Church and World

Off the back of my reflections on the Pope's recent encyclical (part 1 and part 2), I've been thinking a bit about the relationship between the church and the world, and how that relationship might be construed theologically.  I noted in those reflections that the stance of the encylical is very much openness to the world, and a recognition that the church is itself a historical factor and one of the drivers of history.  In my view, this stance sometimes trips over into the church becoming only a historical factor, stripped of its eschatological qualities, and to a certain extent losing its distinctness from the world - for example, when the concept of 'catholicity', which the creed applies to the church as the church, seems to be extended to embrace all of humanity without distinction.  To caricature, the Roman approach to the church-world relationship appears to be to situate the church very firmly within the world, as part of the world, and to locate it as a historical phenomenon; the institution founded by Christ, visibly persisting through history via its structures and organisations, influencing history in such a way that Christ's kingdom is increasingly spread across and throughout the world.

Sean MacEntee, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By contrast, and again with something of a caricature for the sake of making that contrast, the view amongst many evangelicals is that the earthly, historical form of the church is largely irrelevant, or at least to be downplayed (hence the indifference often seen to questions of church government, liturgy, etc. - or at least, theological indifference; these are often viewed as merely pragmatic questions).  The impact of the church in world history is also downplayed (to an extent), perhaps seen as totally mixed in its outcomes and anyway as irrelevant to the real being and mission of the church.  I think that is because there is still in the background of much evangelical thinking a model in which the gospel really only glances off the edge of human history, scooping off a few believers for better things but basically leaving the world untouched.

You can see the difference in outcome between these two very clearly.  The Pope sees the church building the kingdom of God, and transforming history from the inside; he therefore addresses - not only the church but also - the world as a whole, expecting it to listen and to change.  For many evangelical leaders, the world is not addressed at all, except insofar as it is called to stop being the world and become the church, and societal transformation is not expected.  I have, in fact, heard senior evangelicals express a preference for a secular state over a 'nominally' Christian one, and have often heard that we must not seek to 'legislate Christian morality'.

I can't help feeling that both approaches are wrong, and for a corrective I turn, naturally, to the Church Dogmatics, and especially IV/3, from p 681.  I won't make many detailed references to the section, and I haven't always followed the line of thought there, but its very much in the background of the following.

First of all, the church certainly is a historical factor, and its history and role in the world matters; but this is not the heart of what the church is.  The church can't be defined by anything visible in its history, because the church lives from its connection to Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit.  This is what I mean when I talk about the 'eschatological qualities' of the church.  The church is already the new creation, even in the midst of the old, but not as if some historical process had been initiated by Christ which would gradually transmute the old world into the new.  No, the church has its reality as new creation directly from Christ by the Spirit, because new creation always comes straight from heaven.  The church is a historical factor, but the new creation is not; it is always a breaking in to history from above.  However, that breaking in is not ahistorical, but is the revelation of the true meaning of history in Jesus Christ.  In Christ, the situtation of humanity as a whole is radically changed - the gospel doesn not strike the old creation a glancing blow, but puts sinful humanity to death at the cross - but that is only known in the sphere of the church.

The church then exists in the world but does not have its being from any factors in the world, not even its own insitutions, history, or culture.

The church also exists for the world.  It is sent into the world as the fellowship of those who really know the world - as the world cannot really know itself.  The church knows the world, not only in the depths of its rebellion (the world must always deny this knowledge), but also as the world for which Christ died, the world which God so loved that he gave his one and only Son.  The church is for the world because in a sense the church is the world knowing itself.

The church is for the world in that it stands in solidarity with the world.  This does not mean conformity to the world - that would be to compromise the church's spiritual foundation - but a real being with the world in all the pains and struggles and strivings for better things.  (Barth suggests, incidentally, that being overly concerned with maintaining the purity of the church and thus separating from the world, refusing this solidarity, is fundamentally a conformity to the world - for when does the world not want to show itself to be righteous by comparison with 'these sinners'?)

And the church is for the world because, knowing the situation of the world in its depths but also the hope given to the world in the resurrection of Christ, the church goes to the world with good news, and dares to hope for the world even when the world has despaired of itself.

The church which knows itself to be distinct from the world, because it knows itself to belong to Christ and to live by his Spirit, is the church which will also commit itself to the world.

One interesting way in which I think this perspective might play out is that it could make the concerns raised in the Pope's encyclical actionable, in a way that I'm not sure they are otherwise.  The Pope addresses the world as if the world was the church, and expects change which he is never going to see; the world is not listening.  The evangelical pastor doesn't bother with the world, and therefore doesn't address even the church on topics which seem worldly.  What if instead we saw the church as genuinely the provisional representation of the new humanity in Christ, and therefore thought seriously about what it means to be human - for example, how human beings might respond to the challenge of AI - and then committed to living as a church community in a way that reflected that vision for humanity?  We could hope for societal change in a wider sense, but we could express our hope by being the humanity we would like to see, because we believe it is humanity as it is in Christ.

On AI in particular, I think there is too much money to be made for the world to listen to the Pope.  But the church might decide - I'll put my cards on the table and say that I think it should decide - that until a genuinely human-centred way of using AI has been developed the church will be an oasis, a place where AI is excluded as far as possible, despite whatever practical inconveniences this causes.  And in this way, we might bear witness to the reality of human life.