the French phrase, Etre pour la mort, “You exist (are) for death.”[45]Christian theology, in particular, challenges this by revisiting, among other things, the aesthetic sensibility of Israel and its “special intolerance against all forms of the cult of death.”[46] Validating the aesthetic is one more means of reminding ourselves, and the world, that God is for life and all that enhances living.

An artistic appreciation for both the aesthetic and the sensual has direct bearing on the goal of the Seer who seeks to empower others to see everything in relation to God. Bonhoeffer has this in mind when he says, “One severs art’s vital nerve if one takes away its ultimate reference to meaning, to the Divine.”[47] In this way, the aesthetic/sensual assumes greater incarnational significance as a means of “enfleshing” the creative impulse implanted in humanity by the God who is committed to re-creation.[48] Similarly, of course, it serves a sacramental end as a tangible reminder of the moreand the beyondthat human beings instinctively long for.

However, even if the aesthetic is given more credence, I contend that our apprehension of beauty will continue to be severely limited if the role of Seer continues to suffer under restrictions prescribed by male hegemony. Heschel’s distinguishing between the desire to know what one sees as opposed to seeing what one knows is crucial,[49] and I urge that we will continue to bear the fruit of the latter unless we encourage the balance, honesty, and holism available in a vigorous feminine epistemology. Allison Jaggar characterises it as an “epistemology of care and love” that challenges the logocentric base of patriarchal knowledge which minimises erosand usually adheres to foundationalist formulas of authoritative propositions.[50]

The need, obviously, is for ecclesial cultures that encourage the strategic place of women in all levels of leadershipas Seers who so emancipate love that, as Levinas puts it, “transcending the sensible” is possible. It accentuates the beauty of relationships, says Levinas, and is translated through the “caress” as much as anything else.[51] It reminds us that the full expression of beauty requires the feminine touch, apart from which the attractive attributes of happiness and joy remain nothing more than out of reach ideals.[52] Without female Seers, the pursuit of beauty is one-sided and, in fact, bereft.

On Seeing

A phenomenology of optics, therefore, urges much more than the common and tired call for vision. It urges, rather, what John McCurdy refers to as “ocular behavior” which is a “condition” for seeing, not the “cause” of it. Vision (in most cases) is a phenomenological given. Behavior that opens the expanse, horizon and scope of vision is not. “There would be no vision if eyes did not exist,” says McCurdy, “but, given eyes and ocular functions as conditions, vision requires intentional activity.”[53] Some hints at the type of activity betoken of true Seers have been rehearsed above.

Furthermore, it is easily seen that a “panoramic awareness” is needed if leaders are to take on those qualities assigned to Seers.[54] Such a panorama will include grappling with both the good and the bad of ocularcentrism with which the West is beset. It will also need to reinvestigate approaches to truth that do justice to the narrative structures of the Bible, while at the same time moving away from simple notions of correctness and toward an aletheia of character that foments social justice as well. This panorama will be explicitly eschatological, including demonstrations of catalytic imagination, childlike models of leadership, real community, and the unique intrusion of the supernatural. And it will pursue the full realisation of beauty, heavily investing in a feminine epistemology.

In so many words, the leader as Seer will attempt to offer applied wisdomcoupled with wrestling with those questions that revolve around issues involved with howwe see as much as what we see. Ocular behavior will be more important than ocular ability and stylistic or professional competency. Inherent in it is a significant challenge, for the dominance of the egological gaze, with its preference for “the leisure of self-recovery” is not easily recognised, and even less easily replaced. But leaders as Seers will not flinch at the challenge. Rather, they will do all they can to replace it with an “eschatologically conceived beyond.”[55]

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[1] Seona Reid, Principle of the Glasgow School of Art and former Head of the Scottish Arts Council, at Graduation Ceremonies for the Glasgow School of Art, 25 June, 2004.

[2] David Michael Levin, The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation(New York: Routledge, 1988), 9. Levin is concerned with dimensions of a visionary life that do not isolate the individual, but rather place her or him squarely in a specific social context. One critical aspect of the visionary life that is essential to social imaginings that take us beyond that which currently exists, according to Levin, is approaching visionary being as a spiritual vocation.

[3] Nietzsche’s “aversion to reposing once and for all in any sort of totalized view of the world” is one example. See, Frederick Nietzsche, The Will to Power(New York: Random House, 1967), 262.

[4] The work of Emmanuel Levinas is seminal in this regard. As a Jewish sociologist, his overt concern is the protecting of human liberties and uniqueness against the hegemony of totalizing programs. Jens Zimmermann, in fact, contends that “the central thematic of Levinas is to shelter the unique identity of every human being against any possible totalities.” See, Jens Zimmermann, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 190.

[5] In this manner Heidegger criticises Nietzsche’s idea of “eternal recurrence.” See, M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol.II (New York: Harper & Row, 1982),117-18. Heidegger described the resultant lack of standpoint of any sort as an “attempt to flee from one’s own shadow.” Thereby, clear-sightedness is much preferred to no sight at all.

[6] Churchland uses the misguided terminology of “exploitable information” that is there for the taking for those who develop perception in both micro and macro categories. In spite of this, the concept is viable and challenging. It raises the question of how much we are missing when it comes to multiple categories of sight? See, Paul M. Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 7.

[7] Arthur C. Danto, Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation, ed. Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 207. The religious concept of original sin may or may not be invoked without injury to the idea that attributing significance to what is seen necessarily incurs a variety of narrative experiences. Its use by Danto may be unfortunate in that it unnecessarily provokes religious stereotypes that can be easily discarded.

[8] Top-down processing that infects even the innocent gaze is suggested by Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, 2-3.

[9] Levin, The Opening of Vision, 3-4.

[10] Objective reflection resorts to the curious differentiation between what is seen and what is perceived.That this is so should not be uncritically accepted, for it certainly accounts, in part, for the hermeneutic of suspicion that postmodernism injects into everything. If nothing else, it suggests the importance of phenomenological considerations. For an interesting discussion of what is entailed in discerning reflection, see Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol.2: Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1976), 8-15.

[11] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Washington Square, 1966), 345.

[12] Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 152. Jonas argues for a phenomenological scheme that insists upon a preference for vision over mental grappling in terms of which precedes which. The mind can only stretch to what is beyond based on what can be seen, either interiorly or exteriorly.

[13] For an excellent discussion of this, see Robert Paul Doede and Paul Edward Hughes, “Wounded Vision and the Optics of Hope,” in The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition Amid Modernity and Postmodernity(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 174, in which the metaphorics of vision are shown to be critical in the interest of how human beings “schematise conceptions of reality.”

[14] See David Levin, The Philosopher’s Gaze: Modernity in the Shadows of Enlightenment(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 116 ff.

[15] David Michael Levin, The Opening of Vision, 10.

[16] M.M. Bakhtin, Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 49. Bakhtin wrestles with what distinguishes the look of grace from the look of power. The former is premised on the reality that I cannot understand myself without outside help. It offers objectivity for no personal interest, but in ways that are entirely selfless and, in fact, costly.

[17] Heidegger, for example, is concerned with how Being is empowered by the metaphorics of vision. The gaze that is thus empowering moves through stages that he describes as “the moment of vision” that renders “unconcealment,” producing “circumspective looking,” and eventuating in “the clearing,” which is essentially a view from outside that offers discernment. See, Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, trans. Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 150-51.

[18] The concept of eternity is stimulated by the unique simultaneity of image that seeing affords. Physical vision’s capacity for dynamic neutralisation suggests the comparative capacity for objectivity. Spatial distance stimulates thoughts of infinity. See, Hans Jonas, The Phenomena of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, 136.

[19] See, The Future of Hope, 193.

[20] Levin refers to this tendency in postmodernism as a precarious mental exercise that plays with relativism under the guise of deconstruction, when in fact it is about simple destruction. “It undermines all standpoints and calls all viewpoints blind. It becomes totally self-defeating; it offers no alternative to despair, to nihilism.” See, The Opening of Vision, 26.

[21] Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets(New York: Harper & Row, 1962), xi. In this mode, truth is always in a humble posture. As Doede and Hughes put it, “It is a humbled vision that is de-centered, whose clearing is a shadow-land and whose closure is never totalized.” See, The Future of Hope, 185. Aletheia is hugely beneficial as it serves both to clear and to close, but never in a coercive fashion.

[22] See, Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 229-52. Foucault’s concern is to demonstrate how any display of visionary capacity, supplemented by truth in the mode of aletheia, is proved valid in the way that it enhances character and clears the way for its developmental potential.

[23] Levin alludes to this in reference to the interesting concept of “ontological responsibility.” Responsibility of this kind “becomes for us a question that demands our attention, our care, and our thought — a question, in other words, in relation to which our character is to be formed.” See, The Opening of Vision, 15.

[24] Levin, The Opening of Vision, 351. Explaining this more fully, Levin argues that there is “a wisdom in our experience with the night that we desperately need to learn: an experience with absence, with fusion and indistinctness, with ambiguity, shifting boundaries, elusive and transitory presences, insubstantial apparitions, concealments, a sense of wholeness and integration, encounters with the night which disturb our settled sense of reality and penetrate our culturally established egological defenses.” An interesting corollary to the night of the soul experience is the place of visionary dreams that are espoused in the night time experience of Seers in traditions other than avowedly Christian. North American Indian cultures are a case in point. See, for example, Lame Deer, Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972) and Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks(New York: Simon & Schuster, 19720.

[25] Emmanuel Levinas, more so than most others, champions the correlation between truth and justice in Transcendent categories that demand a concentration on the other in accord with biblical priorities. See his, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1995), 188.

[26] Walter Benjamin, Negative Dialectics(New York: Continuum, 1973), 359. In a similar vein, consider the implications for leadership in the suggestion of Heidegger that aletheia “promotes reification, the ability to intervene in history, and the uniting of justice and temporality.” See, M. Heidegger, “The Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking(New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 13.

[27] Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope((London: SCM Press, 1967), 226.

[28] Bauckham and Hart go further in suggesting that eschatological imagination not only serves as a catalyst for purposeful action, but also sets a pattern for Christian engagement with the world. It enables us “to transcend the limits of the given in one way or another. See, Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, Hope Against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), xii, 84-85.

[29] George MacDonald offers that such imaginatively-inspired thinking “takes forms already existing, and gathers them about a thought so much higher than they, that it can group and subordinate and harmonise them into a whole which shall represent, unveil that thought.” Further, “the imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God. Everything of man must have been of God first.” See, George MacDonald, “The Imagination: Its Functions and Its Culture,” in A Dish of Orts (London: Edwin Dalton, 1908), 68.

[30] The fantastic might best be explained, according to Irwin, as “a story based on and controlled by an overt violation of what is generally accepted as possibility; it is the narrative result of transforming the condition contrary to fact into fact itself.” See, W. Irwin, The Game of the Impossible: A Rhetoric of Fantasy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1976), x.

[31] J. Bellemin-Noel, cited in Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London: Methuen, 1981), 38. “The rhetoric of the unsayable,” argues Bellemin-Noel, attempts to verbalise “an apprehension of something unnameable…which can have no adequate articulation except through suggestion and implication.”

[32] The way that eschatological imagination can promote transfiguration is suggested by Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysics of Hope (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1951), 67. Marcel speaks of it in personal and social categories as “an undreamed-of promotion.”

[33] Thomas Howard likens the capacity of myths and fantasy to provide distance and identity to frames around a painting. “Such and such a scene or person or event was “in there,” and you, the viewer, had leisure to regard it and contemplate it. You were free from any entaglement..Of course, part of the genius of the whole thing is that you do get involved. But it is an involvement that is not cluttered by having to attend to a thousand trifling details. You are free to get a grip on things exactly because you are at a remove from them.” See his, “Myth: Flight to Reality,” in The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing (Colorado Springs: Shaw Books, 2002), 338.

[34] F. Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” Untimely Meditations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 83-84.

[35] Churchland argues similarly. “The demand on successful or acceptable theories—that they explain or reduce the facts as conceived within common sense (or within theories already “established”)—assigns to the framework of common sense a significance beyond what it deserves.” See, Paul Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, 44.

[36] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1994), 45-49.

[37] For an insightful explanation of the nature of the fairy tale, see Frederick Buechner’s Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 76-80. “Maybe above all they are tales about transformation where all creatures are revealed in the end as what they truly are—-the ugly duckling becomes a great white swan, the frog is revealed to be a prince, and the beautiful but wicked queen is unmasked at last in all her ugliness. They are tales of transformation where the ones who live happily ever after, as by no means everybody does in fairy tales, are transformed into what they have it in them at their best to be.”

[38] Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous to Be? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 96. Levinas relates the confirmation of self to that “gaze” which flows from an unhealthy “principle of subjectivity” that “takes things in, to the hand which takes and possesses them, to domination of beings.” Luther comments similarly. “In a perverse way, man loves himself, only himself. This perversion cannot be corrected unless he puts the neighbor in his place.” See, M. Luther, Commentary on Romans, trans. J. Theodore Muller (Grand Rapids: Kregal, 1976), 107.

[39] Gabriel Marcel, “The Encounter with Evil,” in Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trans. Peter McCormick and Stephen Jolin (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 19730, 143. Marcel considers such caustic subjectivity to be indicative of the current culture of nihilism that has produced the “triumph of evil—-triumph of death—-triumph of despair.” “The choir’s mission,” he suggests, “can be accomplished only where the choir itself becomes a propitiatory invocation.”

[40] See, Susan Felch, “In the Chorus of Others: M.M. Bakhtin’s Sense of Tradition,” unpublished paper (27 October, 2000), available through Northwestern University Library, Evanston, Illinois. Felch urges, for example, that “your vision supplements mine, just as mine supplements yours. In order for us to understand ourselves, that is to create meaning, we must ‘fill in’ the other’s horizon, by offering our ‘excess of vision’ to the other as a gift.”

[41] Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 80.

[42] See, David Michael Levin, The Opening of Vision, 34-35. Levin would have us, more particularly, “disentangle the word ‘experience’ from its traditional metaphysical interpretation and retrieve its creative, enabling, life-affirming potential.” He cites Heidegger’s idea of the necessity of “The Overcoming of Metaphysics.”

[43] John O’Neill, Perception, Expression, and History: The Social Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 14. The manner in which the aesthetic is laden with meaning is likewise suggested by Goethe with his recommendation that we have constantly before our eyes some work of the best attainable art so as to learn to refuse the evil and choose the good. Cited in George MacDonald, “The Imagination” Its Functions and Its Culture,” in A Dish of Orts, 79.

[44] L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 568. The tendency to degrade the meaning value of the sensuous is endemic. For an excellent assessment of this tendency, especially as it relates to cultural hermeneutics and cultures of truth, see David Michael Levin, The Philosopher’s Gaze: Modernity in the Shadow of Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 433-34.

[45] Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 122-23.

[46] G. von Rad, Theology of the Old Testament, Vol.1, trans. D.M.G Stalker (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2001), 276. Moltmann, similarly, reminds us of how reprehensible dead things were in early Israelite culture, especially as outlined in contrast to the surrounding societies. Christian theology, says Moltmann, finds in it “the presupposition for understanding the resurrection of Christ as the resurrection of the crucified one and not as a symbol for the hope of immortality and the resigned attitude to life that goes along with it.” See, J. Moltmann, Theology of Hope (Suffolk: SCM Press, Ltd., 1967), 208.

[47] Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Predigten, trans. Otto Dudzuz (Berlin: Verlagshaus, 2004), 148.

[48] Incarnation as enfleshing is borrowed from Madeleine L’Engle. “The artist must be obedient to the work,” she writes. “I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.’ And the artist either says, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord,’ and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses.” See, Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water : Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Random House, 1972), 51. In like fashion, Zimmermann relates the recovery of aesthetics to the incarnation. “The incarnational model redeems aesthetics from irrelevant aestheticism and gives it full existential weight. Aesthetics is, in fact, crucial for an adequate biblical hermeneutic.” See, Jens Zimmerman, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 314.

[49] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), xi.

[50] Allison M. Jaggar, “Feelings and Knowing: Emotion in Feminist Theory,” in McConnell-Ginet, Barker, and Furman (eds.), Women and Language in Literature and Society (New York: Praeger, 1980), 181. Marcel hints at the same in his call for the new enlightened philosopher whose vision is compelled by compassion rather than the “hegemony of technology.” See, Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 150.

[51] Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 257: “The caress, like contact, is sensibility. But the caress transcends the sensible.”

[52] Seers, in this broader and gender-equal sighting, see the future in such a way that applied wisdom allows for the experience of happiness in the present. Thus, Pascal’s pessimism is averted. “We never live,” said Pascal, “but we hope to live; and as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.” See, Blaise Pascal, Pensees (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1958), 49-50. Augustine, interestingly, is more optimistic. “With it’s light, truth gives joy to the men who turn to it, and punishes with blindness those who turn away.” See, Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), Book II, 67.

[53] John Derrickson McCurdy, Visionary Appropriation (New York: Philosophical Library, 1978), 41.

[54] M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 68.

[55] The common tendency toward “leisure self-recovery” and the expansive vision of an “eschatologically conceived beyond” are both suggested by Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trans. Peter McCormick and Stephen Jolin (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 151.

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A framework for a biblical theology of wealth and poverty

Andrew Perriman

The covenant with Moses was intended to establish the basis on which the people of Israel would successfully inhabit a naturally bountiful land. A simple rule applied: if the people kept the law of God, they would enjoy the prosperity that would accrue to them from the land:

And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples. (Deut. 7:12-14)

The language both here and at several points in the patriarchal narratives (eg. Gen. 16:10; 17:2, 5-6; 22:17; 28:3; 35:11-12; 48:4) suggests that the presence of the people in the land is conceived as a restarting of the story of humanity. The command to Adam to be fruitful and multiply and fill the land becomes a promise to Abraham to make him fruitful and to multiply his descendants in the land which God would give him. Prosperity, therefore, must be understood not only in material but also in relational or familial terms: it is a measure of the general well-being and productiveness of a community, it is shalom.

Failure to observe the terms of the covenant, however, would result in hardship and suffering in the form of the loss of the prosperity of the land – through disease, famine, military conquest – and ultimately in the form of the loss of the land itself through exile (cf. Deut. 28:15-68). The analogy with the creation narrative continues: just as humanity had originally lost the prosperity and security of the garden as a consequence of disobedience, so disobedient Israel would forfeit the material prosperity of the land that had been promised to Abraham.

Prosperity, poverty and the law

Prosperity for Israel is conceived primarily in national terms. The law required giving in various forms and active concern for the plight of the poor, but it did not enforce economic equality or the redistribution of wealth within the community. In view of this, there were bound to be persistent disparities of wealth within the nation: as Jesus said, the poor would always be with them (Mark 14:7). The problem was to be addressed, however, at two levels. On the one hand, Israel’s rulers were expected to defend the interests of the poor and helpless. On the other, individuals within the community could enter into a virtuous circle of giving and receiving. Acts of righteousness, prominent among which was generosity towards the poor, would lead to prosperity, which would spill over into further acts of righteousness (cf. Ps. 37:25-26).

There is no systematic bias towards the poor. Private property was protected by the law; theft and covetousness were prohibited in the decalogue; both the poor and the rich were entitled to judicial impartiality (Ex. 23:2-3). There are, however, various constraints imposed upon the possession of wealth. Property rights were not absolute: the people in the last analysis were only ‘aliens and tenants’ in a land leased to them by God (Lev. 25:23; cf. Ex. 19:5). The law of Jubilee, the sabbath year, and the sabbath itself had a moderating effect on the acquisition of wealth and built into the economic system a requirement of trust in God as provider. A significant proportion of personal wealth was taken in taxation.

The failure of prosperity

Perhaps inevitably, Israel failed to maintain the standards of economic justice required by the law. The theological response to this failure comes in various forms. There are general warnings in the Wisdom literature about the moral and spiritual dangers of wealth. A more substantial critique emerges from the prophetic writings. After idolatry the refusal to deal justly and compassionately with the plight of the poor is the most significant factor in the judgment that comes upon Israel and Judah (cf. Is. 1:21-25; Amos 2:6-7).

Although at an individual level poverty may be attributed to laziness, at a social level it is seen as a consequence of the failure of the rich to act justly and provide for those in need. The unrighteous wealthy will suffer eschatological judgment on a ‘day of punishment’:

Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey! What will you do on the day of punishment, in the ruin that will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth? (Is. 10:1-3)

Under these circumstances the helpless poor, victims of abuse and neglect, will receive divine favour: He is ‘a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress’ (Is. 25:4). In some respects, therefore, the poor are closer to God than the wealthy: they are more likely to look to the Lord for help (Ps. 9:9-10; 69:32-33), they are more likely to be found in the company of the righteous (Ps. 14:5-6). There is the beginning here of an inversion of the covenantal association between righteousness and prosperity which will become more sharply evident in the Gospels.

Poverty and crisis

As we approach the Gospels we need to keep in mind the fact that Israel is in just that state of eschatological crisis that was foreseen by the Old Testament prophets, and that this state of crisis has implications for how wealth and poverty are assessed theologically.

First, because of economic injustice, at both a personal and a systemic level, we are in a situation in which the righteous are much more likely to be poor. This obviously brings into question the covenantal link between torah observance and prosperity, but the issue here is not that the formula no longer applies but that Israel has failed in torah observance and therefore has brought judgment upon itself, the imminent loss of well-being. Failure at the national religious level has resulted in a fundamental distortion of the covenantal framework: the whole theology of prosperity has broken down. The accumulation of wealth had become a substitute for trust in YHWH. At a time when Israel needed to be saved from its sins, and from the consequences of its sins, the nation was serving mammon rather than God (Matt. 6:24), was storing up grain in its barn not realizing that destruction was imminent (Luke 12:21), was feasting at its table to the neglect of the poor but within a generation would suffer the punishment of gehenna (Luke 16:19-31). Wealth offered no prospect of escape from this national disaster.

Secondly, Jesus’ critique of the possession of wealth and his preference for the poor and marginalized cannot be detached from the context of the judgment and salvation of Israel. The preference arises because, by and large, it is those on the margins who are willing to receive healing and forgiveness and who will form the community of renewed Israel gathered around Jesus. It is on the margins that new life begins to break through.

Thirdly, personal wealth would be of little value for those who were called to share in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of the kingdom of God, who faced ostracism, the confiscation of property, imprisonment, expulsion and possibly death. It would be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 19:23-24). The rich young ruler could not bring his abundant possessions with him along the difficult and dangerous road of discipleship (Matt. 19:21-22). None of them could: ‘whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14:33). The disciples who had left their homes and their livelihoods were promised the abundant blessings of a new community centred around Jesus – this was the only form of prosperity that would sustain them during a period of persecution (Mark 10:29-30).

Poverty and wealth in the New Testament church

The same basic eschatological framework must be taken into account when we consider the teaching and praxis of the early church. Jesus’ insistence that his followers, the core of renewed Israel, should sell their possessions is directly implemented in the communal life of the early church. Land and property were sold and the money distributed to those in the community of believers who had need (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35). It appears, though, that this was done only when the need arose: it was not a requirement of discipleship that personal wealth should be automatically abandoned. Ananias and Sapphira were given the option of keeping part of the proceeds from their land (Acts 5:3); the description of Tabitha as a woman ‘devoted to good works and acts of charity’ seems to imply that she acted independently, giving from her own resources (Acts 9:36); Mnason was an ‘early disciple’ who had his own house in Jerusalem (Acts 21:16).

It seems likely that there were contextual social reasons that at least encouraged this practice, in addition to a strong recollection of Jesus’ example and teaching: the openness of the poorest in Jerusalem to the gospel, the large numbers of diaspora pilgrims who converted on the day of Pentecost, the possibility that the earliest followers of a discredited messiah were barred from the usual sources of public charity. There is no evidence that churches outside Palestine adopted the same radical model of economic communalism. One easily imagines that there was a high level of mutual support within the communities, but nothing suggests a systematic renunciation of personal wealth. Churches met in the homes of wealthy patrons, believers continued to hold public office (Acts 13:6-12; Rom. 16:23) or run businesses (Acts 16:14; 18:2-3).

The sharp criticism of the rich that we find in James’ letter to the ‘twelve tribes in the Dispersion’ (James 1:1) cannot be detached from the later warnings about an imminent day of judgment (5:1, 8-9). John warns his readers not to love the things that are in the world – ‘the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions’ – because ‘the world is passing away along with its desires’ (1 John 2:15-17). Material possessions will be of no value in a time of eschatological crisis. In general terms, though, wealth is seen as damaging to the spiritual integrity of believing communities.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. (1 Tim. 6:9-10)

Paul invokes the Old Testament principle of charitable giving when he urges those who are ‘rich in this present age’ to ‘do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share’ (1 Tim. 6:17-18). What differentiates giving within the New Testament from Old Testament practice is the connection with grace: giving is not simply a mark of righteousness under the law but a gift of grace, a charism (Rom. 12:8; cf. the emphasis on ‘grace’ in 2 Cor. 8:4, 6, 7, 19; 9:14). We do not, however, entirely lose the Old Testament connection between giving and receiving, between doing what is ‘right’ and prospering in the fullest sense of the term. The Corinthians can expect to reap what they sow (2 Cor. 9:6; cf. Prov. 3:9-10; Mal. 3:9-11; Luke 6:38; Gal. 6:7-8). The ‘sufficiency’ (autarkeia) with which God will bless them will provide the material basis for them to ‘abound in every good work’ (2 Cor. 9:8). The quotation of Psalm 112 in the next verse invokes the conventional paradigm of the righteous man who acts justly (5), gives freely to the poor (9), and in whose house are ‘wealth and riches’ (3).

Some conclusions…

1. As a general matter of biblical interpretation questions relating to wealth and poverty, justice and injustice, etc., need to be investigated primarily not as abstract ethical issues but as problems posed within a narrative and essentially eschatological framework. Critically, this connects our thinking with the calling and experience of the people and establishes a distinctly missional orientation.

2. If we are right to understand the renewal of the people of God in Christ as a ‘new creation’, a new humanity, the question arises – a question posed to us not least by prosperity theology – whether we should not also take seriously the material dimension of that renewal. Although we must remain awake to the treacherous nature of wealth, its power to corrupt and deceive, we also need to accept that as the people of God we are not always in a state of eschatological crisis. If the church is in a position to be fruitful, multiply, labour and be prosperous, this must be understood under the rubric of ‘new creation’.

3. From a missional point of view, perhaps one of the key questions to ask as we think about where we locate ourselves socially and economically is: Where does the renewal of creation, both as prophetic sign and as proleptic reality, show up best? Where does new life become apparent? This question must be carefully demarcated from two traditional vocations: on the one side, the evangelization of individuals, and on the other, social-humanitarian assistance.

This essay is based largely on material found in A.C. Perriman (ed.), Faith, Health and Prosperity, Paternoster 2003 (a report for the Evangelical Alliance).

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Being Young, Sleeping Rough

Wesley White

(Scottish Universities Theological Forum, November, 2005)

The Homelessness Partnership of the city of Glasgow, Scotland, reports that it has received between five and six thousand requests for housing assistance from people who are determined to be “qualified homeless,” for one reason or another, in the first half of 2005. That number will have doubled by the end of the year when the books are closed, if records for preceding years are a reliable indication.

I wanted to find out what Glasgow night life was like for rough sleepers. I am a teacher of theology and a committed participant in a Christian community. Can active faith bring these varied worlds together?

During the same time period, there will be approximately 500 rough sleepers who have managed as best they can in various locations across the city. Rough sleepers refers to those who have run out of resources of any kind, their family and friends are no longer able or willing to help, and they have not sought public assistance for whatever reason. They literally spend their days and their nights on the streets.

I wanted to find out what Glasgow night life was like for rough sleepers. I am a teacher of theology and a committed participant in a Christian community. Can active faith bring these varied worlds together? Should it? After amassing all the information I could find, and after many inquiries, I was invited to tag along with one of the two Street Teams that tries to offer public help to rough sleepers.

What follows is a descriptive and accurate account of what I saw and heard and felt in three nights on the streets as experienced by the young who sleep rough.

Tuesday, 25 October

It is a wet and windy night, but not too cold. I take the 44 bus into city centre, arriving at the Barnardos Street Team van, parked in an alley way just off Union Street, at 8:35 p.m. The van is equipped with a simple kitchen unit that doubles as an office for note taking and record keeping. Every night it is parked in a judicious place so that rough sleepers can easily be invited in for a hot or cold drink and maybe a bit of food.

I knock on the side door of the van and am introduced to Terry Gallagher and Fiona McLeod. I will be teaming up with them. Terry is in his mid-forties. He is married and has two children. His head is shaved and he wears an earring. An infectious smile dominates his face. He is a trained social worker and has been on this Street Team for two years. Over the course of the next three nights, I will witness his way of quickly earning the trust of people on the streets.

Fiona is twenty-seven, with shoulder-length auburn hair, pulled back into a pony tail. She is a bit shy with me, but much less so with what she and Terry call “streeters.” She grew up in Oban, but has lived in Glasgow since attending university. Fiona has worked with the Street Team for almost four years.

Later in the night, when there is a bit of a lull, we will grab a cup of coffee from a pub that Terry and Fiona usually visit at least once during their nightly “wander.” We stand in a corner outside the pub where they can keep their eyes open for “streeter types.” We do our best to stay out of the wind and rain, sipping our coffees. They tell me a bit of their stories. They are varied and interesting, but I want to know why they do this difficult work for inadequate pay.

“It is rewarding,” they say, “to know that you are making some bit of difference in the world.”

“You have to know what to look for to pick out the streeters,” says Fiona. “There are telltale signs.”

“We watch out for what kind of clothing someone is wearing,” says Terry. “We can also see it in the movement and look in their eyes. Of course, we also note if they are hanging around in one place for a long time.”

“I guess it’s mainly body language,” he says.

Right now, however, I squeeze into the van for a debrief with the Street Team of the night before. The space is crowded and stuffy with seven of us.

The Monday night team encourages Terry and Fiona to try to make a second contact with seventeen-year-old Alli (Allison) who was out the previous night in the semi-sheltered area between Queen Street Station and the Buchanan Street subway entrance. They report that she is “incoming” in order to get the money to support her boyfriend’s drug habit, for food and to pay for a shower at one of the sleazy city hotels that advertises “pay per use.”

I soon discover that “incoming” is Glasgow street language for prostitution. It crudely depicts the ‘exchange of money’ for sex and the act of a male “coming in”. It usually nets 20-30 pounds per customer for a girl of her age. All of the street team workers agree that the drug habit Alli is supporting is not only that of her boyfriend.

The Street Team hopes to gain her confidence so that they can determine whether she is “solo” (truly on her own) or if she is a runaway. If she is a runaway they must report her to the police. If she is solo, they will do all they can to convince her to take their offer of appropriate housing (there are numerous options) and their offer of help so that she need not resort to "incoming".

The Monday night team also tells us that the public toilets off Buchanan Street were unusually busy the previous night.

And so Terry, Fiona and I head out. It is now almost 9:30. We head first to the public toilets. Fiona descends the steps into the female side and quickly returns to tell us there are probably three female streeters loitering near the cubicles, one of whom she has had contact with before. Terry and I then descend the steps to the male side.

At the bottom of the steps, sitting comfortably in the corner, still partially outside, is an elderly man that Terry tells me is obviously a streeter. We do not talk to him. The Barnardos teams focus only on the young streeters, 16-25 year olds. A separate team from the Simon Community tries to connect with those who are over 25.

At the far end of the urinals are two young boys who show signs of being streeters. Terry motions to me to use the urinal. I surmise that I should simulate relieving myself, even though I have no need. Terry does the same. Whether he is faking it as well, I do not know, or care.

Terry then approaches the two boys, with me at his side. He shows them his Barnardos Street Team identity card. It is around his neck and laminated and under his photo it has Terry’s name and says “Barnardos Street Team… People Who Care.”

Terry asks them if they are trying to keep dry.

One of them shrugs his shoulders and says, "Aye, sure.”

Terry invites them to join us on the steps to talk for minute. Later on, he will tell me that it was too early in the night to try to talk there by the urinals. There are too many people in and out, and streeters will not engage in those situations.

At first the two teenagers are reluctant, but with a bit of coaxing they follow us.

We climb the steps and three-quarters of the way up Fiona joins us. Later in the night the toilets will be inhabited by both genders, but right now it is better for Fiona to keep some distance.

The five of us sit on the steps, keeping enough room on one side for men to get in and out of the toilets. Terry mysteriously produces two pre-packaged muffins and a bottle of fruit juice from the inner pockets of his jacket. The two boys do not hesitate to accept the muffins and the drink.

After a few minutes of friendly small talk, we discover their names, Graham and Brod. The full name is Broderick, but he strongly forbids its use. They are dressed in layers of clothes that are not grossly dirty, but neither could they be described as clean. Brod has a wool cap that is pulled down almost covering his eyes. Graham’s head is bare, his long and stringy brown hair showing the effect of a windy day and a rainy night.

After eating his muffin, Brod rises and begins to amble up the rest of the steps. He reminds Graham that they “have things to do,” but Graham makes it clear that he intends to stay.

Just before he mounts the final step, Brod turns and thanks Terry for the muffin, and he is gone.

Fiona gently questions Graham about his situation. He claims that he is almost 18, but later in the conversation it comes out that he has only just recently turned 16. He has had one night on the benches in Central Station and two nights in these public toilets. He’s not “poppin” (drug use), he claims. A strong odour of alcohol, however, wafts from him every time he opens his mouth or leans in my direction.

Fiona asks him how he comes by any money at all.

“Offering,” he says.

"Offering", it turns out , is another example of Glasgow street lingo. It is the term for male prostitution that usually involves teenage boys and middle-aged men, brokered by a "kink", a local manager of sexual liaisons. Some kinks also manage the exchange of drugs along with kinky sex.

“It can’t be good,” says Fiona. Graham does not reply, but simply stares at his soggy Reeboks.

I ask Terry if I can ask Graham a question. Terry nods.

“What’s it like sleeping in the toilets?”

“At least it’s dry,” Graham replies, “and it is warmer than anywhere above ground. The police usually ignore the place, unless there’s a fight. You have to wake up fuckin’ early because of job people. You wake up stiff all over. But you had a night.”

Terry reaches within the folds of his jacket once more and retrieves another unopened bottle, orange juice this time, which he offers to Graham. As Graham gulps it down, another half hour slips by with friendly banter about life in Glasgow and the various denizens of city centre.

We discover that Graham is from Edinburgh, but has not lived at home for over a year. He has no desire, he says, to return to what he calls the “violent shit” of a mother who is almost always drunk. His father is long gone.

Fiona asks Graham if he wants to come with us to the Barnardos van where we can sit around a comfortable table and have something hot to drink. Terry and Fiona look pleased when he rather quickly agrees.

We make our way toward the van, Graham tossing furtive glances here and there as though he is afraid of seeing someone he knows or as though he might bolt away without a moment’s notice. We are soon there, however, and once seated, he appears much more relaxed.

Terry heats up cups of water, one by one, in the microwave built into the back wall of the van, adds spoonfuls of hot chocolate mix, and sets them before us all.

Meanwhile, Fiona has already begun asking Graham about his mate, Brod. As though ignoring her question, Graham asks if he can smoke. Fiona reaches for an ashtray and Graham retrieves a crumpled box of cigarettes from the side pocket of his baggy trousers.

Finally, as a cloud of smoke envelopes us all, Graham simply says, “About Brod.”

Brod, it turns out, is a “floater,” suggesting that no one, least of all Graham, actually knows why he’s on the streets. He appears here and there, comes up with money as though by magic, but invariably spends his nights either in the public toilets, or at Central Station, or at various places on the south-side where his face is recognised.

Fiona wonders why he left so abruptly.

“He don’t like nobody,” says Graham.

Terry broaches the subject of alternative housing arrangements.

“What would it mean?” Graham asks.

“Rules,” says Terry, “curfews, sharing a room. You’d be put out if you kept on offering.”

“Food?” Graham asks.

“Cold milk and cereal in the morning, nothing more,” replies Terry.

“Ok then,” says Graham.

Some simple paper work is produced. Graham signs a form, as does Terry before he walks around to the driver’s seat and manoeuvres us out of the alley. Soon we are headed toward the south-side and Glengowan House.

The paper work is exchanged with the nightshift worker and we escort Graham to a room.

“This is good,” says Fiona, as we huddle around the open doorway. So far, he has the room to himself.

“What do I do?” asks Graham.

“Do what they tell you in the morning,” says Terry. “We’ll call you tomorrow to see how you’re getting on.”

With a sigh, Graham says thanks and shuts the door.

It is 11:20 p.m. as we drive away. Fiona and Terry are delighted. This has been unusually successful. Often is takes two or three contacts before someone like Graham will receive help of any kind. We make our way back to the same alley off Union Street where Terry and Fiona fill out reports on what transpired with Graham. I record notes of my own.

After a cup of coffee, Terry and Fiona will take another wander that will keep them occupied until 2:00 a.m. But I’ve had enough for my induction night.

“I’m exhausted,” I announce. “I must get home.”

Terry puts a hand on my shoulder as I gather my notes and assorted belongings.

“Do you want to do the most important thing?” he asks me.

“What’s that?” I reply.

“Call Graham tomorrow and see what might come of it. Someone like him needs some support, some friends.”

Terry walks me part way down the street toward the bus stop.

“Didn’t you tell me you have five kids?” he asks.

“Yes,” I respond.

He reaches into yet another pocket of his bulky jacket and thrusts a handful of condoms at me.

“Maybe you need to make more use of these,” he says.

With a wide grin, he turns and heads back toward the van.

Wednesday, 26 October

As I retrace my route of last night into the city centre, I am wondering whether Fiona and Terry had been able to make that second contact with Alli we had hoped for. Rather than going directly to the van, we are meeting at the Barnardos Street Team offices on Mitchell Street, just a few minutes from the pedestrian area of city centre.

We will have a debrief of our own. The Street Teams do shifts of two nights in a row, anticipating that they might make second or third contacts with streeters of the previous nights. It’s all about genuine relationships, as they have told me numerous times already.

As I climb the steps to the first floor offices, I am feeling at least a little less of a novice. I know it’s naive, but it gives me some measure of solace and even some pleasure. This is doable and effective. These people matter, I think to myself. These people matter a lot.

“Were you able to call Graham?” asks Terry as soon as we are seated in the comfortable couches in the office lobby.

“Yes,” I reply. “We had a good chat. Seems like he wants to meet up again. Maybe in the next day or two. He may see us on the streets tonight.”

Fiona has joined us and we wonder together if the possibility of running into Graham is a good or bad thing. His housing arrangement at Glengowan House extends for two weeks minimally. Hopefully, he will stick with it until he can get some more in-depth help.

Tonight we will walk over to the Queen Street Station area. Terry and Fiona had not been able to find Alli after I left them last night. Maybe she will be there tonight. If not her, others. Terry stuffs his pockets with all the paraphernalia that had been systematically revealed to me last night. It has been raining hard throughout most of the day, but now it is dry, though humid and very warm.

“The streeters,” says Fiona, “will be out and happy.”

I am glad that I dressed somewhat more lightly. Even now, I am sweating as we walk.

It is going on 9:20 p.m. as we approach the outer area of the station. It is early enough that there are still good numbers of people coming from and going to the trains. In spite of the crowds, Fiona and Terry easily spy out a youthful group who, to them, are obvious streeters, huddled around the stairway leading up to Cathedral Street.

“It’s mainly in the eyes,” Terry reminds me. “Look at how that observe all the passers-by, maybe with apprehension, maybe as potential customers for what they have to offer.”

We stand to one side and observe them ourselves. On the outer fringes of the group is a girl who matches our descriptions of Alli.

She is shorter than the others and dressed in tattered jeans that seem inordinately tight for her. She is wearing trainers that must have been red at some point, but now look almost black. Her heavy pullover sweatshirt is also red, with a hood that is pulled over her head. Across the front, the sweatshirt reads, “Leeds.” Beneath the hood is a mass of thick blond hair. With the warmth and humidity, her face is moist. We can see it even from our distance.

Fiona leads the way as we amble toward them.

“We met some new friends of yours,” she says, popping her identity card and quickly replacing it beneath the zipper of her jacket. “Want to talk some more?”

Alli seems at ease and moves a few steps away from her group of friends.

“You are Alli?” Fiona asks. Alli nods and asks about the others that she met the previous night.

“They’re not out tonight,” replies Fiona. “It’s our turn for some fun.”

Terry invites her to come with us into the station where we can sit down. She tells her friends she will be right back, and joins us.

There are plenty of empty tables around the Costa coffee shop, and we each pull up a chair.

“I suppose we really ought to order a coffee,” says Terry. I offer to go, and as I make my way to the counter, Terry shouts to me, “Make it one large. We’ll share.”

By the time I return, Terry has already visited his pockets and a large chocolate bar is open on the table in front of us. I have not missed much of the conversation.

“Our friends tell us you’re incoming,” says Fiona.

“Sure,” says Alli.

“Why?”

“Why not?” she replies. “Gotta eat. Try’in to keep clean. The cinema once in a while.”

“Any income tonight?” says Fiona.

“Naw.” “Danny, that’s my boyfriend, says it’s ok. Gotta be.”

“How’s he helping?” says Terry.

“Nothin’,” she says.

“He poppin’?” asks Fiona.

“Here and there.” “But not me. I been clean a while now.”

Fiona looks doubtful. “It would be better to get off the streets,” she says. “We can help. There’s plenty of places.”

“Nope,” says Alli. “Don’t work for me.” “Met shit people in them places.” “Everything’s a fuckin’ issue.”

Terry and Fiona offer her numerous alternatives, but Alli won’t budge.

“I’m fine,” she says, “I’m good.”

I wince inside at the irony. Alli stands to leave. Terry reaches into his pockets and puts five or six condoms in her hand.

“Make sure they use those,” he says, “all the time.”

“Anything else to eat…for my friends?” she says.

“They wanna talk?” says Terry. Alli smiles wryly.

“Can we keep lookin’ out for you?” asks Fiona.

“Yeah,” says Alli, “why not?”

A moment later, she is gone, and the three of us look at each other and shake our heads.

“You can’t help ‘em if they don’t want it,” says Terry.

We walk back over to the team offices to get the van and head over to Anderston.

The Anderston area in and around the train station is notorious in Glasgow as the place where many and easy "incoming" deals are transacted. It is curious, however, that "offering" arrangements rarely transpire there. We will be specifically wanting to have conversations with young girls who are incoming out of streeter necessity.

Fiona forewarns me that they will be shockingly young. “Most people would never guess,” she says.

Dim lights are glowing from the stairwell that leads to the trains below. There are maybe twenty people loitering around, some in groups, some singly. There is no reason not to suppose that they are waiting for a train or perhaps a taxi. Undoubtedly, some are.

Terry instructs us to sit down on the pavement with our backs against the wall of the train building. “Let’s just see what we see,” he says.

As the minutes tick by, the scene takes on more clarity. There are three or four older young women obviously going nowhere. A few people have come and gone. There are two solitary men who have been there since we arrived. There are two girls, clearly too young to be standing around idly at 11:30 on a Wednesday night, in the shadows of the building across the street.

“It is almost certain,” says Fiona, “that one of those men is a kink.”

Nearly thirty minutes elapse before we stretch our stiff legs and backs and cross the street toward the two girls. One of the two solitary men left a good twenty minutes earlier. The other had left as well, but now has returned.

Again, Fiona takes the lead. She is right. I am shocked when I see how young these girls are as their faces come into focus up close. Both Fiona and Terry show their identity cards right away.

“You girls ok?” asks Fiona.

“We’re fine,” says one of them.

“Waiting?” says Fiona.

“Yeah, just waitin’.”

“He with you?” Terry nods toward the man across the street.

Both girls look down at their feet.

“We’re fine,” states the spokesgirl once more.

Terry offers them a muffin or a chocolate bar. Neither of them is hungry.

“Who knows you’re out here?” asks Fiona.

“We’re on our own. We’re fine.”

“You don’t have to stay here,” says Terry. “We can get you a place for tonight and longer. We can get you help, right now. We have a van and we’ll drive you ourselves.”

“Naw,” says the same girl, who seems to do all the talking. “We’re just waitin’.”

We talk for another ten minutes, asking about parents or relatives or guardians. We ask about school. We ask about friends who might be available. But all the answers are vague, avoiding eye contact.

The conversation ends with the inevitable handful of condoms and instructions to make sure they are used.

We cross the street in the opposite direction, our hands in our pockets, and return to our post by the wall. There is not much to say. The solitary man has changed positions a few times, but he is still there.

Fiona and Terry will stay and see what happens. They will be there until 2:00 a.m. But my emotional stamina has run out once again. I say my good-byes, assuring them that I will join them again on Friday night. They will be off on Thursday.

I walk eight or nine blocks before hailing one of the few taxis that happens by. I need the distance. As I settle into the cushioned seat of the taxi, I realise that I am already back in a very different world, a world that feels even more remote as we turn onto the quiet streets of the West End where I live.

Friday, 28 October

Tonight we are meeting at the van parked near Central Station. When I arrive for the debrief, I soon realise that our team for the night will be four in number rather than three. Catherine Jameison is joining us for the evening and Fiona and Terry are very pleased.

She is well-known as the head of the Homelessness Partnership, a joint effort of Glasgow City Council, Greater Glasgow NHS, the Scottish Executive and voluntary organisations like Barnardos that are part of the Glasgow Homelessness Network. Catherine wants to keep in touch with grass-root efforts and so periodically comes along for a night with one of the two street teams. She is a middle-aged woman whose stern demeanour has more to do with her passionate concern for the needs of the homeless than it does with anger.

Terry and Fiona begin by telling us about what happened in the final hours of the Wednesday night shift, after I had left them. They had returned to sitting on the pavement, backs against the wall. After some time, the solitary man had crossed the street and had some sort of verbal interchange with the two girls. And then all three of them simply left.

Who knows what became of them? Was a rendezvous moved to a different location? Were the girls in jeopardy? Were their plans foiled by our presence?

“Who knows?” says Fiona.

There is also good news. A second contact with Graham had been made by the Thursday night team. He was heading back to Glengowan House when they met him at 11:10 p.m. I will phone him again and see if we can meet up either over the weekend or sometime next week.

After the debrief, the four of us leave the van and head into Central Station. We climb the stairs to Bonaparte’s bar and cafe and order four coffees to take away. Then we go back to the main waiting area and sit down to wait ourselves, and watch.

It is early enough that people are still moving at a fairly hectic pace. Terry and Fiona have their eyes on various groupings of the youthful, but it all appears rather routine to me. I am glad that I end up sitting beside Catherine Jameison. I can use the time to ask her some questions.

“I think faith communities could provide long-term support through friendship. Homeless people have a very elusive and even, you might say, a fickle type of community.”

She tells me that outside of London, Glasgow has the most widespread and severe problems with homelessness of all the major urban areas in the United Kingdom, far beyond Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh. On the other hand, she is sure that Glasgow’s efforts to address the issues are better co-ordinated than anywhere else, including London. Glasgow is unique in promoting partnerships that freely combine the best contributions of both government agencies and voluntary charitable organisations.

“What about religious groups or faith-based organisations?” I ask.

She is startled by the question. “Largely, they are not there,” she replies after a moment’s hesitation. She has learned, I discover later, that I have what she calls “theological leanings.”

“In fact,” she continues, “in my opinion, religious groups are suspect of exacerbating problems with their tendency to default to free handouts which only continue cycles of dependancy.”

“What,” I ask, “do you think faith communities could do? What do you wish they would do?”

Catherine sips her coffee and considers my question.

“I think they could provide long-term support through friendship. Homeless people have a very elusive and even, you might say, a fickle type of community.”

“Faith groups,” she says further, “could also help them find satisfactory and meaningful occupation. They just need relationships that are constant . They need to be reminded, a lot, that they can take a job and stick with it.

“And I think,” she concludes, “they could contribute a lot in addressing the educational needs of people caught in the endless cycle of homelessness. They need basic skills that will allow them to find and maintain jobs. They need anything that will enhance their sense of dignity.”

Now it is my turn to be startled. If churches cannot provide these things, I think to myself, who can?

I am glad that Terry and Fiona interrupt us. It is now past 10:00 p.m. They have seen what they certainly believe to be streeters, but they are concerned that the four of us together will be too intimidating. We must divide into pairs. I will split off with Fiona, as will Catherine with Terry.

Fiona and I make our way toward a young man and woman seated against the wall at the far side of the station. They appear to be a couple. The man has his arms draped across his propped-up knees, and his head has drooped down onto his chest. He appears to be trying to sleep, but is roused with a jerk every time an arm or a knee collapses under the onslaught of semi-relaxation.

The woman, however, is wide awake, smoking a cigarette and looking this way and that, as though she is expecting someone or protecting something. Between them is a bundle which must be the collection of their few belongings.

Fiona shows her identity card to the woman, extends her right hand in which is an unopened bottle of orange juice, and says that we have a bit of food if they are hungry.

“What you got?” says the woman.

She has a blanket of sorts spread across her legs. She appears to be twenty-one or twenty-two years old. She takes a final draw on her cigarette and snubs it out on the floor beside her.

We squat in front of them, and Fiona produces a muffin and a couple of pre-packaged sandwiches. The woman’s name is Jane, and she is, in fact, married to the drowsy man beside her. He slowly comes to life and, as he helps himself to a sandwich and some slurps of her orange juice, we learn that his name is Colin.

Suddenly, a muffled cry arises from the bundle between them, and we discover that it is makeshift bed for a four-month old infant. It lies in a holdall bag, surrounded by and on top of their various articles of clothing. The sleeve of a heavy tartan shirt has been draped across its face to shield its eyes from the glare of the station lights. Jane lifts the baby to her breast and begins to nurse it.

Their story, according to Fiona, is not uncommon. Although they have been married for a number of years, he is not the father of the baby.

“Don’t matter,” says Jane. “He’s tryin’ to be a good Dad anywise.”

They have made their way north from London, trying to break away from alcohol and drugs, trying to make a life. They survive on a benefits check that comes to a friend’s address in London. The only way they can access it, however, is for Colin to travel all the way back to London to retrieve it. By the time Colin is reunited with Jane, the money is invariably all but gone on train fare, drink and drugs.

While this conversation unfolds, Colin keeps nodding his head and saying, “I mean to do better.”

He takes jobs here and there when he can find them, but they never last. Binge drinking causes him to miss work for days on end. He and Jane have not lived in regular housing since the baby was born.

In spite of their dire circumstances, they are not easily convinced to take the help we can offer. They are afraid of the police and the record that trails them for too long whenever they enter “the system,” as they call it.

“More trouble than it’s worth,” says Jane. But Fiona argues for what is best for the baby.

“Some place safe,” says Fiona. “Some place warm.”

Finally they comply, although as if resigned to a precarious fate. They are reluctant customers at best. Later on, Fiona will tell me she doubts they will stick with it very long.

“They will back on the streets, somewhere, within the month if the pattern holds true,” she says.

We head to the van and drive Colin and Jane and baby to the Hamish Allen Centre that is available only for homeless people who qualify under family status. It is almost 1:00 a.m. by the time we arrive. Fiona and I stand aside as Jane and Colin investigate the sparse, one-bedroom flat in this building complex that used to be a fire station for the south-side of Glasgow.

The walls are beige and bare, but everything is clean. The tiny kitchen is equipped with a bare minimum of utensils, plates, glasses and cutlery. The bathroom, too, is very small, but sufficient with sink and toilet and shower. There are fresh sheets and blankets, pillows and pillowcases for the two single beds in the bedroom.

Jane quickly arranges a bed of blankets on the floor for the baby.

Tomorrow, they will be interviewed by the staff at the centre to determine how their long-term needs might be addressed. But right now we are all bleary-eyed. It is time to leave them and let them get some sleep.

Taking Fiona aside, I ask, “Can I give them a phone number?”

“Sure,” she says. “They’ll need all the help they can get.”

It is 1:40 a.m. by the time we return to Central Station. We scout around for Terry and Catherine, but they are no where to be seen. We hope it bodes something good. Fiona will find out at the debrief on Sunday night.

We decide to call it a night. Once again, I will find a comfortable taxi to take me home. Fiona will return to the van to write up her notes before she makes her way to the flat she shares just off Argyll Street.

“It’s been an unusual week,” she says, as we exchange good-byes. “Two successful placings in three nights.”

“Must be me,” I offer. “Everyone tells me I have an extraordinarily trustworthy smile.”

“No, it’s your accent,” she says, smiling herself. “Thoroughly American camouflaged by a curious Scottish lilt.”

“Will your friends from your church visit?” she asks.

“Who?” I reply, not certain what she means. “Visit who?”

“Jane and Colin,” she says.

I wish I did not have to hesitate. “I think so,” I reply after a moment. “I hope so.”

I think about Fiona’s question throughout the duration of my taxi ride home. Would my friends easily welcome them? Would they be able to embrace them as they embrace others? Would they welcome them at all? Would my friends make the effort to connect with the likes of Colin and Jane?

It is 2:10 when I climb the steps to my flat. I am too wound-up to sleep, even though I’m exhausted. I turn on the television and watch the final minutes of a repeat of "The West Wing". It strikes me as another strange irony. Does the epicentre of political and military power in the world have anything to do with the lives of Jane and Colin, Graham, Alli, and two very underage girls who turn to incoming to survive?

It is 3:00 a.m. when I crawl into bed beside my wife, who will have been asleep for three or four hours. I peer around in the dark at my own bedroom, books and clothing strewn here and there. My five children are sleeping soundly in nearby rooms. The television is still warm from my viewing. It is a far distant place from where I have been these last few nights.

As I drift off to sleep, I wonder what Colin and Jane will awaken to tomorrow morning. What will become of them? What will become of their four-month old baby? Will we visit?

Epilogue

In the days since my last night on the streets with the Barnardos team, I have been studying the words of the Prophet Isaiah. He seems to be urging me toward a higher level of spiritual fervour.

“Is this not the fast which I choose?” God asks. (58:6-7)

Fasting, I think to myself, is a discipline that is surely indicative of some sort of aggressive spirituality. But what is this fast that God clearly prefers? I do not have to read far in the text to get the answer.

Is this not the fast which I choose,
To loosen the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And let the oppressed go free
And break every yoke?

Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry
And bring the homeless poor into the house;
When you see the naked, to cover him;
And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Isaiah, further, does not hesitate to predict the impact of spirituality of this type, demonstrated in the midst of the world as it is. (58:8-12)

Then your light will break out like the dawn…
The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard…
And you will be called the repairer of the breach,
The restorer of the streets in which to dwell.

I cannot help but think to myself whether these words of Isaiah have any bearing on what happens in the streets of Glasgow? If they do not, what on earth is the good of spiritual devotion? If not, why on earth am I committed to spiritual health?

My mobile phone rang this afternoon just as I was about to step into a university seminar room. It was Colin and Jane.

“Are you coming by?” they ask.

We arrange a time for the day after tomorrow.

“Would you know anyone getting rid of any baby clothes?”

I am sure that I can bring some along. I will also bring some bags of food.

It occurs to me that Fiona and I never got the name of the baby on the previous Friday night.

“Her name is Rachel,” they tell me when I ask, “named after the Jennifer Aniston character in Friends.”

Everyone is desperate for real friends, I think to myself as I switch off the phone. Even these who are so young, but sleep rough.

And so we will visit after all. And what will come of it? Perhaps a bit of light will break out. Perhaps the glory of the Lord will shimmer, even if ever so slightly. I think so. I hope so. I believe so.

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Hermeneutical and Exegetical Reflections on Isaiah 58:1-12

Wesley White

(Scottish Universities Theological Forum, November, 2005)

The Grounding of Interpretative Ideals

Working toward justice must be grounded in the virtue of hope if it is to bear up under the scrutiny of Christian theology. Otherwise, it gives way to the fickle designs of simple optimism that cannot be sustained within historically situated conditions that give every appearance of immutability. The plausibility of change is too far out of reach. Christian hope, on the other hand, is not susceptible to this kind of limitation. Biblical hope, in fact, is capable of re-imagining the world to such a degree that action is inspired and enacted.

Aquinas rightly analyses hope as a special form of desire that is purposefully focused on the good that is within reach. Its ultimate object is God and as such qualifies as an explicitly theological virtue, in company with faith and charity. Justice in these terms is advancing the good that does, indeed, appear impossible, but is not, under the proviso that God himself is intimately concerned and involved in the cause. Where the good one is due is denied, biblically defined justice demands acts of alteration that refuse to succumb to the immutability of historically based conditions and circumstances.

So far, so good. However, I want to suggest that Aquinas falls short in limiting the good to a theological construct of consummation which aims only at an eventual supernatural mode of union with God. For example, Aquinas contends that “Such a good is eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of God Himself…Therefore the proper and principle object of hope is eternal happiness.” Limited as such, it advances a notion of eudaimonia (blessedness) that has little, if any relation to the struggle for justice within history. The results of this type of limited hermeneutic are still with us today, witnessed by the fact that we are compelled to justify justice-seeking at all.

I agree with Wolterstorff when he renders it a “theological mistake” to “see hope for consummation as the only legitimate form of Christian hope.” The narrative dimension of Scripture itself argues against it. The numinous episode of the burning bush in Exodus 3 is a vivid example in this story line. After identifying himself, God goes further to declare that he has seen the affliction of his people, heard their cry of despair, and has come down to deliver them. The song of Zechariah in Luke 1 is yet another part of the story. Eulogy is the mode because God has remembered his holy covenant to “grant us that we, being delivered from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear.” In either episode, the narrative evokes the promise of deliverance as the reason hope is intoned, not consummation.

Each of these examples (and many others) highlight the credence that is properly given to linguistic function in healthy readings of the biblical narrative. It is meant to expose reality to those who would otherwise continue in the self-deception that the world is well-ordered and as it should be. Further, it assumes the power of language to form and reform experience as it encourages the unthinkable, the unutterable and specifically the unimaginable. In so doing, readings of this kind reveal how untenable is the modern fallacy that ugliness, fear, hurt and darkness can be eliminated as greater knowledge and power are attained.

This does not infer, however, that the language of biblical narrative does not invoke political ideals. To the contrary, the story is riddled with kingdom terminology which unceasingly confronts any locus of power (political, military, economic or otherwise) with the purposes of God as determined by his ruling activity. As Bauckham and Hart suggest, the kingdom of God is, in fact, a political image with reference to the whole of creation. It is assuredly an image that promotes an eschatological vision, but only in so far as that is properly understood as demanding localised anticipation, demonstrated particularly in the advent of God before the ultimate redemption. The purpose of the kingdom, no less, is to break into history in such a way that it results in what Moltmann describes as “unbounded astonishment” at its transforming effect on people.

It is clear, then, that the parameters of justice-seeking, when defined by the biblical criteria of hope, are not limited to a beatific vision that is always in the coming. Nor can they be thwarted by contemporary critics who decry what they think to be utopian aspirations that are all but impossible to achieve. John Caputo, for example, disparages hope itself as a limiting concept that is nothing more than a projection of our unduly optimistic desire for something that never can or will come to be. Movement toward justice in the Bible is hopeful precisely because it rests upon the character of God whose promise of deliverance can be relied upon in the present world and in the future toward which the world is even now moving.

Brueggemann rightly distinguishes it as “God-justice” that does not shy away from a materialist reading of both text and experience. It is grounded upon Yahweh himself, and so “cannot be separated from the actual experience of justice in the social process because Yahweh’s presence in Israel is known through and against the social process. Gorringe suggests that it is missional justice founded on a “re-imagining of the world,” seeking a “built environment” that includes social relations, emotional well-being, spiritual vitality and even in literal architecture that promotes equality in ways that are thoroughly and theologically credible.

Missional justice, for example, ought to raise questions about the fact that New York City annually consumes as much electrical energy as the whole continent of Africa in the same time period. Statistics like this, of course, can be explained in numerous and legitimate ways, but they nonetheless rightly call Christian theology to account and underscore the need for justice that is missionally inspired. As Kuno Fussel correctly surmises, “Such an approach to theology means an end of theology as conceptual representation; it is farewell to spectator theologians.”

Living the Word of Isaiah

Theology as a spectator activity is directly challenged by the prophecy of Isaiah, particularly in texts like chapter 58, verses 1-12. In a passage like this, the ramifications of hermeneutical integrity become readily apparent, demonstrable in the spirituality of the people of God and the way it is expressed in historical contexts. Isaiah’s words are a compelling example of what Gossai means when he refers to “the prophet’s critique of the corrupting influence of affluence and luxury,” in contrast with a spirituality defined by focused attention on the needs of the poor and victims of injustice of any kind. Blomberg rightly recognises how this passage combines with Ezekiel 18:5-9, both of which clearly inform Jesus’ rendering of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46.

The text of Isaiah 58:1-12 is ultimately concerned with the aftermath of various approaches to spirituality; that is, what is left in their wake? Is it socially constructive or destructive? Does it detract from the glory of God rather than extol it? The text, in fact, dramatically portends the potential aftermath of that manner of spirituality that leads to unbounded astonishment, as referenced by Moltmann above.

A type of spirituality (dare we even say a level of spirituality) is suggested in the way the text gives such deliberate attention to the matter of fasting, reiterated twice in verse 3, twice again in verse 4, once in verse 5, and once again in verse 6. It is the Hebrew word tsom, literally “to press, tie up or constrain.” It was carried over into the rabbinic teaching of the New Testament era where it continued to be understood as an indication of spiritual fervour. The actual practice of tsom inferred spiritual fervour displayed in so great a desire to know and experience God that one would go without food as a reminder to crave God above all else.

False Spirituality

The text commences by describing what might legitimately be assessed as superficial or disingenuous spiritual fervour in verses 3-5:

Why have we fasted and You do not see, they say, and why have we humbled our souls and You do not know? Behold the day of your fasting, you still find pleasure and all your workers you exploit. Behold your fasting results in strife and contention and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today expecting your voice to be heard on high. Shall this be the fast which I choose, a day for a man to afflict himself? Is it for bowing your head like a bulrush and for laying out sackcloth and ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day which gains approval before God?”

The indicators of superficial ardency are numerous in these three verses. The people are complaining, in verse 3, that their seemingly fervent religious observance is going unnoticed by God. “Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled our souls and You do not know?”

The Hebrew text significantly alters the tense between these two sentences so as to highlight the depth of consternation. “All of our past devotion is of no account, and even now this God has no knowledge of the sacrifices we have endured in order to please him.” They are more concerned that God take notice than in the discipline itself or their heart attitude behind it. It bespeaks an underlying pride revealed in the perverse notion that they can impress God.

The text goes further in verse 3. “Behold in the day of your fasting, you still find pleasure, and all your workers you exploit.” It is describing the parody of convenient religion, suggested by the fact that though they fast, it is never allowed to interfere with a pleasure-seeking lifestyle. In fact, they do not let their spirituality encroach upon their business profitability. Rather, they work their employees all the harder so as to make up for any loss their religious duty may have cost them. The term translated “exploit” is the simple qal form of the Hebrew nagas, and it means “to press hard.” The text contends that they are exploiting their labour force, pressing them hard for more capital output so that their religious obligations won’t deter or discourage profit. Religious fervour is well and good as long as it is likewise convenient.

Verse 5, finally, expresses God’s disdain for self-righteous religiosity. “Shall this be the fast which I choose, a day for a man to afflict himself? Is it for bowing your head like a bulrush and for laying out sackcloth and ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day which gains approval before God?”

The text is obviously referring to that type of public righteousness which is bent on drawing attention to itself. This person fasts in such a manner that it makes public how afflicted he is because of his religious devotion. He bows his head like a bulrush broken in a storm. He changes his wardrobe to sackcloth and douses himself in ashes.

Of course, it was precisely this type of spiritual showing off Jesus expressly decried in his historic mountainside sermon. “Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” (Mt. 6:16)

In Isaiah, the same is depicted as the height of self-righteous religiosity, the summary statement of disingenuous, superficial spirituality, depicted in the pride of trying to impress God, the fallacy of convenient religion and the obnoxious display of oxymoronic religious superiority.

In the midst of it all, verse 4 turns attention back to the prevailing concern for the aftermath of this brand of spirituality. What follows in its wake? “Behold your fasting results in strife and contention and in striking each other with wicked fists.” Strife, contention and infighting. False spirituality of this sort breeds nothing less than relational violence.

True Spirituality

Fortunately, the text does not end there, but goes on to explicate God’s understanding of real and authentic spirituality, in verses 6 and 7:

“Is this not the fast I have chosen: to make loose the chains of injustice, to untie the cords of the yoke and to set free the oppressed and to tear apart every yoke? Is it not to share equally your bread with the hungry and the homeless poor to provide a home? When you see the naked to clothe him, and not to hide yourself from your flesh and blood?”

According to the text, the definitive point that distinguishes this type of spirituality is that it is of God’s own choosing. “Is this not this the fast I have chosen?” (vs.6) Over against that show of spirituality which is humanly devised, concerned with rules, rituals, form, fashion and profit interest, true spirituality makes itself public in accordance with God’s preference.

The Hebrew grammar spells this out in its repetitive use of the infinitive, one of the strongest verbal forms linguistically available: “to make loose;” “to untie;” “to set free;” “to tear apart;” “to share equally;” “to provide;” “to clothe.” It is a grammatical call “to do” something, “to take action.” In fact, this long list of infinitives is in the Hebrew piel form, adding significant intensity and requiring the taking of action in a very deliberate fashion.

It suggests that real spirituality is not displayed in what we think, feel, say, or even believe. Nor is it relayed in a particular style of worship or the mastery of various liturgical forms. Neither is it necessarily portrayed in surrender to drastic ascetic disciplines. True spirituality is manifested in what we do, in whether or not we deliberately (in a premeditative way) take action.

More broadly, verses 6 and 7 suggest how deliberate action is to be taken on behalf of people in two general areas of need.

Verse 6, first of all, calls for action on behalf of those in civil need. The language of deliverance is couched in metaphors of civil restraint: “chains of injustice;” “cords of the yoke;” and freedom for the “oppressed.” Each one speaks of the singular reality of structural wickedness under which victims suffer the hampering of and tampering with their civil rights. Thus, Isaiah pictures them as legally encumbered, bound up in slave-like ways, and socially and economically downtrodden.

Verse 7, then, compels action on behalf of those in physical need. The grammatical emphasis is on the first infinitive: “to share equally.” Equality is at the heart of spirituality of this sort and is made visible in the provision of food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless and clothing for the naked. It does not allow adherents to hide from the stark needs of flesh and blood humanity. The Hebrew is literally “to conceal,” suggesting a refusal to participate in the active injustice of covering up social wrongs, rather than simply avoiding the passive behaviour of ignoring human need.

With verse 8, the text broaches the question of ultimate concern: what is the aftermath of this sort of authentic spirituality? What follows in its wake? “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn and your recovery shall spring forth quickly and your righteousness shall walk ahead of you. The glory of the Lord shall gather up behind you.”

The text is speaking of the wake that follows in the path of those who observe this fast which God chooses. It includes the infusion of light into dark places, the speedy advent of social recovery and the advance of communal righteousness. But ultimately, the aftermath of this brand of true spirituality is nothing less than the glory of the Lord. The many-sided Hebraic idea of glory (cabod) incorporates that which reveals the beauty of God. It is an ontological affirmation, referencing the beauty that proceeds out of the very being of God and manifests itself throughout the created order, but especially in that aspect of creation that bears God’s image, human beings. When humanity exhibits true spirituality, such as the previous verses have described, the beauty of God is made visible.

Furthermore, Isaiah contends that socially-active spirituality leads to potency in prayer (vs.9) and the replacement of gloom with bright hope (vs.10). It also portends the ongoing guidance of God and that quality of nourishment that only comes from him (vs.11). So supernaturally directed and enabled, the people of God can take on the task of rebuilding that which has been devastated by social ruin and repairing the breach left in the wake of social decay (vs.12). They make cities inhabitable once again (vs.12).

Eschatology in Time and Space

Isaiah 58:1-12 thus depends on hermeneutical integrity for its fulfilment in terms of eschatological anticipation. It promotes a vision that, in fact, cannot be realised if it is restrained by a limiting focus on consummation. To be sure, it is a vision that un-apologetically moves toward consummation, but in nonetheless concrete terms that seek deliverance in contemporary time and space. The cause of justice is grounded in the theological virtue of hope that is hopeful precisely because it emerges out of a revitalised spirituality that is authentic and true. It advances the plot of a biblical story that is full of promise.

Justice, therefore, that accords with the words of Isaiah cannot be conceived of apart from the adoption of transcultural values that Christopher Wright helpfully refers to as “redeemed economics.” Assumed in a value orientation of this kind is unequivocal impartiality (see Leviticus 19:15 and Exodus 23:3) that rejects the temptation to elevate the disadvantaged and marginalised to special status, even as it requires the advantaged to pursue just distribution. At the same time, it refuses to condone the perpetual social advance of the advantaged at the expense of the marginalised who are due not only compassion, but justice.

One of the implications of anticipated eschatology, however, that does justice to passages like Isaiah 58:1-12, is the need for a radical inversion of the criteria of honour and shame. Jesus is plainly informed by the vision of Isaiah (see Luke 4:14-30) in the kingdom agenda he pursues throughout the gospels, some of which is undoubtedly worked out in his deliberate example of inversion when it comes to both the sinful and the disadvantaged. As Evelyn Thibeaux has admirably argued, Jesus clearly “incarnated inversion” by honouring the wisdom of the simple, preferring the company of the ostracised, proclaiming a gospel for the poor and being disadvantaged himself. At the same time, he delivered lengthy diatribes aimed at shaming the general and overt hypocrisy of the advantaged. In the midst of it, Jesus might be legitimately warned as to the outcome of such dangerous honesty, but he could not be accused of partiality.

Radical inversion must take its cue from a story line that gives due attention to both the eighth-century prophets and to Jesus of the gospels. It must also be practically located within a communal context whereby incarnational inversion is given material content by the church as the body of Christ. For me, all of this urgently suggests that new and existing communities of faith must seriously entertain various callings and approaches to downward rather than upward mobility. If nothing else, it behoves us to ask the relevant questions. How do we demonstrate Christ in this way? How do incarnational models inform our living and lifestyle choices? Who in our midst has special vocations in this regard? Where and for whom do we plant new churches? How can the rich best adopt the practises of downward mobility? How can the rich best be utilised in communal commitments to downward mobility?

As this happens, perhaps the vision of Isaiah and the agenda of Jesus will take shape and emerge more fully in the world. Missional passion will not be lessened, but only broadened and instilled with greater integrity. If Isaiah can be trusted, light will break out, recovery will spring forth and righteousness will advance. And the beauty of God (the glory of the Lord) shall be revealed.

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Serving Others: An Evolution of Motivation

Carlton Deal

1888

Thousands of people fill the streets of the city. The mood is festive, the scene chaotic. Music and laughter mingle with animated conversation and the cries of children to create the cacophony that is contemporary society.

Suddenly, Jesus enters the city, riding a donkey. And no one cares.

There are no shouts of “Hosanna,” no waving of palm branches, no hopes that the Messiah has come. No one cares because the setting is not Jerusalem in the first century, but Brussels, in the 1888 masterpiece, “Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889” by Anglo-Belgian artist James Ensor.¹

For a long time, that’s all I saw in the painting. A left-wing politician dressed in bishop’s garb leads the procession of thousands away from a miniscule Jesus whose entrance into the city goes unnoticed by all but a handful. The town mayor seems to oversee the proceedings, but the birds-eye view is given to a smug Voltaire, nodding his assent to Ensor’s critique of late 19^th century European church-state relationships. The grandiose banner “Vive la Sociale” waves over the painting and catches the eye long before the tiny one, bottom right, that captures my heart: “Vive Jesus, Roi de Bruxelles.”

But now I’m seeing something different. I’m drawn to Jesus on the donkey: a humble Jesus, a serving Jesus, a Jesus who is known by his unconditional love for those in need. The Creator-Sustainer of all that lives entered time not to be served but to serve. If Christ were to enter Brussels in 2006, would he do so in the same way he entered Jerusalem centuries before? What if this was the Jesus presented by his body to the Europe of today?

2005

Brussels is the capitol of a continent, home to 30,000 Eurocrats responsible for drafting the future of its 25-nation confederacy. By some estimates, almost 10% of Brussels claims a Christian faith, but subtracting non-European cultures reduces the number to the 1% consistent with the rest of the country and much of Europe. Surely, the church cannot sit idly by while the best and brightest of a generation pens new chapters of European history. There must be more that we can do besides sing louder or to better graphics.

The Well, a new Christian Associates church in Brussels, has decided to serve others. This was evidenced most dramatically in a July 2005 project called “Serve the City” – a phrase we hope in time better describes our way of life than a single event. Serve the City brought together a group of nearly 100 visiting and local volunteers for ten days to show God’s love in practical ways to people in need. We partnered with organizations, some faith-based and some not, who were already working with the homeless, refugees, orphans, elderly, and others in need. Each day our serving team spread all over the city to serve food, cut hair, teach English, provide clothing, paint, play with children, and demonstrate kindness. We said when we started that we wanted to know by name the people we know only by their needs. By the last evening, we shared a holy moment of lifting up in prayer hundreds of people by name whom we would never have met had we not served them.

Although the Serve the City project was a new concept for all of us, and a formidable challenge for a number of reasons, it felt like an unquenchable passion from the heart of God. That much I knew with certainty. But I didn’t know why. Was it to be a demonstration of God’s heart for the poor to be served or of God’s heart for his Church to serve? Was it to be a prophetic pronouncement of the kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven” or the best introduction of the Gospel I could think of to the secular Europeans we are hoping to reach? Before, during, and after the project I could hardly speak of these things because my heart was so full of feelings, passion, enthusiasm, pain, and a desperate need to mobilize everyone within my reach. I feel better able to reflect on it now and the remainder of this paper will be devoted to what I am learning through an evolution of motivations I can now see as I look back on God’s work in my life and ministry regarding the priority of serving others.

1995

I was in my fourth year of leading an evangelistic international community youth ministry in Geneva, Switzerland. My objective was to lead a team to share the Gospel with as many non-Christian teenagers as possible. Our primary methods were relationships and weekly youth groups.

In these days, I understood “sharing the Gospel” to mean a conversation or a presentation during which I conveyed information about the main tenets of Christian faith, potentially expressed in two minutes or less like this:

God created you and loves you, but your sin has separated you from him. He sent his son Jesus to die in your place, paying the penalty for your sin, and will forgive you if you believe in him and ask him to.

Unfortunately, it was hard to find people who wanted to hear that. That’s when I stumbled upon Conspiracy of Kindness by Steve Sjogren,² a Vineyard pastor in Cincinnati, Ohio. His book told stories of remarkable evangelistic effectiveness through surprising acts of kindness. The appendix was replete with suggestions, such as free car washes (no donations accepted), free holiday gift wrap, and Sjogren’s personal favorite, toilet cleanings for local businesses. Whether serving spontaneously or in a project organized by his church, conspirators of kindness were encouraged to answer the “why?” questions with this simple phrase: “to show God’s love in a practical way.”

I was pretty sure this was the best thing since sliced bread. We tried a number of Servant Evangelism projects in Geneva and experienced some success. My motivation for serving at this stage was simple: it was the most effective way I knew to initiate a contact with someone that might turn into a conversation about the Gospel.

1996

I felt like I had tried it all: “The World’s Largest Banana Split,” “Battle of the Sexes,” even “Chocolate Pudding Wrestling.” Attract teenagers with fun and then find a way somehow to tell them that they needed Jesus. Camps, trips, and retreats worked the best, but it’s hard to impress international teenagers whose families live in Switzerland, own a chalet in the French Alps, and vacation in the Canary Islands. Even if we succeeded, the atmosphere and activities were far from an ideal backdrop for my two-minute message.

And then one day it struck me: instead of offering teenagers an opportunity for recreation, what if we offered them an opportunity to serve? Missions trips had been impacting Christian teens for years. What about a service project for non-Christian kids? Rather than sharing the Gospel with the community we were serving, we would do so with those in our group. I found some inspiration for this idea from Pulitzer Prize winner Ernst Becker who wrote, “Youth was not intended for pleasure but for heroism.”³

And what heroes they turned out to be! Scores of teenagers I had never met gave me hundreds of euros to travel 24 hours by coach for two weeks over the Easter break to Poland to rebuild houses destroyed by a flood, to Romania to construct an orphanage, to Croatia to renovate a building for reconciliation efforts in the Balkans, to Hungary to assist a ministry that was rescuing homeless from the streets of Budapest. From the first project of 50 people has grown three separate projects, drawing more than 400 students each spring.

This phenomenon also manifested itself locally. Catching on to the desire we were observing in international teens to make a difference in the world around them, we changed our programming and began offering service clubs. While their parents traveled the globe for the High Commission on Refugees, World Health Organization, and World Trade Organization, not-yet-believing teens at home in Geneva served at soup kitchens, played basketball with mentally handicapped athletes, and befriended the elderly. Accompany this activity was a proportionate interest in the Jesus who served and calls us to do likewise.

I couldn’t put words to what we saw working until I stumbled across a book called Churches with Roots by Johan Lukasse,⁴ retired director of the Belgian Evangelical Mission. On my way to lead a church planting team in Brussels, I was fascinated to read the advice of an experienced pastor who had toiled long years on Belgian soil.

In discussing strategies he considered effective in reaching secular Europeans for Christ, Lukasse referenced Lifestyle Evangelism by Joseph Aldrich,⁵ a book I had read long before I was really interested in its content. But now he had my full attention.

Aldrich sketched the well-known triangle of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (below).⁶ First proposed in Maslow’s 1943 paper A Theory of Motivation,⁷ the theory contends that people only experience more advanced needs as their basic needs are met. The pyramid is divided into two halves, “deficiency needs” such as food, shelter, affection, and self-esteem and “being needs,” such as self-actualization and transcendence.

The application to church planting, according to Aldrich, revolves around communicating the Gospel in a way that meets people at their point of need. For people who are living in the lower half of the triangle, the implication is obvious: meet their practical needs and trust that spiritual opportunities will present themselves.

But what about people whose basic needs are already met? They may be less inclined to sense spiritual need as well. This describes much of the international teen culture I was seeking to impact in Geneva as well as Europeans we encounter in Brussels.

Aldrich’s answer is this: in order to reach people living at the top half of the triangle, involve them in meeting the needs of others.

And that’s how I came to want to lead a project like Serve the City. The primary motivation was not for those we would serve, but for those who would serve with us.

2006

But I can feel that a different motivation is beginning to take hold. It’s the idea that serving others isn’t a strategy; it’s the Kingdom of God. Maybe serving is what Jesus did. Maybe serving is how we are supposed to live. Maybe serving doesn’t just give an opportunity to communicate the Gospel, maybe it is the Gospel – or at least contains it in a way I had not previously understood. Maybe one can “share the Gospel” as effectively by serving a cup of hot soup as by drawing the Bridge on a napkin in a crowded McDonalds. Maybe better.

I am starting to believe that the act of serving others speaks prophetically to the world around us. Serving says that in God’s Kingdom, people without legs are just as important as fashion models. It says that in God’s Kingdom, even the smallest needs are met. It says that in God’s Kingdom, people aren’t lonely and isolated and taken advantage of. Serving brings heaven to earth, maybe just for a moment, so we can see Jesus. As the cup of cold water is extended, the Kingdom grows beneath the feet of the servant surprised by his selflessness, and the recipient, warmed by the thought that someone cares. Both feel drawn to the Kingdom and long for it to last. Whether or not it does in that space and time, the Kingdom was there, witnessed by at least two.

I’m starting to think about the kind of serving we’re doing as a community. So far, most of our serving is in simple and small ways and very safe. Perhaps it could be thought of as recreational serving. We’re not meeting any real long-term needs. We’re putting a smile on the faces of the forgotten. In many cases, we’re serving through an existing association, when we want, for as long as we want. We walk away and don’t have to think about whether the practical needs of the sick or hungry or desperate will overtake our lives. They don’t even know where we live. Is that wrong?

It would seem that to be a people who truly “act justly and love mercy” (Micah 6:8), more is required than the provision of food and clothing. There are policy issues to be fought, governments to be opposed, prejudices to be silenced. But the kindnesses shown to “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40) that grants eternal life to the “sheep” were simple acts: water for the thirsty, food for the hungry, visits for the prisoners. I’m left with the feeling that serving is something Jesus wants us to feel like we can do, not something that is a waste of time for anyone who doesn’t have a legal degree. I think Jesus would have us start where we are and serve however we can. As we serve simply, he may show us more that we can do and “more is required from those to whom more is given” (Luke 12:48, NLT).

I have more questions. For instance, is serving for the church or is the church for serving? And how much does the answer matter? One thing I have discovered is this: serving others is my favorite act of worship. I feel God’s pleasure in unselfish service maybe more than anything. Properly understood, I think serving is best enjoyed not because it’s needed or because I should, but because Jesus is worth it. And I think I enjoy it, in part, because I am longing for the Kingdom to come in my heart as it is in heaven.

This last section was headed 2006 because, like the year, this new motivation is coming, but is not quite here. Maybe Ensor imagined something similar when he set Christ’s Entry a year in the future. Since his painting, a hundred years has passed, modernity has run its course, and much has changed. The band in Brussels may still be playing and the party in full swing, but there’s no mistaking the fact that the bishop is no longer leading the parade. Could it be that a stirring in the crowd is causing heads to turn back towards the Servant King? Could it be a rumor you hear that somewhere near the man on the donkey feet are being washed, even as you feel a gentle tug at your feet….

 

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1. Held at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. More information from http://www.getty.edu/art/ collections/objects/o932.html

2. Steve Sjogren, Conspiracy of Kindness (Vine Books, 1993)

3. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press, 1973)

4. Johann Lukasse, Churches with Roots (Bromley: STL, 1990

5. Joseph Aldrich, Lifestyle Evangelism (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1981)

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow‘s_hierarchy_of_needs

7. Abraham Maslow, A Theory of Motivation (Psychological Review, 50, 370-396, 1943). Also available at http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm

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Serving the Poor While Walking with Them

Esmée Chengapen

In the book of Isaiah, when the prophet is announcing the coming of the Messiah, one finds that the poor is very much in the priority list of Jesus. Isaiah 11:3-4 says:

He will not judge what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth

And when we fast, what God demands of us (he does not just suggest it) to share our food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter and when we see the naked, to clothe them…. (Isaiah 58:7)

It seems straightforward because of the injustice around us about who should be a major target group of the communities of faith, but also Christ’s message goes beyond simply feeding the poor, it is a liberating message as described in Isaiah 58, true fasting is also to loose chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, set the oppressed free and break every yoke.

I would think that it is important first to articulate our view of poverty because this will strongly influence how we should go about it and change our lifestyles accordingly.

Is poverty merely a deficit?

If we view poor people as not having enough to eat, a place to sleep, the unspoken assumption is to provide the missing things and the poor will no longer be poor. If they do not have the relevant skills or knowledge, then providing education and if the poor simply learns enough, they will no longer be poor. We, as followers of Christ, then add the knowledge of the gospel to our programme for the poor. 

This has been the traditional approach of the church, however it creates a “Santa Claus” picture of the communities of faith and the poor become passive recipients of the church’s generosity. This approach has two negative consequences: it demeans the poor and it temps us to play god in the lives of the poor.

I experienced this kind of approach while growing up in Mauritius. I must add that I am eternally grateful to the missionaries especially the Irish Catholic nuns who came to the island before its independence from the British. From my great-grandfather to my grandfather to my Dad and his siblings, and to my cousins and I, we all went to missionary schools. In many ways, Mauritius could make it to independence in 1968 because it had an educated workforce and for this, the country owes a great deal to the missionaries who did a great job on the island. However, as of today, most of the island’s population respects Christianity but they are still very captive in superstitious beliefs. As a child, I always thought that the missionaries were superior given that they had the resources, the education and the connections (these are very important on an island!). Indeed, they played god in my life.

Poverty as disempowerment

In “Walking with Poor”, the author shares the thesis of Jayakumar Christian who is a World Vision development worker.[1] His study is based on his work in transformational development in India.[2] Christian describes the poor household embedded in a complex framework of interacting systems which includes:

• a personal system including psychology;
• a social system; and
• a spiritual/religious system (both personal and social).

Each part of the system creates its own particular contribution to the disempowerment of the poor including captivity to god complexes of the non-poor, deception by “principalities and powers”, inadequacies in worldview and suffering from a marred identity.

Captivity to god-complexes of the non-poor- the socio-economic-political system

This is something one would not naturally think of when one has access to the rights and privileges of a middle class European. The poor is subject to another reality: to the whims of a landlord, to radical decisions of governments if he is refugee, to the drug trafficker is he is pawn and victim of the drug trade. Jayakumar Christian reminds us that these powers exist within a cosmic system in which principalities and powers work out their rebellion against God and God’s intention for human life in creation.

 Communities of faith working with the poor should be mindful of this aspect of captivity of the poor. Working for the transformation of the lives of the poor can be compared to getting Egypt out of the children of Israel after they were liberated from the powers of the pharaoh. Indeed, it was a matter of days for God to get the children of Israel out of Egypt but forty years in the wilderness to get Egypt out of them!

While we must always encourage the poor to respect the law of the land, we must educate them about the freedom one has as a citizen of a country (one should have a closer look at his entitlements if he has refugee status) and also the freedom one has in Christ.

This is something that I personally struggle with when I am working with refugees. It is very hard for them as they are unable to work for many years under refugee status, the man is usually so robbed of his dignity because he cannot provide for his family, and on top of that, being a refugee equates being despised by many locals. 

I can illustrate this point with what happened once to one of my refugee friends. Naibkhil is the father of an Afghan boy named Hassib whom I was helping a couple of years ago, the rest of the family was still in Afghanistan at the time. As he did not have much to do after his son left for school, he used to go for a long walk around the refugee centre daily. Once he met a Dutch lady walking her dog and he said a friendly hello to her. The woman proceeded to tell him that he had no human dignity for coming to Holland as a refugee (in the area they knew who were the locals and who were the refugees) and she then said that her dog had a better attitude to the rest of humankind than he had and she would not speak to people of his level! This really hit my friend and as he was telling me about this upsetting encounter, he had tears in his eyes. I felt so helpless in what I could say to him as I felt that he had lost so much of his dignity.

So how can we go about helping the poor in the socio-economic-political area? 

Deception by principalities and powers – the spiritual system

“We were in slavery under the basic principles of this world” - Galatians 4:3

The powerless of the poor is reinforced by fear and deceit created by the god of this age that blinded the minds of believers (2 Corinthians 4:4). 

I can so relate to these verses growing up in Mauritius. Superstition held my family so captive and although we were not poor in Mauritian terms, we lived under the lies of the enemy. It seemed that my family had such a bad karma, that the endless fasting and sacrifices to the Hindu gods would not change anything! When I visit the poor in Mauritius or the refugees in Amsterdam, I can see how the same kinds of superstitions haunt them. They struggle to succeed as at the back of their minds, they have been born under the wrong sign or at the wrong time, or they are not getting their permanent resident status because another family in the camp is envious of them and creating bad vibes in their direction.

Dealing with this kind of spiritual deception requires prayer and fasting and also knowing God’s word, I can say this by reason of my own journey from Hinduism to Christianity.

The marred identity of the poor

Jayakumar Christian observes in his thesis that the poor is marred in two important ways:

Firstly, they are excluded as actors in society and too often, the voice of the poor is regarded as “damaged goods”. The leaders of the country do not expect the poor to have anything to offer since they have been labelled as lazy, ignorant or unworthy, 

Secondly, a lifetime of suffering, deception and exclusion is internalised by the poor in a way that results in the poor no longer knowing who they truly are or why they were created. This is the deepest and most profound expression of poverty. The poor come to believe that they are and were always meant to be without value and without gifts. The identity of the poor is distorted and is kept by a web of lies that entraps the poor in ways far stronger and deceitful than physical bonds or limitations.

To address this aspect of poverty, the communities of faith need to become instruments of God to restore the identity of the poor. Being their friend, helping them to deal with their internal struggles, walking with them as a friend and showing them God’s truth. It requires a much closer approach to working with the poor than what we are currently doing.

Should missional communities aggressively change their lifestyles, attitudes and teaching to reach out to the poor and marginalized in Europe?

I wish I did not have to deal with this question as this is that has been on my mind for quite a while concerning my own life. I would think that most of us have gone through some downward mobility when moving to Europe and leaving the comforts of home. Part of me wishes that there would be no more downward mobility!

Yet, we live in a bubble and very often, this bubble is called an expatriate middle-class world. We then tend to concentrate on our own middle-class problems and do not have the time and energy to reach out to the poor. 

These are the questions I struggle with:

• Should I live in a poorer area so that I am physically closer to the poor?
• How much of my income should go to the poor?
• How much of my church’s income should go towards serving the poor?
• How welcoming am I to the poor in my home?

Footnotes

[1] Myers, Bryant L. 1999, Walking with the Poor, World Vision International, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books
[2] Christian, Jayakumar. 1998a. “A Different Way to Look at Poverty”, Body and Soul, London: World Vision UK

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The ultimate in downward mobility: reflections on the incarnation

Rogier Bos

From the heights we leap and go
To the valleys down below
Always answering to the call
To the lowest place of all
From the heights we leap and go
To the valleys down below
Sweetest urge and sweetest will
To go lower, lower still

Hannah Hurnard, Hinds’ feet on high places

Our culture values upward mobility. Driven by commerce and the media people in the Western world strive for a bigger paycheck, a better car, a larger house, a nicer office, more possessions, a more powerful place on the corporate ladder, and more status. More is better, bigger is better, higher is better, seems to be the message. A not so subtle form of the Social Darwinist claim that we should always be evolving promotes the message ‘be all you can be.’ In the movies of Walt Disney this quickly becomes ‘reach for the stars’ and ‘dare to dream big.’ The mentality in Western culture has become ‘have all you can have, get all you can get and reach everything you can reach.

This culture is pervasive, and it has invaded the church. There is little difference in the pursuits of people outside of the church, and people inside. But was it God’s intention that his people should always be moving upward? Not in Paul’s idea. In his letter to the Philippians he encourages them to follow the example of Christ. In the incarnation Christ modelled downward rather than upward mobility.

In this paper I want to look closely at the famous passage Philippians 2:4-11. Paul’s encouragement is to have the same attitude as Christ Jesus. What lessons might be drawn with regards to downward mobility?

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death –
even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

The largest journey ever made, the most amazing trajectory ever travelled, was the distance between heaven and earth, deity and humanity, life and death, as traversed by Jesus. There can be no greater example of downward mobility than the son of God becoming man, and this man dying on a cross. The incarnation is the ultimate example possible of downward mobility.

General comments

Perhaps two introductory and general comments need to be made regarding this passage. Since it references both the nature of Jesus as divine being as well as the nature of Jesus as human being, this passage plays a role in the debate regarding how those two natures relate to each other. I have no wisdom to offer on this point, other than that it seems to me that this passage does not infer that Jesus was not divine while on earth. In my mind this passage creates no problem with the understanding that Jesus was both God and man while on earth.

The other question raised regarding this passage is the question of authorship. The common view seems to be that this was some sort of hymn the early church sang, quoted by Paul. N.T. Wright disagrees. He suggests that Paul wrote the passage himself, as it ‘dovetails so neatly with chapter 3 on so many levels.’

The intentional nature of the incarnation

When I told a leader in my community I was writing a paper on downward mobility her immediate response was: “I have a number of clients who can say a few choice words on the subject.” She works in public service, helping people who have lost their income. Her ‘clients’ are people who claim welfare. Many of them attempt to defraud the Dutch government by not declaring income or other benefits they are enjoying. Her list of clients is growing: the current economic climate is forcing many below the line of poverty. Downward mobility is not an unfamiliar concept these days.

But downward mobility as a result of economic misfortune is a forced form of such mobility. Jesus’ example, however, is based entirely on his decision to do so. Paul does not write that Jesus was demoted or released from the deity, but rather that ‘he made himself nothing,’ ‘he took the very nature of a servant’, and ‘he humbled himself.’ In calling us to have the mind of Christ (NKJV and ASV), or having the attitude of Christ Jesus (NIV and NLT), Paul invites us to voluntary downward mobility.

Who is not here?

In a recent conversation on this subject Robert Calvert, pastor of the Scottish Church in Rotterdam, helped me understand the motivation to become downwardly mobile. The motivation stems from the realization that some who should be here, are in fact not here. The journey down, to quote Wes White, starts when one looks around the room, and asks the question Who is not here?

Let me explain. In Calvert’s understanding people run the risk in any group to become satisfied or complacent with our group. When we enter a new group of people we try hard to understand the common frame of mind this group shares. But after a while we come to accept the assumptions we make about the group, and accept them as truth. After sufficient time has gone by we stop asking questions regarding inclusion and exclusion all together. These assumptions explain both why the ones who are part of this group are part of this group, while the ones who are not part of the group are not.

"The journey down… starts when one looks around the room, and asks the question Who is not here?"

In looking around the room and asking the question who is not here? we challenge the assumptions we share about our group. We question the status quo, and realize there are reasons why those who are not here should in fact be here. Our reasons for previously excluding them often have to do with some form of pride; we tell ourselves ‘they don’t fit in’ or ‘they don’t meet our expectations’. Once we get past this, we realize that an incursion will have to be made into foreign territory to invite those previously excluded. This is where downward mobility starts.

I think this is precisely what happens in the incarnation. If the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity can be described as a dance, as Orthodox Christianity does in describing perichoresis, Jesus leaves the dance as Paul describes in v. 6 precisely because three persons of the trinity have ‘looked around the room and asked themselves ‘who is not here?’, and they have decided to act on this. Their desire is to bring mankind into their dance, and in order to do that an journey into foreign territory will have to be made, so as to make those not part of the dance previously, now part of the dance.

Mother Theresa is a current-day shining example of this. Her effort is solely aimed at making those not wanted, wanted.

Malcolm: What exactly are you doing for these dying people? I know you bring them in to die there. What is it you are doing for them, or are seeking to do for them?

Mother Theresa: First of all we want to make them feel that they are wanted; we want them to know there are people who really love them, who really want them, at least for the few hours they have to live, to know human and divine love. That they too may know they are the children of God and that they are not forgotten and that they are loved and cared about and there are young lives ready to give themselves in their service.

Lower still

There seems to be a two tier process to Jesus’ downward mobility. First, Paul describes how Jesus relinquished his divine nature and equality to God, and became a human being. Then, once he is human, the second part of the process sets in, in which he humbles himself before mankind, becoming a servant before them, and allowing himself even to be crucified. It is almost as if the text allows for the reader to think ‘And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself – again. Or ‘once more’.

This speaks to me. On those rare occasions where I have voluntarily chosen to humble myself, I doubt I have thought to myself: “OK, now how can I humble myself even further?” Yet this seems to be precisely what Jesus did. He travels from the one far end of the spectrum, where he is part of the trinity and equal with God the father, to the far other end of the spectrum, where he is put to death as the worst kind of person, a traitor crucified on a cross. The words Paul writes to the Galatians echo here: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” (Deuteronomy 21:23; Gal. 3:13).

My own desire for upward mobility rather than downward mobility notwithstanding, having Christ’s attitude would make us want to ‘go lower, lower still,’ as Hannah Hurnard writes in her water song. A community that has this attitude could be said to engage in a spiritual limbo-dance, cheering each other on: “how low can you go?”

Strong imagery

Two images speak strongly to me from this passage in Philippians. The first is that Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. The image of hands grasping something, or conversely, letting go, is powerful to me. In Crossroads Rotterdam we make much of this image. We teach our people to live ‘with open hands.’ Open hands can receive blessing when it comes. They do not claim, seek control, force or keep. Paul highlights Jesus’ attitude, implicating that Jesus lives with open hands. This image becomes clearer when we look at the cross, where his hands were nailed to the wood in the ultimate release.

"So much of our striving for upward mobility seems to be driven by the desire to fill a sense of emptiness we sense within ourselves."

The other image is that of Jesus emptying himself. V. 7 reads Jesus ‘made himself nothing,’ but this could also be translated (as the ASV) does as ‘he emptied himself.’ The Greek word underlying this text is ‘kenoo’ which means ‘to make void or empty’ or ‘to make of no effect.’ For this passage has become known as the kenosis passage: the passage which describes Jesus emptying himself out.

This is another powerful image to me. So much of our striving for upward mobility seems to be driven by the desire to fill a sense of emptiness we sense within ourselves. This is at least true for much of my personal striving. Yet here is Jesus, who seeks the emptiness rather than the fullness. As we see in the confrontation with Satan in the desert (Luke 4:3) he is content with emptiness.

What does emptying oneself entail? If we are to think about ourselves as Christ thought of himself (v. 4, The Message), how do we do that?

A few things come to mind. One is that we can of course give materially. We can give time. We can give energy. This is the first thing most people think of. Most churches teach on giving, or rather, teach on stewardship. In the course of such teaching people learn to give substantially. Some learn to tithe. But is this emptying ourselves?

I would suggest it probably is not. Most teaching on stewardship teaches people to give from the margins of their lives. They may learn to give substantial, and sacrifice may be involved: at least in the congregation I lead few people can easily miss 10% of their monthly income. Yet what Jesus did, was to give all. He did not give from the margins of his life – He emptied himself out. There was nothing left when he was done. His words to the rich young ruler come to mind: “go away, and give everything you have to the poor, and then come back and follow me.”

Recently I have toyed with this concept in Crossroads Rotterdam. Of course I teach on stewardship. I teach that it would be good for people to give a significant portion of their income away: doing so liberates us and it allows the work of the Kingdom to continue. But the idea I have been playing with is this: maybe I should tell the people that at least once in their life-time, they should give away everything they have, and follow God’s call – if not for a lifetime, than at least for a season.

Most people (myself included) tend to think they can have Christ’s attitude precisely because we never think such an extreme possibility will become a reality. We imagine ourselves great hero’s as long as no one calls on us. Reality however sets in when we start considering seriously giving everything away.

I have been reading about Mother Theresa recently. If anyone in my lifetime ever embodied Paul’s description of Jesus, it would probably be her. Her example is amazing – and it helps me realize how completely unattainable Paul’s charge to us in Philippians is to me.

Make us worthy?

In his book Something Beautiful for God Malcolm Muggeridge describes meeting Mother Teresa in Calcutta. He arrives there to make a documentary for the BBC about her work. As soon as she meets him she invites him to accompany her to the chapel. There they both kneel to pray. Her prayer, which she later writes out in a booklet she gives him, is this:

Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our fellow men throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger.

Make us worthy? To us living in Western Europe this seems like a strange prayer. Yet Paul’s song of Jesus’ downward mobility sits in the context of a letter written to a community that is starting to feel persecution. The author of the letter writes about his hardship, and in the process even wonders if he will survive: both life and death hold merit to him (1:20). Then he writes his audience that they, too, have been granted ‘not only to believe on Christ – but also to suffer for him’ (1:29). Paul’s charge to them to follow Christ and perhaps go the lower road – even to death is not an unlikely thing! For them persecution, which might include being stripped of possessions, or being captured for slavery or imprisonment, and even death) was a real possibility. And in the middle of that Paul says what Mother Theresa prays: to serve Christ in such a manner means you have been found worthy in some sort of way. There is a worthiness that is involved in following Christ on the lower road. I wonder if by and large the church in the West has not been found worthy to follow Christ in this manner because we serve God from the margins of our life, instead with all of it.

And then, as I think about this again, I run into the impossibility of really answering this invitation. I cannot follow Christ like that! Giving some – for sure! Giving all – no way! My desire to maintain myself, protect myself, my desire for luxury stand in the way.

Perhaps that is what the disciples felt too, after Jesus was finished with the rich young ruler: “who then, can be saved?” Jesus answer both respected their incredulity and lifted the bar of their faith. “With men this is not possible. With God all things are possible.” Maybe I should echo Mother Theresa’s prayer: “Lord, make me worthy…”

Obedience

What strikes me further is the reference to obedience (v. 8). In our culture we have lost most of our understanding of what obedience means. The term rarely falls in discussions about parenting. We speak of respecting management rather than obeying leaders. Richard Forster writes that the idolatry of today is the worship of power. We do not learn service when we crave influence and power. We regard ourselves and each other as educated, free thinking and empowered, and react in a hostile manner to the very thought of obedience. This isn’t the middle ages!

Two ladies in my community illustrated this recently. They returned from a holiday in the Himalayas of Nepal. Originally their party was supposed to consist of 14 Westerners. But 12 cancelled, leaving only Hester and Erika to go on the trip. Yet the tour operator had organized a company of 7 Nepali companions, consisting of 6 carriers and 1 cook. So off they went into the mountains.

Never once did my two friends feel unsafe in the company of these men. But they did feel uncomfortable! Because these 7 gentlemen asked permission frequently, and sought their leadership at every turn – even though these ladies had never visited this part of the world while these men lived there. As Hester said: “it felt so colonial and so wrong. Yet these men could not operate in another way.”

Another illustration of this comes from Mother Theresa. She made her vows to God and the church, and simply obeys – never questioning. She cannot relate to Malcolm Muggeridge’s questions regarding the political role of the church, nor the church’s involvement in scandals. It simply doesn’t enter her mind to question the reigning authority structures! Her call is simply to obey.

Obedience is a form of downward mobility. We submit to the will and leadership of a force outside of us, and at that point our opinion simply ceases to matter. Jesus became obedient – and obedient to death! To take seriously Jesus’ example means that we must learn to obey. We have to learn not to be involved in the decision making process. We have to learn to be OK with not having been asked for input. We need to learn to accept orders and carry them out without complaining or questioning. A Dutch saying says one has sit quietly when being shorn. Isaiah says Jesus was led like a lamb to the slaughter – without opening his mouth (Isaiah 53:7).

What happens in downward mobility?

How might we become downwardly mobile? Here are some examples I have heard of people pursuing an initiative that might be described as downwardly mobile.

I heard a story recently of a group of people who purposefully put their caucasian children in all-black schools in Rotterdam. In most Dutch cities the innercities consist almost entirely of coloured people. Most inner-city schools are describes as ‘black schools;’ this refers to the absence of any white Dutch children. These schools lag behind notoriously, not only in test scores, but also in facilities, equipment, emotional development and use of new technologies. They have the poorest teachers and the highest truancy rates. Purposefully inserting your white children into such a school in the hope to make a difference, just when your last white neighbours are leaving for the suburbs, might be described as downward mobility.

"Purposefully inserting your white children into such a school in the hope to make a difference, just when your last white neighbours are leaving for the suburbs, might be described as downward mobility."

Another example is when middle-class people move from the suburbs to the city centre when their entire middle-class has left the innercity, and our city centres have become urban jungles.

Downward mobility is when a well-paid professional decide to only work two days a week in a paid profession, so they can invest the rest of his time in a volunteer role.

What happens in downward mobility? Whether downward mobility is forced or voluntary, a number of things change when we become downwardly mobile.

Our social status changes. We loose a degree of respect. We exchange honour for shame. We cease to be the centre of attention, and are moved to the outside of the party, or worse, excluded from the party. The message we receive changes from ‘you are so desirable’ to ‘you are not wanted, not welcome.’

Jesus experienced this in every way. He willingly let go of the honour due to his totally superior role in the universe, and became a criminal spat on by religious and self-righteous people! Not only did he release his grasp on equality to God, he embraced his humanity. When tempted by Satan to turn stones to bread his response was “man shall not live by bread alone,” and ‘you shall not put your God to the test.” In this he clearly demonstrated he thought of himself as a human, and not one equal to God.

Our power changes. When we become downwardly mobile we loose power. Jesus was quite clear about this: “I can do nothing without the Father.” When Pilate asserted his power over Jesus, Jesus did not claim personal power over Pilate, but rather explained to Pilate the source of Pilate’s power: “you would have no power over me, if it were not given you from above” (John 19:11). Jesus’ answer makes clear he realizes himself to be in the power of this Roman governor.

It was not until after he was resurrected that he asserted: “all power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Downward mobility means we willingly release control, influence and power over things and people. The further we become downwardly mobile, the more powerless we become.

Downward mobility also means our wealth decreases. From being the Lord who ‘owns the cattle on a thousand hills’ Jesus becomes a slave – owned property himself.

Identity and loneliness

It should be pointed out that one thing does not change in downward mobility. However low we go, it never changes who we are. Our identity is solidly locked up in our relationship to the Father. Our identity is that we are his children – and this does not change, however low we can go.

Throughout his time on earth Jesus knew perfectly well he was still the son of the father. Even as his crucifixion was coming closer, he spoke comfortably of his close relationship with His Father. The prayer in John 17 is a good example of this: may they be one as you and I are one.

A profound understanding of this relationship with our Heavenly Father is very important. The journey down is a lonely journey. Robert Calvert reminded me of this recently. It certainly was for Jesus. This must have been part of his ‘emptying out.’ In giving up on the equality with God he gives up on living in the very presence of the Father. His existence of earth must have been lonely, given that no one really understand who he was or what he was hoping to achieve. Then his friends betray him and leave him, and finally God leaves him.

Downward Mobility entails loneliness. Moving down rather than up goes against the spirit of the age in the 21^st century. Downward mobility has a prophetic nature to it; prophets stand out because they stand against the spirit of the age. Downward mobility has a prophetic quality to it – and rarely is a prophet honoured for what he or she says.

As we make the journey down we wrestle, as Robert Calvert helped me see, not only with the pressure from without, but also with the pressure from within. Our fight is not only with the spiritual powers at work in the world, but also with our personal demons. We struggle with a desire for recognition, comfort, honour and peace of mind.

Our loneliness also stems from the fact that downward mobility is a cross-cultural experience. We traverse from the circles where we naturally belong, to circles where we do not normally come. Jesus left the realm of the Father to join the realm of the physical. Cross-cultural experiences create loneliness: we feel out of place in our new environment. We do not belong. It takes time for us to develop relationships there. Frequently we experience rejection – precisely because people feel we come from better places, and they feel inferior. They are likely to feel that our effort to relate to them is condescending. Rightly or wrongly they may presume pride and arrogance on our part. Certainly Jesus experienced all these emotions. If he is our example we should only expect that our intentions will be misunderstood.

In such times we should know that the Father loves us, and that we ultimately belong to him. It is He who holds us, watches over us, cares for us in all circumstances, and gives us the strength to carry on.

Upward mobility follows downward mobility

No discussion of the downward mobility of Philippians 2:4-11 would be complete without drawing attention to the upward mobility of verses 9-11 that follow Jesus’ downward mobility. Throughout scripture God seems to especially enjoy those who humble themselves – and he seems to enjoy lifting those who humble themselves up. The more we humble ourselves, the more he seems to lift us up. Paul may have described Jesus’ downward mobility as a two step process, but there is no intermediate stage in the way God exalts Jesus; it’s all the way from the bottom to all the way at the top.

Good news as this may be, there is a problem here. How do we keep humbling ourselves when we enjoy the blessing of God? Donald McGavran, often called the father of church growth theory observed a principle he called redemption-and-lift. It refers to a phenomenon that can often be observed, in which people upon becoming Christians experience an amount of upward mobility. Conversion to Christ often means people are introduced into a new circle of friends. They learn new skills, start developing character in areas that were difficult before. They may stop abusing alcohol. Patterns in their lives change, and they enjoy financial blessing as a result. Better housing, cars and schools may follow. A homeless person ceases to be part of the crowd on the street. A gang member leaves the gang and goes back to school or finds suitable employment. McGavran describes who those who might be the most effective evangelists among their former peers, simply leave their vicinity and loose touch. In this human economy of jobs and money and education and psychology, downward and upward mobility play a complex game together.

An end to the rebellion

Some authors have noticed the contrast between these verses in Philippians, and the passage in Isaiah 14:13,14. Those verses record Lucifer’s intention to raise himself to the same level as God.

“For thou has said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. (Isa. 14:13, 14)

But the words that follow speak of his actual destiny: “Yet thou shalt be brought down to sheol, to the sides of the pit.” The contrast between these verses is as follows. Lucifer would go up, to the same level as God, but is brought down by the Most High. Jesus, conversely, chooses to go down, but is for that reason exalted. Some theologians call this the great parabola of scripture.

It is interesting to note that when Lucifer comes to Adam and Eve in the garden he sells them the same lie: ‘you can be like God.’ In accepting his lie they become part of his rebellion – and Jesus is the son of the Landowner in Matt. 21-45, sent to ask mankind to give up the rebellion. In this parable the tenants kill the son, thinking, “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance” (Matt. 21:38). What Jesus seems to be saying is that we are involved in a fight for supremacy. Lucifer thought he could be supreme – and we thought we could be supreme. The fact is we cannot, and we need to give up the rebellion. Rather than going up, we must choose to go down. Accepting Jesus as saviour is one thing, accepting him as Lord means we go make the journey down.

But this has important bearing on our discussion. It would comfortable to think that downward mobility is gift given to some; some, we might think, are endowed with a special grace to make that journey down. But we would miss an important fact: we have the choice to either go up or go down.

Our excuse for going up might be that we don’t think we have the gift of going down. But in choosing to go up we are in fact still buying into Lucifer’s lie.

Paul does not make downward mobility optional. He does not say ‘this is only for the Paul’s and the Francis of Assissi’s, and the mother Theresa’s of this world.’ He states it more universal than that: ‘you attitude should be like that of Christ Jesus…’

Our own interests versus the interests of others

Which brings me to my last observation on this passage. Verse 4 in the NIV reads ‘each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.’ This makes it sound like it is okay for a person to look after your own interest, provided you also look after the interests of others. But this is strange. Because right after that Paul states ‘our attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.’ The logic doesn’t hold up: Jesus did not look after his own interests at all. This raises the question if the word only should in fact be in the sentence. Should the verse not rather read: ‘each of you should look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.’ Than it makes sense that Paul follows this with highlighting the example of Jesus. Wes White confirms that the older manuscripts reflect this reading, and that in fact my reading here seems to be correct.

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Crazy Jane talks with the bishop

We read a lot of Irish poetry during our time together. We didn’t read this poem by W.B. Yeats, but it speaks powerfully of a ‘downwardly mobile’ love. Thanks, Wes, for drawing my attention to it.

Crazy Jane talks with the bishop

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.’

‘Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart’s pride.

‘A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.’

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Jazz and the Mode of Hopeful Transgression

Wesley White, PhD

Presented at Scottish Universities Theological Forum, May, 2006

Breaking rules understandably arouses precautionary sentiments. It is generally assumed that biblically informed thinking and behaviour usually advocate and demonstrate against it. In spite of an ecclesially generated self-loathing because of the common failure to measure up, in most circles certain degrees of rule keeping are nevertheless interpreted as indicative of religious ardency and devotion. In various settings the rules may be spoken or written, while in others they may be unstated, understated, or simply taken for granted, but in either case it is expected that they will be adhered to.

I want to suggest that such a view, even if it is ubiquitous, is limited, biased, possibly dishonest, or maybe simply uninformed. It does little justice to the scope of transgression, both negatively and positively, that is more broadly represented in the narrative of the Bible, to say nothing of the long history of those whose messianic zeal has led them to invoke disequilibrium as much as anything else. For some, perhaps many, transgression is entertained not as an act of defiance in and of itself, but in the hopeful mode of a changed and better future. In many cases such a mode requires that rules be broken rather than maintained.

The storied pages of Scripture contain numerous examples of transgression of this commendable sort. Four come to mind as particularly instructive here. The prophet Isaiah (62:1-7) rejects the rule of respectable silence in favour of verbal prodding that is meant to inspire anticipatory acts in sync with the dawning of a new order. Furthermore, the silence is additionally defied by the praying of those who will not be deterred until the people of God have become a praise in the earth. In Numbers 22, an ass is enabled to engage in the extraordinary exactness of human dialogue, invested with human language skill in such a way that both the rule of nature and political hegemony are defied. The miraculous by definition breaks with natural order, but the strange account of Balaam and his domestic animal borders on supernatural gimmickry. It is, of course, in the interest of transgression as pedagogy.

In the New Testament, Peter and John and their friends (Acts 4:19; 5:29) opt for civil disobedience in favour of obedience to God. Similarly, the Apostle Paul draws upon the adverbial comparison of “much” (πολλην) confidence in Christ and combines it with the strength of the infinitive (επιτασσειν) with the rhetorical intent of highlighting his prerogative of ordering his fellow-Christian to ignore unjust societal rules and relate to Onesimus, the slave, as a free man. (Philemon 8) Transgression, in other words, is sometimes preferred, sometimes demanded, not in contradiction to, but in deference to a theologically credible understanding of the God of the Old and New Testaments.

In Praise of Transgression

It can rightly be argued that many and differing types of transgression are simply expressions of human creativity. For example, creative expression may assume the form of resistance to all that mitigates against meaning and purpose. Even that which is intended to convey meaninglessness or formlessness depends on creative license and interaction, after all, to render some notion of meaninglessness. George Steiner, for one, argues that the way in which human beings demonstrate a proclivity for creative expression is nothing less than a wager on transcendence that is a form of rightful resistance to emptiness.

Artistic creativity, in particular, exalts in its capacity to limit human dependence on what is easily explainable and that which is categorized by independent reason. It promotes, in other words, the validity of all in the human spirit that delights in transgressing the hegemony of systematic rationalization. Steiner, again, reminds us that this inheres from the unique human ability to appreciate artistic endeavors at all. Without it, the wide array of artistic expression could hardly be received. That is to say that artistic creativity depends upon the human community that is willing to engage in defiance.

We are not restricted, however, to the dissecting of creative acts to discover displays of healthy transgression in the material and social worlds that we regularly inhabit. It is endemic, for example, in the games of language in which the human community not only frolics, but also depends upon for understanding, cooperation and some sense of direction. There is a vectorial dimension to human existence that Steiner, once more, considers in his lucid examination of the nature of language, After Babel. “The status of the future of the verb is at the core of existence.” “It shapes the image we carry of the meaning of life,” he suggests, “and of our personal place in that meaning.” It essentially reflects an instinctual but nonetheless deliberate disregard for the givenness of the present that allows tomorrow to be imagined. In the course of re-imaging the future, the human community can entertain the possibility of change, but it requires a range of language that concedes the place of disparaging words when referring to existence that is narrowly defined by the present.

Amidst a variety of arenas, the propensity of language to shape and encourage alternative futures is particularly evident in the study of literary genre, with specific attention to fantasy. It is a mode most succinctly defined by what Bauckham and Hart refer to as a “wanton transgression of the rules.” Recent scholarly work in the discipline bears this out. Rosemary Jackson, for example, refers to fantasy in contrast to literary frameworks generally determined by epistemological and ontological limits. As such, it “exposes a culture’s definitions of that which can be,” disturbing the rules of artistic representation and particularly reconfiguring literatures’ reproduction of the real. It is, in fact, delightful as a genre type precisely because of the way it embraces negative subjunctivity, purposefully contravening the real and violating it.

This, however, is more than inventive storytelling. The potentiality of human relations and ideals are at stake as fantasy occasions the coinciding of literary and social functions. They coincide at that point where in both cases a transgression of the given (law) is determined to be imperative. In his critically acclaimed work, Tzvetan Todorov suggests that if this coinciding of social and literary domains is to be productive, the intrusion of something other-worldly is always demanded. “Whether it is in social life or in narrative, the intervention of the supernatural element always constitutes a break in the system of pre-established rules, and in doing so finds its justification.” William Irwin cloaks it, once again, in the playful metaphor of language games, though he too understands it to be a high-stakes field, indeed, in which the ramifications may stretch well beyond the seemingly innocent pages of a piece of literature.

Contextualized Transgression

The need for some form (or a variety of forms) of resistance is all the more apparent in light of an ongoing “fascination with despair,” so descriptively depicted by William Lynch in the mid-1960’s. The dominance of despair has continued unabated, only in exacerbated ways. It remains rampant, and, in spite of the many advantages occasioned by the dual developments of postmodernity and postmodernism, it is nonetheless evidenced in what Bauckham and Hart rightly qualify as high levels of religious, aesthetic, moral and epistemic relativism that undergird “the thought of ultimate Nothingness” that have followed in their wake.

Scholarship helpfully traces these developments at least as far back as the early demoralizing trend (most notably articulated by Nietzsche) suggested in the concept of eternal recurrence. The perpetual turning of the hourglass in this scheme hardly leaves room for hopeful possibilities. A purposeful future easily gets lost in “the unconditional and infinitely repeated course of all things,” promoting the present moment, the finite, and the individual to a status wherein little else is of any meaningful significance.

If such Nietzschean ideas and their progeny are taken seriously, as they apparently (maybe unconsciously) have been, one of the inevitable outcomes is the unrestrained reign of a consumerist mentality, at least in those regions of the world where the luxury of consuming is available and therefore craved. It provides little value to life other than perhaps the dubious masking of despair with commercial illusions of happiness. The poets of contemporary lyrics are at least honest enough to challenge the illusions, as a recent song reveals:

The world is turning Disney and there’s nothing you can do
You’re trying to walk like giants, but you’re wearing Pluto’s shoes…
And the answers fall easier from the barrel of a gun
Than it does from the lips of the beautiful and the dumb
The world won’t end in darkness, it’ll end in family fun
With Coca Cola clouds behind a Big Mac sun

Preference for illusion, however, should not be misinterpreted as any type of healthy exercise of imagination. Quite to the contrary, we can trace a blatant decline in the imaginative life and a corresponding demise of the sense of hope that imaginative undertakings normally procure.

Pascal went so far as to contend that “imagination decides everything: it creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the world’s supreme good.” This, however, is far from commonly realized. Rorty’s suggestion as to the disappointing outcomes of misplaced trust in metaphysical comforts has had the corresponding effect of severely limiting the imaginative freedom that metaphysical thought usually provokes. Apart from even minimal aspirations aroused by metaphysical concerns, we are left with a social milieu that John Caputo describes as being routinely “absorbed by rational management techniques.” One of the more unfortunate consequences of trends such as these, I suggest, is restriction rather than emancipation of the imagination.

Extravagant suspicion of metanarrative (not only in terms of particular convictions, but even broad interpretive structures that supply meaning) is culpable to a certain degree. The adventuresome spirit that defines humanness (at least in part) is discovering an unhappy sense of confinement as a result of recent emphases on local stories alone. It soon becomes tedious, if not simply uninteresting and lending to the experience of boredom. Within such confining situations, the bards who captivate our imaginations with “an imagery of heroes and elves and gods” no longer have a place or value in our midst.

In its place, we foolishly rely upon the essentially solitary provinces of cyberspace and ipods and falsely believe them to be imaginative ventures. When, however, we reenter communal contexts as social beings we find that we have merely been experiencing technical simulations that are illusory and immediately fading, having contributed nothing at all to the world around us. Because of this, Richard Kearney indicts the postmodern imagination as distinctly unethical. It fosters the propriety of the “eventual loss of the other,” encouraging detachment, advancing privatism and minimizing ethical obligation simply because public heroes, and the tales of their noble adventures, are no longer needed or appreciated. Apathy, not imaginatively-inspired social care, is bred.

In a climate characterized by the selfish and the apathetic, transgressing the progress of imaginative drain-flow becomes a paramount missional consideration for Christian communities. Healthy Christian doctrine asserts that faith is not merely an affirmation of cognitive belief, but is more an engaging, stretching and enabling of the imagination “to accommodate a vision of a meaningful and hopeful future for the world, a meaning which could never be had by extrapolating the circumstances of the tragic drama of history itself.” As Jürgen Moltmann offers, faith construed as hope “causes not rest but unrest,” as the imaginative capacity is awakened to future possibilities in such a way that cannot help but challenge the status quo, protesting the giveness of the present as fresh possibilities are pursued. Hope of this kind, in other words, is the natural outgrowth of an active imagination generated by faith.

Furthermore, historic and broad ecclesial understandings of the meaning, extent and application of incarnational doctrine bear significantly upon the Spirit-empowered imagination as represented in communities of faith. The Eastern Church, for example, has long taught that all art (any imaginative endeavor) is incarnational, flowing out of the beauty made known in Christ. It represents the reflexive response of the soul that inherently reflects the image of the Creator.

Incarnational doctrine, of course, deliberately and rightly focuses on the historically situated person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Amos Wilder, in particular, has accentuated the imaginative and eschatological intent implicit in what he terms the “symbolics” which underlie and explain Jesus’ preference for teaching in parables. In so doing, Wilder contends that Jesus achieves a wholesome contrast with the “modern catastrophic imagination” by offering imaginative possibilities that are entirely informed by the prospect of new creation. These creative visions of the future are potent precisely because they expect and depend upon supernatural empowering. In Wilder’s words, the modern catastrophic imagination “ignores the phase of miraculous renovation and that world affirmation which has gone through the experience of world negation.”

It is apparent, therefore, that the imaginative designs of particular communities of faith have the missional purpose of awakening laden sensibilities that appeal to human longings for a better and hopeful future. When awakenings of this type more often determine the identity of local faith communities, and when they are more and more experienced as normative, they inspire transgression of (rather than acquiescence to) present realities which are increasingly found to be unacceptable. In this way, the emancipated imagination is seen to be an essential part of ethical development. As George MacDonald observes, “The way to develop the aesthetic faculty is to have constantly before our eyes, that is, in the room we most frequent, some work of the best attainable art. This will teach us to refuse the evil and choose the good.”

Guilty Jazz

We have been rehearsing, to this point, the place and need for healthy transgressions and the imaginative capacity that inspires them. It is time to ask, however, how and where these concepts take on any type of concrete form. I want to suggest that a supreme example is to be had in the musical mode that we know as Jazz. It is happily guilty of many of the trespasses we have noted above, and, as such, has much to offer communities that deliberately highlight the imaginative life of the Spirit.

Jazz as a musical mode, after all, is premised on the art of breaking the rules. The best of jazz, in fact, breaks the rules in the most creative of ways; sometimes winsomely, sometimes flagrantly. It audibly elevates that which does not fit and honors it with a revolutionary sound that is meant to question the way things are. It is an expression, in other words, of that imaginative ability which allows human beings to protest the given, encouraging alternative ways of responding to dominant ideology. Jazz, it might be said, is playful protest music, and breaking at least some of the musical rules is its mode.

Protest music is particularly in order because, in the case of jazz, it is birthed out of the setting of oppression, a place of not belonging, that is the tragedy of the Black American experience. The renowned African-American scholar, W.E.B. DuBois, maintains that the essential key to understanding the black music of America is that behind it all is “the voice of exile.” Exilic injustices are responsible for the rise of the musical phenomena commonly known as the blues, which, according to W.C. Handy, are meant to accentuate the expressive pathos of an entire culture drawing from “a deep well of sorrow.” It is hardly coincidental, therefore, that the most salient features of jazz derive directly from the blues.

And yet, like the poetry of the latter prophets of Israel, the performed music in which jazz and the blues overlap is intended to defy exilic acquiescence and arouse passionate longings for home. It borrows from the best of Old Testament exilic theology, refusing to cling to old devastated dreams, but simply referring to them in order to push ahead and envision a new homecoming. In a similar way, Eileen Southern contends that the well of sorrow which produces the blues is not a well of despair. “Almost always,” she says, “there is a note of irony or humor in the blues, as if the blues singer is audaciously challenging fate to mete out further blows.” They conspire, in other words, with the “double voicing” of the spirituals that deceptively refer to homecoming, and many other exilic themes as well, in more ways than one. Jazz inherits much of its impulse from both the spirituals and the blues and shares their insistence on referencing both the painful and unjust episodes of the past and a hoped for future on behalf of anyone who knows what exile feels like.

Goin’ Home, Goin’ Home, Lord I’m Goin’ Home.
Goin’ Home, Going’ Home, Lord I’m Goin’ Home.
When I’m There, I Be Free. Lord I’m Goin’ Home.
When I’m There, I Be Free. Lord I’m Goin’ Home.
Goin’ Home, Goin’ Home, Lord I’m Goin’ Home.
Goin’ Home, Goin’ Home, Lord I’m Goin’ Home.
Lord I’m Goin’ Home.

As a public voice for exiles, jazz invokes a sense of solidarity that necessarily disturbs the benefactors of inequality and isolation. It is disturbing to them only because it is fully capable of giving performed notice to the opposing twin virtues of equity and fraternity. This is in distinction to utopian visions of the same that are noble enough, but lack any semblance of legitimate grounding or any degree of proportional possibility. Jazz, on the other hand, publicly demonstrates them and, in fact, depends upon them for the success of a performance. Soloing equity is allotted to each musician (not just one select soloist or even a few select soloists) in order for jazz to be jazz. Likewise, the selflessness of providing backup sounds and rhythms while the other solos requires a fraternal spirit that is both musical and communal. In a good performance, that is to say, the rules that dictate and manage inequality and isolation are violated.

Finally, jazz dares to lead the way in the urgently needed trespassing of what James Cone called “the heresy of white Christianity.” Rodney Clapp helpfully summarizes these, in relation to jazz, as correctives in relation to “disembodiment, privatization, and the skewing of eschatology.” Each of these, and probably others, bespeak religious-cultural assumptions that, in spite of their dominance, are far from healthy.

Disembodiment, of course, harkens back to Greek dualistic tendencies. Jazz deliberately transgresses the extreme separatism embraced in dualism by encouraging the integration of mind and body, welcoming and relishing bodily responses to the music (handclapping, yelling, dancing) as much as mental appreciation. Similarly, it challenges privatization of all sorts, religious and otherwise, by being a music that flourishes in the midst of people and largely depending upon an existential communal experience in order for it to have meaning. And, jazz refuses to entertain any strict division between sacred and secular, but invites everyone into the eschatological vision of participating in the making of all things new. Dissonance and unresolved tension are freely embraced because, as Craig Werner suggests, jazz “transforms noise into music, challenges us to hear the music in the noise, open our ears, our minds, our lives to things we hadn’t thought about.”

On all these fronts, and maybe others, jazz is guilty, and we are the better for it. It transgresses the rules such that the boundaries of a hoped for future are stretched back to us, within reach and for the grasping. It breaches that order that is only secure in as much as it limits rather than emancipates. Jazz, in fact, is identified by the manner in which it creatively improvises, based on and in the context of freedom, and in so doing it intentionally breaks many rules.

Promoting Eschatological Values

Appreciating the correlation between jazz and a variety of theological concerns, therefore, is invaluable. Missionally, it also encourages the positive interfacing of culture and theology in ways that capitalize on all the best aspects of creative imagination. For this reason, James McClendon rightly asserts, “a theology of jazz is not a scholar’s whimsy,” but “required work.” It shares the creative energy of all the arts (to say nothing of the imaginative products of a host of other disciplines) that has the power to both capture attention and expand vision for transformational purposes. Artistic ventures, in other words, can be starkly, yet positively confrontational, even if their agenda is subtly conveyed. This agenda is commonly a reference to the future and its expansive possibilities, and jazz is simply one art form that more blatantly exposes it.

Of course, all of this infers, in theological terms, an eschatological orientation that is genuinely at the heart of the imaginative life and experience. In this way, creative energy is not an exercise in manipulation, nor is it even an end in itself, but its greater intent is to signify the power of God’s new creation purposes as they extend backwards into the given moment with the ultimate goal of reshaping it.

Jazz, rooted as it is in the spirituals and the blues, reaps the benefit of a similar phenomena expressed in both musically and socially expedient ways, particularly as it draws upon the heritage of double voicing referred to earlier. “Swing low, Sweet Chariot,” for example, undoubtedly expressed release from the suffering of the world via the future prospect of death, but it also signaled the imminent arrival of the Underground Railroad that would transport slaves to the free North or Canada. Likewise, “Steal Away” meant meeting Jesus in an after death experience or even in a therapeutic conception of conversion, but it was also coded language for stealing into the woods for forbidden slave meetings. To this day, jazz reflects this heritage in what might be called anticipatory music that invokes the future so as to impact the experiential now.

A note of anticipation is precisely what ought to be sounded given an appreciation of the eschatological vision of God’s new creation objectives. Such notes, in fact, are all the more significant as they signal the presence of a new order even though ambiguity continues in the midst of re-creational activity. In like manner, jazz incites renewed awareness of new creation longings every time it creates new sounds on the basis of improvisational freedom. Christopher Small underscores this correlation with the suggestion that “when a musician improvises, the act of creation is experienced at first hand, with the active participation of all those present, listeners as well as performers.” (emphasis mine) The same concept belies the remark of Louis Armstrong, probably unintended yet nonetheless indicative, that many accept as the best definition of jazz, when he observed, “Jazz is music that’s never played the same way once.”

Demonstrations of new creation initiatives are necessarily communal. They are about collective ingathering and collective dispersal in the interest of re-creational objectives, rather than noble but solitary acts born out of isolation and individualism. Jazz embraces communal preferences as well, probably more so than most other musical forms of expression. The best setting of the true jazz experience is the intimacy of a small club or pub, not the concert hall where refrained observation is the mode. Furthermore, as Ralph Ellison observes, the making of the music itself celebrates the dance between the individual and the community, but never the one without the other. It must always be some form of tango. This communal emphasis has no doubt come directly out of Africa where those gifted in musical expression worked in the context of village communities in which they were certainly admired and respected, but nonetheless never expected to function apart from the group. “Their function,” according to Christopher Small, “was not to provide completed art works for professionals to play and the community to listen to, but to act as leaders, pacemakers in the communal work of musical and choreographic creation.”

Communal aspirations, I suggest, find their genesis in the evocative Christian resource of Trinitarian theology. Human longing for communal experience is rooted in and ultimately satisfied by the three-in-one God who invites all of creation into relational closeness with himself and with others. Jazz gives voice to these longings and demonstrates at least their partial fulfillment in what might be referred to as performed Trinity that McClendon highlights under the headings of participation, cooperation, recognition, and inclusion. Within this extremely relationally-dependent esprit, the essential jazz elements of freedom and passion are thrust into prominence and flourish, evoking theological virtues as well.

Finally, it should be clear that esteem for eschatological values lends an ethical dimension to every manner of imaginative pursuit. Artists in particular, including the entrepreneurs of jazz, are invited to contribute to community development in what Pope John Paul II referred to as “a spirituality of artistic service, which contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people.” This approach to the artistic vocation is rightly understood as an ethical contribution in the service of beauty. Service of this kind borrows from the Platonic concept of καλοαγαθια (beautiful goodness) that applauds the way goodness contributes to beauty for the benefit of the polis. It pursues beauty, however, as defined in the broadest sense, and so is equally appreciative of artistry that recoils from escapism, honestly unveiling contradictions of beauty so as to expose it. Like jazz, in other words, it embraces genuine artistic endeavors that are necessarily raucous and dissonant at times, as well as sonorous, harmonic and pleasant.

Purveyors of Hope

Imaginative freedom is especially sanctioned given our indeterminate setting that must balance the tragic realities of the present world as over and against the hopeful prospects of God’s new creation. It assumes a Christological framework that highlights what Moltmann, for example, understands as the ongoing story of life lived in the space between Christ crucified and risen. Imagination so framed is not merely an exercise in dreaming, but specifically serves as a catalyst for what can be altered in present time and space in anticipation of what is to come. It commends the contribution of artists in particular, but challenges them to actualize their productive capacities by “giving aesthetic form to ideas conceived in the mind.”

The Christian vision of the hoped-for future, therefore, necessitates a healthy approach to mission that eagerly embraces an ongoing dialogue with artists of all sorts. It should, in fact, go further and welcome artists into Christian community, happily giving them seats around the full length of the table where their contributions to communion and community, as well as mission can properly serve in catalytic ways. Communities of faith likewise have the corresponding responsibility of deliberately encouraging poets, writers, sculptors, painters, architects, actors, dancers and musicians, even as they urge them to put their gifts at the service of humanity and its future.

In this manner, the arts should be especially appreciated in Christian community as creatively functioning under the auspices of hope. They transgress prevailing notions of despair as they inspire innovative and alternative points of view that have the capacity of eliciting thoughtful and practical change. Jazz, I suggest, is notable in this regard as it colludes with more avant-garde postmodern tendencies that fiercely demand the freedom to re-create, challenge the idols of market-driven loyalty, and aspire to “explore the deepest recesses of human experience.” They assume, in other words, the legitimacy of hopeful possibilities, and for this they should be applauded and embraced.

Christian eschatological musings are uniquely hopeful, therefore, based on the conviction that the future (prefaced in Christological distinctives) is latent in the present to such a degree that reality can only be partially explained by the familiar and common. The link between the future and the present requires both priestly and prophetic roles in which the participation of the artistic community is urgently needed. The entrepreneurs of jazz, I suggest, are singularly qualified for this task. The imaginative capacity of every sort of artistry, however, has a special ability to incorporate the past in the interest of stirring up the present in order that communities of faith might engage in anticipatory acts that demonstrate God’s good future. It bespeaks the presence of the Spirit who continues to move in the world, leading us on toward the realigning of heaven and earth.

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The art of being church

It is characteristic of postmodern art that the relationship between the artist and the work of art produced is not as straightforward as we are accustomed to expect. Conventionally an art object such as a painting or sculpture is understood to be the work of an individual artist, and its public value depends, to a degree at least, on the identity and status of that artist - a convention that is readily exploited for commercial purposes. Increasingly, however, the relationship between artist and art object is becoming blurred, notably through the emergence of ‘art collectives’.

Art collectives are communities that produce art and take collective responsibility for their output. Dimensions, boundaries and identities are fluid. The community can be anything from two people to an unlimited and amorphous online community, such as the Wooster Collective, which exists in the form of a website ‘dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world’. Even a global network of ‘artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs’ such as Adbusters may not be too far off the scale.

Generally the work of the collective is ideologically or idealistically motivated. This motivation may range from the playful and ‘insouciant’ romanticism of the German hobbypopMUSEUM collective to the complex, multidisciplinary anticapitalism of Critical Art Ensemble. It is the idea – in the form of a philosophical outlook, a deconstructive cultural stance, a political agenda, and so on – that drives and informs these groups. A bunch of local artists banding together merely to help promote each other’s work (Artspace in Loughborough, for example) would fall outside this definition.

The collective production of message-driven art has elicited innovative, eccentric and often controversial forms of communication and engagement. The collective 0100101110101101.ORG consists of ‘a couple of restless European con-artists’, Eva and Franco Mattes. Their work has included such ‘media actions’ as promoting a non-existent artist called Darko Maver, running a fake publicity campaign for Nike which claimed that the company was planning to buy and rename famous city sites around the world, replicating and corrupting the official Vatican website, and spreading a computer virus as a work of art. Most recently they produced an elaborate hoax marketing campaign, centred around a Hollywood style poster, for a fictitious film starring Penelope Cruz and Ewan McGregor entitled ‘United We Stand’, in which an elite team of European agents must save the world from disaster as the U.S. and China rush towards war over the Korean peninsula.

Collaborative projects of this nature are likely to involve a much wider range of activities than would normally be classified as ‘art’. The product is not merely a picture, a sculpture, a film: it is a programme, an agenda, a campaign; it is communal behaviour, often over a long period of time. The Blackout Arts Collective, for example, describes itself as ‘a grassroots coalition of artists, activists and educators working to empower communities of color through the arts. We use the tools of culture and education to raise awareness and catalyze action around the critical issues that impact our communities.’ Critical Art Ensemble is a ‘collective of five artists of various specializations dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, radical politics, and critical theory’. According to Holland Cotter, writing in The New York Times, it operates as:

a combination of scientific investigative unit, anticapitalist guerrilla cell, public service agency and multimedia art studio. It has conducted research into government and corporate control of biotechnology and biogenetics, and then presented its findings in publications, exhibitions and public performances that sometimes take the form of laboratory demonstrations. For a German performance with the artist Beatriz da Costa, the collective tested food brought by visitors for genetically modified organisms, whose import European Union officials claimed had been banned.

Art collectives are highly motivated, energetic communities that have formed for the purpose of communicating through art a public and political message. They offer, I think, even at a general level, an illuminating and rather challenging analogy for understanding the nature and function of Christian communities. But they may also provide us with a model (and only a model) for the emerging church as it attempts to understand and give account of its distinctive calling.

So I want to ask: Can we reconceptualize this model around an announcement of ‘good news’ that is more than fashionable socio-political critique, more than cheeky, transgressive deconstruction, more than community empowerment? What if a church were to think of itself as an art collective, called into being in order to explore ways of creatively communicating a message about the presence of God and the renewal of created life? Could a group of like-minded believers come together and shape itself as a ‘Christ collective’ with that purpose in mind? There are a number of respects in which the analogy is suggestive.

One and many

The collective approach to artistic production counters the individualism and self-obsession characteristic of modernity. The group finds its identity in the corporate persona. The self-importance of the individual artist is brought into question; personal ambitions are subsumed under the overarching mission of the group.

One of the ways in which this manifests itself is in a dynamic and fluctuating relationship between the one and the many. A group of artists may take on the identity of a single person; or one artist may masquerade as a group. Four African-American artists in Houston, for example, identify themselves as Otabenga Jones and Associates. Ota Benga was a pygmy exhibited at the Bronx Zoo in 1904 to illustrate Darwin’s theory of evolution, but for the group he has evolved into a collective alter ego - a conceptual artist and historian interested in ‘critically reconstituting the connective tissue between African and African-American cultures’ (Cotter). But the confusion of the one and the many can also work the other way. The Lebanese artist Walid Raad founded the imaginary Atlas Group in 1999 to ‘research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon’. In this case it is the collective that is the fiction, not the individual.

There is a natural correlation here with the biblical idea, expressed in various forms, that Christ represents the many, that he comprises in himself the calling and destiny of the many. We find it in Isaiah’s poetic description of a servant who is both Israel and the prophet and some future ideal figure; in the vision of an individual ‘Son of man’ who is the community of the saints of the Most High; in Jesus’ image of the vine and the branches; in Paul’s metaphor of the Spirit-filled community as the body of Christ, in which the diverse parts find coherence and common purpose.

If the modern church has become little more than a routine aggregation of individuals, then the post-modern rehabilitation of the church must include the recovery of the sense of being one people in Christ. ‘We, though many, are one body….’ The art collective analogy offers a way of recapturing the elusive relationship between the members of the group and a ‘transcendent’ or ‘virtual’ figure that is difficult to find in other contemporary models of community. It is also a model that can be easily scaled up from small groups, to churches, to networks and global movements: at all levels the church has the potential to be a highly expressive new creation in Christ.

Community and mission

The ‘art collective’ paradigm would help the church to reconnect community and mission. Collectives are outgoing, extravert, activist, militant: they communicate through actions, events, performances; they make an impact, they make trouble. They engage socially, culturally and intellectually, but always out of a coherent vocation. They are potentially transformative: ‘We believe in the power of the creative process to transform lives, mobilize communities, and build a more just society’ (Blackout Arts Collective). They model, therefore, an integrity of community and mission in the public realm that has not always been evident in modern churches. Christ collectives would have a shared passion to explore, communicate and enact a message that is new creational or re-creational in its scope. In this sense they would be incarnational: they would help to make sense of God-in-Christ-among-us for others.

Riddles of renewed humanity

The objective of most modern churches is to establish themselves as a solid, enduring, structured, visible presence in the community­ – to be located prominently in the social landscape. Christ collectives would establish their presence, make themselves felt, not through location primarily but through communication. They are the medium by which a message has existence. They are the dreamers of dreams, the seers of visions. They are the machinery of propaganda for God’s reign. They are the script-writers, directors, set designers, make-up artists, and actors of a play performed on the stage of a local community.

Seen in this way, a church-run project to serve the city, for example, is not a covert evangelistic programme; nor is it simply an exercise in humanitarian assistance. It is a work of art, a sign, a collaborative expression of what the community has discovered about the living God. This is not to trivialize either the evangelistic or the social aspects of the community action – it is rather to exploit its potential to capture the imagination and point beyond itself.

The organizational identity of Christ collectives would be more ephemeral and enigmatic: communication is a much more volatile structural principle than the regularity of attendance at a place of worship. But this elusiveness would itself become part of the meaning. Christ collectives become riddles of renewed humanity, parables of new creation, participating actively and enthusiastically in it, but all the time conscious of what they are not. They camp on the shifting boundary between success and failure, speech and silence, being and non-being, familiarity and anonymity, order and chaos. They share the indirectness and uncertainty of metaphor.

The imaginational power of the Spirit

Christ collectives would seek to embody the fecund imaginational activity of the Spirit of God. They are creative, prophetic, propagandist, subversive. They explore the cultural, social, and intellectual implications of the thesis of God. They struggle to see differently, to conceive of new things. They are a place for reflection, analysis and restatement, through conversation, Bible reading, art, prayer, writing. They draw inspiration from the dramatic actions, publicity stunts, by which the prophets – including the prophet from Nazareth – confronted Israel with the prospect of judgment and restoration, failure and forgiveness, death and life. The emerging church is a place for re-imagining what it means to be a distinct, peculiar people telling its story among the nations and tribes and cultures of the world.

The ‘art collective’ analogy makes us stop and think seriously about what we want to say to the world and how we want to say it. We are attempting to articulate in public something far more dense, complex, narrative, engaging, penetrative, subversive than can be expressed through the conventional forms of Christian culture. The 0100101110101101.ORG collective has developed a policy of using ‘non-conventional communication tactics to obtain the largest visibility with the minimal effort’. That is surely what Jesus was doing when he commandeered a colt and rode into Jerusalem, or overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple.

I would suggest that the Spirit of prophecy is stirring us to a creative, exuberant, multidisciplinary exploration of the calling to be a renewed humanity in Christ – awakening our collective imagination, prodding us to develop non-conventional means of communication that will achieve the largest visibility for the creator God…. With minimal effort? Perhaps not – Ezekiel spent 430 days lying next to a brick to get across the message that God would punish the house of Israel. But we recognize the limitations of our resources and trust the creative God to make up the artistic deficit.

References and further reading

• Holland Cotter, ‘Collectives blurring the lines of who makes modern art’, The New York Times, 8th March 2006
• Interview with Critical Art Ensemble, LUMPEN magazine
• ‘Artists who run in packs’, The San Diego Union Tribune, 19th March 2006
• ‘An Interview with Franco and Eva Mattes’, www.culture-jamming.de
• ‘Fake European propaganda movie hits Austria and Bologna’, Rhizome.org
• Ben Davis, ‘Pop Life’, on 0100101110101101.ORG, www.artnet.com

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Mixed Messages

Since moving to Europe years ago, I've become really intrigued with street art. Behind every tag, every sticker, every piece of graffiti lies a story, a person that wants to say something about themselves. Or it maybe just because they are trying to sell something. In the pluralistic world we live in, I wonder if it does any good to simply put our message up on the wall for people to shop, or for people to find. I think that there is something to a subtle overlaying of the message of God, amongst honest discussion.

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Being A Christ-Follower in a Pluralistic Context: Toward a Contemporary Reading of 1 Corinthians 8

This article will argue that Western society maintains a demonstration of religious beliefs. Those beliefs are diverse and often counter historic Christianity. While there is not a conformity of beliefs there is indication of a turn from traditional understanding of the nature of God to an increasing desire for religious experience sometime in the form of beliefs in reincarnation, telepathy, good luck charms and horoscope. As such, the Western religious landscape is characterized by a continued interest in the experiential aspects of religious life. First Corinthians 8 provides guidelines for how the Christian should live in such a society. These guidelines emphasize the uniqueness of the Christians view of God, the Christian relationship with God and the Christian relationship with others. In particular, the relationship with others is motivated by a deep love and desire for a clear presentation of the gospel as exemplified through the manner in which the Christian lives her or his life.

The rest of Michael’s Thinklings paper can be downloaded as a pdf document. Right click on the link and save the file to your computer.

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Jesus as the victor in the battle between good and evil

By Rogier Bos

How do we speak of Jesus’ Lordship in the postmodern, post-Christendom, post-Rational context? For decades, if not centuries, churches have held out a message of personal salvation that has less and less appeal to people. In spite of nice little metaphors and cute drawings and four-step plan it makes no sense to them. How can we speak of Jesus to them in a way that does make sense?

In the fall of 2006 I had a conversation with a girl that I shall name Gisela in which I tried to frame the message of the gospel in terms of the battle between good and evil. I don’t know how the conversation impacted her; I do know it impacted me greatly. Since then I have often wondered if this was a helpful apologetic and how it could be improved upon. The following is a (reasonably accurate) recounting of that story.

  

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The table between us was shaking. She seemed oblivious to it. It was obvious she was feeling some powerful emotions and was struggling to control them. Her face reflected the questions that had kept her awake for many nights now. As far as I could tell, three powerful emotions were causing a tension in her body that somehow found release through her arms on the table. Anger, a strong sense of betrayal as well as a deep confusion were balled up together in the one question she asked me again: “How can he say that a loving God would condemn me to Hell?”

She had sent me an email a few weeks before. She introduced herself as Gisela, a self-employed tax-consultant. Apparently she had come come to church a few times and now she had mustered up the courage to approach me: could we meet? She had some questions… We set a time, but she cancelled the next day, saying it wasn’t necessary. I called her and I could tell through the phone there were some powerful emotions there. We rescheduled our meeting; she cancelled again. I called her again, we rescheduled again, and a week later we finally sat down in the lobby of one of Rotterdam’s nicer hotels.

Her story was simple. Faith had never been a factor for her while growing up. But ten months ago she had fallen in love with a colleague at work. He was a believer. He also fell in love with her and soon moved in with her. Then, six months into the relationship, he suddenly announced that he was moving out, in search of a girl he could marry. Gisela was dumb-struck: marriage had never been a conversation between them, but she knew she loved him and was more than willing to marry him: as far as she was concerned she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Not so for him, apparently: he wanted a Christian girl, because, as Paul wrote in scripture, Christians should not marry non-Christians. As he put it: ‘What did light and darkness have in common?’

If marriage had never been a topic of conversation between them, neither had faith. Again, she was dumbstruck. What was this about? She totally accepted his faith and was willing to investigate faith for herself, but why should faith divide them? And why did he consider himself to be ‘light’ and her to be ‘darkness’? He, however, was adamant: he was a Christian, she wasn’t, and they could not marry. She probed what that meant. What did it mean to be a Christian - and how did he look at her? In a nutshell it came down to this: he was saved, she wasn’t. He was going to heaven; she was going to hell.

She could not believe what she was hearing. The love of her life was leaving because of a God who was condemning her to hell? How could he say that? How could he say this God was a loving God? And how could God, if he existed, condemn her to hell?

She did not see herself as an evil person. She sought to live a good life. She volunteered time to several charities on a frequent basis. She gave money to charity. She befriended poor and lonely people. She explained how she made a good income but lived a simple life; how she bought fair-trade products and rode her bike everywhere rather than drive a car. She thought the world was a broken and confused place and she wanted to be ‘something positive.’ How could God condemn her to hell?

But her boyfriend moved out and she was left with the agonzing pain - and a deep sense of betrayal. She went to church with him a couple of times and they talked about the service afterwards. She did not understand what she heard and saw. To her it seemed like church was this club to which you had to belong and then be there on Sunday. She was not part of the incrowd and really didn’t want to be. The message she heard was: “we have it -people out there don’t. We get to go heaven - the rest of the world won’t” If there ever was concern for the world it was limited to “we should help those people get saved so they don’t have to go to hell.” The message seemed preposterous: how could God condemn people to hell purely because they didn’t know about Him?

The relationship had ended. She had broken it off when she realized the only solution her former boyfriend was allowing was for her to believe this crazy message. To her this was intellectual suicide and not an option she was willing to consider.

The relationship had ended, but the pain did not. Nor did the questions. They drove her to find a church on the internet where she could ask her questions. She came to Crossroads a couple of times in the course of a six-month period. I think she was testing the waters to see how safe her questions might be. I don’t remember seeing her; she probably tried to remain invisible.  I have no idea what the topic was, but it must have provoked her enough to finally write her email: would I meet with her, as she had some questions about ‘this faith-thing’?

I sat there, not knowing how to answer her question. Tears were in her eyes and occassionally rolled down her cheek. I understood both her and him. I felt her pain and bewilderment. I saw her fighting for understanding, but falling short miserably. But I also understood him. I understood his thinking, because I had grown up in the same evangelical tradition: a faith that divided the world into the have’s and the have-not’s. Those bound for heaven and those bound for hell. I was frustrated with him for having only developed a conscience after having moved in with her, but I also saw he had been willing to make a hard choice to do what he believed to be the right thing. Where to start in answering her questions?

The bigger picture

Her next question gave me the opportunity I was looking for: “Do you believe what he believes?” It would seem that my message had made her suspect that I approached things a little differently than her former boyfriend. I did.

“No,” I responded, “I do not. But I think I can explain to you what he believes - and how what he believes and what I believe are the same, and yet very different. It’s not that he is wrong: the problem is that he has taken a part of a grand all-encompassing story and made that part into a dogma - a dogma that only allows for two options: in or out, on or off. I think Christianity is about so much more than that.”

She looked at me and I could tell she was trying to understand what I was saying. “Here,” I said, “it’s like this. It’s like the Christian faith is this giant photograph that has everything in it - the whole world. And it’s like he has this zoom-lens and only sees this part of the picture. And he (and churches for many years) have looked ony through this zoom-lens and now they think Christianity is only about the picture they see. But I want to zoom the lens out and help them see the whole picture. If you only focus on one part of the picture, you do not understand the story the whole picture tells. That’s where he is missing it and why you are so confused.”

“OK,” she said, “I think I understand that. Help me understand the whole picture and then understand what he sees.”

A beautiful world

I looked at her and nodded. “You know that Christians believe in this book, the Bible. They believe it is ‘the word of God’. I do too! But here’s the thing: The Bible is not one book: it’s a collection of books - a collection of 66 books to be exact that were probably written over 1500 years of time. That’s a really long time! From us to Charlemagne is only 1200 years, so to call the Bible ‘a book’ and ‘the word of God’ needs a little explanation.”

“Actually,” I continued, “when you put these books in order what you will get is a story. A grand story of human history, that has everything in it. Our past, where we came from; how we got here; the history of civilization; but also our future - where things are going. That’s the whole picture. It’s the story of the world.”

“It’s the story we all need. Everyone has five or six basic questions that we somehow need to find an answer to: Who am I (and: what am I)?  Where do I come from? Where am I going (or: what is my future)? What is my relationship with the rest of reality? And: what is right and wrong? These are the basic questions humanity needs to face. They are existential questions: questions about our very existence.”

She nodded emphatically. Existial questions had robbed her of a lot of sleep recently.

“There are many different stories that seek to provide an answer to those questions. Hinduism and Buddhism do. Islam does. Marxism and Capitalism do.” I gave some examples and then continued. “So does Social-Darwinism. Chances are you have been living your life by that story.” Again, she nodded. She knew what I was talking about.

“Well, in the Bible we find a story that answers those questions also. It’s a story that addresses the whole human condition, including our past and our future, but also including our present situation. It’s so much more than a ‘who gets to go to heaven and who doesn’t. It’s the story of our world. I’d like to tell you that story.”

She looked at me expectently.

“Let me start by asking you a question. What kind of a place is our world? How would you describe it? Is it a good place?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “I think our world is amazing. It is so beautiful - and it’s so …” She paused. “So fucked up. There is so much pain. So much beauty - and so much pain.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I think you are right. That’s what the beginning of the Bible tells us too. God created this world and everything about it was beautiful. Everything was right. It worked. There was balance, harmony, beauty, peace, comfort, relationship, trust… in fact, the Bible uses one word to describe this creation over and over: it says it is ‘good’. It says God is good, and created something that was good. Purely good!”

Evil enters

“And then evil entered the world. We don’t know where evil came from; we do know God did not create it. The Bible tells us evil presented us humans with a choice and we choose wrong - and so evil entered creation. It’s not that the world ceased to be good; it’s that somehow the world became broken. Not that there was no peace and harmony anywhere anymore; but they were never complete. Somehow now goodness and evil were always at odds. Evil was always trying to break that which was good. I think that’s the world we live in. There is lots of good in this world - and there is a lot of evil. You and I are priviliged to live in a part of the world where there is a lot of goodness that comes our way - we both know that many parts of the world are not so fortunate.”

She nodded. That described the world as she knew it.

“You know, the Bible uses a special word for that brokenness. It’s perhaps a bit of an old-fashioned word: it calls it ‘sin’. Sin is when something that God created as good gets broken. When evil enters and tears and rips apart and breaks. Sin isn’t just God’s law that He imposes on us to stop us from having too much fun: sin is when something that He created as good, gets broken. It’s a father who doesn’t love his children. A thief who beats an old lady to steal her purse - but also a bank director who thinks up a new scheme to seduce people into forms of debt that they cannot afford. Sin is when we disrespect our parents and so break relationship, but sin is also a polluter who dumps waste in the ocean that kills marine life, or an manufacturer who employs slave-labour to sell chocolate bars in our stores.”

I could tell this was a definition of sin she understood better. “You heard Christians talk about sin in a way that made sin sound like it was all the things God didn’t like, but it had nothing to do wth the problems this world faces.” She nodded. “I think that is a mistake. Yes: God hates sin. But he hates it because it breaks what he has made so beautiful. It breaks goodness. It has everything to do with our world.”

“There is one more thing you should know about this evil. When we followed its seduction it entered our world. It entered this creation. And it entered us. It became part of who we are.”

Her eyes made clear she wasn’t following.

“It’s why you and I want to do good - and yet cannot be good consistently. We will do a lot of good. And then we do something evil. We will fight for good - and then come home and be mean to someone. Loveless. Cold. Ignore them. Be selfish.” I could tell she was tracking again. “I think you know what I mean,” I said. “You want to fight for good - but you cannot be consistent. Evil runs deep: it has made itself part of who we are. You want to be part of the solution - but you cannot help being part of the problem. And you are very clear about who you want to be. Imagine what it’s like for someone who is not as clear. They end up being and doing good and evil both at the same time! And then there are people who give up altogether. The brokenness in them is too strong and they long for a little peace and rest and the only way they know how to get it is by hurting others. It makes the world a messed up place.”

“The Bible tells us this story: A world created good, broken by evil. For the first few chapters we see that story follow itself to its logical conclusion: Genesis chapter one and two describe this creation. Genesis three describes the entrance of evil, and in chapter four we have the first murder. It’s like the story leads us to its logical conclusion straight away: death and destruction, a brother murders a brother. And in the next few chapters it just gets worse and worse, until finally we understand that all of creation is so broken and messed up and so confused - everything is a mess.

It’s actualy even worse than that. The Bible tells us evil entered not only us as persons, but our systems as well. Evil is a cosmic force: it’s why an eco-system can go haywire and suddenly produce a tornado that kills thousands of people. Evil runs deep and spreads wide. That’s the scene the Bible sets for our world. It’s beautiful - but broken.”

“But God does not abandon this world. In fact, he chooses to love his creation and he starts this whole plan to save his world. It’s not that he joins the batle against evil: he actually initiates the battle. This is his battle! And he doesn’t just want to save a few people; he doesn’t just want to save people - he wants to make his creation right again. To restore it. It’s why Christian use the word ‘redemption,’ it means to buy back, to take it back, to make it right again. You could say God declares a war on evil, but He won’t fight evil with evil, but he will fight evil with good. And so, you and I find ourselves in a world where this battle between good and evil is always raging.”

“Now, just before you start to think that this is a battle between two equal forces that will continue forever, that is not the case. That is not the picture the Bible paints. This battle will not continue forever! Good and evil are not equal powers that hold each each in some kind of universal balance. The Bible shows us that God, fighting for the restoration of his creation has already won, and it’s only a matter of time before evil will be dealt the final blow. Here on earth we don’t always see that, but make no mistake, the outcome of the battle has already been decided.”

“How can this be?” She asked. “It doesn’t look like that at all!”

“I know. That’s because this battle between good and evil is not just a battle between two impersonal powers, but because it is a battle between two spiritual powers. Evil is personal: it seeks to destroy, to kill, to hurt, to confuse. We sometimes laughingly talk about the devil as some who just wants us to have fun, but the only fun the devil wants us to have is the kind that destroys creation, alienates us from each other, breaks trust, ruins our view of ourselves and makes us ashamed of who we are. If he can do anything to increase the distance we feel between us and God, that’s what he will try and do.

And God is fighting for goodness on the other side. He comes close, loves us, calls us, comforts us, restores us, shows us how not to give evil a chance.  He shows us how to live so that goodness wins. And goodness wins!”

Why goodness wins

“How can you say that? How can goodness win?” Once again her eyes were large with questions. “Is that not a little naive? Evil is really strong.”

“Yes, it is. But we haven’t talked about what God does. That’s where Jesus comes in,” I responded. “We haven’t talked about him yet, but he’s central to the whole story. As the story of the Bible unfolds it becomes clear that God is never surprised by what evil does - but He has a plan that he works our step by step through out history. Let me ask you this question: how do you fight evil?”

She was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Well, how do you fight evil? Do you fight evil by killing bad guys, stealing from them, hurting them, putting them in their place, humiliating them?

She shook her head. “No, that would be fighting evil with evil. It makes no difference; it just creates more problems.”

“That’s right,” I said. “So how do you fight evil?”

“You fight it by doing good,” she said, slower this time.

“Yes. You fight it by doing good. Which is something the church in history hasn’t always understood. But if you read the story of Jesus, you will see that he fought evil by doing good everywhere he went. He spreads hope. He forgives. He heals. He raises people from the dead. He gives people vision. He cleans them. And: he teaches them how to live well.

“So, he’s your example?”

“Yes, he really is. Most people, when they read about how Jesus lived will come to the conclusion that he lived a really good life: a life in service of goodness. But that’s not all. He doesn’t just defeat evil by being a good example - he actually deals evil a death blow by dying. And this is where you and your boyfriend got hung up. Because there is something we haven’t talked about yet: your participation in evil -and mine for that matter- creates a debt. One that needs to be repaid.

“To God?” she guessed.

I nodded. “This is where things get a little sticky for most people. They do not understand that their sin creates a debt towards God. They feel they should have the freedom to do as they please. They are quick to ‘ claim their rights.’ They should be allowed to do as they please. They have the right to their own choices, they feel. How can this then create a debt? To me this argument is actually a little ironic. Because those same people will cry bloody murder if anyone touches their work, their life, their creativity. But the fact of the matter is that our sin is destructive towards God’s creation and spiteful towards God. And, like any artist, God strongly identifies himself with his artwork. How dare we destroy his creation again and again and again, and then look him in the face and think there is no debt? There is a debt - or, to put it definitely, God and us: we need to be reconciled!

“That’s why Jesus dies on a cross?”

“Yes, exactly. Actually, as you read the Bible it becomes evident that there are lots of ways in which his death is necessary and instrumental and throughout history lots of theologians and churches have come up with different models and methaphors to explain his suffering and death. But the nutshell of it all is this: by dying that way, suspended between heaven and earth, Jesus reconciles God and men.”

Her face lit up. “Then we are ok! There is peace between them?”

“Well, not quite. This is where your boyfriend actually understands something right: God has done all he can by allowing Jesus to reconcile us with his death - but we have a part in it too. Our part is to give up the rebellion and to pledge our allegiance to his Kingdom and his goodness.

Do you understand that? Let me explain it this way. Jesus tells a story of a landowner who entrusted his land to some stewards, asking them to take good care of his land on his behalf. No sooner had he left or they turned around and claimed the land as their own. In essence, they rebelled against the landowner and told him to get lost. That’s us - that’s what we did. God entrusted us this earth and we told him to get lost, claiming it as our own. Jesus is quite clear about what the landowner will do. He will come back and give to the unfaithful stewards as they deserve. Jesus’ plea is therefore: stop the rebellion and turn  around, pledge your allegiance to the landowner. Because, if we don’t, if we continue in our rebellion, he will demand an accounting.

But Christians don’t just come together around Jesus’ death. We also come together around his resurrection. That’s equally important. Remember how evil entered not ony creation, but also entered us, on the inside? How evil became part of us as human beings? We need a new mode of life within.  In rising from the dead Jesus releases a mode of life that is not subject to sin, not subject to death. Not that we change immediately, but that mode of life gradually grows in us - to the extent that we let it.”

“You mean Christians are actually different? Have like a different form of life?”

“Well, yeah… if we are sincere in the way we come to him we receive from him a form of life that will live forever.

And you know what? That mode of life, that renewal of creation isn’t just for Christians? Jesus’ death and resurrection are for all of creation. His new mode of life is for all of creation!”

“Let me try to put this all together for you. To put it simply: Jesus wins the battle between good and evil. He comes to earth, shows us how to live, and then gives his life and carries the brokenness of the world away. In the process he defeats even death. And then he releases to us a new mode of life that enables us to live differently, not under the power of evil. That mode of life we can receive from him deep within the core of our being - if, as he says, we choose to give up the rebellion against God. The rebellion that says: I want to do things my way. I know better. Remember the Frank Sinitra song ‘I did it my way? This mode of life flows through us when we say: ‘I am doing it His way.’

Contrasting two views

There was a silence. She was trying hard to process everything. She looked at me, looked out the window, looked at the table. The waiter came and we ordered another drink. The silence continued. Finally she looked at me and said “OK. But what I still don’t get is why my boyfriend …. Is that what he believed? … If he wanted to fight for goodness … I never heard him talk about goodness, about living right… all I heard him say was ‘I’m in and you’re out!”

“Yes. Do you remember the photograph we talked about? The part that he saw and the bigger picture. Here is what has happened. For the past 500 years or so churches have read the Biblical story through the lens of the enlightenment. Remember Rene Descartes with ‘I think, therefore I am’? Ever since that philosophical statement we have read the Bible through the eyes of the individual. I am evil and I need salvation and God will judge ME and I want to go to heaven and Jesus saves ME.” I put the emphasis on ‘I’ and ‘Me’. “And we have looked through the lens of Newtonion Physics, where something is either on or off, in or out, right or wrong. The net result is that you get a concept of salvation in which it is all about ‘Me’ and how ‘I’ get saved. I am either saved or not-saved. Either in or out. And the problem isn’t that such an understanding is altogether wrong; it’s just that there is so much more to the story than that. God cares not only about individuals. But he cares about peoples, about nations, about tribes. And he cares for animals. And for the underdog. Jesus’ death and resurrection is not just for the individual, it’s for all of creation!

Here’s how your boyfriend believed: We live in a fallen world that is broken and going to hell. All people are sinners need to be saved. Jesus’ death and resurrection makes it possible for us to be saved. If we believe in him we receive eternal life and get to go to heaven and escape God’s judgment.

But here’s what I believe: you and I live in a beautiful world that is broken through evil. Evil has entered our world and us as persons and become part of our fabric. God wants to see his creation restored and launches a plan to save it. In Jesus he offers us forgiveness and reconciliation, as well as a new mode of life that will enable us to grow in doing good and in resisting evil. He invites us to join him in the fight for good and against evil. He wants us to become his agents in this world, doing good, resisting evil. His message basically is ‘you can be part of the problem - or you can be part of the solution!’ But that does require a personal decision, and this is where your boyfriend (I believe) was right: we need to choose to cease the rebellion and pledge our allegiance to God. But not so that we sit still and wait until we all escape to heaven; but so that we become his agents and do good in this world.

The church as agent of goodness

And this is where the story is really quite sad. Because, for any number of reasons, the church has become this club that waits until we all get to go to heaven, and has ceased to be the part of the solution that God intended for us to be. We have lost our vision to be agents of redemption. You could argue that evil scored a major victory: by getting us to focus just on ourselves and on the here-after (and building up entire rational defense systems for this in the process) evil has rendered the church ineffective. Remember how I said evil runs deep? The church sits by why evil has a field-day and the best we can do is say ‘ah, if only you knew Jesus - you would get to escape too!’

“Is that why you guys are involved in nature projects and why you talk about justice and do Serve The City?” She was talking some initiatives we had discussed in some of the services she had attended.

“Exactly. When you come to realize that God’s agenda is to restore all of creation, and not just to save the souls of some, your whole understanding of church changes. Basically, you are left with four options.

One, you can be a church that does not care for the rest of the world. This is like a country-club: we are the saved, the rest of the world is not. Let’s stay here and grow together while we wait for the bus that will get us out of here.

Two, you can be a church that occassionally tries to get more people inside its walls and so ventures outside of the wall to spread a message of ‘you need to be saved - join us today.’ There is a vision to see people saved, but the rest of the world gets to go to hell. Chances are your boyfriend’s church was one of these first two. We call this act of spreading the message and seeking converts ‘evangelism’ and I would call this category of churches ‘church with evangelism’.”

She nodded. She knew this kind.

“Option three is that you have a church that understands that God loves his whole world and wants to see it restored and so it will launch initiatives to do some good in the world around. We call this mission, and I would call this model ‘Church with mission’.

“The fourth option is the one that I think Jesus intended: it is where Christians rally together around mission and then forms community around that mission. In the last option the church has a mission. In this option, the mission has a church. I think that is what Jesus intended: men and women banding together in their fight for good and resisting evil, forming community to facilitate that endeavor.”

“Are you saying that the church can renew creation if it just gets its act together?”

“No, I am not, but that is a good question, because it could seem like that was what I was saying. It is what Albert Schweitzer believed. We call it ‘Realized Eschatolog”: the idea that as we get our act together we will gradually become the Kingdom of God and morph into something that is good and has no evil.

But I don’t think that is the picture that Jesus paints, or that emerges from Scripture. The picture that we get there is that you and I live in this in-between phase: the war has already been won, but the battle is not over. You and I get to fight for good, not because by doing so we will actually change the world and eradicate evil - but because we stand as signposts to a future in which God will renew the world. You and I get to hold out the hope that the story is far from over and that good will ultimately win - and that it will do so definitively!”

A silence fell. This had been a long conversation and it had given her much to think about. It was time for us to draw it to a close.

“Here’s what I think it means for you, Gisela. In your boyfriends’ story you are evil and God is angry with you and you need to be saved so that you can go to heaven. In my story God loves you and loves the way you have been fighting for good already.  You and He are fighting the same fight. But he would like to address the evil within you and empower you with new life to fight that fight in a relationship with Him and in relationship of a community that fights for good also. Are you willing to acknowledge that evil has a stake in you that you would like to void? Are you willing to end your participation in the human rebellion and join Him in the fight for good and in holding out hope?”

That’s where our story ends. Gisela and I said our goodbyes shortly after that. Truth is, I never saw her again. Had I shocked her? Killed her curiosity? I actually don’t think so. I was fired from my pastoral position a few weeks later. The church I was priviliged to lead wanted to be a ‘Church with evangelism’, maybe with some mission occassionally sprinkled in. My vision was for us to become a mission-shaped community. This led to a clash in vision that the eldership and I were unable to resolve. They released me from my role and went in search of a pastor that shared their vision. I received an email from Gisela in which she wished me every blessing on my journey. There was a small line that reflected our conversation: “I guess evil runs deep.”

It does. But as I sit here I am more convinced than ever that Jesus intended for his church to be an initiative that would fight for goodness. Evil may run deep - I believe goodness runs deeper still. I believe it wins.

  

---

This document contains no footnotes, but none of the ideas here are original to me, though most (all) of the errors are. I am grateful to the following authors for their inspiration:

NT Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, For All God’s Worth, Simply Christian
Andrew Perriman, Re:Mission; Church After Christendom, Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2007
Andrew Perriman, The Coming of the Son of Man, Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2005
Andrew Perriman, Otherways, Open Source Theology, 2007
Brian McLaren, More Ready Than You Realize
Greg Boyd, God at War
Stuart Murray, Church After Christendom, Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2004
Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1985

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Jesus is Lord: the story continues...

The topic that we will be addressing in the Christian Associates Thinklings gathering in a couple of weeks will be: ‘What does it mean to proclaim that “Jesus is Lord” in the midst of the extreme pluralism that defines postmodern European urban life?’

The question immediately suggests that what we have in mind – what we are inquiring about – is a situation of potential conflict. We are not interested simply in discovering how the confession might be understood, or misunderstood, within a postmodern context or by the different cultural and religious constituencies that comprise our pluralistic culture. The underlying assumption (indicated, I think, by the words ‘proclaim’ and ‘extreme’) is that a community that publicly recognizes Christ as Lord is likely to find itself at odds with its environment. At the heart of this, one senses, is a fundamental conflict of loyalties (this is what we would expect from the rather old-fashioned, even feudal, language of ‘lordship’) and a challenge to a prevailing culture of grudgingly tolerant scepticism.

Have we, then, framed this correctly? My intention in this paper is, first, to consider how the motif of Christ’s lordship works within the New Testament narrative, and secondly, to highlight some general implications of this reading for our self-understanding as ‘church’ in post-Christendom, postmodern Europe.

1. Christ as Lord in the New Testament

There is well-established understanding that by speaking of Jesus as ‘Lord’ (kurios), particularly in a manner that calls to mind statements about YHWH found in the Jewish scriptures, the New Testament closely associates, if not quite identifies, Jesus with God.1 So, for example, Paul argues in Romans 10:8-13 that it is by confessing that ‘Jesus is Lord’ – significantly, as a consequence of his resurrection from the dead – that Israel will be saved. He then quotes the assertion in Isaiah 28:16 LXX that ‘Everyone who believes in him (i.e. YHWH) will not be put to shame’, and concludes the paragraph with a quotation from Joel 2:32: ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord (i.e. YHWH) shall be saved’. In both Old Testament passages the argument is that when God brings judgment against unrighteous Jerusalem, it is those who trust in YHWH who will be saved from destruction. The implication is that the ‘Lord’ who may – it is conditional upon repentance – now save Jerusalem from destruction is Jesus, whom God raised from the dead.

This brief expansion of Paul’s argument in this passage has already drawn attention to the significance of the narrative framework for understanding how kurios connects Jesus and YHWH. Paul has overlaid the immediate question of the fate of his ‘kinsmen according to the flesh’ (Rom. 9:3) with an archetypal story drawn from the prophets about military invasion as both the outworking of divine anger against his people and the prelude to renewal. The proclamation that Jesus is Lord, therefore, needs to be understood in the context of this type of narrative: if Israel is to be saved from the disaster of military invasion, it will be by confessing that Jesus is Lord, by believing in him, by calling on the name of the Lord. As Peter told the rulers and elders of the Jews in Jerusalem: ‘there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12).

The name above every name

If YHWH is to act as king to deliver his people, there is a direct narrative corollary, which is that he must defeat the enemies of his people. From its inception kingship in Israel was conceived as a means by which the integrity and security of the people would be safeguarded, not least against external political and military threats. This was the demand that the people made to Samuel: ‘there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles’ (1 Sam. 8:19-20).

The lordship of Christ is established in the resurrection: he was ‘declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom. 1:4); ‘to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living’ (Rom. 14:9). The most feared enemy of a harassed and sometimes persecuted people is death, and the resurrection is primary evidence that death is not to be feared. This is the point of Jesus’ statement that the ‘gates of Hades will not prevail against’ the community of his followers (Matt. 16:18).2 Jesus has overcome death and by being raised bodily – though this is beyond the scope of the argument about lordship – has opened the door to a radically and ontologically new creation.

But the resurrection also has more immediate ‘political’ implications. To confess Christ as Lord in the context of the Roman world was to affirm that, in the constant conflict between the people of God and the world around them, YHWH had established Jesus as King over this scattered people above Caesar and the all-encompassing pyramid of imperial and local powers beneath him. Implicitly at least, Jesus was the anti-Caesar.

We see how the christology works most clearly in the ‘hymn’ of Philippians 2:6-11. Because of his obedience to the point of death Jesus is exalted and given the name which is above every name – presumably the name of ‘Lord’. But we need to be aware of an eschatological narrative lurking in the shadows of Paul’s thought here that helps us to contextualize the confession that ‘Jesus is Lord’. The trajectory that Jesus follows is contrasted with the career of the belligerent pagan king who would ‘speak words against the Most High’ (Dan. 7:25), who would ‘exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak astonishing things against the God of gods’ (Dan. 11:36).3

In the apocalyptic narrative of 2 Thessalonians 2 this arch-opponent of the people of God becomes the ‘man of lawlessness’ who ‘opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God’ (2 Thess. 2:4). Jesus refused to do this. Unlike the apocalyptic opponent he did not regard equality with God something to be seized or plundered by force (harpagmon). Instead he made himself of no account (ekenōsen); he took the form of a servant and was obedient to the intentions of God to the point of being killed by his enemies (Phil. 2:6-8). For this reason he was given the name which is above every name.4 The quotation of Isaiah 45:23 in verses 10-11 sets this in the context of a polemic against the gods of the nations and the argument that only YHWH can save from futility and destruction, only YHWH can establish an authentic righteousness:

Assemble yourselves, and come; take counsel together, you who are being saved from among the nations! They did not know – those who lift up the wood, their graven image, and pray as if to gods that do not save. If they will declare it, let them draw near so that they may know together who made from the beginning these things that are to be heard . Then it was declared to you, I am God, and there is no other besides me; there is no righteous one or savior except me.

Turn to me, and you shall be saved, you who are from the end of the earth! I am God, and there is no other. By myself I swear, “Verily righteousness shall go forth from my mouth; my words shall not be turned back, because to me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall acknowledge God, saying, Righteousness and glory shall come to him, and all who separate themselves shall be ashamed.” By the Lord shall they be justified, and all the offspring of the sons of Israel shall be glorified in God. (Is. 45:20-25 LXX NETS)

The same story is told in the New Testament, on more than one occasion, in the language of the Psalms. When Peter proclaims to ‘all the house of Israel’ that God has made the crucified Jesus ‘both Lord and Christ’ (Acts 2:36), the statement is a direct interpretation of the significance of Psalm 110:1: ‘The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ The Psalm asserts forcefully that YHWH will give Israel’s king victory over his enemies: he will rule in the midst of his enemies, the people will offer themselves willingly for battle, God will ‘shatter kings on the day of his wrath’, he will ‘execute judgment among the nations’. The theme of Psalm 2 is much the same: the kings of the earth conspire against YHWH and his anointed king, but God will come against them in his wrath and give victory over them; they will be subjugated, broken with a rod of iron, ‘dashed in pieces like a potter’s vessel’. In Peter’s mind these enemies were those who conspired to destroy the ‘anointed’ Jesus: ‘both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel’ (Acts 2:27). To proclaim Christ as Lord, therefore, is to predict (we will consider this future aspect in a moment) that Christ will in a quite concrete, historical manner gain the upper hand over these violent opponents for the sake of those who have taken the risk of following him.

Paul uses the motif in his discussion of the rule of Christ in 1 Corinthians 15. Christ must ‘reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet’, which must entail the destruction of ‘every authority and power, including finally death itself’ (15:24-26). In Ephesians 1:20-22 the elevation of Christ to a position ‘far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come’ is restated in the language of Psalm 8:6 as a matter of all things being put under his feet. Finally, in Hebrews the Son who is enthroned has been assured that his enemies will be made a footstool for his feet (1:13; cf. 10:13). In the context of the early church these affirmations must have brought to mind a powerful narrative that affirmed that YHWH would give his anointed king victory over his enemies – not least over the type of an aggressive and blasphemous king – and would deliver his people from oppression.5

The eschatological judge

The eschatological narrative that determines the shape and purpose of the confession of Jesus’ lordship also projects into a foreseeable and relevant future. It predicts a victory over those powers that threaten the survival of the people of God, not at the end of time but in the course of history.6 The case cannot be adequately made here, but I would argue, for example, that when Paul speaks of the Lord coming to judge the apostles with respect to their work (1 Cor. 4:4-5), this must be set within a prophetic or apocalyptic narrative that foresees the public vindication of the faithful and long-suffering community – and, indeed, of the apostles who endured so much (cf. 1 Cor. 4:9-13) in order to ensure that the church would not be destroyed when the day of fire came (cf. 1 Cor. 3:11-15).7 This is, in effect, the ‘day’ that has been fixed by God, when he will judge the pagan world ‘in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed’ (Acts 17:31), the day when the Lord Jesus will inflict vengeance on those who persecute the church (2 Thess. 1:8), when the one who is called ‘Faithful and True’ will judge and make war against the nations of the Greek-Roman world that so violently opposed him (Rev. 19:11-16).8

2. Christ as Lord in postmodern Europe

I have argued – rather hurriedly – that the confession of Jesus as Lord in the New Testament needs to be understood not as a matter of general christological definition but as an eschatological commitment with significant political-religious implications that become apparent only when the narrative substructure of Paul’s argument is made visible.9 The statement certainly associates Jesus closely with the God of the Old Testament, but the distinctive eschatological nuances should be kept in view: Jesus is the Lord who delivers his people from destruction, who brings about renewal, who displaces the authorities and powers – not least among them Rome – that threatened and bullied and oppressed his followers, and who guarantees the eventual victory of covenantal monotheism over classical paganism.

I think we then have two major questions to address, to which we should at least attempt some tentative and rather theoretical answers. First, by situating the confession that Jesus is Lord in the historical narrative about the emergence of the early church in this fashion, have we significantly impaired its relevance for the church today? Have we reduced it to a simple matter of history, a thing of the past? Secondly, is the public confession that ‘Jesus is Lord’ strictly an appropriate or necessary response for the church under the current narrative conditions – at this particular moment in the story? Emerging theologies in many respects have been reluctant to make categorical pronouncements about truth and authority – perhaps for good missional reasons, perhaps because they just seem out of place in a fractured postmodern landscape. There is a strong preference for ‘incarnational’ models that emphasize Jesus’ self-giving, self-effacing humanity: the ‘taking the form of a servant’ part of the equation. If we then go out of our way to assert the sovereignty of Christ in defiance of Europe’s cultural and religious pluralism, do we not risk uprooting the missional sensitivities that emerging theologies have struggled to establish? Can we realistically and practically have a christology – and a missiology derived from it – that affirms both that Jesus became a servant and that he was exalted to a position of highest authority?

1. Reading the New Testament confession historically and contingently should make us aware of our own place in a historical narrative that stretches both backwards and forwards. This is important, I think, for two reasons. First, we are reminded that we have a story to tell and not merely theological propositions to assert – a hermeneutical reorientation that is widely advocated in emerging theologies. Secondly, we learn to read our present circumstances narratively. We resist the Christendom assumption that the task of the church is to maintain the status quo and ask instead how we should negotiate, under the lordship of Christ, the prophetically interpreted narrative that we currently find ourselves in. To ask about the lordship of Christ is to ask how the church in Europe should address its own foreseeable future.

2. In the New Testament the proclamation that ‘Jesus is Lord’ expresses the concrete defiance and hope of a community – not just of religious individuals – that finds itself interrogated and challenged over its beliefs, practices, and loyalties. In a postmodern or pluralistic context we have again become conscious of the dynamic link between lordship and community. By proclaiming Christ as Lord we assert the criterion that fundamentally sets us apart from other communities and from any overarching social or cultural context that might otherwise assimilate us. We become again a peculiar, distinctive, idiosyncratic, chosen people, called to a particular loyalty amidst an abundance of competing loyalties (cf. Exod. 19:5; Deut. 14:2): ‘For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth – as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords” – yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist’ (1 Cor. 8:5-6).10

At the same time we assert an intrinsic continuity with that community which, for its own historical and contingent reasons, proclaimed first to Judaism, then to the pagan world, that ‘Jesus is Lord’ as a statement of the work of YHWH in delivering and transforming his people. This, to my mind, is the primary response to the question of contemporary relevance: we are part of the same story; we relate to Christ as Lord not only synchronically but diachronically, not only immediately or mystically but historically, as a community.

3. The confession that Jesus is Lord may come to encapsulate the determination of the church to resist the gods of our culture. As Alan Hirsch writes:

When the early church claims “Jesus is Lord,” it does so in precisely the same way, and with the same implications, that Israel claimed God as Lord in the Shema. In fact, the fundamental religious situation hadn’t shifted all that much…. Polytheism was still the dominant religious force in their day, as it is in ours. The names of the gods had changed from those of Canaanite ones (Baal, Ashteroth, etc.) to Greco-Roman ones (Venus, Diana, Apollos, etc.) and from there to romantic love, consumerism, and self-help religion in our day, but in essence the confession has the same claim and impact.11

It suggests that the amiable, easy-going, imaginative, playful, generous, cigar-smoking hedonism that has characterized the emerging response to the narrowness of modern evangelicalism will have to find a way to embrace a distinctive, uncompromising corporate obedience - perhaps even some form of asceticism - that will express quite concretely and unequivocally the reality of Christ’s lordship over his people.

4. To proclaim Christ as Lord or King is to affirm the holiness and durability of the people of God in defiance of whatever cultural, political, religious or spiritual forces oppose it. But we keep in mind that ‘dominion and glory and a kingdom’ were given to one who suffered and gave his life for the sake of his people. The one who was given the name above every name first became ‘obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’ (Phil. 2:8). In confessing Christ as Lord we submit ourselves to the one who was ultimately obedient to the Creator for the sake of the integrity of the microcosm of God’s new creation. We remain a community of grace.

1. 1. See, eg., Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 108-118. Note Hurtado’s three general contexts in which kurios is applied to Jesus: authority, eschatology (coming judge), and worship (115-117).
2. 2. Perriman, The Coming of the Son of Man: New Testament Eschatology for an Emerging Church (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005), 94-95.
3. 3. Perriman, Re: Mission: Biblical Mission for a Post-Biblical Church (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007), 137-138.
4. 4. Hurtado notes the title kurios was used for pagan deities (cf. 1 Cor. 8:5) and, especially in the eastern provinces, for the divine emperor; but he argues that ‘the antipathy of devout Jews toward virtually any aspect of pagan religion makes it unlikely that pagan usage of kyrios was the impetus or the provenance that directly shaped the christological use of the term in Paul’s letters and among his congregations’ (Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 108-109; cf. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 247-248). However, this overlooks the polemical and confrontational aspect of Paul’s (apocalyptic) thought. While it is likely that the practice has its origins in Jewish usage, but it has been inserted into an apocalyptic narrative that highlights its controversial and eschatologically decisive significance for the pagan context. Arguably it is in this rhetorical setting that it becomes appropriate to associate or identify Jesus with YHWH: it is the divinized emperor who provides the conceptual bridge in the development of a high christology.
5. 5. Cf. Lk. 1:71, 74.
6. 6. Hurtado recognizes the eschatological category (Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 116). He states that it is ‘rather stunning for early Christian circles to have placed in such a role a near contemporary who had suffered a disgraceful death and had fallen under the judgment of religious and political authorities’. But it is precisely this irony that makes the historical reading of Jesus’ eschatological role so compelling.
7. 7. See Perriman, Son of Man, 235.
8. 8. Cf. Peter Brown’s argument about the fulfilment of Christ’s supernatural victory in the overthrow of paganism: ‘What happened on earth in the fourth century merely made plain the previous, supernatural victory of Christ over his enemies. It was a “mopping up” operation. The dislodging of the demons from their accustomed haunts – the removal of their sacrificial altars, the sacking of their temples, the breaking of their statues – was presented as the grandiose, and satisfactorily swift, equivalent, on the public level, of the well-known drama of exorcism’ (Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom Second ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1996), 72).
9. 9. Alan Hirsch makes a similar point with respect to the existential and practical, character of Jewish monotheism, though without the narrative eschatological dimension to the argument (Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006), 89).
10. 10. A couple of things to note here. First, other ‘gods’ and ‘lords’ have at least a rhetorical existence. Paul is less concerned to deny the existence of other deities than to assert the exclusive significance of the ‘one God, the Father’ and the ‘one Lord, Jesus Christ’ for the community of believers. Secondly, both God and Jesus are characterized in creational terms.
11. 11. Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, 91-92.

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Pluralism and the public space

The realities of the pluralism that exists and is going to be increasing over time are a challenge to missional Christians. These are those with a desire not to pass up that segment of society that lives in our cities in their efforts at sharing the life of Jesus with others. The urban environment is like none other. Proclaiming the unique message of the Lordship of Christ in that environment effectively and with understanding means that we need to study and understand that environment and the forces at work on people who live there. There are differences from city to city and country to country but some common factors are probably present across the board. But first things first.

In order to proclaim Jesus as Lord we who want to live missionally must hold Jesus as Lord ourselves. It is not a given that as believers we do that adequately. We believe in God and Christ and Christ’s sacrificial death and life- imparting resurrection. We say we desire to be led by God but are we on our faces before him on a regular basis, unwilling to move until we hear from him about our day, our relationships our inadequacies and desires. Do we, like Jesus, take ourselves off and spend long hours with our Lord, our Father, because it is only from Him that we can learn to see correctly and have true understandings. It is only from him that we access the power of the Spirit to help those desperately in need of the kind of healing and peace he has to give.

So my call to us all is not to move ahead without that crucial orientation of our hearts and lives. Not one plan should be made, not one step forward should be taken outside such a position of abandonment and uncompromised commitment to the One who is our life and who we hope to represent and introduce to others. We need to go to the mat before we go to the marketplace.

With that said and done day after day, we can begin to examine some of the things we encounter in the city. A key dynamic that I will focus on here is the public/private divide. The issue of what is public space and what is private is a central element of what it means to live in an urban environment. Some activities almost always take place in the public sphere – shopping, moving around from one place to another, seeking out services and resources and some social engagements are a few of them. Other things are reserved for our private spaces. It has been noted by those who study these dynamics that the greater the concentration of people – the higher the population density – the greater the need for clear lines of demarcation between public and private in our lives. In order to live successfully, to thrive in a densely populated city we need to know we have a place or places where we have control and can shape our environment or be in a predictable environment that affords us space to carry on the personal aspects of our lives safely and undisturbed by the unpredictable and uncontrollable events and encounters outside in the public spaces.

One of the elements of city existence that gets acted out and reinforced within the private sphere is our closely held culture and beliefs. This is the place where we can be who we are in our distinctness that doesn’t have to be conformed to the forces out in the public arena. Our religious beliefs are some of these distinctives. Our personal practices of devotion take place here. And even our communal gatherings for worship, religious teaching and social connection with our fellow believers take place in an essentially private zone.  Even though a church isn’t absolutely closed off to the public arena, because it is a gathering of in-group people for the most part, it acts like a private setting.

There are other places that are more neutrally both public and private such as cafes and restaurants.  Here interactions that could include expressions of beliefs could take place. But there are obvious limitations here as well.

So, given this dynamic of public and private, how can we find ways to effectively bring the message of hope to people in city environments? What are the best places in which to engage people about these deep belief issues. What are the places that are natural for individuals and that are appropriate and conducive to gathering groups of people. Initial contacts would often happen in places in which a deeper, more lifestyle-challenging process would not work well. If we are to confront people’s deeply, maybe even unconsciously, held belief structures we must eventually cross over that divide into people’s areas of privacy.

Maybe this means we create our own private spaces that we invite folks into. Maybe we will at some point get invited into theirs.

So how do we bring our singular message into the plurality of belief structures that are nurtured and developed in the private spaces of people’s lives?  Other things are nurtured there as well. Fears, hatreds, racism and prejudices of every kind are there.

People in urban neighborhoods are open to some public displays of religion like parades or concerts and festivals. These are things that can be experienced but where no commitment is involved. Also participation in community efforts by those from a religious affiliation is seen as acceptable and welcome. Here is where initial contacts are possible that may eventually lead to other more substantial contacts and relationships.  This is the way that Serve The City serves our efforts.

But how can we bring our message more thoroughly to groups of people holding a range of core beliefs and worldviews. How  can we create an environment with the safety of the private sphere but the reality of the public one.  How can we air out people’s beliefs? How can we engage people on a level where in honest thought and discussion and observation, the power of the love of Christ is able to rise up and shine in its uniqueness of grace and hope?

I’d like to consider a starting point informed by The Pluralism Project at Harvard University. They have determined to view religious pluralism according to four precepts.1

1. Pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity. Diversity can and has meant the creation of religious ghettoes with little traffic between or among them. Today, religious diversity is a given, but pluralism is not a given; it is an achievement. Mere diversity without real encounter and relationship will yield increasing tensions in our societies.

2. Pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference. Tolerance is a necessary public virtue, but it does not require Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and ardent secularists to know anything about one another. Tolerance is too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference and proximity. It does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another, and leaves in place the stereotype, the half-truth, the fears that underlie old patterns of division and violence. In the world in which we live today, our ignorance of one another will be increasingly costly.

3. Pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments. The new paradigm of pluralism does not require us to leave our identities and our commitments behind, for pluralism is the encounter of commitments. It means holding our deepest differences, even our religious differences, not in isolation, but in relationship to one another.

4. Pluralism is based on dialogue. The language of pluralism is that of dialogue and encounter, give and take, criticism and self-criticism. Dialogue means both speaking and listening, and that process reveals both common understandings and real differences. Dialogue does not mean everyone at the “table” will agree with one another. Pluralism involves the commitment to being at the table — with one’s commitments.

Is it possible to live our lives, create forums, initiate dialogues in such a way that this approach to pluralism can flourish? Can we articulate our beliefs well enough to engage someone else’s adequately within an atmosphere of understanding and honest comparison and respect? Would such encounters that began in a public sphere cross over into the private one, to where we really engage our core views with one another? Can this lead to sharing life on a level where Jesus becomes clearly evident to these others? This then could lead to Jesus being revealed not just in the private forum but brought back out into the public one by people whose lives are transformed.

It may be a stretch to think we will find many people willing to engage on this level. Won’t we more likely find people who have been discipled by their culture to the point of intolerance to even engage in honest discussion of the kind I have described? Won’t we more than likely run up against the predominant view of secularism that bridles at any encounter with a religious frame of reference so that we aren’t dealing with pluralism anymore but the dictatorship of the secular?

However that may be, I am convinced that we need to be listeners to and respecters of other’s beliefs. And at that point of understanding and knowledge we need to be able to articulate and support our belief in a way that draws others into the dialogue and conversation. The care and concern for others that is Jesus-originated in us needs to be able to come to play within an environment of agreeing to disagree and must not be diminished because of the disagreement. The honest disagreement should be part of an authenticity of character that pulses with the love of Christ that is at the heart of who we are because we are committed to Christ who is Lord and whose love extends to all people.

1. 1. Diana L. Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Director, The Pluralism Project – Harvard University.

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