Theological Horizons: the church in the world

Discerning the situation of the church in her contemporary contexts is no little or uncommon task. Is the church a beacon of light in a terribly dark and lost world? Are there glimmers of light in the world that might illuminate the dark corners and cobwebs of the church? Is such a dichotomy between church and world problematic in the first place? Where might the ‘borders’ of the church begin and end? These are all questions that may be asked on various occasions with differing agendas. There may be, however, other ways of discerning the church's situation in the world.  

In Church Dogmatics Karl Barth develops a concept that he deems ‘secular parables.’ He explains them to be words outside Scripture and church teaching that are in ‘material agreement with [Scripture], illumine, accentuate or explain the biblical witness in a particular time and situation’ (Church Dogmatics, IV.3.1 § 69). Barth goes on to say that such secular parables must lead the church more truly than ever before to Scripture; however, his discussion here points to the fact that the church’s ears should not be deaf to the happenings outside. Moreover, the church can even learn from the outside that the church might better understand Scripture itself. In other words, it would seem that the world outside potentially has many things to teach the church about Scripture, for Barth continues his discussion of secular parables by explaining, ‘The community is not Atlas bearing the burden of the whole world on its shoulders. For all its dedication to the cause which it represents in the world, the cause is not its own, nor does the triumph of this cause depend upon it…even within the world which opposes it, [God] will ensure, as there are always acts of His rule in general, so, too, there will be raised up witnesses to its cause, which is really His.’ The church can learn from others outside because God is working in the world through others even outside the church. This is rather striking indeed and explodes any notion of the visible church alone being a beacon of light in an impenetrably dark world. Because the cause of reconciliation is God’s cause, the church cannot monopolize reconciliation; the church would do well to listen and observe and participate in secular parables taking shape in the world outside the church precisely because in doing so the church may very well encounter and better understand God’s broad cause of reconciliation. In the process, many in the visible church may find the borders of the church seeming less clear than before.

And here, I think, Jürgen Moltmann provides some insight regarding the far reaching character of reconciliation when he explains, ‘The liberation of the believer from the prison of sin, law and death is brought about by God, not by politics, but this liberation calls for something to correspond to it in political life, so that liberations from prisons…must be understood as the parables of the freedom of faith’ (Crucified God, 320). Here Moltmann suggests that there can be not only material agreement between words of Scripture and words in the world (because they are God’s as Barth indicates) but also that there can and should be overlap between liberation from sin and liberation from political oppression. “The real presences of God acquire the character of a ‘praesentia explosiva’” (338). God’s multidimensional cause of reconciliation overflows the church into the world and overflows the world into the church. This can be the case precisely because reconciliation is God's, and consequently we may find the horizon of reconciliation and thereby the church to be broad indeed. 

Theological Horizons: identity and relevance

Imagine the Church had one of those sticker nametags that says, “Hello My Name is…” Rather than putting a proper name in the blank space, a simple description was written. What would it be?

In The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann describes the church in crisis in terms of relevance and identity, and he describes the ways in which different wings of the church have approached the issue of relevance and identity. The first wing of the church seeks to maintain its identity by defending orthodox doctrine. The second wing of the church seeks relevance by being politically and socially active. The first wing accuses the second wing of assimilation, and the second wing accuses the first of sectarianism. Relevance and identity appear to ram heads.

In this discussion, Moltmann has raised some important issues for me, namely that maintaining identity should not mean seclusion and that solidarity should not entail assimilation. In addressing these issues, Moltmann builds upon Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison theology in which Bonhoeffer asserts, “The church is only the church when it exists for others” (Letters and Papers from Prison, 382). Moltmann explains that in order to exist for others it cannot mean that the church must then become like the other, e.g. like society, for that would merely entail residing in the company of those like yourself.

Moltmann exclaims, “Bonhoeffer’s ‘existence for others’, to which so much appeal has been made, becomes meaningless if one is no longer any different from others, but merely a hanger on. Only someone who finds the courage to be different from others can ultimately ‘exist for others’, for otherwise he exists only with those who are like him” (The Crucified God, 16).

Existing for the other must then entail being different from the other. Existing for the other necessarily excludes assimilation. However, existing for the other also excludes sectarianism, retreating into the ghettoes of marginalization, for this too is a sort of assimilation in so far as it passively accepts the marginalization of institutionalized religion in secular society. “Christians, churches and theologians who passionately defend true belief, pure doctrine and distinctive Christian morality are at the present day in danger of lapsing into pusillanimous faith…they build a defensive wall around their own little group,” and they risk losing their identity by accepting “the increasing isolation of the church as an insignificant sect on the margin of society, and encourage it by their sectarian withdrawal” (The Crucified God, 20).

Rather than falling victim to either form of assimilation – sameness or sectarianism, existing for the other entails plunging into society as a reality distinct from society.

If the church in America is to have a future (which I remain quite hopeful about), then its nametag must surely entail a description that is both relevant and faithful to its identity. It can do so by naming its identity to be in the crucified one whose identity is revealed in his relevance. As Moltmann says, “[Jesus] revealed his identity amongst those who had lost their identity, amongst lepers, sick, rejected, and despised, and was recognized the Son of Man amongst those who had been deprived of their humanity” (Crucified God, 27). Moltmann seems to suggest that the church reveals and maintains its identity and relevance by its difference and solidarity.  

Last Things Last (?): destiny illuminating the present

This month I finished classes for an M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary, and I must say that I have had a very stimulating few years at Fuller. Faculty, staff, and peers have made the whole experience immeasurably rewarding. I could not have asked for a better seminary experience.

When I was mapping out seminary classes, I had not intentionally planned to study eschatology at the end of my time at Fuller – roughly speaking eschatology is a fancy word for talk about stuff at the end or destiny. I suppose that it was a bit fitting for me to study eschatology at the end of my seminary education, and for my last assignment, I wrote a paper briefly outlining my reflections on the consummation of creation. Last things last. However, in the past few months and weeks, I have begun to wonder whether or not eschatology belongs at the end. Maybe it belongs near the beginning.

Over the past several years, I have studied various aspects of Jürgen Moltmann’s theology, a Reformed post-Barthian theologian. A little more than a year ago, I studied a few dimensions of Moltmann’s Christology in The Way of Jesus Christ, and this week I have begun reading Moltmann’s Theology of Hope in which he puts eschatology at the beginning of the theological task rather than at the end – in contrast Barth places eschatology on the circumference of the theological task and atonement at the center (Dogmatics, IV.1). Moltmann explains, “A proper theology would…have to be constructed in the light of its future goal” (Fortress Press, 1993, Theology of Hope, 16). Thus, Moltmann begins with eschatology.

Moltmann explains that eschatology is not merely about stuff at the end but is about hope, and he claims that eschatology is the torch that illumines the path into the future; eschatology tells the future about the present. “Hope’s statements of promise…must stand in contradiction to the reality which can at present be experienced…they do not seek to bear the train of reality, but to carry the torch before it” (18). 

Moreover, drawing Barth’s beginning and end together, Moltmann places revelation and eschatology together indicating that God does not simply reveal God’s self but reveals God’s self as the God of promise. God’s promises fuel hope for the future, and God’s promises for the future are grounded in Jesus, particularly in the resurrection of Jesus. Consequently, Moltmann places priority on hope for precisely the same earth on which and for which Christ died and was raised. Christian hope, Moltmann exclaims, “sees in the resurrection of Christ not the eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands” (21).

The future of the earth is pledged and established on the resurrection of Jesus, and this hope based on the resurrection of Jesus has implications for the present. The fulfilled future invigorates action in the unfulfilled present. Moltmann explains, “As long as hope does not embrace and transform the thought and action of men, it remains topsy-turvy and ineffective. Hence Christian eschatology must make the attempt to introduce hope into worldly thinking, and thought into believing hope” (33). Hope for the future stimulates social action and reform.

Rather than supposing eschatology to be something that belongs exclusively to the distant future attached to the rest of theology like an appendix, it may very well be the case that eschatology is the opening to theology. Talk about destiny belongs near the beginning. Telos shapes the present. Hope fuels faith and life, and more particularly hope based on the resurrection of Jesus provides concrete specificity to the sort of hope for which the church hopes. As the Nicene Creed concludes, we look forward to the resurrection of the body and the world to come. For Moltmann, however, this profession about the future belongs at the beginning, and the world for which the church hopes is the earth on which Jesus' cross stood. It may just be the case that theology is possible only because there is hope. 

Suffering, Theology, and the Church: a provisional reflection

When I was ten, I went to the Dominican Republic for the first time, and when I was twelve I went to Haiti for the first time. These trips have since shaped and colored my perception of the world; I knew then that not all is right with the world. In the backyard of the wealthy are people living in cardboard huts without clean water as if they do not exist. When I was in high school, my mom was diagnosed with cancer; the world collapsed. These moments in my life shook me, and I think in order to begin grasping the problem of suffering it has to shake you first.  

I remember sitting in my dimly lit dorm room at CIU during my junior year and reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov for the first time; I remember reading the chapter entitled “Rebellion” in which Ivan Karamazov graphically describes the suffering of children. After Ivan tells a story about a general casting a young boy to be sundered by dogs in front of the boy’s mother, Ivan declares,

“I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one

tormented child…what do I care if the tormentors are in hell, what can hell set right here, if these little ones have already been tormented? And where is the harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive, and I want to embrace, I don’t want more suffering. And if suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price.”

For the past eight months, I have been interning at a small Presbyterian church in Hollywood, California, and part of what I do is lead the congregation in prayer during the worship service on Sunday mornings. People offer their concerns, and then I pray for them. Invariably, on Sunday mornings I have prayed for people with cancer and for families that have recently lost dear friends and family members. In these moments I have often thought and felt, “What shall I say? How should I pray?” These questions have thoroughly shaped my subsequent theologizing. I am reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he asked, “What do we really believe? I mean, believe in such a way that we stake our lives on it?” (Letters and Papers From Prison, 382).

On All Saints Day in 1755 an earthquake shook the very foundations of Lisbon, Portugal. Fires broke out, and people fled to the shore. They watched as the ocean strangely shrunk from the shore only to return as a mountainous wall of water; thousands of people fled to the shore only to be swept away by a tsunami. Tens of thousands of people died. This sparked numerous responses. Some theologians asserted that it was the judgment of God, while philosophers such as Voltaire criticized Leibniz’s repugnant best of possible worlds argument.  

But we need not look back several centuries. Such tragedies are with us today. The tsunami that overwhelmed Japan a few years ago is not front-page news in the U.S. any longer, but nonetheless people are still recovering. The same continues to be the case with people in Haiti.

We would likely wish for a few giant miracles to eradicate suffering from the world in one fell swoop. Indeed with a few twirls of a wand that is what we would like God to do. However, an easy button may be consistent with our character, but however strangely it is not with God’s. Is God then a malicious demon? Or is God impotent?

In response to the question, “How can a good, powerful God allow suffering,” it may be retorted, “God created beings free, which entails the possibility of suffering.” I rather dislike this response because like Job’s interlocutors it pussyfoots around, holding the matter at a distance and pretending to have answers that are little more than half-baked clichés of self-congratulation (albeit I am not calling Alvin Plantinga’s freewill argument a half-baked idea).  

Leaving our armchairs in which we query only about the logical problem of suffering (such queries never get us out of our armchairs!), we should ask, “What has God done and what is God continuing to do about this terrible mess?” I would submit that God is not a malicious demon nor is God impotent; it is often the case that theologians are willing to relinquish God’s omnipotence for the sake of retaining his goodness (cf. Harold Kushner).

God has done and is doing something. The canonical witness describes God responding to human suffering. In response to theodicy questions, it may be said, “Christ and the Church.” 

Christ stood in solidarity with those who were suffering. Jürgen Moltmann says, “The apocalyptic sufferings of ‘this present time’ are gathered up into ‘the suffering of Christ’ on Golgotha. Jesus suffers them in solidarity with others, and vicariously for many, and proleptically for the whole suffering creation” (The Way of Jesus Christ, 152). 

The Church universal is Christ taking form in the world and bearing the world’s suffering. Bonhoeffer explains,

“Suffering has to be endured in order that it may pass away. Either the world must bear

the whole burden and collapse beneath it, or it must fall on Christ to be overcome in him.

He therefore suffers vicariously for the world. His is the only suffering, which has redemptive efficacy. But the church knows that the world is still seeking for someone to bear its suffering, and so, as it follows Christ, suffering becomes the Church’s lot too and bearing it, it is born up by Christ.” (The Cost of Discipleship, 92).

Theodicy questions then are as much ecclesiological ones as theological ones. What Christ did and continues to do is linked to the very existence of the Church universal. But this is not only a theology of solidarity, for this also entails empowered activism on the Church’s part. The suffering Church, the bleeding Church, the Church of the bread and the cup is the Church that knows the suffering of the world and seeks to bring it to an end with the knowledge that it will be brought to an end because the Church is the Church of the empty tomb. This does not mean that the Church mends wounds in the same way an atomic bomb destroys; rather, the Church works from weakness like Christ; the empowered Church works like a mustard seed.