The Bible preserves the church

The church is desperately fragile and vulnerable.  It could be destroyed at any time.  Karl Barth, dwelling on this theme in Church Dogmatics IV/2, reflects on the multiple threats to the church: from the outside, the threat of outright persecution and also the threat of just being ignored; from the inside, the threat of secularisation (where the church becomes alienated from its own basis in Christ) and sacralisation (where the church assimilates to the methods of the world and seeks to glorify itself).  Given it's vulnerability to the world and to its own sin, how is it that the church has not in fact disappeared?

The big answer that Barth gives is that the church is upheld.  But how is it upheld?  Barth's first answer is that the Bible has continued to speak within the church.  The Scriptures "have continually become a living voice and word, and have had and exercised power as such."  (673)  The Bible has, of course, often been submerged beneath church traditions, "or proclaimed only in liturgical sing-song", or contradicted by philosophy and ideology.  "But they have always been the same Scriptures and the community has never been able to discard them."  (674)

So what is it, then, that has upheld the church?  "A mere book then?"  No, says Barth.  The Bible is "a chorus of very different and independent but harmonious voices."  It is "an organism which in its many and varied texts is full of vitality within the community."  The Bible is "something which can speak and make itself heard in spite of all its maltreatment at the hands of the half-blind and arbitrary and officious."

Barth expects the Bible to speak afresh, again and again, recalling the church to itself.  As the chorus of voices which harmoniously witnesses to Christ, the Bible is able to call the church again and again to him.  This cannot be prevented by the church, even when with its traditions and speculations it wants to keep the Bible under control.  Neither, actually, can Christians manufacture this "by their own Bible-lectures and Bible-study or even by the Scripture principle".  Rather, "it is something that Scripture achieves of itself" - and for Barth, that points to the fact that Scripture is the sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:17), the word by which the Spirit works in the church and the world.

This does not mean, of course, that it is a matter of indifference whether churches maintain a reverence for Scripture, or whether they hold the Scripture principle, or whether they strive to keep the Bible central in their common life.  It is critical that the church do this.  But where it is done, the church is nevertheless dependent on the Bible as the Spirit wields that Bible, not its attitude to the Bible or its arrangements concerning the Bible.  "The preservation of the community takes place as it is upheld by this prophetic and apostolic word, or as it is led back as a hearing community to this word."

"And so we can only say to Christians who are troubled about the preservation of the community or the maintaining of its cause that they should discard all general and philosophico-historical considerations... and hear, and hear again, and continually hear this word, being confronted both as individual and united hearers by the fact that the community certainly cannot uphold itself, but that all the same it is fact upheld, being placed in the communion of saints as this continually takes place in the hearing of this word."  (674-5)

Hear, and hear again, and continually hear this word.

Honouring your (venal and corrupt) leaders

The New Testament requires Christians to honour, submit to, and pray for their secular leaders.  These are commands, not options.  But how do you apply them when your leaders are clearly corrupt?  For those of us in the UK, this is obviously not a hypothetical question.

First up, let's think about the apostles' time and ours.  What is different and what is the same?  Well, the leaders of the Roman world were typically corrupt.  They abused their power hugely.  So not very much has changed on that front; we can't pretend that the NT commands are only valid when our leaders are good.  Leaders weren't good when the apostles wrote those commands.  On the other hand, there are differences.  The apostles urged believers to submit to their political leaders, but of course those leaders were autocrats.  Whether you honoured them or not, they were going to do whatever they wanted, and the average person had no means whatsoever to sway their decision making.  For those of us living in modern democracies, there is therefore a difference.  We actually have a responsibility towards our leaders which Peter and Paul did not have: to hold them accountable, and to exercise our suffrage to do that.  That is a real change.

So what does it look like to honour our leaders today, especially when they're just not great?  Here are some thoughts.

1. Honour your leaders by remembering that their authority comes from God.  The Lord Jesus told Pilate - Pilate! - that it was only God who gave Pilate any authority at all.  Our secular leaders are, whether they know it or not, God's servants.  They exercise a fundamental human calling in creation.  We are not called to honour them because they have earned our honour, or because they deserve it, but because they have authority from the Lord.  This does not mean that our secular leaders are above critique; the Prime Minister is not the Lord's Anointed, unable to be touched.  Consider that in his providence God sometimes give bad leaders to a nation; sometimes it is what a nation deserves.  Reflection on that might lead us to prayer for society more widely.  But whatever the reason in God's hidden providence, these people are in power.  Honour them.

2. Honour your leaders enough to critique them well.  In our cynical age, and with the facilitation of social media, it is very easy to respond to bad leadership by being dismissive and sarcastic.  A throwaway tweet, a shared meme.  This is particularly easy in our party political system if the current leadership is not of your tribe.  As citizens in a democracy we should critique our leaders; as Christians, we should do so in a way which properly engages the issues and doesn't just scoff.  It is worth remembering that political leaders have to make difficult choices, often with no obvious right answer.  Honour them enough to pray for them to have wisdom, even as you criticise constructively.

3. Honour your leaders enough to treat them as moral agents.  Take their choices seriously.  Don't assume 'they would do that' because of their ideology or their party.  Don't assume they are trapped in the machinery of government.  Don't just shrug, because we all know politicians are no good.  These are human beings, who are making real moral decisions.  Be shocked and appalled where necessary!  It does not dishonour our leaders to view them as people capable of doing good and evil.  Honour them enough to pray that they would make good choices.

4. Honour your leaders enough to consider their eternal destinies.  We mustn't fall into the trap of thinking of political leaders purely in terms of the impact their choices have on us or on others.  Think about the people in leadership themselves.  They will enter into judgement.  Eternal life is at stake for them.  Particularly where leaders are corrupt, honour them enough to pray that they would repent.  This may also means praying that they would resign, since that would surely be a part of repentance for a political leader.

Today is a depressing day for British politics.  We can still honour our leaders, even if right now that honour looks like criticism and a call for repentance and resignation.

The truth as it is in Jesus

The Lord Jesus says that he is the truth.

It is normally sensible when someone says 'I know the truth' to ask 'the truth about what?'  What aspect of truth have you stumbled across?  What particular truth is it that we're discussing?

We could, I suppose, ask this question of Jesus.  He is making a rather different claim: not merely to know the truth, but to be the truth.  But we could ask: what truth exactly are you?  What subject are we discussing? What particular truth is it that you are claiming to embody?

We could even probably start to sketch an answer to this question.  It is the truth about God.  In claiming to be the truth, Jesus is making a claim to reveal God.  Yes.  But when he makes this claim, it is linked to his claim to be 'the way' and 'the life'.  It is linked to the idea of 'coming to the Father'.  A way joins two points; a life stretches from one time to another.  So when the Lord says he is the truth, we should think in terms of two things.  He is not just embodying the truth about God.  He is embodying the truth about the relationship of God to creation and specifically to humanity.  The Lord Jesus speaks in two ways throughout his ministry.  In one way, he calls people to himself, as if he is their destination; in another way, he points people beyond himself to the Father, as the place where they will find their rest.  He does this because he is the truth of God's relationship with humanity, and vice versa.  He does not teach this truth or show this truth.  He is this truth.  His life is this truth as he obeys the Father, trusts him, and prayerfully depends on him.  This lived life, this life in communion with God, is the truth.

At this point we ought to realise that we've burst through the limits of our question.  What particular truth?  In trying to answer we realise that we've stumbled onto something more: the universal truth.  It is true of creation, because it is true in Jesus, that it exists in relationship to God.  It is true of humanity, because it is true in Jesus, that it exists in dependence on God.

Every particular truth is, in an obvious or concealed way, a species of this truth.

There is no escaping this reality, even in the human absolute of contradiction.  It is possible to live in ignorance of this truth.  It is possible to live against this truth (to one's own destruction).  But the truth cannot be evaded.