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.

Material, not just formal, unity

These are bewildering times for Christians seeking to live faithfully to Christ, under his authority.  I think they are times which require us to rethink our approach to a number of things, not least how we understand Christian unity.

The approach to Christian unity which has characterised evangelicalism rests, I think, particularly on a formal principle: the authority of Scripture.  We can unite with people who share our commitment to the authority of Holy Scripture.  There is a lot of sense in this.  Whilst we can have a conversation with all sorts of people, there is no likelihood of agreement where there is no common commitment to a way of knowing.  Disagreements between people who are equally committed to Scripture at least have some hope of resolution, and an agreed way (in principle) of reaching that resolution: we read and study and debate Scripture together.  Take away that formal agreement - either by taking away the commitment to Scripture, or by adding to it another authority - and material agreement becomes much more difficult, perhaps even impossible.  At the very least, we are having a different sort of conversation if we're talking to someone who isn't happy to follow us into the Bible for answers, and who isn't pre-committed to accepting and submitting to those answers if they're satisfied that they really are biblical.

And so the authority of Scripture is a sensible rallying point.  But it has never been the case that commitment to this formal principle alone is sufficient for Christian unity.  There have always been heretics who claim to hold to biblical authority, and even make an impressive show of deference to the Bible.  Leaving actual heresy aside, even amongst mutually acknowledged Christians there are limits to how much practical unity we can have purely on this formal basis.  And so we qualify our basis for unity: we have unity with those who take Scripture as their authority (the formal principle) within certain bounds (and here we are introducing material beliefs).  Normally for evangelicals that means there is a minimalist statement of faith which we look to as a standard; and so long as people subscribe our minimum standard,  and remain committed to the formal principle, we allow latitude on a whole bunch of issues.

And here's where it gets tricky.  Our minimum standards don't tend to address the hot-button issues of the day, like racism or human sexuality.  The latter in particular is becoming a significant dividing line amongst professing Christians, and it isn't addressed in our evangelical standards.  So what do we do?  Typically we fall back here on the formal principle: you have to believe what the Bible says about sexuality.  We turn it from a material issue (about theological anthropology, say) into a formal issue (about the authority of the Bible).  But this raises two issues.  Firstly, what do we do when people on the other side of the debate claim to be submitting to the authority of Scripture?  We can debate them, in that case, on biblical grounds, and hope to persuade them of our reading of Scripture, but in the meantime is this an 'agree to disagree' situation?  I don't see how it can be.  Second, if this is in fact a fracture point, do we understand why it is so significant?  Why must we divide over this disagreement about the interpretation of Scripture, but not over so many other things which we have (for the sake of unity) designated 'secondary issues', outside the scope of our doctrinal statements?

Here is a difficult thing: we don't want to divide over issues like baptism (who, when, how), or church government, or our understanding of eschatology, but we will divide over sexuality.  Doesn't it sound like we're just cherry picking issues?  Might it not seem as if this is driven basically by homophobia rather than doctrine?  Why, after all, pick this issue as the line?  It will not do to claim that sexual ethics is more important or central - more important than baptism, "which now saves you"?  (Elevating anthropology and ethics above the church and soteriology is not a great way to go, I think).  I am also not convinced it will do to claim that Scripture speaks more clearly on this issue - I think it is also perfectly clear on baptism!

It seems to me that the way forward is a renewed confessionalism, which will show that our formal principle is not merely formal, but carries material content.  That is to say, we need to be able to show that Christian doctrine does not proceed in two stages - first sorting out the source of doctrine in Scripture and then moving on to what the Bible actually says.  Rather, we need to show that our commitment to Scripture and its authority is part of a whole view of God's being and activity; that it already carries with it material content; that the nature of Scripture and its place within the dispensation of grace entails a particular way of reading.  We need a thicker, more substantial doctrine of Scripture, along with a broader confession of Christian truth that goes beyond the bare minimum.  Nobody wants to build higher fences unnecessarily, but I'm not sure we have any other option if we want to maintain Christian orthodoxy in our churches.