Rethinking Church #3: The Church is God’s Act

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What are the essential features of the thing we call “church”? Of course, most of us already have an idea of what “church” means—from the Bible, history, and our own experience. However at this point in the series I am asking everyone to place all those images aside to join me in rethinking the concept from the foundation up. How shall we proceed? Where shall we look to find the essential features of the church?

To get us started, let me make an assertion that I may need to modify later: we will find the essence of the church in its origin as documented in the New Testament. Perhaps we can learn more about the full implications of those essential features as the church takes different forms in different cultures and historical eras, but I am working with the assumption that its essence existed from the beginning and has not changed.

The most basic essential feature of the church is its origin in God. In Ephesians 1, we read about the grand story of salvation in Christ, from the depths of eternity (1:4, 11) to the gathering into unity of all things in Christ (1:10). At first, Paul speaks of the objects of God’s great love as “we” and “us” (1:3-10), but soon he begins to include those whom he calls “you” (1:11-18). Toward the end of the chapter Paul combines the “we” and “you” into a new “us” (1:19) that he calls “God’s holy people” (1:18) and “the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (1:22-23).

The church is God’s idea, God’s choice, and God’s act. God created it to achieve his purpose according to his plan. The church—whatever else it is—is the divine act of gathering all the scattered pieces of creation into unity in Christ by the power of the Spirit (Eph 1:13). We need to think of the word “church,” then, not merely as a noun designating an entity but as a verb describing an action. God is churching the broken, mutually hostile, and fragmented world. It will make clearer sense if we ignore the English word “church,” with its accumulated connotations, for a moment and think of the Greek word ekklesia, which means a gathering of people, an assembly. A gathering must be gathered by someone for some purpose. In reference to the church, God is the subject of the verb “gathering” and the gathering (the church) is the object.

In rethinking church, then, we must rid ourselves of any view of the church that in theory or practice displaces God as the primary actor and replaces him with human actors. The “gathering,” the “uniting” of all things in Christ that we call the “church” is God’s decision, choice, plan, and work. God is churching (reconciling) the world in Christ (2 Cor 5:19). The church is not our plan or project. It’s not for us to determine its purpose or measure its success. And its purpose is way beyond our power to make happen.

If we forget this essential feature of the church and try to “make it happen” by our own power, we may indeed achieve great things measured by human standards. We may build huge, wealthy, and influential institutions. We may entice crowds of people to say the right words. But only God can gather the scattered pieces of creation into unity in Christ. Our task is to let ourselves be churched by God. It is to believe, speak, and act only in harmony with the crucified and risen Christ empowered by God’s Spirit. Do we believe God can do this? Do we have the courage to let God be the primary actor is this event we call “church”? Can we be satisfied with what God does and the way he does it?

Next Time: the church is Christomorphic in form and Cruciform in action.

Rethinking Church #2 Where to Begin?

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I like to get to the bottom of things. I am not satisfied until I see how a claim is properly derived from a foundation that cannot be further analyzed. I know I am not alone in this desire, but I’ve been told that I am more obsessed with it than many others. So, let’s methodically clarify the essence of the thing we call church.

When something provokes us to take an interest in a thing and seek greater understanding, our minds begin sorting things, making distinctions, and seeing relationships we had not noticed before. One such distinction turns on the difference between the essential features of a thing and its accidental features. Conceptually, there is a very clear distinction between the two even if it’s difficult to apply to a real thing with precision. If you add or remove an accidental feature of a car, flower, or human being, these things still exist. But if you destroy an essential feature of a thing, it no longer exists. Aristotle said that a human being is essentially a “rational animal.” A human being can be short or tall, male or female, and brown or white. But if you remove life or rationality from a thing, it ceases to be a human being. Likewise distinguishing between the essential and the accidental properties of the church is one way to begin rethinking church.

Adding or subtracting accidental features from a church does not cause it to cease being the church. However removing an essential feature would destroy its churchly existence completely. What is left is not the church at all. As an example, let’s pick something uncontroversial. Whether a church meets in a public building, a private dwelling, or in a cave, makes no difference to its existence as a church. However, a “church” without faith in Jesus Christ is not a church at all. It is something else.

We need to exercise great care and humility in applying the essence/accident distinction to the real world church. Reading church history and observing the contemporary church demonstrates the great diversity in how this distinction has been applied. Many controversies, some of them bitter, find their origin in this diversity of application:

1. For it is possible to mistake an accidental feature for an essential one, expanding greatly the number of “essential” features.

2. Or at the opposite extreme, essential features can be treated as optional.

3. Or in a third possibility, one may burden the church with so many and such extraneous accidental features that it makes it almost impossible to live out its essence.

4. Or again, perhaps one could be so insistent that the church refrain from adding any accidental features that it cannot adapt to circumstances and can carry out its mission effectively in the real world.

Numbers 1, 3, and 4 retain the essential features of the church despite their excesses, deficiencies, and misplaced priorities. Only number 2 ceases to be the church at all. Given the possibilities for mistakes and the absence of the perfect alternative, you can see why I want to approach the question of the essence of the church cautiously, methodically, and with humility.

Next Time: The first and most fundamental essential feature of the church is its divine origin.

Rethinking Church: Introducing A New Series

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All writing is to some extent autobiography. The series I begin today is especially so. It arises out of my own struggle to understand the nature and place of the church in the world and my relationship to it. I write to articulate my feelings and clarify my thinking on this subject and perhaps to help others to a similar clarity. I don’t know in advance what I will say or at what destination I will arrive.

Like many of you, I don’t remember a time when I was not held within the embrace of the church. She was to me a mother, teacher, and guardian. She taught me about creation, Abraham, Daniel, and most of all about Jesus. And I loved her for it. From early childhood I felt a call to ministry in the church. I listened to that call, got the required training, and served churches for ten years in preaching, youth ministry, and college ministries. After I completed my PhD, I began teaching theology at the university level and served in volunteer leadership roles in local churches. Except as a small child, I don’t think I was ever naïve about the weaknesses and sins of the people that comprised the church. But I hoped that with the strong leaders and good teachers these problems could be managed so that more good than harm would be done.

About ten years ago, after many frustrating attempts to simplify church life and bring it more into line with the simple New Testament vision, I began to realize that the structures, ingrained expectations, and traditions that guided the church were able to neutralize and domesticate any effort at systemic reform. I tried to make peace with this situation and resign myself to working within a broken system to achieve some good. However, about five years ago I began to entertain the idea that the traditional ways churches organize themselves is the major obstacle to embodying authentic church life in the world. About three years ago I came to the conclusion that most of the institutions we call “churches” are really parachurch organizations, much of the “church work” we do focuses on making something happen on Sunday morning, and much of the money given goes to pay a staff to keep the parachurch functions running.

So, here I am on birthday (June 01), a child of the church and a theologian of the church, having to rethink everything I ever thought about the nature and place of the church in the world and my relationship to it. I invite you to join me in this project.

Next time: forget everything you have ever thought about the church. Get rid of all images. What is the essential nature of the thing the New Testament calls, “church”?

Science Is Not On Anyone’s Side—Because It Has No Conscience, No Politics, No Religion, No Heart, and No Soul

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Some problems are difficult to solve. So many factors come into play, so many unknowns are…well…unknown. Private interests and preferences exert their influence. Entrenched social identities—class, race, gender, etc.—determine in advance which proposals get a hearing. Interminable arguments ensue with no obvious path to clarity and consensus in sight. Better to stay out of such quarrels.

However, some seemingly difficult problems have very simple solutions. And I want to deal today with one such a problem: Advocates of all sorts of causes claim that science is on their side. People on the other side are anti-scientific. They ignore the “facts,” and don’t follow the path charted by science. The solution to this problem is hiding in plain sight: in title of this essay. Science is not on anyone’s side! Because science has no conscience, no politics, no religion, no heart, and no soul. It supports no causes.

Allow me to use words I wrote a few years ago to explain why science doesn’t care about your causes—or mine:

Natural science seeks to make understandable the relationship of one set of empirical phenomena to another set of empirical phenomena by means of law-like generalization(s) or postulated causal relations or some other theoretical mediation. All of these mediating principles may be reduced to patterns of empirical phenomena. Or, if the theory refers to unobservable entities, these entities are still physical and manifest themselves in observable phenomena. This is the nature and the limit of natural science, whether physics, chemistry, biology, geology, or paleontology. Natural science studies the relationships within the created world among empirical phenomena, that is, the perceptions or sense data received through the five senses (The Faithful Creator, 2015).

Natural science does one thing. It describes and explains the empirical world in empirical terms. It speaks no other language and understands none. It adheres to no morality and supports none. It treasures no policy preferences and cares nothing for ours. It contemplates happiness or sadness, war or peace, and love or hate with equal indifference. Its methods and goals are the same whether studying the effects of poison or medicine. It can produce weapons of mass destruction or seek ways to feed the world’s hungry with equal efficiency. It doesn’t care. Science can count how many people die this year from infectious diseases and explain how, but it does not care in the least. It does matter to science how long you live, how happy you are, or how virtuous you become. Saint or devil, science makes no distinction. Why? Because it doesn’t care about anything! It can’t. Caring is not part of the scientific method. Its goal is to explain, not to heal or kill. comfort or torture.

So, get clear on this: whoever you are, whatever your cause, however passionate your devotion, science is not on your side. Because science doesn’t take sides! If you want to explain one set of empirical data with reference to another set of empirical date, science can help. But if you have a moral, political, religious, or esthetic question, don’t look to science for answers. It would be like asking a freeway sign whether you ought to vacation in Los Angeles or Miami. It won’t work, because…

Like freeway signs, science has no conscience, no politics, no religion, no heart, and no soul!

Atonement Book–Help Me Choose a Title

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Dear Friends:

I haven’t been writing essays for this blog for a while. That’s because I’ve been trying to finish my latest book. It’s been over 5 years in the making, but I am almost finished! Within a week or two I will turn it over to my publisher, Cascade Press.

I’d like your help in choosing a title.

This book is about how Jesus saves human beings from everything that keeps us from becoming what we were created to be, that is, true images of God. In traditional terms, Jesus saves from sin, death, and the devil. I argue that the traditional and still popular evangelical doctrine of penal substitution—that God punished Jesus instead of us—is wrong and incomprehensible to our contemporaries, church or unchurched The liberal Protestant theory that Jesus “saves” only through the influence of his example is also wrong. That theory is too weak to deal the power of sin, evil, and death that dominates our world. I argue that Paul—and the church fathers Irenaeus and Athanasius—thought differently about the atonement. They see the atonement as recreating humanity and uniting us to God through Jesus’s life, activity, death and resurrection. The traditional theological terms for this way thinking are theosis—a Greek word meaning the process of becoming God or God-like—and recapitulation. That is, Jesus repeated or summed up the history of broken humanity and got it right. He rewrote history so that—to put it in common speech—it has a happy ending. And that happy ending is that we are raise to such glory that the church fathers called it deification. That is, we are given divine qualities like immortality, glory, and incorruptibility, to use Paul’s list in 1 Corinthians 15.

The titles below reflect my indecision between titles that use the vocabulary of theology and those with more popular appeal.

Titles that appeal to the theologically literate:

  1. The Second Adam: Atonement Theology Beyond Penal Substitution
  2. The New Adam: Atonement Theology Beyond Penal Substitution
  3. The New Adam: Why the Early Church Got the Atonement Right and Evangelicals and Liberals Get it Wrong
  4. The Atonement: Why Paul, Irenaeus, and Athanasius Got it Right and Evangelicals and Liberals Get it Wrong

Titles that appeal also to the non-theologically literate reader:

  1. A New Beginning: How Jesus Rescues Us from Sin, Death, and the Devil
  2. A New Beginning: How Jesus Removes Our Guilt, Heals Our Wounds, Defeats Our Enemies, and Raises Us to Glory

Which of these titles do you think would make someone want to read this book?

Thanks for your help!

RCH

We Do Not Fear Death—For Christ is Risen

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As a child, Athanasius (296–373) lived through the infamous Diocletian persecution, which began in 303 and ended in 313 with the Edict of Milan. With the memories of those dark days etched in his memory, he wrote about the change that has come over the world since the resurrection of Christ:

Death used to be strong and terrible, but now, since the sojourn of the Savior and the death and resurrection of His body, it is despised; and obviously it is by the very Christ Who mounted on the cross that it has been destroyed and vanquished finally. When the sun rises after the night and the whole world is lit up by it, nobody doubts that it is the sun which has thus shed its light everywhere and driven away the dark.

Equally clear is it, since this utter scorning and trampling down of death has ensued upon the Savior’s manifestation in the body and His death on the cross, that it is He Himself Who brought death to nought and daily raises monuments to His victory in His own disciples. How can you think otherwise, when you see men naturally weak hastening to death, unafraid at the prospect of corruption, fearless of the descent into Hades, even indeed with eager soul provoking it, not shrinking from tortures, but preferring thus to rush on death for Christ’s sake, rather than to remain in this present life? (Athanasius, Incarnation of the Word 29).

Death use to be powerful and intimidating. We hid our faces from its glance and trembled at its threats. It owned us. We obeyed its every command. But as Athanasius reminds us, the resurrection of Jesus deprived death of its terror and strength. Jesus frees us from its hold: “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body  and after that can do no more” (Luke 12:4).

Fear of death is the root and essence of every other fear. If you fear death, you are the slave of those who hold the power of death. But Jesus exposed death as powerless. It cannot defeat God’s love for us! What, then, is left to fear? Poverty or prison? Frowns or whispers? Pandemic or famine?

Name your fear, my friends, whatever it is. Face it, and say to it, “I do not fear you! For I do not fear death your master! I do not fear death! I do not fear death! For Christ is risen!  He has risen indeed!”

Professor of Theology Interviewed

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I have been off line for a few months. I have poured all my energy into my latest book The Second Adam. This book arises from experiences like this: a few years ago I asked my students what they would say to a non-churchgoing person if they asked a question like, “What do you Christians mean when you say that Jesus died so that your sins could be forgiven?” My students looked at me with blank stares. They knew what you are supposed to feel when you hear those words, but they could not explain what you are supposed to think. My book is an effort to help my students and others to have something intelligent and persuasive to say in this situation.

Perhaps I will blog about the book next year…

In the mean time I hope you will listen to an interview wherein my friend and former student Tim Spivey, pastor of the New Vintage Church in Escondido, CA and I enjoyed a conversation on truth, faith and contemporary culture during the teaching time at New Vintage on November 3, 2019.

Share it with those whom you think would benefit from listening to it.

Message: “A Conversation About Faith and Truth with Ron Highfield” from Tim Spivey

 

 

The Logic of Social Suicide

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Cultural observers are saying that we live in a time of increased division and social strife. Political discourse has degenerated into name calling, distorted quotes, misrepresentation, deep fakes, down right lies, betrayal, opportunism, insincere and impossible promises, and catchy sound bites. Some people blame the current president and others the former one. Still others blame the Electoral College, the corrupt media, the schools and universities, the coastal elites or the common folk of fly-over country, the churches, or social media. However I’d like to propose a different diagnosis: modern society is built a foundation of sand. Within its genetic makeup there is a principle of dissolution that will enviably work its own destruction.

The Killer Gene

In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas argued that, in order to be just, human laws must be based on the moral law, which in turn is based on the eternal law of God’s being and will. Moral law is vastly more expansive and radical than human law. But human law should conform to the moral law in so far as it is possible to enforce without doing more harm than good. And some aspects of the moral law are not humanly enforceable. Hence there will never be a human society that is governed wholly by the moral or eternal law.

Modern political thinkers in the 1600s shifted the legitimating basis of human law from moral and eternal law to a human agreement or contract made for mutual benefit. The fundamental principle in this theory is individual liberty, which can be limited only by the liberty of others. In 1860, John Stuart Mill put it this way: laws should allow maximum liberty and exclude only behaviors that cause harm to others. Or in the language of popular culture, “You should be able to do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.” Hence modern society recognizes no moral principle above human desire. An individual’s desires can be legitimately limited in law only by the desires of other individuals. Laws function to harmonize the conflict of desires.

Contemporary society accepts and builds on the modern understanding of the function of law, but it moves two steps further. (1) It transforms the legal principle of maximum liberty in pursuing desire into a moral principle. Originally, the principle of maximizing liberty was proposed as a rule for making laws. It was not proposed as a moral principle to bind and guide the conscience; for it had no advice about what is good and right. It was not concerned with virtue and vice but with harmful behaviors. But contemporary society views pursuing one’s desires and approving of others’ pursuit their desires as a moral duty or even a sacred duty. It is good and right to pursue whatever one desires as long as you celebrate as good and right whatever other people want to pursue. And if you disapprove of others’ choices you are violating your moral duty and have become a bad person deserving of condemnation. Unlike legislated law, which is limited to legal judgments about enforceable rules, morality is all-encompassing. Negative judgments can be made about the character and the otherwise legal behavior of others. One can show one’s moral disapproval in words and behaviors that are not illegal and do not have the force of law: protest, shunning, boycotts, and various forms of verbal “calling out.”

(2) The second step contemporary society takes beyond the original maximum liberty principle is this: after expanding the maximum liberty principle from the legal to moral sphere, contemporary society begins the process of reverse transferal. It is so outraged by the legal but “immoral” behavior of those who do not conform to its new morality that it demands that its morality be legislated into law. The quest for individual liberty circled around to become suppression of individual liberty. The very ones who protested so loudly against imposing morality on others now demand that their morality be imposed on everyone. What began as an effort to reduce the sphere covered by laws and increase private liberty has become the cry for more laws and less liberty. The protest against moralist and judgmental attitudes has become moralistic and judgmental. The limited legal sphere became the unlimited moral sphere, which returned as the unlimited legal sphere!

Conclusion

When a society founds itself on individual desire as its sacred principle and basic moral good, it has already set its trajectory toward failure. Human desire is unprincipled, omni-directional, and chaotic. Human beings in their curiosity can desire anything! Human desires conflict with each other and with the desires of others.  It should not be surprising, then, that contemporary people cannot engage in civil discussion about important topics, because, according to contemporary theory, all speech arises from and aims at fulfillment of individual desires.  Where there is no truth and reason is not honored, alliances are possible but agreements are not.

Forgiven? How Do We Know?

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My academic teaching and writing require me to consider all aspects of Christian teaching and theology. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the atonement, that is, the meaning of Christian confession that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). In the past year I’ve read thousands of pages looking for insight into this great theme. In the semester just completed my students and I spent five weeks reading and discussing N.T. Wright’s book The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. What events led the first believers to view Jesus’s death as a saving event? What do Paul and other New Testament writers mean when they say that Jesus died for us? How does his death deal with our sin? These questions and many more have been on my mind for months.

In a chapter for a book I am currently writing I briefly discuss seven theories of the atonement: (1) The Ransom Theory, which says that Jesus offered his soul to the devil in exchange for all human souls; (2) The Christus Victor Theory which says that by dying Jesus defeating the evil forces that hold us in the miserable condition of slavery, weakness, deception, corruption and death; (3) The Recapitulation Theory, which says that by living through all stages of human life, including death and resurrection, and getting it right Jesus undoes Adam’s wretched history and gives humanity a new start; (4) The Deification Theory, which argues that the Son of God by living a full human life, dying and rising, makes his divine life available to all who become united to him; (5) Satisfaction Theory in which Jesus’s death in our place pays the debt we incurred by offending God’s dignity and honor in our disobedience; (6) The Penal Substitution Theory in which Jesus voluntarily endures the just punishment merited by human violation of God’s eternal law; and (7) The Moral Influence Theory in which God’s love demonstrated on the cross provokes our repentance and evokes our love in return.

While meditating on this subject day and night for a year, something dawned on me. I asked myself this question: why do I believe I am forgiven? Why do I believe God loves me and extends me grace? Why do I believe I am free from the power of sin, death and the devil? Why do I believe God gives me a new beginning every day…that I do not need to carry a burden of guilt? What is the bottom line my assurance?

It’s not because I deserve it! If we could deserve it, we wouldn’t need forgiveness in the first place. Also—and here is the main point—it’s not because one or more of these seven theories of the atonement makes everything clear to me. In my view, each of them points toward a truth, but each is also troublingly obscure in some way. So, here is my bottom line: I believe that God’s loves me, that I am forgiven, and that God is my Father because Jesus said so. And I believe Jesus told the truth in all sincerity because he sealed his word with his blood. And I believe Jesus knew the truth of the matter because God raised him from the dead and placed his own seal on the new covenant.

Perhaps there are more reasons, more profound explanations of the atonement, more nuanced treatments of the justice and mercy of God…but this is my bottom line. When my best reasoning fails to bring peace to my heart, I cling to Jesus’s words: “Do not be afraid; you (Ron…and Susan and James) are worth more than many sparrows!” (Luke 12:7).

 

Justice Talk…Confusion Everywhere

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These days everybody is talking about justice: social justice, racial justice, gender justice, economic justice, environmental justice and so on. Activists organize marches, protests, petitions and boycotts. Some even do violence in the name of justice. And yet, I have never heard an activist explain what they mean by justice.

Do they mean “equality”?

Equality is a clear concept in the abstract. But equality in actuality is impossible, which means its advocates would need to explain what aspects of life they wish to make equal and why. To avoid the appearance of arbitrariness, they would need to appeal to other principles to justify these modifications to the equality principle. It deserves mention that the bare notion of equality possesses no moral force. You can treat people equally whether you treat them well or poorly. People can be equally rich or poor, dead or alive, in prison or not. Hence the concept of equality cannot carry the full weight of the concept of justice, for justice possesses a moral force that equality does not. We are no closer to understanding what the activist means by justice.

Do they mean “fairness”?

What does “fairness” mean? Usually, fairness means that a rule-defined activity—a baseball game, a legal system or a system of economic exchange—is conducted according to rules, equally applied to all participants. Fairness, like equality, is a clear concept. But it has an advantage over equality in that it can be applied in practice. But fairness concerns the equal application of the rules and does not concern itself with the outcome of the activity. Justice understood as fairness means only that the winners and losers, win or lose “fair and square.” Fairness does not address more the fundamental questions: “Are the rules fair?” “Is the game fair?” “Is the system fair?” Surely contemporary justice activists are not marching for simple fairness!

Do justice activists mean to explain justice by the concept of “giving everyone their due”?

Clearly, this definition also needs explaining. How do you determine what is due a particular individual or group? This is clear only if such rights and privileges are specified in statutory law, common law or custom. Apart from appeals to law, claims of being “due” some right or privilege have no more moral force than saying, “I want this thing, and I feel I deserve it.” Even if activists can appeal to statutory law or acknowledged custom to justify a claim, this fit between a claim and the law cannot serve as an adequate definition of justice. Most of us think laws can possess or lack the quality of justice. And justice activists often protest against laws they claim are unjust. Still, they offer no explanation of what justice is or how we can gain knowledge of it. All the definitions of justice given above merely move in a circle and never arrive at a self-evident concept.

Why invoke justice, if they don’t know what it is?

Invoking the concept of justice, if it is to be effective, asks others to submit to an objective and universal norm that trumps all private interests. However, invoking the quasi-sacred and transcendent ideal of justice is no guarantee that activists understand or seek justice. For it is very useful to maintain the appearance of seeking justice even when seeking one’s private interests. One simple test of whether people are serious about universal justice is whether or not they apply it consistently and rigorously to themselves.

Why justice talk goes no where

There’s no such thing as justice. Justice is a relation, not a substance, a thing that exists somewhere. Justice/injustice is a relation between an action and a law that applies to that action. Or more specifically, it is a relation of a human action or law to the moral law intrinsic to the created order. Ultimately, justice is a relation of fit between an action and the eternal divine law. God alone is justice itself. In God alone is justice an actuality, a substance, a thing. Apart from its actual existence in God, justice is merely an endless series of relations of fit between groundless assertions of right and privilege. To seek actual justice is to seek God, and to seek God is to do God’s will and embody God’s character in this world so full of injustice and godlessness.

Note: I have written several essays dealing with justice on this blog. If you are interested in reading more, search the blog using the key word “justice”.