I picked up Lesslie Newbigin’s The Household of God as I was pondering the question of what is the true church. Newbigin is a favorite of Telford’s, who wrote about the book here, as an articulate advocate of ecumenicism. Telford’s advocacy never convinced me much, but to be fair I decided to take a look at Newbigin myself.
Newbigin was a Presbyterian missionary who wound up becoming a bishop in the Church of South India, a Reformed denomination. He played an active role in forming the World Council of Churches. This particular book consists of a series of lectures on Christian unity he delivered in Glasgow in 1952. He starts off, somewhat to my surprise, with a lengthy explication of the whole “justification by grace” concept as seen in Paul. I must admit, I’ve gotten lost in virtually every attempt that has been made to explain this to me, but Newbigin makes it more comprehensible than usual. Often the whole faith/works argument depends on setting off what you believe against what you do, which never made sense to me since the two are so interrelated. Newbigin, however, describes it more in terms of a sense of entitlement. The Judaicizers that Paul criticized, he says, believed that because they were Jews and kept the law they were entitled to God’s favor, so anyone who wanted God’s favor had to become Jewish. Paul, however, uses the example of Abraham to point out that God pours out his favor on whomever he wants; the circumcision and the other Jewish laws were the seal of that favor, but they did not create a quid pro quo arrangement whereby you get circumcized and therefore God must favor you. If the tree of Israel bears bad fruit, to use Paul’s metaphor, God feels free to cut off some branches and graft on “wild slips” — that is, Gentiles.
Many churches today, Newbigin says, make the same error. But for him it’s not really about “works,” it’s about anything that you think entitles you to be God’s people. Protestants, he says, tend to do that with doctrine: they believe if they have the right doctrine that entitles them to be church, and those with different doctrine are not entitled. But, Newbigin points out, Jesus did not really make that the defining feature of his own church. If he had, he would have made like Allah to Muhammad and written a detailed instruction book. (“A vast amount of scholarly labor,” Newbigin remarks drily, “has been been spent in trying to discover precisely that thing which the Lord Himself did not choose to provide.”) Instead, Jesus created a fellowship, which he invested with an almost frightening amount of authority: to preach the Word, heal the sick, forgive or retain sins, and indeed, write the New Testament. The importance of this fellowship is also why Newbigin rejects the idea of an “invisible church” in place of an actual body of people.
He has a problem, however, with Catholics taking this fact to the other extreme, and making apostolic succession the sine qua non of church. (I presume he could say the same of the Orthodox, whom he never mentions; he admits in the preface that this is a huge omission, but says he wasn’t familiar enough with the eastern churches to comment on them.) Newbigin agrees that apostolicity is an essential characteristic of the Church of Christ; but then, so is sinlessness, and obviously the RCC hasn’t exactly pulled off that one. Catholics generally say that by God’s grace the church itself is somehow sinless in essence, even though it’s full of sinful people. Newbigin doesn’t buy this distinction between the church and the people in it, but more than that, he wonders why God’s grace would cover so many sins and yet not cover a break in apostolic succession. So long as any church fails to be the perfect, spotless Bride of Christ, he says, it continues to exist by God’s grace alone. As Paul says about the Law, once you have failed one part of it you have failed at all of it.
Finally, Newbigin turns to the third defining feature of church: the Holy Spirit. This is to a great extent the authority behind the authorities, as he quotes Quaker luminary George Fox: “What had any to do with the Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth?” The Spirit is of paramount importance in the accounts of the ancient church, and Newbigin believes that mainline churches like his own have historically failed to recognize this. The action of the Spirit alone brought the Gentiles and Jews together, grafted the “wild slips” onto the tree. But he warns against conceiving of Spirit actions in too individualistic or showy a fashion, and thereby failing to see its quieter manifestations. The most exciting thing about the Holy Spirit now, he says, is how mundane it is. While in the Old Testament it only turned up occasionally to get someone to do something, in the Christian Church it has becoming a constant indwelling presence.
So if all churches have failed to be what they ought to be, why does God continue to extend his grace to them? Here we get to Newbigin’s somewhat eccentric version of the doctrine of election, which Telford has also written about here. God’s purpose through both Israel and the Church, in Newbigin’s view, has been the redemption of the whole creation, and “mercy to all.” Those whom he has chosen, from Abraham onward, he has chosen not because of their own merits but in order to serve this great purpose. The mistake that people keep making is (to use an analogy that Newbigin doesn’t) to think too much like Noah and not enough like Jonah. They believe that they’re the few chosen to survive the coming judgment, and so are greatly interested in the earthly markers that distinguish them, be it circumcision, doctrine, apostolic succession, or what have you. But in fact, Newbigin believes that God chooses people in order to serve, to bring the words of truth so that all might be saved. Like Jonah, they don’t have to be the most qualified people for the job; they are simply chosen. Therefore we have no right to judge each other, to decide who is saved and who is not, but have only to love one another.
When I’ve talked about this with Telford, one of my big complaints is that I don’t understand how he can talk in a way that sounds so pluralist and yet be such an anti-pluralist about other religions. And reading Newbigin hasn’t really cleared up the problem. I mean, I know I have some Quaker readers, and I can imagine they’ve been nodding along with a lot of this: the problems with setting boundaries between us and them, the unpredictability of the Spirit, the relative unimportance of doctrine, the idea of the church as servant rather than elite club. But Newbigin is not only not a Quaker, he spent his life turning Hindus and Muslims into Christians. What gives?
In fact, Newbigin’s passion for mission is the whole reason he’s an ecumenicist. He believes that mission is an essential, if not primary, mission of church, and not doing mission “involves a radical contradiction of the Church’s being.” His reason for this is apocalyptic: he believes that Jesus waiting this long to come back solely to give the church time to bring all nations to faith, and not coincidentally, for the church to reunite. “It belongs to the very heart of salvation,” he writes, “that we cannot have it in fullness until all for whom it is intended have it together.” Furthermore, his experience out in the field is that, as with soldiers in a war, missionaries find that the old ecclesial issues back home just don’t seem as important.
It seems to me that, in the end, he is simply trying to rearrange churches’ dogmas. Mission becomes the main non-negotiable thing, in place of all the other non-negotiable things on which churches base their identities. In that sense, he’s just doing the old Protestant thing and building the church around doctrine. Mission is the new circumcision.
Near the end, he admits that church shouldn’t be all about mission. The church should also be a “foretaste of heaven,” including such features as “worship and fellowship, offering up praise and adoration of God, receiving His grace, rejoicing in Him, sharing with one another the fruits of the Spirit, and building up one another in love.” Having established that, however, he quickly moves back to thumping the table for mission.
Now, I have no objection to mission if it’s done properly, but something about this leaves me cold. I kept thinking, so you’re going out and preaching, but preaching what? By questioning the necessity of doctrine and apostolicity, but making mission absolute, Newbigin reminds me of the old joke about what you get when you cross a Unitarian and a Jehovah’s Witness: someone who knocks on your door and doesn’t know why. Newbigin himself knows why he does it, but he seems to not hugely care what churches preach so long as they do it loudly.
But for me, coming to the church as an object of mission, I must say all those features of the church that Newbigin glosses over so quickly — fellowship, doctrine, ethics and so on — to a great extent are the mission. It is because that is where I must look to answer the big questions I have: Who is God? and Where is God? Newbigin’s discussion of entitlement to God’s favor sounded similar to the arguments against pacifism I was hearing in this thread: that tying salvation to any sort of “ethical program”, as Maurice put it, can only be driven by a desire to justify oneself before God. It vexes me no end that people apparently read this post and thought that was my main attraction to pacifism, and I am not sure how I could disabuse them. But that particular issue aside, Christian ethics are to me only partly about the quality of the people holding them — they are also about the quality of God. So long as the church’s ethics are God’s ethics, they reveal God’s good character.
One criticism Newbigin lodges at Catholicism, which he would probably have lodged against Anabaptism also, is that it identifies itself too closely as an “extension of the Incarnation”, with too much “now” and not enough “not yet.” He would, I imagine, say to me that God revealed his character on the Cross, and I should have faith in that. But I guess the whole problem with my faith, such as it is, is that I always need more. Such a distant event, attested by somewhat sketchy sources, doesn’t quite offer the assurance I can stake my life on.
This also makes me regret that he dealt somewhat hastily with the Holy Spirit. He emphasized its importance, and described the odd way in which everyone in the NT instantly and concretely recognized it, as if it were as straightforward as a visit from your cousin Fred. And Newbigin seems to see it in the same way; for instance:
No one who is not spiritually blind or worse can fail to acknowledge that God has signally and abundantly blessed the preaching, sacraments, and ministry of great bodies which can claim no uninterrupted ministerial succession from the apostles, but who have contributed at least as much as those who have remained within it to the preaching of the Gospel, the conversion of sinners, and the building up of the saints in holiness.
Sorry, but “Any idiot can see…” is not really an argument, although God knows it gets invoked enough in the blogosphere. I keep hearing stuff like that though, where Christians seem to expect me to see the Spirit as plainly as I can see the San Gabriels from Pasadena. I remember a while ago I was discussing some of my qualms about PMC with John, and he asked, in a that-settles-it tone, “But do you see the Holy Spirit there?” I was so sick of this question I shot back, “How do I know?”
This was so unlike the answer that he expected that he responded with just an exasperated noise. But it was an honest answer. And when Newbigin, at various points in the book, refers to things that “every Christian sees,” and “every Christian has felt,” that leave me totally confused, I do, despite his efforts, feel like I’m looking at a club for which I have not been elected.
Camassia:
How do you explain what it is that prompts you to undertake and continue the quest of which your blog is the outward expression, if it is not the Holy Spirit?
I wonder if you have ever read “Waiting for God”, a book that compiles letters and other writings of Simone Weil? In a series of letters to a Catholic priest whom she had befriended, she gives a detailed explanation of her decision not to be baptized, despite her intense devotion to the Cross, and to her personal sense of mission, which was to renounce personal wealth, and the privilege to which she was both born, and earned again on her own as a brilliant student in the French university system, in favor of service to others, specifically, the working class.
As I read you, I sometimes detect at least a suggestion of analogy between what you are working through, and at least part of what Simone Weil was about.
Comment by Rob — April 19, 2006 @ 3:39 am
How do you explain what it is that prompts you to undertake and continue the quest of which your blog is the outward expression, if it is not the Holy Spirit?
Oh, it could be any number of things, some of which I’ve brought up already. The search for identity, rebelliousness, loneliness, intellectual stimulation, sexual issues, political issues, relationships, habit, desperation … there are lots of possibilities. I’m sure the Holy Spirit could be working through those things, but it’s not the only conceivable explanation.
I haven’t read Simone Weil. As you might have gathered, my list of book recommendations from people is already pretty long.
Comment by Camassia — April 19, 2006 @ 9:01 am
[H]e asked, in a that-settles-it tone, “But do you see the Holy Spirit there?†I was so sick of this question I shot back, “How do I know?â€
Ha ha, I totally identify with this. Most of my family is Charismatic/Pentecostal, while I’ve chosen to join a liturgical church and have lots of problem with the churches I grew up in. When discussing or criticizing some aspect of charismatic practice or theology, my parents often come back with, “But can’t you see it’s the Holy Spirit?” Honestly, no! A lot of it looks weird to me, and I’m not competent on my own to judge whether or not X is a valid manifestation of the Spirit.
Comment by JS Bangs — April 19, 2006 @ 9:38 am
“…there are lots of possibilities.”
Sure. And if you roll them all up into a ball, what you end up with is a human being *who just happens* to be on a spiritual quest, rather than any one of the myriad other quests that an impetus other than the Holy Spirit might be apt to send one on. I’d say that if the Holy Spirit is a plausible motivator in your case–or any other–its very plausibility moves the case toward probability.
Comment by Rob — April 19, 2006 @ 9:44 am
“How do I know?â€
I can definitely sympathize with that, coming from a Jehovah’s Witness background into mainstream Christianity. I keep running into a shared dialect, a set of assumptions that I’m not entirely in sync with. People say “You can just tell it’s the Holy Spirit!” because of the quality of Christian relationships; or because there is healing and forgiveness; or because somebody started spouting gibberish and foaming at the mouth. Well, maybe it’s the Spirit, but I heard a lot of similar self-justifications from the Witnesses, and you can hear the same claims from any number of other religions.
All that being said, I also keep running into Something I can’t really define, something for which words like ‘grace’ and ‘holy spirit’ are the closest descriptors I’ve found. I see it in non-Christian places; but it’s in Christian circles that I’ve noticed most of it, and where I’ve been given a language to talk about it. Now, that proves nothing at all, and maybe I’m utterly deluded. But, being the limited creature I am, I decided to go ahead and get baptized, and more recently confirmed. So far it’s worked for me, but then again I think I’m less intelligent and have lower standards than you do.
Comment by Elliot — April 19, 2006 @ 10:54 am
PS: That last line’s not intended as a dig at you, just an honest statement.
I suspect you’re going to end up doing one of two things: writing your own ground-breaking theology of the church, or throwing up your hands and giving up on Christianity altogether.
Comment by Elliot — April 19, 2006 @ 11:06 am
I haven’t read Newbigin, but based on the paragraph you quote I think you may be being a bit unfair to his argument. He doesn’t seem to be saying that you can just see that the Holy Spirit is at work in such-and-such churches, but rather that, based on the specific criteria of holiness, gospel-preaching, etc. apostolic succession doesn’t seem to be necessary. I.e. there’s no obvious difference in those terms between a Lutheran or Mennonite church and a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox one. I think this is not a bad argument; if apostolic succession makes no visible difference (other things being equal) in a church’s life, then one is entitled to ask why it’s so important.
The obvious counterargument is that AS is necessary to safeguard doctrine. But not all churches with AS, such as the ECUSA, are obviously better at that than other churches. Of course, Rome and Orthodoxy deny the validity of Anglican orders, but then one could ask why they disagree about seemingly important issues (filioque, papal infallibility, etc.). Clearly they are both committed to the view that having AS isn’t a guarantee against falling into serious error, since each regards the other (I think) as having maintained AS.
Comment by Lee — April 19, 2006 @ 12:18 pm
Actually, I may have spoken too soon. According to this Wikipedia article, Catholics recognize Orthodox orders, but not vice versa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_Succession
Comment by Lee — April 19, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
Well yeah, it’s not that Newbigin has no criteria for what the Holy Spirit looks like, although his descriptions are pretty vague. I’m not sure that I’d assume as quickly as he does, however, that the criteria are all agreed upon. The AS position, at least as I usually hear it, isn’t so much that we know we have the Holy Spirit because we have X and Y manifestations, but because we’re the apostolic church and we’ve been promised the Holy Spirit. That makes a certain amount of sense, because after all the Spirit can be highly unpredictable, so there’s a limit to how much you can identify it by previously defined patterns of behavior. (Not that the AS churches don’t try to domesticate it in their own ways.)
I think one thing that also gives me pause about this sort of confidence is how some past movements that are generally considered heresies today enjoyed quite a run in their time. Arianism, for instance, was around for 400 years, converted a lot of pagans, and unlike something like Gnosticism, seemed to be about 90% identical to orthodox Christianity. In fact, when I read about it I felt that the Arian explanation of the agony in the garden was rather more convincing than the trinitarian one. So when Newbigin says that the Protestant churches must be OK because they’re doing good things and they’re still around (another argument he makes against AS), I have to wonder just how long it takes for God’s will to be known. Many of the most important movements in America have been around for a fraction of the time that Arianism was — evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, dispensationalism, adventism, and the Churches of Christ, just to name a few. Maybe the Arians were dealt with the wrong way (this seems entirely likely!) but it annoyed me that Newbigin sort of dismissed this with the rhetoric of obviousness.
Comment by Camassia — April 19, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
That second point is a great one. The view that all religions are basically interchangable to the extent that they display an ability to make people virtuous has become a common one. Which, I think, takes us back to the point of your question about how you can be an ecclesiological pluralist without being an out-and-out religious pluralist.
But there is still the issue of what defines apostolicity. This is what I cling to, I guess, in my attempts to remain Protestant with a good conscience.
Churches with the historic episcopate define it as continuity in authority from the apostles on down through the laying on of hands. Other churches define it in terms of the content of the gospel message. One side says you need the HE w/AS to make sure you’ve got the right gospel; the other says you need to make sure you’ve got the gospel first and foremost. I’m not even sure how you go about deciding between those two positions, but I find myself unable to say that Protestant churches aren’t real churches (admittedly I’m biased).
Comment by Lee — April 20, 2006 @ 7:57 am
“Christian ethics are to me only partly about the quality of the people holding them — they are also about the quality of God. So long as the church’s ethics are God’s ethics, they reveal God’s good character.”
Well said. I haven’t read Newbigin either. But just a brief thought on the cross as a distant event. I guess you meant historically, but we can be connected to it spiritually through the sacraments and prayer, for example. As for discerning the Holy Spirit, there can be a tension between individual experience and corporate experience. It seems as if you’re saying your community keeps telling you “don’t you see the Holy Spirit at work” but you aren’t experiencing or seeing that? And so how can you trust – both the community and/or God?
Also, as for crashing on the couch: In my Father’s house there are many couches. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? (John 14:2)
Comment by Jennifer — April 20, 2006 @ 10:09 am
“God’s ethics”? God utterly transcends ethics. Whatever God does is Good. Man has ethics; but those are both local and changeable. “God’s good character”? Who would *dare* be the judge of God’s character, even could it be imagined that the word is applicable to God? If the church has ethics and character, or promotes them, it is because the church–any church–is a human institution. As such, it is inherently imperfect, and should recognize itself to be so. It should not self-righteously denounce the imperfections of other churches. Ethics and character are measures of the *limitations* of human goodness, and the law is the means by which to recognize those limitations. Christianity is about the acceptance of the unacceptable. It is about justification by God’s loving sacrifice; ethics and character can’t get you there. Reason and logic won’t prove it for you; they haven’t the capacity to do so. Christianity is about the absolute priority of faith through grace. All else follows, including human institutions and works.
Comment by Rob — April 21, 2006 @ 3:08 am
We have no need to fret anymore over questions of Apostolic Succession because the Catholic Church itself, which assumes Apostolic Succession, has recognized the working of the Holy Spirit in non-Catholic Churches. The authority of Apostolic Succession, that is, the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, does not make this an issue for our salvation. Many non-Catholic Christian churches are recognized by the Catholic Church as fully blessed.
I think I mentioned elsewhere that the Catholic Catechism clearly states: “All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church.” (Section 818) The Catechism adds, “‘Furthermore, many elements of sanctification and of truth’ are found outside of the visible confines of the Catholic Church: ‘the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements.’ Christ’s Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church.” (Section 819)
If some of us do not care for some of the Catholic “add ons”, e.g., celibacy of the priesthood, infant baptism, concept of “just war,” elaborate liturgy and hierarchy, etc. we may assume a more primitive, simpler Christian position with the full blessing of the Churches of Apostolic Succession.
Comment by José Solano — April 21, 2006 @ 8:41 am
God utterly transcends ethics. Whatever God does is Good.
Sheesh, Rob, you’re the guy who used to go on about how the God of Deuteronomy couldn’t really be God because he threatened to do such appalling things. And when it comes to self-righteous denunciations of other people’s behavior you’re no slouch either. It was the pagans who regarded gods as being beyond ethics, who envisioned them as fratricides and rapists and yet still thought they should be worshipped. To say that God is Love is not just a metaphysical statement, it’s a statement about his character: that he gives himself to others, even unto suffering and death, and doesn’t just pursue his selfish and even sadistic interests like so many pagan gods of yore. I see no problem with talking about God’s character and ethics — to do otherwise is to make him something less than human, not more than human. And how are we supposed to image a transcendent non-ethical being, anyway?
Comment by Camassia — April 21, 2006 @ 1:52 pm
Camassia, first of all, let me beg your forgiveness for having caused you pain. It is such an honor that you have invited us all to share in your journey, and especially so since you are more articulate than most of us.
Concerning Newbigin’s translation of “justification by works” as “a sense of entitlement,” I like it. It seems to explain well Luke 18:9-14 and the attitude of the Pharisee versus the attitude of the tax collector. Ironically, despite the attitude of many Christians regarding the security of their salvation, salvation is never to be had “to hand,” no matter how long ago I was saved. I especially sense this when in the Litany I will pray for “my” or “our” salvation using the words, “Lord, have mercy.” My salvation is always-being-given, in the sense that it is nothing I can possess without living relationship with God as the one who gives it. And that living relationship is always one in which I am asking God for his mercy. To trust in the gift, even Christ’s action on the cross, as something that has its own separately existing reality and which I can possess as my own, is to run a decided risk. This is why one can only come to God as sinner: “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Regarding the Holy Spirit, you said: “(Newbigin) described the odd way in which everyone in the NT instantly and concretely recognized it…” It may be of some comfort to know that the NT is not univocal in this regard. I think of 1 John 4:1, “Test the spirits to see which are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Also 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul debates with the Corinthians about the true nature of spiritual gifts. Of course, both Paul and John the Evangelist come down in the same place about how one can identify the Holy Spirit. To wit, 1 Cor. 12:3: “No one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit; and 1 John 4:2-3a: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”
Certainly you share with St. Paul and St. John the true insight that not all phenomena which appear “spiritual” are truly manifestations of the Holy Spirit. There is at least one question that I have regarding their “test”: Are there instances where one hears a confession of Christ with the mouth, but can discern a belief in some other god in the heart? This would seem to address your question regarding which is “the true church,” they all confess Christ, but their actions may seem to disavow Christ.
The witness of St. John and St. Paul regarding the Spirit leads back to the person of Christ, that distant person, attested by such sketchy sources. I would venture to say that it is Christ “crucified for our sins and raised for our justification,” who is the person to whom faith must cling. The arguments from above are perhaps rehearsed ad nauseam, so I will attempt some from below. First of all, it is manifest in the New Testament that Spirit-filled individuals, such as Peter, Paul and Barnabas, were yet sinners and subject to error after the Spirit visited them. Otherwise, being perfectly led by the Spirit, they would not have had debates about the propriety of eating with Gentiles, the desirability of taking John Mark on a missionary journey, etc., etc. Secondly, I notice that any Christian who is not in manifest denial is full of contradictions. They may have questions or doubts in certain areas of faith, be confused about which church is “the true church,” be unsure of the way God is leading them, etc., etc. Since I cannot cling to myself and be certain of my own righteousness, and since I cannot be certain of the righteousness of others, I must cling to Christ who is our righteousness, and trust that in him all our contradictions will one day be resolved.
In a previous post I flashed on John 15:16 as appropriate for you. Now I think of Mark 9:24. You continue to be in my prayer and I ask for yours.
Comment by Maurice Frontz — April 21, 2006 @ 2:13 pm
Camassia:
Yes, it is true that my position has changed somewhat in the past few months. I have finally been convinced, mostly by my friends at “Disputations”, that the OT is essential to the Christian religion. This means that God, as “characterized” in the OT (including Deuteronomy), must be accepted as such. God does things, and acts in ways, that would not be ethical if done by human beings. We must accept that what God does is Good, even though we often cannot understand *why* it is Good. In thus transcending human understanding, God also transcends human ethics and human character; the analogies do not hold. This does not, however, make God less than human; it makes Him *immeasurably* more than human.
I don’t see that you can have it both ways. Either you get rid of the OT concept of God, or you accept it as it is presented. What my friends have convinced me of is that the New Testament focuses on a different aspect, or expression, of God’s love for mankind, but does not replace the God of the OT. I have been convinced that the NT story, while of ultimate importance, is also much more tightly focused, compared to the OT. That God is more like us in the NT is evident. But then, in the NT God walked with us, as one of us, so this should not be surprising. So, I still say that God the Father is beyond character and ethics, as understood in human terms.
To answer your final question, we *are not* supposed to image Him; and cannot, except through Jesus Christ. In fact, it is forbidden, although we do so any way.
Comment by Rob — April 21, 2006 @ 3:12 pm
Hi Camassia,
I have been looking forward to this post on Newbigin’s The Household of God. Is this the only one or is it one of many? You’ve highlighted for me something I’ve never really noticed before about Newbigin: the apocalyptic vision behind his ecclesiology.
The Household of God made a huge impression on me years ago in terms of understanding what the true church is. I’ve always felt inside me the conflict between what I learned from Newbigin and the official claim of my Adventist church to be a “remnant” in Christendom. In fact, as one like Telford largely convinced by Newbigin’s argument, no one doctrinal item of Adventism has given me more disquiet than this ecclesial claim.
Thanks again for posting on this book. Understanding The Household of God as an outworking of Newbigin’s apocalyptic vision as an ecumenist has been really helpful.
Comment by Paul Whiting — April 21, 2006 @ 10:20 pm
Rob, I think I see a little better where you’re coming from. But I wouldn’t make as large a distinction between the Father and the other two Persons as you seem to be making. The radical imputation of the Incarnation is that the divine and the human are not inherently incompatible, they can exist in the same person, and so I wouldn’t say that Christ developed ethics just for the expediency of living on earth. To the extent that he still lives on earth, through the Holy Spirit indwelling his followers (Christ that is in me, as Paul put it), it follows that he would be displaying the same sort of goodness that he did while incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth. Granted, no one ever does that perfectly, but certainly the way the epistles talk about it, you’d expect the Spirit to express itself with more than just conciliar decisions or episodes of glossolalia.
It occurred to me that I might be semantically confusing things by using “ethics” and “character” interchangeably. I guess “ethics” brings to most people’s minds a set of fixed rules, often with rewards and punishments attached, while “character” is a more holistic term for someone’s embedded traits. In that taxonomy, it’s true that God wouldn’t have “ethics”, or any need to restrain himself by some sort of rule set (though he does restrain himself by covenant, after a fashion). However, ethics and character are interrelated, and so I think it’s fair to look at the ethics that Jesus both practiced and preached, and that his followers both practice and preach, as revelation of God’s character. Even basic ideas like “God is good” and “God is love” were arrived at only through revelation; as I pointed out with the pagan examples above, it is entirely possible for people to arrive at other conclusions about God’s character. That does not make God’s character wholly knowable, but it also does not leave it totally unknown.
Maurice, I think this relates somewhat to your point also. Jesus is “the person to whom we must cling”, but that is of course metaphorical since Jesus isn’t here to grab onto. His manner of being present in this age is spiritual, but there are other spirits lurking around. Yeah, demonology isn’t exactly a hip discipline these days, but I do strongly suspect evil spirits are around, and I fear them. If they made themselves easily identifiable by cursing Jesus that would keep things simple, but I doubt it is really that simple.
Paul, this is the only post I planned to write about it. (Hence the length.) I think you’re right that, for all my doubts about Newbigin, he does a pretty good job of blowing up the “remnant” ideas so beloved of 19th-century sects like Adventism. To the extent that the Anabaptists kind of started that whole trend, the Mennonites have a problem, but I don’t know of anyone at PMC who actually holds to that viewpoint. According to my boyfriend, the Mennonites only really started doing scholarly theology in the 20th century, and what they have produced is a lot more orthodox than the long-ago Zwinglian study groups that started the movement. It offers some signs that reconciliation might be possible, at any rate.
Comment by Camassia — April 22, 2006 @ 3:40 pm
Camassia:
I’m glad that I was able to better express myself on the second attempt. As I’m sure you know, there is really nothing in the *ethics* taught by Jesus that is unique to Jesus. To me, a person’s character is defined by many traits, of which such things as truthfulness, integrity, compassion, empathy, generosity, and consideration of the needs of others are prime examples. A person possessing these traits will act in an ethical manner. Certainly we can see all of these things in Jesus, but we can also see them all in any “good” person. It is just a fact that God, in the OT, resembles Jesus very little. In the OT, God’s love is neither unconditional, nor universally bestowed. He has a favorite people, and among that people, favorite individuals. For the most part, where universality is spoken of in the OT, it is spoken of in terms of universal subjection to the *power* of God the Father, rather than universal justification through His freely given grace and salvific loving sacrifice. The Cross is truly a new paradigm of the relationship between God and man, it seems to me. The Cross of Christ serves to reconcile things which are otherwise irreconcible, i.e. fallen man to creator God. The OT remains as a reminder of what human existence would be without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the gracious assistance of the Holy Spirit.
But we must opt for it against the urgings of those demons of which you spoke, and who, I agree, are very real.
Maybe I’m deluded, but it seems obvious to me that no church can claim to possess exclusive rights to franchise the relationship between God and man; it can’t be packaged; it transcends brand recognition; it can be accessed by any individual who slows down long enough, and shuts up long enough to allow himself access to the small quiet voice of the Holy Spirit.
Comment by Rob — April 22, 2006 @ 4:37 pm
Camassia:
I apologize for taking up so much space, but because I do not believe in coincidence, I feel that I need to relate the following:
Immediately after finishing my 4:37 p.m. post, I went into the room where I read, and I picked up one of the several books that I’m currently reading–Secrets in the Dark, A life in Sermons, by Frederick Buechner. The sermon that I began reading was entitled “Love”, and in the course of it Buechner quotes from Psalm 131:
“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother’s breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and for evermore.”
This passage seemed to me to perfectly express what I had so imperfectly attempted to express above. Moreover, being from the OT, while reinforcing that which was perhaps correct in what I had attempted to express, it also corrected that which now seems to have been in error.
Now I will be quiet for awhile. Again, my apologies.
Comment by Rob — April 22, 2006 @ 6:33 pm
Maybe you have been chosen to be the apostle to those who don’t feel chosen, who likewise haven’t experienced a miraculous Holy Spirit Rolaids moment (i.e. heartburn feeling in the chest)? But then how would you know you are chosen? An endless loop. Here is an interesting reflection from the Christian devotional “The Word Among Us”–I was surprised by the anecdote concerning St. Thomas:
“Doubt is a human reaction. Even the saints had doubts. The great doctor of the church, St. Thomas Aquinas, once sighed to God, “I do not know if you love me, or if I love you. . . . I do not even know if I live by faith!†Or recall the other “doubting Thomas†who wouldn’t believe unless he could put his finger into the wounds of the risen Christ (John 20:25).
Jesus sometimes challenged his disciples to have greater faith. But he never discouraged them from bringing their doubts and fears to him. When they did, he always gave them the help they needed. Consider his response to his disciples in today’s passage: “Touch me and see†(Luke 24:39). He even ate in front of them to dispel their suspicion that he might be a ghost or a figment of their imaginations. He was more than willing to help them put their fears to rest.”
The whole thing here: http://www.wau.org/meditations/meditations.asp?month=4&day=20&year=2006&x=0&y=0
I’m always intrigued by those who securely go pretty much their own way and say to God, “if I’m going wrong, you’ll tell me”. They seem to have a less aching need to be right than me. You could always pray what I’ve heard others pray: “I can’t hear You, You’re going to have to use a megaphone!”.
Comment by TSO — April 23, 2006 @ 8:05 pm