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.

News and reflections at the close of 2025

Personal news

The big personal news at the end of 2025 is, on the one hand, that I think I'm very close to submitting my PhD Thesis, and on the other hand that from next week I will be serving part-time as an Associate Pastor at Magdalen Road Church here in Oxford.  I am enormously grateful to those who have helped me through this long period of study and writing, and also to the elders and congregation at Magdalen Road who have given me the opportunity to dip my toe back into the water of pastoral ministry.  Looking forward to that opportunity has also stirred up lots of reflections on the close of my last period of pastoral ministry, and I realise that when I wrote my reflections on that at the time I hadn't really grasped how deeply traumatic it had been.  Prayers appreciated as we as a family move into this new season.

Church reflections

One interesting phenomenon that seems to have ramped up in the last year is the influx into the church of people from the political/cultural 'right', at least some of whom seem to have become convinced that Christianity is an essential component of Western civilisation, and therefore a potential bulwark against what they see as the decline of that civilisation.  This mirrors the trickle of more liberal minded folk into the church over the last few years, who seemed themselves to have realised that only the Christian message could provide a philosophical ground and foundation for the liberal values they hold dear.  Both sides are right, of course, in the sense that the particular shape of Western civilisation and the liberal values of the early Twenty-first Century do owe a great deal to Christianity.  Both sides are wrong, though, in imagining that it will be possible to turn to Christianity purely to bolster social values or a political agenda.  As Lewis has one of his characters put it, one might as well try to use the staircase to heaven as a shortcut to the local chemists.

As for the church, she will just have to accept newcomers with a patient testimony to the reality of life in Christ, and a patient rebuke to those elements of ideology on left and right which are incompatible with that life.  The church needs to stand on her own ground, and speak clearly and even handedly to right and to left.

I wonder whether this means we will see more of the culture wars playing out inside churches, and I worry for what that might look like.  I think evangelicalism, on the whole, has no coherent theological vision for society and for political engagement, and in fact many evangelical leaders give the impression that the best we can hope for is a sort of benign, neutral secularism in the public sphere.  This is unlikely to satisfy culture warriors on either side, but more importantly seems theologically rather vapid.

Perhaps some of the responses to the news that there will be a UK version of The Gospel Coalition already reflect elements of this culture war.  Certainly the write up in Evangelical Times, which reflects the more conservative strand of the evangelical world, is extremely negative.  Personally, I think that write up scandalously misrepresents the people who are mentioned in it, and I wonder whether from the author's perspective it is possible to engage thoughtfully with the modern world without being accused of social liberalism.  On the other hand, I tend to think TGCUK is a bad idea; I am not sure we need more umbrella organisations, which seem to me to be a classic evangelical response to our lack of a distinct vision for catholicity.

Social reflections

Outside the church, political life in 2025 just became more fractured and depressing.  Government seems incapable of delivering.  Populist parties on left and right are growing, both equally disturbing to my mind, and it does indeed seem that the centre cannot hold.  Because I lean slightly right, I am particularly alarmed by the rise of non-conservative right wingers, and by the way some are embracing them simply to enjoy the sight of the liberal consensus taking a beating.  We should be wary of what might end up replacing that liberal consensus.

It seems pretty evident already that local services are failing, for lack of will or resource, and I wonder how local churches - already stretched pretty thin - might be able to fill some of the gaps.  We may need to review our programmes of activities, and ask ourselves more rigorously how our resources can be best used to testify to the reality of the world renewed in Christ.  Middle class evangelicalism might need to specifically ask about our ability and willingness to serve the poorest.

Goodbye to 2025

One of the questions I come back to again and again is that of time.  I agree with Augustine that time is an extremely difficult thing to understand.  As another present slips into the past, I continue to be very grateful that in Christ God has made himself a partaker of our time, and has shown himself able to gather up all the times of our lives to share in his own eternal life.  So, goodbye to 2025, but of course not quite goodbye; rather this year is laid down in the archives, to form part of the strangely glorious whole which for now we can only vaguely imagine.

On liturgy, for the non-liturgical

It seems to me that the renewal of our corporate worship ought to be a priority for evangelical churches in the UK.  I think so many of our problems can be traced back to weakness here - whether it's a lack of joy in the gospel (and therefore a lack of joyful witness), a leadership that doesn't stand in awe of the Lord (and therefore abuses authority in the church), or a weak discipleship (and therefore ethical compromise with the world).  We need liturgical renewal (amongst other things) because worship stands at the very centre of our church life, of the outworking of God's redemption in the community life of God's people.

But I know that whenever you start talking about liturgy, there is a group of Christians immediately turned off.  If you think that liturgy means ritualism, dressing up, reciting everything from a script, and inaccessible choir performances in place of congregational singing - well, in that case I can see why you might not be thrilled at the thought.  For many who grew up in traditions which had, perhaps, beautiful liturgy and shiny vestments and ancient sanctuaries, but little to nothing in the way of living faith, I completely understand the negative associations.

Suffice to say that when I'm agitating for liturgical renewal, I'm not aiming for any of those things (although some of them might do more good than harm, if done well).  What I'm talking about is simply making our Sunday gatherings appropriate, or fitting, to the immensity of what is happening in the gathering of God's people - in tone, structure and content.

Tone is perhaps the most difficult thing to pin down, but essentially I mean this: does this feel like we are coming into the presence of Almighty God?  The book of Hebrews tells us that, whereas Israel came to the burning mountain of Sinai, we come to the heavenly mountain of Zion, gathered into the presence of innumerable angels and the assembly of the saints who have gone before, into the very throne room of God through the Mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Does the tone of our worship reflect that?  The tone we're going for is reverence and awe with cheerfulness, a sort of serious joy.  This tone will be set by the nature of the greeting, by the voice and posture of the service leader, by the choice of hymns, and perhaps preeminently by the way we are led in prayer.  Does it feel like we are meeting with God?

Structure helps to underline what it is that we are doing.  If we are coming to God through Christ in the Spirit, it is helpful to have some narrative structure, a movement, to what we are doing.  The imagery of spatial movement is useful and thoroughly biblical here: we draw near, we enter, we come.  The sense of movement and direction fosters the sense of encounter, as we approach the Lord.  This is not a manipulative thing; we're not trying to manufacture something that isn't there.  Rather, we are trying to make the outward structure fit with the inner spiritual reality.  When God calls his people together to worship, he does meet with them, and we want to show that.  And of course the particular narrative structure for our worship is the gospel.  That is the story we retell and in a sense relive each Sunday.

Content is actually much more flexible from my perspective, but it has to serve tone and structure.  A jokey little sketch is inappropriate tonally (and can't be justified by the bad excuse of talking to kids!); a lack of Scripture reading and preaching is inappropriate in terms of narrative, missing the central place of God's speech in the gospel story.  A participatory liturgy - the congregation doing more than just singing the hymns! - helps with that sense of coming together to worship.  Responses, confessions, corporate prayers - all good.  As an aside, in the sorts of churches I'm most familiar with, this is often hindered by too much talking from the front; there is no need for an explanation of each Bible reading, or an extra sermon before Communion!  And speaking of Holy Communion, this should ideally be a weekly feature of our worship, the highpoint of our time together.  Giving it this place will help with tone and structure as well.

There are lots more specifics that we could get into, but I imagine the more specific we are the more likely it is that there will be disagreement.  I have strong opinions on all sorts of minor details!  But in the end I'm convinced that what really matters for our spiritual health as believers and as churches is that we be able to come week by week, with serious joy, to rehearse the gospel as we come into the presence of God to worship him.

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.

Catholicism and Sectarianism

In the Creed, we confess our faith in "one holy catholic and apostolic church".  This phrase is a stumbling block for some, because when they hear the word 'catholic' they immediately think Roman Catholic, and of course they don't believe in the Roman Catholic Church in that sense.  For that reason, the word 'catholic' is sometimes dropped and replaced with 'universal'.  I have no particular problem with that switch, although I would on the whole prefer to retain the word 'catholic' and explain its meaning.  It is true that in the Roman Church, the word 'catholic' is thought to refer to the universal validity of that church which is in communion with the Pope, with its clerical hierarchy and congregations.  To be outside the Roman communion is to be (to some extent; the line has become a little more fuzzy for post-Vatican 2 Roman Catholicism) outside the catholic church.  But I don't think we must, or should, accept the Roman construal of catholicism.  Let me try to offer an alternative.

To believe in the catholic church is to believe that Christ has but one people, one body.  This is the church.  It is one across the centuries, and it is one throughout the world.  It's unity is not direct, but indirect; by which I mean, the members are not joined directly to one another, but are all joined in the one Holy Spirit to Christ.  The catholicism of the church, therefore, does not rest on any human organisational scheme, whether that of Rome or anything else; it rests in a common faith in the Lord Jesus.  This commonality may well be only imperfectly expressed, or even sometimes completely hidden, in this world, but since it is grounded in Christ it cannot be ultimately broken and will be ultimately revealed.

That's how I understand catholicism.  But to get at what it means in practice, it is perhaps more useful to ask what a catholic spirit looks like, and to illustrate that by contrasting it with its opposite, sectarianism.  In essence, the catholic spirit draws the boundaries of the church as broadly as possible, where the sectarian spirit tends toward narrowness.  There are lots of ways in which this plays out.

The catholic sees an essential unity between the church of the past and the church of the present, and looks on the theological and creedal decisions of the past as having (relative) authority within the church.  The sectarian, by contrast, is free to reject the past, and tends to be disparaging of the church in past ages.

The catholic sees their own church as part of a greater whole, and is therefore free to draw upon liturgical and theological resources from around the world, throughout time, and across a broad ecclesial spectrum.  The sectarian tends to make use only of resources from their own particular tradition, or in more extreme cases only things tailor-made for their own congregation and situation.

Again, the catholic sees their own church as part of a greater whole, and therefore wants to bring the particular insights and strengths of their tradition to the rest of the church in service.  The sectarian is happy just doing their own thing.

The catholic can't be content with the divided nature of the church, but seeks a clearer expression of the essential unity of the church.  This will involve entering into controversy - the catholic is not content to see parts of the church affected by theological error.  The sectarian, on the other hand, either adopts a 'live and let live' attitude to churches of different traditions (i.e., indifference), or writes off any church which significantly disagrees with his own position as outside the church altogether.

Examples could be multiplied, but you get the idea.

Be more catholic.

Crisis?

The word 'crisis' has been thrown around a lot in the last year, including by yours truly.  But what is a crisis?  A crisis is really a moment of decision, a moment when circumstances and pressures and potential outcomes load this decision with more than ordinary significance.  The crisis is not really the moment to be doing any deep thinking; rather it is the moment that your foundations are exposed and your past thinking (or lack thereof) is brought into the light.  Often the crisis is the moment when the world is shown - and perhaps you are shown - that you don't believe or value the things you seemed to believe or value.  The crisis is the moment when the rubber hits the road.  The crisis is also the point at which a direction is determined, or perhaps the point at which it might be possible to change direction.  The crisis is the moment you look back to when asking the question 'how did we get here?'

2020 surely did present us with a crisis on lots of levels.  Societally, for example, it raised the question of what (and who!) we really value.  But I, and others, have been mainly thinking about the crisis in the church.  The situation in which the Government outlawed corporate worship seemed to ask deep questions of us: how much do we value worship, preaching, the sacraments?  To what extent ought we to go along with the presuppositions of a government and society which are non- and to an extent anti-Christian?  How should we respond?

It sure seemed like a crisis.

And yet in recent weeks I've been wondering if it was.  The thing is, there is definitely part of me that really wants a crisis.  A crisis is awful, in terms of the pressure, and this particular crisis had the potential to put me and others in a really awkward place.  But on the other hand, the crisis is decisive.  Having discerned what seems to be the right decision, you count the cost and you take it.  The crisis, you hope, sets you on the right road.  It is the crossroads at which, if you choose wisely, you will determine your arrival at the right destination.  Then again, there is something individually satisfying about responding to a crisis.  Perhaps it's just me, but there is an attraction to the last stand, the forlorn hope, the death-or-glory charge.

And there are other reasons to be on the lookout for the crisis.  I've done a fair bit of work on Bonhoeffer and the German church of the 1930s, and one of the things you notice is that because many people refused to contemplate the possibility that this might be the crisis, the time when it was necessary to take a stand, the church as a whole ended up sleepwalking into complicity with, and sometimes active support for, Nazism.  It ought to be an established rule of discourse that nothing else is quite like 1930s Germany, but still.  You don't want to miss the moment.  Many of those moments didn't look so serious to lots of people as they did to someone like Bonhoeffer, and the church as a whole was unwilling to elevate them to the level of crisis.  And yet in retrospect all of those small and seemingly insignificant decisions paved the way for a betrayal of the church's being and mission.

For those of you who are impatient with those of us who tend to see a crisis everywhere: please consider that we just really, really don't want to miss the crucial stand that we are called to make.  No doubt we sometimes over-analyse the issue and make it more significant than it really is.  If we're annoying you, just think of us as canaries in the mine; maybe we're hypersensitive, but it might be helpful to have someone hypersensitive down here with you.

But was it - and to the extent that it continues, is it - a crisis?  Re-reading Impossible People by Os Guinness I've been reminded of his description of our cultural issues: it's less like the boy with his finger in the dyke, and more like a mudslide.  That is to say, everything is on the move.  A heroic stand won't work here.  There are myriad ways in which we could betray the Lord every day, myriad little crises.  Maybe everything is a crisis.  The point is: I wonder whether I've been looking for one big decision, when it actually comes down to lots of little decisions.  Not one bold act of defiance of the world, but the resolution to keep on believing unpopular things, to keep on living for things that the majority think are myths, to keep on pursuing a vision of life which is shaped by invisible realities.

Outstanding questions

 As the Covid crisis enters what I guess we all hope will be its final act, I have various outstanding questions which I think need answering or at least exploring fairly urgently.  Here are some of the questions relating to churches and Christians in particular.

1. How should we think of our relationship with the state?  The big question is to what extent the state has a right to intervene in various areas of life, including the corporate worship of the church.  The acute version of the question is about when it becomes right to disobey or actively resist the instructions of the state.  To my mind, a great deal of the interaction on the big question has been naive about the state and its role, assuming that the state is basically and normally a force for good.  I am no libertarian - I believe in the necessity of a strong state - but biblically and theologically I think we need to consider the vision of the beastly state in Revelation 13, or the animalistic states of Daniel, or just the basic fact that the climactic encounter between God and the human state ends up with a weak Pilate signing off on the execution of the Messiah.  It is no coincidence, incidentally, that many passages to do with the state belong to the apocalyptic genre, where the human world is unmasked and its deeper spiritual dynamics are exposed (and is not Pilate the very picture of the unmasked state as he stands face to face with the Lord?)  In the big picture, the state is at best an ambiguous force.

How we answer the big-picture version of the question has, of course, an impact on how we view the acute version.  It has been depressing to me to see how often Christian leaders have reached instantly to Romans 13 as if the few verses there on obedience to the state constituted everything that Holy Scripture had to say on the subject; as if thinking theologically about the role of government just meant reiterating the content of these verses.  It isn't so.  Of course it has been generally recognised that there are instances where we ought to disobey: the two most commonly cited would be if the state asks us to sin, and if the state becomes a persecutor of the church.  But this is so narrow.  To me this represents the interests of a sect, not of a group of people who see themselves as the firstfruits of a new humanity.  It basically winds up being 'I'm all right, Jack', on a grand ecclesiastical scale.  The church should always stand up for the human over against the merely political.

2. What is gathered worship all about?  The general impression I've got is that the majority of us don't know.  We can get sermons online, we can meet up with fellow Christians for encouragement in the park; what are we really missing?  It seems clear that for the majority of Christians in the UK right now there is a view of the Christian life which begins with the individual, and sees church as a helpful add on.  This is not the historic Christian vision.  For historic Christianity (whether Roman, Orthodox, Lutheran, or Reformed) the corporate and sacramental life of the church comes first, and the individual enters into that life.  Viewed from that perspective, the suspension of corporate worship and of the sacraments becomes rather more tragic.  I wonder whether opposition to lockdown - especially the prolongation of lockdown - has been stiffer amongst those who hold to the historic Christian orthodoxy than it has amongst the majority of evangelicals.  I think so.

Coupled to this, I've noticed that Christians who disapprove of churches meeting illegally (on which, see question 3) often start their criticism with some variation of the phrase 'I'm looking forward to being with my church community as much as the next person...' as if church were essentially about human community.  Don't get me wrong, clearly a church is a human community, and the relational aspect is important.  But do we really just gather on a Sunday to be with people, to share common interests, to participate in shared traditions on a purely human level?  The vertical dimension in all this seems to have gone missing completely, and instead of the church, where Christ is offered from pulpit and table and his people are lifted up in the Spirit to be together with him as they offer their praises, we're left with a club, the Jesus Club.  I am not keen to be a member.

3. How can we disagree well?  I realise I've been rather strident above, and that might cut against my third point.  Oh well.  I am not one of those who thinks that disagreeing well means endless fudge and a desperate effort not to offend anyone.  There are those who can speak in mild tones about things they think are crucially important; I'm afraid I am not one of those people.  But there is one particular instance of disagreement which I have in mind: the public critique of people who are trying to follow their Lord.  If a church in good conscience, and after due consideration, thinks that the dominical command to gather together trumps the current regulations from HMG - by all means argue with them, by all means say they are wrong.  But at the same time, you ought to be saying: I commend these brothers and sisters for seeking to be faithful.  Rather too much of the response I have seen seems to have been intended to distance ourselves from those we fear the world may look on with disapprobation.  That's not right, surely?  Shouldn't we disagree robustly with orthodox believers whilst still being clear that we are with them, even if it damages our reputation in the eyes of the world?

4.  Speaking of reputation, I believe there is an ongoing question along the lines of: how do we bear witness?  My suspicion is that we have got used to a model of commending the gospel by being good neighbours and good citizens; I think that lies behind a lot of the critique levelled against churches meeting despite regulation to the contrary.  And of course, this is a genuine strand in the New Testament.  We are to be good neighbours and good citizens.  But the NT also points to the fact that no matter how good we are in this regard, we will still have a poor reputation, because we follow Christ.  It wasn't possible in the ancient world to decline to worship the pagan gods and still be regarded as a good citizen.  You had to choose.  I think the time of choice is upon us.  You can't be regarded as a good neighbour or good citizen and hold orthodox Christian teaching on sexuality, for example, or a host of other ethical issues.  But more fundamentally than that, you can't bear witness without being weird, without pointing to a whole different value system.  I was trying to express something about that in this post about worship.  I've tried to sum it up on Twitter: the difference between reputation management and witness is that the former requires us to do what the world expects, whilst the latter requires us to expect a new world.

Those are my big four questions.  I don't think we've collectively got answers to them.  As Covid-tide draws to a close over the next six months, I wonder whether we shouldn't pay some attention before the next crisis hits.

Liberty as a human good

I know lots of people are vexed over current restrictions on our lives.  For myself, the frustrations fall into a number of categories: that the rules seem arbitrary; that there seems very little evidence base for many of them; that they show a basic misunderstanding of most of the elements of life they are intended to regulate; that they change in unpredictable fashion for no very obvious reason; that they are inconsistent; that they have been imposed without due scrutiny in Parliament...

I could go on, but I guess that makes it clear where I stand.

I know that we will all have different perspectives on this, and many people will feel that the rules are basically justified even if the detail isn't great; others will feel there should be no rules at all, or perhaps just voluntary guidelines.  I get it.  I have to keep reminding myself that although I try to be informed I am really no expert.  Probably neither are most of you.  So my opinion is just that, and there is no reason it should carry a huge amount of weight, and I won't offer any further comment on it.

Where I do want to comment is at the intersection of church and society, and therefore of theology and politics.  Like many people, pastors have been scrambling to understand the new regulations (and given the constantly moving target, this is an ongoing task).  We've been asking each other questions about how the 'rule of six' affects people arriving at worship services; we've been looking for loopholes that would enable our homegroups to meet for fellowship.  On the whole, what we've found is that the regs make it extremely difficult for us to do anything approaching 'normal church'.

So here's the thing: what is a homegroup?  Well, it's an attempt to create community, to share life, in the particular context of the church.  But community and life-sharing are not activities unique to the church.  In fact, in its community and fellowship the church, in so far as it understands itself, will be aware that it is just being human.  Christ is the Creator, and the Lord of the Church.  In the church, he brings his human creation back to itself, back to normality.  So the church's activities are, in the specific context of the community of faith, just being human.  Which means that we need to realise that if we're being restricted from running our homegroups - and assuming we're not being particularly targeted, which we're not - then something fundamentally human is being restricted.  I think our response then needs to be not looking for loopholes to try to maintain our particular activities, but speaking up for the common human need for community and togetherness.  We need to think more broadly than 'government is getting in the way of our programmes and structures' to see that government is getting in the way of being human.  The liberty to come together as people is a human good.

None of this is to prejudge the question of whether and to what extent government is currently justified in restricting that liberty.  People will have different views on that.  I get it.  I just think we need to consider those views in the broader context.

Theologically, I've seen a lot of people rolling out Romans 13 to argue that we must submit to the state - until or unless the state particularly targets Christians to prevent their witness (in which case, Acts 4:19 kicks in).  I think that represents a truncated view of the biblical stance on the state - it is, perhaps, biblicism, in the sense that it does not take into account the whole of God's revelation in Holy Scripture or the way in which the church has wrestled with the question of the state over the centuries.  In this context, I want to point out that it tends to limit the church's interventions on questions of liberty to those which directly affect us and our activities.  What about a wider, creational concern for humankind?  Does Romans 13 mean we can never protest an unjust decree?  Our theological forebears thought it just to part a king from his head over the question of liberty - and whilst I'm not sure they were right, I don't think we can just quote Romans 13 to say they were wrong.

Again, I want to stress that I'm not saying you ought to come down on one side or the other in terms of the particular justice of the current regulations.  I guess my view is clear, but I know my limitations and I don't expect everyone to agree with me.  All I'm really asking is that we have the conversation in an expanded context.

Leadership

I've written before about my concerns with the preoccupation with leadership in the evangelical constituency of which I am a small part.  I'm seeing a lot floating around on the subject again, much of it a healthy response to the presence of abusive leadership within the churches.  That's good, in so far as it goes, but I do wonder whether the problem runs deeper.  I wonder why we're so obsessed with the idea of leadership in the first place.

I think there is a language problem here, which probably has a conceptual problem behind it.  If I turn to older authors, I find much about ministry, but very little about leadership.  Pastors and elders do not seem to be conceived of as leaders, or at least that is not the main way in which they are conceived.  That broadly reflects the balance of biblical language, where leadership occurs rarely in relation to the church (Hebrews 13 is the main collection of 'leader' words; there is also 'rule' in 1 Timothy 5:17).  We ought perhaps to be asking why we talk so much about leadership when neither Scripture nor Tradition make this a major theme.

Where does it come from, this emphasis on leadership?  My guess is that much of my constituency is based in University towns, and many of the pastors I know cut their teeth in student ministry.  In Christian Union circles, the question of who will lead is often acute; I know that as a UCCF Staff Worker I was often preoccupied with questions of who would lead the committee next year.  'Raising up leaders' in these contexts becomes very important.  I wonder whether 'leadership' models make more sense in parachurch organisations than they do in the church as the household of God; I wonder what that says about parachurch.  Similarly, in large churches with rapid turnover of people (i.e., student churches), the need to find and equip people to lead in the various established programmes of the church makes 'raising up leaders' a constant task.  And of course when you're working with students you are often (but not always) working with people who will, humanly speaking, be leaders in their various spheres.  Why not also in church?

There is a need to invest in next generation of ministers and servants of the church - no doubt.  But I wonder whether the constant talk of leadership, and leadership training, doesn't distort our view of ministry and of church.  Of ministry, of course, because we start to view pastors and elders through a conceptual lens which is not the one primarily employed by the inspired authors; of church, because so much of our energy is directed towards a minority of people.  After all, most people in our churches will never be 'leaders'.  If 'raising up leaders' is a preoccupation, then will we bother with those people?  What does it say to the 'average footsoldier' in the church if our primary goal seems to be raising and equipping leaders?  What does it communicate about their value, the worth of their service?

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that our efforts to root out 'bad leaders' will always be hampered by the fact that the very notion of leadership as we have employed it is bad from the start, and the ecclesiology - and indeed theology proper - that stands in need of such a notion of leadership is seriously wonky.

On worship and being good witnesses

There has been a debate in church circles about whether we ought to be pushing for permission to gather again for worship.  As we move to a point where 'non-essential retail' is allowed to open up, you can see why there are more voices pushing for a quicker pace for churches.  On the other hand, the activities of a church are different from the activities undertaken in a department store; there is a reasonable case to be made that gathering for worship carries more risk of spreading disease than popping to the shops.  Hence the debate.

I don't particularly want to engage in that debate now, although obviously I have opinions.  Instead I want to try to see what's happening behind it.  There are lots of motives one way and the other, but I think the strongest advocates on both sides of the debate are talking about (amongst other things) how we can best bear witness to Christ.  Do we best bear witness to Christ and his kingdom by being good citizens, not scandalising our neighbours by returning to activities they would regard as unsafe (and relatively unimportant), staying at home, staying safe?  A case can be made.  It is loving to make sacrifices for the good of others.  It is right that believers should think about the safety of society.  But on the other hand, might we not best bear witness to Christ and his kingdom by showing that we are ultimately citizens of another country, a heavenly one?  That we don't see safety as the ultimate value?  Again, a case can be made.  Christians ought to have different priorities from the world.  We should be demonstrating that our hopes are not primarily in this life.

So apart from all other considerations - and there are plenty of others which would have to be taken into consideration - thinking only about witness, a case can be made either way.

I regularly come back to these words from the 2nd century letter to Diognetus: "But while they live in Greek and barbarian cities, as each one's lot was cast, and follow the local customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship. (Christians) live in their own countries, but only as non-residents; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners."  Christians participate as citizens, but endure as foreigners.  Which is to be stressed in the current crisis - the participation, or the enduring?  Our standing alongside and with our fellow human beings, or our union with Christ which makes us foreigners wherever we are in the world?

I don't know the answer, but I'll tell you the risk I see whilst we're not gathering.  Corporate worship is the particular event in which we celebrate and remember that the kingdom of God has come in Christ Jesus.  As we together lift up our hearts and minds to heaven by the Holy Spirit within us, we recall that we can do this because heaven came down to us in Christ.  We remember that the kingdoms of this world are passing away, and that the kingdom of God which came in Jesus is also coming with Jesus when he returns.  We nourish ourselves on worship, on the Word, on the body-bread and blood-wine, because we reject the nourishment that this fallen world has to offer - its ideologies, its plans, its spiritualities.  We will take Jesus over them all, because he is Lord over them all.  And because his kingdom is better, his presence is sweeter, his life is life indeed.  So when it comes to witness, our gathered worship is already a testimony that we don't belong here, aren't ultimately invested here, expect nothing good from the setup of this world but all our good from Christ.

Whilst we're not gathering, there is a danger that we will forget this.  It is so easy for Christians to forget the immanent-yet-transcendent kingdom of the enthroned Lamb, and start to identify the kingdom of God with something happening on the plane of this world.  When well-meaning Christians point to all the good works which the church is up to at this time and say 'look, that's the real church', implying that the food banks and the justice ministries are the heart of the matter rather than worship, we are on the very brink of that terrible danger.  The kingdom of God is not to be identified with any social or political movement in this world.  It is not to be identified with governments or protesters against governments; it is not to be identified with the works of the church or the prophetic utterances of her leaders.  (In fact, every truly prophetic utterance will acknowledge and show this).  The kingdom of God is in Christ the King, in heaven, and surely coming quickly.  We need to remember this, and without corporate worship we lose our best reminder.

Don't read this as me arguing for a hasty reopening of the churches.  That's not what it is.  It is a reflection on how quickly and easily we subside from being those crazy people who show by their behaviour that they're really banking on there being a real God, a real resurrection, a genuine eternity - and become instead good citizens, practising our politics (progressive or conservative), doing good works, speaking into society.  In short, we become sane in the eyes of the world, with just a little bit of religion in our morality to which nobody but the hardest humanist could object.  We must be good citizens, of course, but only as foreigners.  Without gathered worship, we need to work extra hard to recall just how much we don't belong.

On running the church, then and now

One of the interesting things about reading John Owen on the question of church is picking up some of the similarities and differences between his situation and ours.  When it comes to the role of elders, Owen has three main things to argue: firstly, that churches should have elders(!); second, that elders should not be put over people without their consent; and third, that elders have real authority to rule and manage the church.  I think it would be fair to say that his stress falls on the first two points, without neglecting the third.

The backdrop, presumably, to this arrangement is a prevalent clericalism and authoritarianism in religious matters.  The semi-reformed state of the Church of England before the Civil War - and in many ways the worse situation after the Restoration - meant that the most familiar form of running the church would have been episcopalianism.  The break with the Roman understanding of the clergy/laity divide had not been made with anything like the decisiveness or clarity required.  So one of Owen's main targets is the parish church, to which a person is legally assumed to belong purely by virtue of their habitation within the boundaries of the parish.  This brings a person of necessity under the rule of a pastor (vicar, priest, whatever) who derives his authority from a bishop - and moreover it does so without the person's consent.

Owen regards this as a form of spiritual tyranny.  Both the singular nature of the pastor - Owen devotes a great deal of space to the importance of having 'ruling elders' alongside him - and the lack of consent make the arrangement entirely illegitimate.

On the other hand, against those on the radical wing - remember that Owen had significant and very negative encounters with Quakers during his time as VC at Oxford - Owen has to assert that elders really do rule (1 Tim 5:17) and have a responsibility for managing the church (1 Tim 3:4-5).  They do this as ministers and not as absolute rulers - they can appeal to people's consciences, but they have no coercive power - and nothing they do is legitimate if it isn't ultimately designed to display Christ's authority and not their own.  Owen maintains that there is no ultimate authority in the church save that of Christ, and elders can only act under him.  Their authority is not inherent in them, but is simply the ministerial exercise of Christ's authority.  (Neither is their authority delegated to them by the congregation; rather, the church, in endorsing elders, recognises Christ's gifting of them and his appointment of them to office).  The limits of their authority are made most obvious for Owen by the fact that anyone can freely withdraw from a local congregation if they judge the elders not to be ruling in Christ's name for the good of his people.  Still, the (delegated, limited) authority of the eldership is maintained.  It is established as a sign of the authority of Christ himself.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.  The clericalism of the past is largely dissipated, and the parish structure has long been bereft of legal force and is now in complete breakdown - the most lively Anglican churches are functionally 'gathered churches' rather than parish churches.  The radicals of Owen's day have largely wandered over the centuries further and further away from orthodoxy, and their heirs barely claim to be Christian anymore.  But the threats to a biblical form of church government haven't gone away: on the one hand, an authoritarianism (usually, let's face it, promoted - perhaps unconsciously - by ministers, but more often that not with the connivance and cooperation of congregations) which exalts the 'man of God' over the congregation, neutering whatever 'lay elders' there may be and leaving all the reins in one pair of hands; on the other hand, a democratisation, which (often by an appeal to the Holy Spirit - cf. the old Quakers) denies the form and order of the church as it is prescribed in Scripture in favour of a kind of free-for-all.

I suspect that in today's climate Owen would have found that he had to lay more stress on his third argument.  So used have we become to democratic mechanisms - and so thoroughly has democracy come to be equated with goodness in our culture - that it is hard to argue for the authority of elders without sounding like you're arguing for authoritarianism.  It's a fine line to tread.

So, in answer to the question 'who runs the local church?' I think I'd want to say something like this:

The Lord Jesus governs his church, being enthroned in heaven and present by the Holy Spirit, and he has established within his church elders, who are to govern as his ministers, with the consent and counsel of the whole congregation.

Plural eldership.  Congregational consent - and counsel, active involvement (Owen doesn't have much to say about this; he is also a product of his time, and has not totally shaken off clericalism).  All in recognition of the fact that Christ rules, in the present, by his Spirit, and that this is the form which he has directed for the government of his people.

Loving the church

If we love Christ, we must love the church.  But how?

The main way in which we are called to love the church is in love towards the members of the particular congregation to which we belong.  (This is obviously to take for granted the very first act of love towards the church, which is to join yourself to a particular congregation!)  That means practical care, and spiritual care - not one without the other!  And spiritual care includes the duty to pray for one another, to encourage one another, and, yes, to rebuke one another where necessary.  All of this is part of love.  We are called to love each member of the church, not because they are lovely, but for the sake of the Lord Jesus, to whom they are united just as we are by faith and the Holy Spirit.  That includes the awkward ones, the ones who wind you up something chronic, and the ones from whom you can expect little return.  That is the calling.

Although this is the front line of love, the place where our love for the church is most tested, I want to suggest that it is not the whole of the duty.  We are to love the members of the church, but the church is more than a group of individuals.  The church is a body, the body of Christ; and that body is manifest both in individual congregations and in the whole of the church throughout space and time.

To love the church as body is to love the church in the things that it does corporately - to love worship, to love the preaching of the word, to love the sacraments, yes, even to love business meetings.  And in the same way that loving an individual does not mean popping into their life when you feel like it, to love the body of the church means to be committed to coming together, not to give up meeting together.  And in the same way that loving an individual does not mean just loving the things about them that you find lovely, to love the body of the church means to participate in those activities that you personally find less attractive, to sing the songs you don't like, to turn up to the prayer meetings that you really struggle with.

And to love the body as it is catholic, that is to say, as it extends throughout time and space, is to love the church in all its messy history and all its messy present.  Not, of course, to love every detail of that history, or that present; there is much sin there.  But to love the church, despite its brokenness and, often, wickedness; to see the church, despite those things, as it is loved by the Lord Jesus.  In practice, to lift our eyes beyond the confines of our own congregation and denomination, and to love the church as it exists in traditions which seem alien to us; to lift our eyes beyond the boundaries of our own culture, and to love the church as it exists in languages and forms which are foreign to us; to lift our eyes beyond our time, and to love the church as it stands in history as the monument to God's faithfulness and constant grace.  To learn from ancient and alien forms, to sing the old hymns and the new songs and the songs from far away.  To consciously stand in union and communion with those who have gone before on the road and those who walk the same road in very different places.

"As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,

in whom is all my delight."

He has spoken

I'm re-reading a bit of John Owen at the moment (On the true nature of a gospel church - volume XVI of his Works, for those following along at home).  Owen is very definitely of his era: a scholastic theologian, meaning that he pushes for precision in every point and is very careful in his analysis; in particular, he milks the Scriptures for every drop of truth he can see in them, and works hard to bring those truths into relation with one another.  It sometimes makes for tedious reading (okay, okay, John - you've made your point), but I basically like it.  There is something in the scholastic instinct which to my mind honours God, by seeking the coherence of his words and works.  "Fear of scholasticism is the mark of a false prophet", as Barth remarks in CD I/1.

Behind Owen's rigour there lies the conviction that God has spoken, and still speaks through the Scriptures; and therefore whatever question is raised in the church it is to the Scriptures that we ought to turn.

I think we've lost that conviction a little bit, or perhaps a lot depending on what circles you move in.  My guess is that it happened like this, although I freely admit I've made no effort to check whether history maps on to this analysis.

In the olden days (that is to say, the 16th and 17th centuries), the three convictions that (1) God has something to say on all points of Christian doctrine, that (2) it is in principle possible with the aid of the Spirit to hear what he says from Scripture, and that (3) it is our absolute duty to listen to, trust, and obey God in every detail of what he says led to the long confessional documents that characterise that era.  These confessions reflect a belief that God has something clear and certain to say about, for example, the extent of the atonement, the precise mode of church government, the proper administration of baptism (to whom, when and how), even the role of the civil magistrate and the limits of state power.  They are, as I mentioned long documents.

The failure to come to a consensus on many of these points in Protestantism, with the multiplication of church associations and the writing of ever more lengthy doctrinal statements, undermined over time the central convictions.  Of course no Protestant - no Christian! - could easily sell out point 3: we certainly have to hear and obey God in everything he says.  But convictions 1 and 2 begin to waver, or at least to function less vitally in the church: perhaps God has not spoken to every detail, perhaps it is not possible for us to reliably read off every detail of what he has said from Scripture.  Of course some theological positions were never committed to these assumptions - to be an episcopalian, for example, you have to assume that the church is given wide latitude to form its own church government, and that means assuming that God has not given direction on the matter (or at least, that he has not done so in Scripture).

Modern evangelicalism is characterised by, amongst other things, its desire to bring Christians who are committed to the Bible together.  This is often achieved by drawing a dividing line through theological issues, splitting them into primary and secondary.  The aim of this division was not, originally, to undermine the claim that God speaks into all sorts of doctrinal questions; the aim was to clarify which doctrines came so close to the heart of the gospel message that to distort or abandon them was to ruin the church's faith and witness.  Those doctrines are classified as primary.  Others, judged less close to the heart of the matter, were judged secondary.  We can talk and argue about them, but we shouldn't divide over them, at least not completely.  (Everyone accepts that practically it is difficult to run a church without agreeing on, for example, who are the proper subjects of baptism; but congregations which disagree on this could still co-operate in mission organisations and local outreach, for example).

This is helpful and commendable; nobody wants to go back to the divisiveness of early modern confessionalism, I hope.  But I suspect that over time it has undermined further our already wobbly convictions.  If we're working with these people, worshipping with these people, it becomes harder to think that their disagreement with us over 'secondary' issues is a matter of them not hearing properly what God says on the topics in question.  It is easier to say that God has not spoken, or at least that he does not speak clearly, on these subjects.  That gives us latitude to fudge them without any sense of disobedience on our part, or any apprehension that our good co-evangelical friends are disobedient.  But this naturally leads to the idea that these 'secondary issues' don't really matter: if they did, God would speak clearly on them.  So rather than work hard (and scholastically) to hear God, we shrug and let everyone go his own way on these things.

The fundamental problem here is that we have stopped listening to God.  That means, in practice, that we are doing what lies in us to prevent the Lord Jesus from governing his church.  (Thankfully, what lies in us is really not very much).  Out of fear of awkward chats, and a disinclination to work hard, think carefully, and be precise, we have done our best to shut out the voice of God.

But he has spoken, and because he has spoken he is speaking; and no topic is beyond the scope of his sovereign speech.  Might it not be better to try to hear and obey him?  If it leads to us having to acknowledge frankly that we think others, whilst we see them as in many ways faithful brothers and sisters, have failed to hear and obey - would that be the end of the world?  And might it not even be helpful if it exposes us to the same sort of critique from them?  Might we not together expect to hear God speak more clearly as we mutually rebuke and exhort each other?

I hope for a future with more scholasticism in this sense, more rigour, more fiery theological debate between people who acknowledge one another to belong to Christ's faithful.  I hope for a future in which God's word rules God's people.  I hope for a future in which the Lion's roar is heard clearly again.

The visible church

The distinction between the visible church and the invisible church plays various different roles in different theologies and ecclesiologies.  Basically the idea is that the church as we see it in the world and in history, the empirical church, is not wholly identical with the church as it exists in the sight and plan of God, the spiritual church.  This distinction may serve to justify the relative impurity of present churches - it sometimes functions, for example, as an argument for mixed congregations in which it is known that many are not living as disciples despite their attachment to 'the church'.  It can also function as an apologetic for the ruined and divided state of the church catholic - the visible church is by schisms rent asunder, but the invisible church is nonetheless one and whole in Christ - which can unfortunately make efforts towards visible unity seem a waste of time.

At one level I think the distinction is certainly necessary.  The New Testament seems to call for it, whenever it acknowledges that there will be eschatological surprises over who ultimately is found to belong to the church.  And it seems inevitable conceptually - I am reminded of Screwtape's advice that the newly converted patient should be put off church by keeping his mind on the deeply unsatisfying reality of his neighbours assembled in church rather than on "the Church as we (demons) see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners."

But does this idea also have dangerous implications?

In The Trinitarian Faith Torrance suggests a particular genealogy for the distinction between the visible and the invisible church.  For some of the early Fathers of the church - he particularly mentions Origen and Clement of Alexandria - there was a similar distinction between the physical/sensible gospel and the spiritual/eternal gospel.  Influenced by Platonic dualism - with its rift between the visible/invisible, temporal/eternal, physical/spiritual, and its clear preference for the latter in each of these dualities - there was a tendency to see the incarnation, in all its visible/temporal/physical nature, as pointing towards a better invisible/eternal/spiritual gospel, of which it was a passing sign.  The danger here for Christology is hopefully obvious, but what if - as Torrance suggests - this is also the source of the idea of a visible and invisible church?  What would be the consequences?

Torrance suggests that this distinction "opened the door for the identification of the real Church with a spiritualised timeless and spaceless magnitude, and for the ongoing life and mission of the empirical Church to be regarded as subject to the laws that control human society in this world." (276)  In other words, the visible church - being no longer regarded as itself the Body of Christ, but only at best as a rough approximation of or signpost to his spiritual Body - is run as if it were just another human society.  The reality that the church - meaning the local congregation here and now - exists because its members have been baptised by one Spirit into the one Body of Christ, through whom they have access together to the Father: all that is lost, or is in danger of being lost.  In practice, the presence and reality of the Spirit with(in) the people of God here and now is downplayed or neglected; human efforts to maintain and organise the church are substituted for a dependence on God's Spirit.

I don't know my Patristics well enough to know if Torrance's account is correct; I find it plausible from the little that I do know.  I wonder what it would look like in our churches to resist this dualism.  A higher doctrine of the church?  Actually, I would guess, an understanding of the church that sees it not as an add-on to the gospel but as an intrinsic part of the gospel.  And then a lived reality of church which leans much more heavily on the presence and work of the Holy Spirit uniting us to Christ in the here and now.

The prophetic voice

As we've just launched into a Lenten preaching series in Jeremiah, I've been thinking a good deal about prophets, and what it means to be prophetic.  There is no doubt in my mind that the church is called to a prophetic ministry, that the church must sometimes speak in the prophetic voice.  But what does that mean?  Jeremiah has been helping me to think it through.

Most fundamentally, before one can speak in the prophetic voice one must adopt (or be placed into) the prophetic posture.  This is basically the position of the humble listener.  What the prophet has to say must first be heard by the prophet.  God's words are put into Jeremiah's mouth; he is a recipient (and sometimes not a particularly enthusiastic one).  It is characteristic of the false prophets whom Jeremiah encounters that they speak without first hearing; they have not stood in the council of the Lord, they have not received his words.  The true prophet is first of all a humble listener, and for the church to speak in the prophetic voice it must first of all be a community which is devoted to the reception of God's word.  That means primarily devoted to Scripture as the one divinely commissioned and inspired witness to God's revelation in Christ.  A prophetic church is a biblical church.

A second thing that struck me about the role of the prophet in Jeremiah is what a vulnerable role it is.  The prophet is entirely without weapons (except the word of God), entirely without defences (except the word of God), and entirely without a solid place to stand (except the word of God).  The priest has his role in the temple, his ancestry, his legally-backed position in society; the prophet has nothing but the word of God.  To speak in the prophetic voice is a venture, a reach, a stretch - into the void, humanly speaking, but for the prophet a step onto the firm foundation of the word of God.  For the church to be prophetic it will need to understand the authority of God's word and have deep confidence in it, so that it can go out in the strength of that word alone, expecting and needing no other resources.  A prophetic church is a bold church.

Then again, one of the key characteristics of the true prophet as we see that role in Jeremiah is speaking unpopular truths.  The false prophet says everything will be fine.  But Jeremiah has to proclaim judgement on sin, the inevitability of the fall of Jerusalem.  He is even driven to call the people to surrender to the enemy, a stance which in time of war look distinctly treacherous.  Because the true prophet has heard God's word, and because he knows he can stand only on that word, he will speak, regardless of the consequences.  The prophetic voice in the church must surely include this aspect: saying what has to be said (and it has to be said not because we think it is important, but because we heard it from the Lord) regardless of the unpopularity of the message.  I think something for me and churches like mine to look out for is a faux-prophetic stance which criticises sins which none of us are particularly guilty of, or only makes those denunciations which will play well in the group to which we belong.  (It is easy for me to critique materialism and greed in the pulpit; the liberal-ish world around us also denounces those things.  What about if I speak against sexual immorality?  Might one test of the prophetic voice be: would this get me thrown into a cistern?)  A prophetic church is a counter-cultural church.

All of which leaves me thinking we have a long way to go.  But...

Most fundamentally a prophetic church is one which looks to Christ, who is in his person the fulfilment and sum of all prophecy, and expects from him the Holy Spirit.  In other words, the prophetic church is empty, and recognises that it cannot possibly be the prophetic church, but needs God to move if anything worthwhile is to happen.

So perhaps we're on the starting block at least.

Our problem

Everything I'm about to write might be completely wrong, and nobody would be more happy about that than me.  But I think I've observed this one big problem with my lot, that is to say evangelical Christians of a relatively conservative persuasion.  The problem is that we misidentify our problem.

Specifically, I think we often assume that our problem is with our borders, and that our centre is sorted.

For example, we assume that we're basically sorted when it comes to Sundays - preaching, worship, that sort of thing - and that the real issue, the thing that is holding us back, is our difficulty with evangelism or apologetics or general engagement with the world.  Or perhaps in the realm of ideas we assume we've basically got a handle on theology, but that we need to work hard at understanding the culture.

Two qualifications.  Firstly, I don't mean that anyone out there is saying, 'hey, I've nailed preaching, no need to work on that anymore'.  But I suspect that most of our work on preaching is basically tinkering.  The same sort of thing, mutatis mutandis, could be said about worship or theology.  Fundamentally we know what we're doing, or at least what we're trying to do.  Second, I don't mean that evangelism and apologetics and cultural engagement aren't important, or that we're doing okay at those things.  They are, and we're not.

But here's the thing.  The church lives from its centre, which is Christ.  In particular, the church lives from the proclaimed word, in which Christ comes to it again and again in the gospel, and draws his people again and again to himself.  That is where the life of the church begins, and begins again and again each Sunday.  Then again, that life of the church flows directly into liturgy, into prayer and praise and adoration.  That is both the immediate outworking of life in Christ and its ultimate goal.  That is the expression of the life of the church.  Then again, theology is the crucial rule of the church, the direction of its life, the mirror in which the church sees itself as a people shaped by union with Christ.

So if there's a problem in the life of the church - specifically, let's say there seems to be a problem with our ability to evangelise the world around us, for that certainly is the great challenge we face and it is a challenge in which we are making remarkably little headway - I would suggest that we ought not to immediately look to the presenting problem, but to the centre.  Is the life of Christ evident in the church?

Practically, do we really know what we intend to do when we stand up to preach a sermon, or sit down to listen to one?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why is so much of our preaching tediously didactic, or dully sentimental?  Where is the power?  Why do we find the sermon over-long when we sit to listen?  Why are we glancing at our watches all the time?

Practically, is our worship an expression of Spirit-fuelled joy, as the Spirit-filled community with Spirit-unveiled faces perceive the glory of Christ?  Do we know what we are doing when we stand up to sing, or sit to pray?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why have we ended up with so much thin liturgy, so little seriousness?  Why does the joy look more like froth, that evaporates quickly into the air, than deep seated contemplation of the beauty of the Lord?  Where are the holy hands uplifted?

Practically, are we sure we've grasped what theology is all about?  Do we know what we're going about when we seek to read and study or to teach?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why does so much of our theology seem either totally untethered from what the church of all ages has believed, or alternatively to be a mere repristination of thoughts someone had in the seventeenth century?  Where is the creative engagement with Holy Scripture?  Why is there such impatience with theological questions, the rush to pragmatic solutions, the inability to see the links between different theological loci and practical church life?

Maybe I'm wrong.  But I do wonder whether instead of looking to our borders we ought to be crying out for renewal from the centre.

He must maintain and defend it

We tell our Lord God plainly, that if he will have his church, he must maintain and defend it; for we can neither uphold nor protect it...

Thus Luther, Tabletalk, 368.

It is a common theme of my musings on Sunday nights and Monday mornings that if God wants to have a church, he is going to have to step in and work.  Whether the Sunday service has gone well or poorly - and I am often a bad judge of that - there is still the realisation that nothing we have done is sufficient.  Nothing we have done can bring it about that spiritually dead people will come to life; nothing we have done will lead by necessary consequence to the strengthening of faith; nothing we have done is adequate to defend those who know the Lord from the attacks of world, flesh, and devil.

Indeed, the church is a very fragile thing.

One of the most helpful applications which I take from the Advent season is simply this: not only does the world need Christ to come to redeem his creation on the last day, but the church needs Christ to come to save his people every single day.  Because God wanted to save his world, he sent forth from the heavens his eternal Word, to become a baby, frail and human.  If God wants to keep his church, he must send forth from the heavens his eternal Word, again and again and again, by his Spirit.  If God wants to grow his church, he must open up the heavens and show forth Christ.

It is a humble but impertinent prayer:

Lord God, you have shown us that we can do nothing without you, either to maintain your honour, display your glory, preserve your church, or advance your kingdom.  In truth, we are nothing unless you send your Word in the power of your Spirit.  And so, we turn to you.  If you desire to have a church, if you desire to draw a people to yourself, if you desire to be glorified in all the earth - you must do it.  Will you do it, please?  Amen.

The old and the new and the church

We must first remember the general truth that when the New Testament speaks of Jesus Christ and His community it really speaks of the goal (and therefore of the origin and beginning) of all earthly things.  Jesus Christ and His community is not an additional promise given to men.  The existence and history of Israel with Yahweh was a promise.  The reality of Jesus Christ and His community does not continue this history.  It is not a further stage in actualisation of the divine will and plan and election which are the purpose of creation.  It concludes the process.  It is the complete fulfilment of the promise.  It is the goal and end of all the ways of God.  It is the eschatological reality.

Thus Karl Barth (in CD III/2, 301).  This passage takes place in a section examining the nature of humanity, and particularly the mystery of marriage, the meaning of which is revealed only through Christ.  (As an aside, it's hard, knowing what we know, to read Barth's profound and deeply moving treatment of marriage as a sign of the gospel.)  But I didn't particularly want to write about that; just to draw out one phrase.

The reality of Jesus Christ and His community does not continue this history.

This got me thinking about one of the things I struggle with in some Reformed thinking, which is the massive emphasis on continuity between the OT and the NT.  To me, it misses something which Barth grasps here.  The history of Israel is a prophetic history, a history which is fulfilled in Christ.  (Barth discusses the significance of the ongoing existence of historical Israel outside the church elsewhere).  But the church is not just another form of Israel, looking back just as Israel looked forward.  The church is an eschatological reality - indeed, "it is the eschatological reality".

This matters.  The change wrought by the presence of Christ is nothing short of the fulfilment of all God's purposes for the world.  All that remains is for the world to come to see this, and to enter in to the enjoyment of it (or not).  The discontinuity between Israel and the church is nothing less than the discontinuity between the old creation and the new.  The church is not just a community of people living in faith and hope and expectation, though of course it is that too; the church as its existence is founded in the reality of Jesus Christ is the new world.  Everything is accomplished, because Christ is not a prophet but the fulfilment of all prophecy - "someone in whom everything is not fulfilled would not be Jesus Christ".

I'd want to qualify that the church is only this eschatological reality indirectly, in its grounding in Christ and not in its own internal being.  That means the reality can be seen only by faith.  And yet the life of the church - and the church only has life in so far as its life is given by the Spirit through its union with Christ - is to stand for, to symbolise, to make visible to those given eyes to see, the eschatological reality that the old world has passed and away, and behold, everything is made new.

History doesn't just trot on.  The Incarnation wasn't a blip in an otherwise unaffected history.  The death of Christ was the end of the world.  The resurrection of Christ was the new creation.

Nothing's the same any more.

The church's greatest need

I stumbled across a website the other day which proclaimed that the greatest need of the church today is a recovery of the historic creeds and confessions - I imagine meaning here primarily the Westminster Confession (it being a Presbyterian source).

Can I just go on record as saying that this is incorrect?

I am a great fan of creeds and confessions.  I have pushed to see the catholic creeds especially reintroduced into church life.  I think that there is much that the present day church can learn from the sixteenth and seventeenth century confessions of faith.  I am excited by a growing emphasis in certain streams at least of evangelicalism on historical theology.  So this is not the cry of a 'no-creed-but-the-bible' sort of person.

But really, greatest need?

The greatest need of the church today, just like the greatest need of the church yesterday, is to hear the living voice of God.  That is to say, what the church really needs is for Christ to be preached from the Scriptures in the power of the Spirit, such that in God's grace the church finds herself addressed, unmistakably, in the here and now, by the eternal God.  The greatest need of the church is to hear the voice of her Lord.

When we read creeds and confessions, we are encountering the church's record of what she thinks she has heard God saying to her.  That is valuable.  It is valuable because the church is made up of sinners, and one thing that sinners consistently do is exalt other voices - and not least the voice of their own hearts! - into the place of God's voice.  Listening carefully to the report of yesterday's church about she heard from God can help today's church to be discerning about whether the voice she is hearing today is really that of the Lord.  It is valuable also because every age tends to absolutise the questions and the concepts and the forms of thinking of that age - and it is a good reminder that God is beyond these things, for has he not spoken to the church of yesterday, with other questions and concepts and forms?

But listening to the report of yesterday's church is not listening to the living voice of God.  And in fact, where it is substituted for that - where study of the Confession takes the place of study of the Scriptures - there we are in danger of elevating the voice of the church to the place of the divine voice.

What the eternal God says is always the same, because his Word is Christ Jesus.  The creeds and confessions help us to evaluate whether we are truly hearing that same Word.  But they can't take the place of that Word.  Because what the eternal God says is also always absolutely new, the Word we can never take for granted, or imagine we have heard sufficiently, or be content to hear second-hand  We need Christ, Christ preached and Christ present.

That is the greatest need of the church.

The church in Holy Week

Not to keep harping on about the same things, but Holy Week surely has something to tell us about the being of the church in the world.

Look, Jesus gets some cheers and some crowds as he enters Jerusalem, presumably mostly from the people who have followed him along the way, but the people of Jerusalem on the whole don't know him and won't have him.  The influential, in particular, are against him.  The cleansing of the temple (which in the Synoptic gospels takes place in Holy Week; not in John, but that's another story) is an action which must surely be deliberately divisive.  The Supper is taken with a small band of disciples, but even here there is a traitor and the group is divided.  Even on the cross, a division is made between a thief who sees and a thief who doesn't, and therefore between life and death.

This, I think is what the author of Hebrews meant: the Word of God is sharply divisive, cutting through all the appearances and shams that we can put up.

There are lots of words in the world, lots of messages, lots of causes.  Some unite people and some divide people.  Most do both in different ways.  But nothing cuts through like Christ crucified.  Here is the divine scalpel, which penetrates our individual existences, right to the heart, slicing away me from me.  All the other divisive-uniting words exist within the system and complex of human words.  They are relatively divisive, but they work because they recognise that underneath there is a commonality; the divisions are not essential, the wound is not mortal, the crisis is not existential.  Not so the Word of God.  Here is the Man from Without, the God who has stepped Within.  Here is division that goes all the way down.

What about the church, though?  Many churches delight to be, or aspire to be, at the centre of their communities.  But can the church speak the Word which divides from that place?  We want to serve our communities, but if our service means giving people what they already recognise as good, how are we serving the Word?