Manifold Witness : The Plurality of Truth [1 ed.] 9781426729508, 9780687491957

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“Why is there a Trinity of persons and a quartet of Gospels? Do not relation and difference, context and plurality lie at the very heart of the Christian tradition? Is not the infinite resourcefulness of love enhanced by change and alterity? These are the kinds of questions that John Franke addresses in a bold, sweeping, and lucid presentation of the ongoing renewal of the life of the church. Manifold Witness is the fruit of a tenacious faith in the Christian tradition and a no-less-tenacious faith in the power of truth.” —John D. Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities at Syracuse University and author of What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church

“With clarity, grace, and practical insight, John Franke argues convincingly that the plurality of witnesses in Christian tradition is not a hindrance but a gift that rescues us from both the rigid dogmatism that constricts God’s truth and the ‘anything goes’ pluralism that trivializes it.” —Danielle Shroyer, pastor of Journey Church in Dallas, Texas, and author of The BoundaryBreaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise

JOHN R. FRANKE is the Lester and Kay Clemens Professor of Missional Theology at Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.

ISBN-13: 978-0-687-49195-7 90000

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Cover Image © Bettman/Corbis/Ilustration of the Constellations Cover Design by John R. Robinson

780687 491957

FRANKE

“John Franke’s Manifold Witness is the most Reformed book I have ever read. Why? It is the first I have read that not only believes the human mind has been impacted by the Fall but also that carries this through into how the Bible makes truth claims. We need manifold witnesses because, as humans, no one author can grasp the whole Story. If it takes a village to nurture a child, it takes the manifold voices of the Bible and the church to nurture the church. Boldness, braced up by humility, marks every page of this book.” —Scot McKnight, Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies, North Park University and author of A Community Called Atonement

MANIFOLD WITNESS

“A refreshing study of plurality and diversity as something intrinsic to the nature of Christianity rather than as something extraneous to it. Lucid and lively, the book makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion about the religion’s emerging profile in the twenty-first century. I am entirely in agreement with John Franke that faith is embodied, that theology is rooted in practice and experience, and that the gospel shapes and is shaped by culture. Manifold Witness tracks the manifold trails of Christianity’s impact on persons and societies. It should find welcome response in theological study and teaching.” —Lamin Sanneh, Professor of World Christianity and Director, World Christianity Initiative, at Yale Divinity School, Professor of History at Yale University, and author of Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture and Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity

More praise for Manifold Witness: “I am grateful to John Franke for this bracing and bold theological account of plurality and truth. It expanded my imagination, gave me words I have long been looking for, and is helping me understand God and the church better and more faithfully. Grazie mille, John.” —Lauren F. Winner, Duke Divinity School, author of Girl Meets God “An honest, passionate, engaging, and spirit-raising book! Franke’s humble, bold articulation of the crux of the emerging church conversation, centered on the Bible and tradition, is confessional yet inclusive. He genuinely celebrates the gifts of the plurality of the church in diverse witnesses and the unity of the reconciling love of God in Jesus’ mission.” —Andrew Sung Park, Professor of Theology at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio “I cannot think of a more imporant nor relevant topic than the nature of Truth, with a capital T. It shapes and influences how we think, believe, and act. In a world of competing truth claims it is easy and common to end the conversation by retreating to our own familiar tradition. John Franke wants us to do more, to think deeply and faithfully about a wonderfully provocative notion, the plurality of truth. This book will be an invaluable resource for preachers and teachers.” —John Buchanan, Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, and Editor/Publisher of The Christian Century “Manifold Witness will truly help Christians committed to the apostolic faith understand that a plurality of views and interpretations, rather than contradicting that faith, stands at its very core!” —Justo L. González, author of A Concise History of Christian Doctrine and A History of Christian Thought

More titles in the Living Theology series

A COMMUNITY CALLED ATONEMENT Scot McKnight

NATURE’S WITNESS: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith Daniel M. Harrell

Connect and keep talking at the Emergent Village website (www.emergentvillage.com)

ABINGDON PRESS Nashville

MANIFOLD WITNESS THE PLURALITY OF TRUTH Copyright © 2009 by Abingdon Press All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission can be addressed to Abingdon Press, P.O. Box 801, 201 Eighth Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37202-0801, or e-mailed to [email protected]. This book is printed on recycled, acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Franke, John R. Manifold witness : the plurality of truth / John R. Franke ; foreword by Brian D. McLaren. p. cm. — (Living theology) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 978-0-687-49195-7 (binding: pbk., adhesive-perfect : alk. paper) 1. Church—Unity. 2. Truth—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title. BV601.5.F73 2009 262.001'1—dc22 2009019816 Scripture unless noted otherwise is taken from the Holy Bible, TODAY’S NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 2001, 2005 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of the International Bible Society. Scripture quotations noted NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18—10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In memory of Stanley J. Grenz (1950–2005)

Contents

Introduction to Living Theology by Tony Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Foreword by Brian D. McLaren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv 11. Do You Believe in Truth? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 12. Plurality and Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 13. The Historic Christian Faith? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 14. Community, Tradition, and the Emerging Church . . . . . . . 31 15. Jesus, Truth, and the Trinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 16. The Life of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 17. God Speaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 18. Scripture as the Word of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 19. Scripture as Manifold Witness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 10. Manifold Witness and the Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 11. Manifold Witness and Deconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 12. Theology as Manifold Witness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 13. The Many and the One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Scripture Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 vii

Introduction to Living Theology

Tony Jones, Series Editor

I

know a lot of theologians, and I don’t know any who want to hide theology under a bushel. No, they want to let it shine. But far too often, the best theology is hidden under a bushel of academic jargon and myriad footnotes. Such is the life of many a professor. But in Emergent Village, we’ve always wanted to talk about the best theology around, and to do it in ways that are approachable for many people. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for us to partner with our friends at Abingdon Press to produce a series of books of approachable theology—of “living theology.” Our friends who are writing in this series have academic chops: they can write the 400-page monograph with 800 footnotes. But that’s not what we’ve asked them to do. Instead, we’ve asked them to write something they’re passionate about, something that they think the rest of the church should be passionate about too. The result, we hope, is a series that will provoke conversation around ideas that matter to the Christian faith. We expect these books ix

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to be useful in church small groups and seminary classrooms and Emergent Village cohorts (our local incarnation). Likely, they’ll raise as many questions as they answer. And, in so doing, these books will not only tackle theological issues; they’ll also promote a way of doing theology: one that is conversational, collegial, and winsome. Those of us who are involved in this series hold our own convictions, but we do so with enough humility to let contrary opinions shape us too. It’s a messy endeavor, theology. But it’s also fun and, in my experience, uniquely rewarding. So we offer this series to Christ’s church, with a prayer that it will draw many closer to God and further down the journey of faith. Grace and Peace.

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Foreword

Y

ou’re about to read a wonderful book. By wonderful, I mean “full of wonders,” four of which I would like to name. First is the wonder of a first-rate theologian and scholar like Dr. John Franke writing with due scholarly care yet using the kind of English that most of us can actually understand. And enjoy! For not only does John write accessibly, which would be wonder enough, but he writes beautifully too. This means that when you need to slow down and read a sentence twice, it’s not because he has overloaded the sentence with technical terms like ontological or hermeneutic or hegemonic or metadiscourse—it’s because there is an elegance and rhythm to his writing that deserves a second notice and a second thought, like going back for seconds at a delicious, home-cooked holiday meal. Then there’s the wonder of a white theologian writing with deep sensitivity to the hegemonic discourse (oops, sorry—the oppressive or dominating tendencies) of white theologians. Nobody is surprised when communists critique capitalism, or when non-Westerners critique the West, or when conservatives critique liberals (or vice versa). But when capitalists and Westerners and conservatives (or their counterparts) are self-critical, that’s a wonder, and the same goes for white male Christian theologians. xi

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Third, there’s the wonder of a scholar of the Reformed tradition who actually takes seriously the Reformation ideal of semper reformanda—to be always reforming. At a time when many who cherish the label Reformed seem to be freezing if not fossilizing in a kind of theological retrenchment, John stays true to the best in the Reformation tradition by continuing the Reformers’ essential and ongoing work. He does so not simply by endlessly repeating the Reformed tradition’s sixteenth- or seventeenth- or twentieth-century formulations, nor by critiquing everyone who is not Reformed, but by subjecting the Reformed tradition and the larger Christian tradition alike to a kind of loving scrutiny. This isn’t the scrutiny of a fault-finder, but rather the scrutiny of an oncologist investigating his own mother’s X-ray for signs of malignancy. And finally, there’s the wonder of the book’s thesis itself: that for human beings, truth is inherently plural. John asserts this, not because it is fashionable (it’s the very opposite among his guild in the theological academy), but rather because he believes it is true, and is willing to suffer the scorn of some of his peers for this truth as he sees it. He asserts the plurality of truth, not as a capitulation to non- or antiChristian thought, but rather as an expression of profoundly Christian thought—and specifically, of emergent, missional, and trinitarian Christian thought. In so doing, he gently implies that the dominant alternative view—that white, modernist, Western Christian scholars and institutions have a monopoly on truth—is actually a capitulation to modes of thought and power that have betrayed the life and gospel of Jesus Christ. Put these four wonders together and you have a wonderful book indeed. It will be interesting to see how it is received. Will some line up exactly as we might expect, to reactively dismiss John’s thesis on the basis that it doesn’t conform to their privileged monologue about truth as flat, proprietary, and “common-sense” (meaning “obvious to people like themselves”)? Probably. But I think that John’s clear logic and irenic spirit in these pages will get through to many who up until now have been put off by the various generative conversations emerging around the margins of the Christian community. I think they’ll read John’s book and say, “Ah, now I get it. Why didn’t somebody explain it this clearly before? This isn’t xii

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heresy. This is an exciting new dimension of the generous orthodoxy that has always been at the heart of Christian tradition.” For those of us who have been struggling for some time with the important issues raised by this book, I believe Manifold Witness will eliminate a lot of static and fear, and clear the way for more and more truth-seekers to be welcomed to the theological table for a rich banquet. This banquet will feature good and healthy foods from many cultures. It will kindle joyful fellowship and spirited dialogue rather than rancorous debate. It will stimulate and strengthen all who participate to love and good works, and to justice, compassion, and humility in the Spirit of Jesus Christ and to the glory of God the Father. For the truth as John explores it in this book isn’t simply an outline of objective statements that invites assent; it is a person who issues a summons to repent and follow. When we do so, we find ourselves in the company of a vast assembly from every tribe and nation, a multitude that no one can count, sharing a thousand bona fide perspectives on the manifold grace and glory of God. To God be all glory. Brian D. McLaren Laurel, Maryland January 2009

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Preface

I

would like to thank Tony Jones, the general editor of this series, for his invitation to write this volume and for his work on behalf of Emergent Village over the past several years. Tony has been a major catalyst for the emerging church conversation and he will continue to be an important voice as he moves into a new phase of life and ministry. His extensive comments on the first draft of this manuscript have made it a much more readable book. I also benefited from the comments of the Baltimore and Twin Cities Emergent cohort groups. Tim West at Abingdon Press has been particularly helpful in carefully editing the manuscript and offering many useful suggestions. A number of friends and colleagues have engaged me in conversation around the themes of the book and some have kindly taken the time to read various portions and drafts along the way, in one form or another. Their commentary and insight have been invaluable in helping me better address the issues raised in the book. I particularly wish to thank the following: Scot McKnight, Brian McLaren, David Dunbar, Todd Mangum, Sam Logan, David Lamb, Phil Monroe, Mabiala Kenzo, Don Thorson, David Williams, and my colleagues in the faculty cluster of the Reforming Ministry project. All of these xv

P R E FA C E

friends probably wish I had incorporated more of their suggestions and concerns than I have. I have had the opportunity over the past several years to present this material in various forms at a number of colleges, seminaries, and conferences in which I appreciated warm hospitality and stimulating conversation. I particularly wish to express my thanks to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary, Whitworth University, St. Mary’s College at the University of St. Andrews, Highland Theological College, and Taylor University College. I would especially like to thank my students at Biblical Seminary who have listened to these ideas for several years in lectures and classes and have been a constant source of wisdom and encouragement. I also want to express my gratitude to my former teaching assistant Stephanie Lowery for her work during the 2007–2008 academic year in enabling me to work on this book. Thanks, Steph; I couldn’t have done it without you. I dedicate this volume to the memory of my friend and mentor Stanley Grenz. I once told Stan that whatever I went on to write, even where I disagreed with him, would always be indebted to his influence. I hope he would be pleased with this book. I think he would be.

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Chapter 1

Do You Believe in Truth?

I

still remember the first time I was asked the question: “Do you believe in truth?” The person posing the question looked at me earnestly with an expression of grave concern etched on his face. The tone of his voice made it clear that his statement was as much an accusation as it was a question: “You don’t believe in truth, do you?” I was genuinely surprised and startled. I had never had a question like this posed to me before. I had always been an advocate of truth, not one of its detractors. I thought to myself: Of course I believe in truth. I believe in God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. On top of all that, I have been involved in the church all of my adult life and thought, somewhat cynically, that I certainly wouldn’t be doing that if I didn’t believe in truth. 1

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I had committed my life to the task of teaching theology to help prepare women and men to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to participate in the reconciling work of God in the world. Of course I believe in truth! What had I said or done, I wondered, that could possibly lead this person to think that I didn’t? I also wondered about the ideas and motives behind the question itself. After all, without further explanation, “do you believe in truth?” raises a number of interpretative possibilities. For instance, when I and my friends in Emergent Village get asked this question, we tend to say yes, of course we do. This should not be surprising to anyone who has carefully examined our commitments. On the Emergent Village website we self-identify as “lovers of God and God’s truth,” who therefore “seek wisdom and understanding, which are the true goals of theology, and to engage in respectful, thoughtful, sacred conversation about God, world, and church.”1 So when we get asked, we simply say yes, we believe in truth. In fact, we not only believe in it, but we are passionately committed to seeking it. Personally I will admit that I am beginning to find the question more than a little annoying, especially from people who are critical of Emergent Village and claim to know something about it on which to base their criticism. Instead of asking, “Do you believe in truth?” since we clearly state that we do, I wish critics might say something like the following: “It’s clear that you not only believe in truth but also that you affirm it. We appreciate that because we are also committed to truth. It’s just that we don’t think your commitment to truth is strong enough and we’d like to talk with you about that and challenge some of your thinking.” This would at least provide a basis for a conversation. But when the question “do you believe in truth?” is asked with the clear implication that we don’t believe in truth, it’s difficult to even get to first base in a conversation. And anyway, what do people really mean when they ask the question “do you believe in truth?” Are they asking if someone believes in their understanding of truth, truth as they see it? The implication being that they and their community of reference have the truth and therefore anyone who does not agree with them obviously does not believe in truth. Or perhaps, in a variant on this, are they asking if someone believes in an understanding of truth in which one position 2

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must be right (most often a position that they already hold) and all others are wrong? Some are asking a more technical question. They want to know what theory of truth is believed: correspondence, coherence, pragmatism, and so on. Are you a foundationalist, a postfoundationalist, or a nonfoundationalist? And oftentimes if you pick the wrong theory from the perspective of those doing the asking, you find that you are accused of denying truth. What about all of this? What is truth? And if we believe that Christianity is in some sense true, how do we account for its massive irreducible plurality in history? Which of the theories of truth is most appropriate given that self-professed Christians have held to all of the labels mentioned and others besides?

Tradition and Traditions Since that first time, I have been asked the same question in various forms again and again in a variety of settings such as classrooms, conferences, churches, and casual conversations. What has prompted the question time and again has been the attempt to come to terms with what I believe to be one of the most significant challenges facing Christian theology in the contemporary setting: the sheer, existential reality of Christian plurality. While we often speak glibly of the Christian tradition, even a cursory glance at the history of the church should make us aware that at the end of the day we can speak only of the multiplicity of Christian traditions that make up what we refer to as the Christian tradition. The fact is that Christians disagree with each other on a host of significant theological questions that are accompanied by a dizzying array of answers. Think of the different traditions that make up Christianity: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Wesleyan, Mennonite, Baptist, and Pentecostal, among others. Considerable plurality marks each of these traditions. Diversity from within has always characterized Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Church. Protestantism knew plurality in the first generation of the Reformation. The Lutherans divided among the so-called genuine Lutherans who followed Martin Luther and those who followed Philip Melanchthon. The Reformed tradition was shaped by differences 3

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between those in Zurich, who took their lead from Ulrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger, and the Genevan tradition shaped by John Calvin. Anglicans struggled to articulate a middle way between Catholicism and the reformations of continental Europe. In the midst of these groups that assumed a close and positive relationship between the church and the state, the radical reformation, which affirmed the necessity of separation between church and state, spawned numerous different communities. And this is only to scratch the surface of the differences among these traditions. These communal differences produced alternative and competing answers to many important questions concerning Christian faith. Think of the debates throughout the history of the church on the work of Christ and the numerous theories that have been offered concerning the atonement. The doctrine of justification has drawn considerable attention, particularly in the disputes between the Catholic tradition and the Protestant churches. The question of the interpretation of Scripture has produced varying approaches to hermeneutics with corresponding significance for belief and practice. Different conceptions of the relationship between the Testaments have produced alternative accounts of the nature of the church and the relationship between law and gospel. Debates concerning baptism and the Lord’s Supper continue unabated among the churches. This history has been particularly tragic with respect to the Eucharist. Different views concerning this practice, which is to be a demonstration of the unity of the church in Jesus Christ, have resulted in separation and hostility. Differing views on the relationship between the church and the state have led to considerably different conceptions of the responsibility of Christians in the world. And differences between those who believe in the possibility of a just war and those who believe that war and the use of violence to achieve a just end are always at odds with the teaching of Jesus have led to markedly different accounts of Christian discipleship. Even the understanding of prayer, that most basic of Christian practices, has been disputed. What happens when we pray? How should we pray? Does prayer change things? The list of contested questions and proposed answers goes on and on. In addition, most of the standard accounts of Christian history 4

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have been focused on the concerns of the Western church, with little emphasis on the history of Christianity as a world movement. Expanding the focus of Christian history leads to a widening of diversity and plurality both in the past and the present. Faithful Christians in different contexts and settings ask questions that have not been formed by the experience of the Western church. They consider the Bible, theology, and the church with philosophical and worldview assumptions that are different from those of Greco-Roman, FrancoGermanic, and Anglo-American settings. Indeed, many of the conversations and controversies that have shaped the Western church are of little significance in other parts of the world. The plurality and diversity of the church is an inescapable reality. What are we to make of this plurality in light of the witness of Scripture to the one faith that was delivered once for all to the saints? How do we account for it theologically? What do we think of other Christian communities that live and practice the faith in ways different from ours? How do we relate the concern for the unity of the church with the concern for truth? Must we really choose between a pragmatic unity that seems to give up on truth and an approach to truth that appears to mandate a divisive and sectarian understanding of the church? Questions like these are significant for all the traditions of the church as they bear witness to the one faith. Thinking about them might also assist the church in addressing the pressing concerns raised by religious pluralism. Indeed, we may wonder whether we can effectively address the reality of religious pluralism from a Christian perspective if we have not adequately thought through the realities of pluralism in the church.

Plurality and Christian Faith Part of this challenge involves addressing the reality of Christian plurality in light of some beliefs that have been commonly held by Christians over the centuries. Of particular importance is the belief that the Bible is the inspired word of God and that the teachings and promises it contains are trustworthy: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 5

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so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Connected with this is the belief that God will provide guidance for the church as it goes on its way through the world. God is the one who gives wisdom to those who ask: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (James 1:5). In addition, the Holy Spirit is the one who guides the disciples of Jesus into the truth: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you” (John 16:13-14). But if the Bible is the Word of God, given so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work, and if God gives wisdom liberally to those who ask, and if the Holy Spirit is at work guiding the church into all truth, how are we to account for and make sense of the plurality of the church? Why is it that Christians from across time and around the world, seeking guidance and understanding concerning the mysteries of life and the hope of the gospel, have come away from their study carrels and their prayer meetings with such different conclusions on nearly every aspect of the one faith? These differences are not simply matters that might be regarded as more or less incidental to Christian faith but rather concern ideas that are at the very core of that faith. What is God like? How can we know God? Who is Jesus Christ and how are we to understand his life and mission? What is the gospel? What is the kingdom of God? What is salvation? What is the Bible and how are we to interpret and understand it? What is the church? What is the ultimate destiny of human beings? The list goes on and on. The fact is that on matters as central to the faith as these, Christians simply do not agree on the answers. Nearly every aspect of the Christian faith has been and is contested by the very adherents of that faith. Several possible answers are readily available to account for the existential reality of Christian plurality. Perhaps the Bible is not really inspired by God. Maybe it is simply a collection of documents that contains mutually exclusive perspectives that render the biblical canon insufficient for the purpose of guiding and equipping the 6

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Christian community for common witness in the world. Certainly many scholars have argued along these lines. Perhaps God is not as generous in dispensing wisdom as is suggested in Scripture or maybe the promise that the Spirit would guide the church into truth is idealistic and represents wishful thinking. Another possibility is that a certain segment of the church has grasped the truth and the rest of the church needs to repent of its errors and follow along. But which group? The Roman Catholics? The Eastern Orthodox? One of the traditions of Protestantism, perhaps? It would not be difficult to find adherents among each of these communities of Christian faith who would be well prepared and quite pleased to make such an argument on behalf of their particular tradition. I believe that none of these answers is sufficient. I believe that Scripture is inspired and given to the church as a means of grace in guiding belief and practice. I believe that God does not skimp on the promise to provide wisdom and that the Holy Spirit is in fact guiding the whole church, in all of its diverse manifestations, into the fullness of truth that is the living God revealed in Jesus Christ. Of course, these convictions about Scripture, God, and the Holy Spirit are matters of faith and not subject to demonstrable proof. Yet they form some of the central working assumptions that impinge on my thinking, assumptions that are well established in Scripture and among Christian communities, both past and present. In other words, in seeking to account for the diversity of the church, I want to do so with an outlook that presumes these core convictions to be true, rather than jettison a confidence in Scripture, the generosity of God in the provision of wisdom, or the promised guidance of the Spirit.

Thesis In order to do this, I suggest a simple thesis: the expression of biblical and orthodox Christian faith is inherently and irreducibly pluralist. The diversity of the Christian faith is not, as some approaches to church and theology might seem to suggest, a problem that needs to be overcome. Instead, this diversity is part of the divine design and intention for the church as the image of God and the body of Christ 7

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in the world. Christian plurality is a good thing, not something that needs to be struggled against and overturned. This claim does not mean that everything that goes on in the church is therefore allowable and appropriate as a manifestation of diversity—far from it. We must bear witness to the faith, commend sound doctrine, and oppose false teaching. Some claims and assertions about Christian belief and practice are wrong, such as those that support discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender. These need to be resisted and refuted. False teaching must be identified and challenged. The Bible is clear about this. Leaders are called to “encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” (Titus 1:9). On the other hand, not all disputes are profitable for the church: But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn divisive people once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned. (Titus 3:9-11)

What I am suggesting is not that anything goes but rather that Christian witness that is pleasing to the Lord will be characterized by irreducible plurality. It will be a manifold witness. However, it is precisely in forwarding this thesis that I have been accused of abandoning the concept of truth. After all, the reasoning goes, isn’t this simply a Christian form of the pluralistic relativism that inhabits our culture and compromises the very idea of truth—or at least the belief that we can know it with any degree of confidence? In this book I want to argue that this is not the case while at the same time maintaining that Christian faith is inherently and irreducibly pluralistic. I will seek to provide a theological account of truth that highlights its plurality and thus gives rise to the diversity of Christian expressions of faith without lapsing into an “anything goes” sort of mentality. Understood in this way, the plurality of the Christian community constitutes a faithful witness to God’s intentions for the church. In addition, I also want to examine the significance of the plurality of truth and Christian pluralism for the practice of theology and witness in the life of Christian communities. The diversity 8

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and plurality of these communities give expression to the polyphonic character of truth as part of the manifold witness of the global and historical church to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. “Do you believe in truth?” Yes, I do. I believe that Jesus Christ is the revelation of God in the flesh and that, as such, he is the way, the truth, and the life. I also believe that the church, as the image of God and the body of Christ, is called to bear a unique witness to Jesus in the world and that, by the will and intention of God, this witness is inherently and irreducibly plural. We cannot bear this witness alone: no single individual, no single church, no single culture or tradition. We need each other. I believe in truth and in the plurality of truth—and therefore in Christian pluralism. Here are my reasons. I hope they are sufficient. I hope they are faithful. But, above all, I believe that they are true.

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Chapter 2

Plurality and Truth

A

n impressive and fascinating degree of diversity characterizes the world in which we live. In an age of digital technology and global informational networks, we are aware as never before of the staggering plurality that accompanies the human experience. These differences are unavoidable in the living of our lives, no matter what our own views are concerning them. They confront us every day in the news in faraway places like Africa and the Middle East as well as in our own local communities. We regularly encounter people who think and live differently than we do. Much of this diversity, though often delightful and fascinating, is relatively trivial in the context of the pressing issues and concerns that make up day-to-day existence. Differences in the color of eyes and hair, or preferences for particular foods or games, add spice and variety to life but are usually not the basis for conflict and hostility (except in the case of particular regional or international sporting events!). Other manifestations of diversity are more threatening. Differences related to politics, ethnicity, economic well-being, culture, worldview, 11

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and religion have often produced intense conflict resulting in heated arguments, estrangements, uprisings, and wars. Even in the setting of a common religious tradition, differences such as these have resulted in hostility. Indeed, the history of the Christian church is filled with such incidents arising from different and often competing ways of understanding the faith. Along with our general awareness of this diversity and its significance for the events that shape our world, comes the unsettling realization that whatever our own political, ethnic, social, cultural, and religious identity happens to be, most of the rest of the world does not share it. If we reflect on this situation at any length at all, we soon find that we are confronted with the question of the ultimate truth of our particular beliefs in a world in which they are not generally shared— as well as specifically challenged and opposed. In this situation the notion of truth is a controversial topic. And this is no mere theoretical, academic debate. It is enmeshed with power and privilege in the establishment and realization of individual and communal agendas. Plurality is a particularly vexing challenge in this discussion. In our global, mass-media culture, we are aware as never before that we live in a world made up of numerous ideological communities. These communities maintain ideas, values, and outlooks on life that result in conceptions of truth that are at odds with those generated by other communities. Our everincreasing awareness of this plurality and the proper response to it has raised challenges concerning the proclamation of truth in our culture.

Cultural Relativism One approach to dealing with plurality is that of cultural relativism, captured in phrases such as “you have your truth and I have mine” or “that may be true for you but it’s not true for me.” These types of statements may simply point out differences between two persons or communities concerning alternative perceptions of the content of truth. However, in contemporary culture, they also often mean that truth is simply what a particular culture, community, or individual takes it to be. 12

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Cultural relativists believe that differences between individuals and communities concerning truth are the inevitable and ultimate reality of human existence. These differences are not only inevitable but also irreconcilable. They deny that any common or shared ideas, beliefs, or practices can function as the basis for mutual convictions concerning the meaning of life and truth. From the perspective of relativism, it is impossible for people to arrive at common conceptions of truth, except perhaps to affirm their commitment to the idea that there is no ultimate truth in the universe. Such a response amounts to waving a white flag in the face of plurality and giving up altogether on notions of transcendent or ultimate truth, the idea that some things are true for everyone regardless of their social and cultural location, their beliefs, or their particular opinions. Everything is interpretation: mine, yours; ours, theirs; each as good as another. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong, particularly when it comes to religion.1 This sort of thinking is often connected with various approaches to knowing and knowledge that have been called postmodern.2 The label postmodern is a descriptor of the current social and intellectual context in which we function. In fact, the current North American cultural setting, as well as that of much of the world, can be generally described as “postmodern.” The intellectual milieu of Western thought and culture is in a state of transition precipitated by the perceived failure of the philosophical, societal, and ethical outlooks and assumptions of the modern world forged by the Enlightenment. This cultural transition has been shaped by the thoroughgoing critique of the modern project and its quest for certain, objective, and universal knowledge, combined with a series of disparate provisional attempts to engage in new forms of conversation and intellectual pursuit in the aftermath of modernity. It has also been made possible by the digital revolution in information technology, which has enabled us to receive and process information from around the world in ways never before imagined. While a precise definition is notoriously difficult to provide in the midst of the numerous claims concerning the identification of postmodernity in various contexts, we can affirm a shared discourse and some common perspectives that provide the distinctive shape of the 13

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postmodern outlook. However, since this postmodern paradigm continues to emerge, it remains hotly contested by those who are convinced by it as well as those who are opposed to it. Some prefer to speak of this cultural phenomenon as late modernity rather than as postmodernity, believing that it has greater continuity with modernity than is suggested by the prefix post. Whatever label we choose, this emerging outlook that is taking shape in our midst constitutes a borderland between the thoughts and assumptions of modernity and something new that descriptors like postmodern or late modern have been used to describe. One of the common features of this outlook is the assertion that all human knowledge involves interpretation—that it is shaped by the conditions and situations from which it emerges. No ideas are simply neutral and objective since all are formed by particular circumstances related to both the formation of the ideas and the uses to be made of them. Interpretation is an inherent part of the human experience and shapes our ideas and conceptions of truth and reality. Knowledge is never simply objective, if by “objective” we mean knowledge that is not influenced by the circumstances that surround it.

Capital T Truth and Small t truth Claims such as these have led some to assume that they must constitute a denial of the reality of truth. If knowledge and truth are not objective, doesn’t this mean that ultimate truth does not exist? Wouldn’t truth simply be the product of particular circumstances or the desires of particular communities? It has become common for significant numbers of Christian thinkers to dismiss the concerns of postmodern thought as being incompatible with the faith. Christian philosopher Merold Westphal has observed that at “varying degrees along a spectrum that runs from mildly allergic to wildly apoplectic” many Christian thinkers are “inclined to see postmodernism as nothing but warmed-over Nietzschean atheism, frequently on the short list of the most dangerous anti-Christian currents of thought as an epistemological relativism that leads ineluctably to moral nihilism. Anything goes.”3 This view has been particularly influential among many conservative and evangelical Christian thinkers who have gen14

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erally assumed that postmodern thought is inherently opposed to the quest for truth, the idea of truth, and therefore to the particular truth claims of the Christian faith. But this conclusion does not follow from the interpretive nature of human thought. Just because human knowledge and perceptions of truth are always formed in the midst of particular situations does not mean that ultimate truth does not exist. Radical cultural relativism arises not from the interpretive and situated character of all human thought but rather from the assumption that there is no comprehensive knower whose knowledge is the truth. Now, it is certainly true that some postmodern theorists who have described themselves as atheists have concluded that the situated and finite character of human knowledge leads to the following conclusion: the (small t) truth is that (capital T or ultimate) Truth does not exist. However, as Westphal maintains, such an assertion stems not from analyzing the interpretive character of human thought but from placing that analysis in an atheistic context. If our thinking never merits the triumphalist title of Truth and there is no other knower whose knowledge is the Truth, then the truth is that there is no Truth. But if the first premise is combined with a theistic premise, the result will be: The truth is that there is Truth, but not for us, only for God.4

In this framing, all human knowledge is understood as finite and limited, that is to say, it is situated in particular circumstances, and these circumstances have a significant effect on the character and content of that knowledge. Only the living God has knowledge that transcends the limitations of time and place that are characteristic of finitude. From the perspective of Christian faith, with its conviction that God has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, we can affirm the reality of ultimate or transcendent truth even as we acknowledge the interpretive character of human knowledge. At the same time, by virtue of the grace of divine revelation, we are able to know something about reality even if we cannot know it exhaustively or perfectly. While Christians must wrestle with the challenges of pluralism like everyone else, we cannot acquiesce to radical cultural relativism without 15

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compromising our convictions concerning God: God is the Creator of heaven and earth; God is omniscient; God knows comprehensively; the life and knowledge of God is itself the ultimate truth. Further, Christians believe that God has been revealed in Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). This belief offers a stark challenge to claims of radical cultural or religious relativism. A commitment to the presence and reality of ultimate truth is also part of the Christian confession that Jesus Christ is Lord. Because of this, Christians affirm the reality of truth and maintain that not all the things that are claimed to be true actually are true. Some beliefs and convictions, no matter how sincerely held, are false and untrue.

What God Knows and What We Know If the approach of cultural relativism falls prey to taking pluralism so seriously that it discounts the idea of ultimate truth, other ways of thinking about truth do not take pluralism seriously enough. In these approaches, nothing is interpretation; everything is black and white; my way, not your way; our way, not their way. Such conceptions of truth deny the interpretive and contextual character of human knowledge and run the risk of blurring the distinction between God and ourselves. If the Christian confession that the living God is revealed in Jesus Christ refutes the claim that transcendent truth does not exist, the particular character of revelation challenges the presumption that transcendent truth is simply self-evident to human perception and readily available to us. Christian teaching has long maintained the distinction between what we know and what God knows, even concerning things that God has revealed to us. Thus, even revelation does not provide human beings with a knowledge that exactly corresponds to that of God. The distinction between God’s knowledge and that of finite human beings suggests that all human knowledge of God, and therefore ultimate truth, is the result of God’s accommodation. In other words, in the process of revelation, God makes allowances for the limits of our understanding and descends to our level much the way a parent does with a child in order to provide instruction. God uses human nature, language, and speech to instruct us about the shape of our beliefs 16

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and the conduct of our lives. Yet these means are limited by virtue of the fact that they are created and finite. That is to say, they bear inherent limitations in spite of the use God makes of them in revelation. Further, Christian teaching on creation reminds us that although we are created in the image of God, we are finite and are qualitatively different from God. Our perspectives and understandings are shaped and limited by our particular locations and social conditions. This situation is responsible, in part, for the multitude of Christian perspectives. Christian plurality also arises from the very nature of God. The One revealed in Jesus Christ, the one who is the truth, is triune. God is a plurality-in-unity and a unity-in-plurality. Put another way, the truth is characterized by plurality. The plurality of truth itself accounts for the plurality of witness to that truth. The church bears manifold witness in the world as the only form of witness appropriate to its subject, the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. As Christians from different cultural settings and perspectives have studied and reflected on their faith, they have offered numerous descriptions and accounts of its significance for their particular locations and situations. This accounts for the diverse expressions of Christian faith and patterns of thought throughout history. In addition, alternative conceptions of Christian faith have been offered from within particular cultural settings by those who have not shared the dominant outlooks of those in the majority. Sadly, it has been a common practice in Christian history to suppress these alternative perspectives on the faith because they have been perceived as a threat. This reminds us that the plurality of Christian faith is not found only in the variety of its particular traditions—Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestantism with its numerous alternatives (Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist, and so on). It is also manifested in the diverse perspectives arising from gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic outlooks within these various traditions. An understanding of the situated and contextual character of truth and Christian theology provides a theological framework from which to embrace Christian pluralism without compromising the commitment to ultimate truth entailed by the Christian confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ. 17

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These observations help identify the challenges and temptations faced in addressing the question of truth in our culture and in the church. These challenges regarding truth are not unidirectional, as some assume when they pin the blame for societal problems or the loss of vibrancy in the church on either the liberals or the conservatives. In fact, these challenges move to both the left and the right and are found in both the abandonment of truth by some to cultural relativism and in attempts by others to “absolutize” truth. In the first instance, the notion of ultimate truth is eradicated in the name of tolerance, and in the second it is reified as though it were a commodity that can be easily accessed and controlled by human beings and put to use in ways that empower its holders at the expense of others. Instead, truth is a reality to which we must continually aspire through the commitment of our entire being to the love of the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit. It is a reality that constantly calls on us to reconsider the nature of power and the use of power as we seek to privilege others above ourselves in accordance with the teaching and example of Jesus. It is a reality that continually reminds us that we are always in a position of dependence and in need of grace with respect to our knowledge of God, who is the source of all truth. The failure of humans to acknowledge our dependence on God and the ways in which we are prone to error, especially when our own interests are at stake, is all too common throughout history, including the history of the church. Such failure, no matter how well intentioned, inevitably leads to forms of oppression and conceptual idolatry.

Bold Humility This awareness should lead the Christian community to resist these consequences by humbly acknowledging the human condition of finitude and corruption. In so doing, and by grace if at all, it will not belie the one to whom it seeks to bear faithful witness, the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. Thus, in the proclamation of truth in the world, Christians should manifest what we might somewhat paradoxically call “bold humility.” 18

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Our proclamation of the truth of the gospel must be bold in accordance with our confidence that God has indeed made known the divine will for creation and our conviction that in Jesus Christ the world is being reconciled to God. Yet at the same time, it must also be seasoned with humility due to our dependence on God; the limitations of finitude; our awareness of the differences among Christians concerning matters of faith, life, and practice resulting in the plurality of the Christian community; and our understanding that in the present we know not in full but only in part even as we diligently seek to know and live out more of the truth and love of God. Christians committed to the lordship of Jesus Christ should not acquiesce to the cultural relativism that gives up on the notion of ultimate or transcendent truth. But we must also resist the temptation of espousing a notion of truth that makes an idol out of our own conceptions, assumptions, and desires as though they are not subject to critique. We must learn the discipline of diligently and self-critically seeking after truth by continually listening, looking, and learning. In this ongoing quest for truth, it is good to remember that we do not journey alone. We do so in the company of the church, in the fullness of its global and historical manifestations, under the guidance of the Spirit of the living God who leads us into the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus Christ. While the full manifestation of the Spirit’s work will be realized only at the eschaton, it is also part of the vocation of the church to participate fully in the work of the Spirit through the promotion of truth as part of its missional calling in order that what is promised, the fullness of truth, may be anticipated in the present life of the church.

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Chapter 3

The Historic Christian Faith?

I

was baptized on Easter Sunday 1962 at First Presbyterian Church in Evansville, Indiana. I regularly attended the church with my family and as I grew older I went to Sunday school to learn about the Bible and Christian faith. My parents had bought some children’s books that told the stories of the Bible, and it wasn’t long before I knew most of them by memory. One of my earliest recollections from those days is of my Sunday school teacher starting to tell a story from the Bible and then asking if I could finish it. I always did (at least that’s how I remember it). I said the Apostles’ Creed with the congregation and learned about the meaning of this affirmation of belief, some of which seemed strange to me. I had a hard time, for instance, getting my young mind around the idea that Jesus went to hell and that this trip was supposed to be a good thing. I wanted to know if God had really told Jesus to “go to hell” since this seemed to have extremely negative connotations, particularly given the number of times I had heard one adult tell another to do the exact same thing. The tone was never positive and affirming. Finally one of my teachers, who must have had a few good 21

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laughs recounting the story about the kid who thought God told Jesus to “go to hell,” patiently explained to me the difference between “descending” to hell and “going” to hell. I didn’t get the distinction right away, but everyone seemed to agree with the explanation and that was enough to satisfy my curiosity. By the time I entered confirmation class (now in northern Virginia), I had come to the realization that not all Christians agreed with each other concerning the beliefs and practices of the faith. In fact, truth be told, there seemed to be more disagreement than agreement. I remember well the debates about the meaning of the Bible and the practical implications of Christian faith that animated our classes. As I became more and more aware of the differences among various groups of Christians, I felt a bit confused. How could so many different viewpoints be attributable to the same common Christian commitments: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and the church? Some tried to settle questions about these differences by appealing to the “historic Christian faith.” I will admit that for a time this was decisive for me. In fact, one of the reasons I decided to move in the direction of evangelical Christianity for my education was the claim that evangelicals were not only committed to the Bible but also to the historic Christian faith. This seemed like a good thing and something that I wanted to affirm. The only problem was that when I actually started to study the historic Christian faith, what I discovered was not, at least to my mind, a set of beliefs and practices that were adhered to everywhere, always, and by all, to cite the famous formula of an early Christian writer, but rather an incredibly diverse set of assumptions, conversations, and disputes that looked like anything but a unified set of beliefs. In addition, none of the early Christian communities seemed to look like any church that I was aware of. Given this awareness, I have started to wonder how we can talk about something like the historic Christian faith in light of the diversity that has characterized Christian history.

The Chronicles of a Space Scholar Missiologist Andrew Walls helps us understand the diversity of the Christian community over the course of history by asking the ques22

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tion: Is there a historic Christian faith?1 He invites us to imagine a long-living, scholarly space visitor, perhaps a “Professor of Comparative Inter-Planetary Religions” who visits Earth every few centuries in order to study Christianity. On the first trip to Earth, our space scholar visits the original Jerusalem Christians, who are all Jews and who practice Judaism from the perspective of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. They meet in the temple, offer animal sacrifices, scrupulously refrain from all work on the seventh day of the week, circumcise their male children, regularly perform certain rituals, and carefully read and follow the teaching of the law and the prophets contained in the Hebrew Scriptures. Unlike other Jews, however, they identify Jesus as the Messiah, Son of Man, and Suffering Servant described in those Scriptures. During the next visit, our scholar attends the Council of Nicea in 325. Those at this meeting are unmarried men who come from many different geographical areas around the Mediterranean, and none of them are Jewish—in fact, some refer to Jews in very hostile terms. They connect “sacrifice” with bread and wine rather than animals, and they refuse to circumcise male children. They worship on the first day of the week instead of the seventh. Although they read a translation of the law books used by the Jerusalem Christians, they also value writings that were not even in existence during the scholar’s first visit to Jerusalem. They also seem concerned with giving precise definitions to certain philosophical and theological words such as homoousios (“same substance”), and usually refer to Jesus as “Son of God” or “Lord” rather than “Son of Man” or “Suffering Servant.” Three centuries later, the scholar visits Ireland and finds Christian monks pursuing lives of holiness by standing in freezing water and reciting psalms, praying in relative isolation from others, and performing bizarre acts of penance. Groups of these monks also risk their lives on long journeys, attempting to convince others to worship Jesus as God rather than nature gods. They write and illustrate beautiful manuscripts of the same sacred texts used at the Council of Nicea, and seem to put a great deal of emphasis on determining the correct date of Easter. They recite the creed developed at the Council, but they do not have the same philosophical or theological interests. 23

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In the 1840s, the professor visits a Christian assembly in London where the speakers are promoting missionary and commercial efforts in Africa as well as the abolition of slavery. Many at the meeting have their own English translation of the books used by the earlier Christians, but they do not appear to live in the same degree of poverty. Like the monks, they also emphasize holiness but utterly reject the idea that this has anything to do with standing in cold water or living in isolation from others. The final visit is to Lagos, Nigeria, where people wearing white robes dance and chant in the street on their way to church. They say that they experience the power of God in their services through healing and the reception of specific messages from God. They are quite removed from the London assembly’s way of life and while they fast like the Irish, they do so only on certain occasions. They use the same sacred text as the London group does, but they are focused on the power that comes from preaching, miraculous physical healing, and personal visions.

Connection and Continuity Walls writes, “Back in his planetary home, how does our scholar correlate the phenomena he has observed? It is not simply that these five groups of humans, all claiming to be Christians, appear to be concerned about different things; the concerns of one group appear suspect or even repellent to another.”2 (Our space scholar could easily draw a very similar conclusion by visiting contemporary Christian communities in various cultural settings around the world today.) Would the scholar find any coherence among the diverse communities that he visited during his travels? Could he reasonably conclude that, in spite of their differences, these varied groups were all participants in an identifiable religious tradition beyond the mere fact that they all considered themselves to be Christian and shared this common name? Walls answers in the affirmative and mentions two aspects that have shaped the common Christian tradition. The first is the “historical connection,” while the second is an “essential continuity” that exists between the groups mentioned. 24

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Regarding the historical connection, Jewish Christians took the gospel to Greek Gentiles. The classical Greek or Hellenistic culture in which these Gentile Christians lived shaped the conception of Christianity that became dominant in the Roman Empire. With the collapse of the Roman world and its institutions and intellectual traditions, Christianity continued on in Ireland, whose monks evangelized Europe. In turn, the European evangelization of the world shaped the most recent phase of Christianity, the emergence of the world church. While this history of evangelization is characterized by tragedy as well as the spread of the gospel, it does point to the common theme of mission among these communities. The Christian community “continues as church as it continues Jesus’ mission of preaching, serving and witnessing to God’s already-inaugurated yet still-to-be-consummated reign, growing and changing and being transformed in the process.”3 In addition to this historical and missional connection, Walls also identifies an essential continuity. “There is, in all the wild profusion of the varying statements of these differing groups, one theme which is as unvarying as the language which expresses it is various; that the person of Jesus called the Christ has ultimate significance.” He notes that all appeal to the same sacred texts, though their interpretations of these writings vary considerably and are often at odds with each other, and that they all make use of bread and wine and water in their ritual practices. “Still more remarkable is the continuity of consciousness. Each group thinks of itself as having some community with the others, so different in time and place, and despite being so obviously out of sympathy with many of their principal concerns.” He concludes that these realities are reflective of the essential continuity of the plurality of communities and traditions that make up the one Christian tradition, while acknowledging “that these continuities are cloaked with such heavy veils belonging to their environment that Christians of different times and places must often be unrecognizable to others, or indeed even to themselves, as manifestations of a single phenomenon.”4

Indigenization and Transformation In accounting for the diversity of the Christian tradition, Walls suggests that the history of Christianity has always been a struggle 25

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between two opposing tendencies that find their basis in the very substance of the gospel itself. He refers to these as the “indigenizing” principle and the “pilgrim” principle. I will refer to them as the indigenization principle and the transformation principle. The indigenization principle is rooted in the core gospel affirmation that God comes to us where we are and accepts us as such through the work of Christ and not on the basis of what we have been, are, or are trying to become. This acceptance of us as we are points to the notion that God does not relate to us as isolated, self-sufficient individuals but rather as people who are conditioned by the particular times and places in which we live. As people who in the midst of particular times and places are also shaped and formed by the particular families, societies, groups, and cultures in which we participate. In Christ we are accepted by God in the midst of all the relations, experiences, and cultural conditioning that make us who we are. The impossibility of separating ourselves from our social relationships and the societies in which we belong has led to the unwavering commitment to indigenization that has characterized the Christian tradition. That is, to live life as both a Christian and as a member of a particular society, culture, and people group. The account of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 provides an affirmation of this principle of indigenization with the decision that the Gentiles should be permitted to enter into the faith without being bound to the rituals and practices of the Jewish Christians. The most significant of these decisions was the determination that male Gentile converts would not need to undergo circumcision. The affirmation that God accepts people as they are means that those who have not participated in such customs as circumcision, dietary restrictions, and ritual cleansings need not do so in order to be part of the community of Christ’s disciples. In light of this, Walls asserts that no particular group of Christians “has therefore any right to impose in the name of Christ upon another group of Christians a set of assumptions about life determined by another time and place.” The notion of being a “new creation” in Christ is not intended to suggest that a convert to the way of Jesus starts a new life in a vacuum with a mind that becomes a blank slate. We are all formed by our social, cultural, and historical circumstances. 26

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The affirmation that God has accepted us as we are means that our lives and minds will continue to be influenced by ways in which they have been developed along with the assumptions and presuppositions that we have learned. These are not somehow eliminated from our consciousness and they continue to shape the ways in which we view the world. It is also worth noting that this reality is “as true for groups as for persons. All churches are culture churches—including our own.”5 In tension with the indigenization principle is the transformation principle, which is also intimately connected with the gospel. While it is true that God meets people where they are and as they are, it is also true that God does not intend to simply leave us where we are. The intention of the gospel is transformative. God in Christ calls us to be transformed by the power of the gospel and to participate in the mission of God in the world. This call to transformation means that even in light of the indigenization principle that affirms culture and experience, the followers of Christ also find that they are not completely in sync with their cultural and historical surroundings. The transformation principle reminds Christians that we will never be completely at home in this world and that we must always be seeking the renewal of our minds and lives and resisting conformity to many of the social and cultural patterns of our societies. In other words, faithfulness to Christ will often put us out of step with our culture. While the indigenization principle affirms that Christians remain appropriately related to the relationships and thought-forms in which they are raised and seeks their renewal in Christ, the transformation principle points to an entirely new set of relations with others who are part of the community of Christ’s disciples. These relations call on us to be accepting of others and all of their group relations just as God has so accepted them, while at the same time seeking the transformation of all things in Christ in accordance with the will and mission of God. All Christians have dual nationalities and loyalties to multiple Christian faith communities in Christ. These loyalties and commitments serve to link us beyond our own affinity groups to individuals and their communities who are naturally opposed, by cultural and historical assumption and presupposition, to the very things to which we .

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are committed. In addition to these relationships, Christians are given an adoptive past that links us to the people of God throughout all of history. In this way all Christians of whatever nationality, are landed by adoption with several millennia of someone else’s history, with a whole set of ideas, concepts, and assumptions which do not necessarily square with the rest of their cultural inheritance; and the Church in every land, of whatever race and type of society, has this same adoptive past by which it needs to interpret the fundamentals of the faith.6

These principles point to both the complexity and plurality of the faith as it has been expressed throughout the history of the Christian tradition and to the calling to take responsibility for this plurality in bearing witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Mission and Diversity As seen from the chronicle of Walls’s space traveler and the indigenization and transformation principles, the history of Christianity is the story of a diverse movement that is embodied in ever-fresh ways as the gospel enters into new and changing cultural settings. God appoints the church to be a bearer and witness of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit and therefore, as a witness to the truth, to also proclaim the truth. The proclamation of the truth bears the marks of the particular social and historical contexts in which it is received and transmitted. The tradition of the church may be viewed as a series of local iterations and instantiations of Christian witness or as local theologies, closely related to different cultural conditions. Plurality, not uniformity, characterizes the story of Christianity, which did not move in one direction from Palestine to Europe to the rest of the world but rather was a multifaceted and multidirectional movement: Palestine to Asia, Palestine to Africa; Palestine to Europe. It is a story that must be understood not simply as “the expansion of an institution but as the emergence of a movement, not as simply the propagation of ready-made doctrine but as the constant discovery of the gospel’s ‘infinite translatability’ and missionary intention.”7 28

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This infinite translatability may be better understood as inexhaustible translatability in order to preserve the notion that some translations are inappropriate while at the same time affirming the inexhaustible range of possibilities for faithful gospel witness. This translatability continually results in fresh adaptations of the faith as the gospel spreads across the world and engages culture after culture, ethnicity after ethnicity, situation after situation. The church continually reinvents itself to meet the challenges of relating the gospel to new peoples and new cultures. In this activity, the experience and understanding of what it means to be the church arises from the ongoing engagement of the gospel with culture. “There seems to be an inevitable connection, therefore, between the need for Christian mission, on the one hand, and the need for that mission always to be radically contextual. The urgency of mission is linked to the urgency of change, adaptation and translation—in other words, to context.”8 The ongoing engagement of the gospel with the cultures of the world means that the work of theology is never completed. It results in an ongoing and irreducible plurality that is reflective of the missional nature of the Christian community to take the good news of the love of God proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth and embody it among all peoples and situations for the good of the world. This is the very nature and essence of the historic Christian faith.

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Chapter 4

Community, Tradition, and the Emerging Church

T

he understanding of historic Christian plurality articulated in the last chapter raises implicitly the question of the significance of these diverse local theologies that make up the Christian tradition. As local expressions of the mission of God and historical witnesses to the work of the Spirit in guiding the church into truth, how are these diverse manifestations of the Christian faith to be related to each other? How should the diversity and plurality of the Christian tradition relate to the ongoing task of proclamation in the present context? What significance do past acts of confession by the diverse communities that make up the Christian community have for the contemporary task of confession and proclamation? To address these questions we must begin by examining the notions of community and tradition.

The Idea of Community In considering the notion of community there are three central characteristics that are particularly worthy of note.1 First, a community 31

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is made up of a group of people who share a common outlook concerning life and the world. Second, members of a community maintain a group focus that produces a shared sense of identity. This sense of group identity creates solidarity with other members of the group, but this group focus does not demand complete uniformity of opinion and outlook among all participants. What is indicative of community is a shared interest in being involved in an ongoing conversation as to the nature of the communal identity. Hence, participation in a community produces both consensus and challenges to consensus that can result in significant change. Third, this group orientation is a significant factor in the identity formation of its members. In other words, participants in a community find a sense of self-identity and self-understanding by virtue of their commitment and involvement in the group. In the Christian faith, these general characteristics of community find transcendent expression in their relationship to the God made known in Jesus Christ. The fullness of community as depicted throughout the biblical narrative is the idea of the presence of God among humans. Through the reconciling ministry of Christ and the continuing work of the Spirit, God is truly among us, even though our experience of that presence is partial. However, the biblical witness does not end with the partial experience of God’s presence. It reaches its climax only in the future, with the establishment of the new heaven and new earth that will be characterized by community in the highest sense. On that day, the peoples of the new earth will live together in peace, nature will again fulfill its purpose of providing nourishment for all the citizens of the earth (Rev 22:1-3), and God will dwell with humans, thereby bringing to completion the divine design for creation. The mission of God is to establish a community of people that transcends every human division, a people from every nation and ethnicity, every socioeconomic status, consisting of both male and female who find their identity in Christ (Gal 3:28). While the fullness of this community will be realized only at the completion of God’s creative intentions, it is the vocational calling of human beings created in the image of God to anticipate this community in a partial, yet genuine, fashion. Although this present reality takes several forms, its focal 32

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point is the community of the followers of Christ. The New Testament characterization of the church as the temple of God and the body of Christ means that it is intended to be the focal point of the representation of God in the world. The church is the particular context in which the Spirit works to create a community that anticipates the ultimate reality of the consummated kingdom, a world centered on Jesus Christ. The future world as God wills it to be is established in a proleptic fashion in the present as the church anticipates its participation in the trinitarian fellowship of love. Jesus Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, characterized by obedience to God in the form of love and service, is the model of the trinitarian fellowship of love. The church as the ongoing representative of Christ in the world is called upon to imitate this love (Phil. 2:5-11). As the church has engaged in mission throughout history, the gospel has entered into dynamic relationship with various cultural settings. In this interactive process both gospel and culture are dynamic realities that inform and are informed by each other. The conversation between gospel and culture is one of mutual enrichment in which the exchange benefits the Christian community in its ability to speak to its context. It also serves to account for the variety of expression that has characterized Christianity throughout history. Further, as Christian communities formed in a variety of cultural situations, they established traditions that became integral to their cultural and communal outlook. These traditions shaped their understanding of the Christian faith, their reading of the Bible, and the particular shape of their witness to the gospel. This plurality is part of the work of the Spirit in guiding the church into truth and serves as a defining mark of the Christian tradition.

Diverse Communities, Diverse Tradition Tradition is popularly misunderstood as implying something relatively stable, monolithic, and stultifying. This is not the case. In fact, tradition fairly seethes with diversity and creativity. Communities form tradition as they gather around common interests and concerns and participate in an ongoing discussion as to what constitutes the 33

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identity of the group. A living community is one in which there is difference, argument, and even conflict about the meaning and implications of shared values and goals and the means by which they will be made real in everyday life. The history of this ongoing conversation or argument constitutes tradition.2 The Christian faith centers on the formative event of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and the Scriptures that witness to that event. Thus, we can say that Christian tradition is the history of the interpretation and application of Scripture by the church as it listens to the voice of the Spirit speaking through the text. Christian tradition is comprised of the historical attempts by the Christian community to translate the language, symbols, and practices of the Christian faith, arising from the interaction among community, text, and culture, into the various social and historical contexts in which that community has been situated. Tradition is not some sort of static, lifeless entity but rather a living, dynamic idea in which development, change, and growth occurs. Tradition develops as it engages new questions and challenges and as it faces new situations and difficulties through the course of history. As we have seen, the history of Christianity is characterized by change and diversity—as well as continuity—as various Christian faith communities, under the guidance of the one Spirit, grapple with the interaction between Scripture and their various social and historical situations and the particular challenges posed by the ways in which those contexts continue to change and evolve. Christian Scripture witnesses to the concern of the early church that its basic teachings be communicated from one generation of Christian believers to the next. The narratives of God’s redemptive activity and these basic teachings and practices of the early Christian community constitute “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3 NRSV). Passing on the teachings of the community from generation to generation, over time and across cultures, is the most basic expression of the operation of tradition. Yet the Christian church has been located in a wide variety of social, historical, and cultural contexts. It has had to exercise wisdom and creative judgment in addressing questions in a manner that best promotes its mission to proclaim the gospel and establish communi34

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ties of Christ’s disciples. For example, in the story of the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), the church had to address the cultural issues raised by the conversion of Gentiles and their coexistence in the community of the new covenant with ethnic Jews who were concerned to preserve their social distinctiveness. All expressions of Christian faith are contextualized, including the biblical documents themselves, which were written within particular social, cultural, linguistic, and philosophical frameworks. Thus, we may say that Christian tradition serves as a resource for contemporary proclamation, not as a final arbiter of theological issues or concerns, but rather by providing a historical and interpretive context for the tasks of proclamation, theology, and biblical interpretation.

The Significance of Tradition The historical affirmations of faith, such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, are one part of Christian tradition that helps provide such a context. Through the ages, Christians from a wide variety of social and cultural locations have used such statements to confess their faith in the God revealed in Christ and their commitment to participate in the divine mission. In so doing they join all who have confessed the Christian faith throughout history. Because Christians are participants through Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God in this continuous historical community, the history of its theological and confessional traditions should be an ongoing conversation partner as we offer our own confession. In this way we seek to maintain a certain theological and confessional unity with the church of the past even in the midst of our diversity. At the same time, however, we must remember that historical confessions of faith were articulated in particular times and places. If Christians are not simply to parrot past confessions in new and changing circumstances, then new ways of confessing the Christian faith are needed; no confession can serve a once-for-all function. This is especially so in light of the Spirit’s ongoing work in the life of the church. The Spirit is guiding the community of faith into the truth, purposes, and intentions of God. These purposes and intentions are a divine goal that is anticipated in the present through the 35

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life and witness of the church but that will be fully realized only at the eschatological consummation of all things. Hence, the tradition of the church, made up of the numerous communities that form it and that constitute its plurality in keeping with its missional vocation, must always be understood as contextual, interpretive, and provisional in character. In the Spirit’s work, Scripture is the norm for Christian faith and life, while the tradition of the Christian community, expressed in beliefs and practices, provides a crucial context and trajectory in which to engage in the act of proclamation. This proclamation responds to the current situation while also remaining in continuity with the life and witness of the church in its historical and global manifestations. This pluralistic tradition is an important element of the ongoing proclamation of the church in which the past events of the guidance of the Spirit are taken into account for the work of the present. Theological reflection must be renewed constantly as part of the church’s ongoing witness to the revelation of God in Christ. However, in this ongoing work of renewal, attention must be given to the theological tradition of the church as the witness of past attempts to hear God speaking in Scripture. For Karl Barth3 the notion of theology as theology for the church means that the “theology of past periods, classical and less classical, also plays a part and demands a hearing. It demands a hearing as surely as it occupies a place with us in the context of the Church. The Church does not stand in a vacuum.”4 Beginning from the beginning, however necessary, cannot be a matter of beginning off one’s own bat. We have to remember the communion of the saints, bearing and being borne by each other, asking and being asked, having to take mutual responsibility for and among the sinners gathered together in Christ. As regards theology, also, we cannot be in the Church without taking as much responsibility for the theology of the past as for the theology of our present.5

The task of taking responsibility for the theology of the past means taking responsibility for the plurality of the Christian tradition and embracing it. It also means raising questions concerning the ways in 36

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which it has failed to do this through the development of institutional structures that have hindered the formation of the diversity that is appropriate to the life of the global and historical community. The ongoing confession and proclamation of the church, understood corporately, constitutes the diverse and manifold witness of the church to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ in its various social and historical embodiments. Lamin Sanneh concludes: It follows from this theological insight that Christianity is not intrinsically a religion of cultural uniformity, and that in its historical expansion it has demonstrated that empirically by reflecting the tremendous diversity and dynamism of the peoples of the world. Christian pluralism is not just a matter of regrettable doctrinal splits and ecclesiastical fragmentation, but rather of variety and diversity within each church tradition.6

Historic Christian Faith, Plurality, and the Emerging Church Participants in the emerging church conversation also appeal to the historic Christian faith. But instead of using it as a means to settle questions and disputes—as if to suggest that the historic Christian faith is something singular and demonstrable—they view it as characterized by plurality and open-endedness, something that is real and enduring while also being elusive and ephemeral. The Emergent Village website affirms: “We are committed to a ‘generous orthodoxy’ in faith and practice—affirming the historic Christian faith and the biblical injunction to love one another even when we disagree.”7 “Emerging church” has become a common descriptor for alternative and nontraditional approaches to thinking about and doing church. As such it has taken on a wide array of meanings with both positive and negative connotations. Some see it as the great hope for the future of North American Christianity, while others view it as a harbinger of increasing cultural accommodation in the church and the sacrifice of orthodoxy for the sake of relevance. As a member of a mainline church who teaches theology at an evangelical seminary and who has been involved in the emerging 37

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church conversation and in the leadership of Emergent Village, a community committed to fostering the concerns and values of the emerging church, I am often asked questions. These come from the curious, the hopeful, the concerned, and from those who are simply looking for further ammunition for their attacks. They want to know: What’s the real story on the emerging church? What do people in this movement really believe about Christian faith and the church? The difficulty with this sort of question is that it assumes that somewhere in the midst of a diverse conversation a succinct and straightforward answer to this question is possible. Now, in one sense it is. The emerging church is committed to the way of Jesus Christ. But every time I have fielded questions about the emerging church, this answer has never been satisfactory. People are asking for more, and I understand why. They want details. What does it mean to follow in the way of Jesus? What theological and doctrinal convictions are assumed? What practices does this entail? These questions are understandable and legitimate. And more detail can be provided, but we must not lose sight of the basic commitment to follow the way of Jesus. The story of the emerging church is found in the numerous and multifaceted micronarratives of the individuals and communities that make up the fabric of the emerging church conversation. In other words, the real story is a plurality that works against the reductionism in the question, what does the emerging church believe? In a descriptive sense, this situation is similar to the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. If you asked a participant in that movement what the diverse collection of so-called Protestant Christians really believed you could have certainly found someone to give you an answer, but it would have varied greatly from person to person and place to place. The early Protestant church was characterized by plurality, but this does not mean that Protestants were pluralists. They were not. Instead, they were committed to establishing the one true church over against the Roman Catholic Church, which they viewed as a heretical distortion of the one true church. They were committed to one true way to be a Christian, the one right way to read the Bible, the one true system of doctrine, the one right set of practices. In their collective search, different groups came up with alternative and competing con38

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clusions on these matters. But these differences did not lead them to embrace plurality. Although the emerging church movement, or more preferably, the emerging church conversation, is similarly characterized by plurality, it also affirms plurality as an appropriate and necessary manifestation of Christian community. It is this particular aspect of the emerging church that we will focus on here. From the perspective of those in the emerging church, plurality is not so much a problem to be overcome as it is a manifestation of the blessing and presence of God. It is not to be opposed, but rather something to be sought and celebrated. This basic commitment calls forth openness to innovation and a variety of communal forms as the message and entailments of the gospel are proclaimed and socially embodied in new and everchanging situations. The experience and forms of particular Christian communities emerge in the context of the concrete interaction between the gospel and the particular social, historical, and cultural situations in which these communities are embedded. The concrete social forms and practices of these emergent, missional communities cannot be predetermined apart from this contextual interaction. Thus, diversity is to be expected. No single set of assumptions, outlooks, viewpoints, and practices will be appropriate or necessary for every context and situation. And some things that are especially helpful and illuminating in one particular setting may in fact be counterproductive and misleading in another. One size will not fit all. Plurality is desired and required.

Emergent Village Values and Practices The Emergent Village community affirms such plurality as one of its primary values on its website: “We are committed to honor and serve the church in all its forms—Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, Anabaptist. We practice ‘deep ecclesiology’— rather than favoring some forms of the church and critiquing or rejecting others, we see that every form of the church has both weaknesses and strengths, both liabilities and potential.”8 Out of this commitment comes the desire to be irenic and inclusive with respect to the plurality of traditions that make up the history and present 39

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reality of the Christian community and to learn from the church in all its forms. This commitment to the plurality of the church leads to four specific and concrete practices: (1) “To be actively and positively involved in a local congregation, while maintaining open definitions of ‘church’ and ‘congregation.’ We work in and with churches, seeking to live out authentic Christian faith in authentic Christian community”; (2) “To seek peace among followers of Christ, and to offer critique only prayerfully and when necessary, with grace, and without judgment, avoiding rash statements, and repenting when harsh statements are made”; (3) “To speak positively of fellow Christians whenever possible, especially those with whom we may disagree”; and (4) “To build sincere friendship with Christians from other traditions.”9 One important observation that arises from the articulation of these practices is that the label “emerging church” does not signify anything like a particular denomination. Rather, it is a movement that can be found within the various traditions of the church as well as on the edges of traditional forms of Christian community. Those who identify with the emerging church come from numerous backgrounds ranging from across the theological and ideological spectrum. Most are interested in moving beyond such labels as liberal and conservative, and come from both evangelical and mainline denominations as well as from independent churches and those interested in establishing Christian communities outside of these traditional contexts. In the midst of the diversity that characterizes the emerging church conversation is a common commitment to truth. The openness to plurality does not imply a denial of truth but rather a belief in the importance of multiple perspectives in the apprehension and communication of truth. I hope that this book will contribute to the dialogue and witness of the emerging church by providing a theological articulation of the plurality of truth that I believe is implicit in the specific values and practices articulated by Emergent Village and found more generally in the broader emerging church conversation. 40

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Challenges for the Emerging Church The commitment to plurality raises two particular challenges for the emerging church. First, while the Christian faith is properly characterized by multiple expressions, it is also true that not all expressions of Christianity are appropriate. Indeed the history of the church is littered with manifestations of Christian community that are at odds with the message of the gospel. The value of plurality must not lead to an “anything goes” type of mentality in the Christian community. Resisting this possibility is an ongoing challenge for those of us convinced of the importance of affirming and promoting plurality in the church. Second, while the emerging church is committed to the plurality of Christian community, in many ways, for all of its variety of forms, it continues to reflect the relative lack of diversity that characterized the traditional ecclesial contexts from which it emerged. For the most part the conversation about the emerging church continues to be shaped primarily by the perspectives and concerns of the dominant social, intellectual, and cultural forms of the North American context. This has meant that for the most part, the emerging church conversation has attracted very little interest from those who do not share in these assumptions and outlooks and often feel excluded and alienated by them. In order to address these challenges, those of us who are convinced of the potential significance of the emerging church conversation must be vigilant in the establishment and maintenance of a healthy and robust commitment to the discipline of self-criticism. Such a practice provides the context in which we make ourselves open to the work of the Holy Spirit and allow the Word of God to challenge and deconstruct our own assumptions and commitments in order to correct our shortcomings and failures and to broaden the horizons of our vision. We must develop this practice in order to identify and correct inappropriate forms of Christian community while at the same time allowing for the continued expansion of appropriate diversity and plurality in the church for the sake of the gospel and our participation in the mission of God.

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Chapter 5

Jesus, Truth, and the Trinity

L

et me suggest, without denying that technical philosophical discussions about truth and epistemology have their place, simply that for me, along with many Christians around the world, Truth (or if you prefer, ultimate Truth) is a person, Jesus Christ. In the account of the interrogation of Jesus by Pontius Pilate found in John’s Gospel, Pilate seeks to clarify the identity of Jesus by asking if he is, in fact, “the King of the Jews” (18:33 NRSV). After inquiring as to the basis for Pilate’s question, Jesus replies that while he is indeed a king, his kingdom “is not from this world” (18:36 NRSV). This means that Jesus and his followers will not engage in combat in order to save his life or secure his kingdom. Pilate is puzzled by the claim of a kingdom that affirms notions of nonviolence and otherworldliness and seeks to clarify the status of Jesus: “So you are a king?” To this Jesus responds: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (18:37 NRSV). Perhaps even more puzzled, 43

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Pilate concludes his conversation with Jesus by famously asking: “What is truth?” The generally convoluted nature of theoretical and philosophical discussions of truth, coupled with their relative inconclusiveness, have led many to conclude that, at the end of the day, Pilate’s conclusion, while certainly cynical, is also perhaps the most realistic and compelling. However, the Gospel of John and the Christian tradition offer a different answer.

The Way, the Truth, and the Life The focal point of the diverse witness of Christian history is Jesus Christ. Truth is not found in abstract notions or theories but rather in the person of Jesus Christ, who is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Knowing truth and participating in truth depend, from the perspective of the Christian tradition, on being properly related to this one person who is divine truth. In focusing on Jesus as the truth, we also see in the testimony of the Gospel of John that he is not the truth alone. He is the truth in relation to the Father, who sent him into the world out of love for the world. Jesus is the truth because he is the eternal Word of the Father. Truth comes through Jesus Christ who is in closest relationship with the Father such that while no one has ever seen God, God is made known in Jesus Christ who is himself God (John 1:17-18). Hence, Jesus is the truth not simply on his own but by virtue of his unique relationship with the Father, on whom he expressed his complete dependence (John 5:30). Jesus is also the truth in relation to the one he would send into the world: “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me” (John 15:26). The Spirit is the truth because the Spirit leads the world to Jesus who is the truth. Hence, the Father, out of love for the world, sends the Son to take on human flesh, live a human life, and experience death for the sake of the world. In this sending the Father gives all to Jesus who in turn gives himself to the world by entrusting all that he has to the Spirit, who leads the world into all truth by leading it into Jesus who was sent from the Father. The relationship between the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit is a 44

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Christian distinctive that helps us understand the nature and character of the truth revealed in Jesus Christ. We should not be surprised to find a trinitarian pattern in the selfrevelation of God who is the truth. This is due to the identification of truth in Scripture and the Christian tradition as an attribute of the triune God. In fact, we might say that in its deepest sense, from a Christian perspective, the very notion of truth is bound up with, and identical to, the three persons of the Trinity. The identification of truth with the persons of the Trinity in relation with each other points also to the relationship between the Christian belief that God is triune and the Christian witness to the revelation of God in the life of Jesus Christ. The reason for the confession of the church concerning the Trinity is that this is the way in which God is revealed to us. Knowing Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life points us to the historic Christian identification of God as triune.

The Christian Identification of God We live in a world where people constantly speak about God. The word God is invoked on a regular basis in ways that are both serious and glib. The term is used so often that we can begin to take its meaning for granted. However, casual observation will alert us to the fact that the term is used in different ways. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (eleventh edition, 536) lists the following definitions for god: “the supreme or ultimate reality”; “the being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe”; “the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit”; “infinite mind”; “a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship”; “one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality”; “a person or thing of supreme value”; and “a powerful ruler.” While these entries certainly cover a significant number of the usages that are commonly ascribed to God in our society, none of them mention that historic Christian identification of God as Trinity. The etymology of the word theology, “the study of God,” suggests that its central concern is with the nature, character, and actions of God. The chief inquiry for any theology, therefore, is the question of the 45

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identity of God. For Christians, the subject of theology is the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the Christian answer to the question of God’s identity ultimately leads to the doctrine of the Trinity. Christians have maintained that the one God is triune: Father, Son, and Spirit, to cite the traditional designations for the trinitarian persons. This affirmation of the trinitarian character of God is the most distinctive feature of the Christian faith. In keeping with this conviction, the ancient creeds and expositions of the Christian tradition consistently reflected a trinitarian pattern. For instance, the most common symbol of ecumenical Christian faith, the Apostles’ Creed, is structured according to this trinitarian pattern. It begins with an affirmation of belief in God the Father: “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Then it turns to the Son of God: “And [I believe] in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord,” followed by a series of affirmations concerning his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. After which it concludes with a series of articles following from the confession of the Holy Spirit: “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” This basic pattern is repeated again and again in the history of the church and its confession of the tenets of the Christian faith. This pattern reflects the reasoning of the Christian community that since its faith is committed to finding its basis in the being and actions of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, Christian faith should be ordered in such a way as to reflect the primacy of the Christian confession about the nature of this God.

The Trinity, the Bible, and the Christian Community Some Christians have expressed concern with an emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity since it has often been observed that the explicit confession of God as triune is not found in the Bible. The term Trinity is not part of the vocabulary of the Bible, contained in Scripture. Furthermore, the theological concept is not developed or fully delineated in the canonical texts. This has caused them to wonder about this teaching and its primacy for Christian faith. In light of these observations it may be helpful to think of the doctrine of the Trinity not as an explicit teaching of the Bible, but rather as a theo46

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logical teaching which the early Christians understood as defending the central faith convictions of the Bible and the church. Indeed, by the fourth century the church had come to the conclusion that understanding God as triune was a nonnegotiable aspect of the gospel, because it encapsulated the Christian conception of God. Still, some have continued to wonder if it is a mistake to order the confession of Christian faith around a doctrine that is not more explicitly articulated in the Bible. The early Christian community came to the conclusion that confession of the Trinity was an important and necessary theological conclusion that served to communicate a central component of the faith of the community. The centrality of this commitment was such that the doctrine of the Trinity came to be understood as the definitive Christian affirmation concerning the identity of God. It was understood as a natural outworking of the faith of the New Testament community that served to encapsulate the Christian conception of the God made known through the life and ministry of Jesus. In the thinking of the early church, trinitarian teaching was based on the concrete witness of the Bible, and this view of God emerged as the basic theological conclusion arising from the various writings that made up the canon of Scripture. In fact, the trinitarian conception of God came to be viewed as being so closely tied to the biblical stories and teachings that it came to function as a succinct way of identifying the God revealed in the witness of the New Testament and about the documents themselves as the product of the actions of the God of the Bible. While the doctrine of the Trinity has often been viewed as a highly abstract and speculative teaching emerging from the philosophical concerns of third- and fourth-century thinkers, it is more accurate to understand the confession of God as triune as a response to the concrete historical situation encountered by the early Christian community. The understanding of God as Trinity emerged and took shape as the followers of Jesus sought to make sense of their beliefs about him and their convictions about God. The doctrine of the Trinity was a response to the challenge of reconciling the inherited commitment to the confession of the one God with the lordship of Jesus Christ and the experience of the Spirit. Far from a philosophical abstraction, the confession of God as triune 47

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constitutes the culmination of an attempt on the part of the church to address the central theological question regarding the content of the Christian faith, a question that arose out of the experience of the earliest followers of Jesus.

One God In keeping with their Jewish heritage, the early Christians continued to maintain a core belief in one God. This commitment led them to reject the practices of the surrounding culture of the Roman Empire, which were characterized by a belief in many gods. This commitment to one God was a manifestation of the assertion of the early Christian community that it was a continuation of the covenant that God had initiated with Abraham, who continued to be regarded as one of the most important figures in the early history and development of the community. In the same way that the Hebrew community had understood itself to be the heirs to the promises made to Abraham, so the Christian community took itself to be a continuation of this tradition and the recipient of these promises. In this context, the early Christians continued to maintain that there is only one, true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And this God was the same God as the one revealed in the life and witness of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, this God and only this God was entitled to the worship of the Christian community. In this way, the early Christians understood themselves to be the ongoing manifestation of the one people of God, the continuation of the community initiated in the covenant God made with Abraham. Therefore they remained vigorously committed to the monotheistic tradition and practices that they saw articulated in the Hebrew Scriptures. Hence, while they came to understand themselves as distinct from the Jewish community because of their commitment to Jesus of Nazareth, the followers of Jesus also believed that the God they worshipped was nevertheless the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This commitment to monotheism formed a basic assumption around which the early Christians reflected on the events that took place in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In the midst of their continuation of the Jewish practice of worshipping only one God, the early 48

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Christians also came to believe that the one God had come to dwell among them in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Because of this belief, they ascribed deity to Jesus and worshipped him as the Lord of the universe and the head of their community.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Yet in spite of their commitment to monotheism and the worship of only one God, they also made a clear distinction, following the practice of Jesus himself, between the Son of God and the one whom Jesus addresses as the Father in the gospel accounts of the Christian canon. Thus, while they maintained the divinity of Jesus, they also believed that he was not the same as the Father. This affirmation of the deity of Jesus as the living Word of God is captured most memorably in the opening words of the Gospel of John (1:1-5): In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.

And later in the chapter (1:17-18): “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only [Son], who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” Along with their confession of the one God and of the lordship and divinity of Jesus, the early Christians also believed that the Holy Spirit was divine. The Spirit had been sent to sustain and empower the church after the ascension of Jesus. Through the ministry of the Spirit, the followers of Jesus enjoyed an intimate relationship with God and the presence of God in their fellowship as well as in their own lives. The community believed that through the presence of the Spirit, Christians individually and corporately comprise the true temple of God (Rom 8:9; 1 Cor 3:16; 2 Cor 3). This assertion is particularly striking in the light of the significance of the temple in firstcentury Judaism. As the focal point of all aspects of Jewish national 49

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life, the temple was regarded as the place where God lived and ruled. Thus, the connection between the presence of the Spirit in the life of the Christian community as constituting that community as the temple of God intimately linked the Spirit with God. In addition to the relationship of the Spirit to the Father, the Spirit is also closely connected to the person of Jesus, thus drawing a clear distinction between the Spirit and both the Father and the Son. The close relationship between the three as God as well as the distinctions among them are evident in the summary formulations found in the New Testament such as Matthew 28:19: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; and 2 Corinthians 13:14: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The challenge of integrating these commitments into a coherent, composite understanding borne out of their experience of God led to an emphasis on both the unity and the differentiated plurality of God. The church did not confess three Gods. Yet at the same time the three encounters and experiences of God in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were far too concrete to be seen as simply different “modes” of the one God. As a result, the Christian confession of God as triune finds its basis in the practical concern of offering an account of God that reflects the experience of the community and the witness of the early believers. The decisions of church councils throughout history have affirmed the triune character of God and have served to provide the framework for Christian thinking about God and the ongoing development of trinitarian theology. Yet although the early church councils affirm the full deity of the Son and the Spirit along with the Father, the creeds that articulated the results of these deliberations and conclusions did not address the question as to just how the three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, comprise one God or the detailed implications of this teaching for the proclamation of the gospel and the Christian message. The biblical witness to the experience of the early Christian community with God points beyond this encounter and the affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity that it produced to the eternal life of God. In other words, in addition to acting in the history of the world, the 50

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Bible pictures God as having a history in which creation is not the beginning point but a particular event in the continuing story of the divine life that stretches from the eternal past into the eternal future. This insight, coupled with the claim at the beginning of the chapter that truth is an attribute of the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ, beckons us to consider the nature and significance of the life of this God if we are to grasp the nature of truth.

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Chapter 6

The Life of God

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ne day at lunch with some students visiting my seminary and thinking about coming to study with me, the conversation turned to the question of the minimum beliefs that one had to maintain in order to be a follower of Jesus. Now, I will admit that I don’t like this sort of question. It plays into so much that seems to me to be wrong with many contemporary North American expressions of Christianity, particularly the minimalist reductionism. I said this to the group and suggested that this type of thinking is foreign to the gospel accounts. What is required to be a follower of Jesus in the gospel accounts is the commitment to follow him with the entirety of our being. Hence, I resisted answering the question. They persisted. Surely there must be some doctrine that was necessary to affirm to be a disciple of Jesus. We went around and around for a while, and finally one of them exclaimed: “I know one that you’d agree with, since I’ve read your books. Surely you’d say that someone can’t be a true follower of Jesus unless they affirm the Trinity.” 53

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I replied that surely the doctrine of the Trinity is an important teaching and that I thought it was a crucial and historically indispensable component of Christian faith that ought to be affirmed. However, I also raised a series of questions to each of the five committed Christians and keen theology students who were with me that day. Apart from affirming the doctrine of the Trinity, were any of them able to articulate it and explain its significance? They were not able to do this. I asked if any of them could explain the difference the Trinity makes for their understanding of the church and its witness to the world. They could not. After asking several more such questions, all of which they admitted they could not answer, I asked if they could offer any explanation of the difference that the doctrine of the Trinity makes for the day-to-day life of individual Christians and the Christian community other than the fact that they thought all Christians needed to believe it. They could not. I concluded by asking what kind of sense it made to them that someone could not be a follower of Jesus because they did not share a particular piece of cognition, in this case the doctrine of the Trinity, that otherwise made no difference in their lives except that they believed it. That’s where the conversation ended. It is certainly the case that there are leaders and teachers in the church who could have given very good answers to the questions I raised at lunch that day. However, in my experience these young students were not exceptional in their inability to answer these questions. In fact, I have encountered precious few people in countless local Christian communities, including the leaders of these churches, who are able to answer such questions. It’s no wonder the Trinity has fallen on such hard times in the church. It’s a challenging teaching that most folks seem to find completely unrelated to the practice of their faith. Because of this some have simply given up on the Trinity altogether. Others continue to affirm it but don’t quite know what to do with it and, quite frankly, would rather not talk about it. It’s like an old museum piece from a bygone era. It was important once and we don’t really want to part with it, so we keep it locked away in an old room somewhere and bring it out when the situation suits, only to quickly return it after the occasion in case anyone starts asking difficult and annoying questions about it. 54

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Of course, in my judgment the doctrine of the Trinity is a crucial component of Christian teaching that needs to be better understood in the church. Further, I think that it could be the starting point for Christian witness to the world. Interestingly, I also think that this primary Christian doctrine is a focal point in the thesis of this book. In this chapter I would like to reflect a bit on the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity for Christian faith and the plurality of truth. We might start by asking a question. What was God doing from all eternity before the creation of the universe? Now, in one sense this might seem to be an irritatingly speculative question. One early Christian writer reportedly responded to this inquiry by saying that what God was doing was preparing an unpleasant place for people who asked such questions. While this response is humorous and might seem appropriate to some of the sorts of speculations that have been engaged with respect to the eternal life of God, it is also shortsighted with respect to one particularly crucial theological affirmation about the nature and life of God: the belief that God is love.

God Is Love From all eternity God has been in an active, loving relationship characterized by the giving, receiving, and sharing of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are able to say this because the actions of God in history provide us with a basis for speaking of the life of God as Trinity. These actions are indicative of God’s ongoing internal life, and Scripture invites us to think through the implications of this history with respect to the character of God. This suggests a theological principle: God is as God acts. The identity of God is known through the actions of God. The self-revelation of God is reflective of the character of God. The character and being of God are constituted and made known by the actions of God in history. Following this principle we can say that God is a being in act. The revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the actions of Jesus of Nazareth allow us to say that God is as God does, and what God does is love. Through the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, we encounter the living embodiment and exposition of God’s gracious character in relation in humanity as the One who loves. In 55

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this focus on the actions of God as indicative of the being of God, we must set aside all of our assumptions and preconceptions concerning what we already believe to be true of God and instead seek to learn from the God who is through the actions of God. God is known through what God has done, and what God has done emerges from the person Jesus Christ and the witness of Scripture. What we see in the life of Jesus and narratives of Scripture is that God is the One who loves. Therefore, in seeking to know the character of God in response to the action of divine self-revelation, we must seek to understand the fundamental biblical assertion that “God is love.” However, we must not presume that we know in advance the character of love based on particular individual or generally accepted cultural assumptions and then impose that understanding on the love of God. Rather, our knowledge of the love of God should be shaped by the particular way in which God loves through the ongoing establishment of communion between God and God’s creatures in and through Jesus. God’s love for the world is not that of an uninvolved, unmoved, passionless deity but rather that of one who is actively and passionately involved in the ongoing drama of life in the world, and who lavishly pours out this love in Jesus Christ. This lavish expression of love for humanity and creation revealed in Jesus Christ points us to the internal life of God as an eternal trinitarian fellowship of love shared between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In other words, explication of the triune God in God’s self-disclosure in and to creation is at the same time the explication of the triune God in the divine reality. When we affirm with Scripture that “God is love” (1 John 4:8), this points not simply to the feelings of God but to the eternal life of God lived in a set of ongoing and active relationships of love, which constitute God’s being in and for God’s self. These are the active relationships of God’s eternal trinitarian fellowship in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit participate in the giving, receiving, and sharing of love that includes both difference and unity. Technically, we might say that God gives, receives, and shares love from all eternity in selfdifferentiated unity and unified self-differentiation. In other words, this eternal fellowship of divine love is characterized by both unity-inplurality and plurality-in-unity, in which we affirm that the one God 56

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exists in three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that the three together are the one God. In these active relations God freely constitutes the divine being in this distinctively trinitarian fashion. From this conception of the triune God as a being in act who in freedom gives, receives, and shares love from all eternity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let us note two particularly important entailments for our understanding of the divine life.

God Is Social First, God is social. Perhaps the single most significant development in twentieth-century trinitarian theology has been the broad consensus among interpreters of the significance of relationality as the most helpful way to understand the Trinity. This so-called relational turn is viewed as an alternative to the metaphysics of substance that dominated theological reflection on the Trinity throughout much of church history. The classical focus on an abstract property of substance, or a divine essence, has been called into question for its implication that God is a solitary, isolated being. The result of the identification of God with a divine essence has led to an obscuring of the internal relationality that is constitutive of the divine life and an attendant loss of emphasis on the loving relationship that God manifests toward the created order in much of the classical theological literature of the character of God. The heart of the concern over the classical understanding of God is the seeming incompatibility of this theoretical conception of the changelessness of God with the biblical portrayal of a God who maintains a loving relationship with creation. Although the debate continues as to the degree to which the technical theological category of substance ought to be abandoned in the formulation, construction, and articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, contemporary theologians voice considerable agreement that the primary accent should be placed on the relational aspect of the divine life. In understanding God as social plurality rather than a solitary being, the question is therefore raised, what does it mean to affirm that God is one? In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one” (10:30) and explains that his works were done so that those who saw 57

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them might “know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (10:38). In seeking to explain this, thinkers in the early church turned to an idea known as perichoresis. This refers to the mutual interdependence, even mutual interpenetration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their trinitarian relation with one another. It seeks to explain the nature of the divine life with the assertion that while the three members of the Trinity remain wholly distinct from each other, they are also bound together, wholly interior to each other, in such a way that the Father, Son, and Spirit are dependent on each other for their very identities as Father, Son, and Spirit. In other words, the Father, Son, and Spirit would not be the Father, Son, and Spirit, that is, would not be God, apart from the interdependent relationality they share with each other. This relational interdependence is manifested in the earthly life of Jesus, who did not function as an autonomous, independent individual. Rather, he says that he constantly seeks the will of the Father and that he can do nothing by himself but only what he sees the Father doing. At the same time, he also says that the Father judges no one but has entrusted all judgment to the Son. Nevertheless, in rendering these judgments he says, “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30). This understanding of perichoresis leads us to conclude of the persons of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are one by virtue of their interdependent relationality. The contemporary consensus concerning the relationality of the life of God brings us back to the affirmation that God is love. Articulating the doctrine of the Trinity in accordance with the category of relationality gives us an indication as to how this biblical and classical assertion is to be comprehended. From the beginning and throughout all of eternity, the life of the triune God has been and continues to be characterized by love. This divine love is found in the reciprocal interdependence and self-dedication of the trinitarian members to one another. Indeed, there is no God other than the Father, Son, and Spirit bound together in the active relations of love throughout eternity. This love provides a profound conception of the reality of God as understood by the Christian tradition. Love expressed and received by the trinitarian persons among themselves 58

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provides a description of the inner life of God throughout eternity apart from any reference to creation. In addition to enjoying the support of the biblical witness and the tradition of the church, love is an especially fruitful term for comprehending the life of God since it is an inherently relational concept. Love requires both subject and object. Because God is a triune plurality-in-unity and unity-in-plurality, God comprehends both love’s subject and love’s object. For this reason, when viewed theologically, the statement “God is love” refers primarily to the eternal, relational intratrinitarian fellowship among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who together are the one God. These three are one throughout eternity by virtue of their interdependent relationality. In this way, God is love within the divine reality, and in this sense, through all eternity God is the social Trinity, the community of love. The life of God, which is truth, is characterized by difference and plurality expressed in unity through interdependent relationality, or, in other words, the plurality of truth itself.

God Is Missional A second entailment of our understanding of the triune God as one who gives, receives, and shares love from all eternity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is this: God is missional. The Christian tradition has maintained that God has a mission in the world and therefore speaks of the mission of God (missio Dei). However, in addition to the affirmation that God has a mission, let us also assert that God’s very character as the one who loves from all eternity is missional. Love characterizes the mission of God from all eternity and therefore God loves the world lavishly in Jesus Christ. Creation itself may be viewed as a missional act, a reflection of the expansive love of God whereby the triune God brings into being another reality, that which is not God, and establishes a covenantal relationship of love, grace, and blessing for the purpose of drawing that reality into participation in the divine fellowship of love. Creation forms the external basis and context of God’s covenant with humanity in that God’s act of creation always has in view the institution, preservation, and execution of the covenant of grace in which 59

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God has called human beings into participation and partnership. The covenant of grace is the internal basis of the act of creation in that God’s covenant with humanity constitutes the fulfillment of the very intentions of God in the work of creation. The missional character of God’s eternal life is reflected in the relation of God to the world and the biblical witness of God’s concern for engagement with the world. Indeed, mission is at the heart of the biblical narratives concerning the work of God in human history. It begins with the call to Israel to be God’s covenant people and the recipient of God’s covenant blessings for the purpose of blessing the nations. Hence, the mission of God is at the heart of the covenant with Israel and is continuously unfolded over the course of the centuries in the life of God’s people recorded in the narratives of canonical Scripture. This missional covenant reaches its revelatory climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and continues through the sending of the Spirit as the one who calls, guides, and empowers the community of Christ’s followers—the church—as the socially, historically, and culturally embodied witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the tangible expression of the mission of God. This mission is carried out in the global ministry and witness to the gospel of churches in every culture around the world and, guided by the Spirit, moves toward the promised consummation of reconciliation and redemption in the eschaton. This missional pattern is communicated in the words of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (20:21 NRSV). With respect to Jesus this suggests not simply that the Son of God sends the church into the world but also that the Son has been sent. God is both sender and sent, and in turn God, through Jesus Christ, sends the church into the world after the pattern by which Jesus had been sent by the Father. The love of God lived out and expressed in the context of the eternal community of love gives rise to the missional character of God who seeks to extend the love shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit into the created order. According to the prominent South African missiologist David Bosch, this means that mission is not something that is a product of the church but instead is derived from the very nature of God. As such, mission must be situated not in the context of Christian teach60

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ing on the church or salvation but rather in the Christian teaching on the Trinity. Accordingly, the logic of the classical doctrine of the missio Dei expressed as God the Father sending the Son, and the Father and the Son sending the Spirit, must be expanded to include yet another movement: “Father, Son, and Spirit sending the church into the world.”1 From this perspective, the church is seen as the instrument of God’s mission and its various historical, global, and contemporary embodiments may be viewed as a series of local iterations of God’s universal mission to all of creation. Or, put another way, as a manifold witness in the created order to the plurality of truth that characterizes the life of God from all eternity. One final point: the plurality-in-unity and unity-in-plurality that characterize the life of the triune God means that difference is part of the life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in the fellowship of missional love. The Father is not the Son or the Spirit; the Son is not the Father or the Spirit; and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. This means that in the life of God is the experience of what is different, other, not the same. It is important to note that the missional love of God is not an assimilating love. It does not seek to make what is different the same but rather lives in harmonious fellowship with the other. The Father, Son, and Spirit are one by virtue of their interdependent relationality, but this unity does not make them the same. They are one in the very midst of their difference. In this way the eternal life of God is characterized by the plurality of truth in interdependent relationality.

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Chapter 7

God Speaks

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he confession that God is triune and has lived from all eternity in a social, communal fellowship characterized by love, unity, plurality, and mission carries with it an implicit question: On what basis is this conviction to be affirmed? I suggested in the previous chapter that we know God through the actions of God, and these actions are connected with the idea of revelation. In other words, the confession affirmed earlier that God is an omniscient and comprehensive knower who is the truth is connected to another: God speaks. The One who is all truth and knows all truth graciously speaks to us as our loving Creator and Sustainer in order to provide guidance and direction concerning the conduct of our lives with respect to both belief and practice. This aspect of Christian teaching is reflected in the doctrine of revelation. It affirms both the existence of God as the one who knows ultimate truth and also that this God has communicated truth to human beings through the free and gracious act of selfrevelation in Jesus Christ as attested in Scripture. 63

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The purpose of revelation is to draw creatures into relationship with their Creator and to invite them to share in the love and fellowship of God and to participate in the divine mission of love and reconciliation. As mentioned earlier, the belief that God has been revealed in Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life, offers a stark challenge to claims of radical cultural or religious relativism. However, we cannot think about revelation without remembering the human recipients who hear it and respond to it. In other words, there is a necessary human dimension that is part of our talk about the Word of God. Having said this, we must also remember that this human dimension is not to be understood as something contributed by the human recipient of revelation independent of the Word of God. Instead, divine revelation creates its own hearers. It is because of the very directedness of the Word to human beings that the reception of revelation and the talk of God that it enables must of necessity include the human response. In this chapter I will briefly consider the nature of revelation and its contextual pluralist character beginning with a consideration of the orthodox understanding of Jesus Christ as a paradigm for an understanding of the situated and contextual nature of revelation.

Jesus and Revelation In addition to pointing us in the direction of the Trinity, the centrality of Jesus in the act of divine revelation also points to the relationship between the divine and the human in the person of Jesus Christ and the mediated character of revelation. The classical theological construction of ecumenical Christology and the mystery of the incarnation is the definition provided by the Council of Chalcedon, one of the ecumenical councils of the church, held in 451. In light of the affirmation of the Council of Nicea concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Council of Chalcedon sought to address the question of the humanity of Jesus and to consider the mysterious relationship between his human and divine natures. The Council of Chalcedon was held in 451 to address a controversy that had emerged in the life of the church concerning the person of Christ. In 325 the first Council of Nicea had deliberated on the 64

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question of the divinity of Jesus in response to the Arian controversy. Arius had suggested that while Jesus was unique, he was not fully divine. His phrase, “there was when the Son was not,” became a way of asserting that Jesus was categorically different from the Father. The Council concluded that the understanding of Arius was deficient and that Jesus was truly divine. This conclusion was reaffirmed at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which issued the creed that is referred to today as the Nicene Creed because of its summary of the conclusions of the Council of Nicea. This decision concerning the deity of Jesus led to questions about his humanity. If he was God, was he really human? And if so, how were the divine and human to be understood in relation to each other? These questions were addressed at the Council of Chalcedon, which concluded that Jesus Christ is understood as “one person” in “two natures” meaning that both his divinity and humanity are viewed as internal to his person. Jesus is not simply a human being with a special relationship with God or a divine being who is not really human but rather a single person who is complete in both divinity and humanity. No definition is provided of either Christ’s divinity or his humanity except to say that they are present in a way that is perfect and complete. From the perspective of the Chalcedonian formulation, any conception of the two natures of Christ that does not meet this basic and minimal standard is deemed to be an inadequate account of the biblical witness concerning Jesus. Nothing more is affirmed concerning the way in which Christ’s two natures are related to each other except to rule out options that are untenable with an orthodox confession of Christ’s person. Each of the two natures retains its distinct integrity in the midst of the closest fellowship and communion with the other. The relation of Christ’s two natures, as stated by Chalcedon, suggests an abiding mystery of their unity-in-distinction and distinctionin-unity. Conceptions of Christology that are faithful to the Chalcedonian formulation must not compromise the understanding of Jesus Christ as one person in two natures who is complete and perfect in both deity and humanity. This means that while the eternal Word becomes human flesh, and hence situated and enculturated, the Word nevertheless remains transcendent. From the perspective of 65

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this formulation, we now turn our attention to the question of the divine act of revelation.

Revelation, Context, and Accommodation As creatures, human beings are finite and situated in our understanding. All of our thoughts are shaped by the social and cultural settings that we inhabit. None of us has vision and understanding that is universal in scope. None of us has a “God’s eye” view on the world. This is not to say that our social contexts unilaterally determine all of our thinking. We can certainly change our views through numerous ways, including conversation with others and engagement with other forms of thought. In other words, ideas can influence a culture in the same way that culture influences ideas. Having said that, even where such change or conversion occurs, it still bears the marks of its social setting. This notion of the contextual and situated character of all human thought has raised concerns for some Christian thinkers who fear that taking these conclusions too seriously is to jeopardize the very possibility of theology and truth. This concern poses the challenge of providing a theological account of revelation that addresses the way in which the Word of God comes to expression in the words of human beings. In other words, if we are thoroughly situated and imbedded in our own social and historical settings, what are the implications for claims about truth? Some have argued that the Christian confession that God speaks simply negates and overcomes these concerns. They suggest that the Christian doctrine of revelation implies that God breaks through the limitations of human finitude in order to provide us with access to ultimate and universal truth—that is, reality as God knows it to be with respect to the particular point about which God speaks. Others, in seeking to affirm the implications of the situated human condition, have maintained that what finite human beings are really able to know and understand about the divine is God’s fundamental hiddenness and incomprehensibility. In seeking to move between these options, we must be clear that God does not break through and negate the situatedness that is part of the human condition. 66

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Instead God has chosen to enter into and participate in the limitations of that condition in the act of revelation as a means of accommodation to the finitude of human creatures. The church has long maintained the distinction between finite human knowledge and divine knowledge. Even revelation does not provide human beings with a knowledge that directly corresponds to the knowledge of God, even with reference to the content of revelation itself. The difference between the infinite God and finite human beings suggests the accommodated and mediated character of all human knowledge of God. The sixteenth century theologian and church leader John Calvin asserts that this means that in the process of revelation God “adjusts” and “descends” to the limited capacities of finite human beings in order to reveal something of the infinite mysteries of the divine reality, which by their very nature are beyond the capabilities of human beings to grasp. In other words, human beings can’t handle the truth about God as it is in itself, but because God desires to establish a relationship with us, God accommodates to our limitations and, in Calvin’s evocative language, “lisps” to us as a parent does with a child.1 This means that God chooses to be revealed through creaturely mediums that bear the marks of their finite character. In other words, the very means used by God in the act of revelation—human nature, language, speech, and writing—bear the inherent limitations of their creaturely character. These limitations remain in place in spite of the use God makes of them as the bearers of revelation. It is at this point that the Chalcedonian formulation of the person of Jesus becomes significant. Here the divine and human natures of Christ remain distinct and unimpaired, even after their union in Jesus of Nazareth. One of the implications of this is the denial of the “divinization” of the human nature of Christ in spite of its relationship to the divine nature. Put another way, the human nature of Jesus does not take on any special properties that enable it to transcend its finite limitations because of its union with the divine nature. In the incarnation, the Son of God willingly chose to accept these limitations. At the same time, the limitations of the human nature of Jesus do not compromise his divinity. 67

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While this conception affirms the mediated and contextual character of revelation, it also affirms that God has chosen to be revealed and is therefore not entirely hidden from us. God has been made known in Jesus Christ, in whom all the fullness of Deity lives in bodily form according to the witness of Scripture (Col 2:9). And God is certainly not absent from us. Jesus Christ is Immanuel, Godwith-us, and has promised to remain with us always (Matt 28:20). Although mediated, contextual, situated, and enculturated—the revelation of God is also transcendent and able to address human beings in particular contexts for the purposes of critique, judgment, and transformation.

Indirect Revelation In seeking to set forth an understanding of revelation that is in keeping with the person of Jesus Christ, I suggest that we turn to the notion of indirect revelation. In this conception, revelation is indirect because it is always mediated through creaturely forms, and nothing can be known of God directly by the natural perception of human beings. Yet at the same time, in spite of the limitations of the mediums of revelation and the human recipients, God is genuinely revealed. Karl Barth speaks of this as “the dialectic of veiling and unveiling,” by which he means that God is revealed or unveiled in and through creaturely mediums which, from the perspective of human beings, serve as veils that hide what is revealed from its intended recipients apart from the further action of God. With respect to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, this means that the act of revelation entails no impartation or communication of divine attributes to the human medium of revelation. For instance, revelation does not become a predicate of the human nature of Jesus. It is not something that is part of the natural created order and therefore may not be read directly from the person of Jesus apart from the grace of God. The consequence of this idea of indirect revelation is that it remains hidden to natural human perception and requires that human beings be given “the eyes and ears of faith” in order to perceive the revelation of God that otherwise remains hidden to them. This explains why so many of those who followed Jesus and observed 68

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the signs and wonders of his public ministry were nevertheless unable to perceive that revelation of God. An example of this occurs in the Gospel of Matthew with the recording of Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Jesus replies, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (Matt 16:17 NRSV). In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul asserts along similar lines that no one can truly confess that Jesus is Lord apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. In this understanding, then, revelation involves both an objective moment when God is revealed through the veil of a creaturely medium as well as a subjective moment when God gives human beings the faith to understand what is hidden in the veil. With respect to Jesus, the paradigm of revelation, the objective moment is christological when Jesus takes on a human nature. The subjective moment occurs through the work of the Holy Spirit, which enables human beings to see the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. In the context of indirect revelation we are able to affirm God’s use of the mediums of language, speech, and writing, while respecting our awareness of their inherent limitations. Revelation is never simply a past event that requires nothing further from God. If this were the case, the epistemic relationship between God and human beings would be static rather than dynamic. Instead, the ongoing need for the grace of God means that revelation is never at the beck and call of human beings. This means that we are never able to move from a position of epistemic dependency to one of epistemic mastery. We are always in a position of humility and dependence for our knowledge of God. This dependency that is the result of an indirect understanding of revelation points to the “nonfoundational” nature of our understanding of truth.2

Nonfoundational Theology In theological terms, nonfoundationalism means that apart from the ongoing grace of God, we would be unable to know the truth about God. Knowledge of the truth, the living God revealed in Jesus Christ, is not possible for human beings apart from the grace of God. 69

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This understanding of truth sets aside all appeals to presumed selfevident, noninferential, or incorrigible grounds for making truth claims. It rejects the notion some ideas must be immune to criticism and provide the certain basis upon which all other assertions are founded. This does not preclude the formation and maintenance of strong convictions and commitments that may be vigorously defended. It simply means that all such convictions and commitments remain subject to ongoing critical scrutiny and the possibility of revision, reconstruction, or even rejection. This conception of truth promotes a theology with an inherent commitment to the idea that all of our thought needs to be continually reformed in accordance with the Word of God. It makes us aware of the ways in which our particular contexts and settings shape our thinking, accents the situated nature of human knowledge, and mandates a critical awareness of the role of culture and social location in the process of theological interpretation and construction. This perspective seeks to nurture an open and flexible theology that is in keeping with the local and contextual character of human knowledge while remaining thoroughly and distinctly Christian. Such a theology retains its Christian identity through its focus on Jesus Christ as the living Word of God. However, while the Word of God is the truth and the source of Christian faith, it never enters into our possession such that we can exercise control over it. Attempts on the part of humans to seize control of the Word of God and truth in the name of universality inevitably lead to forms of conceptual idolatry. The truth of the revealed Word of God opposes such seizure, and the only appropriate human response is to bear witness to this reality through the promotion of an understanding of truth and theology that humbly acknowledges the human condition and our dependence on the God to whom we seek to bear faithful witness. From this perspective Karl Barth concludes that the focal point of Christian faith, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, determines that in the work and practice of theology “there are no comprehensive views, no final conclusions and results. There is only the investigation and teaching which take place in the act of dogmatic work and which, strictly speaking, must continually begin again at the beginning in every point.”3 70

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It is to the living Word of God that we must bear witness. Yet the limitations of finitude frustrate our attempts. Here then is our dilemma: We must speak of the Word of God as that which makes everything new and thereby ruptures and transcends the limitations of our humanly constructed language, assumptions, and categories; yet as finite creatures we find that all of our attempts to do so are flawed and inadequate when compared to the reality of the Word itself. Hence, we are completely dependent on the free grace of God. Since truth is a predicate of the living God, the human reception of truth can only be an ongoing event that is made possible by the grace of God. Truth is not something neutral that is grasped by solitary individuals who coolly assess its claims from a distance and then make decisions concerning the ways in which they will choose to relate to it. Rather, truth is something that is self-involving and that calls the whole person into fellowship with God through the divine self-revelation in Jesus Christ. The ongoing nature of this encounter, which as humans we cannot manipulate, control, or demand, means that truth is never behind us, never something that we can possess in a once-for-all fashion, never something we should press into our service for the accomplishment of our particular agendas or our empowerment. Instead, truth calls all of us into question and places us under judgment. Truth is a living reality, identical with God’s own life as the Lord of all creation. Truth is identical with God, and revelation is the entrance of God into the created order. The trinitarian life of God points to the plurality that characterizes this divinely living truth. It is a truth that is rich and multifaceted in its unity such that it continually assumes new and unexpected forms in constancy with itself. God, who is the truth, lives eternally as plurality-in-unity and unity-in-plurality. And this pattern of divine life is expressed in the revelation of the truth, the Word of God, in the world. With this understanding of revelation, we now turn our attention to the character of Scripture as an inspired witness to revelation and the plurality of truth.

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Chapter 8

Scripture as the Word of God

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hroughout its history the Christian communal identity has been bound up with a particular set of literary texts that together have been identified by that community as canonical Scripture. The centrality of the Bible for faith and life is at the very core of Christianity and its corporate expression in the life of the church. To commit to the Christian community and its expression of life is to participate in a community that acknowledges the centrality of Scripture for life and thought. In the mind of this historic community, the centrality of Scripture is bound up with the perceived relationship it bears to the living God revealed in Jesus Christ and made known through the work of the Holy Spirit, who bears witness to the person of Jesus Christ through the inspired writings of the Bible. This work of inspiration is connected with the purpose of the Spirit to guide the church into the truth. The New Testament bears witness that the Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth. In John 14, Jesus speaks to his disciples of the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, who the Father will 73

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send in the name of Jesus and who will teach the disciples “all things” and will remind them of everything that Jesus had taught them (v. 26). In John 15, Jesus makes reference to the Spirit as the Advocate he will send from the Father, “the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father” (v. 26). In John 16, Jesus speaks again of the promised Spirit as the “Spirit of truth” who will guide the disciples into “all truth” and who will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said that the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you. (vv. 13-15)

Finally, in 1 John 2 we note the admonition to trust the work of the Spirit who guides the church into all truth (v. 27). In the witness of the community the work of the Spirit is concerned with the establishment and promotion of truth and this is manifest through the inspiration of Scripture. The historic commitment of the church to the idea that Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit has led to the conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God and as such reflective of the intentions of God for human beings and all of creation. While Christians have differed over the precise ways in which the Bible is to be understood as the Word of God and the implications of this belief for faith and practice, it is nevertheless true that this common commitment to the Bible as the Word of God has given Scripture a central and unrivaled position of significance in the life of the historic and global Christian community. This belief that the Bible is the inspired Word of God has led to a close connection between Word and Spirit.

Word and Spirit The relationship between Scripture and the work of the Spirit is such that throughout the history of the church Christians have been anxious to keep Word and Spirit connected. This concern to bind Word and Spirit together has been characteristic of the Christian community 74

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as a way of providing the conceptual framework for understanding the means by which the Spirit governs and guides the life of the church throughout history. We can identify two tendencies with respect to the separation of Word and Spirit. One is the tendency of intellectualist scholarship to incline toward the study of the human word of the text apart from its animation by the Spirit, while the other speaks of the leading of the Spirit apart from a careful consideration of the text of Scripture. Because Word and Spirit are inseparably linked, we can conclude that two errors must be avoided: that of “collapsing” the Spirit into the text and implying that the leading of the Spirit is simply that of understanding the text in its historical setting; and that of marginalizing the written text in the name of following the Spirit, implying that an understanding of the text is incidental to the direction of the Spirit. Hence, the centrality of the Bible in the Christian community is connected with the idea that the Spirit governs and guides the church by speaking in and through canonical Scripture. This assertion that Christian belief and practice are governed by the Spirit who speaks in and through Scripture means that Christian belief and practice cannot be determined merely by appeal to either the exegesis of the Bible carried out apart from the life of the believing community or to claims of guidance from the Spirit that contradict the witness of Scripture. The reading and interpretation of the text is for the purpose of listening to the voice of the Spirit who speaks in and through Scripture to the church in the present. The Bible is a central element of the Christian community because it is understood as the means through which the Spirit speaks. In other words, the position of the Bible in the church as the instrument through which the Spirit speaks is ultimately bound up with the work of the Spirit. Christians acknowledge the Bible as Scripture because of the work of the Spirit who has inspired these texts and continues to speak through them. The Christian community came to confess the unique significance of Scripture because it experienced the power and truth of the Spirit of God through writings that were, according to their testimony and confession, animated with the Spirit of Christ. It is worth mentioning that the sixteenth-century theologian John Calvin is insistent that Word and Spirit be bound together and asserts 75

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the principle that the church is to be governed by the Spirit. However, he maintains that the Spirit is bound to Scripture in order to ensure that the government of the church might not be vague and unstable. From the perspective developed here, in keeping with the work of the Spirit as the one who guides the church into truth, it is more appropriate to say that the word of Scripture is bound to the Spirit who, in the divine economy, inspired it and continues to speak through it. To say that the Spirit is bound to Scripture runs the risk of collapsing the Spirit into the text and allowing human beings to move from a position of epistemic dependency with respect to the knowledge of God to one of mastery. In this sense, what is suggested here is in continuity with Calvin and the Protestant tradition in its insistence on binding Word and Spirit, but it also seeks to amend an aspect of the tradition by explicitly prioritizing the role of the Spirit in relation to Scripture in ways that are less indicative of traditional Protestant orthodoxy. It is important to note that this does not mean that it is only the Spirit’s contemporary appropriation of the text that invests it with authority. The Spirit, by inspiration, has spoken normatively in the text of canonical Scripture. What is being sought is an understanding that provides for the continual work of the Spirit in addressing the church in its various cultural settings and circumstances in order to affirm the authority of the Spirit in governing the church through the ages. What is affirmed is that the Spirit has spoken, now speaks, and will continue to speak with authority, guiding the church into truth, through the canonical texts of Scripture. In other words, the notion of the Spirit speaking in and through the text of Scripture should not detract from the importance of serious and diligent work in biblical interpretation. In keeping with the wisdom of the church throughout its history, we seek the guiding voice of the Spirit in the human words of the prophets and the apostles. The work of biblical interpretation or exegesis is therefore of crucial significance as the instrument through which the gospel is made known, the touchstone to which the church must turn again and again. Exegesis is the ongoing attempt to diligently listen and attend to what the Spirit says to the church. Hence, in prioritizing the work of the Spirit in relation to the Bible, no one should suppose that this provides license for the marginalization of the seriousness of the task 76

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of biblical interpretation. It is simply an effort to be faithful to the economy of God in the governance of the church by asserting the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. The biblical texts, in conjunction with the work of the Spirit and in keeping with the pattern observed in the act of revelation, invite readers to bring their own experiences into a conversation with them, resulting in an ongoing interpretation of each in the light of the other. The Bible is the principal means by which the Spirit guides the church today. The Spirit engages in the ongoing work of speaking to the church in its varied settings through the appropriation of the text. This does not eliminate the importance of exegesis in an effort to engage the voice of the author, but it does point to the idea that the speaking of the Spirit is not bound solely to the original intention of the biblical authors. Literary theorists note that once an author writes a text, it takes on a life of its own as it is read and interpreted in new and constantly changing situations. The speaking of the Spirit through the texts of Scripture means that while the intention of the author is an important concern, it is not the only concern. It does not represent the fullness of the speaking of the Spirit, since this always involves the response of the reader. The intention of the Spirit is to guide the church throughout its history, equipping and empowering it for participation in the mission of God and leading it into the fullness of truth. In this sense, the speaking of the Spirit does not come in abstraction from contemporary circumstances but rather in the context of both the specific situations in which it is received and in relationship to the interpretive tradition of the community in which it is read. The effect of the Spirit’s work is to form Christian communities that reflect the witness of Jesus Christ to the truth of the gospel. In short, the Spirit speaks to the church in and through the Bible for the purpose of world formation in keeping with the mission of God and the call of the church to bear the image of God.

The Function of Scripture For Christians it is the Bible that provides the collection of texts that are the focal point in the establishment of the narrative world 77

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that shapes the Christian community over time and across cultures. In the history of the church, the Bible has provided the means of seeing the world in new ways and of establishing hope through a future vision of God’s intentions for the fulfillment of creation. This eschatological hope has called the church beyond the apparent realities of its day-to-day world and challenged it to participate in the process of bringing a new world into being. While the biblical text plays a significant role in the process of world construction, it is important to bear in mind that this is ultimately the ongoing ministry of the Spirit, who speaks through the text. It is also important to remember that the world created by the Spirit is not simply the world of contemporary Christian communities, as though this reality is simply what we experience in present situations. Nor is it the world of the ancient faith communities. The world the Spirit intends to bring into being is not that of some supposedly pristine time when everything was as it was supposed to be. It is not the world of the first-century church or that of the sixteenth century. Rather, the world that Spirit seeks to create is the eschatological world intended by God for creation that is disclosed, displayed, and anticipated in the pages of the Bible. Scripture is the vehicle of the Spirit who speaks in and through the biblical texts for the purpose of establishing a social world in the midst of present circumstances that is concretely and particularly centered on the present and future lordship of Jesus Christ. In this way the church is the image of God. It is a socially constructed reality that lives and functions as the body of Christ in the world in accordance with the event of the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ and in anticipation of the ultimately “real” world as it is willed to be by the Father. The Spirit is able to guide the church in this way as the one who knows the deepest intentions of God. “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the person’s own spirit within? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 2:10b-11). This same Spirit who knows the thoughts of God lives in the midst of the believing community and guides it in the ways of God in order that the intentions of God for creation may be realized in the world. 78

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However, the world that God intends for the created order, the world as God wills it to be, is not a reality in the present situation. Instead it lies in the eschatological future as the hope of a time when God will put things right and the world will be what God intended from the beginning. In this sense, the most “real” world is not what we see around us in the present situation but instead the world as God wills it to be. It is this intended, future reality that the church is called to anticipate in accordance with the will of God. It is for this reason that Jesus taught us to pray that the will of God would be done on earth as it is in heaven. The Christian community is called to be the social context in which that prayer is provisionally answered in anticipation of the fuller and more complete realization of the intentions of God in the consummation of all things in Jesus Christ. In other words the “real” world, the world the church is called to anticipate and emulate, is not some past time but rather the future eschatological world that will be established by God in the promised new creation. A time in which, according to the prophet Isaiah, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD / as the waters cover the sea” (11:9b). This future reality is God’s determined will for the created order and as such is far more real than the present form of the world which is even now passing away (1 Cor 7:31). This picture of the real world presented in the biblical witness points to what can be called eschatological realism. The church is called to participate with God, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in the work of establishing a socially constructed reality lived out in the life of a community that reflects the purposes of God for creation in keeping with the character of God. The Spirit speaks to the church in and through the texts of Scripture in order to guide in the establishment of a community that is both local and global and that reflects and anticipates the eschatological intentions of God that stand at the climax of the revelation of the Word of God. The local and contextual nature of the Spirit’s speaking gives rise to the plurality of Scripture itself and it is this idea that I will now consider.

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Scripture as Manifold Witness

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ave you ever wondered why there are four Gospels in the New Testament? A friend of mine recalls starting seminary several years ago with little background in Christianity. He had decided to follow Jesus as an undergraduate and as a new Christian wanted to learn more about the faith and decided to attend seminary. On orientation day a test was given to assess the basic Bible knowledge of each student in order to determine if they needed to take a Bible survey course. My friend remembers a particular question from that exam, “How many Gospels are found in the New Testament?” He thought it was a trick question. He knew that there was only one gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and responded accordingly. He ended up taking the survey course. The question of the relationship between the four Gospel accounts contained in the New Testament and the one gospel of Jesus Christ is not new. In fact it goes back to the work of a second-century Christian thinker and apologist named Tatian. He was a native of Assyria educated in Greek rhetoric and philosophy who became a Christian in 81

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Rome sometime in the middle of the second century. He was a passionate defender of the Christian faith who concluded that it would be helpful to the defense and affirmation of the faith to have a single gospel account rather than four, which might be confusing and lead to misunderstandings of the Gospels themselves. In order to rectify this situation, Tatian composed a single continuous narrative of the life of Christ drawn from the four Gospels called the Diatessaron. This harmony of “the Four” work circulated widely in the Syriac churches as an alternative to the works of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and became the standard gospel text until the fifth century, when it was replaced by the four separate Gospel accounts. This decision was significant and underscores the commitment of the church to the manifold witness of Scripture and the plurality that emerged in the life of the church as a result of the diversity contained within the canonical texts. Here I consider the relationship between the Bible and culture and the plurality of Scripture.

The Bible and Culture The speaking of the Spirit in bringing about a socially constructed world centered on Jesus Christ is always contextual in that it always comes to its hearers within a specific social and historical setting. The ongoing guidance of the Spirit always comes as a specific community of believers, in a specific setting, listens for and hears the voice of the Spirit speaking in and to the particularity of its social and historical context. This conception of the work of the Spirit has been operative in the earliest church and in the establishment of the biblical canon, which is the product of the early Christian community hearing the Spirit speaking within their changing contexts, often through literary materials that they had gathered and preserved, and that eventually led to the composition of additional texts. The specificity of the Spirit’s speaking means that the conversation with culture and cultural context is crucial to the act of interpretation. We seek to hear the voice of the Spirit in and through Scripture, which comes to us in the particularity of the social-historical context in which we live. Consequently, because the Christian community is socially embodied in the midst of present circumstances, the ques82

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tions, concerns, and challenges it brings to the Scriptures are not identical with those of contemporary exegetes or even the ancient writers themselves. What we seek from our continual listening to and ongoing conversation with the Bible is significantly determined by our particular cultural setting, in order that we might be in position to speak and bear witness to it from the perspective of faith in the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. The claim that the Spirit speaks in and through the text, not in abstraction but in the context of particular cultural circumstances in this process of world formation, leads us to inquire about the reading of Scripture in the context of particular cultural settings. Here we note that the interpretation of the Bible always takes place in the midst of a particular social linguistic setting and that this setting will bear on the understanding of Scripture. This calls our attention to the interpretive character of our theological reflections and practical conclusions in relation to the Bible as a part of the socially constructive world-forming action the Spirit accomplishes in speaking through the text of Scripture. This notion has significant implications for our understanding of the connection between the biblical text and our various theological interpretations and constructions. Of particular significance is the implication that the purpose of the text is not to provide the basic materials for the construction of a theological or interpretive system. Rather, we engage in the theological task as servants of the Spirit and ministers within the community of those who are intent on discerning the voice of the Spirit speaking through the text of Scripture. Theological constructions and doctrines are not the meaning or the heart of the diverse stories and literary forms of Scripture. They are particular tools whose purpose is to assist particular communities in hearing the Spirit’s voice in order to better enable the proclamation of the gospel story. Put another way, the goal of reading the Bible is not the attempt to identify and codify the true meaning of the text in a series of systematically arranged assertions that then function as the only proper interpretive grid through which we read the Bible. Such an approach is characteristic among those who hold particular approaches to theology and hermeneutics in an absolutist fashion and claim that such 83

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procedures will lead to the arrival of the one true and proper conception of doctrine contained in Scripture. The danger here is that such a procedure can hinder our ability to read the text and listen to the speaking of the Spirit in new ways. We read, confident that the Spirit speaks through Scripture in order to create a communal setting that bears contemporary witness to God’s future intentions for creation in the midst of the present circumstances. In the call to participate with the work of the Spirit and the missional purposes of God, we must bear witness to the gospel in ways that are appropriate to our particular circumstances. This reminds us that our task is not that of simply repeating the words of the Bible, but rather of speaking the words that we must speak today, in our particular circumstances, based on the stories and teachings of Scripture. In keeping with the intention of the Spirit speaking in and through Scripture to form local communities centered on Jesus Christ and to guide these communities’ truth, Scripture is always in conversation with culture. In this way the Spirit continually speaks to the believing community in its present situation through the witness of Scripture to the paradigmatic events of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ as a means of providing ongoing guidance for the church as it grapples with constantly changing circumstances. From this perspective, the history of this Spirit-guided interaction may be viewed as a series of local theologies, traditions, and iterations of Christian faith that are closely related to the different social and cultural situations to which they are responding. These local events represent the translations of Christian faith in numerous and diverse historical settings in keeping with the mission of God and the sending of the church into the world as an agent of reconciliation, after the pattern of Jesus. They represent the plurality of the Christian faith expressed in the manifold witness of the church to the self-revelation of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, the plurality of this witness is not simply the result of social and cultural differences among communities that receive and reflect on Scripture but is also related to the shape and content of the biblical texts themselves. 84

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The Plurality of Scripture In the event of the Word of God, the revelation of truth, Scripture functions as the Spirit-inspired attestation and witness to the selfrevelation of God through the creaturely medium of the words of the prophets and the apostles. These words are imbedded in a socially constructed linguistic context. With respect to God, human language is by its nature, as a finite and creaturely medium, radically unlike the subject to which it seeks to bear witness and is insufficient for the task of speaking of God. It is only by the grace of God that it is enabled to transcend itself and attain sufficient likeness to make human speech about God possible. This understanding affirms the incapacity of human language as a finite creaturely medium to refer directly to God in ways that correspond to the knowledge of God that is possessed by God. Thus it respects the inherent mystery and otherness of theology’s divine subject matter. At the same time it also preserves the possible occurrence of genuine and proper reference to God by the miracle of ongoing divine self-revelation, which allows humans to speak in an authentically informative way about God. It also affirms that the means used by God in revelation, in this case the medium of human language, continues to bear the inherent limitations of its creaturely and finite character in spite of the use God makes of it as a bearer of truth in its witness to revelation. Hence, while Scripture is inspired by the Spirit and is truth written, it nevertheless remains subject to the historically and culturally conditioned character that attends to all human language. One of the entailments of the contextual character of the Bible as an inspired and true witness to revelation is its plurality. Canonical Scripture is itself a diverse collection of witnesses or, put another way, a manifold witness to the revelation of divine truth. In fact, the Bible is not so much a single book as it is a collection of authorized texts written from different settings and perspectives. Each of the voices represented in the canonical collection maintains a distinct point of view that emerges from a particular time and place. In other words, the Bible is polyphonic, made up of many voices. The self-revelatory speech-act of God is received among diverse communities over long periods of time and in a plurality of cultural 85

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settings. The human reception and response is shaped by the communal and cultural settings in which revelation occurs. This is part of the act of revelation itself that creates its own hearers and places them and their responses firmly in the event itself. Here we remember that it is the directedness of the Word to human beings that means the human response must be included in the act of revelation and the talk about God that it enables. The plurality of truth, the revelation of the triune God, is received in a plurality of cultural settings and is expressed and proclaimed from these diverse contexts to others over the course of history in accordance with the sending of the church into the world as a representative of the image and mission of God. As truth written, Scripture paradigmatically reflects this plurality and diversity. In this way Scripture is the constitutive and normative witness for the formation and proclamation of Christian community. At the same time, it is also the first in an ever-expanding series of presentations of the Christian faith throughout history for which it is paradigmatic. In this multifaceted and diverse collection of writings, each text offers a distinct perspective that contributes to the whole such that none of the works included can be understood properly apart from their relation to the others. The Bible contains a diversity of literary forms such as narrative, law, prophecy, wisdom, parable, epistle, and others. And within each of these forms we have the expression of numerous canonical perspectives. The mere presence of four different Gospel accounts offers the most straightforward and significant demonstration of plurality in the biblical canon. The inclusion of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each with its distinctive perspective on the life and ministry of Jesus, alerts us to the pluriform character of the gospel. This stands as a powerful reminder that the witness of the Christian community to the gospel of Jesus Christ can never be contained in a single universal account. Instead it is always perspectival and characterized by a diversity of forms, in keeping with the tradition of the biblical canon. In light of this, the early church resisted attempts at harmonizing the Gospels into one single account, such as that of Tatian’s Diatessaron, mentioned at the outset of this chapter. The fourfold witness of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John indicates the 86

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irreducibility of the gospel of Jesus Christ to a single, universal account. Attempts to do this are inappropriate in the face of the canonical witness. A true harmony of the gospels is neither attainable nor desirable. Like the problematic notion of a cultural melting pot in which numerous distinct cultures come together and form one new universal culture made up of all the others, something of value is always left out or excluded. When we attempt to ease the difficulties of the multiple perspectives in Scripture to make matters more compact, clear, and manageable, we suffer the loss of plurality and diversity that is woven into the very fabric of Scripture and, by extension, the divine design of God. If we had only one witness to the gospel in Scripture, then perhaps it could be asserted that a single description of the Christian faith was adequate and sufficient for all. But the multiplicity and plurality of the biblical witness stands against such a notion. This means that true “catholic” or “universal” faith is pluralistic. “It is ‘according to the whole,’ not in the sense that it encompasses the whole in a single, systematic, entirely coherent unit, but rather in the sense that it allows for the openness, for the testimony of plural perspectives and experiences, which is implied in the fourfold canonical witness to the gospel.”1 The multiplicity of the canonical witness to the gospel is not incidental to the shape of the community from which it emerged under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and which it envisions for the future. Attempts to suppress the plurality of the canonical witness by means of an overarching, universalistic account lead to serious distortions of the gospel and the community that is called to bear witness to it. The plurality of forms and perspectives imbedded in the biblical witness suggests that no single voice or interpretive approach will be able to do justice to this diversity. Further, it may also be taken to imply that any of the forms and perspectives in the Bible itself will fail to bear adequate witness to the self-revelation of the triune God if they are abstracted from the other forms and perspectives and used in a reductionistic fashion. In relating these diverse forms as the Word of God, it is important to envision their plurality-in-unity and unityin-plurality. As evangelical theologian Kevin Vanhoozer asserts: 87

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It is worth reminding ourselves at this point that this plurality should not and cannot be construed as leading to an “anything goes” sort of relativism. As stated at the outset, the Christian conviction that God speaks rules out this sort of approach, and the acknowledgement of diversity and plurality in the Bible must not be used as an attempt to support such a perspective. In addition, as witness to the revelatory speech-act of the triune God, the plurality of Scripture should not be used as a denial of the unity of the canon. In keeping with the conviction that the Bible is inspired by the Spirit for the purpose of bearing witness to the self-revelation of God and guiding the church into truth, Christians affirm that the Bible constitutes a unity as well as plurality. But this unity is a differentiated unity expressed in plurality. As such, the Bible has given rise to a variety of meanings and interpretations that are derived from the work of exegesis, theology, and the particular social and historical situations that have shaped its interpreters. In the task of seeking to read the Bible as a unity-inplurality and plurality-in-unity, we should expect a variety of models and interpretations due to the very nature of the canonical texts themselves. Scripture itself authorizes multiple perspectives within a set of possibilities that are also appropriately circumscribed by the shape and content of the canon. The point here is not that anything goes but rather that within the context of what “goes” we should expect plurality. Indeed, the plurality of the church is a faithful expression of the plurality of Scripture, which is in turn a faithful witness to the plurality of truth lived out in the eternal life of God and expressed in the act of revelation. Plurality is the intention and will of God as a faithful expression of truth. In the words of Lamin Sanneh: “For most of us it is difficult enough to respect those with whom we might disagree, to say nothing of those who might be different from us in culture, language, and tradition. For all of us pluralism can be a rock of stumbling, but for God it is the cornerstone of the universal design.”3 88

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As the Word of God and normative witness to revelation, Scripture consists of inspired human speech-acts that bear authentic witness to the divine speech-act of the event of revelation. As such, Scripture is truth written, and its pages bear manifold witness to the plurality of truth. As the Word of God and paradigmatic witness to revelation, Scripture also invites greater plurality than that contained in its pages, in order that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the witness of the church to the truth in the world may be continually expanded to all the nations in keeping with the mission of God.

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Manifold Witness and the Other

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orms of theology are properly shaped by the Word of God because the plurality of truth will continually be characterized by openness to the witness of the Other. This is consistent with the rule of love that governs all forms of Christian discourse that would be faithful to the triune God of love who lives in eternal fellowship with the Other. Here it is important to remember that the love of God does not seek to assimilate the Other and make it the same but rather relates to the Other as Other. The emphasis on otherness that is related to the triune character of God is also a particularly promising aspect of postmodern thought, and one that has great significance for the practice of theology. If we are to resist the dangers of cultural accommodation and fulfill our calling to bear faithful witness to the plurality of truth and the Word of God, theology must be open to the voice of the Other.

Dominant Culture and the Marginalization of the Other Among the connotations associated with the idea of otherness are philosophical, ethical, and eschatological concerns. Here we will 91

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focus on the more philosophical and ethical conceptions of otherness in connection with the practice of theology. Here the Other is viewed as anything or anyone that falls outside of one’s own categories. Here the realm and context of a person’s own particular self, or what is called the “same,” is constantly confronted and pierced by what is other, that which cannot be confined in the categories of the same. The challenge with respect to this aspect of the Other is to refrain from its violation by reducing it to the self-enclosed realm of the same and thereby forcing it into a homogenous, self-made mold that serves to efface it and eliminate its distinctive difference, its very otherness in relation to the same. One of the ways in which concern for the voice of the Other bears on the practice of Christian theology is manifested in contexts where the dominance of a particular set of social and cultural assumptions and presuppositions have served to stamp the Bible and theology in its image. When this occurs, the voices of those who do not participate in the assumptions and presuppositions of the majority are marginalized or eclipsed, often under the guise of claims that they are not being faithful to Scripture or the Christian tradition by seeking to import a particular cultural agenda into the discipline of theology. This is one of the great dangers of cultural imperialism in theology. It easily leads to the suppression of voices that do not fit the accepted cultural norms for the practice of theology. This is one of the dangers of allowing the tradition of the church to function in too authoritative a fashion in the work of theology. This is not to contradict the claims made earlier. The tradition of the church is an important aspect of a theology of the Word of God. We can learn a great deal from the tradition for our constructive work. At the same time, we can also observe the ways in which that tradition has worked against and suppressed the emergence of appropriate manifestations of diversity. Now, one might wish to argue at this point that such a claim is false. After all, the Christian tradition has produced considerable diversity. As we noted in the first chapter, the diversity is evident in the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and the churches of Protestantism. Yet this diversity is often the diversity that emerges from a particular cultural perspective, which to be sure is an 92

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appropriate manifestation of diversity but is not in itself the fullness of diversity called forth by the truth of the Word of God as it is received in the multiplicity of all cultural perspectives. And the sad reality is that in the practice of theology in the West, the cultural assumptions, developments, and traditions of early modern Europe have exercised a dominant influence that has too often been viewed as normative for theology to the exclusion of other perspectives. Insofar as these other perspectives have been marginalized or largely ignored as “special interest” theologies, they represent the voice of the Other that demands attention if the Christian community is to be a faithful witness to the Word of God.

The Testimony of Black Theology In order to understand the effects of cultural privilege on the ability of the church to hear the Word of God in all the fullness of its plurality, let us consider the testimony of the African American theologian James Cone concerning the significance of the black community and the black experience for theology. Cone was the most prominent figure in the articulation of black theology in the sixties, and two of his books, Black Theology and Black Power and A Black Theology of Liberation, stand at the headwaters of the development of black theology in the North American context. In his book, God of the Oppressed, Cone offers what he described as his most developed theological position. In the introduction to this work Cone reflects on the challenge of doing theology from the perspective of the black community and the black experience in the midst of Christian tradition coupled with dominant power structures of white cultural privilege: I respect what happened at Nicea and Chalcedon and the theological input of the Church Fathers on Christology. . . . But the homoousia question is not a black question. . . . Unfortunately not only white seminary professors but some blacks as well have convinced themselves that only the white experience provides the appropriate context for questions and answers concerning things divine. They do not recognize the narrowness of their experience

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MANIFOLD WITNESS and the particularity of their theological expressions. They like to think of themselves as universal people. . . . They fail to recognize that other people also have thought about God and have something significant to say about Jesus’ presence in the world.1

Theology is not a universal language. It is situated language that reflects the goals, aspirations, and beliefs of a particular people, a particular community. No statement of theology can speak for all. Throughout God of the Oppressed, Cone provides a tour de force of the devastating consequences of concluding that a particular theology is a universal theology for all people. The result is injustice and indifference to the humiliation and suffering of others. It is nothing less than a form of oppressive idolatry by which a particular group is empowered by the idols they have constructed, while others are painfully disenfranchised. For instance, as Cone points out, in the United States theology did not arise from the experiences and social realities of black people. Rather, its character was determined by those who were so committed to the presumptions of the Enlightenment that they failed to question the consequences of this perspective that were reflected in the assumptions of cultural superiority that led to colonization and slavery. Hence, Cone remarks that while it has often been asserted that the Enlightenment represents a revolution in the thinking and consciousness of Western man, it is crucial to remember that not all people are Western, or men. And that not all Western people experienced the Enlightenment in the same way. It has not been the liberating force that it has so often been portrayed to be. “For black and red peoples in North America, the spirit of Enlightenment was socially and politically demonic, becoming the pseudo-intellectual basis for their enslavement or extermination.”2 In this context, American theologians from across the ideological spectrum from conservative to liberal have interpreted the gospel and the Christian faith from the perspective of the dominant cultural group and have seldom sought to transcend the social and political interests of this group for the sake of the gospel. As Cone remarks, “White theologians, because of their identity with the dominant power structure, are largely boxed within their own cultural identity.”3 94

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In other words, it’s not that white theologians have simply intended to serve the interests of their own particular constituency. Certainly this would be denied since it would be vigorously affirmed that the gospel is good news for all people. It means that white theologians have interpreted the gospel in terms of our own interests because we have too readily assumed that our cultural assumptions and interpretations of Christian faith are the cultural assumptions and interpretations of Christian faith. In this procedure the gospel is not only domesticated by the assumptions and interests of a particular group, but it is unwittingly and perversely turned into an instrument of oppression of other social and cultural people groups who do not participant in the social, political, and ideological “givens” of the dominant culture. Now, some who are knowledgeable about such things might want to say at this point that James Cone himself speaks for a particular segment of the theological community. One that is not only black but also committed to a revisionist conception of Christian faith in which culture and experience are given too much standing in the work of theology instead of relying simply on normative witness of Scripture. This has been a standard evangelical critique of approaches to theology such as that offered by Cone. However, black evangelicals have been confronted with similar challenges in their evangelical setting. Consider the testimony of William H. Bentley, who served as the chair of the Commission on Theology of the National Black Evangelical Association. In a paper coauthored with his wife, Ruth Lewis Bentley, and delivered to the Evangelical Affirmations Conference at Trinity Evangelical Divinity in 1989, he reflected on the prospects of black theology in the evangelical world: The function and scope of a Black evangelical approach to a Black theology is to understand, articulate, and expound the nature of a Blackcentric Christianity, hampered as little as possible by certain entrapments of traditional white theology, but more specifically reflective of the totality of Black experience, both within and outside of American history and culture. The apparent inability of American Christianity to assimilate the Black religious experience without destroying certain of its basic assumptions and foundations, seems to this author, as well as

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MANIFOLD WITNESS some others, to call for a theological posture which is designed to deal more adequately with Black humanity and that dignity and viability to which, as creatures of God, it is entitled. . . . We need a theology which will enable us as Black Americans to deal with our total experience here. We are not calling for a new Bible, or a new Christ, or a different Almighty God. For all of us who so believe, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the biblical revelation given to us through the Holy Spirit are in every way sufficient; but western theology has notoriously failed Black people and virtually all non-European-based people by [regarding] them functionally as lesser peoples. In so doing, it tends to afford a certain aid and comfort to political, economic, and racial oppression. As the religion of western man, western theology has either preceded him, joined him, or followed him in all missions of world colonization or conquest. It has singularly been unable to wean western man from his white tribalism or nationalism. There is a real sense in which Christianity (not Christ) is a white man’s religion.4

The implications of this situation continue to have serious and tragic consequences for the evangelical church. Sociologists Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith studied the influence of evangelical faith on the question of racial reconciliation and found that the assumptions and practices of white evangelicals have served to obscure and perpetuate the ongoing discrimination and injustice that fosters racial inequality in our society. Ironically, in spite of the public efforts to address the problem of discrimination and to attempt to reverse the trend, Emerson and Smith concluded that evangelicals were in fact serving to preserve the racial divide that continues to haunt American life and culture, not because of active or overt racism, but instead because of the assumptions that have shaped the evangelical tradition. These include theological assumptions such as the idea that the repentance and conversion of the sinful individuals at fault will serve to solve the problem. While this is certainly an important element in addressing the evil of racism, it shows no awareness of the complex and systemic nature of the issues involved.5 Such an outlook can also be used to exonerate individual persons and communities from the social and cultural questions of racism. 96

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Since they themselves believe that they are not racist, meaning that they are aware of no racial prejudice in themselves or in their particular communities, they conclude that the problem must be with others. And, quite often, since they do not personally know any people or communities that are overtly racist, they may even be tempted to conclude, and often do, that racism is really not a major theological, social, or pastoral issue. This outlook was once communicated very directly to me by the pastor of a healthy-sized evangelical church. I had been having a conversation with the pastor about addressing issues of social concern in the church such as racial and ethnic prejudice. He rejected the idea, saying that racism was not an issue for his church morally, pastorally, or theologically. When I challenged him on this assertion, he got a bit defensive and stated that it was a far more pressing pastoral matter for him to deal with a member of the congregation who was angry with another member because they sang flat on hymn #604 on Sunday morning than it was to raise questions about racism, since no one in the congregation was a racist. Recently, Edward Gilbreath has reflected on this situation in his book, which is a gentle and gracious firsthand account of the pervasiveness of these problems in the world of white Christianity. Gilbreath also bears testimony to the growing frustration of those working for reconciliation with the apparent lack of serious interest and sustained progress in this area despite the numerous claims by leaders in all segments of the church that this is an issue at the forefront of social and ecclesial concern.6

Against Totality It is important to note here that while we have been focusing on the relationship of the black perspective and experience for theology, the same questions have been raised by other social and ethnic communities. All have spoken of similar experiences in their dealings with the dominant culture of white Eurocentric Christianity and its assumptions of universal totality—that is, the idea that it could speak truth for all people at all times. 97

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At the end of the twentieth century, James Cone, quoting W. E. B. DuBois, reminded us of the enduring nature of the struggle against totality for the present. In 1903 W. E. B. Du Bois prophesied, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of [people] in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.” As we stand at the threshold of the next century, that remarkable prophesy is as relevant today as it was when Du Bois uttered it. The challenge for black theology in the twenty-first century is to develop an enduring race critique that is so comprehensively woven into Christian understanding that no one will be able to forget the horrible crimes of white supremacy in the modern world.7

Here we simply add that these horrible crimes were often committed with the complicity of a culturally imprisoned white theology. In addition to the question of the color line is also the question of the gender line. Feminist and womanist historians, biblical scholars, and theologians have alerted us to the cultural assumptions of male supremacy and the discrimination and horrible crimes committed against women, often with the complicity of a culturally imprisoned male-dominated theology. These concerns stretch across racial and ethnic boundaries as women in all cultural settings continue to experience the oppression, marginalization, and limitations that have been associated with gender discrimination. Doubtless most readers, hopefully all, will resonate with the criticisms raised concerning the dominant forms of Christianity as they have been developed and practiced in the contemporary setting. Perhaps many will also ask why, for instance, given the desire to promote racial reconciliation in the church as a witness in the world to the power of the gospel, it has been so hard to achieve. One of the reasons for this state of affairs is related to the relative unwillingness of those who are part of the dominant cultural frameworks and structures across the ideological spectrum to give serious attention to the voice of the other in disciplines like biblical studies, hermeneutics, and theology because of a particular totalizing or universal conception of truth that allows for only one proper expression of it. 98

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A particular understanding of theology or truth is developed and then taken to be universal and normative for all by those who framed it. When those who are not part of the contexts and communities that have a stake in the proposal on offer subject it to scrutiny and critique from their own experiences and vantage points, they are frequently accused of relativism or special interest approaches to theology and truth. In fact, all theologies and theories of truth are contextual and perspectival, none simply rise above the social conditions and particular interests from which they emerge. The danger of cultural hegemony is that those in the dominant culture, particularly if they ignore the voice of the other, will be tempted to conclude that their outlook is universal. And this conclusion will lead to the marginalization of those who do not share in the outlooks and assumptions of the dominant culture. This presumption of universal totality is illustrated in the story of a North American white theologian who was invited to speak in Africa. After one of his lectures he was approached by an African theologian who asked why it was that when he spoke of theological reflection in South America he referred to it as South American theology, and in Asia as Asian theology, and in Africa as African theology, but referred to his own work simply as theology. This is a fairly obvious and straightforward point, and yet one that is easily missed. All theological reflection emerges from a particular location. As finite creatures, we must surrender the pretensions of a universal and timeless theology. And where we are unwilling to do this, we propagate forms of cultural, ethnic, and racial imperialism under the guise of theology and the Word of God. The failure to surrender these pretensions will continually hinder the hopes of racial reconciliation in the church because the Christian faith will continue to be defined in ways that are governed by the assumptions and outlooks characteristic of the white experience and its cultural dominance. True reconciliation cannot be achieved on these terms. In listening to the voice of the other, it is important to remember that the “other” is never monolithic, as can be suggested by phrases such as white theology, black theology, hispanic theology, feminist theology, and the like. All of these are characterized by their own plurality that emerges from their particular perspectives. While we are 99

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often very aware of the nuances and pluralities of our own traditions, we can often fall prey to viewing others in a simplistic, homogenous way that easily allows us to assume our cultural superiority. This way of “listening” to the voice of the other can become simply another mechanism linked to the exercise of power and control. It is also important to note that the voices of these various traditions of theological reflection are not simply to be seen as serving merely their own particular communities. Hence, we must not think that black theology is only for black people, hispanic theology for hispanics, feminist and womanist theology for women, and so on. These theologies, while particularly attentive to the experiences of specific communities and constituencies, are for the whole church. They must inform the thought of all if we are to bear witness to the truth of the gospel and the unity of the church, the body of Jesus Christ. As James Cone asserts, the particularity of his conception of black theology, arising out of the black experience and the Bible together in dialectical tension, still has significance for all: While we must begin our theological reflection with the particularity of our own struggle for justice, we should never stop there. The truth of our struggle pushes us beyond ourselves to the truth of other struggles. The Bible and the struggles of the oppressed throughout history broaden our vision of the truth and thereby impel us to make real the beloved community that Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke so eloquently about. Human beings are made for each other and no people can realize their full humanity except as they participate in its realization for others. While some critics, shocked by my accent on blackness, missed the universal note in my theology, it has been there from the beginning. The end point of my theology is as important as the particularity out of which it was born.8

While Christian theology always arises out of particular social and historical experiences and contexts, its intent is to serve the whole church precisely by bearing witness from the particularity of those experiences and perspectives to the truth of the gospel on behalf of the whole. Taking seriously the witness of the Other in the task of proclamation and theology means listening attentively to the voices of those who have been marginalized and ignored in the forms of 100

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traditional Western theological discourse. In order to facilitate this, a strong dose of deconstruction will help make space for the Other. I will consider the role of deconstruction in making space for the flourishing of plurality before considering theological practices that properly bear witness to the plurality of truth.

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Manifold Witness and Deconstruction

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art of the obligation we bear as those who must speak of God as faithfully as we can is to learn to hear the witness of the Other for the sake of the mission of God in the world and the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Other witnesses to theology as those voices that have been excluded, marginalized, and ignored in the dominant forms of theology that have shaped the common perceptions of the enterprise in the church. In addition, the concept of the Other also has an eschatological dimension that bears on our inability to speak of God. In this idea, the Other is what is to come, the awaited future as a realm of peace and justice, the ultimate reality and truth beyond what we see in our everyday lives and what is yet to come. Here the Other is what we long for and what is disclosed in the revelation of the Word of God but which also remains hidden and elusive. This is what we desperately want to speak about and live but find that our words and lives continually fail us and fall short of our longings. Here we are always dependent on the grace of the God who 103

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loves in freedom. Yet, as we have seen, we are also invited and called to participate in the mission of God to the world. This raises again the question of our witness to the Word of God, the plurality of truth, in the work of confession, proclamation, and theology. How do we do this in a way that is faithful to the fullness of a reality that is tantalizingly and frustratingly both known and within reach as well as hidden and beyond our grasp? In the last chapter I focused on the witness of the Other in its philosophical and ethical senses. Here I will consider witness that the church must bear through the practice of deconstruction as a necessary part of a theology that is truly open to the voice of others as well as the Other in its eschatological sense.

Deconstruction and Truth Deconstruction has often been viewed in negative terms as what exists to tear down all the achievements and accomplishments of tradition, society, and culture—to subject them to critique and destruction simply for the sake of critique and destruction. And doubtless some employ this tool with just such cynicism. They don’t really like anything and so they seek to destroy everything. However, this is not a proper conception of deconstruction, certainly in the hands of a Christian who is committed to the truth. Deconstruction is in fact a theory of truth. It constitutes not so much a tearing down as a bursting through of the cultural and intellectual sediment that so often serves to obscure and distort the truth. Its intention is not to destroy tradition but rather to keep it alive by contesting the idea of “the one tradition that is the truth” and thus seeking to prevent the death and mummification of the very idea of tradition. As we have seen, the very idea of the Christian tradition, a tradition animated by mission, breeds plurality, and this plurality serves to keep tradition alive by extending the conversations it fosters into new contexts and situations and by reminding us again and again of the need to listen and learn. This idea is embedded deeply in the outlook of the Protestant Reformation with its slogan ad fontes, “back to the sources.” Martin Luther spoke of the need to deconstruct and reform the Christian tradition he had received through his Roman Catholic education. 104

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He wanted to strip away the philosophical and intellectual accretions of a hierarchical church and medieval scholasticism in order to recover the true Christian tradition. This thinking is contained in the Reformation ideal that the reformed church is always reforming according to the Word of God. In keeping with the premise that the church is always reforming, it is also true that the theology and proclamation of the church is always reforming according to the Word of God in order to bear witness to the truth of the gospel in the context of an ever-changing world characterized by a variety of cultural settings. Hence, the process of reformation is not, and never can be, something completed once and for all and appealed to in perpetuity. Such an approach to community and theology poses a double challenge. On one hand, when it faces the challenges of deconstruction and reformation in light of new circumstances and fresh understandings of the Word of God, it can risk compromising or losing important and defining commitments. On the other hand, when it opposes criticism and deconstruction, it can betray its affirmation of the necessity of continual reformation and run the danger of becoming anachronistic and inconsequential in the contemporary setting. These observations point to two distortions to which Christian theology has been susceptible and which must be avoided if the vitality and faithfulness of its witness to the gospel is to be maintained. One is the conservative distortion of so closely equating theology with the events, creeds, and confessions of the past as to virtually eliminate, in practice if not in theory, the need for ongoing reformation. The other is the revisionist distortion of becoming so taken with the opportunities and possibilities for innovation that theology ceases to be a distinctively Christian enterprise. The task of subjecting our confessions and traditions to the process of criticism and deconstruction is an essential part of theology, as is the importance of engaging with the past and allowing it to speak to us in the present.

Deconstruction and Confession In order to address this challenge we return to the second-order and constructed character of Christian theology, particularly with 105

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reference to its historical traditions and confessions of faith. Throughout its history Christianity has been a confessing faith. The church has maintained that one of its obligations is to declare what it believes about the good news to the world. This commitment to the task of confession has been one of the defining characteristics of the church and should continue as a regular and ongoing aspect of the life and witness of the Christian community. In doing so the church seeks to participate in the mission of God in dependence on the Spirit in its proclamation of the truth and hope of the gospel. The act of confession can be compromised when we choose to minimize its significance through the marginalization of the confessional tradition in the church and to function as though it did not exist. Here the contemporary act of confession is severed from its connection to the work of the Spirit in the tradition of the church, thus making it more likely that the church will become captive to the cultural assumptions and norms of the contemporary setting. Hence, the church must seek to ensure that its confessional heritage is preserved in its collective memory as it proclaims the faith in its own time. While this confessional heritage consists of human responses to the revelation of God, this should not lead to the conclusion that past confessions can be viewed as simply a collection of fallible documents that can and should be disregarded and ignored. To affirm that the confessions of the faith are provisional affirmations from particular vantage points is far different from the conclusion that they are merely poor attempts at making assertions that finite human beings are not in a position to make. They are in keeping with the obligation of the church to speak of God. The ideas of limitation and provisionality with respect to the confessional traditions of the church are not intended to imply skepticism concerning their significance. The fact that they manifest the limitations of their finite character does not negate their significance for the life of the church. Instead it is simply an acknowledgment of our ongoing dependence on God and the need for continual reformation in the life and thought of the church. The limited and provisional nature of the confessional tradition of the church points to another way in which the act of confession can be compromised. The claim that a particular confessional statement 106

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can be viewed as sufficient for all times and places returns to the suggestion of a universal theology. In this case the need for ongoing confession is minimized or altogether eliminated by the suggestion that the church can be faithful to its calling to confess its faith by simply repeating over and over again the formulations of a past confession. The creeds and confessions of the history of the church, then, are vitally important as the historical reflections on the revelation of the Word of God by particular Christian communities. To marginalize and ignore them is to deny in practice the promise of the Spirit to guide the church. At the same time we understand that these confessions are constructed and subject to criticism and deconstruction. They are provisional statements that are subordinate to the Word of God, and this reality stands as a challenge to those who ascribe binding authority to them. Such an approach runs the risk of transforming past creeds into de facto substitutes for the Word of God itself. Furthermore, in the interest of securing an absolute and final authority in the church, this approach can actually hinder such a community from hearing the voice of the Spirit speaking to the church in new ways. This means that the work of confessional criticism is a vital component of the practice of theology. Developing a practice that expresses an approach to the traditions and confessions of the church—that holds fast to their significance while still subjecting them to the sort of serious criticism demanded in the practice of deconstruction—is difficult and resistant to hard-and-fast legislation. Some are always anxious to throw out the old and bring in the new, while others want to hold fast to the old ways and will not tolerate the new. On the one hand are those who cannot be bothered to learn from the past and imply by their attitudes and practices that the past holds little if any value for contemporary life and thought. On the other hand are those who are beholden to the past and cannot imagine any possibility that we can improve on the venerated conclusions of past symbols. These common trajectories are not legitimate options for Christian communities that are committed to the truth and the guidance and ministry of the Holy Spirit. The reforming principles of deconstruction and self-criticism must be practiced and maintained as the only proper response to the material convictions of the Christian tradition 107

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regarding the primacy and ultimate authority of God in the church and the world and the limitations of created and finite human beings. Yet these must not be viewed as providing license for constructive theology to proceed apart from serious engagement with the historical traditions and confessions of the Christian community. Such a procedure effectively denies the manifestation and ministry of the Spirit promised to the church throughout the ages and thereby the authority of God.

Deconstruction and Tradition The task of tradition criticism, while a proper and necessary component of the reforming principle, must be done only through careful, patient, and respectful attention to the tradition itself. The task of proclaiming the gospel and appropriating the Scripture for constructive theological purposes in the contemporary situation must be done in constant conversation with the traditions of the church. A deep familiarity with and commitment to the texts and traditions of the Christian community is a critical prerequisite for responsible engagement in the task of criticism and deconstruction. To read the texts of a tradition well one must: learn to read the various languages into which the tradition has been translated; learn as much as possible about the intellectual and cultural contexts that shape the texts under consideration, including their religious, social, political, and historical presuppositions; gain an understanding of the complex history of contemporary and subsequent interpretations, and so on. In other words, responsible participation in the task of deconstruction requires that we must do our homework before seeking to reframe and reform our tradition. Commenting on the thought of Jacques Derrida with respect to deconstruction, John Caputo observes that the work of reading texts responsibly in the act of deconstruction is not easy. In fact, he says, “it is an infinite task, and deconstruction is not a license to circumvent it. For otherwise, if this reading does not take place, then ‘anything goes,’ and readers may say of a text whatever comes into their heads.” Having said this, it is important to remember that these activities provide simply the guardrails, parameters, and horizons “within which 108

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interpretation takes its first steps.” As important as these first steps and guardrails are in the preservation of a tradition, they must not be allowed to function absolutely as the final word in interpretation lest they grind the tradition to a halt and fossilize it. In which case, they will not protect tradition at all, “unless you regard embalming as a form of protection. So, the only way to be really loyal to a tradition, that is, to keep it alive, is not to be too loyal, too reproductive; the only way to conserve a tradition is not to be a conservative.”1 It is perhaps necessary to point out here that this critical and deconstructive element of theological reflection is first and foremost a calling to self-criticism, the critique and deconstruction of our tradition rather than the traditions of others. Over the years I have had students who asked why I was so willing to criticize the evangelical and Reformed traditions of the church given that these are the ones with which I identify and participate in. Why not be more critical of the liberals, the Lutherans, the Roman Catholics, the Baptists? My answer has always been that I am the most critical of the traditions in which I participate because they are mine. This is consistent with the teaching of Jesus that we first tend to our own failures and shortcomings before becoming overly concerned with those of others. Failing to do this, and instead focusing on the ways in which we assume we are right and others wrong, inevitably leads to forms of sectarian pride that are not appropriate in the church. Of course, this is not to say that we do not on occasion offer questions and constructive criticism of other traditions of theological reflection as part of our participation in the life of the broader Christian community. It simply affirms that when we engage in criticism, our first and longest examination should be of ourselves, not others. It also reminds us that tradition should not be viewed as a weapon to employ in combat with those who differ with us. John D. Caputo asserts: A tradition is not a hammer with which to slam dissent and knock dissenters senseless, but a responsibility to read, to interpret, to sift and select responsibly among many competing strands of tradition and interpretations of tradition. If you have a tradition, you have to take responsibility for it and its multiplicity. But that, of course, is the only way to conserve a tradition.2

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Deconstruction and the Church This commitment to ongoing reformation, and the openness to the criticism and deconstruction of the tradition that it implies, points to the ongoing dialectical tensions that exist between the community of the present and its relationship to the community of the past and the future as well as to the true community that all are called to become in Christ. How do we maintain appropriate continuity with the earthly Christian communities, guided by the one Spirit, while engaging in an ongoing process of reform? We have spoken of the ways in which the Christian tradition should continue to bear on the life of the church under the guidance of the Spirit. But we must always subject the traditions of the church to critical scrutiny, with openness to deconstruction for the sake of the tradition itself as a witness to the truth. One of the formative principles that has served to shape the church throughout its history, often explicitly but always at least implicitly, is that its being is in becoming. That is to say, it has lived with a profound awareness that it continues to fall short of its calling be all that God intends it to be as the image of God and the body of Christ in the world. The Christian community does not exist in heaven but on earth and in time. The situatedness of the Christian community in the midst of temporal and changing circumstances is a reality that shapes the entirety of its life and witness. And in spite of its calling to participate in the mission of God as the body of Christ in the world, it often experiences failure with respect to this vocation. Nevertheless, in spite of its failures and shortcomings, the church moves ahead under the guidance of the Spirit as a sign in and for the world of the new life, which is available in Jesus Christ, and as a provisional demonstration of God’s intentions for humanity. The church is the human institution that is established by the event of the Word of God in Jesus Christ through the work of the Spirit to participate in the mission of God and bear witness to the gospel to the ends of the earth. In this work it is called to bear the memory of the teaching of Jesus and to proclaim that to the world. And yet, as with all human institutions, it has done this imperfectly. It has failed to heed the teachings of Jesus and has misheard and misunderstood what 110

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he said. In the establishment and constructions of its institutional forms, it has sometimes, even often, failed to discern the consequences of its assumptions. Because the church as a human institution is constructed, it is always subject to deconstruction by the Word of God, the truth around which it seeks to gather and be animated. In bearing witness to this reality, proclamation and theology must develop and promote open and flexible forms of practice and the temperament for ongoing self-criticism that allow for this ongoing reformation to occur. Deconstruction and self-critical theological reflection are necessary because the church is resident to all of the foibles of the human experience. It is not a perfect or infallible institution. It is prone to error and frequently loses its way in the world. This is precisely why deconstruction must be an ongoing practice and not viewed as something done once and for all. It must be an aspect of the witness of the church that is returned to again and again in a ceaseless effort to promote truth in the church and to call the church to faithfulness in its witness to the gospel. In this task constant attention to Scripture as the vehicle of the Spirit is of particular importance. However, one of the most significant challenges to the practice of deconstruction in the life of the Christian community is its familiarity, real and imagined, with the contents of Scripture. The ready acceptance of cultural assumptions, patterns of reading, and deeply ingrained intuitions and presuppositions can serve to domesticate our reading of the Bible to the standards of a particular culture or tradition. The practice of deconstruction seeks to unleash the Word of God in the church and the world, and free it from cultural and ecclesial captivity. This captivity can serve not only to domesticate the witness of Scripture but also to demonize it when the words of the Bible are used to justify horrific practices such as genocide, slavery, murder, the abuse of women, cultural imperialism, racism, and the oppression of those who do not conform to the assumptions and standards of the empowered majority. The practice of deconstruction and self-criticism is necessary precisely because the Bible can be, and has been, a dangerous book when it is linked to the desires and aspirations of a particular group of people who have been too confident of their reading of the Bible and have too readily assumed their superiority over others. 111

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The practice of deconstruction and self-criticism provides a formal means of maintaining openness to the other in the sense of the witness of voices and persons speaking from outside of the same, the familiar and customary patterns of dominant cultural and ecclesial traditions. We maintain this posture and practice in keeping with our obligation to speak of God and bear witness to the truth of the Word of God by continuing to address our manifest shortcomings and failures.

Deconstruction, Reality, and Theology We also engage in the formal practice of deconstruction and selfcriticism in openness to the Other in its eschatological sense. We run headlong into our inability to speak of God and bring to pass the community of peace and justice that we long for, either in the world or in the church. It is the Other that bursts through and shatters all the pretensions of our God talk and leaves our words and ourselves undone. As theologian William Stacy Johnson maintains, the Other is not a projection of ourselves and our ideas and values but rather something outside of us, something beyond us that enters into our lives and shatters the protective totalities that we construct around ourselves for our security and protection. It is an infinity that claims us and will not let go in its call to move us beyond the constraints of our selfhood, beyond the limitations of our versions of reality and truth and toward the Other, the God in whom we live and move and have our being.3 Deconstruction is a modest, cautionary engagement that seeks to preserve the real and the true through its openness to the Other and the primacy of the event over the traditions of reflection that form around the event. We might think of this notion of the “most” real as a sort of hyperrealism which affirms that ultimate reality is not what we see in the present but what is beyond the present and contained in the truth. This resonates deeply with the witness of Scripture and the persective of eschatological realism. The most real world is not what we see in the present but rather God’s ultimate intention for creation when all things will be put right and all who are thirsty may find water that satisfies with a satisfaction that is beyond our imagination in this 112

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age. It is what we longingly pray for when we say “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Our openness to deconstruction and our engagement in selfcriticism may be viewed as a form of theological practice and theological hermeneutics that we employ in our effort to bear formal witness to the hope that we have concerning the Other. We hope that this present world is not all there is. We are aware that we all need deliverance and liberation from the ways in which we are thoroughly enmeshed in this world’s distortions and are compromised by them, even as we bear witness to the truth of the gospel. The problem with traditional forms of realism is that they are simply too content with what is at the present. Realism is too comfortable with the status quo and too lacking in imagination about the possibilities of the reign of God. The Word of God establishes only one reality, the reign of God. In so doing, it deconstructs all human conceptions of reality, all ideologies, theologies, and institutions, including the church, insofar as none of them are themselves the realization of the reign of God. They may serve as shadows or proleptic manifestations of truth, but they are not the fullness of truth revealed and anticipated in the Word of God. As such they remain subject to the witness of deconstruction that is an integral part of the human experience of the Word. The witness of deconstruction reminds us of this truth and calls us to live with the tension of allowing our determined and cherished beliefs to be shadowed and haunted by what is indeterminate and not yet. Plurality fosters and breeds deconstruction and self-criticism, which is a necessary and crucial aspect of our witness to the truth of the Word of God. Apart from plurality and the witness of deconstruction, we easily conclude that our way is the way and thus construct various sorts of idols in our own image that lead to the marginalization and oppression of others and leave no space for the Other. Deconstruction is the faithful servant of a theology that is called to bear witness to the plurality of truth revealed in the Word of God. Its witness keeps theology and the traditions of theological reflection alive by reminding us again and again that theology, tradition, and confession cannot be reduced to finished formulas that can be repeated again and again and appealed to in perpetuity as the one true theology. Deconstruction is “a way to keep the event of tradition going, to keep 113

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it on the move, so that it can be continually translated into new events, continually exposed to a certain revolution in a self-perpetuating auto-revolution.”4 It invites us to be productive rather than reproductive, to reread texts ancient and new, to rethink and revise, and to perceive the ever-unfolding plurality of theologies and traditions within the Christian community that together provide manifold witness to the plurality of truth.

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proper conception of the Word of God leads to the plurality of truth. The one truth is, and can only be, expressed in plurality. This is consistent with an understanding of God as trinitarian unity-in-plurality and plurality-in-unity, the trinitarian and contextual nature of revelation, and the manifold witness of Scripture to the revelation of truth. Indeed, the biblical witness to revelation leads to the conclusion that the Word of God is the plurality of truth. In light of this, how should we understand the practice of theology? In this chapter we will briefly examine the nature of theology as a contextual discipline and suggest an approach to theological conversation that bears witness to the plurality of truth.1

Contextual Theology We have suggested that the event of the Word of God encompasses not only the divine act of revelation but also its human reception. The socially constructed nature of human communities reminds us 115

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that this reception always is a communal and cultural dynamic as people in different contexts hear and receive, through the action of the Holy Spirit, the revelation of God. Hence, the dialectical pattern of theology suggested above is not ultimately something that is most fully worked out by individuals engaged in the task of theology but rather something worked out by communities of theological reflection under the guidance of the Spirit in relation to other communities that make up the Christian church, the one body of Christ. In other words, the corporate theological reflection of the church, taken as a whole, is necessary to bear proper human witness in a culturally and ethnically diverse world. This is the great theological dialectic of the plurality of truth as it is lived out in the church. The various parts of the body of Christ faithfully bear their particular witness as part of the whole. No single community, tradition, or perspective can speak for the whole church. Each has its own vocation and calling in relation to the whole as ordered and guided by the Holy Spirit. This points us to the notion of theology as practiced in particular settings as a local, ongoing, and contextual discipline. As mentioned earlier, the Christian doctrine of creation as well as the sociology of knowledge reminds us that all forms of thought are embedded in social conditions, and while this does not mean that those conditions unilaterally determine thought, it does point to the contextual nature of theology. All human knowledge is situated. It is influenced and shaped by the social, cultural, and historical settings from which it emerges. As a human endeavor bound up with the task of interpretation, the discipline of Christian theology, like all other intellectual pursuits, bears the marks of the particular contexts in which it is produced. It is not the intent of theology simply to set forth, amplify, refine, and defend a timelessly fixed orthodoxy or a systematic theology. In the articulation of theology we are constantly drawing on contemporary ideas and thought-forms. One of the consequences of this is that the categories we employ are culturally and historically conditioned. This has always been the case in the history of Christianity, from the writings of Scripture to the formulations of the great councils of the church to the great systems of theology articulated in the medieval church to the Reformation to the present day. Theology is situated and contextual. In addition, because 116

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the setting into which the church proclaims the gospel is always changing, the work of theology is never completed in some sort of once-and-for-all fashion. It is a living enterprise, a social practice of the church that will continue without end. Theology is not something that falls to earth from heaven in pristine form. It is always a human and earthly enterprise. The attempt to articulate a theology free from the influence of culture and ever-changing circumstances is misguided. Culture is always a factor in the construction and articulation of theology, and no formulations are ever devoid of it. We are not able to remove ourselves from the numerous influences, seen and unseen, that shape our perspectives on the world and on our faith. All of our ideas and interpretations emerge from a particular location and are shaped by those circumstances.

The Gospel and Culture Divine revelation itself comes to expression in the midst of the cultural setting as part of the divine accommodation to the finitude of human creatures. This means that our proclamation of the gospel is also shaped by the circumstances of the social setting in which it is articulated. Indeed, the well-known mission theologian Lesslie Newbigin asserts that in our witness to the gospel we “must start with the basic fact that there is no such thing as a pure gospel if by that is meant something which is not embodied in a culture.” All articulations of the gospel are shaped by culture and none are free of cultural influence. Even the four Gospels and the letters of Paul represent a particular contextualization of the gospel. This should not be viewed as detracting from their normative character for the church as inspired witnesses to the revelation of the Word of God but rather as a reminder of the distinction between finite creatures and their infinite Creator and the covenant faithfulness of God in the establishment of communicative relations with us. To drive the point home, Newbigin asserts that even the meaning of a simple and straightforward verbal statement such as “Jesus is Lord” depends to a great extent on the content that a particular culture gives to the idea of lordship: 117

MANIFOLD WITNESS The gospel always comes as the testimony of a community which, if it is faithful, is trying to live out the meaning of the gospel in a certain style of life, certain ways of holding property, of maintaining law and order, or carrying on production and consumption, and so on. Every interpretation of the gospel is embedded in some cultural form.2

He concludes that “the idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion.”3 The knowledge of Jesus Christ and the gospel never comes to us apart from the perspective of culture or apart from cultural baggage. From the very beginning it is received and passed on within the setting of a particular culture. The life and ministry of Jesus occurred in the midst of the Jewish culture of his time and circumstances. It was in the concrete situation of Galilean Jews of the first century (according to contemporary reckoning) that Jesus called his disciples and sent them out as his witnesses. “Ever since, in the passage to the various forms of Hellenistic culture, in the conversion of the Germanic peoples, and in every other missionary enterprise and conversion experience, people have met Christ mediated through cultures—both theirs and the culture of those who communicated the gospel to them.”4 This observation indicates that the culturally specific nature of divine truth revealed in the Word of God arises directly out of the event of the incarnation. As we observed earlier, the deity of Jesus is inseparably related to his humanity. In the same way that it is impossible to separate the deity and humanity of Christ, since he is now and forevermore Jesus of Nazareth, so it is impossible to separate the church from the surroundings that have shaped it and given it its particular form. In other words, while it is certainly true that the church is called to engage its surrounding culture, it is also true that the church is a culture. There is no such thing as an abstract Christ, an abstract church, an abstract proclamation of the gospel, or an abstract culture. These are all characterized by particularity. Following this pattern, the missionary Apostle Paul was willing to employ the writings and assumptions of the Greek cultural setting in his proclamation of the gospel, perhaps most memorably in his conversation with the Athenian philosophers at Mars Hill 118

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(Acts 17). Similarly, Newbigin reminds us that a missionary does not come to a new cultural setting “with the pure gospel and then adapt it to the culture where she serves: she comes with a gospel which is already embodied in the culture by which the missionary was formed.” This has been the case throughout Christian history. “The Bible is a book which is very obviously in a specific cultural setting. Its language is Hebrew and Greek, not Chinese or Sanskrit. All the events it records, all the teachings it embodies, are shaped by specific human cultures.”5 The constantly changing nature of culture and the world in which we live means that the challenge of bearing witness to the gospel is an ongoing process that never comes to an end. This means that theology as a human enterprise is always in flux and on the way. The prominent missiologist Stephen Bevans asserts that the time is gone “when we can speak of one, right, unchanging theology, a theologia perennis. We can only speak about a theology that makes sense at a certain place and in a certain time. We can certainly learn from others . . . but the theology of others can never be our own.”6 All proclamations of the gospel and articulations of theology are situated, that is to say, enculturated. The challenge for faithful Christian witness is not to arrive at some form of unenculturated gospel or theology but to be able to discern between legitimate and illegitimate enculturations of the gospel and theology. This is a task that requires the insight and wisdom of the whole church in all of its diverse plurality, lest the gospel and theology be distorted and held hostage to one particular cultural manifestation. Maintaining the belief, as many do, that the true gospel must be absolute and unenculturated is dangerous because it leaves those who hold such beliefs blind to the ways in which their own culture shapes their understanding of the gospel. This danger is further compounded because it not only leads to a gospel domesticated by the assumptions of a particular culture but also to the suppression and eradication of other legitimate forms of the gospel. As evangelical theologians Brad Harper and Paul Metzger contend, “Hermeneutical monopolies—privileging one culture’s reception of the gospel over others—give the appearance of being concerned for absolutes. However, such absolutizing moves distort the gospel, giving rise to syncretistic aberrations.”7 119

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No matter how persuasive, powerful, and compelling the theologies and confessions of faith from Christian history may have been in their day, the Christian community is always faced with the challenge of confessing the faith in ways that are culturally appropriate as a witness to the circumstances and challenges of its own time. This means that the work of theology will never be completed in a once-and-forall fashion in the present age but must wait for the consummation of all things to find its fulfillment. This leads to the conclusion that in one sense all theology is local, in that all attempts at doing theology will be influenced by the particular thought-forms and practices that shape the social context from which it emerges.

Local Models of Theology In keeping with the local character of theology, the church engages in the task of theological reflection through the development and articulation of models of Christian faith.8 These models should be in keeping with the canonical teachings and narratives of the Bible, appropriate to the particular social and historical context in which they are situated, and informed by the history of the church. This means that the sources for the construction of these models are the Bible, the thought-forms of the contemporary setting, and the traditions that make up the tradition of the church. The intent of this constructive process is to envision all of life in relationship to the living God revealed in Jesus Christ by means of biblically normed, historically informed, and contextually relevant models and articulations of Christian faith that communicate the Christian story and its invitation to participate in the reconciling and liberating mission of God. Theological models function as heuristic conceptions that enable complex issues and questions to be opened up for reflection and critical scrutiny. A model is “a relatively simple, artificially constructed case which is found to be useful and illuminating for dealing with realities that are more complex and differentiated.”9 In this way models are constructions rather than exact representations of phenomena to be studied. Models provide images and symbols that enable us to conceive of the richness and complexity of the divine life and action of God in the 120

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world without the claim that they are absolutely literal and precise. Effective and useful models provide genuine insight into theological questions with the understanding that such knowledge is always partial, fragmentary, and provisional. Their constructed, contextual, and fragmentary character points to the need for a plurality of models in the task of theology. No single model will be adequate to account for the plurality of the biblical witness, the diverse perspectives on it in the tradition of the church, and the complexity entailed in the interaction between the gospel and culture that gives rise to theological reflection. The distinction between finite creature and infinite Creator and the diversity of human situatedness and experience affirms that a plurality of models in dialectical relation to one another is imperative in the task of bearing faithful witness to the subject of theology. In fact, the exclusive use of one model of theology, even a dialectically conceived model, will lead to a distortion of the very reality that the model is attempting to make better known. The divine subject matter of theology coupled with the limitations of finite human perspectives lead to the conclusion that a proper conception defies a single unique description and requires a plurality of perspectives in relationship to one another. In this way theology can be viewed as the ever-increasing emergence of manifold witness to the truth and plurality of the gospel and the Word of God. Our awareness of the situated character of Christian proclamation and the need for deconstruction raises a challenge. How does the Christian community engage in a robust practice of deconstruction that does not itself become accommodated and domesticated to the assumptions and aspirations of a particular social and historical situation? While the church is committed to the Word of God and Scripture, we are also always enmeshed in particular settings that on a conscious and unconscious level shape our entire outlook on the world. These assumptions cannot be allowed to function in absolute or uncritical ways without impairing our ability to hear the Spirit speaking in and through Scripture. Given this situation, Lesslie Newbigin asserts that the unending task of theology must involve openness to the Word of God in such a way that our assumptions and aspirations come under critical scrutiny. He concludes that this can only happen in the fullest sense if we are “continuously open to the 121

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witness of Christians in other cultures who are seeking to practice the same kind of theology.”10

Theology at the Ethnic Roundtable In imagining what the practice of theology might look like that bears faithful witness to the plurality of truth and provisional nature of our theological conclusions, we can envision what Hispanic theologian Justo González describes as Christian theology done at “at the ethnic roundtable.” He summarizes the work of a group that undertook such a project in Out of Every Tribe and Nation: Christian Theology at the Ethnic Roundtable, in which ethnic minority theologians gathered together to examine the various topics of traditional theology from their own perspectives, and to “enter into dialogue with each other and with traditional theology, seeking a better and deeper understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”11 He describes the book as a celebration of discovery in which the participants shared lively and exciting theological discussions that produced the experience of theological discovery in the midst of their diversity. In addition, they experienced the pleasure of discovering one another as they shared and came to understand one another’s hopes and pains as well as the faith that animated their lives. The book is intended as an invitation to its readers to both celebrate and share in the discovery of the participants of the group. It is a discovery that is vital for the witness of the gospel in our society. Yet, as González observes, the task is not easy, because powerful forces in the world and in the church stand in opposition to this discovery. “There are the forces of inertia, parochialism, and racism, which push people in our society to stay among others ‘of their own kind.’ And there are the forces of self-interest, for a true discovery would force us to deal more justly with one another.” Nevertheless this is the task to which the God of mission has called the church in order to represent the image of God in the world as a witness to the character of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. The difficulty of this calling is that it goes against the grain of our imbedded cultural racism, against many of our own self-interests, and against much of the current political

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THEOLOGY AS MANIFOLD WITNESS trend. But God has never called the church to easy tasks . . . It is the tasks that the world deems impossible that most appropriately belong to the church. If so, the task of promoting a new and mutual discovery among the peoples of this earth is certainly the task of the church.12

The witness of the Other must be discovered and prioritized in the church as theology done at the ethnic roundtable in order to provide both a witness against and an alternative to the racism and tribalism that permeate life in the world. In order for this vision to be fully realized, a particular challenge must be embraced by those who represent the hegemonic forms of theology that have served to marginalize the other in the church as well as in the schools and seminaries where so many traditional Christian leaders are trained. If the witness of the Other is to flourish throughout the church, we must be willing to subject the dominant theological traditions and intellectual assumptions of the Western church to critical scrutiny and intentionally “decenter” them in relation to other voices and traditions. We must assume a place at the ethnic roundtable along with all the other participants, with the particular responsibility of assuming the posture of a learner rather than that of a teacher. We must be willing to give up the assumption of self-supposed theological and intellectual supremacy and be prepared to listen rather than to speak. In so doing we will be in a position to receive the witness of the other and be liberated from the cultural imperialism that has served to deafen us to the voices of so many and blind us to the work of God. This is particularly a challenge for those who represent the dominant streams of theological reflection because of the power differential that exists between these traditions and those outside of the dominant streams. In order to promote the Spirit-guided flourishing of plurality in the church, those with power must be willing to both make use of it in such a way that allows for the witness of the Other to be realized in the life of the church and to relinquish power for the sake of the gospel. While this task of “decentering” the dominant strands of the Western theological tradition will be difficult and often painful to those of us who have been formed and privileged by them, such a process is necessary for the witness of the church to the character of 123

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God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thus, for the sake of the gospel and the community that is called to bear living witness to it, we must in humility consider the interests and concerns of others before our own in keeping with the example of the Lord of the church, “Who, being in very nature God, / did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; / rather he made himself nothing / by taking the very nature of a servant” (Phil 2:6-7). That this is a matter of utmost importance for the witness of the gospel stems from the fact that the plurality of the church is not simply a fact but is also, as we have argued, the very intention of God. Only a pluralist church and pluralist theology are able to bear appropriate witness to the plurality of truth. In light of this, Justo González concludes that “the opposite of a pluralistic church and a pluralistic theology is not simply an exclusivistic church and a rigid theology, but a heretical church and a heretical theology!”13

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n taking soundings on the plurality of truth and the manifold witness offered by the Christian community to the revelation of the Word of God, I have to this point left unanswered the question of the relationship between the many and the one. If the witness of the church is and must be characterized by plurality, how are we to understand the unity of the church that Scripture calls on us to manifest and preserve? How can we conceive of the unity of the Christian community in the midst of a pluralist church that has been embodied throughout history and across cultures in such a dazzling array of forms and in which so much is debated and contested with respect to both beliefs and practices? While Christians around the world confess that they believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, does not the simple fact of Christian diversity force us to ask the question: Is the church really one? And if it is, how are we to understand this unity in the midst of its sheer and irreducible plurality? In what sense, if any, may the diverse Christian communities of the past and the diverse global Christian communities of the present 125

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be said to somehow be one with one another? We might also first consider why such a question even matters. Do Christians have any stake in affirming the unity of the church or is it the case that the varied and often competing practices and traditions of the churches can simply move forward in a sectarian fashion with each community secure that it represents the one truth? Sadly, this has often appeared to be the case for many Christians from across the ideological spectrum. From this perspective the diversity of the Christian community has been the basis for disunity and even hostility between the churches as they struggle to assert their claims of primacy and superiority over the others. However, such an exclusivist understanding of church and theology is contrary to the mission and intentions of God in the witness of the New Testament, which calls the church to be one and relates this unity to the witness of the church to the gospel.

The Unity of the Church in the New Testament Perhaps the most significant text in the New Testament concerning the unity of the church is found in John 17. John reports that after Jesus prayed that his disciples would be sanctified in truth by the Word of God, which is truth itself, he affirmed that he was sending them into the world as he himself had been sent and then turns his attention to the unity of the church. Jesus prays for his disciples and the church and asks that they might all be one in a way that is like the unity that he shares with the Father in order that the world might believe that he was sent by the Father (John 17:20-23): “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

It is worth noting here the close connection that is made between the truth, the sending of the church, and the unity of the church. The 126

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sending of Jesus into the world is to proclaim the truth, to be the light of the world, in order that the world might believe. The church is entrusted by Jesus with the continuance of that mission as those sent by Jesus into the world to proclaim this reality that Jesus had been sent by the Father for the purpose of reconciling the world to God. The unity for which Jesus prays is to be a prime indicator of this truth. Hence it is to be a visible unity and not simply an invisible one. It can be seen by the world and is a visible testimony to the reconciling love of God in Jesus Christ. This indicates that the unity of the church is vitally connected with its life and witness and as such is a central aspect of the church’s missional vocation to be the people of God, the body of Christ, in the world. This concern for unity is prominent in other parts of the New Testament as well. For instance, in the letter to the Ephesians, the church is called upon to adopt attitudes and practices that will promote peace in the church and is urged to maintain the unity of the Spirit. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph 4:2-6)

Unity is not simply an invisible reality but also a calling that is to be manifested in visible ways through the cultivation of the disciplines of humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance with others. The letter to the Philippians connects these qualities to the life of Jesus, who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but instead humbled himself by taking the form of a servant, and urges that the church follow this example (Phil 2:1-11). The letter to the Galatians speaks of these qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and selfcontrol as the fruit of the Spirit against which there is no law (Gal 5:22-26). God calls the church to full unity, a unity like that which the Father shares with the Son, in the midst of the plurality of truth after the pattern of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit. 127

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Ironically, given the close connection between the truth of the Word of God and the unity of the church, one of the most significant challenges to the unity of the church comes from those who make certain kinds of truth claims. The letter to Titus addresses this in an explicit warning against factiousness in the church of Jesus Christ (3:9-11). It calls on those in the church to avoid “foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless.” Now, doubtless those who want to argue about such things do so under the guise of truth. They say, “We must all believe and maintain this particular conception of the law because it is the one proper understanding.” They are convinced that it is the one and only truth and on that basis they foster discord and dissension in the church in pursuit of their own views and interests. I believe that we could easily add the word theology to this passage with no distortion of meaning. Some debates that have become controversies in the church are simply not profitable. They needlessly divide the church and distract it from its missional vocation. The prescriptions offered in the letter are clear: “Warn divisive people once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned.” Clearly, according to the witness of the New Testament, and in keeping with the prayer of Jesus, the unity of the church is such a matter of importance that the Spirit is jealous to protect it and the members of the community are called upon to preserve and promote it. These texts point to the importance of the visible unity of the church as a testimony to the world of the truth of the gospel. As such, the church is called upon to make every effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit and to be vigilant in opposition to those who promote division in the church. In this way, the promotion and preservation of the unity of the church is a part of its missional vocation. The mission of the church is vitally connected with an appropriate and visible manifestation of its unity in the midst of its diversity, and the failure to maintain this unity will significantly compromise its mission and witness to the world.

Unity and Plurality Part of the challenge in maintaining visible unity among Christian communities is connected to the pervasive individualism in society 128

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that leads not only to personal individualism and the notion of the autonomous self but also to a sectarian individualism with respect to the church. This occurs when we come to think that our particular church or tradition is the sole bearer of truth and the only proper way to bear witness to the gospel. Such notions are the products of individualistic ecclesiologies that fail to comprehend the interconnectedness of the whole church as the one body of Christ in the world, even in the diversity of its expression. Theology that serves the church in ways that are consonant with its missional vocation must seek to promote and preserve the unity of the church in accordance with the work of the Spirit and the witness of Scripture. Theology seeks to develop constructions and formulations of Christian faith that promote and maintain the unity of the church and the interconnectedness and solidarity that is called forth by the metaphor of the church as the body of Christ in the world, which is not divided but is one. The interconnectedness and solidarity between churches reminds us of the dual responsibilities involved in the missional calling of the church to bear local witness to the gospel in the context of particular social, cultural, and historical circumstances while remaining faithful to the whole church in its historical and global expressions. It needs to be added here that while the one faith takes on multiple expressions, not all expressions of the one faith are appropriate. The problematic nature of some expressions of the faith points to the importance of the work of deconstruction discussed in the previous chapter in the ongoing process of assessing the proclamation and practices of the church. This means that the unity of the church is not to be sought merely as an end in itself but rather as a unity centered on the truth of the gospel and the Word of God as it is worked out in mission to the world. But the sort of unity that is often imagined is that of a church in agreement around a universal theology or the practice of a common liturgy or shared understanding of the proper principles of biblical interpretation. Much ecumenical conversation has been pursued in the past in order to arrive at a common confession and theology through the incorporation of various insights, and the rejection of others, into a melting pot out of which it is hoped will emerge a 129

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singular expression of Christian faith, thereby securing the unity of the church. It is also suggested, implicitly by some and explicitly by others, that the church cannot manifest the unity to which it is called apart from such a common theological expression since this would amount to a compromise of truth. In this work, I have been pursuing a different conception by maintaining the plurality of truth and the corresponding notion that a diverse community is required in order to bear witness to the truth. In other words, we should not expect agreement and commonality on all matters of theology and biblical interpretation. If this is the case, where is the unity of the church to be found in a pluralist church with a pluralist theology? As mentioned earlier, Andrew Walls identifies two points of commonality among the diverse and pluralistic communities of Christian history. The first is a “historical connection” characterized by the common commitment of Christian communities to mission. The second is what he calls an “essential continuity” characterized by the centrality of Jesus Christ, a commitment to the Bible as Scripture, a common set of ritual practices, and a sense of relationship with other Christian communities.

Unity in Mission The church is one in its commitment to mission. Whereas the particular conceptions and manifestations of mission have varied throughout the history of the church, the significance of mission has nevertheless, to a greater or lesser extent, characterized the life of the Christian community. Space does not permit a detailed discussion here, but in addition to the call to live out the unity of the church for the sake of witness and mission, let us simply point to two biblical texts from the gospel of Luke that should characterize the life of the church sent by God into the world after the fashion in which Jesus was sent. The first is found in Luke’s account of the inaugural events of the public ministry of Jesus. He went to the synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath day and took onto himself the words of the prophet Isaiah concerning the work he had been sent into the world to accomplish: 130

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“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, / because he has anointed me / to proclaim good news to the poor. / He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners / and recovery of sight for the blind, / to set the oppressed free, / to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:1819). In view of the emphasis of the biblical witness to the liberating ministry of Jesus, it is entirely appropriate and necessary to define the Christian community as “the community of the oppressed which joins Jesus Christ in his fight for the liberation of humankind.” From this perspective the mission of the church and theology is to explicate the meaning of God’s liberating activity so that those who labor under enslaving powers will see that the forces of liberation are the very activity of God. Christian theology is never just a rational study of God. Rather it is a study of God’s liberating activity in the world, God’s activity in behalf of the oppressed.1

A second text is found in Luke 19:1-10, the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus the tax collector. When Jesus entered Jericho, Zacchaeus wanted to see him but could not see over the crowd. Rather than let that deter him, he ran ahead and climbed a tree so he could see. Jesus looked up and told him to come down immediately because he wanted to stay at his house. The tax collector gladly welcomed Jesus. Some who saw this muttered to themselves that Jesus was to be the guest of a sinner. In response, Zacchaeus promised to give half of his possessions to the poor and to pay back fourfold anyone he had cheated. Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:9-10). The church has been sent into the world after the pattern of Jesus to seek the lost and to proclaim the goods news of salvation in Christ. Hence, evangelism is a central aspect of the liberating and reconciling mission of God to a lost and broken world. The church is called to unity through participation in this liberating mission of Jesus, which is the good news of God’s love socially embodied and lived out in the life and witness of numerous historical and cultural Christian communities for the sake of the world in order that through Jesus the world might be reconciled to God. 131

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Unity in Christ The church is also one in its shared commitment to the centrality of Jesus Christ as the Lord of creation and in a series of common assumptions shaped by that commitment: the appeal to Scripture as a definitive witness to the faith of the early community and its experience of the revelation of God; the ritual practices involving water, bread, and wine as signifying participation among the people of God; and the shared sense of relatedness with those who also participate in these beliefs and practices. Commenting on these conclusions, Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder speak of this essential continuity described by Walls as the means by which Christianity remains itself as it transforms itself in missionary outreach. Despite differences of language, context, and culture, there persist as well certain constants that define Christianity in its missionary nature. Walls names several of these, which might be stated generally to be the constant of Christology and the constant of ecclesiology.2

In summarizing these constants they write: “Jesus always remains the Christ, although his Christness—the way he is understood as of ultimate significance—is expressed differently and understood more deeply in the church’s various historical and cultural embodiments.” And in spite of the fact that Christian communities have developed and will continue to develop “various and even conflicting understandings of who they are, what the significance of the Bible is, and how to celebrate Eucharist and baptism, they will always see themselves as a community that is nourished and equipped for its work in the world by both word and sacrament.” They conclude that while the particular content of these constants is not the same, Christianity “is never without faith in and theology of Jesus as Christ and never without a commitment to and understanding of the community it names church.”3 In addition to these two constants of the centrality of Jesus Christ (along with his relation to the Father and the Holy Spirit) and the ecclesial nature of Jesus’ disciples in their missional activity (expressed 132

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in fidelity to a common book, a common heritage, and a common ritual), Bevans and Schroeder propose another four: eschatology, salvation, anthropology, and culture. They suggest these concerns are all integral to an understanding of the Christian faith. As such they are constitutive of the unity of the church as a community gathering around the living presence of Jesus Christ in common mission grappling with these common concerns. The answers to these questions about Jesus, the church, the future, salvation, and human nature and human culture have certainly varied through the two millennia of Christianity’s existence, as the church has lived out its missionary nature in various contexts. As questions, however, they remain ever present and ever urgent, because how they are answered is how Christianity finds its concrete identity as it constitutes itself in fidelity to Jesus’ mission.4 Here we see that the unity of the church throughout history and across culture can be discerned in its common sense of missional vocation as a community sent into the world by God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit, and in its common theological and practical concerns as expressed in the sort of “essential continuity” or “constants in context” spoken of by Walls, Bevans, and Schroeder. These common connections provide a practical and intellectual basis for the unity of the church in the past, the present, and the future as the particular and diverse Christian communities participate together in various ways in one common mission, the mission of God. While these elements of commonality are important and instructive, the most significant basis for the unity of the church is not to be found in these matters but rather in the ongoing presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Christian community. This presence is celebrated in the Eucharist, which is a symbol of the unity of the church in spite of the different ways in which it has been understood and practiced. In this ritual Christians celebrate in various ways and with different conceptions, from real presence to spiritual presence to memorial of presence, the promise of Christ recorded in the Gospel of Matthew that he would be always be present with the church until the end of the age. The unity of the church is not to be sought among its diverse communities in full agreement on matters related to its teaching and practices. This will reflect the social, cultural, and 133

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historical diversity characteristic of various communities throughout history, Christian or otherwise. The unity of the church, in the midst of its commitments to mission, Scripture, and particular practices, is found ultimately in the living presence of Christ promised to his followers: “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 18:20; 28:20b). By the gift and witness of the Spirit, Jesus Christ is not only the example of Christian life and service but also a living presence in the midst of the Christian community. From this perspective, theologian Thomas Oden observes: The circle of the Christian tradition has an unusually wide circumference without ceasing to have a single, unifying center. It is Christ’s living presence that unites a diverse tradition, yet that single presence is experienced in richly different ways. Christ’s presence is experienced sacramentally by the liturgical traditions, spiritually by the charismatic traditions, as morally inspiring by the liberal traditions, as ground of social experiment by the pietistic traditions, as doctrinal teacher by the scholastic traditions, as sanctifying power of persons and society by the Greek Orthodox tradition, as grace perfecting nature by the Roman Catholic tradition, and as word of Scripture by the evangelical tradition. All of these traditions and the periods of their hegemony have experienced the living and risen Christ in spectacularly varied ways. But nothing else than the living Christ forms the center of this wide circumference.5

Interdependent Particularity In relating these many communities of the Christian tradition to the one body of Christ, we turn to the metaphor of the church as a body provided in chapter twelve of the first letter to the church at Corinth. Here we read that the Spirit is at work forming one body, one church out of many parts in which a diversity of gifts are given for the edification of the whole church. “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to 134

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each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor 12:4-7). The diversity of the church is the work of the Spirit in enabling the church to bear witness to the plurality of truth. Each part provides particular gifts and understandings of the truth revealed in Jesus Christ for the edification of the whole body in service to one common Lord. “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but many” (1 Cor 12:12-14). In addition, the various parts of the church are interdependent. They need one another. They cannot fulfill the mission to which they are called apart from their relation to the whole body, for no single part can do all that needs to be done or comprehend all that needs to be said. “If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body” (1 Cor 12:17-20). Hence, no part of the church is independent of the rest. “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (vv. 26-27). This should be understood with respect to both the local church and the church universal. In the same way that various members of the local church contribute to the edification of the particular community of which they are a part, so all Christian communities should see themselves as but a part of the larger body of Christ in which each has particular gifts to bear but none is able to fulfill the missional calling and bear fully adequate witness to the plurality of truth on its own. As the metaphor of the body suggests, each of the members is dependent on the others for their overall health. The gifts, theological insights, and particular ecclesial practices provided by the Spirit to one segment of the body of Christ are intended for the benefit and edification of the whole church but none of these are adequate for all times and places. 135

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This serves as another caution against the temptation of a universal theology. In seeking to learn from the insights of other theological traditions and perspectives and acknowledging the significant contributions of each as they are brought to the roundtable of varying perspectives, we should expect that all theologies and traditions of reflection will be enriched. However, as Justo González reminds us, this does not mean that what we must now do is simply bring together all the contributions of these various perspectives, in order to forge a truly “universal” theology. Such a “universal” theology, were it achievable, would lack true catholicity, for the same reason that a “harmony” of the gospels, one in which all differences are resolved, must never be substituted for the fourfold witness to the gospel. When used in this manner, “universal,” rather than a synonym for “catholic,” is its antonym.6

When this does occur, given the way in which the perspective of any particular group necessarily influences its theology, claims of universality are no more than theology produced from the perspective of those who have cultural privilege. Instead, the many parts of the church are called to participate together in a unity characterized by interdependent particularity. Each is a part, and only a part, of the embodied witness to the truth of the gospel made known in Jesus Christ. Each plays its part by bearing faithful witness to Jesus Christ in all the fullness of its cultural, social, and historical particularity in order that the world may know that the God of love has been revealed in Jesus Christ and that through him God is reconciling the world and announcing good news to all people. All are called to do their part in the mission of God in accordance with the gifting of the Spirit and with the particular social and historical circumstances in which they are situated. All have gifts to give and to receive in the edification and building up of the one church as the instrument and witness of the gospel. All are dependent on the life and witness of the others for their own health and vitality in the service of the gospel and the mission of God. Plurality in the Christian community is not a problem to be overcome but is instead the very intention and blessing of God who invites 136

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all people to participate in the liberating and reconciling ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The plurality of the church constitutes the manifold witness to the plurality of truth lived out in the eternal life of God, made known in the revelation of the Word of God, and exemplified in the pages of Scripture. We cannot bear this witness alone. We were never intended to do so. We need each other. It cannot be otherwise. We are called to bear the image of the triune God. I believe that this is the truth.

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Notes

1. Do You Believe in Truth? 1. Quoted from section 1, “Commitment to God in the Way of Jesus,” at http://www.emergentvillage.us/about-information/values-and-practices.

2. Plurality and Truth 1. While the primary focus of this book is not to address the challenges of cultural or religious relativism but rather to affirm plurality, the question of responding to radical relativism is a pressing one. Readers who are interested in exploring this question from a perspective that is, to my mind, consistent with the thesis of this book and my own outlook on the discipline of theology should see James Wm. McClendon, Jr. and James M. Smith, Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism, rev. ed. (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press, 1994). 2. Those unfamiliar with the ideas associated with postmodern thought and their relationship to Christian faith or who wish to gain a more nuanced perspective than that which is generally found in many popular Christian

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N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 4 - 3 6 criticisms are encouraged to consult the following works: J. Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1995); Nancey Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press, 1996); Crystal L. Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith: Questioning Truth in Language, Philosophy, and Art (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006); James K. A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006). 3. Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), ix. 4. Ibid., xvii.

3. The Historic Christian Faith? 1. Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996), 3-7. 2. Ibid., 5. 3. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004), 33. 4. Walls, 6-7. 5. Ibid., 8. 6. Ibid., 9. 7. Bevans and Schroeder, 2. 8. Ibid., 31.

4. Community, Tradition, and the Emerging Church 1. For a more in-depth discussion of community, see John R. Franke, The Character of Theology: An Introduction to Its Nature, Task, and Purpose (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 166-88. 2. For a fuller discussion of tradition, see Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 93-129. 3. Karl Barth was one of the most prominent theologians of the twentieth century. For an introductory overview of his life and thought, see John R. Franke, Barth for Armchair Theologians (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006).

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N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 6 - 9 4 4. Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, new edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 3. 5. Ibid. 6. Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 130. 7. Quoted from section 1, “Commitment to God in the Way of Jesus,” at: http://www.emergentvillage.us/about-information/values-and-practices. 8. Ibid., section 2: “Commitment to the Church in All Its Forms.” 9. Ibid. Reprinted by permission.

6. The Life of God 1. David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991), 390.

7. God Speaks 1. For a fuller explanation of Calvin’s understanding of the accommodated character of all human knowledge of God, see Edward Dowey Jr., The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 3-24. 2. For a detailed discussion of nonfoundational theology, see Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 3. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1/1 (New York: T & T Clark, 2004), 868.

9. Scripture as Manifold Witness 1. Justo L. González, Out of Every Tribe and Nation: Christian Theology at the Ethnic Roundtable (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), 22. 2. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 275. 3. Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989), 27.

10. Manifold Witness and the Other 1. James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997), 13-14.

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N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 4 - 1 1 9 2. Ibid., 42. 3. Ibid., 43. 4. William H. Bentley and Ruth Lewis Bentley, “Reflections on the Scope and Function of a Black Evangelical Theology,” in Kenneth S. Kantzer and Carl F. H. Henry, eds., Evangelical Affirmations (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 311-14. 5. Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 6. Edward Gilbreath, Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical’s Inside View of White Christianity (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006). 7. James H. Cone, Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968–1998 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), 137. 8. Cone, God of the Oppressed, xii-xiii.

11. Manifold Witness and Deconstruction 1. John D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), 78-79. 2. Ibid., 37. 3. William Stacy Johnson, “Reading the Scriptures Faithfully in a Postmodern Age,” in Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays, eds., The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 123-24. 4. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, 37.

12. Theology as Manifold Witness 1. For a more detailed discussion of the nature, task, and purpose of theology, see John R. Franke, The Character of Theology: An Introduction to Its Nature, Task, and Purpose (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005). 2. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 144. 3. Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 4. 4. Justo L. González, Out of Every Tribe and Nation: Christian Theology at the Ethnic Roundtable (Nashville: Abingdon, 1992), 30. 5. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 144-45. 6. Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2002), 4-5.

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N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 9 - 3 6 7. Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger, Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009), 277. 8. For extended discussion on the tasks of doing local theology, see Robert J. Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1985); and Clemens Sedmak, Doing Local Theology: A Guide for Artisans of a New Humanity (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2002). 9. Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 30. 10. Lesslie Newbigin, “Theological Education in a World Perspective,” Churchman 93 (1979): 114-15. 11. González, Out of Every Tribe and Nation, 15. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 25-26.

13. The Many and the One 1. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, Twentieth Anniversary Edition (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1990), 3. 2. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004), 33. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 34. 5. Thomas C. Oden, After Modernity . . . What? Agenda for Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 176-77. 6. Justo L. González, Out of Every Tribe and Nation: Christian Theology at the Ethnic Roundtable (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), 26.

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Subject Index

Abraham, 48 ad fontes, 104 Anglican Church, 3, 4 anthropology, 133 Apostles’ Creed, 21, 35, 46 ascension, of Christ, 49 atheism, 14, 15

Bosch, David, 60 Bullinger, Heinrich, 4

baptism, 4, 132 Baptist Church, 3, 109 Barth, Karl, 36, 68, 70 Bentley, Ruth Lewis, 95 Bentley, William H., 95 Bevans, Stephen, 119, 132, 133 Bible, 51, 75, 77, 85, 86, 88, 120; culture and, 82–84; as inspired Word of God, 5, 6, 74, 75; Trinity/Christian community and, 46–48. See also Scripture black community, 94 black evangelicals, 95 black theology, 93–97, 100 Black Theology and Black Power (Cone), 93 A Black Theology of Liberation (Cone), 93 bold humility, of Christians, 18–19

Calvin, John, 4, 67, 75–76 Caputo, John D., 108, 109 Christ. See Jesus Christ Christian community, 75, 79, 107–8, 110, 121, 125, 133; Bible/Trinity and, 46– 48; diversity of, 125–26; plurality in, 136–37; witness to gospel of Jesus Christ, 86, 93; Word/Spirit relationship and, 74–75 Christian faith, 14, 36, 94, 120, 133; community of, 27, 43; contested, 6, 7; historic, 21–29, 37–39; mission/diversity of, 28–29; plurality and, 5–7, 17, 84, 87. See also evangelical faith Christianity, 34, 96 Christians, 27, 29, 34, 49, 50; bold humility of, 18–19; connection/continuity of, 24–25; essential continuity of, 24, 25; Gentile, 25; identification of God, 45– 46; Jerusalem, 23; Jewish, 26, 118; missionary works of, 24, 25, 60

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SUBJECT INDEX Christology, 64, 65, 132 church, 33, 84, 92, 98, 107, 118, 121, 123, 125, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134; confession/proclamation of, 37, 104, 106; deconstruction and, 110–12; Holy Spirit guidance of, 6, 35–36, 49, 60, 75– 76, 77, 78, 107, 110, 119; as human institution, 110–11; as image of God, 7, 78; interdependent particularity of, 134–37; plurality of, 88, 116, 123, 124, 125, 137; prayer of, 37, 106; reformation of, 105, 106, 110; unity in New Testament, 126–28; universal theology of, 107, 129, 136; witness of, 36, 125. See also Anglican Church; Baptist Church; emerging church; Lutheran Church; Mennonite Church; Orthodox Church; Pentecostal Church; Protestant Church; Reformed Church; Roman Catholic Church; Syriac Church; Wesleyan Church circumcision, 23, 26 coherence theory, of truth, 3 Commission on Theology of the National Black Evangelical Association, 95 community: 12, 25, 27, 43, 49, 84, 133; diverse, 33–35; God mission of, 32–33; Trinity/Bible and, 46–48. See also black community; Christian community; Hebrew community; Jewish community Cone, James, 93, 98 confession, 50, 104, 107; of church, 37, 104, 106; compromise of, 106–7; deconstruction and, 105–8 confessions of faith, 35, 106 consensus, of community, 32 conservative distortion, of theology, 105 contextual theology, 115–17 correspondence theory, of truth, 3 Council of Chalcedon, 64, 65, 67 Council of Constantinople, 35, 65 Council of Nicea, 23, 64–65 covenant, 48, 60 creation, 59, 78, 116 creed, of church, 107. See also Apostles’ Creed; Nicene Creed

cultural imperialism, 42 cultural perspectives, 93, 94 cultural relativism, 12–15, 99 cultural situations, 94 culture, 66, 117, 118, 133; Bible and, 82– 84; dominant, 91–93; gospel and, 33, 117–20 deconstruction, 104, 107, 108, 113, 121, 129; church and, 110–12; confession and, 105–8; manifold witness and, 103– 14; reality/theology and, 112–14; tradition and, 104, 108–9, 113; truth and, 104–5 deep ecclesiology, 39 Derrida, Jacques, 108 Diatessaron (Tatian), 82, 86 distinction-in-unity, 65 diversity: of Bible, 3, 7, 88, 134; of Christian community, 125–26; of Christian faith, 28–29; of Scripture, 86, 87; tradition and, 25–26, 33–35, 92 divine life, 57 divine mission, 35 divine revelation, 117 divine truth, 85, 118 dominant culture, 91–93 DuBois, W. E. B., 98 ecclesiology, 39, 132 Emergent Village, ix, 2, 37, 38, 39–40 emerging church, 37–39, 40, 41, 110 Emerson, Michael O., 96 Enlightenment, 13, 94 eschatological future, 78, 103, 112 eschatological realism, 79 eschatology, 133 ethnic roundtable, 122–23 Eucharist, 4, 132, 133 Eurocentric Christianity, 97 Evangelical Affirmations Conference, at Trinity Evangelical Divinity, 94 evangelical faith, racial inequality and, 96– 97 evangelical tradition, 109 evangelism, of church, 131

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SUBJECT INDEX exegesis, 76, 77, 88 faith. See Christian faith false teaching, 8 gifts, diversity of, 134 Gilbreath, Edward, 97 God, 16, 26, 27, 48, 51, 57, 70, 71, 85, 87; Apostles’ Creed and, 21, 35, 46; Christian identification of, 45–46; church as image of, 7, 78; community mission of, 32–33; grace of, 69–70, 86; is love, 55–57, 58; is social, 57–59; Jesus Christ revealed and, 15, 16, 18, 32, 35, 46, 73, 120; knowledge of, 16–18, 69; life of, 53–63; mission of, 59–60, 77, 84, 103, 110, 120, 122, 136; plurality-inunity of, 17, 56, 59, 61, 71, 88, 115; speaks, 63–71, 66; theology and, 45–46; as triune, 45, 47–48, 63; triune character of, 50, 83, 137; unity-in-plurality of, 17, 56, 59, 61, 71, 88, 115 God of the Oppressed (Cone), 93, 94 González, Justo, 122–23, 136 gospel, 81, 117, 119; Christian community and, 86, 93; culture and, 33, 117–20; of Jesus Christ, xii, 81, 103. See also John, Gospel of; Luke, Gospel of; Matthew, Gospel of; Mark, Gospel of grace, 60, 68, 69–70, 71, 86, 103 Harper, Brad, 119 Hebrew community, 48 hegemonic, xi hermeneutic, xi Holy Spirit, 19, 49, 75, 133; Apostles’ Creed and, 21, 35, 46; church guidance by, 6, 35–36, 49, 60, 75–76, 77, 78, 107, 110, 119; Jesus/God relationship, 49– 50; Scripture and, 74, 82–84, 86, 111; as truth, 44–45, 73. homoousios, 23 human knowledge, 16–18, 70, 116; finite, 66–67 human language, 85 human thought, 66

identity, 32 incarnation, 64, 67, 118 indigenization principle, 25–28 indirect revelation, 68–69 interdependent particularity, 134–37 Isaac, God of, 48 Israel, covenant of, 60 Jerusalem Council, 26, 35 Jesus Christ, 7, 17, 23, 26, 33, 38, 43, 49, 65, 84, 118, 127, 132, 133; Apostles’ Creed and, 21, 35, 46; Council of Chalcedon on humanity of, 64, 65, 67; Council of Nicea on divinity of, 64–65; divinity of, 49–50, 67; God revealed in person of, 15, 16, 18, 32, 35, 46, 73, 120; gospel of, xii, 81, 103; revelation and, 64–66; truth/trinity and, 43–51; witness of, 9, 77; as Word of God, 49, 70 Jewish community, 48 Jews, 23, 48, 118 John, Gospel of, 82, 86 Johnson, William Stacy, 112 justification, 4 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 100 Lord, Jesus as, 23 Lord’s Supper. See Eucharist love: God is, 55–57, 58; relationality of, 59; rule of, 91; trinitarian fellowship of, 33, 56 Luke, Gospel of, 82, 86 Luther, Martin, 3, 104 Lutheran Church, 3, 109 male supremacy, 98 male-dominated theology, 98 manifold witness: deconstruction and, 103–14; Other and, 91–101; Scripture as, 81–89; theology as, 115–24 marginalization, of Other, 91–93 Mark, Gospel of, 82, 86 Matthew, Gospel of, 82, 86, 133 Melanchthon, Philip, 3

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SUBJECT INDEX Mennonite Church, 3 metadiscourse, xi Metzger, Paul, 119 minimalist reductionism, 53 missio Dei, 59, 61 mission, 28–29, 129, 130; of God, 59–60, 74, 84, 103, 110, 120, 122, 136; unity in, 130–31 missionary works, 119, 133; of Christians, 24, 25, 60; ecclesial nature, of disciples and, 132–33 monks, 23 monotheistic tradition, 48 New Testament, 33, 47, 81; unity of church in, 126–28 Newbigin, Leslie, 117–18, 119, 121 Nicene Creed, 35, 65 Nietzschean atheism, 14 nonfoundational theology, 69–71 Oden, Thomas, 134 ontological, xi Orthodox Church, 3, 7, 17, 92 Other, the, 92, 103, 112, 123; Christian theology and, 92, 103; manifold witness and, 91–101; marginalization of, 91–93; witness to, 91, 100, 103, 123 Out of Every Tribe and Nation: Christian Theology at the Ethnic Roundtable (González), 122 paradigmatic witness, 89 Paul, Apostle, 118 Pentecostal Church, 3 perichoresis, 58 plurality, 3, 17, 25, 39, 41, 88, 113; in Christian community, 136–37; Christian faith and, 5–7, 17, 84, 87; of church, 88, 116, 123, 124, 125, 137; of Protestant church, 38–39; of Scripture, 79, 85–89; of theology, 99–100; of tradition, 25, 36–37; of truth, Word of God as, xii, 115, 126, 135, 137; truth and, 8, 11–19, 104, 113–14, 135, 137; unity and, 128–30

plurality-in-unity, 17, 56, 59, 61, 71, 88, 115 Pontius Pilate, 43–44 postmodernity, 13, 14, 91 pragmatism theory, of truth, 3 prayer, 4, 37, 79, 106, 127 proclamation, 104 Protestant church, 38–39 Protestant Reformation, 38, 104 Protestantism, 3, 17, 92 racial imperialism, 99 racial inequality, 96–97, 122 racial reconciliation, 98 radical culturalism, 64 radical reformation, 4 reconciliation, 33, 84, 98 Reformation, xii, 3, 116 reformation, of church, 105, 106, 110 Reformed Church, 3 Reformed tradition, xii, 109 reforming principles, of deconstruction, 107 reign of God, reality of, 113 relational interdependence, of Trinity, 58 relativism, 64, 88 revelation, 16–17, 63, 64, 67, 68, 77, 85, 89, 106, 115; context/accommodation of, 66–68; human reception to, 115–16; indirect, 68–69; Jesus Christ and, 64– 66; mediums of, 67, 68, 69; of Word of God, 103, 107, 137 revisionist distortion, of theology, 105 ritual practices, 132 Roman Catholic Church, 3, 7, 17, 38, 92, 104, 109 Roman Empire, 25, 48 salvation, 133 Sanneh, Lamin, 37, 88 Schroeder, Roger, 132, 133 Scripture, 7, 36, 46, 56, 73, 78, 85, 89, 112, 121, 125; diversity of, 86, 87; function of, 77–79; Holy Spirit and, 74, 82–84, 86, 111; interpretation of, 4, 34; as manifold witness, 81–89; plurality of, 79, 85–89; as Word of God, 73–79

148

SUBJECT INDEX self-criticism, 41, 110, 111, 112, 113 self-revelation, 85, 87 Smith, Christian, 96 Syriac Church, 82 Tatian, 81–82 temple of God, 49 theology, x, 36, 45–46, 91, 92, 98, 99, 105, 117, 120, 129; Black, 93–97, 100; contextual, 115–17; deconstruction/reality and, 112–14; dialectical pattern of, 115–16; at ethnic roundtable, 122–23; God and, 45–46; local models of, 120– 22; as manifold witness, 115–24; nonfoundational, 69–71; Other and, 92, 103; plurality of, 99–100; situated language of, 94, 119; trinitarian, 50, 57; universal, 107, 129, 136 totality, against, 97–101 tradition, xii, 3–5, 48, 92, 109; criticism of, 108, 109; deconstruction and, 104, 108–9, 113; diversity of, 25–26, 33–35, 92; plurality of, 25, 36–37; Reformed, xii, 109; significance of, 35–37 transcendent revelation, 68 transformation principle, 25–28 translatability, infinite, 28–29 trinitarian fellowship of love, 33, 56 trinitarian theology, 50, 57 Trinity, 54, 58; Bible/Christian community and, 46–48; doctrine of, 47–48; Jesus Christ/truth and, 43–51; truth and, 44– 45 Trinity Evangelical Divinity, 95 triune: God as, 45, 47–48, 50, 63; God’s character of, 50, 83, 137

truth, 2, 3, 13, 18, 28, 40, 71, 104; belief in, 1–9; deconstruction and, 104–5; grace of God and, 69–70; Holy Spirit as, 44– 45; Jesus Christ/trinity and, 43–51; plurality of, xii, 8, 11–19, 104, 113–14, 115, 126, 135, 137; transcendent, 16, 19; Trinity and, 44–45. See also divine truth; ultimate truth ultimate truth, 16, 19, 43 unity, 125, 127; in Christ, 132–34; of church, 125, 133; in mission, 130–31; in New Testament church, 126–28; plurality and, 128–30 unity-in-distinction, 65 unity-in-plurality, 17, 56, 59, 61, 71, 88, 115 universal theology, 107, 129, 136 universal totality, 99 Vanhoozer, Kevin, 87–88 visions, 24 Walls, Andrew, 22–29, 130, 132, 133 Wesleyan Church, 3 Westphal, Merold, 14 witness, 34, 47, 87, 89; of Christian community, 88, 93; of church, 36, 125; of Jesus Christ, 9, 77; to Other, 91, 100, 103, 123 Word of God, 64, 66, 70, 85, 86, 87, 91, 92, 99, 105, 110, 121; Bible as inspired, 5, 6, 74, 75; Calvin on, 75–76; Jesus as, 49, 70; as plurality of truth, 115, 126, 135, 137; revelation of, 103, 107, 137; Scripture as, 73–79; Spirit and, 74–77 Zwingli, Ulrich, 4

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Scripture Index

Old Testament

10:30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 10:38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 14:6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 14:26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73–74 15:26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 16:13-14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 16:13-15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 17:20-21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 18:36, 37 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 20:21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Isaiah 11:9b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

New Testament Matthew 16:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 18:20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 28:19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 28:20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 28:20b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Acts 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26, 35, 119

Luke 4:18-19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 19:1-10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Romans 8:9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

John 1:1-5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 1:17-18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44, 49 3:16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5:30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

1 Corinthians 2:10b-11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 3:16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 7:31 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

151

SCRIPTURE INDEX (1 Corinthians—continued.) 12:4-7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134–35 12:12-14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 12:17-20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 12:26-27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 2 Corinthians 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 13:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Galatians 3:28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 5:22-26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Ephesians 4:2-6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Philippians 2:1-11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 2:5-11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2:6-7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Colossians 2:9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 2 Timothy 3:16-17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5–6 Titus 1:9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3:9-11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 128 1 John 2:27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 4:8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Jude 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Revelation 22:1-3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

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“Why is there a Trinity of persons and a quartet of Gospels? Do not relation and difference, context and plurality lie at the very heart of the Christian tradition? Is not the infinite resourcefulness of love enhanced by change and alterity? These are the kinds of questions that John Franke addresses in a bold, sweeping, and lucid presentation of the ongoing renewal of the life of the church. Manifold Witness is the fruit of a tenacious faith in the Christian tradition and a no-less-tenacious faith in the power of truth.” —John D. Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities at Syracuse University and author of What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church

“With clarity, grace, and practical insight, John Franke argues convincingly that the plurality of witnesses in Christian tradition is not a hindrance but a gift that rescues us from both the rigid dogmatism that constricts God’s truth and the ‘anything goes’ pluralism that trivializes it.” —Danielle Shroyer, pastor of Journey Church in Dallas, Texas, and author of The BoundaryBreaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise

JOHN R. FRANKE is the Lester and Kay Clemens Professor of Missional Theology at Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.

ISBN-13: 978-0-687-49195-7 90000

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Cover Image © Bettman/Corbis/Ilustration of the Constellations Cover Design by John R. Robinson

780687 491957

FRANKE

“John Franke’s Manifold Witness is the most Reformed book I have ever read. Why? It is the first I have read that not only believes the human mind has been impacted by the Fall but also that carries this through into how the Bible makes truth claims. We need manifold witnesses because, as humans, no one author can grasp the whole Story. If it takes a village to nurture a child, it takes the manifold voices of the Bible and the church to nurture the church. Boldness, braced up by humility, marks every page of this book.” —Scot McKnight, Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies, North Park University and author of A Community Called Atonement

MANIFOLD WITNESS

“A refreshing study of plurality and diversity as something intrinsic to the nature of Christianity rather than as something extraneous to it. Lucid and lively, the book makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion about the religion’s emerging profile in the twenty-first century. I am entirely in agreement with John Franke that faith is embodied, that theology is rooted in practice and experience, and that the gospel shapes and is shaped by culture. Manifold Witness tracks the manifold trails of Christianity’s impact on persons and societies. It should find welcome response in theological study and teaching.” —Lamin Sanneh, Professor of World Christianity and Director, World Christianity Initiative, at Yale Divinity School, Professor of History at Yale University, and author of Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture and Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity