Jottings from LESSLIE NEWBIGIN:
(SPCK, London / Eerdmans, Grand Rapids Michigan, 1989).
Here’s the gist of one of the most significant books
I’ve read recently. It’s pretty rough, but I thought you might
appreciate it.
Shalom!
Rowland
We are constantly in danger of domesticating the
gospel within the confines of the assumptions of the day. What
is the place of ‘evangelism’ or ‘dialogue’ in a pluralist culture?
Until the 18th century both defenders and attackers of the Bible
had shared assumptions. Then the battle lines formed: modern scientific
method vs. ‘dogma’ (from Gk. ‘dokein’, to seem. Cf. Acts 16:4).
Dogma is something authoritatively given to be received by faith.
We dogmatically assert that ‘the fact of Christ’ (Carnegie Simpson)
is the Light by which everything else is seen. Today the word
‘dogma’ is used pejoratively, as the enemy of an open mind, hence
the necessity for ‘dialogue’ (rather than proclamation). It’s
a battle between ‘values’ and ‘facts’ in a pluralist society.
However,
1. All systematic thought begins with dogmas
or presuppositions. Christian dogma asserts that ‘God has acted
to reveal and effect his purpose for the world in the manner made
known in the Bible.’ (p.8).
2. Societal coherence depends on its
‘plausibility structures’ (Berger). Reason doesn’t operate in
a vacuum. The Gospel is a radically new plausibility structure,
challenging all others.
3. The point about the blind men and elephants
is that they were seen by the sighted king.
(a) Let’s be careful
to avoid coercion, otherwise we will negate the Gospel’s message
of freedom.
(b) We must at all costs avoid domesticating the Gospel
within the reigning plausibility structures (as happened in the
18th century). ‘Reason’ and ‘revelation’ are two ways of interpreting
data, available to all. For example, believing that Jesus arose
from the dead only in the minds of his disciples, is to domesticate
a miraculous event within a rationalistic plausibility structure.
In this case ‘faith’ makes more sense of human experience.
(c) We must be committed to a ‘proper agnosticism’: we do not have
all the truth, but are on the path to Truth.
(d) Dogma is story, not timeless propositions. Christianity is the interpretation of a story yet unfinished.
Cultural pluralism welcomes different lifestyles,
assuming they are enriching. But every culture has good and bad
features (eg, cannibalism, abortion). Religious pluralism assumes
different religions are different perceptions of one truth: ‘beliefs’
may differ whereas ‘facts’ agree. But what is a ‘fact’? One hundred
years ago, in Scotland, it was assumed that ‘man’s chief end is
to glorify God.’ But no longer: now evolution is assumed to be
a fact! Creation is a belief. Allan Bloom (The Closing of the
American Mind) says relativism and subjectivism reign today. It’s
no longer a question of ‘what is right or wrong?’ but ‘what values
do I wish to espouse?’ (cf. Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’). So ‘values’
are assumed to be ‘what I want’ or ‘my will to power’. Hannah
Arendt (The Human Condition) used the analogy of the telescope
to show that things are not what they seem. Cf. Descartes’ ‘I
think, therefore I am.’ and Kant’s idea that the real/noumenal
world is only real as it appears to the senses. Ultimate reality
is unknowable. ‘This is true for me’ is OK, but not ‘This is true’.
1. We need a critique of doubt (Polanyi). We doubt
because we believe some things.
2. All knowing begins with an act of faith, eg. in
our senses, or teachers.
3. Science begins with faith – in a rational or contingent
universe. So the notion of ‘facts vs. beliefs’ is an illusion.
All facts are interpreted facts.
4. To the doubter we ask ‘ How do you ‘know’ what
you know? Relativism (ie. what is true for me) is evasive. There
is more truth yet.
5. Truth, said Bertrand Russell, is the correspondence
between beliefs and actual facts. If we say ‘I believe" –
what I believe has to be true for everyone. ‘Knowing’ is both
subjective and objective. Our culture suffers from the illusion
that ultimate knowledge is not knowable; that ‘facts’ involve
no personal commitment. ‘Public truth’ (eg. evolution in the U.S.)
is opposed to ‘private truth’ (belief in a Creator): so schools
and church are in conflict. Then again, the liberals believe truth
is a personal inward experience, whereas the fundamentalists believe
it is objectively revealed through propositions. George Lindbeck
(The Nature of Doctrine) says there’s a third way, what he calls
a ‘cultural linguistic model’ which is not experiential or propositional.
Most cultures have a plausibility structure provided
by the dominant religion. So Religion and racism are often intertwined
– so pluralism is the easy way out, suggesting that seeking to
convert others is wrong!
Until the 17th century theology was part of ‘knowledge’
(eg. Isaac Newton). Then came the telescope and microscope, leading
to systematic scepticism. Descartes committed himself to a search
for certainty. But maybe illusion is more widespread than certainty.
Is mathematics certain? ‘Not necessarily’ said Einstein. Words,
too, have no fixed meaning, but are always culturally determined
(eg. ‘dog’). The so-called ‘scientific method’ is riddled with
uncertainty. Most great human advances have a significant component
of intuition and imagination. ‘Theories’ are essentially unprovable.
They stay around until a better one comes along. So THERE IS NO
KNOWING WITHOUT BELIEVING, AND BELIEVING IS THE WAY TO KNOWING.
Culture is a way of seeing reality: various cultures
see reality differently.
Culture is like a lens – you see through it not at
it. So is what we take as obvious really ‘true’? Three centuries
ago, Europeans believed in a unified cosmos. Now, through new
spectacles, Europeans believe God may or may not exist. With the
microscope we can examine minutae, and find new ‘explanations’
of reality. Things are no more explained according to their purpose,
but as causes and effects. So physics with its search for ‘value-free’
facts has replaced religion. However, particle physics wrestles
with the notion that matter is not material. In quantum physics,
the scientist is part of the action. So ‘FACTS’ CANNOT BE VALUE-FREE.
If a monkey at a typewriter, given enough time, could tap out
a Shakespearean sonnet, could it also make the typewriter? Does
a machine create itself? Can the cosmos be without purpose? The
Christian story is a lens to see through, hence the need
for a transformation of the mind.
The Enlightenment (18th century) saw the rejection
of tradition. Kant’s invitation ‘Dare to Know’ spelt the end of
‘heresy’. Now, in this post-Enlightenment era, says Berger, we
must all be heretics (except in elementary geometry/Euclid!).
Today’s children, in religious studies, are taught to doubt. But
science has no open mind. Scientific ‘paradigm shifts’ (Thomas
Kuhn), such as that from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics require
the operation of intuition and imagination. A doctor, for example,
studies from textbooks, but must then undergo clinical experience.
First we have the authority of tradition, then later, new discoveries.
Innovations are only accepted from the masters of tradition. So
the scientists’ credo is distinguished from Augustine’s ‘Credo
ut intelligam’ – ‘I believe in order to understand.’
‘Scientism’ (vs. ‘science’ – a transcript of reality)
is not unlike fundamentalism (where adherence to the text of the
Bible is supposed to free one from the risk of error). Christianity,
however, gives weight to both tradition and the authority of Scripture.
Unlike science, it is concerned with questions about ultimate
meaning and purpose. Larger than science, its presuppositions
concern not only the rationality of the universe, but also its
Author/Sustainer. . Like the scientist, the Christian must ‘indwell’
the tradition – then we can ‘know’ Jesus, the truth who is true
for all. The scientific tradition concerns human learning. Christianity,
on the other hand, is witness to the actions of God. So we ‘dwell
in’ a tradition, and in the knowledge of God, whose activity is
continuing.
Anglicans hold to three ‘canons’ of authority: scripture,
tradition and reason. Now we would add a fourth – ‘experience’
(particularly relating to oppression and alienation). Since Vatican
2 Catholics acknowledge revelation and the transmission of revelation
as authoritative – scripture, and the continuing tradition of
its interpretation. But we need reason to understand scripture,
tradition and experience, and such reason always operates within
a ‘plausibility structure’. Reason, further, needs the assistance
of language, and debate, and culture.
But with new traditions and paradigm shifts, with
the culture always changing, we need the use of a ‘second first
language’ to grapple with these new realities. We now have a cosmopolitan
plausibility structure, critiquing the Christian tradition and
vice-versa. As we have said, there is no such thing as a disembodied
reason, or an impartial umpire, between these rival claims. All
‘truths of reason’ have developed in a historical tradition (as
against the 18th century notion of ‘self-evident truths’). Even
facts are theory-laden. All experience is interpreted experience.
So Kepler’s ‘I have discovered’ or Moses’ ‘God is here’ both involve
rationality (Cf. Buber’s I-it and I-Thou). So Reason must not
be set against Revelation. Our faith must always be tested, rationally,
to find meaning in apparently irrational events. We must courageously
restate the tradition in the light of new experience.
That is, there is no form of rationality which is
independent of all socially embodied traditions of rationality
and which can therefore judge them all. In our consumer society,
ruled by personal preferences, the reigning plausibility structure
denies Christian claims. So one must live in both traditions,
and internalize the debate.
Historical religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)
depend on their founders more than, eg, Buddhism. Is the ‘happenedness’
of the gospel stories important? If your relationship with God
is important for his purposes through you in history, their history
is important. From Augustine to the 18th century, we had a providential
view of history. Then after World War 2, a ‘God who acts’ (Herbert
Butterfield). Then James Barr and others have led us along another
track.
1. ‘Scientific method’ studies causes and effects.
But the ‘outsider’ views events this way. The ‘insider’ seeks
understanding.
2. God reveals himself in history, but not all history
reveals God. The study of history begins with presuppositions
about what is important. The providence of God? (yes, until the
18th century). The fortunes of nation-states? Or civilizations
(Toynbee)? If God is the key, we are faced with the ‘scandal of
particularity’. Religiously, we wrestle with its seeming irrationality;
philosophically, with the problem of the idea of God.
3. You have to know a person to understand
his ways. But nature and humans have some autonomy. We understand
God from within a faith-tradition. ‘God’s’ operations seem to
have some continuity within the history of Middle Eastern religions
(J. Barr). But there is also discontinuity. Events are understood
through words that describe them. So I make a personal decision
to place myself within the faith tradition. Jesus’ incarnation
has led to the gift of the Spirit as interpreter of a true understanding
of history. So the history of the church is the fruit of the promised
Spirit.
Why should God choose one small nation, speaking
through Moses, rather than saying directly to Jean-Jacques Rousseau
what he wanted him to know? The idea of election is central in
the Bible: ‘I chose you!’ In India, for example, salvation is
a private quest: the guru does not seek and save the lost.
There is, we have said, no pure ‘rationality’ (vide
Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Whose Justice? Which Rationality?’). The
Bible views the human situation in terms of relationships. To
receive God’s saving revelation we must open our door to our neighbour.
Despite God’s choosing Israel, they rejected him (Romans 9-11).
God could have made ‘vessels for dishonour’ because he
retains his freedom, but he has not done what he might have done.
This is the logic of election: Israel will receive salvation through
the non-elect. Election doesn’t assure privileged status (Amos
3:2) but assumes responsibility. No one has exclusive claims on
God: our election should lead to attitudes of wonder and awe.
God isn’t an abstract divine omnipotence (theism as the projection
of our human ego onto the heavens – Feuerbach). Jesus comes with
grace. The cross addresses the disobedience of all of us. In the
resurrection, he appears, not to ‘believers’ but to chosen witnesses.
Election is not about being ‘saved’ or ‘lost’ but being chosen
to share the God’s mission of suffering and glory in history.
God’s revelation comes to a particular community, yes, but is
a universal mission. Should we then espouse a rationalistic universalism?
No. Are some saved and others lost, then? That is not our prerogative
to say. We must keep both these ideas in tension. Both Jesus and
Paul warn against complacency: but anxiety can lead to a selfish
salvation. So we need both a godly confidence and a godly fear.
The Bible (unlike most Eastern religious books) has
a vision of cosmic history: creation to consummation. ‘History’
is always selective (eg. Augustine’s ‘Civitas Dei’; the 17th century’s
millenarianism; secularism and notions of ‘progress’ before World
War 1; apocalyptic marxism). Modern Europeans have little hope,
so they spend rather than save; they ravage the environment. (Cf.
Moltmann’s ‘cold despair, loss of vision, resignation and cynicism’
= anomie). Toffler’s and others’ ‘futurologies’ won’t help: they’re
too inexact.
1. Faith comes to a minority, sometimes a persecuted
minority, but a minority whose ‘beliefs are held with universal
intent’ (Polanyi).
2. To ask ‘what is the framework of events within
which history is interpreted?’ requires faith rather than ‘objectivity’.
Our stance is ‘confessional’ (as against ‘religiongeschichte’).
3. In the Bible words describe happenings.
4. Thus event and interpretation go together. Jesus
didn’t write anything, much less a definitive account of his life:
so we must debate and interpret the events in every generation.
5. The Bible, therefore, is to be understood in the
light of modern thought. But is a critical culture thereby ‘trying
to push a bus while sitting in it’? For example, Indian ideas
about karma or samsara, with their ideas of endless cycles of
human life, may imprison Jesus within this plausibility structure.
The fundamentalists want an Archimedean lever of reason, inerrant
propositions, to interpret Jesus. The biblical event offers us
rather a dying and rising God, uniquely incarnated within human
history, with its dates and places.
6. We must not merely examine the text from outside
it. It addresses us personally (Barth). We indwell the
text, and seek to understand the world through the text. So we
must inhabit an alternative plausibility structure to the one
we live in: one which is essentially narrative, with a central
character – an infinitely patient God who meets and woos and punishes
fallible humans, who are, in his mysterious providence, chosen.
The key mark of the community of the chosen is HOPE: a commitment
to a clear vision of the goal of history. (The Tamil has no word
for the NT idea of hope). We look forwards and outwards to the
horizon of history, with its cry ‘Your Kingdom Come!’
Hebrew (but not Greek) history moves towards a goal.
Promise and fulfilment are threads running right through the Bible.
Jesus is history’s meaning. Scweitzer (The Quest for the Historical
Jesus) asks ‘Was Jesus mistaken?’ Jesus’ kingdom was ‘near’ (Gk.
engiko) in a spatial rather than a temporal sense, but this kingdom
is not ‘seen’ unless one makes a u-turn, repenting after facing
the wrong way. There is a conflict with the ‘powers’, so we are
to pray for the future (complete) kingdom. Jesus does reign
already. His followers are to take the Good News to all, and to
wait, patiently and watchfully… The church will suffer, but
will also provide ‘signs’ – powerful works – and both are witnesses
to the reign of Jesus. God’s mercy holds back the final unveiling,
to give time for repentance. So we make the three-fold affirmation
‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.’
But over the nations hangs the banner ‘No future’
(Moltmann), resulting in immediate consumption and enormous debts.
(‘Spend now and someone else will pay later’). From the middle
of the 18th century until World War 1 the notion of ‘progress’
gave meaning to history. This notion was formed in cultures dominated
by Christian teaching, but it was one-sided: the power of the
resurrection without the marks of the cross. But the Marxist alternative
of ‘progress later’ isn’t a viable alternative, as it makes the
present generation expendable. So-called Christian societies have
witnessed the collapse of belief in progress, with a concomitant
privatized eschatology preoccupied with the blessedness of the
soul after death.
We must challenge all these ‘powers’ and expect them
to fight back. We are both realistic and hopeful. The powers are
real, but our actions in the public life of the world are acted
prayers for the kingdom (Schweitzer). The track may disappear
from sight before the destination, but it is reliable – we can
see the goal, the Holy City.
Why Christian mission? Essentially it’s a response
to our Lord’s command. Mission in the NT resulted from an explosion
of joy. Paul, for example, nowhere talks about our ‘duty’ to engage
in mission. Proclamation in Acts was generally in response to
questions.
It’s not our mission, but Jesus’; and it wasn’t
his but his Father’s. We go not only to preach but to learn.
The church is not so much the agent of mission as its
locus: it is God who acts, in the power of the Spirit (eg. Russia,
China). When the church is faithful, people will ask questions.
They then respond by doing a ‘u-turn’, see what was hidden, face
the sun, shine brightly and become part of the evidence. Mission
is what the church does in the world. Is the aim of missions church
growth? The Christianization of society? Paul said that from Jerusalem
to the Adriatic he had ‘no more room for work’. He had ‘fully
preached the gospel’ ie. created believing communities. When that
happens other messianisms appear: marxism in evangelized parts
of India; Chinese communists who are graduates of Christian schools.
The church must always learn new things (eg. Cornelius).
Our confession here will always be partial, culture-bound, incomplete.
The central focus of mission is not saving souls from perdition.
In the mystery of God all are consigned to perdition so that he
may have mercy on all (Ro. 11:32-36). There is no room here for
anxiety about our failure or boasting about our success.
The logic of mission: the true meaning of the human
story has been disclosed – to be shared universally. There is
a call for decision: either for Christ as the clue to history,
or for some other clue. So missions test our faith, and our readiness
to share the Truth with all. Mission is an acted-out doxology
– that God may be glorified.
Christian mission is about the Clue to history, communicated
to every human community. In the church we continually remember
and re-enact that central revelation. Christian mission not only
proclaims but propels events towards their true
end. It is an awakening from the slumber of ontocratic society
(Arendt von Leeuwen) where ‘what is’ is taken for granted rather
than what shall be. Millions live and die without leaving any
history. The Christian gospel (and to some extent, secular notions
of ‘progress’) offer hope, expectation. Many young people in India
and China say ‘Christianity taught us to believe in the possibility
of a different world. Marxism showed us how to get it.’ But a
generation of Marxists has betrayed those hopes. The vision of
a new age has produced only false prophets and war.
So Christianity is not only an interpretation of
history but a history-making force (Berkhof). There is a nexus
in the NT between deeds and words: heal, cast out demons, preach
as you go (Mt 10:7). People become aware of this new reality and
ask questions, so there’s preaching (Acts). Jesus is the Kingdom,
the Spirit is the arrabon, the gift/foretaste of the Kingdom.
The Father is ceaselessly at work in all creation and in human
hearts and minds (‘Missio Dei’). So mission is more than evangelism,
more than preaching with words, and more than action for justice
and peace. The central reality is not word or act, but the total
life of the community of Christ. Deeds and words validate each
other and this greater reality. Thus Jesus challenged the ‘rulers
of this world’ but did not offer another political system. No
political party or or slogan will endure. But we must be involved,
choosing the relatively better among possibilities, none of which
is absolutely good (Reinhold Niebuhr). The church’s role in justice
and peace is to equip people to live justly, not just encourage
leaders to make pronouncements. We must never live in comfortable
cohabitation with the powers of this age.
Our greatest need is for the ‘real Jesus’ to be heard,
seen, understood. The gospel must be communicated to the total
context of our cultures. The early Jesuit missionaries in Southern
India encouraged converts to stay in their caste. Later other
Western missionaries brought ‘modernization’ with them: ie. Christianity
domesticated within Western culture. And now some new Asian, African
and Latin American theologies run the danger of being domesticated
in those cultures. But the gospel is never ‘pure’, disembodied
within a culture. ‘Jesus is Lord’ – but what is ‘lordship’? The
Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, describing events shaped
by very different cultures to ours. So what is a ‘Christian’ culture?
Hebrew culture? No, circumcision was not deemed necessary for
the early Christians.
Roland Allen contrasts St. Paul’s methods with the
‘mission-station’ approach. All that is essentially needed for
mission is the Bible, sacraments, and an apostolic ministry, then
we move on. (Cf. Vincent Donovan’s ‘Christianity Rediscovered’
– RCC). There’ll be problems (eg. food offered to idols), but
the believing community will not be finally betrayed. When a moral
code or set of principles – something outside the story – becomes
central, the church becomes rootless, like a piece of driftwood.
We are now witnessing a proliferation of theologies
of liberation (eg. Indian Dalit theology). They are theologies
‘from below’, with a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’, affirming that
the poor have an epistemological privilege. Some begin there and
evaluate Scripture by this principle. Others attempt to begin
with Jesus, friend to all, the poor and the extortioners, and
rejected by all on the cross. His temptation in the desert revolved
around attending to the aspirations of the people. But we must
begin with the story itself. The gospel does not merely applaud,
but must radically criticize national aspirations (Kosuke Koyama,
‘Mount Fuji and Mount Sinai’). The gospel has a No and Yes, judgment
and grace. ‘Scripture is not a picnic where the authors bring
the words and the readers bring the meaning.’ Jesus is who he
is, though our perceptions of him will be shaped by our culture.
In reality, the gospel often comes alive in unpredictable ways.
The wind of the Spirit blows freely. So be careful before defining
issues (eg, injustice) and remedies (eg, liberation). The starting
point is God’s revelation; it then continues in the life of the
community.
Should Christian mission be triumphalist (‘the evangelization
of the world in this generation’)? Is God’s grace already at work
in all cultures? (Vide Paul Knitter, ‘No Other Name?’, John Hick,
‘The Myth of Christian Uniqueness’, and the International Review
of Missions, July 1988). We are facing global problems, and a
need for global unity: but was there only one incarnation? The
first century was also a religiously pluralist world, with many
lords, many gods. So there is a need for unity – but whose idea
of unity?
All wars are fought for the sake of peace (Augustine).
Christianity has sometimes been imperialistic, but at its heart
is a cross, and the denial of all imperialism. Every program for
unity has an organizational principle. Even if it’s ‘modern historical
consciousness’ (Gordon Kaufman) that too is a dogma, a ‘faith-commitment’.
Are there, then, common elements in all religions: mystical experience,
justice, freedom, charity, transcendance? ‘The religious pluralism
represented in ‘The Myth…’ is evidence of cultural collapse’
(p.161). Langdon Gilkey points out that there is a ‘shadow side’
to all religions. The Christian church does not claim to have
absolute truth, but claims to know where to point for guidance.
‘No absolutes’ – that’s unsupported dogma. ‘Revelation
is always present and personal’ – that’s a very ancient seduction
of a purely individualistic spirituality. Why not follow Hitler
then? We believe in Jesus, the person, not just ideas of love,
justice, etc. Put these Scriptures: Genesis 1-10, Amos 9, the
story of Jonah and Nineveh, Cornelius over against Genesis 11
(Babel), Amos 3:2, and we discover the missionary is certainly
needed. We do not espouse a ‘supermarket theology’, each choosing
one’s favourite brands, moving from a Christocentric/theocentric
theology to a ‘soteriocentric’ one. Salvation, says Hick, is the
‘transformation of human experience from self-centredness to God-
or Reality-centredness.’ (Myth, 23). Thus for Hick, ‘reality’
has no form except our knowledge of it: it’s essentially unknowable.
It is not objective, as the concrete person of Jesus is. It is
anthropology, not theology. How do you know that the truth
about God is greater than that revealed in Jesus?
I have affirmed that we are to reject religious pluralism
and acknowledge Jesus Christ as the unique and decisive revelation
of God. But a ‘religion’ may understand God’s self-revelation
in historical terms (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), or be a-historical
(Hinduism, Jainism, Sukhism, Buddhism), or even include messianic
Marxism.
1. We can understand the world in one of three ways:
(Dr. Harold Turner): atomic (eg. modern Western individualism),
oceanic (eg. the merging of all into one in Brahmanism),
relational (eg. in ‘primitive’ societies).
2. All of life is permeated by ‘religious’ beliefs (the modern
Western distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ is peculiar).
Jesus’ parables were about ‘secular’ matters; the light shines
in the darkness (of religion).
3. If ‘all who do not accept Jesus as Saviour are eternally lost’,
brainwashing would be permissible, even obligatory. Who is saved
or lost? God alone knows.
4. Does Jesus’ saving work extend beyond the church? Yes, says
Rahner: a. God had a relationship with those before the historical
incarnation; b. non-Christian religions are salvific before the
gospel comes; c. non-Christian religionists may be ‘anonymous
Christians’; but d. other religions will not displace Christianity.
5. The idea of non-Christian religions as vehicles of salvation
is now popular.
6. We must begin with the reality of God in Christ, who welcomes
faith in those outside the house of Israel.
7. Calvary, instigated by religious leaders, is the central unveiling
of the infinite love of God.
8. Universalists, as Anselm put it, have not yet taken full account
of sin. 9. ‘What happens to the non-Christian after death?’ is
the wrong question: only God can answer that. Jesus warned against
making such judgments: the last day will be a day of surprises
for both sheep and goats, saved and lost. ‘Salvation’ in the NT
does not abstract souls from bodies, and is in three tenses, past,
present, future. What is happening now has to do with salvation.
Then, too that question starts with the individual, instead of
God and his glory. The goal of missions is the glory of God.
Four implications
1.We welcome signs of the grace of God at work in
the lives of those who do not know Jesus as Lord.
2. We must cooperate with people of all faiths in projects which
are in line with the Christian’s understanding of God’s purpose
in history (eg, struggles for justice and freedom).
3. Dialogue, initiated by our partners, will occur where we mustdiffer,
because we understand history from this side of the resurrection.
4. So we simply tell the story, the story of Jesus, the story
of the Bible.
Is this position exclusive? Yes, the revelation
of God in Jesus is unique. Inclusive? Yes, we must
not limit the grace of God to church-members. Pluralist?
Yes, in the sense that God is working in the lives of all. However
it is not true that all roads lead to the top of the same mountain.
Culture is the social aspect of human living, the
sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings
and transmitted from one generation to another. Religion is part
of culture. ‘God accepts culture’ (McGavran). True? Does God accept
sati – the burning of a widow on a man’s funeral pyre?
Or slavery? Or caste? Or (a more complex issue) polygamy (or the
serial polygamy of the West)? Elements of any culture may be good
or bad. Western Christianity reflects the individualism of our
culture: individuals are converted (or a part of them) but not
the culture. The gospel is always culturally embodied, and a loss
of confidence in the culture means a loss of confidence in the
gospel. How can the gospel be critical of culture?
Christians belong to two cultures: our citizenship
is also in heaven (Phil. 3:20). We do not simply affirm culture,
nor simply reject it. God still cherishes and sustains the world
of creation and of culture, in spite of its subjection to illusion
and vanity. God both accepts and judges human culture. We cannot
avoid being in a culture, even if the results are sometimes
disastrous (as when, in 1914-18, churches on both sides made an
almost total identification of the cause of Christ with the cause
of their own nation).
We wrestle with complex questions about gospel and
culture best by belonging to a supranational, multicultural family
of churches. The criteria for making judgments between what is
good and bad in any given culture cannot arise adequately from
within that culture.
‘Address the individual conscience: the reformation
of society will follow’. No, society shapes the person as much
as the person shapes the society. So the Torah is addressed as
much to the nation as to the individual. And on almost every
page the NT talks about power, authority, rule, dominion, lordship,
principalities and powers. Magistrates, priests, elders, governors,
a petty rajah like Herod – these and others constitute the ‘powers
that be’ (cf. Ro. 13). The powers do not exist apart from human
agencies in which they are embodied, but are not identical with
them. Institutions can be malevolent or benevolent, outlasting/beyond
individuals involved. A school has a ‘good spirit’ or ethos; a
mob can be evil. The stoicheia (the word is always plural)
– ‘elements’, rebellious powers – have been disarmed, but not
destroyed by Christ’s cross. The law, originally a good gift of
God has become a power that enslaves, says Paul in Galatians.
Political powers are necessary to prevent anarchy, and as such
serve God’s purpose, but they too can become demonic. Even ‘numbering’
is one of the stoicheia, enabling us to measure, quantify:
but when absolutized nothing is valued except what can be measured/quantified.
So too with race, money: with all such powers we must not be conservatives,
regarding them as beyond the saving power of the gospel; nor are
we anarchists who seek to destroy all structures. ‘We are patient
revolutionaries, sharing in the groaning and travail of the whole
creation.’
Walter Wink reminds us that the victory of the Church
over the demonic power embodied in the Roman imperial system was
not won by seizing the levers of power; it was won when the victims
knelt down in the Colosseum and prayed in the name of Jesus for
the Emperor. Evangelism which is politically and ideologically
naive, and social action which does not recognize the need for
conversion from false gods to the living God, both fall short
of what is required.
Max Weber suggested that increasing rationalization,
industrialization, and bureaucratization, are creating a society
where there was less room for the supernatural. But the country
furthest down those paths – the U.S. – has seen a renaissance
of conservative/evangelical religion. One writer, Prof. Rodney
Stark, says ‘secularization will not usher in a post-religious
era. Instead, it will repeatedly lead to a resupply of vigorous
otherworldly religious organizations…’ (The Sacred in a Secular
Age, Berkeley 1985, p.146). The enormous growth of belief
in astrology is also evidence that the human spirit cannot live
permanently without answers to the question ‘why?’ Surveys how
inverse relations between higher education and adherance to core
religious tenets. And the correlation between academic life and
irreligion is higher in the social sciences and humanities than
among the natural sciences. Many better-educated Christians also
welcome the idea of a secular society, with its promise of the
peaceful coexistence of all worldviews, and deliverance from the
tyranny of dogma. Denis Munby’s The Idea of a Secular Society
from the early 1960s, that decade of technological and secular
promise, is committed to the idea of a secular society’s ‘modern
worldview’ as simply about ‘how things actually are.’ But ‘facts’
are not raw data divorced from any conceptual framework. All facts
are interpreted facts. On what basis are ‘important facts’ in
any situation determined? As Calvin said, our minds are ‘image-factories’.
No society exists without models held up for emulation.
Indeed, we have learned in the last two decades that
what has come into being is not a secular society devoid of public
images, but a pagan society which worships gods which are not
God. The secular society is a myth, and it has the power of
a myth to blind people to realities. We have settled
for the easy option – a secular society with Christian options.
We believe, naively, that European-style democracies formed over
500 years can be replicated anywhere without Christian roots.
‘Contemporary political events do not encourage that optimism’
(p.221).
In spite of the crimes, blunders, compromises, and
errors by which its story has been stained and is stained to this
day, the Church is the great reality in comparison with which
nations and empires and civilizations are passing phenomena.
Discussion
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