In This Sign Serve

A Personal Theological Statement

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the question, “Is the church entirely past or entirely future”[1] has never been more poignant.  Largely ignored by society as irrelevant, the church can offer an important counterbalance to the growing trend towards depersonalization in a power hungry, profit-seeking world.  Born as a dissident community in an era of Roman oppression, she survived the oppression, sustained by the power of persuasive love, and she has provided a definition of communal life for the societies that succeeded Rome for nearly twenty centuries.  Today, corporations centralize power in boardrooms much as the Roman government did, and humanity isolates itself in cubicles, in automobiles, and behind television screens.  The church, if she would, could once again answer dominating oppression, with serving community.  Unfortunately, all too often, her theology prevents her from doing so.  Having neglected her Christology, her theology has become “weak and obscure.”[2] 

To find the relevance she needs to counter greed and oppression, the church must rediscover her message.  She must remember that God has spoken in Jesus Christ, and that he did so because he wished to serve rather than to rule.  Moreover, as the church remembers this fundamental truth, she must radically adjust her thinking in several important areas.  First, she must revise her anthropology so that she sees in humanity something worth serving.  Next, she must revalue the present world and look for ways to make the present world more like the eschatological future for which she hopes.  She must also revise her ecclesiology by renouncing her desire for ideological domination, and aligning herself with the model of service she finds in the incarnation.  Finally, she must rethink her view of scripture so that she values it, not as an authority, but as a description of the example of service set by incarnate revelation. 

The church must rediscover her message.  She must remember that God has spoken in Jesus Christ.  The name of the man who “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited…but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,” has been “highly exalted,”[3]  but, the exaltation has been premature and it has not been God’s doing.  Rather, ecclesiastical leaders have used coercive means to exalt their ideas concerning him, to a position of domination.  Often, they did so in service to their own interests, and a theology that insists on viewing God’s relationship to humanity in adversarial terms has licensed such coercion.

Augustine displayed a noxious view of God at enmity with humanity when he said, “those who oppose God’s rule…are called his enemies.”[4]  Calvin and Luther were no better.  Calvin pictured God as a master and humanity as his servant, when he advocated that humanity give its “back and hand to his [God’s] rod.”[5]  In fact, for Calvin, the relationship was one of ownership.  Three times in a single paragraph he insisted, “We are not our own…we are God’s.”[6]  Luther said, “God threatens to punish all who transgress these commandments.  We should therefore fear his wrath and not disobey.  On the other hand, he promises grace…to all who keep them.”[7]  His words suggest an adversarial relationship as well: that of governor and governed.

While all three thinkers held toxic views of God, Luther’s “other hand” suggests a second set of views that portend a more hopeful view of God.  All of these thinkers also thought that a friendly divine-human relationship was possible.  Augustine spoke of God as “the Inspirer of that love which makes possible a life that is both good and happy.”[8]  Calvin talked about God as a lenient parent,[9] and Luther taught that grace could ameliorate the damage done by disobedience.[10]  The problem is, that for each of these thinkers, God related to humanity, first as an adversary.  He was friendly towards humanity only secondarily, and then only because of a heroic effort to overcome humanity’s disobedience.  God was first an enemy and next he had been reconciled to humanity.  God was first a slave owner and became a father.  God was a governor who overcame his anger through Jesus. 

If the church is to speak relevantly to humanity, it must make Christ, and particularly his incarnation, the test of the way that she understands the divine-human relationship.[11]  Doing so will cause her to embrace the secondary image that Augustine, Luther, and Calvin struggled to imagine, as the primary reality of divine-human relationships.  God is not primarily an adversary.  As Karl Barth suggested, he is “One who…communicates” the message “God with us.”[12]  The incarnation asserts that this is the primary nature of God, and it forces theology to take its definition from Christology.[13]  God became a human being so that he might serve humanity.  In Luther’s words, “He relinquished that form of God…and emptied himself, unwilling to use his rank against us.”[14]  He became a human being to say emphatically that he is not an enemy, a slave owner, or a governor.  Rather, he chose to be “with” humanity because he either could not, or would not rule coercively.  It was either his nature or his choice to persuade rather than to coerce.  The Christology proposed by Griffin and Cobb takes Barth’s picture of a God who “shows and persuades and convinces”[15] a step further.  Their assertion that Christ’s incarnation demonstrated that God “seeks to persuade each occasion toward that possibility…which would be best for it”[16] is in keeping with the man who washed feet.  It is the picture of a serving God, not a coercive one.[17]

An important corollary to a radically embraced theology of incarnation is a revision of the church’s anthropology.  A vision of God as friendly to humanity would allow the church to understand humanity as intrinsically worth serving.  Traditional teaching, on the other hand, has produced a two-tiered view of humanity by suggesting that those in the church have value, while those outside of the church do not.

At the root of traditional Christian understanding of human worth is the idea that disobedience left humanity in a sinful state.  Augustine devalued humanity unnecessarily, when he explained human weakness as the result of original sin.[18]  Calvin worsened the damage done by Augustine’s theology by enumerating the consequences of original sin.  Humanity can neither know nor worship God.  The soul is “blinder than a mole.”[19]  The blindness occurs because people “court darkness.”[20]  Sinful acts spring from “a world of iniquity treasured up in the human soul.”[21]  Luther exacerbated the situation further, by adding that people “must utterly despair of [their] own ability.”[22]  The problem, as Luther saw it, was that original sin had so thoroughly corrupted humanity that people no longer have the ability to choose to do good.  He thought that, “Free will, after the fall, exists in name only.”[23]  Humanity’s only remaining power of choice is its ability to choose evil actions.[24]

When they speak of human helplessness, traditional theologians demonstrate profound insight into human nature.  Anyone who has struggled with an addiction or watched an important relationship fall apart needs no convincing of his or her helplessness.  Moreover, most will agree that the religion that is needed to correct such helplessness does not “spring from the interior of [a] better soul.”[25]  The problem is that this idea of helplessness readily translates into a doctrine of worthlessness.  Luther drew the matter to its dark and logical conclusion by saying “and nothing good or virtuous is left in man, since he is flatly stated to be unrighteous…and worthless [italics mine] in the sight of God.”[26]

If the church believed that all of humanity is both helpless and worthless, her position would be harmful enough.  Unfortunately, in deference to her constituency, her dogma often expresses a two-tiered anthropology.  While Calvin argued that depravity is universal by saying, “in no part of the world can genuine godliness be found.”[27]  He also argued, “All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation.”[28]  This does not suggest that Calvin was inconsistent.  In the first statement, he was arguing for the universality of the problem, while in the second he was arguing for the specificity of the solution.  Though consistent, the unfortunate result of this system is a division of humanity into first and second-class people.  God has chosen Christians.  God has condemned the remainder. 

The church must repent of such deprecation of human value, and these theologians point to a better theology in spite of their insistence on human depravity.  Augustine spoke of the image of the divine in humanity, when he said that a return to God is a return to one’s own nature.  He urged, “When, therefore we contemplate His image in our very selves, let us…return to ourselves, rise and seek Him.”[29]  By suggesting that people return to themselves, when they return to God, Augustine opened a door to understanding the human personality as possessing, in addition to disabling weakness, a latent potential for radical good. 

Calvin also called people to “attend to the image of God, which exists in all, and to which we owe all honor and love.”[30]  Such a view anticipated a much-needed revision of the church’s anthropology.  Yet to overcome the tendency of the church to congratulate its members while condemning outsiders, it must replace the dualism implied by Calvin’s doctrine of election, with an understanding of the worth of all humanity.  Barth rethought election in terms of “an election of grace, an election of love, an election to give.”[31]  The church in the twenty-first century must learn to see both election and human worth in light of the incarnation.  It can best do this by affirming that God elects to love all humanity and that the image of God is a potential for good, present but unrealized in all.  By seeing in humanity a latent potential for radical good, the church will also see in humanity, people worth serving.

As disturbing, today, as traditional theology’s devaluation of humanity, is the low value it places on the present world, and the corresponding negligence of the present it fosters in the church.  A veiled dualism underlies this valuation and negligence, and it is as old as Augustine’s belief in present and future worlds.  For Augustine, “heartaches, troubles, griefs, and fears” characterized the present life.[32]  Fortunately, for the Christian, he imagined a better future world.  The Christian would someday be promoted to a world where she would enjoy a “supreme degree of peace.”   The future world would be so good, that Augustine had trouble describing it.[33]  On the other hand, the future state of the non-Christian was not so attractive.  Augustine thought that they would dwell forever in eternal fire.[34]

Calvin exacerbated Augustine’s theology.  He did so by emphasizing his dualism and by adding a note of determinism.  For Calvin, the present life was a series of accidents.  He said that, “Diseases…pestilence…frost and hail…loss of loved ones…fire,” made “men curse the day of their birth.”[35]  However, to Calvin these difficulties made sense as preparation for the next life.  He felt that when a person is “reduced to poverty,” her “riches in heaven are increased.”  When she loses her home, she has “a more welcome reception into the family of God.”  When she is “stigmatized by disgrace and ignominy,” she has a “higher place in the kingdom of God.”[36]  Moreover, Calvin agreed with Augustine’s belief that the fate of Christian’s and non-Christians was radically different.  God would save some and destroy others.[37]  Given the stakes, it is understandable that Calvin laid so much stress on the next world and so little on the present.  Christians were to be “pilgrims in the world, that [they] may not fail of obtaining the heavenly inheritance.”[38]  They were to guard against the flesh by “despising the present life.”[39] 

Calvin displayed a troubling determinism when he insisted that the Christian passively accept her lot in life.  In view of the next world, Christians were to endure “narrow and slender circumstances” patiently,[40]  “restraining a too eager desire of becoming rich.”[41]  The neighbor’s lot was determined as well.  The Christian was to prefer her neighbor to herself.[42]  She had specific duties depending on her “mode” of life,[43] but absent from these duties was any suggestion that she ought to attempt systemic change on behalf of either herself or her neighbor. 

Here again, the men we disagree with come to our aid.  A first step towards remedying their negligence of the present is to overcome the dualism at its root, and with this, Augustine can help.  He insisted that the world in which we live is an innately beautiful one, since God created it.[44]  “All natures…are good.”[45]  The church must affirm the goodness of the present world, and it must learn to work for a world that is as good as the future world it imagines.  Cobb and Griffin take the second step required to remedy the church’s negligence of the present world by removing Calvin’s determinism.  By envisioning God in the process of becoming, they insist that the “future is fully and radically open.”[46]  Where Augustine and Calvin robbed Christians of the capacity to act meaningfully by insisting that God controls the destiny of the cosmos as well as each individual life, Cobb and Griffin, answer this affront to purpose by affirming that every moment, each person makes choices, and the choices matter.  Moreover, they matter because they affect the future, and not merely, because they prepare one for heaven.  The decision to recycle changes the trajectory of the future just slightly.  The decision against one act of unsafe sex protects the health of an uncountable number of people.  By valuing the present world as highly as it does the next, and by insisting that human decisions matter, the church can put an end to its negligence of the present.

As the church revalues humanity and looks for ways to make the present world more like the eschatological future for which she hopes, she must also rethink her ecclesiology by reinterpreting her purpose in light of her Christology, abandoning her ideological arrogance, and reconsidering her relationship to other faiths.  Once again, one can trace the church’s problematic theology to Calvin’s teachings.  Calvin was interested in the visible church and particularly her government.  In the section devoted to aphorisms in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin used a number of maxims to lay out his position on ecclesiology.  These sayings display an arrogant belief that the church enjoys a primacy of place in the divine economy.  He said, “God takes care of the whole human race, but especially [italics mine] his Church.”[47]  Moreover, his aphorisms deal primarily with the visible or organized church and they seem more interested in ecclesiastical government than with ecclesiastical purpose.  In the aphoristic section in which he discussed the church, Calvin spoke first of church government, and only later of sacraments, and then only as an extension of his discussion of the offices of the church.  He discussed matters like government, power, rule, office, doctrine, legislation, and jurisdiction before he spoke of sacramental service.[48] 

Luther, on the other hand, had a very different vision of the church.  His ecclesiology paralleled his vision for the individual Christian.  He urged the individual Christian, like Christ, to “empty himself, take upon himself the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in human form, and to serve, help and in every way deal with his neighbor as he sees that God through Christ…deals with him.”[49]  This view of the role of the individual Christian drives Luther’s ecclesiology.  When he spoke of the church, Luther spoke first of its sacramental service and then of its organization, and when he spoke of the organization, he reminded the church that the “bishops or priests” were not “heads or lord or bridegrooms, but servants, [and] friends.”  Only after calling the clergy servants did he add the words “superintendents, guardians or stewards.”[50]  The church must reinterpret her mission in light of Luther’s ecclesiology, and affirm a desire to serve rather than to dominate.

As she reinterprets her purpose in light of the model of service in the incarnation, the church must renounce the ideological she learned from Calvin as well.  In addition to assigning a primacy of place to the organized church, Calvin asserted ecclesiastical rights to ideological turf.  Particularly, he thought that the church had the responsibility to promote “the glory of God and the edification of the church” by defining articles of faith.[51]  This arrogance is a large part of what renders the church impotent in twenty-first century society.  At one time, the church’s worldview and dogma were of vital cultural importance, but today few who attend church can articulate more than a point or two of doctrine.  Yet, Christians are as wedded as ever to the church’s ancient metaphysical construct.  The belief in an omnipotent and omniscient God who inhabits heaven, and who created the cosmos in seven days is often more important to Christians than the model of service presented in the incarnation.  Many people find such dogmatism strange, and other faith communities find the church’s insistence on one “right” worldview alienating.  Even those drawn to the Christian faith, find a worldview that does not allow questions impossibly quaint at best and oppressive at worst. 

The church must renounce the arrogance that she has inherited from Calvin along with her desire for ideological dominance.  She must learn to accompany her proclamation of God’s offer of loving service to humanity in Christ with a humble uncertainty about the nature of the universe, and even about God’s non-moral attributes.  In place of dogmatism, the church must embrace a willingness to serve through dialog.  As she embraces Luther’s idea that service should be her mission, she must extend the imperative of service to the content of her proclamation as well.  Schleiermacher is only half-right when he calls the idea that religion should serve “denigration.”[52]  He is right in the sense that faith must never serve political or economic agendas.  On the other hand, religion in general and Christianity in particular must serve humanity. 

Finally, after reinterpreting her proclamation and her mission in light of the incarnation the church must reevaluate her position in relationship to other faiths.  The church must learn to say to a world with different ideas, “we have an idea about God” instead of her customary, “we have the idea about God,” and she must learn the art of dialog with other faiths.  Learning to dialog with other faiths will necessarily involve learning to value people with other ideas, to learning to listen to other messages, and a willingness to alter her own message in light of truth that emerges from dialog.  The church must learn to see that dialog “can lead to deepened understanding and fresh insight,” and to “creative transformation.”  She must learn to “experience the clash of received doctrines,” both Christian and non-Christian, “as an opportunity for purification, enrichment, deepening and transformation.”[53]  These phrases from Cobb and Griffin suggest that valuing others with differing ideas involves a renunciation of infallibility.  The church’s unwillingness to listen to criticism has been one of her greatest historical weaknesses.  If she is to regain relevance, she must lay aside her infallibility, and admit the possibility of error that comes with her humanity. 

None of the transformations suggested above will be possible unless the church rethinks the authorities to whom she appeals.  Particularly, she must rethink her relationship to scripture.  For many in the church today, the Bible is the only recognized authority.  As such, it is the final court of appeal concerning ideas about not only God, but the cosmos as well.  This situation, like the other theological difficulties considered in this paper, has roots in Augustine.  Augustine was convinced that scripture was authoritative and he was dismissive of those who disagreed with it.  He described some who did not accept scriptural authority as “so psychotic in their bullheadedness that they will…defend, at all costs, what they know or believe to be false.”[54]  Luther also thought that scripture was authoritative.  Yet for him, scripture was not so much an authority as the authority.  He called the “external Word,” along with the sacrament the means of grace, and went on to say that, “whatever is attributed to the Spirit apart from such Word and sacrament is of the devil.”[55]  For Luther, scripture was primary authority. 

The greatest difficulty for the twenty-first century church is not that scripture is an authority, nor even, that it is primary authority.  The greatest difficulty is that Christians often consider it the only authority.  Again, the church inherits her attitude from Calvin.  Calvin, like Augustine and Luther thought that scripture was authoritative, and like Luther, he thought that its authority was primary.  Yet, for Calvin, the primacy of scripture extended so far in some matters that it deprecated other authorities.  Calvin’s summary of his ideas concerning divine election begins with an appeal to scripture.  In it, he used the phrase, “scripture clearly proves.”  These words imply that one can establish an idea solely by reference to its assertion in scripture.  By making this suggestion, his words deprecate other authorities.  Calvin admitted that other authorities existed.  He said, for instance, that common human instincts taught the existence of God,[56] yet he believed that only scripture could illuminate some matters.   Moreover, Calvin’s deprecation of authorities other than scripture displayed a distrust of reason.  Just as Calvin thought that the fall had corrupted the will, he also thought that it had corrupted the human faculty of reason.  He said that because people are “vain in their imaginations,”[57] they “do not conceive of him [God] in the character in which he is manifested, but imagine him to be whatever their own rashness has devised.”[58]  Reason, rather than being a useful tool to Calvin, was a faculty to be “postponed,” if not renounced altogether.[59] 

Along with a certainty that scripture is the only reliable source of truth, and a distrust of reason, the church has inherited a distrust of speculation from Calvin.  This distrust is evident in his admonition that presumptuous speculation about God be “curbed and restrained,” since “the word of the Lord is the only way which can conduct us to the investigation of whatever it is lawful for us to hold with regard to him.”  Calvin further displayed his distrust of speculation by saying the theologian’s “first principle,” ought to be, that trying to understand more than what revelation exposes is like trying to find light in darkness. [60]  Not only was scripture the only authority for Calvin, in some matters, attempts to understand more than what scripture taught were foolish.  Unfortunately, Calvin’s distrust of reason and speculation has infected twenty-first century Christianity.

While on its face, the assertion that a written revelation from a divine source is superior to human reason and speculation seems indisputable, the fact that humans are the interpreters of revelation destroys the assertion.  Abraham Lincoln alluded to the problem when he said of the North and the South that they “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.”[61]  Scripture does not guarantee its interpretation, and men and women of good faith often disagree about the meaning of its contents.

A radical Christology, once again points to an answer.  Theology must have an authority or it is merely opinion.  Augustine, Calvin, and Luther all considered Christology important, and they all thought that faith should find its authority in revelation.  Had they pushed their Christology harder, they might have made the connection that for the Christian, there has been a revelation, the revelation is authoritative, and that revelation is Jesus Christ.  The church must learn to validate her message in relationship to that revelation rather than by a proof text here and a verse interpreted in light of ecclesiastical or cultural tradition there.  The church must find authority for her message in that which the incarnation proclaims most clearly.  In the incarnation, God served, and the church’s message must not contradict that model of service.  Moreover, as the church validates her message in the incarnation, she must insure that the message, itself, conforms to the incarnation.  Like the church, it must imitate Luther’s individual Christian.  Her message must empty itself, take upon itself the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in human form, and serve, help and in every way deal with those who hear it as God through Christ has dealt and still deals with the church that carries it.[62]  The message also must serve.  It is valid when it does so.  When it seeks to dominate, it is not. 

Like all theologies, there are problems with the ideas proposed in these pages.  Among these problems, three stand out as particularly significant.  First, a God who does not control cannot guarantee the future.  Such a God is profoundly unsatisfying to some.  Next, the call to use a life lived two millennia ago as the primary authority for faith may seem impossible or absurd or both.  Finally, this theology does not address the significance of the crucifixion, and so, while it deals with the person of Christ it says nothing about his passion.  

Regarding the need for a controlling God, one is tempted to reply as some theologians of old might have.  That is just the way it is, it is what the revelation says.  The fact that Jesus lived a life of service, eschewing control is undeniable, and if God is like Jesus, as the church surely affirms, then God also eschews control and seeks to serve.  However, Process theology adds an important possibility to this bald assertion.  While it argues, not only that God renounces control but also that he cannot control the future,[63]  it also insists that, “no matter how great the evil in the world, God acts persuasively upon the wreckage to bring from it whatever good is possible.”  Perhaps, as Process theology suggests, “persuasive power with its infinite persistence is in fact the greatest of all powers.” [64]  While God may never have the final word, he always has another, transformative word.  

Two millennia is a very long time from which to view a historic person, and this is the root of the second problem.  Historians have convinced modern people that they can know little with certainty about their subject.  Source critics have destroyed any illusions that the gospels were eyewitness accounts.  Even had the Gospel writers been eyewitnesses, these critics assert, the authors wrote so many years after the fact that their reliability is doubtful.  The historical Jesus may indeed be lost beyond recovery.  Yet one wonders how it could be otherwise.  Had God chosen to speak in a document he surely could have done so.  Pillars, stones, and even parchments survive with messages from periods that antedate Christianity.  Yet God chose to speak in human flesh, and because he did so, it is doubtful that even his contemporaries fully understood the message.  Schleiermacher was right.  “Religion never appears in a pure state.”[65]  To think that the church understands the message better twenty centuries later is hubris.  The historian may never be certain of the historical details surrounding the incarnation, yet the very center of the incarnate message is that Jesus renounced power and that he served, and that may, after all, be all that is important.

The final problem with the theology suggested in these pages, is its neglect of the significance of the crucifixion.  Christ’s passion has been the central focus of the church throughout her history, and a theology that does not consider the death and resurrection of Christ hardly seems Christian.  Yet this paper has not touched on its meaning.  That is not, however, the same thing as saying that the theology presented here has no room for an interpretation of the cross, thought it does constrain such interpretation.  Consistency with this theology demands that one not say that a judgmental God propitiated himself with a vicarious sacrifice.  Such an idea portrays a divine human relationship in which one sees God primarily as one who dominates and secondarily as one who serves.  However, consistency allows one to say that the cross speaks of a loving God, and that that love makes the risk of trying to live well worthwhile.  Such a theology seeks to serve and not to dominate.

In these pages, several theologians have contributed to a dialog regarding issues that will determine the church’s relevance in the twenty-first century.  These theologians would surely disagree with significant portions, if not most of what has been suggested.  Nevertheless, a radical rediscovery of the incarnation is the only way that the church can find renewed relevance in today’s world.  The church must insist that the incarnation ascribes infinite worth to each individual regardless of one’s beliefs.  She must look for ways to make the present world more like the eschatological future for which she hopes.  She must renounce her desire for ideological domination and align herself and her message with the model of service she sees in the incarnation.  Finally, she must embrace the example of service set by the incarnate revelation as the authority for her message.