“The authors offer a series of soundings toward an ecclesiology that can be

both evangelical and ecumenical, both robust and contemporary. The book is
especially important for the way it engages ecclesiology in a dialogue between
the church’s gospel-shaped identity and the cultural circumstances in which
it lives its witness to the gospel.”
—George R. Hunsberger, Western Theological Seminary

“We live in an era when there seems to be confusion about the character, na-
ture, purpose, and relevance of the church. Exploring Ecclesiology calls for a
deeper understanding of the role of the church. Harper and Metzger provide
a helpful resource for theologians, pastors, and lay leaders to engage in this
much-needed dialogue.”
—Soong-Chan Rah, North Park Theological Seminary;
author of The Next Evangelicalism

“A thoughtful introduction to ecclesiology that is biblically grounded, histori-

cally informed, ecumenically engaged, and culturally relevant. It is a worthy
textbook for introducing and furthering current discussion about the church
and does so in a way that is accessible, broad-ranging, and practical. Explor-
ing Ecclesiology marks an important milestone in the renewal of interest in
the doctrine of the church within evangelicalism.”
—Kimlyn J. Bender, University of Sioux Falls

“Harper and Metzger unpack some of the most vexing questions and im-
portant issues regarding the nature and purpose of the Church. Their clear
commitment to speak in an unapologetic manner into the particular ethos
of evangelical Christianity will challenge and at times provoke their readers.
Theirs is a challenge which needs to be taken seriously as it is grounded in
reference to and appreciation of theologians from a wide variety of back-
grounds and eras.”
—Rev. Dr. Peter M. B. Robinson, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto

“The church—harlot or mother? Experienced as the first by many, this impres-

sive work seeks to encourage the latter judgment€by providing an extensive and
constructive evangelical theology of the church. Finally, we have an ecclesiology
that is not reactionary, separatist, denominationally narrow, impractical, or
out of touch with the postmodern world.”
—Barry L. Callen, Anderson University

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 1 3/9/09 8:01:34 AM

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 2 3/9/09 8:01:35 AM
 Exploring
Ecclesiology
An Evangelical and Ecumenical
Introduction

Brad Harper and

Paul Louis Metzger

S
Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 3 3/9/09 8:01:35 AM
 © 2009 by Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger

Published by Brazos Press

a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the
prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Harper, Brad.
Exploring ecclesiology : an evangelical and ecumenical introduction / Brad Harper and
Paul Louis Metzger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58743-173-9 (pbk.)
1. Church. I. Metzger, Paul Louis. II. Title.
BV600.3H443 2009
262—dc22 2008047959

A version of chapter 13 appeared as “Christ, Culture, and the Sermon on the Mount Community”
by Paul Louis Metzger in ExAuditu’s An International Journal for the Theological Interpretation of
Scripture, 23 (2008): 22–26.

Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International
Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Soceity. Used by permission
of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture marked NASB is taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962,
1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture marked NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas
Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked TNIV is taken from the Holy Bible, Today’s New Internation Version™. Copyright
© 2001 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.

5 2 19 3 15

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 4 3/9/09 8:01:35 AM

 To Mariko, my best friend and precious bride,
With gratitude for the mystery of heart-to-heart life with you,
And to our children, Christopher and Julianne,
For raising me to be a child of God.

Paul

To Robin, Drew, Breegan, and Corey,

For teaching me what it means to love and to live in grace.

Brad

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Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 6 3/9/09 8:01:35 AM
 Contents

Acknowledgments€€€€9
Introduction€€€€11

1. The Church as a Trinitarian Community: The Being-Driven

Church€€€€19
2. The Trinitarian Church Confronts American Individualism€€€€39
3. The Church as an Eschatological Community€€€€47
4. Eschatology, the Church, and Ecology€€€€79
5. The Church as a Worshipping Community€€€€85
6. The Worshipping Church Engages Culture€€€€113
7. The Church as a Sacramental Community€€€€123
8. Sacraments and the Search for the Holy Grail€€€€147
9. The Church as a Serving Community€€€€155
10. Church Discipline—The Lost Element of Service€€€€175
11. The Church as an Ordered Community€€€€183
12. The Role of Women in the Ordered Community€€€€201
13. The Church as a Cultural Community: Christ, Culture, and the
Sermon on the Mount Community€€€€207
14. Getting Past the Ghettoizing of the Gospel in Today’s Culture€€€€227
15. The Church as a Missional Community: The Being-Driven
Church€€€€237
16. From Building Programs to Building God’s Missional Kingdom€€€€265

A Postmodern Postscript€€€€275
Recommended Readings€€€€285
Appendix: Types of Ecclesiology€€€€292
Notes€€€€294
Subject Index€€€€330
Scripture Index€€€€334

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Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 8 3/9/09 8:01:35 AM
 Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Multnomah University and Seminary

for giving them the time and space to work on this project, the students in their
ecclesiology classes for engaging their ideas and helping to refine them, and
Rodney Clapp and his team at Brazos Press for consistent counsel and encour-
agement. Special thanks goes to Halden Doerge, Will Thompson, and James
Tucker for their research assistance, helpful suggestions regarding sources and
references, and for keen insights on the theology of the church.
Paul wishes to acknowledge Professors Philip Lueck and John Zizioulas and
the late Harold O.€J. Brown and Colin Gunton for their commitment to being
theologians of the church and for their influence on his intellectual develop-
ment as a churchman; Pastors Samuel Mall, Ron Mancini, Rick McKinley,
Barry Morrison, Peter Robinson, Murray Trim, John Wenrich, and the late
Roy Jenson and LeRoy Koepke, for the pastoral and missional impressions
they have made on his life and thought; and the evangelical Prophet John M.
Perkins for his vision of community development centered in Christ’s kingdom
community. Paul is indebted to his parents and grandparents for raising him
in God’s household, and to his whole family for sharing life as a household
of faith with him.
Brad wishes to thank Pastor Marvin Francine, his spiritual father, for teach-
ing him to hear the voice of Christ in the church; Pastor Michael Andrus,
colleague, pastoral mentor, and friend for teaching him that the church, in the
midst of all its brokenness, is the place where God most loves to reveal himself;
and Pastor Matt Hannan for his leadership in fostering a community of grace
where hurting people find hope in the Savior and among his people.

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Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 10 3/9/09 8:01:35 AM
 Introduction

People are into “Jesus” and “spirituality” today, but not “religion” and
“church.”1 Many are disillusioned by what they see and hear in church or on
television: an obsession with attendance, buildings, and collections;2 spectacles
of prosperity gospel preachers stealing from the poor to get rich; and scandal-
ous reports of priests molesting little children. Christ’s church often plays the
harlot, just as Israel played the harlot in Hosea’s day (see Hos. 1:1–2).
But we must never forget that the church is also our mother. Without the
church, we would not have Jesus and the Bible. While the Bible shapes the
church’s life, the church also birthed the Bible under the guidance of the Spirit.
While we are “born again” as children of God through personal relationship
with Jesus, those who are born again are born into the church.3 John Calvin
speaks of the church’s significance as our mother in the following statement
on the visible nature of the church:

But because it is now our intention to discuss the visible church, let us learn
even from the simple title “mother” how useful, indeed how necessary, it is
that we should know her. For there is no other way to enter into life unless this
mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and
lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal
flesh, we become like the angels [Matt. 22:30]. Our weakness does not allow
us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives. Fur-
thermore, away from her bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins
or any salvation, as Isaiah [Isa. 37:32] and Joel [Joel 2:32] testify. Ezekiel agrees
with them when he declares that those whom God rejects from heavenly life
will not be enrolled among God’s people [Ez. 13:9]. On the other hand, those
who turn to the cultivation of true godliness are said to inscribe their names
among the citizens of Jerusalem [cf. Isa. 56:5; Ps. 87:6]. For this reason, it is said
in another psalm: “Remember me, O Jehovah, with favor toward thy people;
visit me with salvation: that I may see the well-doing of thy chosen ones, that I

11

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 11 3/9/09 8:01:35 AM

 12 Introduction

may rejoice in the joy of thy nation, that I may be glad with thine inheritance”
[Ps. 106:4–5; cf. Ps. 105:4, Vg., etc.]. By these words God’s fatherly favor and
the especial witness of spiritual life are limited to his flock, so that it is always
disastrous to leave the church.4

So, while it is often the case that we can’t live with the church (given its blem-
ishes and brokenness), we can’t live without the church either.
Not only is the church our mother, but we as the church are also Christ’s bride,
a point brought home by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:25–32, and the apostle
John in Revelation 19:6–9. Luther claimed that the believer is simultaneously
blemished and faithless as a harlot on the one hand, and spotless as Christ’s bride
on the other.5 The church as Christ’s bride is constituted by and constitutes such
simultaneously spotted and spotless believers. What drives this book is our firm
conviction that for all its warts and wrinkles, the church made up of her various
members is God’s most beautiful creation as Christ’s very own bride, and so well
worth living for and writing about. Our hope is that this book will play a part
in helping the bride make preparations for the wedding banquet.
To help prepare the church for that day, we believe it is vital that a systematic
study of the church be framed by the Bible, historical theology, ecumenical con-
cerns, and cultural considerations. Why? An ecclesiology should be grounded
in the Christian scriptures, for they constitute the one completely authoritative
witness for the church’s theology. A theology of the church should also be
historically self-conscious. Theology about the church is best done by those
who are cognizant of the church throughout the centuries, for the church did
not begin with us. Having said this, it is also important to account for the
contemporary church in its various contexts, for the church is a living, growing
organism that responds and reacts to the multitude of cultural environments
in which it finds itself.
Accounting for these factors, it follows that no one church constitutes the
whole church. Just as there are many parts to Christ’s body, so there are many
churches that form the one true church. As evangelical Protestants writing at
the beginning of the twenty-first century, we seek to engage the larger Christian
community of our age and throughout the ages from our particular vantage
point, entering into dialogue for the mutual benefit of all, going through our
distinctive evangelical convictions, not going around them or stopping short
at them. Further to the points on the historical and contemporary contexts,
it is important that those reflecting on a theology of the church recognize the
church and churches throughout church history up to the present time both as
products of given cultures and as prophetic voices over against those cultures.
Only when the church and its theologians are truly mindful of these biblical,
historical, ecumenical, and contemporary factors can the church make itself
ready with sensitivity—including hindsight, insight, and foresight—for the
marriage supper of the Lamb.

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 Introduction 13

With this approach in mind, we have sought to provide our readers with a
fully developed evangelical and ecumenical theology of the church of service
to the pastor, theologian, and student, which can be used as a textbook and
reference. Thus, the subtitle for our book is “An Evangelical and Ecumenical
Introduction.” The word evangelical means many things to many people. We
use the term here to refer to that post–World War€II movement in Protestant
American Christianity that prizes the “fundamentals of the faith,” as they
are called, while rejecting a fundamentalist spirit that discourages dialogue
with those outside our tradition. Thus, we hold to the “fundamentals of the
faith,” including belief in Jesus Christ’s deity and virgin birth, a high view
of scripture’s accuracy and authority, and an affirmation of substitutionary
atonement, while also prizing personal conversion and relationship with God
through Jesus Christ in the Spirit. As evangelical Protestants who affirm these
fundamentals while rejecting a fundamentalist spirit, our goal is to represent
and embrace those interpretations of the church that reflect the central streams
of historic orthodoxy common to the various Christian traditions. Where those
traditions disagree, the goal is to present them in dialogue with one another,
searching for conclusions that respect the various perspectives. In addition,
it is the purpose of this text to allow the best traditions of biblical and his-
torical ecclesiology to speak prophetically and critically to the contemporary
church in the West, particularly in the United States. Contemporary issues
addressed include individualism, women in ministry, evangelism and social
action, consumerism in church growth trends, ecumenism, and the church in
a postmodern culture. As a textbook, the main target course for which this
book is aimed would be a theology class that contains a component on the
theology of the church. It could also be used in courses that compare historic
ecclesial traditions and those that consider the relationship of the church to
culture.
Why this book? If one were to do a library title search on the topic of the
church, it would be clear that there is no shortage of recent publications.
However, most recent works appear to be either niche-oriented (addressing a
particular ecclesial issue) or confessional, or they lack one of the four basic
characteristics listed above (biblical, historical, ecumenical, and cultural) for
this proposed volume. For example, Veli-Matti Karkkainen’s An Introduction
to Ecclesiology focuses on ecumenical, historical, and global models. Donald
Bloesch’s The Church provides excellent discussions on ecumenical and his-
torical perspectives but is short on biblical theology. John Stackhouse’s edited
volume Evangelical Ecclesiology: Reality or Illusion? focuses on evangelical
perspectives. Moreover, evangelical texts on the church, while traditionally
strong on biblical perspectives, often lack true appreciation for ecumenical
dialogue and/or serious cultural engagement. Thus, a book of the scope pro-
posed here has the potential not only to be well received in the world of
evangelical theology, but also has the potential to provide an effective means

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 13 3/9/09 8:01:36 AM

 14 Introduction

for constructive engagement of the broader Christian tradition amidst the

diversity of postmodern culture(s).
Now for the outline and structure of the book. Chapters 1 and 3 function
as the fundamental theological chapters for the entire work. Chapter 1 focuses
consideration on the church as a trinitarian community, and chapter 3 ap-
proaches the doctrine of the church from an eschatological kingdom vantage
point. Our basic reasoning for choosing these two theological lenses through
which to view the various topics that pertain to ecclesiology is twofold: we
must give foundational consideration to the church as the community of the
Triune God because the church derives its core identity from its relationship
with the Triune God to whom the church is united as God’s people, Christ’s
body and bride, and the Holy Spirit’s temple; and we must give foundational
consideration to the church as the eschatological community of the Triune
God because it serves as the primary agent and embodied witness of this God’s
kingdom. These foundational chapters shape chapters 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15,
which are more practical in orientation and address the following themes,
and in this order: worship, sacraments/ordinances, service/gifts, order/polity,
culture, and mission.
The last item to note in terms of structure is that chapters 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11,
13, and 15 are each followed by discussions of culture (chapters 2, 4, 6, 8, 10,
12, 14, and 16). In the even-numbered chapters we flesh out specific instances
of the odd-numbered chapters’ theological concepts in terms of their cultural
import. Thus, for example, chapter 1, “The Church as a Trinitarian Com-
munity,” gives rise to a discussion of Americal individualism from a Trinitar-
ian perspective in chapter 2. This cultural component reflects not only one
of the characteristic features of the book, but also our conviction expressed
more fully in the postscript to the volume that those writing truly meaning-
ful evangelical and nonevangelical ecclesiologies alike in the contemporary,
postmodern context must intentionally situate their reflections in concrete
cultural settings.
Further to the point on postmodernity, we are mindful that what follows
will never serve as a once-and-for-all ecclesiology; at best, it can serve as a
handmaiden to the church today as theologians and practitioners continue to
prepare the bride for the wedding day, from which future generations can draw
as they glean insights from the whole of church history in their own labors of
love for the bride. The non-“once-and-for-all” nature of ecclesiology is both
problematic and promising: problematic for those who see the church as a
static entity, not a dynamic organism that is ever-evolving, and promising for
those who see a given ecclesiology’s situatedness as providing opportunities
and vantage points for further exploration.
Not only is ecclesiology problematic yet promising due to its concrete
particularity, and due to the blemished yet beautiful being of the church as
noted at the outset of the introduction, but also evangelical ecclesiology is

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 14 3/9/09 8:01:36 AM

 Introduction 15

problematic yet promising because it is not a denomination, but rather, a

movement. This fact has resulted in a lack of ecclesial distinctives typically
found in denominations, as well as a lack of loyalty to any particular ecclesial
tradition. Kimlyn Bender addresses both of these problematic issues in the
following statement:

Evangelicalism is marked not so much by an ecclesiology as by ecclesiolae in

ecclesia, a fellowship of persons within churches. At its most extreme, it trades
the church for Spener’s collegia pietatis, a college of piety, though it may also
focus on doctrinal non-negotiables. Evangelicalism thus is smaller than churches
insofar as it exists within them. It unites persons with shared convictions within
traditional churches. Indeed, the ecclesiology of evangelicalism has often been
an ecclesiology of division and separation as new denominations emerged from
older ones in formal schism due to doctrinal differences or disagreements about
the necessity of conversion. Separatism has been a recurrent feature of evangeli-
cal ecclesiologies.6

In light of Bender’s comments, it is worth pausing to ponder how great an

influence this separatistic impulse has had on shaping or at least on not resist-
ing the current church shopping scene. Evangelicals do not simply separate
based on doctrine or conversion. Personal preferences also play a key part.
As John Stackhouse remarks, “Many evangelicals .€.€. feel free to leave one
congregation, or even an entire denominational tradition, to find what to them
is most important in a church: usually some combination of the right basic
doctrines, good preaching, good programs for the kids, and so on. Indeed,
only among evangelicals does one encounter the revealing cliché, ‘church
shopping.’”7 We will address the consumerist impulse within evangelicalism
at different points in the volume.
As an outgrowth of fundamentalism in the post-WWII period, American
evangelicalism’s ecclesiological roots are anchored in the fundamentalist-
modernist controversy that emerged in the early twentieth century. During
this period, the separatism Bender speaks of consisted largely of individual
churches leaving their denominations or of the conservatives in certain mainline
denominations forming new denominations. The result was a movement of
churches and denominations whose fellowship was based on their conserva-
tive views of the Bible, Christ, and salvation, yet organized around a variety
of ecclesial forms. Thus, one could find fundamentalist, and later, evangelical
churches that held to episcopal (Methodist), presbyterian, and congregational/
baptistic polities. This diversity of ecclesiologies makes it difficult to define
an evangelical ecclesiology. Perhaps this conundrum is no more pointedly ex-
emplified than in the stunning fact that the statement of faith of the National
Association of Evangelicals makes no mention of the church!8
So, as evangelical theologians—if we are to be honest—we have to confess
that “evangelical ecclesiology” is problematic in part because it is difficult to

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 16 Introduction

define. This challenge can be illustrated by a bit of humor shared among some
evangelicals involved in formal dialogue with Roman Catholics. As they put
it: “The main difference between us and the Catholics is ecclesiology. They
have one and we don’t.”9 As Mark Noll comments, the joke is funny because
it is at least partially true. Indeed, one evangelical theologian has even floated
the idea that “evangelical ecclesiology” may be an oxymoron.10 Nevertheless,
we disagree with those who would claim that evangelicalism does not have
an ecclesiology.11 To be sure, it is an ecclesiology limited, among other things,
by the temptation to resort to a kind of lowest-common-denominator ap-
proach. For example, evangelicals are less likely than the Catholic or Ortho-
dox churches to claim that there is only one valid form of church polity, since
a variety of church government models are represented among professing
evangelical churches.
This does not mean, however, that there are no distinctive common denomi-
nators to shape an evangelical ecclesiology. The following is a list of ecclesial
convictions that evangelicals tend to share, movement-wide: The church is the
people of God, body and bride of Christ, temple of the Holy Spirit promised
in the Hebrew scriptures, and brought into being by Jesus Christ, who is its
head.12 Its members are those who have experienced salvation through faith in
Jesus Christ and who are connected to a local manifestation of the universal
church. The sacraments or ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are
to be practiced, and the Word of God is to be taught. Its purpose includes the
worship of God, the building up of the body of believers, and the sharing of
the good news of Christ with the world in word and deed.
Someone will rightly point out that these convictions could be shared by
many traditions. Are there characteristic traits that distinguish evangelical
ecclesiology from other traditions or movements? We believe there are, as
suggested by the following examples. First, authority—always an issue of
ecclesial structure and ethos—is understood as being vested most strongly
in the Bible, vis-à-vis the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, where authority
is vested heavily in the institution and hierarchy, or the classically Reformed
churches, where authority is vested heavily in a creed like the Westminster
Confession, or the Pentecostal and charismatic movements, where authority
is construed primarily in terms of the direct intervention and personal leading
of the Holy Spirit.13 The result has been that the “main event” in the typical
evangelical church service has been the preaching of a sermon engaging a par-
ticular biblical text.14 Second, evangelicals have historically taken a minimalist
approach to liturgy. This has been due in large part to the fundamentalist rejec-
tion of many of the traditional liturgies of the mainline Protestant churches,
since fundamentalists associated them with what they considered to be dead
institutional Christianity devoid of heartfelt faith and the life of the Spirit.15
Third, given the lack of historic liturgy and practice, there has been a strong
tendency toward pragmatism in the structure of church worship and ministry.

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 16 3/9/09 8:01:36 AM

 Introduction 17

Church form and practice are often shaped by what works. This has led to
a tendency to adopt the forms of popular culture as the basis for everything
from church architecture to worship music to evangelistic techniques. It is
evangelicals who pioneered the “seeker-sensitive” culture and methodology of
the late twentieth century. Thus, in summary, while we recognize the problems
of defining an evangelical ecclesiology, we nevertheless contend that there are
characteristics particular to the movement, which makes a definition not only
possible but also makes evangelical ecclesiology an important contributor to
the broader dialogue on ecclesiology. Whether these and other characteristics
of evangelical ecclesiology contribute positively or negatively to the discussion
will be examined throughout the book.
Having addressed the problematic nature of doing an evangelical ecclesiol-
ogy, we also need to discuss the issues of writing an ecumenical ecclesiology.
If an evangelical ecclesiology suffers from the lack of distinction that can
result from spanning a variety of denominational traditions, an ecumenical
approach is susceptible to the same fate. One way to do an ecumenical theology
is simply to focus on those items upon which all traditions can agree—the
lowest-common-denominator approach—which would result in a pretty short
book! The other—which is the direction we have chosen—is to take for granted
that the distinctions of the various traditions have the potential to bring rich-
ness even in the midst of disagreement, creating a mosaic that, examined up
close, may reveal that a few pieces are out of place or misshapen but which
nonetheless at a distance becomes an image recognized by all as a beautiful
work of art. While we as evangelicals do not accept, for example, the Roman
Catholic theology of apostolic succession, we can, however, appreciate the
sense of unity it brings to the Catholic Church and could wish that the Roman
Catholic commitment to “stick together” in spite of differences were more
characteristic of evangelical churches. Or we may not accept the Orthodox
view of the Eucharist, but as evangelicals who tend to be individualistic in
our worship practices and who often lack any real sense of our connection to
the whole church, we can benefit from the Orthodox sense that whenever the
church celebrates the Lord’s Supper, not only is Christ there, but so too is the
entire church, both on earth and in heaven. It is this mosaic-like approach to
ecclesiology, we believe, that has the promise of moving the church toward
the kind of unity in diversity that must characterize the church of Jesus Christ
if it is going to prosper in a culture that is increasingly hostile to organized
religion, especially of the Christian variety. Moreover, such mosaic unity in
diversity anticipates the fulfillment of the Lord Jesus’s prayer in John 17:23:
“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” (TNIV).
The image of a mosaic is attractive to us as a metaphor for the church. As
the Lord Jesus’s prayer suggests, such mosaic unity in diversity is rooted in the

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 17 3/9/09 8:01:37 AM

 18 Introduction

trinitarian communion of the God who puts the various pieces together. And
given the eschatological nature of our salvation, we can even now begin to
see the beauty of what the church will one day be—even though some pieces
are missing—and anticipate its fulfillment by striving to live together in the
bond of peace, truth, and love.
Why should we strive for such mosaic unity in diversity? It is because the
church—not this or that uniform movement or niche faction—is one body
with many parts, created by the one God and Father for his Son as his bride,
the one Lord who gives his life for her redemption, a body gifted in a diversity
of ways by the one Spirit who calls the church to unity (not uniformity), both
to embody and to proclaim the one gospel of God’s salvation. The mosaic
will be complete on that day when the entire church sits down together at the
marriage supper of the Lamb. It is our hope that, in some small way, this book
will encourage the whole church to live out more fully in the present that unity
which will be completely realized in God’s future, and in so doing to invite
the whole world to the wedding. Come, Lord Jesus, come!

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. In your own experience, how have you found people to be disillusioned

with the church?
2. How should a person’s Christian identity be defined in relation to the
church?
3. How do you understand your church background in relationship to
other church traditions?

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 18 3/9/09 8:01:37 AM

 1

The Church as a Trinitarian Community

The Being-Driven Church

The Church’s Relational Identity, Purpose, and Activity

The church is a trinitarian community. For the church is the creation and cov-
enantal companion of the God who exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in
eternal communion. The church belongs to the Triune God. The Father calls
the church into being by the Son and indwells it by the Spirit, who unites it to
Christ. The church is the people of God (1€Pet. 2:10), the temple of the Holy
Spirit (1€Cor. 3:16), and the body and bride of Christ (Eph. 5:29–32). Outside
the Trinity, then, there is no church. For the people of God exist by way of the
God, who elects it in the beloved and seals it by the Spirit (Eph. 1:1–14). This
relationship and sense of belonging determines the church’s identity, purpose,
and activity, and in that order.
The church’s identity is itself communal and relational. It derives this com-
munal being from the Triune God whose being is the three divine persons
in communion, and who created it for communion. The God who created
everything, including the church, is love (1€John 4:8). In a way similar to the
creation story, God births the church as a free and creative expression of that
inner-trinitarian love and spreading goodness through the Word and Spirit.1
This communal state of affairs suggests that while the Christian individual is
a temple of the Holy Spirit, the Christian community is the ultimate temple

19

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 20 Exploring Ecclesiology

of the Holy Spirit (see 1€Cor. 3 and Rev. 21–22). The Triune God created the
church to be God’s people and body and bride of Christ in communion one
with another, a people who are also constituted in relation to God, to human-
ity at large, and to the whole of creation.
The church’s purpose flows forth from its identity, because the church’s
communal identity is purposive. The church has its existence in constitutive
relation with God, its own, humanity at large, and the world. Moreover, the
church exists to love God, its own, the world, and the whole creation because
it is loved in covenantal communion with God. This relational orientation
signifies that the church is being-driven. A church that begins with a missional
purpose before it begins with its identity as communal reality in relation to
God is problematic.2 This orientation is very American but is not biblical.
Biblically speaking, the missional purpose flows forth from the church’s com-
munal identity and is the inevitable outcome. In fact, communion with God
gives rise to missional existence, for God’s communal being is co-missional:
God ministers in the creation through the sending of the Son and Spirit. The
church participates in this missional movement, for the church exists through
God’s Son and Spirit’s advance, bearing witness to God’s kingdom in its midst.
The church participates in the communal God’s life as the Father goes forth
into the world through the co-missional Son and Spirit to create and sustain
a new humanity and community over whom and through whom God reigns,
and in whose midst God dwells. Thus, the church is being-driven—driven into
the world by the communal and co-missional God who reigns and dwells in
its midst as the one to whom the church belongs.3
An illustration of this point will prove helpful. Grandparents in nursing
homes and newborn infants are important relationally even though they do
not do anything significant. When our children were born, they could not
do anything for us. We had to do everything for them—from feeding and
burping them to changing their diapers. Even so, we delighted in caring for
them—passive as they were—because we loved them. Nursing-home grand-
parents and newborn babies are vital members of many families. The church
is God’s family. As those birthed by the Father through the Son in the Spirit,
our significance is communal. As those birthed into this world through God,
our missional task as we grow as members of this family is to build up this
communal dynamic, including inviting others to join our family. We value
those who enter the family not ultimately because of God’s purposes for the
church and what these spiritual newborns can eventually accomplish for the
church, but because we are loved by God as the church. Communion with
God as members of God’s family shapes everything.
The church’s relational identity and communal purpose also shapes the
church’s activity, including its approach to leadership, worship, and outreach.
This chapter focuses on the church’s identity as a trinitarian community and
addresses its missional purpose and activity to the extent that they reflect

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 The Church as a Trinitarian Community 21

this theme. Later chapters will bear directly on purpose and activity. We will
develop each of our identity claims in conversation with the Bible and the
church’s own witness past and present, beginning with important images of
the church.

Important Images of the Church’s Relational Identity

Humanity in the Image of the Triune God

The first motif in scripture bearing upon the church is the theme of the
image of God.4 Genesis 1 tells us that the Triune God created humanity in
God’s image. Ultimately, the church participates in the paradigmatic image
of God, who is Christ. It will be good to set forth this theme in terms of its
biblical development.
Genesis reveals a God who desires to create. God does not need to create,
for God is content as the divine communion of persons. As the Triune God, the
Lord Almighty freely fashions a world and a people as an overflowing expres-
sion of that holy love experienced in the communion of the divine life. God
creates the world through the Word and Spirit, whom Irenaeus of Lyons calls
God’s “two hands.”5 God’s Word engenders life by the Spirit, whom we find
in Genesis 1 hovering over the waters. God creates the world and all that is in
it through sheer acts of speech, and breathes the spirit of life into humanity.
Genesis 1 tells us that this God creates humanity in the divine likeness. This
likeness is fundamentally relational. “Let us make man in our image, in our
likeness .€.€. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he cre-
ated him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:26–27). As relational, this
likeness is totally dependent and in no way autonomous; the human creature
is not made to be independent of the Creator. Dietrich Bonhoeffer gets at this
in his discussion of Genesis 1 when he writes that the “likeness, the analogy of
man to God, is not analogia entis [analogy of being] but analogia relationis
[analogy of relation]. This means that even the relation between man and God
is not a part of man; it is not a capacity, a possibility, or a structure of his being
but a given, set relationship .€.€. And in this given relation freedom is given.”6
Bonhoeffer continues on by saying that the human person does not have “this
likeness in his possession, at his disposal.” It “is a God-given relation,”7 which
continually depends on God for its existence. The likeness between God and
humanity is fundamentally relational, one of covenantal communion between
God and the human creation, which is initiated, determined, and sustained
by God, not human effort.
The divine being is itself communal. The “let us” recorded here in Genesis 1
signifies the three persons of the Godhead, not an angelic counsel to whom God
speaks, nor the communicative device known as the “royal we.”8 God creates

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 22 Exploring Ecclesiology

a relational counterpart that reflects this divine plurality. Just as God is only
God as three persons in communion, the man is only fully human in relation
to the woman. The man was never meant to be alone (Gen. 2:18). “Man” here
is not an individual in isolation, but persons in communion with God and one
another. Bonhoeffer points out that according to Genesis 1, man/humanity
exists in duality as male and female: “Man is not alone, he is in duality and it
is in this dependence on the other that his creatureliness consists.”9
Human identity is communal because humanity is created in the image of
the Triune God. As communal, it is also creative. God creates this communal
being to be creative: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and
subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). Selfless, loving communion is always creative, expan-
sive, and transitive. Self-love, on the other hand, is reductive, recessive, and
intransitive.10 It will prove helpful to elaborate on these claims.
God creates humanity as an overflowing expression of the divine com-
munal love. God’s chief aim in creating humanity is to love us and to enter
into communion with us.11 As those created in the image of God, our chief
end is to respond to God’s love and to invite others into that communion so
that they may experience God’s goodness and grace and share it with others.
There is nothing more glorious than this communal reality, because through
it we fulfill God’s intention for the creation to participate in God’s spreading
goodness and glory. When we fail to respond to God’s love in faith, we turn
in on ourselves and negate the divine and human other as objects of our love.
Those who do not respond to God’s love turn in on themselves. They become
lovers of themselves, rather than lovers of God who also love those around
them. In 1€John 4, we find that those who do not love others do not know
God’s love. God’s love produces a chain reaction, where we love because God
has first loved us.
The state of affairs to which we speak finds its ultimate fulfillment in the
kingdom of which the church is the concrete manifestation on earth. The
church’s end is to respond to God’s love in faith and to invite others into lov-
ing communion with God and others. When the church does this, it fulfills its
destiny to become the people God intended for the new humanity to be. When
the church—Christ’s bride—fails to respond to God’s love in faith, it turns
in on itself rather than upward toward God and outward toward the world
in love, denying its predestined identity as God’s communal new creation in
his eschatological kingdom.
A few pages into the Genesis story, we are told that the indissoluble com-
munion that exists between God and humanity, man and woman, and between
humanity and the creation is short-lived. For man and woman determine to
express their creativity autonomously from God—wishing to be God (Gen.
3:1–7) rather than express themselves creatively as those who exist in the image
of the Triune Creator. Turning their backs on God spells autonomy from each
other as Adam blames his wife and will now rule over her (Gen. 3:12, 16).

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 The Church as a Trinitarian Community 23

Their departure from God also spells the cursing of the ground (Gen. 3:17–19)
and sets the stage for Cain’s murder of Abel (see Gen.€4).
Humanity created in the image of God is a ruined Rembrandt as a result of
the fall, a masterpiece severely marred by the fallen world, the flesh, and the
devil. Left to itself in this state, there is only dissolution and despair. And yet
the divine judgment involves a promise to redeem and transform humanity,
and the creation with it. The one through whom and for whom humanity is
created will come forth as the paradigmatic or archetypal image of God to
restore the masterpiece. God will do this, not simply through the redemption
of individuals, but through the redeemed communal life of the church united
to Christ.

The Communal Christ as the Ultimate Image of God

The Triune Creator is revealed to be the Triune Redeemer in the face of the
fall and divine judgment. Speaking to the serpent who deceives humanity, God
says: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed
and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen. 3:15,
NASB). The God who exists communally, and who created humanity to be in
relation to God, determines to redeem humanity and the whole of creation
from the clutches of autonomy, death, and despair. The God who had walked
in the Garden, and who had dwelt in their midst, would come in the flesh to
pray in the Garden and to offer himself upon the cursed tree from which the
man and woman had eaten. As the ultimate image of God (Col. 1:15; Heb.
1:1–3), Jesus would offer himself up to death and rise from the dead so as to
reverse the curse and recapitulate or transform the creation. He would make
it possible for us to be like God through our participation in his resurrection
and ascension. As the Eastern church has so aptly put it: “He became what
we are so that we might become what he is.”12 If only our archetypal ances-
tors had waited to be like God in the way that God had planned for them all
along—through union with his Son in the Spirit.13
As the archetypal image of God, the incarnate Son of God would come
forth to dwell in our midst and share with the church this supreme likeness to
the divine. Paul tells us that Jesus is the image of God, and that he is the head
of the body—the church (Col. 1:18). As the image of God, Christ does not
stand apart from others. Paul indicates that there is a communal character to
Christ as the image of God. For he is God with us in bodily form (Col. 2:9),
and we have been given fullness in him (Col. 2:10).
For Paul, in Colossians 1, Christ as the image of God in the flesh is a rec-
onciling force, drawing humanity back into peaceful communion with God
by taking humanity’s brokenness upon himself to redeem and transform it. As
such, Christ is the firstborn of the new creation and firstborn from the dead
(Col. 1:15, 18). The church is the firstfruits of the new creaturely order, raised

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 24 Exploring Ecclesiology

with Christ and poured out through the Spirit into the world. So one cannot
understand Christ in abstraction from his corporate solidarity with and for
the church in the cosmos. He does not stand apart but always exists with and
for the church in the world. For its own part, the church exists with and for
Christ in the world. The connection between Colossians 1 and Genesis 1 in
Paul’s thought signifies that Christ is the ultimate image of God. Christ shares
this image with the church, and through the church, with humanity.14
The creation story serves as the backdrop for Paul’s discussion. The only
time in the creation story where God says something is not good is in Genesis
2:18, where God says it is not good for man to be alone. Adam is not complete
apart from Eve. The same can be said of Christ. Christ in his humanity is not
complete apart from his bride, the church. Just as it was not good for man
created in the image of the Triune God to be alone, it is not good for Christ
as the image of the Triune God to be alone. For apart from the church, he
could not bear witness to the interpersonal communion of the Triune God
in his human state.
The One who would epitomize the image-of-God dynamic in Genesis 1
and 2 through his being in relation to the church is also the One promised in
Genesis 3. The promised seed of Genesis 3 would come forth to redeem God’s
creation and create the church to fulfill God’s communal kingdom’s mandate:
“I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and
they will be my people” (2€Cor. 6:16; cf. Lev. 26:12; Jer. 32:38; Ezek. 37:27).
The God who had walked in the garden in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8) will
once again dwell in our midst. The whole of the Hebrew Scriptures points
forward to this end.

The People of the Triune God

God creates humanity for covenantal communion. God comes to us ul-

timately in Christ to dwell in our midst and to take us to himself to form
a people who bear his name. A name expresses identity and character. It
also indicates one’s source, origin, and relationships: the person or persons
to whom one belongs. A nameless God has no people. A people without a
name do not belong to anyone. They are without identity and purpose. Those
without names must prove themselves to be more than numbers. They must
demonstrate their value and worth. On the other hand, those who belong to
God do not need to make a name for themselves. God has made a name for
them, for those who belong to God bear God’s name.
God will not allow humanity to make a name for itself outside of commu-
nion with God, but only as God’s chosen people. Recall the story in Genesis
11 where God wreaks havoc on the people of Babel, confusing their language
because they sought to make a name for themselves. This God is no glutton-
ous glory grabber, though. In the very next chapter, Genesis 12, God calls

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 The Church as a Trinitarian Community 25

Abram to be his follower, friend, and father of a new people, whose name he
will make great (Gen. 12:2). And he promises that through Abraham he will
bless all peoples on the earth (Gen. 12:3) by that promised seed, who is Christ
(Gal. 3:16, cf. Gen. 3:15; 12:7; 13:15; 24:7).15
The God who called Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the
earth and subdue it calls Abram (later Abraham) out from among his people
to go to a land that God will show him (Gen. 12:1). God renames Abram and
leads him and his family on a journey that will take them through the Promised
Land and then to Egypt. There, Jacob—renamed Israel—will become a vast
people, whom the Egyptians will eventually enslave out of fear.
The God who renames Abram and Jacob is a name-bearing God. While there
are many names for God in scripture, “the Lord” stands out. It stands out in
Exodus and the New Testament writings of John and Paul. Exodus tells us that
God hears his enslaved people’s cry and comes down to them. God calls out
Moses to go tell Pharaoh to let his people go. Here God reveals himself to Moses
and the people as “the Lord,” which is his proper name. God had not revealed
himself to the patriarchs by this name (Exod. 6:3). But “this is my name forever,
the name you shall call me from generation to generation” (Exod. 3:15, TNIV).
By this name, God delivers his people from bondage in Egypt, and all peoples
from bondage to the curse throughout all generations, including our own.
The name “the Lord,” by which God saves his people, is God’s triune name.
Jesus shares this name with the Father and the Spirit (John 8:58; 17:11–12;
Phil. 2:9–11; see also Matt. 28:18–20). In John 8:58, Jesus tells his opponents:
“Before Abraham was, I am.” They rightly understood him to be referring
back to Exodus 3. In Exodus 3, Moses had asked God for his name so that
he could tell the Israelites who had sent him. God’s response was, “I am who
I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites. ‘I AM has sent me to you’”
(Exod. 3:14). In the next verse, God tells Moses to say to the Israelites that
“the Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.” Jesus claims to be the named
God, the Lord, the God of Abraham, who appeared to Moses in a burning
bush as the Angel of the Lord in Exodus€3.
Jesus shares the divine name with the Father and the Spirit, as the Great
Commission makes clear: “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” (Matt. 28:19). Jesus commissions his church to be the missional people
of this named God, who will be with them through the mediation of the Spirit
until the end of the age (Matt. 28:18–20). Everyone who calls on the name of
this God—Jew and Gentile alike—will be saved (Rom. 10:8–13; cf. Joel 2:32).
Referring to Jesus, Paul quotes Joel 2:32 in Romans 10:13: “For ‘everyone who
calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” Jesus is the savior of Israel and
the church. We belong to “the Lord,” who rescued Israel out of bondage in
Egypt and the church from slavery to sin.

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 26 Exploring Ecclesiology

The God who revealed himself to Pharaoh as “the Lord,” and who com-
manded Pharaoh to let his people go (Exod. 5:1), will not let go of his people.
The Father and Son protect Christ’s followers in the name that the Father gave
the Son (John 17:11–12), so that they may be one like Christ and the Father
are one (John 17:11), so that the world might know that God has sent his Son
(John 17:20–23). Beginning with Abraham, the father of faith, God’s com-
munity of faith is the creation and covenantal partner of God through the Son
and Spirit. As such, the community of God’s people bears God’s name.
How we act has a bearing on God’s name, for we bear God’s name. God’s
name reveals his identity and character. Thus, if we bear it badly, we reflect
badly on God’s identity and character. In Romans 2:24, Paul says that God’s
people were the cause of God’s name being blasphemed among the nations.
Children who live well honor their parents’ names; so too the church that lives
well honors God’s name. As God’s children, and members of God’s household,
we must seek to bring honor to our Father’s name.

Children of the Triune God

Jesus’s opponents in John 5 were stupefied and horrified that he called God
his own father. They rightly interpreted him to be saying that he was equal
with God. As a result, they sought to stone him (John 5:18). No doubt, more
spiritually sensitive recipients of his message took note of Jesus’s claim to
experience profound intimacy with the Father. The nation of Israel claimed
to know God as Father, but it was not common for individual Jews to address
God as “Father.” Jesus both knows and addresses God as his own Father, and
invites us into a similar relationship as members of the church: “Our Father,
who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name” (Matt. 6:9).16
It is only through Jesus that the church, and individuals within the church,
know God as “Abba”—Daddy Father (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). For Jesus is the
one and only Son of God, who comes forth from the bosom of the Father
(John 1:18; 3:16). He alone knows God as Father by nature. We know God as
Father by grace—the grace poured out for us in Christ and ministered to us
through the Spirit. And so, God is our God and Father through Jesus his one
and only Son. The distinction between Christ’s sonship and our own forever
remains (see John 20:17). But such distinction is no division. In and through
Christ, God loves us—his sons and daughters, those who are his church—just
as much as he loves his Son (John 17:23).
As God’s children, we are brothers and sisters of Christ and one another.
Just as there is no division between God and us and Christ and us, there is to
be no division between brothers and sisters as members of God’s household.
For we are God’s family. This claim has a profound bearing on the church’s
approach to matters of ethnic, economic, and ecumenical diversity and divi-
sions, subjects that will receive consideration in the present volume.

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 The Church as a Trinitarian Community 27

The House and Household of the Triune God

The New Testament views all relational structures (parent–child, husband–

wife, brother–sister, and master–slave) through the lens of the church. Jesus
revolutionizes our understanding of family by making his community of dis-
ciples his primary family, taking precedence over his biological family. On one
occasion, when Jesus was told that his mother and brothers had come to see
him, Jesus says, “‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked. Then he
looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, ‘Here are my mother and
my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother,’”
(Mark 3:33–35). Family ties in Jesus’s day were much stronger than they are
today. So, his hearers would have been shocked by this statement. It is not that
Jesus disowned his mother and brothers, but that he reframed familial ties so
that, for example, his mother would be viewed first and foremost as part of his
family of disciples. Thus, at his death, Jesus tells Mary that his disciple John is
now her son, and tells John that Mary is now his mother. As a result, she came
to live with John, and not one of her other sons (John 19:26–27).
The New Testament views our relational–social structures through the lens
of the church. Where there had been disparity, now there is equality. Joseph
Hellerman claims that the fundamental family relationship adapted by the
early church was that of sibling-to-sibling, and that one of the values reflected
in the sibling image was equality. Hellerman writes,

Those who had the most to gain from the image of the church as family were
the poor, the hungry, the enslaved, the imprisoned, the orphans, and the widows.
For brother-sister terminology in antiquity had nothing to do with hierarchy,
power, and privilege, but everything to do with equality, solidarity and general-
ized reciprocity.17

Such sibling-to-sibling relationships have a bearing on how those in the church

treat their children. Our sons and daughters by birth who are also believers
are our brothers and our sisters in Christ. Such familial ties mean that we
are to treat as brothers and sisters those of other ethnicities and economic
levels. Christ levels the playing field in the church. The church becomes the
new family unit because it is God’s family unit, God’s household, and God
dwells in its midst. God dwelt in Israel’s midst in the person of the Angel of the
Lord,18 who bears God’s name (Exod. 23:20–21), and God dwells supremely
in our midst through Jesus, who shares God’s name (Matt. 28:19–20; John
17:11)—the Word who became flesh, tabernacling with us (John 1:14). Jesus
shares God’s name with us and makes the church a dwelling place in which
God dwells through his Spirit (1€Cor. 3:16).
This idea of “tabernacling” runs throughout scripture.19 God tabernacles
with his people Israel (Exod. 40:34). And as stated above, God also tabernacles

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 28 Exploring Ecclesiology

as a human in the person of Jesus among his people (John 1:14) through the
Holy Spirit, whom he has given to the Son without limit (John 1:32–34; 3:34).
Moreover, God tabernacles in us. We are temples of the Holy Spirit (1€Cor.
6:19). The God who tabernacles bodily as Jesus tabernacles bodily in each of
us through the Holy Spirit. This is a trinitarian tabernacling. And not only is
the individual the temple of the Holy Spirit, but also the church is the temple
of the Holy Spirit (1€Cor. 3:16), for the church is the body of Christ (Eph.
4:4–5; 5:29–30; Col. 1:18). Peter tells us that Jesus is the cornerstone of God’s
temple, and that the church is made up of living stones that are being built up
as a spiritual house (1€Pet. 2:4–10).
Jesus makes this all possible by destroying the temple of his own body on
the cross and rebuilding it on the third day (John 2:18–25), inaugurating a
new order through his resurrection from the dead. Upon his ascension and
glorification, streams of living water—the Spirit—descend upon and flow
from within those who trust in Christ (John 7:37–39).
No doubt, many have wondered about Jesus’s ascent and the Spirit’s
descent. Would it not have been better for Jesus to stay? Not according to
John 14 and 16. According to Jesus, it is a good thing that he goes away.
Why? Because he goes to prepare a place for his followers in the Father’s
house (14:2–3). It is also good that Christ goes because the Father is greater
than Christ (v.€28). More can be done through Christ going to the Father
than if he were to stay here (v.€12). Jesus’s followers can go directly to the
Father through him to get great and glorious results—for the Father’s sake
(vv. 12–14). It is also good that Christ goes because he will ask the Father
to send the Spirit (v.€26; 16:7). The Spirit of truth will come to comfort,
instruct, and serve as the continued presence of Christ to his followers
(see John 14:15–17 and John 16:7–15). In fact, the Father and Son will
come to us through the Spirit of truth to make their home with us (14:23;
“through the Spirit” follows theologically from the surrounding context).
Just as Jesus goes off to prepare a place for us, the Spirit prepares a place
for God and Christ in and with us. The Father and the Son send the Spirit
to dwell in us, and through the Spirit, they themselves come and dwell in
our midst (see John 14, including v.€23). In Jesus, and through Jesus, God
truly is with us (Matt. 1:23). And Christ will be with us always, to the end
of the age (Matt. 28:20).
Thus, the new tabernacle is better than the old. But the ultimate taber-
nacle/temple remains future. Christ is preparing a place for his people now.
Ultimately, this place is a relational space so that his people can be with him
forever (see John 14:3). In the age to come, there will be no need for a temple,
for God and the Lamb are the temple (Rev. 21:22), and they will dwell in the
midst of God’s people (Rev. 21:3), which is the holy city of the New Jerusalem
(Rev. 21:2) of God’s Israel and the church (Rev. 21:12–14), the bride (Rev.
21:2). The Spirit—who is the water of the River of Life flowing down the

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 The Church as a Trinitarian Community 29

middle of the great street of the city from the throne of God and the Lamb
(Rev. 22:1–2)—and the bride say, “‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’
Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free
gift of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17).

The Body and Bride of Christ

The church is Christ’s life-giving bride in the Spirit. Unlike with Adam and
his bride, whose spirits died when they ate from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, the nations who walk by the light of the city (Rev. 21:24),
which is Christ’s bride, find healing from the tree of life, which stands in the
city (Rev. 22:2). Outside the Trinity, there is no church; inside the Triune God’s
church, there is salvation.20
God creates a bride for his Son through his Son’s death unto life through
the Spirit (Eph. 5:25–27). The Spirit who searches the depths of the God who
is love (see 1€Cor. 2:10; 1€John 4:8) and who communicates to the Father and
Son the love they have for one another unites the church to Christ by pouring
forth the divine love into our hearts (Rom. 5:5) through disclosing God’s pre-
cious promises (see Rom. 8:15–17; 2€Pet. 1:3–4), thereby creating faith (Rom.
10:17). The disclosure of God’s love for us in Christ through the Word by the
Spirit pierces our hearts and makes us one flesh with Christ by faith.
A good husband loves his wife, nourishing and caring for her as his own
body, for they are one flesh. So too Christ nourishes and cares for his body—
his bride, the church—for they are one flesh (Eph. 5:28–31) through faith in
God’s promises of love and favor. Christ cleanses and purifies his bride by the
washing of water with the Word (Eph. 5:26). He nurtures and cares for his
church by sharing his righteousness with her while taking her unrighteousness
to himself. This has been called the “joyful exchange.”21 Here is how Luther
describes this joyful exchange:

Who then can fully appreciate what this royal marriage means? Who can under-
stand the riches of the glory of this grace? Here this rich and divine bridegroom
Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and
adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they
are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And she has that righteousness
in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she
can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say,
“If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his
is mine and all mine is his,” as the bride in the Song of Solomon (2:16) says,
“My beloved is mine and I am his.”22

For Luther, the bride truly is righteous through her very real union with Christ
by the Spirit. Justification by faith through the faithfulness of Christ and

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 30 Exploring Ecclesiology

outpouring of divine love into human hearts by the Spirit of God means that
the bride is truly one with Christ.23
Luther’s imagery is reflective of the Hebrew Scriptures where the bride in the
Song of Solomon stands in stark contrast to the whore of Hosea. Whereas the
former looks only to her beloved, the latter goes after other lovers. The former
pursues intimacy. The latter seeks after autonomy. God will not abandon us to
our autonomy, though, for God is a jealous lover. God has pursued us in his
Son and persuaded us by his Spirit to return to him. God has made a people
of those who were not his people (see Hos. 1:9–10; 2:23; Rom. 9:25; 1€Pet.
2:10) and has taken the prostitute and purified her of all her unrighteousness
to make her his spotless bride—the church (see Eph. 5:26).
As Christ’s bride, the church shares in Christ’s righteousness. Christ’s
righteousness creates and completes her. Her righteousness is not her own,
but it is hers through faith in Christ. Thus, her righteousness is relational
and dialectical (i.e., dynamic, multifaceted, even paradoxical). In fact, the
whole of the church’s dialectical righteousness bears witness to the church’s
relational identity as dialectical. How does this kind of dependent righ-
teousness affect the way the church should engage an unrighteous world?
The church can never engage the world in a self-righteous manner, but in a
gracious manner. Of course, the same would hold true for how Christians
are to engage one another. Having drawn attention to important biblical
images of the church, discussion will now turn to the dialectical nature of
the church’s relational identity. Consideration will be given to the church
as wholly righteous yet wholly sinful, as one yet many, and as here and not
here, now and not yet.

The Dialectical Nature of the Church’s Relational Identity

Wholly Righteous Yet Wholly Sinful

The Trinity as the one God who is three persons in communion is a dia-
lectical reality. Our union with the Triune God is also dialectical, for while
we are sinners, we are also righteous. God’s Spirit unites us to Christ, and so
we become righteous before God through our relational union with Christ
through the Spirit, while remaining unrighteous in ourselves apart from this
relational union with the Triune God. This dialectical, relational union is
constitutive of the church’s identity.
Our righteousness comes from Christ, not ourselves. Christ’s righteousness
becomes ours, not that we acquire a new capacity, but that we possess him
as a new lover. We possess Christ by faith in God’s loving promises: “My
beloved is mine and I am his.” Truly, as those who are the church, we are new
creations and spotless, but such newness and purity depend completely on

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 The Church as a Trinitarian Community 31

our dynamic interpersonal union with our beloved Christ, not on our works.
Luther puts it this way: “No good work can rely upon the Word of God or
live in the soul. Just as the heated iron glows like fire because of the union of
fire with it, so the Word imparts its qualities to the soul.” Christ marries the
believer through “the wedding ring of faith.” For Luther, Christ marries those
who are the church “in faith, steadfast love, and in mercies, righteousness, and
justice, as Hosea 2[:19–20] says.”24
We possess Christ as he gives himself to be had by us. This personal, re-
lational possession ever remains a gift through the outpoured Spirit of love
in our lives. No one has grounds to boast when salvation is a gift, no matter
one’s station in life. For apart from Christ, there is no one righteous, not even
one (Rom. 3:9–20). All stand before God condemned apart from his compas-
sionate turn toward us in Jesus—Jew and Gentile alike. The ground is level
at the foot of the cross, and so everyone is equal through faith in Christ Jesus
through the Spirit of him who makes us one.
Since Christ’s righteousness is never ours apart from utter dependence upon
Christ, the church is not only a haven for saints, but also a hospital for sin-
ners. The people of God are those who enter God’s kingdom as little children
completely dependent on God, ever remaining as such even while growing up
to complete maturity in Christ (Matt. 18:3). Only children are able to enter
into Narnia, and only those who know they are in need of healing seek after
a physician to be healed (Mark 2:17). The very first beatitude in the Sermon
on the Mount indicates that blessed are the spiritually poor—the spiritu-
ally bankrupt,25 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:3). Spiritual
bankruptcy is the only way to have one’s account paid in full with God. The
kingdom of God is short on puffed-up Pharisees and packed full of penitent
publicans and prostitutes (see Luke 18:10–14).
The completeness of each person of the Godhead is bound up with the
union of the three. In similar fashion, our righteousness—our completeness—
is completely dependent on our union with Christ through the Spirit of God.
Our righteousness is also completely dependent on the other members of the
body. Thus, it is interdependent righteousness. Just as the body is incomplete
apart from the head, each of the parts of the body requires the other parts
to function properly. Thus, our righteousness depends also on one another.
It takes all the parts—people groups, people with their gifts, and the various
churches—to make the whole body, and to make the body whole. So, the
members of Christ’s body share Christ’s righteousness by inviting one an-
other to repentance and healing in Christ, not by exclusionary finger-pointing
and condemnation. When one grieves due to sin, everyone grieves, and when
one rejoices due to victory in righteousness, everyone rejoices. United we
stand, divided we fall. The church is whole only when each of its members
is whole, and when each and every member works for the good of others in
light of the whole.

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 32 Exploring Ecclesiology

One Yet Many

It is a great mystery that Christ and the church are one flesh (Eph. 5:32).
Equally mysterious is that the church is one—made up of Jews and Gentiles
alike as equals through faith (Eph. 3:4–6). Just as God’s atoning work in Christ
tore the veil in the temple from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51) so that God’s
people could become the temple of the Holy Spirit, so Christ’s atoning work
tore asunder the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile so that
they could become one body (Eph. 2:13–16).
Notice the profoundly trinitarian dynamic in Ephesians 2:14–22. Christ
brings peace to the conflict between Jews and Gentiles, and so he is their
peace (cf. Micah 5:4–5). He has destroyed the hostility of the flesh (bound
up with circumcision and the requirements of the law) in his own death in
the flesh on the cross. He has reconciled the two by reconciling them to God
through the cross. Through his once-for-all bodily death, he has made the two
into one body. It is by this same Jesus that we have access through one Spirit
to the Father. Now Gentiles belong to God’s household whose foundation
is the apostles and prophets and whose cornerstone is Christ. Christ brings
into alignment the whole structure so that it grows into God’s holy temple. In
Christ, God builds together Jews and Gentiles into the place where God dwells
by the Spirit. And so, they belong together as members of God’s household
and as the house in which God dwells.
Through Christ, Gentiles are heirs with Israel, members together of Christ’s
own body, and sharers together in God’s promises in Jesus (Eph. 3:6). And
so, Jews and Gentiles (and all other groups) affirm their union with Christ
when they are united with one another. Christ died and rose to make Jews
and Gentiles one. Christ also died to make male and female and slave and
free one, for we are “all one in Christ Jesus” and “Abraham’s offspring, heirs
according to promise” (see Gal. 3:28–29). Yet, all too often, we do not live
by faith with our brothers and sisters, but are instead divided by skin color
and ethnicity, social status and economics, gender and personal preference.
Still, those who ascend to God in faith will descend to their neighbor in love
through the Spirit, who pours out God’s love in our hearts.26
Paul urges the Ephesians to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace” (Eph. 4:3). The Spirit of peace unifies us in the one who is our
peace. He goes on to write, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you
were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and
in all” (Eph. 4:4–5). Paul appeals to the common hope and one Triune God.
So too must we.
Although Paul’s concern for unity in the body does not discount or eradi-
cate particularity, the parts exist for the whole. In Ephesians 4, the apostle
writes that there are many parts to the one body (Eph. 4:16). In 1€Corinthians,

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 The Church as a Trinitarian Community 33

he speaks to the need to make use of all the parts of the body, and for them
to function together (1€Cor. 12:12–31). The Spirit of God is key to the parts
actually functioning well together. This same Spirit who mediates the love
between Father and Son, who mediates the incarnation of God’s Son, and who
unites Christ and his church also unites Christ’s humanity and his body—the
church, including its various parts. The Spirit forms and shapes each part to
be the particular one it is intended to be for the diverse outworking of the
church as one body. Our unity in and with and through Christ by the Spirit
upholds and nurtures the diverse church’s various forms of particularity for
the sake of the whole.
As Christ’s body on earth, we become a divinely appointed means of com-
municating the person, love, and righteousness of Christ in the flesh here and
now. We are Christ’s hands and feet by whom God’s Spirit communicates
Christ to each member of the church. So, when we forgive one another, we
experience God’s forgiveness. Catholics have recognized this truth and practice
it through the liturgy of confession. There is something incredibly powerful
about having a fellow believer tell us in the flesh that we are forgiven. Catholics
have limited this practice at least sacramentally to the priesthood, and so have
limited its profundity.27 The church as a whole, and not a select ordained few,
is a “royal priesthood” (1€Pet. 2:9). And so, we should make public confession
to one another and receive forgiveness from one another.
Some Protestants will be quick to point out that “there is one mediator,
the man Christ Jesus” (1€Tim. 2:5). While that is certainly true, the very same
passage also tells us to make intercession (1€Tim. 2:1–4). Intercession is a
form of mediation. It makes sense that the apostle would exhort us to pray,
because we are the one mediator’s body and bride, and share in his Spirit.
While Christ alone is our savior, mediator, and high priest, we bear witness
to one another of his saving grace when we forgive in Jesus’s name. James
calls on us to confess our sins to one another and to pray for one another so
that we may be healed (James 5:16). The prayer of faith saves the sick (James
5:15), and the person who brings another back to faith saves him too (James
5:19–20). How we miss out on God’s blessings when we fail to hold fast to
God’s word and be the church—the priesthood of all believers.
The church also misses out on God’s blessings when it fails to live in unity.
We have already touched on the divisions between Jews and Gentiles and other
groups in the church. Divisions spell dysfunction. The same holds true for
divisions in the church as a whole. Recall that our righteousness is interdepen-
dent. The lack of unity in the body means that the church is not complete, not
whole—not living out who we are as Christ’s righteous body and bride. This
should deeply grieve us. Now just as God is one, so too are we called to be one.
And just as when one rejoices, the whole rejoices, and when one grieves, the
whole grieves, so too the fact that the church is not whole should grieve every
church. For just as we communicate to one another the good news of God’s

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 34 Exploring Ecclesiology

love when we forgive one another, so too we communicate to the world that
God has sent his Son when we are one as God is one (John 17:21). Disunity, on
the other hand, communicates to the world that God has not sent his Son.
While one does not want to overinstitutionalize the church, it is equally
problematic to see the church as completely invisible. If the church is invisible,
then it is not visible to the world. While there are wheat and tares and sheep
and goats, and while we are to make every effort to make sure we ourselves are
not goats, the evangelical emphasis on the invisible church sometimes arises
from an individualistic bias that does not account for the interdependent
reality of the whole church.28
Scripture teaches that the whole church is present at each local assembly.
The Baptist theologian Millard Erickson writes that “the individual congrega-
tion, or group of believers in a specific place, is never regarded as only a part
or component of the whole church. The church is not a sum or composite of
the individual local groups. Instead, the whole is found in each place.”29
The church of God is in Corinth (1€Cor. 1:2), Ephesus, Rome, and the like.
This profound reality should cause each local assembly to exist for the whole
church. However, the North American church has profound difficulty recog-
nizing and working for the visible unity of the whole church. This is due not
only to the emphasis in so many circles on the invisible church, but also to the
American affirmation of tolerance as well as the adoption of the free market
system for church growth in many quarters. The Christian form of tolerance
and the free market system find their origin in the American experiment of
the separation of church and state and give rise in part to the separation of
churches from one another.30
The contributors to In One Body through the Cross, a recent proposal for
Christian unity, address such tensions as these and call for greater attentive-
ness on the part of all Christians in North America:

Congregational and parish life in the United States often proceeds with little sense
of contradiction between division from others and life as a realization of the one
church of Christ. This unawareness is indeed related to positive developments:
greater tolerance and the willingness of many individual Christians to accept
members of other churches as brothers and sisters in Christ. But friendly division is
still division. We must not let our present division be seen as normal, as the natural
expression of a Christian marketplace with churches representing different options
for a variety of spiritual tastes. Consumerist values and an ideology of diversity
can anesthetize us to the wound of division. Recovering from this ecumenical
anesthesia is one of the strongest present challenges to faithfulness.31

This ecumenical anesthesia presents a key challenge to faithfulness and re-

veals our lack of interdependence and completeness. Although Christ is not
divided (see 1€Cor. 1:13), the divided church does not bear witness to the one
true God.

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 The Church as a Trinitarian Community 35

The fact that we exist by the Triune God should mean that we exist for
the church of the Triune God. A mark of the Spirit’s presence is that we are
one as God is one. Our common confession in the Triune God should lead to
common communion. Thus, unity in the truth should lead to a united com-
munity. While we should not go around our differences in the pursuit of unity,
we should go through them in search of what binds us together in the midst
of them. We look forward to the day when our coming, common hope—the
Lord Jesus—will make us one. We must live today in view of that day, when we
will no longer look through a glass dimly, but face to face (1€Cor. 13:12).32 One
day the whole church will be one, even as it is now one through its union with
the ascended Christ through the indwelling presence of the Spirit. Someday,
we will become what we are.

Here and Not Here, Now and Not Yet

Christ is the second Adam, the last Adam, the eschatological human (see
1€Cor. 15:45–49). He has provided purification for sin and has sat down at the
right hand of God (Heb. 1:1–3). He purifies us through the Spirit whom the
Father has poured out on us and who unites us to Christ. Just as God offered
up the willing Christ upon the cross by the Spirit without blemish to make us
pure (Heb. 9:14), the risen and ascended Christ pours out the Holy Spirit upon
us to complete and perfect us, to make us one with God and with one another.
The Spirit is the perfecting member of the Trinity. While Christ institutes our
humanity as the firstborn of the new creation, the Spirit constitutes Christ’s
humanity as the archetype of this eschatological humanity and forms the
church as the body and bride of this eschatological human.33
And so, Jesus shares that eschatological humanity with the church, which
is his people, body, and bride. The church as the eschatological community
is the bride of the eschatological man. Christ is what we will be. We shall be
like him when we see him as he is. We are called to become what we will be,
and what we already are in him.
Although the church is pledged to Christ as his bride through the Spirit,
and so according to the biblical world is already married to him, this union
will not reach its ultimate consummation until her faith becomes sight at the
marriage supper of the Lamb. While one with the ascended Christ now by faith
through God’s love poured out into its members’ hearts through the Spirit,
the church will truly consummate her union as one person with Christ, her
bridegroom, at the end of the age.34 The Spirit who unites us to Christ will
usher in this eschatological age in its fullness.
Until then, we live in tension. We are here on this earth, yet seated with
Christ in the heavens (Col. 3:1–14). We belong to Christ’s kingdom, which has
been inaugurated, but which will not reach its fulfillment until the end of the
age. Christ has all authority, and exercises that authority in and through the

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 36 Exploring Ecclesiology

church, which is his body (see Eph. 1:20–23). And yet Christ and his church
often experience rejection at the hands of this world’s authorities (see 1€Pet.
2:4–12). The church must never become attached to this world and its king-
doms, for we are looking forward to an eternal kingdom, and to a city whose
foundations are from God (Heb. 11:10).
Our life is now hidden with Christ in God. And yet Christ is also with
us in the Spirit here on earth. Thus, while we are resident aliens, we are not
orphans (see John 14:18). The Spirit leads us forward. We must keep in step
with the Spirit, God’s promissory note and perfecting agent preparing us for
the day of redemption.
The Spirit who completes the Triune God by uniting the Father and Son does
not close God off from the church and world but accomplishes God’s turning
outward to the church and world in Christ. According to Colin Gunton, the
Spirit who, as Basil states, “completes the divine and blessed Trinity” serves

not as the one who completes an inward turning circle, but as one who is the
agent of the Father’s outward turning to the creation in his Son. As the one
who “completes,” the Spirit does indeed establish God’s aseity, his utter self-
sufficiency. Yet this aseity is the basis of a movement outwards€.€.€. The love of
the Father, Son and Spirit is a form of love which does not remain content with
its eternal self-sufficiency because that self-sufficiency is the basis of a move-
ment outwards to create and perfect a world whose otherness from God—of
being distinctly itself—is based in the otherness-in-relation of Father, Son and
Spirit in eternity.35

The Holy Spirit’s “work is the eschatological work of perfecting through the
redemption won by Christ that which was created and fell from its proper
being. It is this connection with perfecting that above all characterizes the
holiness of the Spirit.”36
The Spirit who completes the divine life turns outward to create and perfect
the church and world. The Spirit completes and perfects us, making us one
with God and one another. For its own part, the people of God find completion
through union with this outward-turning God and by turning outward toward
the world. This outward movement of perfection and perfecting witness in the
Spirit gives rise to a church that is truly concerned for the well-being of those
outside the church. Such an outwardly directed church witnesses to God’s
perfecting work of holy love in the Spirit toward and for all creation.
All too often, Christians think of completion and perfection in “members
only” terms. Nothing could be further from the truth, though, especially if we
reframe our understanding of completion and perfection in light of the Holy
Spirit. The Spirit does not close circles but opens the circle, so that all may have
access to the Father through the Son, and opens us up toward the world.
Nowhere is this open-circle reality more beautifully envisioned artistically
than in Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Trinity,37 which “clearly expresses” the

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 The Church as a Trinitarian Community 37

“eternal circle of love which opens to the hospitality of the creature, leading it
to the eternal trinitarian Banquet.”38 Here in this icon, “The circle of the infinite
tenderness of ‘the Three’ opens to welcome the viewer, whom the icon leads
into sacred space, to communion at the Table of God, at the very heart of the
hospitality of God to which man, in turn, is invited and where, with fear and
love, he enters into the intimacy of God.”39 Nowhere is this divine hospitality
more explicitly depicted biblically than in the closing chapters of Revelation.
The God who judges the whore Babylon makes of a whore a holy bride for his
Son, and through the Spirit and the bride invites all to come and partake of
the marriage feast. And nowhere is this open circle hospitality grasped better
theologically than in Robert Jenson’s appropriation of Jonathan Edwards’s
discussion of the church as Christ’s bride:

And the final goal of creation is thus at once God and his creature united in
Christ, the totus Christus [the whole Christ]€.€.€. “There was, [as] it were, an
eternal society or family in the Godhead, in the Trinity of persons. It seems to
be God’s design to admit the church into the divine family as his son’s wife.”
“Heaven and earth were created that the Son of God might be complete in a
spouse.”40

The Son will be made complete in a spouse through the Spirit. The bride—the
church—is not yet complete either. And so, this is no closed circle. Just as the
icon opens up toward the viewer, so God opens up toward the world through
the Spirit and bride of Christ and says, “Come!”

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. How does trinitarian thought shape your understanding of the

church?
2. Why is it important to think of the church as a being-driven community,
and not simply as a purpose-driven community?
3. Which biblical images of the church do you find most meaningful in
your own experience?
4. What would the church look like if we really believed that the church
is both a haven for saints and a hospital for sinners?

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Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 38 3/9/09 8:01:48 AM
 2

The Trinitarian Church Confronts

American Individualism

A hallmark of the evangelical Christian tradition is personal relationship

with God through Jesus Christ. That God takes us seriously and loves us
personally is a profound and precious reality. While God in Christ loves the
entire world, Jesus brings God’s love home personally to Zacchaeus, whom
he finds in a tree (Luke 19:5), to Nathaniel, whom he spots under a tree (John
1:50), and to the Samaritan woman whom he meets at the well (John 4:7).
Jesus calls Peter to abandon his fishing nets (Matt. 4:18–20) and summons
Matthew from his tax collector’s booth (Luke 5:27). Every hair on our heads
is numbered (Matt. 10:30), and God leaves the ninety-nine sheep to go after
the stray (Luke 15:3–7).
Bertrand Russell—by no means a friend of Christianity—marveled at this
characteristic trait of the Christian religion. In Why I Am Not a Christian,
Russell writes,

If Christianity is true, mankind are not such pitiful worms as they seem to be;
they are of interest to the Creator of the universe, who takes the trouble to be
pleased with them when they behave well and displeased when they behave
badly. This is a great compliment. We should not think of studying an ants’ nest
to find out which of the ants performed their formicular duty, and we should
certainly not think of picking out those individual ants who were remiss and
putting them into a bonfire. If God does this for us, it is a compliment to our

39

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 40 Exploring Ecclesiology

importance; and it is even a pleasanter compliment if he awards to the good

among us everlasting happiness in heaven.1

This is one reason why we the authors are evangelical Christians. Concern for
the individual person is incredibly important to Christianity, and especially to
evangelicalism. God’s concern for us is both flattering and humbling.
As noted, the individual’s profound value to the Creator and Savior is a bibli-
cal notion. But this theme has taken on added importance in the modern world
as a result of the Enlightenment and rise of fundamentalist-evangelicalism. The
Enlightenment, or modern era, arose in part out of concern for safeguarding
space for the individual in the face of imperial and ecclesial institutional forces
that oppressed the individual person during the medieval period. The same
response arose during the fundamentalist period, where conservative Christians
rejected what they took to be the oppressive constraints of mainline Protestant
liberal institutionalism.2 The irony here is that the fundamentalist-evangelical
movement is both modern and a reaction to modernity.3
Having said all this, the fundamentalist-evangelical movement has over-
reacted to the perceived medieval and modern mainline excesses by failing
to situate adequately the individual person in a community of persons. The
tendency is for people in the movement to see the temple of the Holy Spirit
primarily in individual rather than corporate and/or institutional terms. In
like fashion, discussion of spiritual renewal often focuses on the individual
rather than on the church body. Listen closely to the words of many praise
choruses. The primary focus is often on “I,” not “we.” Moreover, the way
evangelicals often read their Bibles leads them to see most everything in in-
dividualistic terms. For example, those within the movement often fail to see
that the Epistle to the Romans has much to say about how faith in Jesus is the
great equalizer between Jewish and Gentile people before God, much more in
fact than it has to say about believing individuals. Consideration of believing
individuals in Romans and elsewhere must be set forth against this backdrop
of the Bible’s communal orientation.4
Now, we the authors know what it means to be born from above and to have
our hearts strangely warmed. But we do not conceive the born-again encounter
as private and individual. Today, the danger exists that people often view the
born-again experience in private, individualistic, and even consumerist terms.
In A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren, one of the characters, “Neo,”
says that the definition of “saved” has been “shrunken and freeze-dried by
modernity.” Neo calls for

a postmodern consideration of what salvation means, something beyond an

individualized and consumeristic version. I may have a personal home, per-
sonal car, personal computer, personal identification number, personal digital
assistant, personal hot-tub—all I need now is personal salvation from my own

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 The Trinitarian Church Confronts American Individualism 41

personal savior .€.€. This all strikes me as Christianity diced through the modern
Veg-o-matic.5

While relationship with Jesus is truly personal, it is by no means private,

individualistic, and consumerist. It is public and interpersonal or communal.
Prayer requests, sermon titles, and messages often reflect this individualized
and consumerized Veg-o-matic imbalance. All too often, sermons tend to fol-
low the “How to Lose Weight and Be Filled with the Holy Spirit” pattern, not
the “Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me” paradigm.6 No doubt, the problem
goes back to the fall and its aftermath, where everyone began doing what
seemed right in their own eyes. It is just that today we have perfected the art
of individualized identity and self-realization.
The problem does not end with the individual Christian. It extends to the
individual family. People may claim to be community-oriented by spending
time with their families. Unfortunately, the individual nuclear family too often
takes precedence over the family of God. One reason why Dr. James Dobson
is so powerful a figure now is that he speaks to one of America’s greatest
national treasures and endangered species—the nuclear family. Pastors can
speak on all kinds of subjects at church. But they dare not challenge prevailing
notions of success, our use of money, the American nation, and the family.
Just about anything else will do. In fact, we often use our money to foster
successful ministries that often cater to the American dream of stable and
wholesome birth families.
This was brought home to our attention the Christmas of 2005. Many
evangelical churches across America decided to close their doors on Christmas
Day, because Christmas fell on Sunday. One leading pastor in the area where
we live reasoned that his church would have several Christmas Eve services to
attend, but that people should be home with their families on Christmas Day.
In so doing, this pastor placed the birth family over the born-again family. As
a result, many individuals removed from their nuclear families had nowhere
to go and no one to talk to on Christmas Day. So much for the emphasis on
the individual before God!
Churches often cater to this tendency to overvalue the nuclear family in
American culture. Ironically, those churches that cater more to the family—
making Christ and the church a predicate of family values—often become
more successful churches. And not so ironically, it tends to produce competi-
tion between churches where families shop for the best children’s ministry
with accompanying state-of-the-art children’s wing.7
We have before us three problems: overemphasis on the individual, the
individual family, and the individual church. How shall we respond? The indi-
vidual is important to God, just not in isolation from the church. The family
is important to God, but not to the detriment of God’s family. The individual
church is important to God, just not in isolation from other churches.

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 42 Exploring Ecclesiology

When Christianity places undue emphasis on the individual, it reduces the

church to a group of believing individuals or, worse, sees Christian identity as
separate from participation in Christian community. But the church is greater
than the sum of its parts, and the parts do not stand alone. We are only who
we are in relation to others. As stated in chapter 1, “The Church as a Trinitar-
ian Community,” God is three persons in communion. The three persons are
the being of God, not a divine individual in isolation. As those created in the
image of God, we have our personal being in interpersonal communion with
God and others. Scripture never refers to the church as a group of believing
individuals or autonomous Christians, but as the body of believers, the body
and bride of Christ. The risen Christ himself is not simply an individual. He
is corporate in that he is one with the church as his body and bride. And so,
we are not simply individuals. We are a corporate reality as Christ’s body
and bride.
The problem is not limited to the individual person. When the church
places undue emphasis on the individual nuclear family, it tends to disregard
the church as the ultimate family. As a result, it also tends to disregard the
single person or the single parent raising a family. However, when we see the
church as God’s family, and ourselves as part of that family, we realize that
our spouses and our children are our brothers and sisters in the Lord. So too
we realize that single parents and their children, orphans and widows in their
distress, and those who visit our fellowship, are members of our family.
This reality was brought home to one of us when he and his family shared
in a Sunday worship celebration with a Jordanian and Egyptian congrega-
tion in Oregon. After the service, to our surprise, the people invited everyone
over—including us as their guests—to one of their houses to celebrate the
birthday of one of their church members. It was such a profound experience.
The individual family was part of a larger family, and we were welcomed into
their fellowship as part of their family too.
We experienced more intimate conversation with these people we hardly
knew that one afternoon than what we normally experience in our own local
fellowship of believers. Perhaps one reason is that in the dominant culture
we tend to treat one another and our respective families as individuals and
individual nuclear units, for identity is ultimately defined in individual terms.
Not so for those from Middle Eastern and Asian cultures. Of course, we do
not mean to suggest that there are no problematic features in those cultures.
All too often, there is insufficient regard for the individual in these cultures.
However, our trinitarian faith calls us to affirm the one and the many, for
God is triune.
It is important for us to emphasize that members of our church families
are members of our nuclear families, and that our nuclear families are part
of this larger church family. This would keep us from separating and priori-
tizing family over church, or vice versa. One of the Jordanian women at the

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 The Trinitarian Church Confronts American Individualism 43

birthday party told us that she had served on the church staff of a largely
Caucasian congregation for several years. She was amazed how often people
used their nuclear families as a means to the end of not getting involved in
church life.8 In contrast to that either/or perspective, these Middle Eastern
Christians were building biological or blood-related family while building
Christian community.
Perhaps the problem in the West stems from a contractual model of human
identity. The individual subject is the basic unit of human identity, and rela-
tionships are based on contractual arrangements made between individual
subjects. Men and women enter into marriage contracts as individuals and
remain so while fulfilling their commitments to the contractual arrangements
of mutual benefits. A marriage can be terminated if either party fails to live
by the agreement. A contractual relationship is conditional, based on fulfilling
commitments and obligations involving sharing of the respective parties’ assets
and capacities and mutually satisfying performance of various activities.
This is not how scripture views human identity and marriage. Just as God
is indissolubly communal, so too human identity is a relational being. On this
view, people make covenants, which express their indissoluble bond as persons
in communion. The marriage bond signifies that the two have become one flesh
(Eph. 5:31). Biblically speaking, if a marriage were to be terminated, the couple
would die. For the two had been one flesh (Eph. 5:31), and their bodies were no
longer their own—their bodies belonged to each other (1€Cor. 7:4). It is only
as one dies that the other person is free to marry another (Rom. 7:1–3).
The problem of autonomy and contractual relations is not limited to the
individual and individual nuclear family. The same problem holds true for
churches in relation to one another. If people view relationships in contractual
terms, where obligations are met to receive certain benefits, then they will likely
look at the church family in contractual terms. In this case, people look for
that church that will meet their needs and provide spiritual goods and services.
They enter into relations with the church, providing services and financial
resources as long as the church meets their expectations. Once expectations
are not met, people are tempted to go next door or down the street.
It is very important that we shape people’s understanding so that they see
that our churches are inviting them to be part of a family, and that family
involves risk and loss, not “What’s in it for me?” As Rick Warren would say,
“It’s not about you.”9 It’s really about God and all of us, which includes you.
It is not about giving people what they want, when they want it, at the least
cost to themselves, but about being the people of God, which involves giving
and receiving, even at great cost to themselves.
By contrast, when churches focus on being vendors of religious goods and
service providers to expectant consumers, churches tend to focus on doing
what it takes to make sure their fellowships survive in the religious free mar-
ket, where only the fittest survive.10 When the church focuses solely on its own

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 44 Exploring Ecclesiology

fellowship, it can easily give rise to disregard for other fellowships, and even
competition between churches. It is important that each church realizes that
Christ is present to each church. Now if Christ is present to each church, and
the whole church is the body and bride of Christ, then the whole church is
present to each assembly. Thus, each church should exist in an open manner
toward the whole. One church in the area where we live includes a prayer
request every week in its worship program for other local churches and their
leaders. This is a good first step. But other steps are needed, such as churches
sharing resources with one another. It would be a profound indication of
church unity if affluent churches would put some of their building program
money toward assisting less-affluent churches with their facilities. One can
learn a lot about churches’ hearts based on how they approach their respec-
tive building programs.
Individualism and separatism is not limited to how churches relate to one
another. It also impacts how the church and individuals within it relate to the
world at large. So often, evangelism is reduced to individual proclamation to
see that an individual soul is saved, instead of expanded to be an invitation
to the individual, and even the individual’s community, to enter into God’s
kingdom community. The community is the place in which our salvation is
realized and perfected. In fact, our salvation must be nurtured and realized in
community, for our God is communal, and so is our union with God. In fact,
entrance into community and communion is salvation.11
Such entrance does not involve a retreat from the world, but a new way of
being in the world that leads to the redemptive transformation of the world’s
structures through the creation and cultivation of a new kind of community
in the world. The church is Christ’s body in the world, and so the church must
give itself to the world, just as Christ did. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer claims, the
church is the church “only when it exists for others€.€.€. The Church must share
in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping
and serving.”12 Just as God gave his Son to save the world, so God gives his
church to the world. The church is a microcosm of the world,13 and of the
transformative work God is undertaking through his Son and Spirit to make
all things new.
So what would the church look like if it became less individualistic and
more trinitarian? It would look something like the Jordanian-Egyptian con-
gregation mentioned earlier. No doubt, it was not a perfect community, but it
was profoundly beautiful and unique in a culture where individualism reigns
supreme. This community was not centered on the individual or individual
family or individual church, but it had a place for all of them at the celebra-
tion. The individual and nuclear family had place settings at the dinner table.
So too did our family, although we were visiting from another church. This
church fellowship also had a heart to share the bounty of the table to those
in their community. Perhaps their openness and inclusiveness were due to the

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 The Trinitarian Church Confronts American Individualism 45

fact that they knew the importance of being open and inclusive in a culture
where they are often excluded as foreigners and recent immigrants.
We need to sit down together at the birthday-party table of our new identity
in Christ more often. All too often, we are a group of individuals, nuclear
families, individual churches, a separatistic community set apart from others
and the world at large, doing our own thing. The Lord wants to do a new
thing in our lives, families, churches, and communities.
What is a trinitarian community? Henri Nouwen and Philip Yancey give us
some clues. Developing a point made by Nouwen, Yancey writes:

Henri Nouwen defines “community” as the place where the person you least
want to live with always lives. Often we surround ourselves with the people
we most want to live with, thus forming a club or a clique, not a community.
Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form
a community.14

Too often, we associate only with our individual friends, but not our broth-
ers and sisters in the Lord. After all, it is our inherent right as Americans to
choose! And so, we choose to be with our friends and call that our church
family. But the church family is not limited to our friends—those like us.
A fellowship exclusively made up of friends—our kind of people—is not a
church, but a clique.
Over against the supposedly American freedom to choose whatever we
want, and to be with whomever we want, which is actually bondage, because
it does not free us for “the other”—the one who is truly different from us—
God chose us in Christ, and chose our brothers and sisters in Christ for us.
We share a common Father as siblings in Christ through the bond created
by the Spirit. God calls us to the family table, to work out our differences
with “the other,” to share a meal together, and to invite other “others” to
the table of the crucified and risen Lord. Christ became other than God,
and he became the abandoned other so as to reconcile us to God and one
another. Jesus’s last supper with his band of social misfits and outcasts
was the first supper of the eschatological kingdom family. The supper of
the Lord has a way of reshaping us from individuals and nuclear families
and churches and insiders in isolation to being inclusive of others so that
we might truly become what we already are—the family of God. Christ’s
own Middle Eastern last supper is truly a birthday celebration for the entire
family into which we have been born anew. And so, in light of this celebra-
tion that will be consummated again and again in God’s eternal home in
the coming kingdom, God calls us to expand our circle of friends so that
our cliques might be completely transformed into a family circle. Until we
do, we will never be complete.

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 46 Exploring Ecclesiology

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. How have you found individualism to be problematic in the American

church?
2. Why is personal relationship with Jesus so important to church life?
3. What would the church community look like if we conceived of it as
God’s ultimate family?
4. How do we move the church from being a social club where people asso-
ciate only with those like them, toward becoming a true community?

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 3

The Church as an
Eschatological Community

What the church is, in short, is determined by what the church is destined to
become.
Stanley Grenz1

From Temporary Community to the Community of God’s Future

Several years ago, on a tour of the sites of the life of Martin Luther, a twelve-
year-old boy and his father were wandering through the magnificent cathedral
in Mainz, a classic Gothic structure, its architecture begging the eyes to look to
the heavens. Seeing that his son was quite taken by the majesty of the building,
the father asked him for his thoughts. “Dad,” he replied, “everything in this
building makes me look towards heaven and search for God.” What joy his
comment would have brought to the architects of this grand medieval church.
Indeed, Gothic church architecture illustrates an important theological prin-
ciple regarding ecclesiology. Just as the boy looked beyond the church building
to the God it pointed to, so the church in the world today must look beyond
itself, to a God bigger than earth and bigger than the present. To understand
its identity and mission, the church must look to its own future. For the Bible’s
ultimate picture of the church is found at the end of the story. The apostle John
in Revelation 21–22 invites us to imagine the church in its consummate form

47

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 48 Exploring Ecclesiology

as the New Jerusalem descending from heaven like a bride whose wedding day
has finally come, a bride fully prepared for her groom. It is a church purified
of all sin, healed from all brokenness, a community that welcomes both the
persons and the riches of every human culture. In it, a humanity cured of its
own internal animosities, living in perfect harmony with a glorified creation,
fulfills its final purpose of an unfettered love relationship with Christ, bring-
ing glory to God the Father.
In the biblical narrative, the people of God are always urged to look for-
ward, imagining their future not simply as a way of ameliorating the pain
of their present circumstances, but also to help them understand what kind
of people God wants them to be in the present. Thus, for a theology of the
church to be truly biblical, it must be one that understands the church as an
eschatological community. For many of us who were raised in the American
evangelical tradition, eschatology has often focused on the study of charts
that graphically depict a particular interpretation of biblical prophecy about
the end of the world. Key to this approach is the rise of a renewed nation of
Israel (usually said to have been reconstituted in 1948), a nation that would
again become the recipient of God’s saving grace and the locus of Christ’s
kingdom rule over the earth—all this as the church faded into a heavenly
background.2 But no matter what one believes about the future of the nation
of Israel, the church must never be relegated to the status of a temporary
community. It is the community of God’s future, which means that a biblical
eschatology must always be a study of the future of the church. Conversely,
any biblical theology of the church must include a study of its future, or, in
eschatological terms, the relationship of the church to the kingdom of God.
The relationship between the church and the kingdom is a subject that pours
forth from the pages of scripture. The central topic of the teaching of Jesus
is the kingdom of God. And it is upon his apostles and their message of the
kingdom that he promises to build his church.
Throughout its history the church has struggled to understand its relation-
ship to the kingdom. The fundamental question asks if the promised kingdom
is present or still remains a future hope. The gospel writers answered the
question paradoxically. The kingdom of God was indeed present in the life
and ministry of Jesus and demonstrated its power over death in his resurrec-
tion. Nevertheless, the church was still envisioned as a bride waiting for the
arrival of her groom. The consensus of twentieth-century scholarship is that
the New Testament presents a picture of a kingdom that is here and not here,
now and not yet.3 And the kingdom has created a community that, while not
identified with it, is a function of the kingdom’s presence and anticipates its
consummation at the end of the age. This means that the church is a com-
munity both of fulfillment and of hope, realizing the blessings of the future
while yet awaiting the fullness of these blessings to be revealed at Christ’s
second coming. This identity shapes the church, the bride, by calling her to

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 49

conform now, as much as possible, to her future image as the spotless bride
of Christ.
This paradoxical relation to the kingdom raises a number of important
questions for the church: What aspects of the kingdom can the church expect
to experience in its own existence and mission, now and in the future? What
is the church’s role in the kingdom of God now? And how does the pres-
ent/future nature of the kingdom of God guide the church’s engagement of
culture, including its role in influencing secular government and the shaping
of culture’s values? These are profound questions that have generated much
discussion. It is to these questions that we turn our attention in the following
pages. First we will seek to understand the presence of the kingdom in the
ministry of Jesus and in the church founded by him as understood in the Syn-
optics, John, and Acts. Then we will examine the nature and characteristics
of this eschatological church, and finally, we will suggest ways in which such
a church must engage culture.

Jesus, the Kingdom, and the Church as an Eschatological Community

Having been anticipated in the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures, it is in the

Synoptic Gospels that the topic of the kingdom comes most prominently into
focus. The kingdom is the fundamental subject of Jesus’s preaching. Indeed,
Mark begins his account not with the birth narratives, but with John’s an-
nunciation of the coming king and Jesus’s declaration that the kingdom is at
hand (1:1–15). Similarly, Matthew and Luke record Jesus’s first major preach-
ing event as a proclamation of the arrival of the kingdom, as envisioned by
Isaiah, and of himself as the one who would inaugurate it.
Of the many passages related to the kingdom and its presence in the preach-
ing of Jesus, one of the most important is found in Matthew 12:22–32. Here,
the arrival of the kingdom is cast in imagery reaching all the way back to
Genesis 3:15 and the promise of the ultimate defeat of Satan by the seed of
Eve. This future blessing of the kingdom has begun in Jesus’s casting out of
demons by the power of the Holy Spirit (another indication of the presence
of the kingdom—cf. Ezek. 36; Joel 2; etc.). Drawing on Exodus imagery and
the formation of the people of God, Jesus robs the strong man’s house, tak-
ing captive for himself Satan’s possessions, that is, people. He embarks upon
this rescue mission to bring together the kingdom people of God, the church
(Matt. 16), which would be made up of those from every tongue and tribe and
nation (Matt. 28:19–20). Jesus announces that the work of the kingdom has
now begun for this people in the preaching of the gospel, healing, and raising
the dead. Thus, the blessings of the future are experienced in the present.
Nevertheless, Jesus’s teaching on the arrival of the kingdom contains mixed
messages. One of the most poignant examples of the paradox of the preaching

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 50 Exploring Ecclesiology

of the kingdom is found in Luke 7:18–23. Alone and abandoned in a prison

cell for condemning Herod’s adulterous marriage, John is struggling with
Jesus’s ministry. Like the rest of the Jews of this day, John had an expecta-
tion of the kingdom that included things that were not happening. Rome and
other evil rulers were still in charge, unaffected by Jesus’s annunciation of
the kingdom, a fact brought home powerfully to John by the fact of his own
imprisonment. God was supposed to come in power with the kingdom, wipe
away unrighteous rulers, and restore Israel to Davidic glory.4 Confused, the
man who spent his entire life anticipating his God-given job of announcing
the arrival of the Messiah/King sends his disciples to ask Jesus if perhaps he
has made a mistake. Maybe Jesus is not the one?
Jesus’s indirect answer illustrates well the paradox of the kingdom. He tells
John’s disciples to go back and relate to him the miracles they see. The lame
walk, the blind see, the dead are raised, and the gospel is preached to the poor.
These miracles are the signs of the kingdom as foretold by the prophets (Isa.
42:7; 61:1). Then, Jesus retorts cryptically, “Blessed is the man who does not
fall on account of me.” Jesus knows here that his ministry, while clearly fulfill-
ing prophecy, is not living up to all the current expectations. The cataclysmic,
apocalyptic elements are not there, nor the restoration of a righteous political
system in Israel. Jesus knows this is what the suffering and oppressed Jews
are looking for. But he also knows that this aspect of the kingdom promise is
not what he came to fulfill .€.€. yet. So they must not stumble over that. Here
Jesus exhorts his followers to recognize the presence of the kingdom of God
in the midst of a community that remains broken. Thus, the kingdom and its
power become both a realization and a hope.
Contemporary New Testament scholarship has come to understand that
the eschatological dualism of John differs from that of the Synoptics. While
the Synoptics see the world through the language of the kingdom and its
horizontal dualism of this age vs. the age to come, John’s dualism is vertical,
using the language of above and below. In the incarnation, and later, through
the Spirit, God invades human history, bringing the transcendent God into
the realm of humanity. This focus results in a significant amount of “realized
eschatology.” John’s approach led such scholars as C.€H. Dodd to conclude
that, in John, virtually all of the eschatological hope has already taken place
with the coming of Christ and the Spirit, so that eternal life is an already
present reality in the church rather than a merely future hope. Dodd argues
that “all that the church hoped for in the second coming of Christ is already
given in its present experience of Christ through the Spirit.”5
Indeed, John’s Gospel does focus a great deal on the present experience
of the eschatological blessings. In Christ, God comes to earth to bring life to
all people (John 1). Also in John 1, using the eschatological temple imagery
of Ezekiel, John pictures Jesus as the new tabernacle (skene), fulfilling God’s
promise to dwell in the midst of his people. And in chapter 4 he is the new

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 51

temple, replacing both Jerusalem and Gerazim so that the “location” of wor-
ship is now found in him. This is the temple to which the Spirit of God and
the glory of God has returned, as Ezekiel promised. In John 11, Jesus calls
Lazarus from the grave, clarifying for Martha that his identity as the “resur-
rection and the life” is not simply a matter for the future, but for the present.
In John 14, Jesus promises not to leave the community of the disciples as
orphans, but, looking forward to the Day of Pentecost, declares that he will
return to them in the person of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. This does not
mean, however, that eschatology in John is entirely realized, that there is no
sense of the not-yet as well as the already. For Jesus also tells his disciples that
he must go away to prepare a place for them, so that when he returns they can
be where he is. Moreover, 1€John 3:2 recognizes that the community of Christ
still awaits his coming.
While all of this eschatology is rightly applied to the church, both in Christ’s
present residence in the church through the Spirit and in his future coming for
it, John ties his eschatological vision most clearly to the church in the book of
Revelation.6 The following are several of John’s images. First, the eschatologi-
cal Christ speaks to local churches. Unlike in his letters, where he speaks as
the leader of the Johannine community, here John presents the picture of the
risen and glorified Christ himself speaking directly to seven local churches.
What is important for our purpose here is not the particular content of each
of the messages, but the image that in the midst of each local church stands
the glorified Christ, the exalted Son of God, witnessing the faithfulness, or
lack thereof, of each church to form a community whose values and actions
reflect the life and teaching of their risen Lord. He is there to judge, but also
to encourage. For it is clear that the churches struggle under both persecution
and the lure of an enticing but evil world system. To these suffering churches,
Christ extends the promise of future glory if they remain faithful to him.
Another of John’s images suggests that the church as the people of God
extends beyond the grave, even now. In chapters 4 and 5 we see a majestic
crowd of angelic/heavenly creatures worshipping God through the worship
of the crucified and risen Lamb in the center of the throne of heaven. Later,
in chapter 20, John expands the image by including in this glorious assembly
the souls of believers who have died. Here is a prelude to John’s understand-
ing of the ultimate destiny of the church. For the church of Jesus Christ is a
heavenly community, some of its members even “currently” existing in the
very heavenly presence of God himself. The earthly church exists now in
union with the heavenly church. Nevertheless, both of these elements of the
church still look forward to Christ’s final revelation of his bride. For now
the earthly church endures as a human community broken by sin, while the
heavenly church endures as a purified people who still await their vindication
by the resurrection of their bodies. Then, in chapters 19–22, John narrates for
us the final moments of the story, where the people of God, through Christ’s

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 52 Exploring Ecclesiology

final victory, become all they are meant to be. In chapter 19, Christ descends
to earth to rescue his persecuted bride, transporting her to celebrate with him
at the marriage feast of the Lamb. The church then returns to earth in the
form of the new Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God. All of this glorious
vision is given to the church now, to bring comfort in the midst of a broken
and decadent world by assuring it of its future destiny, encouraging it to live
in light of that destiny even now.
Finally, John shows us that the church of the eschaton is truly a world
church. Pictured in Jewish terms (as the New Jerusalem), it is, nevertheless,
a multiethnic, multicultural community. For here we see a community of na-
tions and kings, bringing the treasures of their earthly cultures before Christ
in exaltation of his majesty. Jerusalem, the city of the temple of YHWH,
represents not the Jewish nation, but the very presence of God in the midst
of his people, the church, which he has gathered from every tongue and tribe
and nation.7
Moving from John to the post-Pentecost story of the church, the book of
Acts reveals that the kingdom, which has arrived in the ministry of Jesus, finally
creates the church as the eschatological community of God as promised by the
Hebrew Scriptures. In Peter’s Acts 2 speech, his call to the crowd to embrace
Christ is filled with kingdom imagery. They are to repent and be baptized,
symbolizing preparation for the coming kingdom by purification. They are
promised the Holy Spirit, a key component of kingdom expectations. And
Jesus of Nazareth is proclaimed, not only as the promised Messiah, but also
as the new David, exalted through his resurrection to the place of ultimate
authority.
In summary, historical Christian scholarship has experienced a number
of pendulum swings regarding the presence or absence of the kingdom of
God relative to the church. But in the twentieth century, a consensus position
has emerged among scholars of various Christian traditions. This consensus
recognizes the paradox of the biblical narrative—the kingdom of God is here
and not here, now and not yet.8 The gospel of the kingdom Jesus is preaching
means that God, in the person of Christ, is attacking the kingdom of Satan
and is at work among humanity, reigning as king in the hearts of his people.
He demonstrates that the kingdom of God is at work in this present evil age.
It has arrived, but has not yet brought this age to an end.

The Nature of the Eschatological Church in Relation to the Kingdom

The struggle to understand the nature of the kingdom as inaugurated in the

ministry of Jesus and yet to be consummated only in the future has resulted
in a similar struggle to understand the nature of the church as a community
connected to the kingdom of God. What finally emerged as the dialectical

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 53

nature of the church arose from the tendency to view the church either as a
community waiting for the kingdom, or the kingdom of God on earth.

A Community Waiting for the Kingdom

In his extended sermon known as the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24–25; Mark
13; Luke 12; 19; 21), Jesus weaves together his vision of the future with his
theology of the people of God, the church. One of his main themes, illustrated
most dramatically in the story of the virgins waiting for their bridegroom and
servants living in expectation of the return of their master, depicts the church
as a community (or a bride) in waiting, waiting for her king and his kingdom.
Paul also focuses on this theme, consistently describing the church as the com-
munity of Christ living in expectation of his parousia. Several examples are
found in 1€Corinthians. Paul’s advice on marriage, material possessions, and
other temporal connections to the world (1€Cor. 7) is given through the lens
of this expectation, calling for the establishment of a way of life that will not
reflect this-worldly values. Further, chapters 10 and 11 give us a major eucharis-
tic passage on the church as a community living in anticipation of the second
coming. The Eucharist is a reenactment of the Last Supper, allowing the church
to encounter the crucified Christ in anticipation of his future coming, when
Christ will once again drink from the cup with them in his Father’s kingdom.
In 1€Thessalonians 4–5, Paul pictures the church living in expectation of the
second coming, which will arrive like a thief in the night. Peter also uses this
imagery of the unexpected thief to encourage the church to wait patiently for
the Day of YHWH, which will consummate the kingdom of God.
Having understood itself to be such a community in waiting, the church
has struggled with the question of what it means to wait for the kingdom.
How should the church wait? What should the church do while it waits? And
how should the church endure the hostility of the world while it waits? Before
Constantine legitimized the church as the official religion of the empire, the
eschatology of the church was influenced by its status as a marginalized and
often persecuted sect.9 Both in the biblical context and in the history of the
church, one of the by-products of persecution is an eschatology that focuses
on a victorious existence beyond history. This appears variously in the form
of the cataclysmic entrance of God from outside history to judge the wicked
and reward the righteous, martyrdom as the highest act of spirituality, and
the emphasis on the church as a holy community separate from the world
around it. All three of these emphases play a role in the eschatology of the
early church before Constantine.
The glorification of martyrdom in the theology of the early church illustrates
that, under persecution and the threat of death, much of the eschatological
thought of the church concerned how believers would endure in the faith so
as to enter the kingdom of God. During times of persecution, Christians,

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 54 Exploring Ecclesiology

especially Christian leaders, were asked if they would recant their confessions
of faith and offer incense to the emperor to save their lives. Their refusal to re-
cant, and their subsequent executions, became widely told stories of individual
faith in the face of death. In this context martyrdom came to be understood
as a sure and instant pathway into the presence of God. Martyrdom became
revered and, in the case of some, was even desired.
In the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 110), we find this idealization of
martyrdom. His seven letters to the churches of Asia Minor on the way to
his martyrdom in Rome reveal Ignatius’s conviction that martyrdom is the
surest way to become a true disciple of Jesus. Indeed, as Cyril Richardson
comments about Ignatius, “He is clearly impatient to ‘get to God.’”10 While
the eschatology of martyrdom is quite individualistic and otherworldly in
Ignatius, focusing on the hope of immediate personal and individual union
with Christ for the martyr, there are elements of a realized eschatology for
the church as well. Ignatius urges believers to meet together in faith as those
who are in union with Christ together. When they meet they should always
partake of the Eucharist, for it is “the medicine of immortality, and the an-
tidote which wards off death but yields continuous life in union with Jesus
Christ.”11
What the glorification of martyrdom illustrates is that one of the church’s
historic ways of waiting for the kingdom led to a fundamental disconnection
from the world. The marginalized church looked forward to God’s return to
judge the wicked and reward the righteous. And generally in the early church
the expectation was that God’s judgment was near. Much of this expectation
took the form of premillennialism, the hope of the rule of Christ on a renewed
earth for a thousand years before the end of all things.12 This approach to
waiting for the kingdom has ebbed and flowed through the church’s history,
often depending on the church’s own sense of its status as being either inte-
gral to society or marginalized by it. Rising to popularity at the end of the
nineteenth century, as much of the church in America began to sense itself
becoming marginalized by the antisupernaturalism of the Enlightenment, a new
kind of premillennialism called dispensationalism saw the church as radically
disconnected from the future kingdom of God and thus from eschatology. In
classic dispensationalism the kingdom of God is understood to be an earthly
and physical kingdom. The Old Testament prophecies of the kingdom, with
their earthly imagery, meant that at the second coming Jesus will rule the
kingdom from Jerusalem in an Israel restored to Davidic glory. But the church
is an entity virtually unforeseen by Old Testament prophecy and in no way a
fulfillment of the establishment of the kingdom of God.13 The church, said
William Blackstone in his 1908 classic Jesus Is Coming, is a mystery, a reality
never spoken of by the Old Testament, which merely awaits the fulfillment
of the promises to begin when Christ, the bridegroom, arrives.14 Thus, the
church is not an eschatological community.

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 55

In modern times, no major Christian movement, at least in America, has

created a stronger discontinuity between ecclesiology and eschatology, between
the church and the kingdom, than has the classic dispensational premillen-
nialism of the first half of the twentieth century. Reacting against the liberal
postmillennialism of the modernist impulse, dispensationalists rejected any
substantive connection between the church and the kingdom of God in the
present age. The church was understood as a kind of parenthesis between
Israel’s rejection of the kingdom as offered to them by Christ and God’s
renewal of his work with Israel, which is to begin with the pretribulation
rapture of the church and the subsequent earthly millennium. One result of
this theology was that virtually all eschatological imagery and discussion in
the scriptures was understood to be addressing the renewed nation of Israel,
not the church. Thus, eschatology and the theology of the kingdom played
little role in ecclesiology other than that Christians should actively evangelize
and live holy lives in anticipation of the rapture, which could come at any
moment. To the extent that the church has conceived of itself as a mystery
disconnected from Old Testament promises of the kingdom and has under-
stood the kingdom as primarily a future reality to be waited for rather than
a present reality that has taken root in this world, it has tended to disconnect
itself from social engagement apart from evangelism.15 It was in this vein that
dispensationalist preachers often warned their listeners not to “polish the brass
on a sinking ship” (the world).16 God was coming to judge the unrighteous
world and to remove from it his righteous church. Thus, the church’s job, in
the popular phrase of early-twentieth-century dispensationalists, was simply
to “occupy until I come.”

The Kingdom of God on Earth

The dialectic (tension, paradox) of the kingdom of God as here and not
here, now and not yet, results in a dialectical nature of the church as well.
It is a community caught between this age and the age to come, on the one
hand waiting for a kingdom that remains a future hope, and on the other
hand embracing the blessings of a kingdom that has not only created the
church, but empowers it for Christ’s mission in the world. Christ’s vision
of the relationship between the church and the kingdom makes it clear that
the church is founded upon the power of the kingdom and represents that
power on earth. For Jesus promises to Peter and the disciples the keys of the
kingdom (Matt. 16:18; 18:18), through which they will declare to the world
the terms on which the kingdom may be entered. In this power they would
go out, as they already had been sent (Matt. 10:7–8), to teach, heal, and cast
out demons. They would stand before government leaders before whom they
would witness to Christ and his kingdom (Matt. 10:17–20), perhaps even
doing as John the Baptist did with Herod, calling government leaders on the

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 56 Exploring Ecclesiology

carpet for their immoral behavior and urging them to repent (Mark 6:17–20).
In short, the church of Jesus Christ would engage the world in the power of
the eschatological kingdom. The theology of Paul also suggests this kind of
cultural engagement, contending that as the sin of the first Adam affected the
entire human race, the righteousness and redemption of the second Adam
would have a universal effect as well, calling into being not simply a new com-
munity of persons, but a new creation (2€Cor. 5:17) through a redemption of
cosmic proportions (Rom. 8:19–22).
Taking seriously Christ’s proclamation that the kingdom had arrived in him,
the church, at various points in its history, has understood itself to represent
the kingdom of God on earth, seeking to transform society into the image
of the kingdom. After Constantine, expectations of a coming kingdom took
on new forms that would have been impossible during the centuries of the
church’s persecution and marginalization before him. Constantine’s favor and
patronage resulted in a shift in the church’s eschatology in the mid-fourth
century, moving from an emphasis on the cataclysmic inbreaking of God for
judgment and salvation to a more immanent picture of God’s salvation within
human history. In the works of Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339), for example,
this shift becomes obvious. Eusebius sees God’s work of salvation not pri-
marily in the eschaton, but in the establishment of the church as the official
religion of the empire. In the church, through his servant Constantine, God
has brought the blessings of the eternal kingdom. In Eusebius we see the seeds
of eschatology as the Christianization of the world through the church. Brian
Daley writes of him,

As the earthly kingdom takes on, for Eusebius, more and more characteristics
of the Kingdom of promise, the future hopes of the church become simply a
two-dimensional backdrop for the theatre of human history, where human actors
corrupt or realize God’s gift of salvation, build Christ’s ideal society or hinder
its coming. For his de-emphasis of eschatology as well as for his reading of the
past, Eusebius has been called with some justice “the first political theologian
in the Christian church.”17

Perhaps a more accurate appraisal of Eusebius is not that he deemphasized

eschatology, but that he partially collapsed eschatology into ecclesiology—
the hopes of the future become realized in the church and even in the world
through the church’s work. This perspective takes on monumental significance
and influence in perhaps the most important work of theology before the
Middle Ages, Augustine’s City of God.
Augustine, who early on held to a millennialism in the spirit of Irenaeus
and others, later rejected that view, opting for a more symbolic interpretation
instead. While the kingdom of God in its ultimate form remains future, the
kingdom is truly present now in the church. Augustine writes,

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 57

We must understand in one sense the kingdom of heaven in which exist together
both he who breaks what he teaches and he who does it, the one being least,
the other great, and in another sense the kingdom of heaven into which only he
who does what he teaches shall enter. Consequently, where both classes exist, it
is the church as it now is, but where only the one shall exist, it is the church as
it is destined to be when no wicked person shall be in her. Therefore the church
even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven.18

The millennial kingdom is not to be conceived of as a future earthly reign of

Christ, but as the present reign of Christ in the lives of believers who have
experienced the resurrection from a life of sin through baptism. This ecclesi-
alization of eschatology played a key role in the tendency for the kingdom to
be identified with the Roman church throughout the Middle Ages.
The early church’s vision of itself as an eschatological community was
largely affected by its status as a marginalized and often persecuted community.
Similarly, the ascendancy of the church to a place of social acceptance and
power after the conversion of Constantine revolutionized its eschatological
vision throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Simply stated, the massive
fact of the Middle Ages is the rise of the church as an institution to a place
equal to and sometimes greater than the institution of the state. While the
early church could not reasonably hope for an immediate and large-scale
change of the culture and society in which it lived, conceiving of itself instead
as a refugee community looking for its true home beyond death and hoping
for the cataclysmic inbreaking of God to judge the world, the church of the
Middle Ages saw itself as an earthly empire. It was God’s instrument to bring
the kingdom to earth now. Through the political connections of the papacy
and, even more importantly, the power of the church to dispense or withhold
salvation, even to or from entire countries, the church was able to control legal
systems, often making the law of the church the law of the land. This imperial
symbiosis between church and state, designed to bring the kingdom of God
to earth, was most aptly illustrated in the name of this medieval alliance—the
Holy Roman Empire.
As we move from the Middle Ages to the modern period, we find in America
another example of the church understanding itself as the kingdom of God
on earth. The theology of the kingdom of God in America includes a rich and
varied tradition of millennial perspectives ranging from biblical and scholarly
approaches to the radical popular millenarianism of dozens of American uto-
pian communities. It is a tradition that sees the development of an American
mythos of being “chosen of God” that extends from Cotton Mather’s Magnalia
Christi Americana to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The
variety of perspectives in the American eschatological landscape raises ques-
tions similar to those raised in the early and medieval churches—is the kingdom
present or future, transcendent or immanent, and what is the relationship of

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 58 Exploring Ecclesiology

the church to the kingdom of God and to society in terms of engagement vs.
disengagement, and optimism vs. pessimism?
In his classic work Errand into the Wilderness, historian Perry Miller notes
that though some of the early colonists came to America to escape religious
persecution in Europe, a major theme in the transcontinental migration was
the sense that the settlers were on a divine mission. With God’s help they
would create a new society with a government that would operate according
to the principles of true Christianity and provide for and defend the estab-
lishment of the church. John Winthrop led his band of believers to America
not with the idea of finding prosperity for the oppressed classes, but to enter
into a covenant with God. According to Perry Miller, the Massachusetts Bay
Company came to set up a government which would have “at the very begin-
ning of its list of responsibilities, the duty of suppressing heresy, of subduing
or somehow getting rid of dissenters—of being in short, deliberately, and
consistently intolerant.”19
The idea was that if people kept their bargain with God, he would prosper
American society. The errand into the wilderness was to make America God’s
“city on a hill” which would be recognized throughout the world. The overriding
conviction of these early American settlers was that God would work through
the true church in America to reform the world and bring about his kingdom
on earth. Historian Ernest Tuveson, commenting on millennial themes in the
writings of the early American Puritan Increase Mather, wrote:

There is the implication that the pioneers of New England were separated out
from the pioneer nation of the Reformation to advance that Reformation; as the
millennialist doctrine developed, it came to seem “manifest” that this separated
community .€.€. was not only a special instrument in God’s plan, but the agency
he had ordained.20

In these themes of America as the place of the millennial kingdom and of

the church as God’s tool for progressively establishing it are revealed a strong
American conviction that the kingdom of God is an immanent reality to be
developed by the power of God through the historical process. They were
taken up and expanded most notably by the colonial era’s greatest theologian,
Jonathan Edwards, and his disciple, Samuel Hopkins. At the height of the
First Great Awakening Edwards spoke in glowing terms about the prospects
for the establishment of the millennial kingdom through the church in the
near future. In 1742, Edwards wrote:

’Tis not unlikely that this work of God’s Spirit, that is so extraordinary and
wonderful, is the dawning, or at least a prelude, of that glorious work of God,
so often foretold in Scripture, which in the progress and issue of it, shall renew
the world of mankind .€.€. And there are many things that make it probable that
this work will begin in America.21

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 59

But by 1747, disappointments began creeping into Edwards’s vision. He noted

that the church was not continuing to prosper and to reform society at the pace
that it had a few years earlier. Edwards shifted from viewing the millennium
as an imminent inevitability to seeing it as a future utopian hope.
This note of pessimism reflected a small chink in the armor of the post-
millennial optimism of the early Edwards and foreshadows the full-blown
pessimism that would characterize American premillennialism in the early
twentieth century. What we see here with Edwards, as we saw in the transi-
tion from the early church to the church of the Middle Ages, is that the more
eschatology is collapsed into ecclesiology, the more likely the church is to en-
gage society with the hope of reforming it. Conversely, the more eschatology
becomes separated from the church, the more pessimistic the church becomes
about social reform.
In the postmillennialism of colonial America, tempered by the writings of
Hopkins and the later Edwards, the kingdom of God was immanent within
the historical process.22 It would not arrive suddenly by the cataclysmic sec-
ond coming of Christ, but by God’s sovereign and gradual work through the
church. God had begun a work of reformation in the church in Europe and
had brought the pure elements of that church to America to establish a new
community that would exemplify and promote the standards of the kingdom
of God. Later, this sense of the immanence of the kingdom through the work
of the church would be challenged by a growing premillennial perception,
conceiving of the kingdom much more in terms of transcendence—as a reality
that could never be developed through the church, but only brought suddenly
by the power of God at the end of human history.23
Throughout its history, the church has best understood the relationship
between the church and the kingdom of God when it has maintained the bib-
lical dialectic between the two. In recent decades representatives of the most
nondialectical views have become more balanced. In the Roman Catholic
Church, the medieval synthesis that virtually collapsed the kingdom into the
church has given way to a more moderated approach. Moving beyond the
triumphalist perspective of the medieval church, which so closely connected
the kingdom with the visible church on earth, Vatican€II portrays the church
as a pilgrim people, a community already on its way to the future and in
possession of the promises of the future in incipient form, yet also one that
hopes for the final realization of its identity in the future. The church already
possesses a holiness that is real, but incomplete. It is nourished by the real
presence of Christ who, by his body and blood, makes the church a partaker
in his glorious life.

The promised and hoped for restoration, therefore, has already begun in Christ.
It is carried forward in the sending of the Holy Spirit and through him continues
in the church in which, through our faith, we learn the meaning of our earthly

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 60 Exploring Ecclesiology

life, while we bring to term, with hope of future good, the task allotted to us in
the world by the Father, and so work out our salvation.24

On the other end of the spectrum, the traditional dispensational premil-

lennialism of the first half of the twentieth century in American theology has
given way to what proponents call “progressive dispensationalism,” a view
that maintains a clear separation between church and kingdom but has come
to understand that the kingdom has indeed been inaugurated in Christ, Chris-
tians are members of the kingdom now, and that the power of the kingdom
is manifest in the church.25

The Function of the Eschatological Church in Relation to the Kingdom

Given the dialectical relationship between the church and the eschatological
kingdom, the church must ask, What, then is the function of the church vis-
à-vis the kingdom of God? Beyond embracing the values of the kingdom for
its own existence, how does the church conceive of its role in living out the
values and the demands of the kingdom in the world? The following categories
suggest several ways in which the church should understand its eschatological
function.

The Church Is the Doorway to the Kingdom

First, the church is the doorway to the kingdom. This connection is, perhaps,
most clearly attested in Jesus’s response to Peter’s confession in Matthew 16
and Luke 9. In Matthew, Peter confesses Jesus not only as Messiah, but also
as the royal Son of King YHWH. Jesus responds that he will build his church
upon Peter (and the other apostles), who recognize him as Messiah/King. And
all those who follow the disciples in this confession, becoming members of the
church, also find entrance into the kingdom. The church does not exist as an
individual entity, unrelated to the arrival of the kingdom, but as the doorway
to the kingdom. The leaders and members are given the keys to open the door
of the kingdom to all who enter the “doors” of the church. For on the Day
of Pentecost, Peter contends that entrance into the new community of Christ
followers means entrance into the community of the promised kingdom (Acts
2:14–39).
Early in the life of the church, its leaders began to discuss the idea that
to enjoy the blessings of the kingdom, one must be a member of the church,
the community of the King. In his On the Unity of the Church, Cyprian of
Carthage (d. 258) teaches that the church is the only way to eternal blessings.
Those who separate themselves from the church, even if they have confessed
the true faith under the threat of death, cannot receive the blessings of heaven.

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 61

Speaking even of those martyred for the faith who are, nevertheless, outside
the unity of the church, Cyprian contends:

What peace, then, do the enemies of the brethren promise to themselves? What
sacrifices do those who are rivals of the priests think that they celebrate? Do
they deem that they have Christ with them when they are collected together,
who are gathered together outside the church of Christ? Even if such men were
slain in confession of the Name, that stain is not even washed away by blood:
the inexpiable and grave fault of discord is not even purged by suffering. He
cannot be a martyr who is not in the church; he cannot attain unto the kingdom
who forsakes that which shall reign there.26

Thus, for Cyprian, there is no access to the kingdom of God for those who
are outside the one church, even if they have confessed Christ. Here we see the
beginnings of the idea that the church, as an institution, unified by a specific
and recognized group of bishops, is the one and only doorway to the salvation
that awaits the faithful beyond this life. This connection between the church
and the salvation of the kingdom would come to full flower in the Roman
Catholic Church of the Middle Ages.
In spite of the problems inherent in this medieval institutionalization of
the church,27 recognized by Catholic theologians as well as Protestant,28 it is
nevertheless important to recognize the importance of its emphasis on the
communitarian nature of the church in light of its eschatological identity. As
the eschatology of the early church held it together in the face of persecution,
so the institutionalized eschatology of the medieval church never let people
forget that the security and enticements of worldly power could not bring them
into the kingdom of God—only membership in the church could do that.
One of the benefits of the Roman Catholic view is its focus on the idea
that eschatological salvation begins by membership in the eschatological com-
munity. To say it another way, a biblical theology of salvation argues that
salvation creates a community, “a people for God’s own possession,” not just
saved individuals. In contrast to the Catholic emphasis on membership in the
eschatological community in order to enjoy the blessings of the kingdom,
modern Protestant evangelicals have tended to focus on the message of Jesus
as the doorway to eschatological salvation. Protestants generally have opted for
the view popularized by John Calvin that the church is primarily understood
as the community of all persons everywhere who have faith in Christ, visible
only to God since they are not gathered in any one church or denomination.29
One of the dangers of disconnecting one’s enjoyment of the blessings of the
kingdom from one’s membership in the visible church is a tendency to conceive
of salvation in terms of one’s personal relationship with Jesus apart from the
church which keeps us from seeing salvation as ultimately communal.
To be a citizen of the kingdom of God comes through personal connection
with the King himself. And to be fully connected to the King is to be connected to

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 62 Exploring Ecclesiology

his body, the church. For many of the blessings of the kingdom are experienced
only through the grace dispensed by God to the members of that community to
be shared with one another.30 The church is the doorway to the kingdom.

The Church Bears Witness to the Kingdom

Second, the church bears witness to the kingdom. The book of Acts makes
it clear that the apostolic church understood one of its fundamental functions
to be that of being a witness to the kingdom of God. Indeed, in his last words
to the disciples at his ascension, Jesus emphasizes this task. In a passage laden
with kingdom expectations (Acts 1:3–8), Jesus proclaims that the disciples
will be witnesses to Messiah/King Jesus, to whom all authority has been given
(Matt. 28:19). For these disciples, to be Christ’s witnesses was to be witnesses
of the kingdom. Later we see Philip preaching the good news of the kingdom
in Samaria (Acts 8:12). Finally, Paul becomes the preacher of the kingdom
of God to the Gentiles (Acts 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31). What all this means is
that when the church proclaims Christ in the world, it is not simply pointing
people to him, as if the message of the gospel were fully expressed in calling
people to embrace Christ individually. In proclaiming the kingdom, the church
points to Christ as king over an eschatological community, calling upon all
persons to believe in Christ, thus becoming members of the community that
celebrates his kingship now, living under his kingly authority until his rule
is finally a de facto reality over all creation. Moreover, the church becomes a
living witness to the kingdom by living out its values in community. Biblical
scholar George Eldon Ladd writes,

If Jesus’ disciples are those who have received the life and fellowship of the
Kingdom, and if this life is in fact an anticipation of the eschatological King-
dom, then it follows that one of the main tasks of the church is to display in
this present evil age the life and fellowship of the age to come.31

Throughout the church’s history, the way it bears witness to the kingdom is
always a function of its view of how closely church and kingdom are related.
For example, dispensationalism’s emphasis on eschatological futurism led to
a general tendency toward the rejection of human culture as both a morally
declining and irremediable entity, one that would play no part at all in the
establishment of the kingdom of God. G.€L. Alrich, in the popular periodical
Our Hope, argued that since the world was obviously in moral decline, and
since the kingdom of God would come only by supernatural means, there is
no reason to try to reform society. “Remember that the very things you are so
entangled with today, and the world which you are trying to make better by
reform and education, etc., is under the curse of God for the murder of His
son; and is doomed.”32

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 63

For classic dispensationalists, the rejection of society as a reality that could

be reformed or could participate in the establishment of the kingdom of God
was clear. Yet this conviction did not mean that they believed that the church
should never do the work of God in society. On the contrary, they were ag-
gressively involved in society, both in America and overseas, primarily through
mission work that focused on evangelism. But they did not typically focus on
projects that aimed at improving the life of people in this world.33
Despair of cultural reform also led to a very narrow view of the church’s
witness. If there was no hope for this world, then the only world worth work-
ing for was the world to come, the entrance requirement for which was belief
in Jesus. Thus, the entire work of the church in the world was evangelism. As
J.€E. Conant remarked,

It is perfectly clear, therefore, that the church is not commissioned to convert the
world, nor to educate it, nor to civilize it, nor help solve its economic problems,
nor to Christianize its social order, and certainly take no part in governing it.
She is simply to “preach the gospel to every creature,” nothing else, nothing
less, that whosoever is willing to believe the “good news” may experience the
power of God unto salvation and transformation.34

Thus we see in dispensationalism a radical millennialist movement, extreme in

its transcendent perspective of the entirely future kingdom and in its subsequent
loss of hope in and disengagement from society. The important point in all
of this is to see that how the church understands its relationship to eschatol-
ogy, to the kingdom of God, has a significant effect on how it understands its
relationship to the culture in which it exists. To depart from the dialectic of
the scriptures and to opt instead for a view of the kingdom as either radically
present or radically future will always affect negatively the church’s ability
to bear witness faithfully to the kingdom. When the church works to live in
the tension of the dialectic of the now and not yet, it will always be a more
faithful witness.
Echoing the dialectic of Luther’s two-kingdom theory,35 Lutheran theologian
Phillip Hefner contends that the church is “transparent to the kingdom” and
thus intimately related to it.36 While it can only point to the future finality of
the kingdom, nevertheless the church is the community where God intends to
actualize his meanings and intentions for human creation. Because the church
is symbolic of God’s ultimate future, it is never an end in itself. God’s future
has not totally arrived in the church, nor can the church completely reform
the world to bring it into conformity with God’s vision. The church is ac-
countable “to embody signals of what God is about in the world.” Thus, the
church is responsible for representing to the world the redemptive purposes
of God, ultimately manifest in the future kingdom. So this relationship to the
kingdom speaks both to what the church is and to what it must become. “Its

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 64 Exploring Ecclesiology

structures, its message, its liturgy and communal life, and its outreach must
always be reformed toward greater conformity with the intentions of God for
the world€.€.€. The hope of the church points to the day when it will indeed not
pass away but will be transfigured in God’s own work of consummation.”37
As a representative of the Reformed tradition, Donald Bloesch argues that
the church is not only the anticipatory sign of the coming kingdom, but the
“springboard and vanguard” of the kingdom. The kingdom is the creative
and redeeming force of God’s Word and Spirit creating a new humanity in the
church. The kingdom’s presence in the church brings moral regeneration that
reorders human relationships. The church, then, is the community in which
the kingly rule of God is made visible and becomes a conduit of the power of
the kingdom in its preaching and ministry, both to itself and to the world. It
is, then, a visible means of grace.
For Bloesch, human history is the arena in which the kingdom is manifest,
but the kingdom does not arise from history, coming instead from above to
create a community where the rule of Christ as Lord is manifest in the church,
as it will one day be over all of creation. It does not bring about the gradual
Christianization of history. The church relates to the kingdom both as church
militant and church triumphant. In an earthly millennium the church militant
will reclaim a world that has lost its way. In the eternal kingdom, the whole of
human creation will be made up of the church triumphant, where sin, death,
and the devil are finally done away with. In the present age, the victories of
the church triumphant become real in the midst of the church’s existence in
the fallen world. Thus, the kingdom takes root in the church, not by human
progress, but by Word and Spirit.38
So, in bearing witness to the kingdom, the church receives by grace the
transforming blessings of the kingdom of God, becoming a community that
lives under the kingship of Christ, who begins the work of transforming a
broken and sinful people into a “holy nation” (1€Pet. 2:9–10). This pilgrim
community on the road of transformation seeks both to live out the values
of the kingdom in its own relationships and to call to those outside to join in
experiencing the redemption and transformation offered by Christ.

The Church Is the Instrument of the Kingdom

Finally, the church is the instrument of the kingdom of God. By this we

mean simply that the church not only points to the kingdom (witness) and
opens the door to the kingdom (doorway) but also brings the blessings of the
kingdom, not only to its own members, but to the world as well. What we
see in the Gospel narratives before the founding of the church at Pentecost is
that the powers of the kingdom are essentially limited to Jesus. Those who
hear the gospel hear it from Jesus. Those who experience healing are healed
by Jesus. Of course, we do find limited instances (i.e., the commissioning of

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 65

the twelve in Matt. 10 and of the seventy-two in Luke 10) where the disciples
are given authority to extend the power and blessings of the kingdom to the
world in the absence of Jesus. But these seem to be preludes to the future au-
thority Jesus gives to the church (Matt. 16), rather than a paradigmatic role
for the disciples while Jesus was still with them. After Pentecost, however,
everything changes in this regard. The resurrected Jesus returns to his disciples
through the personal agency of the Holy Spirit (John 14:15–21), bringing to
the world not only the kingdom’s good news of the forgiveness of sin, but
even the kingdom’s miraculous healing power. As the disciples preach, the sick
are made well and demons are cast out. Moreover, what was experienced by
only a few, the blessing of being in the presence of Jesus, is now experienced
by the entire church, where Christ’s presence is revealed in the person of the
Holy Spirit. The person of Christ, previously incarnate to reveal God and his
blessings only in Jesus of Nazareth, is now incarnate in the members of the
church, dwelling in them through the Holy Spirit so that they might extend
his presence and blessings to one another and to the world.
Of all the early material that focuses on the eschatological nature of the
church, one source that relates particularly to this chapter’s image of the church
drawing the future into the present and becoming the instrument of the kingdom
in human culture is Gregory of Nyssa’s fourth homily on the Book of Eccle-
siastes.39 At a time when no one, not even in the church, was arguing against
the practice of slavery, Gregory argues, on the basis of his eschatology, that the
church should reject slavery entirely. Commenting on Christian eschatology in
general and of Gregory in particular, David Hart argues that the kingdom of
God is a future reality that

comes suddenly, like a thief in the night, and so fulfills no immanent process€.€.€.
Only thus will it complete all things. At the same time, the Kingdom has al-
ready, at Easter, been made visible within history and now impends upon each
moment, a work of judgment falling across all our immanent truths of power,
privilege, or destiny.40

To make a long and complicated argument simple, God created all of humanity
with an ideal in mind, which has been broken by the fall. In the incarnation,
Christ takes on this broken humanity, redirecting it toward its ideal and tran-
scendent end. But until that end becomes a reality, the church as the mystical
body of Christ is the visible form of redeemed humanity. As God’s vision of
humanity is one where its slavery to sin and death is overcome, so slavery to
political or social powers must also be overcome. Thus, the community of the
redeemed becomes the community in which the social powers which divide
Jew and Gentile, slave and free, man and woman, are to be rejected. And
because Christ takes on himself the whole of humanity, the condemnation of
slavery must be heralded not only in the church, but also by the church in the

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 66 Exploring Ecclesiology

world. Here we have a powerful demonstration of the role of eschatology in

shaping the identity and mission of the church and a principle that we will
come back to in chapter 5.
Simply stated, the eschatological nature of the church argues for its involve-
ment in the issues of society, calling it both to realize the values of the kingdom
(human dignity, brotherhood, and freedom) in its own existence and to bring
them to the world outside the church as well. God’s eschatological promise
of justice and peace means the church should work to establish these reali-
ties on earth now. Paul’s vision of the future healing of earth and humanity
in ways that go beyond spiritual regeneration (Rom. 8; 15) means that the
church should work for the healing of earth and humanity now in ways that
go beyond evangelism. And when the church helps to bring justice, peace,
and healing to a broken world, it is a good and godly thing, a true act of the
church’s role as instrument of the kingdom of God, even if overt evangelism
does not take place.

Characteristics of the Eschatological Church

We have seen that the nature of the eschatological church is that it is both a
community waiting for the kingdom and the presence of the kingdom of God
on earth. As such, its function is to be the doorway to the kingdom, to bear
witness to the kingdom, and to be the instrument of the kingdom. What, then,
does this community look like? What are the characteristics of a community
that lives out in the present the hopes of its future? To these questions we
dedicate the rest of the chapter.

A Community of Restored Relationships

First and foremost, the biblical story of God’s relationship to humanity is

a story about relationship and community. Shortly after the beginning of that
story, after the rebellion of Adam and Eve, it becomes one of transformed
relationship. For humanity’s relationship with God has been broken, affect-
ing all of creation. But God is undeterred, immediately committing himself
to remedying the disaster, not only restoring the relationships of creation to
their rightful place, but even taking them further, to a place Adam and Eve
could never have imagined.
The idea of a “people of God” begins not with the promise of the formation
of a nation to come from the seed of Abraham, but with the creation of the
very first human beings. As we have already seen in chapter 1, the trinitarian
God, existing eternally in relationship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, created
Adam and Eve as a community of persons. The thrust of the original story of
creation leads the reader to wonder at the emptiness of Adam’s life, devoid

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 67

of the kind of communitarian experience present even for the animals. For
while he is in relationship with God, he can only ponder and celebrate that
relationship by himself, like a lover of Renaissance art trying to celebrate
Michelangelo’s David in a museum devoid of other people. The story tells us
that Adam was never meant to be alone, but to be in relationship with God
through being in relationship with others. This tightly woven integration of
relationships between God and creation is illustrated by the fact that when
Adam sins, wounding his relationship with God, his relationship with Eve is
wounded also, as well as both of their relationships with the rest of creation.
Thus, the experience of finding healing community as a member of the “people
of God” also becomes a means of finding God. God’s eschatological promise
to heal the relationships broken by sin begins here in Genesis 3:15. Through
the seed of Eve, he will crush Satan, rebuild human community, and restore
humanity to life in union with him and in harmony with nature, finally deliv-
ering them from death. Moreover, the story of Adam and Eve’s banishment
from the Garden and its Tree of Life looks forward in the narrative, not to a
restoration of the status quo of the Garden, but to the City of God where,
once again, we find the Tree of Life and humanity face-to-face with the living
God (Rev. 21–22).
In chapter 5 of Ephesians, Paul’s image of the church as the bride of Christ,
illustrating the union between Christ and the church, is also eschatological,
imagining an ultimate healing of relationships and drawing that healing back
into the present. The “already” is seen in the fact that Christ is now head of
the church, having given himself for it and having made it holy through the
washing away of its sin. Nevertheless, the marriage has “not yet” been fully
consummated. The text looks forward to a day when Christ will present the
church to himself as a fully sanctified bride. For Paul, union with Christ is
never merely an individual union, but also a corporate one. As believers are
one with Christ, so they are one with each other. Together they make up the
one “person” of the bride. As always, with this image, Paul moves beyond
abstract theological concepts to ethical ramifications. The believer’s union
with Christ, which also involves union with other believers, revolutionizes the
relational structures of a fallen world, bringing healing to human relation-
ships. Wives, treated as property by their husbands and shut out from most
public functions in the ancient world, are to be cherished by husbands willing
to give their own lives for the benefit of their wives.41 Similarly, the structures
of parent/child and master/slave as conceived of in the ancient world are also
transformed. Parents are to nurture their children rather than merely to de-
mand submission, and masters are to remember that the same Christ is Lord
of both master and slave and does not follow the discriminating patterns of
culture in his relationships with human beings. The crux of the eschatological
focus here is that part of looking forward to the finalization of the marriage
between Christ and the church is the transformation of human relationships,

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 68 Exploring Ecclesiology

anticipating the ultimate reality of oneness in Christ in opposition to the

relational structures of a fallen world.
Finally, scripture envisions an ultimate healing of creation, both in its own
brokenness and in its broken relationship with humanity. The fall disrupted
not only the God/human and human/human relationship, but also the human/
creation relationship. Adam and Eve could no longer function as ideal stew-
ards of the earth in a fallen creation (Gen. 3). The Bible’s vision of ultimate
salvation is not merely spiritual, but actually quite earthy. Isaiah envisions a
creation of amazing productivity and harmony. Paul imagines the groan of a
broken creation turning into praise at the second coming of Christ. And John
sees in the new heaven and new earth a universe of pristine beauty, perfection,
and peace. If then, the church is meant to draw its future back into the present,
this has significant ramifications for the church’s relationship with creation.
The church is called to be an advocate for the healing of a broken environment
in anticipation of its ultimate healing, transforming the human relationship
to creation from one that is often adversarial and utilitarian to one that is
supportive and protective. This is a significant ramification regarding restored
community, to which we will give more attention in chapter 4.

A Community of the Messiah

Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser, among others, has identified the
tripartite promise of the OT as “I will be their God, they will be my people,
and I will dwell in their midst.”42 There is a progressive realization of this
promise in part throughout the story. But there is also always the sense that
the promise of a people for God’s own possession and presence is still a future
hope. Genesis 12 looks to the fulfillment of the promise through the forma-
tion of Israel but also recognizes that the fulfillment will not be complete until
the Gentile nations are included. Chapter after chapter, as the descendents of
Israel become the people of God, led by a great leader who takes them to the
very edge of the fearful presence of God, we see that even the formation of
this great people and its man of God is still anticipatory. For the Pentateuch
concludes (Deut. 18) with the promise of another prophet, another Moses to
come who will be the ultimate leader of God’s nation, speaking the very words
of God to them. What we have in the Pentateuch, then, is a fulfillment of God’s
eschatological promise to create a people for himself. Yet even their entrance
into the land and their acquisition of a king does not fulfill their identity and
mission. They still look forward both to a new prophet/priest/king and to the
salvation of the nations. They are an eschatological people.
At its very outset, the New Testament picks up this theme of the formation
of a messianic community. At the heart of Matthew’s Gospel is a desire to
demonstrate to his Jewish audience that Jesus is the promised eschatological
leader of God’s renewed and perfected people. A striking example of this is

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 69

seen in his depiction of the baby Jesus returning from Egypt. The story is cast
in the context of Hosea’s comments about Israel coming out of slavery in Egypt
to become the people of YHWH led by him into the Promised Land. Jesus
here stands for the new Israel, the people of God—he is their representative.
Thus, the people he will lead will not only be connected historically to the
Mosaic community, anticipating entrance into the Promised Land, but also a
new community, led by the new Moses toward a new Promised Land, the one
envisioned by the prophets.
In the Passion narratives the messianic nature of the church is also illus-
trated through a messianic meal. In the last supper we have the eschatological
meal of the people of God in anticipation of its final meal at the wedding of
the Bride to Christ.43 As the final meal is the wedding meal of the sacrificed
and risen Lamb (Rev. 19:9), so this meal is the betrothal/covenant meal of
the about-to-be-sacrificed Lamb who, in his self-sacrifice, fulfills his com-
mitment to the Father, earning the right to take the bride for himself on a
future wedding day. He eats with his disciples, representatives of the entire
community of the church. It is the meal of the new covenant. It is the meal of
forgiveness, a distinctive of the age to come. It is the meal that both realizes
the arrival of the kingdom in Christ and anticipates the church’s ultimate
fellowship with him in the kingdom to come (Christ will not drink the cup
of the covenant again until he drinks it with the church in his father’s king-
dom). And, in the theology of Paul, it becomes the meal of remembrance of
Christ’s death and resurrection, in celebration of his presence in the church,
and in anticipation of his coming again (1€Cor. 11). The point here is that
this foundational celebration of the church is an eschatological celebration,
recognizing both Christ’s presence now and hoping in his future coming.
Thus, the future coming Christ is brought into the present life of the church
through the eucharistic meal.
For Paul, the man who could not possibly be the Messiah, having been
crucified by Romans, has been shown by his resurrection to be both Lord and
Christ (Rom. 1–4). And the church is a community of persons who have been
transferred from one kingdom to another, from the kingdom of darkness to
the kingdom of his Son, Christ, the Anointed One, or Messiah (Col. 1:12–13).
It is the community over which Christ now reigns as head (Col. 1:18) and in
which he reveals himself through Word and Spirit, bringing the promise of
messianic redemption.
The church is a messianic community. In it God has begun the promise to
dwell with his people. The church is no mere community that teaches truth
about God, but one which celebrates his very presence. Wherever the church
gathers, it experiences the authentic presence of the Messiah, not just hearing
about him, but worshipping, loving, and submitting to him personally as he
dwells in their midst in anticipation of his visible, touchable presence at the
end of the age.

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 70 Exploring Ecclesiology

A Community of the Holy Spirit

In Acts 2, the eschatological promise of the Holy Spirit (Joel 2) is fulfilled as

the new community created by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost begins to display
some of the characteristics expected by the prophets. Wonders and signs are
performed by the apostles (Acts 2:42–48), validating the kingdom nature of
the church in the same way that Jesus validated his own status as the one who
brought the kingdom (Matt. 4; Luke 7; etc.). In Acts 6 we see how leadership
becomes fundamentally a matter of those who are filled with the Holy Spirit
and wisdom, not of being a member of a priestly caste.
This eschatological promise of the Holy Spirit figures prominently in
Paul’s ecclesiology as well. For the promised redemption has already begun
for the church as it experiences righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy
Spirit (Rom. 14:17). While the church is founded upon Jesus Christ, the
power to live according to the kingdom is made possible because its life is
“in the Spirit” (Rom. 8). Moreover, God’s love has been poured into the
hearts of believers (Rom. 5) by the Holy Spirit, turning hardened, rebellious
hearts, which could not be transformed by the law, into those that desire
God more than all things (cf. Ezek. 36). This community of the Spirit not
only experiences this heart-transforming “justification” (Rom. 8:1ff) but,
in Paul’s words, has also already been glorified (Rom. 8:30). Thus, the es-
chatological is drawn into the present in the life of the church. Moreover,
Paul’s temple imagery for the church (1€Cor. 3, for example) harks back to
Ezekiel’s eschatological imagery of the return of the Spirit to the temple of
YHWH. Here, believers filled individually with the Spirit come together to
create the eschatological corporate temple of YHWH, which is the body
of Christ.
Irenaeus also sees the initiation of the blessings of the eschaton as pres-
ent in the church through the Spirit, contending that “where the church is,
there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the church,
and every kind of grace€.€.€. Those, therefore, who do not partake of Him,
are neither nourished into life from the mother’s breasts, nor do they enjoy
that most limpid fountain which issues from the body of Christ.”44 Here, the
eschatological promise of the Holy Spirit is realized in the church in anticipa-
tion of the full realization of the age to come.
As a mystical communion through union with Christ through the Holy
Spirit, the church is a social reality that continues in heaven. Thus, the church
in its present state is not merely a promise or a pledge of the heavenly church,
but an anticipation of it. The eschatological gift of the Holy Spirit is already
poured out on the church. The sacraments demonstrate that the kingdom
is mysteriously present now in the church. They are signs that point to the
future, but more than that, they indicate its presence in the church now. The
Vatican€II document Lumen Gentium expresses it this way:

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 71

It is especially in the sacred liturgy that our union with the heavenly church is
best realized; in the liturgy, through the sacramental signs, the power of the Holy
Spirit acts on us, and with community rejoicing we celebrate together the praise
of the divine majesty, when all those of every tribe and tongue and people and
nation who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ and gather together into
one church glorify, in one common song of praise, the one and triune God.45

Combined with this sacramental view of the presence of the Holy Spirit should
be a Word-centered view. Theologian Karl Barth contends that when the Word
is preached it is actually an eschatological event, because it is God himself
who is being revealed in the preaching.46 For when God reveals himself to his
people, he never does it simply by communicating concepts, truths about
himself. Rather, he always reveals himself relationally. He engages us with
the Word, both written and incarnate, through the relational ministry of
the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth (John 14). Further, Paul tells us that the
wisdom of God expressed in his Word can only be fully embraced by those
who have been transformed by the Spirit (1€Cor. 2:6–16). And only those who
encounter the Holy Spirit find the freedom to recognize Christ as the fulfill-
ment of the eschatological promise and to be gradually transformed into his
image (2€Cor. 3:12–18).
The upshot of all this is that God, in the person of Christ, through the
ministry of the Holy Spirit, is personally and relationally present with his
people when they gather as the church. As they worship together they are
filled with the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18–21), who begins to transform them into
a community that not only submits to Christ, but even to one another out of
love for Christ. Without the Holy Spirit, the church is a lost cause. For, created
by a relational God, we can become the community where God is healing the
brokenness of this world only if we can encounter God personally. The person
of the Holy Spirit, present to the church through the now and not-yet reality of
the kingdom, encounters us in the church when we gather, drawing our minds,
hearts, and bodies into deeper relationship with God in anticipation of the day
when we will be like him as we see him face-to-face. Then this eschatological
community, empowered by the Spirit, begins to live in new ways.

A Community of Social Righteousness

From the fall onward, the biblical narrative is concerned with restoring
humanity to a place of righteousness, both personally and socially. Individual
humans are crippled by unrighteousness that comes in the form of rebellion
against God, a rebellion consisting of both sinful behavior and hearts at odds
with God. But humanity is also unrighteous socially. Personal unrighteous-
ness manifests itself in the animosity of persons toward each other and in the
creation of barriers and prejudices based on personal and social distinctions.

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 72 Exploring Ecclesiology

Thus, the biblical theology of righteousness is, at its core, about relationship.
Individually, it is about the restoration of one’s broken relationship with God.
It is, as theologians commonly say, a right relationship with God, provided
by God. This personal righteousness, then, forms the basis of social righ-
teousness. As individuals grow in the rightness of their relationships with
God, they should also grow in the rightness of their relationships with one
another. Thus, biblical eschatology envisions a future community of social
righteousness. Since the theology of personal righteousness is more properly
addressed by soteriology, the theology of salvation, we will here address mainly
the concept of social righteousness, addressing personal righteousness pri-
marily as a transformation that leads to social righteousness.
Nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures is the concept of social righteousness
more clearly addressed than in the Prophets. The ethos of the prophetic lit-
erature of the Bible is one that fundamentally looks both to the present and to
the future. The prophets, usually speaking during a time of Israel’s suffering
or disobedience, look forward to a time of the coming of God both to judge
his people and to save them, to the coming of a great Messiah/King who will
establish the kingdom of God in righteousness and peace. This future salvation
image is not depicted in terms of individuals, but of a nation, a people bound
together by obedience to the king and the worship of God. Thus, for suffering
and broken Israel, its own self-understanding is always at least partly a func-
tion of its hope that God will one day come and make all things right for his
chosen community. Nevertheless, the prophets do not intend these images of
the future simply to create a hope that things will one day be better. Indeed,
they present these images as part of a call to the people of God to begin to
conform now to the image of their future.
In his extended imagery of God’s glorious future for Israel, Isaiah looks
forward (chs. 60–66) to a restored community, the people of God inhabiting
a place that is both a new creation and a renewed one. It will be a community
of peace, prosperity, and righteousness, where God will be present to delight
in his people. Jeremiah envisions a community of people whose hearts are
transformed such that knowing God and obeying him is not a matter of the
external compulsion of the law, but the ready response of a transformed mind
through the new covenant (chs. 30–31). Ezekiel sees the departure of the glory
of God from the temple and looks to a time when his glory will return and
God’s people will worship him in righteousness. Thus, the eschatological an-
ticipates a community of worship. Moreover, in his vision of the valley of dry
bones, Ezekiel imagines a people returned from exile and living in the land of
God who dwells in their midst in the person of the Spirit. Malachi 3–4 looks
to a day when YHWH himself will come in the person of his messenger of the
covenant, both to judge and to reclaim for himself a nation that worships him
in righteousness, a kingdom of healing, joy, and perfect community. But for all
these prophets, painting a glorious picture of the future of the people of God

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 73

also includes an admonition of drawing that future into the present. Isaiah
calls for the people to seek justice and care for the poor now (cf. chs. 58–59),
and to worship God in integrity and righteousness (61:10–11). Jeremiah, al-
ready having foretold the exile and future glorious restoration of Israel, calls
upon those who survived the destruction of the city to remain there and live
in obedience to YHWH (ch. 42), so that he could bring restoration to them
in the present in anticipation of future glorious restoration.
This motif is continued in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus the new Moses
preaches the fulfillment of the law by his giving of a new law, the law of the
transformed heart. This is the ethics of the kingdom, the ethics of the eschato-
logical people of God, who will know and follow God’s law from their hearts
(Jer. 31). This righteousness of the kingdom is not meant only for individuals;
it is to be lived out in community as well. Those who hunger and thirst for,
and then are filled with, righteousness, will respond by being merciful, and
by being peacemakers (Matt. 5:6–9). They will mend relationships with one
another before offering sacrifices to God (5:23–24).47 They will remain faith-
ful in their marriages (5:27–32), true to their promises (5:33–37), say “no” to
revenge (5:38–39), give sacrificially to those in need (5:40–41), and love their
enemies. It is to this eschatological vision of community that Jesus calls his
followers. Yet it is a community reality that the disciples seemed not to fully
grasp until the arrival of the Holy Spirit to transform their hearts and, sub-
sequently, their social barriers and prejudices.
Indeed, the church of Acts begins to break down barriers that were meant
to be broken down by the eschaton. Gentiles, included in the promise to Abra-
ham and envisioned by the prophets (Gen. 12; Isa. 49:6, 22; Hos. 1:10; Zech.
2:10–11; etc.) as part of the kingdom community, are embraced by the church.
Women, upon whom Joel declares the Spirit of prophecy will fall in the last
days, are included in the leadership of this new community. And the needs of
the poor are met by the sacrifice of wealthier members. Thus, the people of
God, heretofore embodied in a hierarchical, monoethnic, national community,
begins to look like the images of its ultimate status as a community made up
of people from every tongue, tribe, gender, and socioeconomic status.48
Paul also pictures the church as a community of social righteousness. In
Galatians, this eschatological community is one that, like the Israel of the
exodus, was created through God’s mighty work to free people from bond-
age. At one time, Paul says, the whole world was a prisoner of sin. Then, as
a result of legalism, the Jewish community was a prisoner of the law. Now,
there is one new community of promise, where all are sons of God by faith,
a transformation that Paul says makes us free (Rom. 8:21). But for Paul, this
new freedom is not merely individual; it is not merely the freedom from sin
and guilt experienced by the individual believer. It is a freedom created by the
promised Holy Spirit that results in love of neighbor (Gal. 5:13–15). It is also
a community freedom, in which social structures such as Jew/Gentile, slave/

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 74 Exploring Ecclesiology

free, and man/woman are transformed (3:28). Galatians 3:28 is a highly de-
bated passage in which some commentators see only the idea that individual
persons, no matter what segment of society they come from, are equally saved
by faith in Jesus Christ. We contend that while this is certainly true, it does not
take the passage far enough. Paul does not say here, “You are all individually
saved through faith in Christ.” Rather, he argues that “you are all one in Christ
Jesus.” Moreover, since it is unlikely that Paul or any of his readers would
have thought that Greeks, slaves, and women could not be saved, his intention
must go beyond individual salvation to social transformation.
This is a passage about how the gospel not only frees individuals from the
bondage of sin and law, but also creates a new community, free from destructive
social structures such as racism, slavery, and gender discrimination. It is Paul’s
fundamental proclamation about the eschatological nature of the structure of
the church. In Christ, believers are being brought together by the Holy Spirit to
become the eschatological temple of YHWH, relating to each other not as mas-
ter/slave, Jew/Gentile, or even husband/wife, but as equal members of “God’s
household” (Gal. 2:19), siblings in the “family of believers” (Eph. 6:10). Thus,
believers are called to create a community that breaks down social barriers,
anticipating a future people of God where all segments of humanity have not
only equal access to God, but also equal places of worship and service in his
kingdom,49 a community imagined by John’s revelation in which nationalities
and social distinctions are not abolished but are simply no longer a source of
separation and animosity, rather of celebration and richness. Similarly, in his
discussions about faith and righteousness, James admonishes the church for
favoring the rich and degrading the poor, and for fostering dissension among
believers (James 2:1–7; 4:5–5:6). For him, the claim of individual righteousness
is dubious in the absence of community righteousness.
It is to this vision of social righteousness that the church is called today in
anticipation of its final perfect community experience. Improper social barriers
and prejudices based on race, class, gender, wealth, age, etc., must be recognized
and rejected. Personal righteousness must lead to social righteousness. How
sad it is when secular institutions, knowing nothing of the grace and mercy of
God, do a better job of removing these barriers than does the church.

A Community Where Satan Is Disarmed

Finally, in any discussion of the characteristics of the church as an escha-

tological community, we would be remiss if we did not discuss the disarming
of Satan. From the first mention of an eschatological promise to redeem the
fallen world, God looks forward to the crushing of Satan’s head (Gen. 3:15). As
Satan was instrumental in the derailing of God’s plan for perfect relationship
with his creation, so the destruction of Satan must be part of the resolution
of the problem.

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 75

While the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures are aware of Satan as an adver-
sary (the fall, the prologue to Job, David’s numbering of Israel, etc.), it is not
until we get to the New Testament that we begin to see God’s plan to confront
and finally vanquish Satan. Moreover, it is in the church and for the church
that Satan will be disarmed. In Jesus’s desert battle with Satan (Matt. 4), we
find an interesting indication of the eschatological nature of Jesus’s mission
and foundation of the church. Much modern preaching and commentary on
this event sees in it an example of how Christians should battle Satan. While
the passage may be valuable for that subject, it is not Matthew’s main interest.
Irenaeus captured what is surely the more important motif.50 This scene is a
Garden of Eden redux, where Jesus represents his people, with whom he has
just identified himself in baptism, defeating Satan on our behalf in anticipation
of the complete defeat of Satan in the resurrection and second coming. Here,
Jesus begins the fulfillment of the promise of Genesis 3:15, initiating the crush-
ing of Satan’s head, which will continue through the crucifixion, resurrection,
and finally, Christ’s victorious second coming. It is this eschatological leader
who gives his people the keys to the kingdom of God, empowering them to
follow his lead, challenging and defeating the power of Satan in the church,
even through the brokenness of a fallen world, until he meets his final destiny
at the hands of the victorious Christ (Rev. 19–20).
Further, one of the meanings of Jesus’s casting out of demons (Matt. 12) is
to demonstrate the presence of the Holy Spirit and, thus, of the kingdom of
God. This power to face, reject, and cast out Satan was then given by Christ
to the church through the Holy Spirit. So as the apostles cast out demons in
the church, God is working through them to validate that this new community
is indeed the community of the kingdom, the community against which the
gates of Hades would not prevail (Matt. 16:18).
For Paul, the church is the eschatological community that witnesses to
the rulers in high places regarding Christ’s victory over them, assuring the
demonic realities of their ultimate defeat. For Christ’s eschatological disar-
mament of the “powers” (Col. 2:15) is demonstrated in the victorious life of
the saints. As the church engages in battle against demonic forces, it employs
the weapons of the eschatological community (faith, truth, righteousness,
gospel, salvation—Eph. 3 and 6), through the power of the eschatological
Spirit, waging war in anticipation of Christ’s final victory.51
This sense of the disarming of Satan was retained in the early church. In
his sermon to the catechumens who were being baptized, Cyril of Jerusalem
(c. 315–386) comments on their act of stepping into the water, facing west,
verbally rejecting Satan and all of his pomp and all of his ways, then turn-
ing east to embrace Christ as Lord. In his death, burial, and resurrection,
represented by baptism, Christ had vanquished Satan. And although he still
roamed the earth like a roaring lion seeking to kill, his power was broken in
the church. There, he had been declawed.52

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 76 Exploring Ecclesiology

While Satan remains active, and while the church remains the object of
his fury and a target for his destructive efforts, as it walks in the power of the
Spirit, the church need not fear Satan or be captive to either his deception or
his power. And at every time and place that the church gathers, it can rejoice
that its future is secure despite all of Satan’s attacks, for by his death, Christ
has secured the destruction of him who has the power of death (Heb. 2:14).

Conclusion

We have seen that the church is an eschatological community, fully engaged

in the present through its identity as God’s community of the future. How,
then, does this perspective help the church better understand its identity and
mission? Following are several suggestions, the first being general and the rest
more specific:
(1) The church should work to understand the values and structures of its
eschatological identity as revealed in the scriptures and as best understood by
the church’s historical traditions. These values and structures should then be
drawn back into the life of the local church as its leaders construct statements
on the church’s purposes, values, and mission.
(2) If the church seeks to build a community in the present that resembles
the community of its future, this means, in part, that the church must be a
community for the whole human family, a place where people of every race,
every socioeconomic status, male and female, adults and children come before
God on an equal footing as servants of Jesus Christ. While there are other
important images of the church’s future, this community image is one the
church has done little to fulfill, historically speaking. Often, secular institu-
tions are more reflective of this biblical image than the church is.
(3) The church should live in constant hope of its future redemption at the
return of Christ. As such, the church must be wary of placing ultimate value
on things that are temporal. In the prosperous West, this means that the church
must constantly be wary of consumerism.
(4) Because eschatological images are communal rather than individual,
the church should value ministries that build community over those that cater
to individual interests.
(5) Because it is the instrument of the coming kingdom, the church should
work to bring the values of the kingdom to the world. This means going beyond
verbal proclamation to social action. It also means going beyond bringing the
values of the kingdom to individuals, expanding the work of the church to
encourage kingdom values in the structures of society.
(6) The eschatological ethos of the church should also motivate the church
for evangelism. The coming kingdom of God engages the world both for
redemption and for judgment, calling humanity to repentance as well as to

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 The Church as an Eschatological Community 77

hope. The church must do more than simply work for social justice. As it
lives in the shadow of the return of Christ, it must urge the world to turn to
him for salvation.
Our study of the church as an eschatological community has shown that
the bride of Christ exists, metaphorically speaking, with one foot in this world
and one foot in the next. The church is a community that lives in the hope of
the coming kingdom of God, both to redeem it from this fallen world and to
perfect it for the age to come. While the church waits for that redemption, it
must strive to become, as much as possible now, the spotless bride it will be
on the day Christ comes, creating in the present age a community that seeks
to conform to its eschatological identity and live out the values of the escha-
tological kingdom in its engagement with the world.

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. What do people usually think of when they think of eschatology?

2. What are the downsides of disconnecting eschatology from our under-
standing of the church?
3. In what ways is the church changed when we draw its biblical future
into its present ministries?
4. What does it mean for you to think of yourself as part of God’s kingdom
community today?

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 4

Eschatology, the Church, and Ecology

For many of us who grew up spending significant moments making forays

into nature—perhaps camping, backpacking, or simply sitting on the beach
watching the crashing of ocean waves, becoming captivated by the beauty,
power, and majesty of nature—but who also grew up seeing the increasing
ecological devastation of the industrial era, a theology of the environment
has become an increasingly important issue. In the 1980s, many Christian
theologians were alarmed at Secretary of the Interior James Watt’s use of a
Christian worldview in support of negligent environmental policies. Surely he
did not represent God’s view of the cosmos, as he purported to. But neither
should the church be impressed by scenes of pantheists weeping and wailing
in the forest, pleading with the trees to forgive them for cutting down their
brothers. The problem is that the biblical metanarrative has been used by
many, perhaps especially in the twentieth century by those in the evangelical
tradition, to argue for positions that degrade the environment and foster its
abuse. Tom Sine has contended, for example, that Tim LaHaye, influential
coauthor of the wildly successful Left Behind series, argues for a worldview
of cosmic escapism that leads to the rationale that it doesn’t make much sense
to be overly concerned for the environment when the world is just going to
burn anyway.1 Other popular evangelical authors like Frank Peretti and Larry
Burkett have also cast care for the environment in a negative light, Peretti
portraying environmentalists as people deceived by lying spirits, and Burkett
supporting the human dominance paradigm of creation, suggesting that our

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 80 Exploring Ecclesiology

concern should not be for the care of the environment, but merely for the use
of it to benefit humanity.2
Unfortunately, these types of responses to the environment from popular
Christian writers only serve to bolster the argument made by philosopher Lynn
White, in his historic 1967 essay, that the main responsibility for environmental
degradation lies with the Christian worldview.3 In spite of the fact that White’s
grasp of historic Christianity is lacking, the overwhelmingly anthropocentric
(or human-centered) theology of twentieth-century evangelicalism serves to
support his stereotype. In response, we will contend that the overwhelming
focus of the biblical narrative, the blessed hope of the kingdom of God, argues
for a salvation that includes the entire cosmos. Accordingly, the Christian faith
best understood calls upon the church, as an eschatological community, not
only to care for the environment, but also to be part of healing its present
brokenness, in anticipation of the glorious consummation of the kingdom.
The biblical vision of future salvation clearly contains a number of oth-
erworldly images. But the kingdom of God is neither the hope for a future
spiritual existence nor the hope for an escape from this world to an entirely
heavenly creation. Rather, it is the hope for a redeemed bodily existence in the
present cosmos and on the present earth, renewed by having been released from
its bondage to sin and the curse that has corrupted it. Historically, Christian
theology has emphasized the anthropocentric nature of the fall and, thus, of
the salvation of the kingdom.4 Adam and Eve sinned, breaking their relation-
ship with God and leading to death, both physical and spiritual. And while
theologians have often noted the cosmic nature of the fall, they have rarely
concentrated on the effects of the fall beyond the resulting degradation in
human relationships with God and one another. Of great importance also is
the broken relationship between humanity and the environment. Not only did
humans become alienated from God and other humans, but as Richard Young
writes, “It is clear from Scripture that nature was affected by the fall and that
the curse on the ground marks a relational skewing between humanity and
the earth.”5 As a result of his sin, Adam the formerly carefree grazer would
now be Adam the sweat-breaking farmer, struggling to wrest an existence
for himself and his family from a land made cruel by its own suffering under
the curse. But the God of grace would not leave his creation without hope.
In Genesis 3:15 we see the first note of the promise of a savior, the one who
would be king of the kingdom of God, whose salvation would lift the curse
and, once again, make the cosmos the way it is supposed to be.
Simply stated, the kingdom of God is about the redemption of not only the
church, but also of the whole creation. From the very beginning, the story of
salvation is a story not merely of the restoration of relationship between God
and his people, but of God dwelling in the midst of his righteous people in a
glorious land. “Deliverance in this sense,” writes Paul Santmire, “as tending
to a fecundity experience in the land, is a central, if not the central motif of

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 Eschatology, the Church, and Ecology 81

the Old Testament, as Walter Brueggemann has shown. ‘It will no longer do
to talk about Yahweh and his people,’ Brueggemann states categorically, ‘but
we must speak about Yahweh and his people and his land.’”6 God’s salvation
would not be simply about people, but about the earth.
As a prophet of God to the nation of Israel, Isaiah’s vision of salvation
is clearly one of national and political renewal. But more than that, it is a
theology of a redeemed earth. Isaiah’s vision of the future is a vision where
all the elements of nature once again exist in harmony with one another, a
vision expressed in Isaiah 35:1: “The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.” Isaiah gives us images not of a world
destroyed and completely remade by God, but of one that is purged of sin,
restored and renewed, illustrated by his nostalgic images of pre-fall creation.
He writes, “The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compas-
sion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like
the garden of the Lord” (51:3, TNIV).
In the Gospels, while we do not find nearly as much earth-oriented language
or teaching as in the Hebrew Scriptures, we do find both a dependence upon
the Old Testament earthy vision and a number of references that imagine the
kingdom in terms of the renewal of the present rather than an entirely new
creation ex nihilo (out of nothing). If we begin at the beginning, that is, with
the annunciation of the birth of Jesus, we encounter not only the otherworldly
voices of an angelic choir singing to shepherds, but the very earthly voice of a
mysterious star, as if to say to a group of mysterious Gentiles from far away,
“Come, and I will show you the one born not only to be king of the Jews, but
King of the whole earth.”
The miracles of Jesus, which verify the arrival of the kingdom, also argue
for a salvation that goes way beyond the spiritual, to the human body and
even to nature. The one who heals human bodies, miracles often referred to
by the sozo (salvation) group of verbs, connecting them to salvation, is also
the one who stands up against an angry sea and shouts, “Be quiet!” (Matt.
8:26–27). Not merely an illustration of the authority of the God/Man over
nature, this command, similar to his commands to the demons who torture
the sons and daughters of men, illustrates that both the earth and humanity
must experience healing to live together in harmony.
Three more scenarios illustrate a continuity between this world and the
next in the Gospels’ portrayal of salvation. First, Jesus’s victory over Satan
and temptation in the desert indicates that salvation begins in an earthly
sphere. Salvation is not escape from the earth, but godliness in the midst of
it. Second, the incarnation rejects any spirit/matter dualism in the doctrine of
salvation. God comes to his creation not as a spirit to rescue humanity from
a hopelessly cursed earth, but as part of creation itself. Recalling the visible,
touchable tabernacle and temple of Israel, symbolizing the presence of God
with his people, John tells us that in the incarnation, God took on flesh and

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 82 Exploring Ecclesiology

dwelt among his people as a visible, touchable human being. In Christ, even
under the veil of mortal flesh, humanity witnessed the glory of God. But more
than merely a symbol for God’s desire to save humanity, the incarnation speaks
of God’s original intention that his glory should be manifest through all of
his creation and anticipates the day when a renewed creation will once again
declare God’s glory with an unfettered voice.
Third, as the paradigm for the redemption of creation, the resurrection of
Jesus indicates that victory over death is not victory over the limitations of
creation but anticipation of a glorified creation. For the risen Christ retains a
body forever, even bearing the scars of his physical degradation, yet renewed
to glorious power and beauty. Thus, the glorified body of our Lord is both a
new body and a healed body, foreshadowing both our resurrection bodies and
also the very nature of a redeemed creation.
For Paul, the gospel is expansive, breaking beyond barriers of gender, class,
and race to become the good news to the whole world. Thus, his images of the
entire cosmos as part of the salvation of the kingdom are fitting. In Romans
8, Paul makes explicit what is implicit in the Genesis story of the fall and of
the hope of redemption. As a result of the curse, the whole of the creation has
been subjected to frustration, crippled by decay, unable to achieve its creation
purpose—the world is not the way it is supposed to be. Nevertheless, having
been led into this bondage by the rebellion of humanity, the creation will also be
led into freedom, becoming a beneficiary of the glory of the sons and daughters
of God whose victory over the curse has been secured by the Son of Man.
Moreover, we also see Paul’s theology of the kingdom of God at work here
in this passage, which argues for the already completed work of justification
leading to the hope of complete sanctification and glorification in the eschaton.
So closely connected are humanity and the cosmos in this kingdom pattern of
salvation for Paul that he can even picture the creation as a pregnant woman
groaning in labor, assured of a glorious new birth, but suffering all the way
until the moment she is delivered. In Colossians 1, we again find Paul con-
necting the salvation of the kingdom to the entire cosmos. Here too, it is the
redemption of humanity, the church’s transferral from the kingdom of dark-
ness to the kingdom of the beloved Son, which leads the way for the glorified
Christ. And the glorified Christ is both redeemer and creator, reconciling
both humanity and the entire cosmos to God. More, this reconciliation of the
cosmos is accomplished by the blood of the cross, leading Paul to exult in the
fact that this cosmic salvation is the gospel that, perhaps in anticipation of
St. Francis of Assisi, has been preached to “every creature under heaven.” As
the New Testament scholar David Garland remarks, “The cross establishes
a new relationship between God and humans, which overcomes the rupture
created by sin—estrangement from God, estrangement from other humans,
and estrangement from created things.”7 Thus, Christ, the kingdom bringer,
establishes the basis not only for a new relationship with God and other human

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 Eschatology, the Church, and Ecology 83

beings, but for the church’s relationship with creation as well, which becomes
a partner with the church in the redemption from death to life.
Finally, the earthiness of the kingdom of God is found in the imagery of the
biblical metanarrative as a whole. The story of salvation begins in a garden and
concludes in a city filled with nature—even some of the very same elements of
nature found in the primeval garden. Revelation 21 and 22 lead us into a New
Heaven and Earth, not entirely recreated de novo, but, like its human popula-
tion, redeemed. For the church, as the New Jerusalem, descends to earth as God
proclaims that he is making all things new. In this radical transformation to the
new, the old is not forgotten as the “kings of the earth” bring their splendor into
the city. Even the imagery of the city itself is filled with building materials well
known on earth, but redeemed in their ability to show forth God’s glory in a way
they never could before, crippled as they were in their unredeemed fallenness.8
So, given that the redemption of the cosmos is part of the ethos of the king-
dom, and that the church is the instrument of the kingdom, we argue that the
values of that redemption should be drawn back into the present—the church
should care about the environment. At this point someone may protest, “Wait
a minute! It’s one thing to draw the future elements of God’s redemption back
into the church’s present, because redemption has already begun for us. We ex-
perience actual realities of our redemption now in Christ through the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit. But the cosmos does not experience any aspect of its future
redemption now, so why should we draw the realities of the future redemption
of the cosmos back into the present?” Indeed, the material redemption of the
cosmos has not begun, that we know of. But neither has the redemption of
human government begun. Nevertheless, Christians still work for civil laws
that reflect biblical values, desiring a government that though not yet actually
redeemed, can reflect now some of the characteristics of its future redemption
under the perfect rule of Christ. In the same way, the theology of the kingdom
of God encourages the church to engage culture and the cosmos, bringing the
values of the future even to the unredeemed present, in anticipation of the full
and final redemption of creation at the second coming. As the presence of the
kingdom now has made the healing of salvation a present reality for human
beings, so should it bring, as Francis Schaeffer has argued, “substantial healing”
for the environment.9 And as God uses the church to bring his healing grace to
humans, so the church should be used by God to bring his healing grace to the
earth, drawing the glories of its future back into the present.
This means that when it comes to caring for the environment, maintaining
the status quo is not enough. As the church works to bring believers into in-
creasing conformity to Christ now in anticipation of eschatological perfection,
so it must work now to bring nature into greater conformity with its glorious
future. Moreover, it is not merely an issue of moving creation toward its future
status as glorious in its own right. For the cosmos, like humanity, is designed to
declare God’s glory. The psalmist proclaims that, even in the here and now, the

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 84 Exploring Ecclesiology

creation declares the glory of God (Ps. 19). And Isaiah announces that the trees
themselves will clap their hands at the arrival of the kingdom (Isa. 55:12). But,
as Paul reminds us in Romans 8, the ability of creation to serve this function has
been degraded. The earth has a voice made for the purpose of praising God; but
that voice has been muffled and distorted by the curse; thus, it groans. So as the
children of God experience the salvation of the kingdom of God through the
firstfruits of the Holy Spirit, creation can begin to experience its own deliver-
ance through the ministry of the church working to heal its voice of praise. As
theologian Ernest Lucas notes, “There is an eschatological motivation in the
concept that we are trustees of the inheritance which Christ will one day come
to claim€.€.€. It [the motivation] is .€.€. implied in Colossians 1:16, which says of
Christ that ‘all things were created through him and for him.’”10
Here then, is a very present motivation for the Church to participate in
the care of the earth. For the earth, which will one day proclaim God’s glory
perfectly, was created in space and time and has existence now, not only by
Christ’s power, but also for his glory. Thus, as believers heal the earth, we free
the cosmos to glorify Christ more clearly now and in concert with us. The
human ability to declare God’s glory increasingly conforms to God’s escha-
tological vision as it moves beyond individuals to the church and, ultimately,
to the gathering of all the nations in the New Jerusalem. So too is human
praise completed when it is joined by the voice of the cosmos in exaltation of
the One who, as the hymn writer proclaims, is the “joy of the whole earth.”11
Here the earth, once perfect, now broken, and one day to be glorious again,
is brought together with the church in its own eschatological anticipation.
The kingdom of God demands that we look not just to the Genesis history of
creation, but to the eschaton in order to understand the nature and purpose of
nonhuman creation and to discern our role in caring for it. Unless the church
understands this radical vision for the future and makes this vision a part of
its theology of creation and redemption, it will continue to languish in apathy
for the environment. Or, at best, it will act as a paid tenant in God’s vineyard
rather than as the bride preparing the garden for her husband’s return.12

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. What do you make of the statement attributed to Martin Luther, “If I

knew the world were to end tomorrow, I would plant a tree today?”
2. What are the dangers of the church focusing too much on the redemp-
tion of the creation?
3. In light of God’s future plans for the creation, should taking care of
creation in the here and now matter to you?
4. In what ways can the church be involved in caring for the creation
today?

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 5

The Church as a Worshipping Community

The Church is first of all a worshipping community. Worship comes first, doc-
trine and discipline second.
George Florovsky1

Worship as the Church’s Primary Task and Chief End

If a roomful of theologians were asked, “What is the first or greatest priority

of the church?” one would not be surprised to find “worship” as the most
common answer. Florovsky’s affirmation reflects the sentiments of the Eastern
Orthodox tradition on this question.2 But the West also places worship at the
top of the list, as illustrated by the Westminster Larger Catechism’s contention
that the chief end of humanity is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.3 We
likewise would contend that worship, a response of love to God for his love
to us in Christ through the Spirit, is the primary task and highest end of the
church. For this chapter we will consider worship as the specific activity of
the church when it gathers for its weekly services. While it is often argued that
all of life can be considered worship in some way, we will address only that
function of the church commonly called the worship service. We will define
worship as that activity of the church where it, as a community, proclaims
and celebrates God’s person and redemptive work through participation in
his trinitarian community.

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Worship as Trinitarian

In our first chapter, we argued that the trinitarian nature of God forms the
basis for the nature of the church. It is a community whose life is found in
relational participation in the trinitarian community of God. If, as Irenaeus
and many since him have argued, God does all things trinitarianly, this would
include the things God does “passively,” like receive worship.4 As God does
not save us simply as the Son or the Father, neither does he receive worship
singularly. Whenever God is truly worshipped, he receives that worship as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Rev. 4–5).5
In the biblical narrative, we find all three persons of the godhead included
in worship. In the Hebrew Scriptures of course, since reference to the trinitar-
ian God is not explicit, worship is simply directed toward the one God. In the
New Testament, trinitarian worship becomes more pronounced. The worship
of the one God of the Hebrew Scriptures is affirmed in the Gospels through
Jesus’s practice and command of worshipping God as Father. In John 4, Jesus
says that the Father seeks those who will worship him in spirit and in truth.
And in the sermon on the mount, prayer as an act of worship is directed to
“our Father in heaven” (Matt.€6:9).
Worship also has a christological focus in the New Testament. In the midst
of the clear awareness in the Gospels that Jesus is fully human, there arises
the conviction that he is also God. In the Olivet discourse, Jesus is the king of
the kingdom of God. In John, the one who comes to us in human flesh is the
eternal logos, creator of all that is. In Revelation, John dramatically brings into
focus his theology of Christ as the incarnate God in the context of worship. In
chapter 5, the Lamb receives the very same kind of worship as the Almighty
YHWH does in chapter 4. For Paul, Christ is the focus of worship as well,
having been exalted by the Father to the highest place so that at the mention
of his name, every knee should bow in worship and every tongue proclaim
that Jesus is Lord (Phil. 2:5–11).
Finally, the role of the Spirit in worship is consistent with his role both within
the Trinity and in God’s work with humanity. As Paul refers to the Spirit as the
mediator of divine love for us (Rom. 5:5), so we believe that in the trinitarian
life, it is the Spirit through whom the love of the Father for the Son and of the
Son for the Father is communicated.6 In God’s work with humanity, it is the
Spirit who brings God and humanity into relationship with each other. As Paul
says, it is by the Spirit that we are able to call God with the relational name
of “Abba/Father,” and through whom we are able to proclaim “Jesus is Lord”
(1€Cor. 12:13). And it is through the Spirit that even the unconscious desires of
our hearts are brought before God in prayer, for the Spirit who knows intimately
our human minds also knows the mind of God (Rom.€8).
As to the issue of the Spirit being worshipped directly, there is little direct
discussion of this in the scriptures, presumably because of his role as facilitator

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 87

and communicator of the love and work of Father and Son. However, there
is evidence that the Spirit is directly affected, and even addressed, by human
beings. He is affected by our behavior in that he can be grieved (Eph. 4:30).
And in Acts 5:3–4 we see that in lying to God, Ananias actually lies to the
Holy Spirit. If he can be grieved and lied to, and if he is God, it is reasonable
to conclude that the Spirit also may be worshipped.7
In Ephesians 5:18–20, Paul brings the pieces together for us, showing how
all three persons participate in the worship process. Believers are filled rela-
tionally with the Holy Spirit, which moves them to acts of worship, by which
they give thanks to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thus, our worship is relationally motivated by the Spirit, and mediated by
the person and work of Christ our High Priest, culminating in thanksgiving
to the Father. This is not to say, however, that the Father is the sole, or even
ultimate, target of our worship. The creed from the Council of Constanti-
nople confesses: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life,
who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and the Son together is
worshiped and glorified.”8 These sentiments are repeated in the doxology
called the Gloria Patri, which dates back at least to the fourth century and
proclaims “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.”
The church is correct in proclaiming worship to any and all persons of the
Triune God. And as it does, God receives that worship not as the God who
is alone without us, but as the God who welcomes us into the communal life
of Father, Son, and Spirit.
To ask a rather crude question about all this, what is the payoff that God’s
trinitarian nature brings to worship? So often, the Trinity has been taught by
theologians in a way that makes it appear esoteric and irrelevant to the church.
But the significance of the Trinity for worship is titanic. Trinitarian worship,
says theologian James Torrance, is the gift of participating through the Spirit
in the Son’s communion with the Father. And as we participate in this com-
munion, God engages us in worship that authenticates what it means to be
truly human. For personhood at its best and fullest is being “in relation, in
love, in communion.”9 Non-trinitarian views of God, which typically focus on
Christ as example, are in danger of turning worship into a response to God’s
call for behavior modification in order to placate him.10 For a non-trinitarian
God, who is ontologically nonrelational, remains either distant and austere
or immanent and impersonal.11 But the Triune God is neither distant nor
impersonal in worship. For through his eternal relational love, the Father sent
the Son to become one of us and, through the Spirit, one with us.
To take this one step further, trinitarian worship begins with the eternal
community of Father, Son, and Spirit, which calls the church into worship as
participation in the divine life. This, then, results in a horizontal community
of worship. Worship is not merely the church, eyes toward heaven entering
into the life of God, but it is also the members of the church declaring God’s

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 88 Exploring Ecclesiology

worth to each other (“speaking to each other in psalms, hymns, and spiritual
songs,” Col. 3:16, italics added). Worship is an activity, indeed, the activity
par excellence of true human community.

Worship as Eschatological

If worship is the activity of the church in which it proclaims and celebrates

God’s person and redemptive work, then worship must be eschatological. For,
in worship, especially in the liturgy of the Eucharist, God comes to us in the
person of the resurrected Christ, through the Spirit, engaging us as the One
who has already realized the victory promised to us in our own resurrection
on the last day. In his institution of the Eucharist, Jesus designates the meal as
an eschatological celebration, proclaiming, “I tell you, I will not drink of this
fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in
my Father’s kingdom” (Matt. 26:29). Paul continues this theme for the church,
explaining that whenever the church takes the bread and the cup, it proclaims
Christ’s death until he comes (1€Cor. 11:26). And the redemptive work that the
church celebrates, having been accomplished by Christ, still looks forward to
its final application for a broken humanity. So when the church worships, it
celebrates its future, already fulfilled in Christ’s resurrection, but not yet fully
realized in his corporate body.
This eschatological aspect of worship begins, however, not in the New
Testament, but in the Old. One of the great benefits of examining worship
in the Hebrew Scriptures is that, in the Psalms, we have an actual manual of
worship. But, more than a manual, it is also a theology of worship.12 In it we
see a progression from the early psalms dominated by lament to the later ones
where praise is more prominent. One of the reasons for this is that the later
psalms begin to shift their focus from the present to the eschatological, as il-
lustrated in Book Five, Psalms 107–50. Psalm 107 introduces the final book,
reflecting upon the captivity and return. It makes clear that the captivity was
just—the result of Israel’s rebellion (v. 11), but also that YHWH has heard the
cries of his people and restored them, gathering them back from being exiled
in every direction. In Psalm 110 we see Hebrew worship looking forward to
the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant, yet the affirmations of this psalm go
way beyond David. Verse 1 speaks of a king who is coregent with YHWH.
This prophecy of one who would be both king and Lord is attributed to the
Messiah by Jesus (Matt. 22:44), and to Jesus by Peter (Acts 2:34ff). Verse 4
looks forward to a king who would also be a legitimate and enduring priest,
according to the order of Melchizedek, whose priesthood was seen as com-
ing from a higher order and predating that of Aaron. Even as the Jews come
back to the land, it is evident that they will need someone greater than David
to make Israel preeminent again. Only the Messiah will do. The final psalms

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 89

of the book (147–150) rejoice again in the restoration and rebuilding of Jeru-
salem, ending the Psalms with overwhelming praise for YHWH from all the
earth—all creation and all people. The pain of earlier psalms has given way
to rejoicing and hope. Thus, the worship of Israel in the final book of the
Psalms both rejoices in God’s present salvation, which has taken place in the
form of the return from exile, and sings praise to God in the hope of the final
deliverance of the kingdom of God.
As we come to the New Testament, we find a great deal of continuity with
the Hebrew Scriptures on the themes of worship. But there are certain changes
as a result of the fulfillment of realities only anticipated in Israel’s worship.
God has not changed, but he has brought himself to a new place of relation-
ship with his people. In the New Testament we see the worship of the church
take on an increasingly eschatological character, moving from anticipation to
fulfillment, at least in part. In the Synoptics, the theme of the arrival of the
messianic kingdom brings an eschatological character to all of its theology,
including worship. In Luke, for example, the praise songs of Mary (1:46–55)
and of Zechariah (1:67–79) are filled with Old Testament images of expectation
of the messianic era, now fulfilled in the upcoming birth of Christ. Moreover,
Simeon’s prayer (Luke 2:28ff) and Anna’s declaration at the dedication of Jesus
(Luke 2:36ff) give glory to God for the fulfillment of his kingdom promises.
The Gospel of John is also filled with eschatological worship images. In
John chapters 1, 2, and 4 we see a temple imagery that harks back both to
temple worship in general and to the eschatological anticipation of renewed
temple worship found in passages like Ezekiel 43. In his graphic visions of
the temple, the prophet watches, stunned, as YHWH responds to idolatrous
priests by removing his glory from the temple. Then God shows Ezekiel the
future, looking forward to a day when YHWH’s glory will return to the
temple: not to the temple built by Solomon, or even Herod, but one described
in terms that transcend bricks and mortar. This is most likely the image in
John’s mind as he connects Jesus to the temple. In John 1, the eternal Word
of God takes on flesh and “tabernacles” (skene) among human beings, and
as he does, the disciples become witnesses of his glory. In John 2 he is the
temple who will one day raise himself up after destruction. And in chapter
4, he is the new temple to whom all true worshippers will come to worship
the Father. In Christ, the glory of God returns to the temple, which is Christ
himself. Thus, it is now through Christ that all true worship will come to the
Father. For John, Christian worship is fulfilling the Old Testament promise of
a renewed worship, but as we would expect, it does so in a here and not-here
kind of way. The worship of God through Christ, the new temple, reaches
its apex for John in the New Jerusalem, where there is no temple, “because
the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” And the city does not
need the light of the sun, “for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb
is its lamp” (Rev. 21:22–23).

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 90 Exploring Ecclesiology

In Revelation, one of the key theological themes from beginning to end is

worship. After showing John the church on earth in various stages of bro-
kenness, God pulls back the curtain of heaven. When John looks up he sees
worship. There, innumerable persons, angels, and images representing all of
creation worship God and the risen Lamb. Later (Rev. 20), we find that some
of the beings in the presence of God are humans who have died for their faith.
Combined with the heavenly vision of the church in Hebrews 12:22–23 and
Paul’s theology of the believers’ immediate entrance into the presence of Christ
at death (2€Cor. 5:1–10), the church is depicted here as a community that ex-
ists and worships concurrently on earth and in heaven. In Eastern Orthodoxy,
this Johannine imagery has resulted in a concept of worship that brings both
arenas together such that when the church on earth gathers to worship, it
actually participates in the worship of the community of heaven. The idea is
that whenever a local congregation worships, the universal church is present,
including “the saints, the angels, the Mother of God, and Christ himself.”13
By the end of the biblical story, we find the nations and the kings of the earth
coming before God/the Lamb, bringing the splendor and glory of their own
kingdoms as they offer themselves to God in worship.
So then, if the church understands its worship to be eschatological, how
should that affect what worship looks like? Bottom line, the worship of the
church should reflect the here and not-here ethos of the kingdom of God.
As such, it should create forms that recognize the presence of God in the
worshipping community in the person of the risen Christ, both inviting him
to be king over the church now and celebrating his presence with us in our
brokenness. For example, actually getting up out of one’s seat and going for-
ward for the Eucharist can symbolize Christ’s kingly presence with us as we
actually go to the table to meet him. This symbol is less clear when the bread
and wine are simply passed through the rows of seated worshippers. Also,
worship practices that allow for the corporate confession of sin teach us that
Christ is graciously present with us in our brokenness. Other forms of worship
should express the church’s hope in the return of Christ to finally and fully
redeem our broken lives. Eschatological worship should also be ecumenical
and multicultural. If the final community of worship will include the entire
church in unity, the church should find ways to seek that unity now, perhaps
using worship as a way of occasionally bringing together churches that may be
separated by historical theological differences. In John’s eschatological image
of worship at the end of Revelation, we find that eschatological worship will
also be multiethnic and multi-socioeconomic. People from every nation, from
kings on down, will come as a community before God in worship. This is no
mere vision of the future for John but has significant ramifications for the
church now. If the worship of the future is to be drawn into the present, then
the church today should do what it can within its particular cultural setting to
bring together worshippers from various ethnic and economic backgrounds.

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 91

In heaven, white people will not worship in one building while black people
worship in another a couple of blocks away. Rather, all will come together
before the Lamb. There, the social diversities that, in a broken world, create
animosity will be healed, bringing the richness of the whole of humanity
into worship. If this is God’s ultimate goal in worship, then it should be the
church’s goal now, as much as possible.14

Worship as Encounter

In keeping with what we have said to this point, numerous theologians of the
Hebrew Scriptures have agreed that there is a basic, three-part promise from
God that weaves its way through the story from beginning to end, shaping
every area of its theology—“I will be their God, they will be my people, and
I will dwell in their midst.”15 The theology of worship that arises from the
scriptures reflects the elements of this promise. From the fall onward, God’s
redemptive engagement calls forth from his people a response of worship. This
worship, then, plays a key role in giving Israel the sense that they are not just
a people, but his people.
The narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures shows that God is the initiator
of worship, or to say the same thing from a different direction, worship is
a response to an encounter with God. Again and again it is God’s initiative
through redemptive action that calls forth a response of worship. In the story
of the flood (Gen. 8), Noah leaves the ark after the floodwaters have receded
and builds an altar to worship the Lord. Only after the flood can he possibly
conceive of the magnitude of the disaster from which God has saved him, and
his response is worship—thanksgiving for so great a salvation. In Genesis 12,
Abram is called by God, heretofore unknown to him, and is led away from
his polytheistic homeland. As he arrives on the outskirts of Canaan, God ap-
pears to Abram and shows him the land that will one day be a home for the
nation of people who will come from Abram’s family. Abram’s response is to
build an altar of worship. As we move on through the Old Testament story,
we find similar events. The voice of God calls to Moses from a burning bush,
and Moses removes his shoes in response to God’s holiness. And of course,
the exodus becomes the paradigmatic event for the entire story. Again and
again, when God is confronting his people about their response to him, he
reminds them of his redemptive act of delivering them from Egypt (1€Sam.
10:18; Neh. 9:18; Jer. 2:6; 11:4; Ezek. 20:10; Mic. 6:4). As this redemptive act
led to worship and obedience, so should their remembrance of his deliverance
lead to worship.
Related to the power that the redemptive acts of God have to call forth wor-
ship is the power of God’s intrinsic awesomeness as a person. Israel responds
to him in worship, not only for what he has done, but also for who he is. The

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 92 Exploring Ecclesiology

God whose very presence brought thunder and lightning over Mt. Sinai is a
fearful being. And when God pulls back the curtains for Isaiah to see him in
heavenly glory, the prophet can only lament that he is surely as good as dead,
for he, a sinful man, has seen the holy and almighty YHWH (Isa. 6). In his
classic work The Idea of the Holy, Rudolph Otto speaks of the paradoxical
aspects of the presence of God as tremendum and fascinans. He is the one
whose awe-full manifestation reveals him as the Wholly Other who, at the same
time, both attracts and repels us.16 His self-revelation to Isaiah, for example,
was not meant to destroy the prophet, but to attract him. But Isaiah’s fear can
only be ameliorated by a messenger from God sent to purify him from his sin.
Thus, the believer’s approach to God, New Testament scholar Ralph Martin
says, “will be in the constant awareness of our weakness and sinfulness; and
we shall draw near with becoming reverence and fear€.€.€. One cannot be .€.€.
flippant with the God who is an all-consuming fire!”17 Yet we are allowed to
draw near to this awesome God despite our fear because, as Otto explains,
the All Holy is also the All Gracious.18
To put it another way, while God comes to us as the Holy God, his holiness
is always subordinate to his love. Yet even his love is a holy love, calling for
holiness in us as he encounters us. It was this God Luther finally discovered
in his search for a gracious God, prompting him to contend that liturgy and
preaching should always include both law and gospel, for, as Lutheran theo-
logian Marva Dawn argues, we experience proper exhilaration only when
we understand that God’s love and grace reigns in the midst of his wrath.19
Perhaps Søren Kierkegaard best explains how encounter with a holy God can
call forth such a response of joy in worship:

Father in Heaven! Hold not our sins up against us but hold us up against our
sins so that the thought of You when it wakens in our soul, and each time it
wakens, should not remind us of what we have committed but of what You did
forgive, not of how we went astray but of how You did save us!20

As in the Hebrew Scriptures, the worship of God in the New Testament

retains the idea of God’s initiation and the human response to encounter with
him. This encounter takes place in a number of ways. God reveals himself
through mighty acts, through the relational presence of the Spirit, and through
the preaching of the Word. We see all three of these means in the story of the
early church in Acts. In Peter’s preaching, God is represented to the hearers
primarily through proclamation of the gospel, a description of the mighty
and gracious act of God on behalf of humanity in Jesus Christ. The message
of God’s work confronts its hearers with the awesome and gracious person
of God, to which they respond with conversion and worship. At the end of
Peter’s speech in Acts 10, for example, at the house of Cornelius, the response
of the hearers is conversion and praise to God.

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 93

In each of these situations of conversion and worship, God also reveals

himself through the Holy Spirit. In Acts 2 to the disciples, Acts 8 to the Samari-
tans, and Acts 10 at the house of Cornelius, Luke writes that the Holy Spirit
came upon the people, bringing them into a personal, relational encounter
with God. The result was praise and worship.21 Finally, God also revealed
himself to his people through mighty acts. The worship of the community in
Acts 2:42–48, for example, is partly a response to the miracles God was doing
through the apostles. And in Acts 4, the community worships in response to
God’s miraculous release of Peter from prison.

Location

Worship is about God’s people experiencing his presence. Ironically, even

though the biblical narrative consistently recognizes God’s omnipresence, for
God’s people to experience most fully the presence of their God, they have to
come together in a particular location. For the nation of Israel, that location is
the tabernacle and, eventually, the temple in Jerusalem. During the wilderness
wanderings, the God who makes himself visible in the cloud and the pillar of
fire draws the nation into his unique presence at the tabernacle (Exod. 25).
While they know of and understand God’s forgiveness of their sin on every day
of the year and in every tent of the community, when they gather around the
tabernacle on the Day of Atonement they encounter God and his forgiveness
specially, as at no other place (Lev. 16). Visually, they encounter the presence
of God as they watch the sacrifices. With their hands they experience his work
for them as they place their hands on the scapegoat, sensing their sins being
transferred to an innocent substitute and banished to the desert. Here, in
this location, God makes his presence known to his people more vividly and
intensely than he does anywhere else.22
Not until King David conquers Jerusalem and makes it the city of his resi-
dence does this city become a fixed location for the worship of Israel. David
brings the ark of the covenant to rest there in permanent residence. And
eventually, Solomon fulfills David’s dream of replacing the itinerant tabernacle
with a permanent temple for YHWH. In his prayer of dedication, Solomon
remarks that this temple is now the dwelling place of the omnipresent God.
Here he will dwell with his people. He asks, “Will God really dwell on earth?
The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you” (1€Kings 8:27). Yet,
during this very service of dedication, God appears in the temple in a cloud,
his glory being so overwhelming that the priests are unable to perform their
tasks. This presence of the glory of God, resident in the temple, is so powerful
to the nation, so key to its life, that the reader of the story of Israel’s history
is moved to grief as Ezekiel recounts his vision of the glory of God departing
from the temple as a result of the detestable worship practices of Israel’s temple
priests (Ezek. 10). Here is the low point of worship for the nation. Most of

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 94 Exploring Ecclesiology

the people cannot worship properly, because they are away from the temple,
captive in Babylon. Yet even those who remain in Jerusalem cannot worship
properly. For while the ruined temple remains present in the city, YHWH is
no longer present in the temple. The supreme importance of the temple as the
dwelling place for God and of the idea of location in worship is seen again
when the top priority of the exiles in their return to Jerusalem under Ezra is
to rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:1–8).
Worship in the New Testament also carries a sense of location, but in a
different sense. As discussed above, temple imagery in the New Testament has
been transformed from a geographic location to a relational one, such that
now Jesus himself and the church are the temple, the location of true worship.
As the ground upon which Moses stood was holy because of the presence of
God there with him, so Paul tells us that the church becomes sacred space as
God dwells in the midst of his people through the presence of Christ by the
Spirit (1€Cor. 3:16).
What this discussion about worship and location says to the church is that
neither the omnipresence of God nor his presence through the Holy Spirit in
each individual believer (1€Cor. 6:19) eliminates the need for Christians to come
together in a particular location for worship (Heb. 10:25). Moreover, while
an individual can worship God while alone, such a worshipper simply cannot
experience the presence of God to the fullness in which he is encountered in the
gathered church. For God desires to be worshipped as he dwells in the midst
of his people. Only as believers share with one another their individual union
with Christ can the presence of God in Christ be experienced in its earthly
fullness, which leads us to the next characteristic of worship. A communal
God desires communal worship.

Community

Worship in the Hebrew Scriptures is communal, for it is the worship of the

people of God. Granted, the patriarchs, at various points in their journeys,
seem to worship when they are alone. But the regular and organized images
of worship in the Hebrew Scriptures are functions of the whole community.
The Psalms of Ascent are to be sung by groups of people as they make their
way to Jerusalem and the temple for annual national worship celebrations.
And major worship events in Israel’s history make one wonder if there was
anyone left to watch the sheep, since the entire nation seemed to have turned
out. Solomon called out “the whole assembly of Israel” for the dedication of
the temple (1€Kings 8), and there is the sense that everyone has to be there for
this great worship service to be right. Indeed, the text says that the priests do
not take up the ark of the Lord to begin the worship event until all the elders
of Israel arrive (v.€3). And while there is, perhaps, more drama at this worship
service than at any other in Israel’s history, it is more than theater, more than

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 95

an event to be observed by the crowd. For after the king offers a prayer, which
is filled with requests regarding the relationship between God and his people,
the story tells us that all Israel joins the king in offering sacrifices. Further,
Israel’s worship is communal in both the vertical and the horizontal senses.
It is a participation in one another’s lives as well as in the life of God. At the
end of the worship event (fourteen days in all), after being blessed by the
prayers of the king, the people respond by blessing him. Moreover, Solomon’s
prayer is filled with pleas for redemption and reconciliation among members
of God’s community who have sinned against one another (1€Kings 8). Thus,
the joy they sense in their hearts as they leave is surely not only because of
God’s great work on their behalf, but also because worship has brought them
to a place of reconciliation with one another. Later, Jesus understands this
horizontal aspect of community in worship, urging his followers to reconcile
their own broken relationships, as far as it is possible with them, before they
offer sacrifices to God, the great reconciler (Matt. 5:23–24).
As Jesus’s urging indicates, the community aspect of worship found in the
Hebrew Scriptures is also a key component of worship in the New Testament.
In the story of the early church in Acts, the general pattern is that the Holy
Spirit falls upon groups of people, who then respond in worship. And the
church understands that it is to come together often as a worshipping com-
munity (Acts 2:42ff). In Paul we also find that worship is about community
in Christ by the Spirit. In Ephesians 5:18ff Paul sees worship as the result of
individual believers being filled by the Spirit, who then brings them together.
Here we see that community worship is dialogical, in two ways. It is not simply
a group of people proclaiming God’s worth to him as he engages them by
the Spirit, but it is also believers proclaiming God’s glory to one another. It is
as the believers sing God’s praise to one another that they also sing to God.
Worship is not meant to be a corporate collection of individuals all facing
the same direction with closed eyes, as if the only persons in the room were
the individual and God. No, in worship we speak to one another as well as to
God. We rejoice in God by rejoicing with one another. Only then is worship
truly a community celebration of the person and work of God.23
To take this further, believers in worship not only celebrate Christ with one
another, but they also represent Christ to one another. Peter argues that the
church is the fulfillment of God’s ancient desire for his people to be a royal
priesthood. From this the Reformers contended against the medieval church
for the “priesthood of all believers.” For modern evangelicals, this has come
to mean that the pastor of the church is not a priest any more than the other
members of the church—that he does not represent God to the congregation
or the congregation before God, but that he leads the congregation as they
represent Christ to one another and come before God as equal participants in
an offering of thanksgiving. The position of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox
churches is that while all believers are priests in a sense, the ordained priest

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 96 Exploring Ecclesiology

has a unique role in representing the congregation to God and in dispensing

God’s grace to the congregation.24
Paul illustrates the community aspect of worship in another way in 1€Co-
rinthians 10. Here, in anticipation of his discussion of the Lord’s Supper, Paul
contends that the members of the church have koinonia, fellowship/community,
in the bread and wine. So the worship activated in the Eucharist affirms not
only the believer’s union with Christ but his or her union with all other believ-
ers. Further, 1€Corinthians 11 and 14 picture an ordered community worship,
one that is unified in its practice and discipline, but also one that gives space
for all. Women are included in worship along with men, the prophet along
with the tongues speaker, and the hymn singer along with the teacher. Even
the unbeliever is given a certain space as Paul urges the community to worship
in a way that makes sense to the uninitiated, making worship a truly public
act of the community.

Love

Many theologians, especially those in the Reformed tradition, typically

begin their definitions of worship by explaining that it is the church’s corpo-
rate act of proclaiming God’s glory.25 In fact, this is an appropriate definition
of worship in a sense, and an aspect of worship we will discuss below. But
given the trinitarian foundation of worship articulated above, we believe it is
better to characterize worship, first and foremost, as a relational encounter
initiated by God. As such, it is important to discuss love before glory. For just
as humans can rightly worship God only after they understand his love in
the midst of his holiness, so humans can truly glorify God only in response
to his love. For humans with no awareness of God’s love can respond to him
only in terror or fear.26
As a relational activity through and through, worship must be more than
a corporate declaration of the greatness of God, and even of his great acts of
salvation on our behalf. Such worship can be too objective, lacking the subjec-
tive, relational component that is also important for true worship. What God
initiates in his encounter with humanity, before all other things, is not a decree
to save, but an objective and personal act of love that saves us. As John puts
it, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1€John 4:19, KJV).
And John’s approach is by no means restricted to the New Testament. For
the law, which one might expect to be filled with dutiful responses to God
because of his holiness, is actually filled with this same principle of human
love for God in response to his initiation of love. The word for “love” is used
in Deuteronomy over twenty times.27 Most of them are for human love for
God. But, clearly, that human love is in response to God’s initiatory love. For
his covenant with Israel is a covenant of love (7:9, 12) and he promises to love
his covenant people for a thousand generations (5:10; 7:9).

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 97

For Paul as well, more than a right doctrine of God is necessary for the
kind of encounter with God that transforms us from rebellious sinners to
worshipping sons and daughters. The Holy Spirit brings us into relational
union with Christ, pouring God’s love into our hearts (Rom. 5:5). The result
of this encounter is that we no longer relate to God as a distant judge, but as
a dear father, Abba (Rom. 8:15). True worshippers, says Paul, are those who
worship by the Spirit (Phil. 3:3) and are filled with the Spirit when they are
together (Eph. 5:18). The Spirit, engaging the gathered church with the rela-
tional love of God in Christ, elicits a response of love in return, which leads
to the desire of the church to glorify God.

Glory

At this point, it is totally appropriate to talk about worship in terms of

glorifying God. It is here that we talk of worship as the act of declaring God’s
immeasurable worth by proclaiming the glory of his person and works. Now
glorifying God takes the form of celebration and thanksgiving. We celebrate
and thank him for who he is—for being the God who loves us, after which we
can joyfully praise him for his holiness, and for all his other glorious attributes.
We praise him for being the Creator, the one who has given us existence and
who has manifested himself in his creation (Rev. 4:11; Ps. 29:3–10).
We also celebrate and thank him for what he has done and will do. The
people of Israel consistently rehearsed and rejoiced in the saving acts of God on
their behalf, especially the paradigmatic redemption of the exodus, prefiguring
the work of the Messiah, who would redeem his people from slavery to sin.
Imagine the celebrative atmosphere of the Israelites as they find themselves
separated from Pharaoh’s army by the Red Sea. Hundreds of years of slavery
to Pharaoh are put behind them as God invites them into a new relationship
as his “captive” covenant people. There, on the shores of the Red Sea, Moses
and Miriam lead the people in a song of celebration and thanksgiving, both
for who YHWH is and for his great act of salvation (Exod. 15:1–18). Stanley
Grenz summarizes the matter this way:

Above all .€.€. the people of God were to worship him for his saving acts€.€.€.
Through its corporate worship life, the community gathers to commemorate
the foundational events of our spiritual existence, at the center of which is the
action of God in Christ delivering humankind from the bondage of sin.28

Dedication/Sacrifice

As we begin to understand the nature of the trinitarian God as the one who,
from all eternity, has existed in mutual self-giving love, we have the foundation
for understanding that worship finally includes dedication and sacrifice of the

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 98 Exploring Ecclesiology

self to God. Having been captivated by his love, resulting in a desire to give
him glory, the church can finally do no less than offer herself fully to God, her
lover. After a long theological discourse focusing on the gracious act of God
to save a rebellious and broken humanity, Paul ends the eleventh chapter of
Romans with a poetic exclamation of God’s unfathomable greatness. Then he
calls the church to respond: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s
mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this
is your spiritual act of worship” (Rom. 12:1–2). Indeed, this sacrifice of the self
is the response God has always wanted. Throughout the prophets we find God
rejecting the legally proper sacrifices of his people when they come without
a heart and life dedicated to God.29 King David, in despair and guilt over his
sins of adultery and murder, cries out to God with great understanding of
this fact: “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take
pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken
and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:16–17).
Numerous concepts reside in the image of dedication/self-sacrifice. Two
of those are the giving of the whole self and confession of sin. Paul’s image
causes the reader to imagine himself crawling up on an altar of sacrifices.
There is clearly a death image here, which in this situation simply speaks of
a total self-giving. The sacrificed animal gives all it has—its very life. So, the
church, in response to the unfathomable person and work of God in Christ,
rightly offers itself, holding nothing back. It is the most reasonable response
of worship. David’s self-dedication in Psalm 51, also a temple sacrifice image,
recognizes that what is given to God must be pure and holy. For sinful human
beings, this means confession of sin, which is exactly what David is doing in
Psalm 51. For the church at worship, this means that there should always be
an opportunity for worshippers to deal with unconfessed sin.

Worship as Act

So far, we have said that worship is, fundamentally, the gathered church’s
response to an eschatological encounter with the one God, who always en-
counters us trinitarianly, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have argued that
true worship is relational—it is a declaration of the glory and worth of God
and thanksgiving for his great work of redemption by those who have been
captivated and transformed by his love in Jesus Christ, communicated to them
by the Holy Spirit. From this foundation, we can then argue that the goal of
the church in its worship services is to bring the people of God into a relational
encounter with him, leading to a proper response of worship. So, how does
the church do this, and what form does that response take? We devote the rest
of this chapter to suggesting answers to these questions, outlining categories
for the various means and shapes of worship.

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 99

Drama

Human beings have long understood that there are few things as powerful
as a stage play, and especially a musical, to give us the sense that we are being
drawn into a living story. And when the audience knows the story and its
songs, it is almost impossible to keep from singing along with the players
as they pour out their hearts onstage. Even more powerful is the experience
of the actors themselves. Having spent months doing character studies and
rehearsing their lines, they actually become the characters they are playing in
the story, sensing their pain, their joy, their frustration and excitement as they
live the story themselves. Perhaps for these very reasons, drama has always
been a part of worship. From the drama of Israel’s feast days to the church’s
rehearsal of Christ’s passion in the Eucharist, the people of God have engaged,
not as audience, but as participants in a kind of virtual reality exercise, al-
lowing themselves to be drawn into the story of their redemption. One of the
main purposes of the church in worship should be to retell the gospel story,
inviting people into the story to encounter Christ, the story’s hero. Robert
Webber argues that in worship, the church re-creates and thus re-presents the
historical event of Christ’s redemption, so that it is not merely a retelling of
the story but becomes a personal encounter with God. According to this ap-
proach, pastors and worship leaders are directors, and congregants are not
the audience, but the players, retelling and reenacting the drama to God and
to one another.30
At various times in the history of the church, most of its denominational
traditions have made the mistake of minimizing, sometimes even eliminating,
participation from the congregation, so that it becomes little more than an
observer, passively watching while the priest/choir/pastor is engaged in the
action. The pre–Vatican€II Roman Catholic worship service was in Latin,
and the priest said mass with his back to the congregation, separating them
both visually and linguistically from the story of redemption.31 Vatican€II
made great strides in reengaging the whole church in the drama of worship,
changing the mass from Latin to the vernacular, turning the priest toward the
people, and inviting laypersons to aid the priest in the eucharistic celebra-
tion. On the other end of the spectrum of traditions, the evangelical church
in America has also inhibited congregational participation. As a result of the
fundamentalist/modernist controversy of the early twentieth century, mil-
lions of Christians departed from mainline churches (which were generally
liturgical before the controversy), creating thousands of independent churches
and new denominations. Many of these dispensed with traditional liturgical
elements of worship, associating them with denominations they accused of
becoming theologically liberal.32 The result was that, for many of us who grew
up in the American evangelical tradition, worship participation was limited
to singing hymns. There was no kneeling, no responsive reading, no recita-

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 100 Exploring Ecclesiology

tion of the creeds. Virtually everything was done by the pastor and his staff
for the benefit of the congregation. Moreover, the fact that most evangelical
Protestant churches have limited the Eucharist to a monthly, or even quarterly,
event limits congregational participation. But to draw people effectively into
an encounter with God, the church must move beyond passivity in worship
and make participation a priority.33
Historically, in order to facilitate authentic worship, drawing believers into
the drama of Christ’s redemption, the church developed liturgy, by which we
mean nothing more than the forms and arrangements of public worship. From
its earliest days we see that, when the church gathers, it has regular elements
involved in its worship. Acts 2:42 lists the teaching of the apostles, fellowship,
the breaking of bread, and prayer.34 Near the turn of the second century, Igna-
tius indicates that prayer, listening to the teaching of church leaders, and the
Eucharist are part of regular church services.35 Justin Martyr indicates that
these same forms are a regular part of worship in the second century.

And on the day called Sunday there is a meeting in one place of those who live
in cities or the country, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writing of the
prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the
president in a discourse urges and invites [us] to the imitation of these noble
things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers. And, as said before,
when we have finished the prayer, bread is brought, and wine and water, and the
president similarly sends up prayers and thanksgivings to the best of his ability,
and the congregation assents, saying the Amen, the distribution, and reception
of the consecrated [elements] by each one, takes place and they are sent to the
absent by the deacons.36

As worship forms develop during the early church period, it is clear that there
is both form and freedom. Some prayers, for example, were not fixed (i.e., the
president of the congregation prays “to the best of his ability”), while other
forms became fixed, such as the eucharistic prayers we see in documents like
The Apostolic Tradition.37 After the conversion of Constantine changes the
status of the church in the Roman Empire, the more rapid spread of Chris-
tianity leads to the development of new lines of worship tradition, such that
worship in the East begins to take on its own character somewhat different
from that of the West. Even in the West there are Gallican rites and Roman
rites until the West is unified under the Roman rite in the ninth century.
The point of this foray into the history of liturgy is that the church has
always had forms for public worship. Even independent Bible churches have
forms of worship. And those forms have been meant to function in at least
two major ways—to draw the church into an encounter with God and to
proclaim the truths of his redemption. With the exception of some minor
traditions, the church has used two kinds of forms—those which it believes
were clearly instituted by Christ himself or are direct products of the scriptures

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 101

(e.g., baptism, Eucharist, singing the Psalms), and those which the church has
created on its own (e.g., recitation of creeds, singing hymns/songs, kneeling/
standing at various times).38 Liturgy, says Lutheran theologian Philip Hefner,
is the church’s public act of prayer, praise, and devotion. It brings the believer
into fullest possible communion with the faith. It is the expression of the
faith that gives life to the church, and which witnesses to the world of God’s
redemption in Christ. As an embodiment of God’s plan of reconciliation of
creation with himself, the liturgy is centered in Christ. More, it brings the
believer into the presence of Christ and into relational sharing with him. It
is made up of symbolic actions and words that allow people to participate,
receiving together God’s revelation and responding in praise.39 In those churches
which are more sensitive to the historical patterns of the church, the liturgy
has a distinct order, meant to lead the worshipper through an ordered experi-
ence. Hefner explains the Lutheran liturgy this way: the first section of the
service consists of readings from scripture along with singing, prayers, and
preaching that relate God’s work to contemporary life. This is followed by
the Eucharist, celebrating the saving work of Christ, closing with a petition
for the Holy Spirit to incorporate the lives and work of the believers into the
work of Christ in the world. The kiss of peace, also an important part of
the liturgy, reflects love and unity with fellow Christians.40 It illustrates that
the liturgy is meant to be received in the midst of the community of God’s
people; it is not meant to be solitary. Thus, the liturgy is both vertical and
horizontal. Hefner writes:

The reception involves intimate appropriation by the individual of Christ’s

benefits, but it also involves intimate horizontal love for and sharing with fellow
human beings. Both the reception of grace and the expression of that grace in
the life of love and service are thoroughly enfleshed, embodied, earthly.41

In its own theology of the drama of worship, the Roman Catholic Church is
conscious of the trinitarian nature of the liturgy. Similar to the Lutheran idea,
the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that in the liturgy the church
confesses the mystery of the Trinity and God’s plan to redeem creation.42 The
Father accomplishes the mystery by the giving of his Son and of the Holy Spirit
for the redemption of the world. Liturgy facilitates the participation of the
people of God in the work of God. Through the liturgy, Christ our high priest
continues his work of redemption in, with, and through the church. This issue
of participation is very important in Catholic liturgy/worship. It is a relational
participation with Christ through the Holy Spirit. In the liturgy, the faithful
are initiated into the mystery of Christ. Through the visible symbols/signs the
believers move to the thing signified. Thus, the symbols of the liturgy actually
connect people to Christ. Liturgy combines celebration, proclamation, and

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 102 Exploring Ecclesiology

active charity, engaging the faithful in the life of the community of salvation
and involving the participation of everyone.
The liturgy is the work of the Father, for in it:

The Father is acknowledged and adored as the source and the end of all the
blessings of creation and salvation. In the Word who became incarnate, died,
and rose for us, he fills us with his blessings. Through his Word, he pours into
our hearts the Gift that contains all gifts, the Holy Spirit.43

The church blesses the Father for his inexpressible gift of the Son and asks
for the Holy Spirit to allow that the blessings of God come to life through the
fruits of life that result in the praise of God.
Christ is also at work in the liturgy, for he is seated at the right hand of the
Father, serving as High Priest, pouring out the Holy Spirit upon his body. He
does this by acting through the sacraments of the church to make himself actu-
ally present and to make his grace efficacious. Most importantly, the Paschal
mystery is made present, along with its grace, to the life of the church. Christ
is present also through the Word, since it is he himself who speaks when the
scriptures are read. And he is present when the church prays and sings.
The Holy Spirit’s role in the liturgy includes being the church’s teacher:

The desire and work of the Spirit in the heart of the Church is that we may live
from the life of the risen Christ. When the Spirit encounters in us the response of
faith which he has aroused in us, he brings about genuine cooperation. Through
it, the liturgy becomes the common work of the Holy Spirit and the Church€.€.€.
[The Holy Spirit] prepares the Church to encounter her Lord; he recalls and
makes Christ manifest to the faith of the assembly. By his transforming power,
he makes the mystery of Christ present here and now. Finally the Spirit of com-
munion unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ.44

In its own very short history, the twentieth-century evangelical movement

in America has tended to see itself as a nonliturgical church. To illustrate
this, an examination of the indexes of three popular evangelical systematic
theologies reveals only two references to the word liturgy.45 Wayne Grudem’s
remark, while cautioning evangelicals not to despise historic forms of liturgy,
is telling. “Evangelicals need to be cautious .€.€. that they do not too quickly
dismiss unfamiliar forms of worship€.€.€. Regarding the unison reading of a
liturgy, if Christians can worship and pray by singing words in unison, there
is nothing to prevent them from genuinely worshiping and praying by reading
words aloud in unison!” (italics original).46
Of course, evangelicals do have liturgies, but they have tended to reject
many of the historic forms because of their connection with churches they
have considered liberal. The strength of evangelicals regarding forms of wor-
ship is their commitment to biblical models. The classic ecclesiology by Robert

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 103

Saucy is a fine example.47 He goes to the New Testament text to cite examples
of the centrality of the scriptures and of the importance of all members of
the congregation having the opportunity to contribute through the vehicle of
the word (each one having a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, an
interpretation [1€Cor. 14:26]). He notes the various types of prayer included
in worship—supplication, intercession, thanksgiving—and discusses biblical
forms of singing. He also suggests that biblical worship includes the recitation
of short creedal statements, such as those found in 1€Corinthians 15:3–5 and
Romans 4:25. What he lacks that is central in the liturgical/historical traditions
is the whole philosophy of worship as reenactment of the events of salvation
and of participation by the believers in the blessings of those acts through the
Holy Spirit. There is also little sense of order or progress in the liturgical ser-
vice itself. In addition, evangelicals have generally dispensed with the liturgical
year or church calendar. Such tendencies have robbed evangelicals, both of the
sense of the rhythm and development of God’s participation in the life of the
church throughout the year and of the rich experience of each act of gathered
worship as rehearsal and reenactment of the story of God’s redemption in
Christ. Evangelicals, while rightly remaining committed to the priority of the
scriptures in all functions of the church so as to stay true to God’s desires for
his people, could learn much from the historic liturgical churches that would
help them draw their people into a more holistic encounter with God.
Finally, the charismatic movement, especially among evangelicals, has made
a major contribution to forms of public worship. While charismatic pastors
and theologians do not represent a unified approach, there is no question that
a fundamental principle of charismatic worship is freedom in the Spirit (2€Cor.
3:17). This means that charismatic worship entails a significant amount of
spontaneity and congregational participation. When the Spirit lays a word upon
the heart of a worshipper, she should speak it. If someone in the congregation
says he has a new song on his heart, let him sing it. It is not that charismatic
churches eschew all order, for most would recognize Paul’s call to order and
sanity in 1€Corinthians 14. Nevertheless, the need for order should never be
allowed to quench the freedom of the Spirit.

Symbol

Church historians have occasionally remarked that the genesis of stained

glass windows was to help the largely illiterate population of the ancient and
medieval world learn the stories of the Bible without having to read them.
While such a generalization overlooks the fact that peasants could not have
afforded a Bible even if they could read, the point is well taken. Visual sym-
bols can be just as effective as words in communicating the biblical story of
redemption. The biblical story itself is filled with symbols from beginning to
end, perhaps the apex of all of them being the moment when Jesus, in the

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 104 Exploring Ecclesiology

upper room, hands a broken piece of bread to his disciples and proclaims,
“This is my body.”
The church has always understood that God reveals himself to humanity
in ways other than words. Webber remarks, “Forms are not mere externals
but signs and symbols of a spiritual reality. Even as God who is immaterial
met with humans in the material form of a human person, Jesus, so Chris-
tians meet Him in worship in the context of visible and tangible forms.”48
The scriptures indicate that God communicates himself through historical
events, such as the exodus. And the Psalms contend that the material creation
reveals God, declaring his glory through the majesty of nature in a way that
can be recognized by believers and can draw them to praise and love him. In
its early battles against the Gnostics, the church affirmed material creation as
the product of God and as good. At stake was the incarnation itself, which is
really the key event in this theology. The Word became flesh and tabernacled
among us. God’s use of a human body to reveal himself shows that phys-
ical realities have a place in worship. This is not idolatry. It would have been
idolatry if the disciples worshipped the flesh of Christ. But they worshipped
the God revealed in the flesh. Likewise, to worship a sacrament or a picture
is idolatry. To worship the God revealed through them is not.
For the church of the ancient and medieval world, the idea that God revealed
himself through visual symbols was axiomatic. But the philosophical revolution
of the Enlightenment elevated rational means of communication, diminishing
the value of imagistic communication among some modern Christian tradi-
tions. In the contemporary culture of postmodernism, however, imagistic com-
munication has begun to experience a renaissance. Indeed, recent movements
in America such as the “emerging church,” filled with young believers birthed
in a culture of virtual reality, have rediscovered the value of symbols such as
icons. While every era has its tools for constructing symbolic realities, no era
has known the technological resources that have made the creation of virtual
realities such a defining characteristic of postmodernism. As culture watchers
have recognized this trend, a number of authors have noted the natural and
historic relationship among symbol, simulation, and religion. In his call for
the evangelical church to rediscover this relationship, Robert Webber quotes
approvingly from Peter Roche de Coppens’s The Nature and Use of Ritual,
contending that “in short, symbols are the ‘psychospiritual means by which
we invoke a certain presence, induce a certain state of consciousness, and
focus our awareness, by which we recreate, in ourselves, an image, facsimile,
or presentation of that which is without or above us.’”49
The most obvious symbols of the church are the sacraments. Besides them
are the cross, the table, the pulpit, icons, vestments, candles, kneeling, bowing,
raising hands, etc. These symbols allow the whole person to be involved in
worship. Symbols are not an end in themselves but represent something beyond
themselves and trigger the imagination and heart response of worshippers.

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 105

Symbols are like parables whose meanings are revealed to those who have
faith, and hidden from those who do not. To the believer, the symbol’s spiri-
tual meaning is accessed by faith, connecting him or her to God relationally
through material things in a way similar to how a picture or personal item
(a deceased father’s pocketknife, a grandmother’s hairpin) can enable us to
sense our relationship with a loved one. Relational communication is holis-
tic. Many of us have in our workplaces, for example, photographs of family
members, pictures drawn by our children, maybe even an old love letter from
our spouse, which is itself an image of relationship between a husband and
wife. The point is that all these are symbols, each of which communicates
relationship to us in a way different from, but no less profound than, the
spoken word.

Word

While certain segments of the church have experienced a lack of symbolic

encounter in worship, others have failed to expose people properly to God
through the Word, the scriptures. The Reformers were right to call for a renewal
in biblical preaching, which had diminished in the Middle Ages. The Bible has
a unique transforming effect on the lives of believers. King David put it this
way: “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you”
(Ps. 119:11). Jesus also recognizes that the word of God has a transforming
effect, praying for his disciples, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth”
(John 17:17). In the apostolic era, listening to the apostles’ teaching of the
scriptures was central to the worship life of the church (Acts 2:42). For Paul,
the reading of the scriptures and the development of right doctrine is a crucial
component of worship. It is through the scriptures that we encounter God
authentically, because they allow us to see him truly and to be transformed by
him. Paul tells pastor Timothy to make sure that the scriptures are always read
and taught in the public worship service. He encourages Timothy to watch
both his life and doctrine closely, presumably because right doctrine should
lead to a right response of life, and vice versa (1€Tim. 4:13–16).
In the early church, the reading of the scriptures became a regular part of
the weekly worship celebration. Very early testimony (ca. 150) is found in
Justin Martyr (cited above). By the third and fourth centuries, the patterns of
Bible reading in worship had become fixed. The worship service was divided
into two sections, the first being the “Liturgy of the Word,” made up of bibli-
cal readings, instructions, and prayers. In his history of the mass, Adalbert
Hamman writes:

The readings which open the celebration are three in number .€.€. according to
John Chrysostom and the Apostolic Constitutions: a prophecy taken from the
Old Testament, an excerpt from Acts or one of the Epistles, followed by the

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 106 Exploring Ecclesiology

Gospel. Between the readings the psalms were chanted, where the people took up
the refrain linked with prayers€.€.€. The readings are followed by a homily. This
consists of a commentary on the Scripture just read whose text had been chosen
with a view to the sermon. The preacher applied the text to daily life.50

This demonstrates the centrality of the scriptures to church worship. Not only
were the scriptures read, they were also sung, explained, and applied to life.
Only after the church had encountered God through his written Word, did it
move to encounter him symbolically through the Eucharist.
This pattern of Word and table is one that historians universally recognize
as the norm for worship from the earliest days of the church. The pattern’s
universality should encourage some segments of the contemporary church to
rethink their philosophies of worship. Many of us who are lifelong members
of the American evangelical tradition grew up without the historic balance
of Word and table.51 Among the negative effects of this lack of balance is the
disconnection of the ministry of the Word from worship by its exaltation
above the other elements of worship. It is typical among evangelicals to see
worship as encompassing only the singing and other elements that include the
participation of the congregation. A result is that worship is often understood
to be a “warm-up” for the main event, which is the preaching of the scriptures.
Perhaps in an ironic twist of worldviews, the rationalism of the Enlightenment,
rejected by evangelicals for its liberal modernism, has left its mark anyway, such
that evangelicals have typically prized the rational exposition of the Bible over
the existential and symbolic as the means of encountering God. This tendency
is further evidenced by the fact that most evangelicals hold a memorial view
of the Lord’s Supper, as opposed to any sense of real presence.52 It is encour-
aging that the “emerging church,” generally understood as an outgrowth of
evangelicalism, has begun to revisit both the historic balance of Word and
table, and to focus more on symbolic encounter as an important balance to
the teaching of the scriptures as a means of encountering God in worship.53

Table

In light of the fact that we will include an entire chapter on the sacramental
nature of the church, the discussion here of the table, the Eucharist, will be
brief. In the Eucharist, the church has its most powerful liturgical symbol of
the presence of Christ. Whatever a church’s view of the nature of the symbol
(memorial or real presence), the bread and wine re-present Christ to his gath-
ered church. Here, the theology of encounter is dramatically played out as
believers come to the table to encounter the risen Christ. For it is his table, not
the table of the priest, pastor, or elders. In the story of Jesus’s encounter with
the disciples on the Emmaus road, Luke powerfully illustrates that where Jesus
is present with his disciples, he is the host of the table (Luke 24:30–32).54

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 107

In addition to facilitating an encounter with Christ, the Lord’s Supper is

also an element of worship, in that it gives God glory for his redeeming work
in Christ. As we have noted, Paul contends that every time the church takes
the bread and the cup, it proclaims Christ’s death (1€Cor. 11:26). Moreover,
the worship of the table is eschatological, for in it the now and not-yet nature
of the kingdom of God is realized in the proclamation that the risen Christ is
now present with his church but is also yet to come. The Eucharist also provides
an opportunity for dedication and self-sacrifice. As the believer comes to the
Lord’s Table to meet him, she or he participates in a very physical imagery
of humbling self before Christ and surrendering to his lordship. Further, the
sacrificial ethos of the bread and wine as the body and blood of the Lamb of
God calls to the participant to offer himself or herself as a living sacrifice to
God for the sake of Christ (see Rom. 12:1–2).

Music

Robert Saucy writes: “Above all, the church praised God in song. Even as
God’s people in the Old Testament found music a fitting instrument of praise,
with many of the psalms being intended for use in congregational worship, .€.€.
so the church expressed its joyful enthusiasm in the Spirit through singing.”55
In the Psalms, we not only have a worship manual for the nation of Israel, but
also a hymnal. After the profound worship of the last supper, Jesus and the
disciples leave singing a hymn (Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26). And Paul encourages
the church to sing when it worships (Col. 3:16; Eph. 5:19).
Why is singing so appropriate for worship? First, the scriptures indicate
that singing the glories of God is a feature of the whole created order, not just
humans. Metaphorical though it may be, when Isaiah imagines creation prais-
ing God, he imagines it by way of singing, calling on the mountains to burst
out singing in praise of God (Isa. 49:13; 55:12). Moreover, the angels praise
God with singing. The annunciation of the birth of Christ is made by a choir
of angels (Luke 2:13–14). And as God pulls back the curtain of heaven for
John, he is overwhelmed by the sight of millions of angels and other creatures
singing the glories of God (Rev. 5). This suggests that music and singing are
not merely products of human culture, but are part of the fabric of God’s
creation. Music is part of God’s intention for his creation. It is part of the
beauty of the creation which he declared good (Gen. 1:9ff).
But music and singing are also important means of worship because they
help humans worship with all that we are. Grenz writes:

Although its forms may vary among cultures, music seems to be a universal part
of human life. Music offers people a medium through which to give expression
to the broad dimension of their being. Song can incorporate the cognitive aspect
of life, expressing in lyrics and in the structure of the music the composer’s

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 108 Exploring Ecclesiology

conception of the world. But music also reflects the noncognitive. It captures
feelings, emotion, and mood, thereby giving expression to what cannot be said
through words alone.56

Music is a window to the soul. Through it the message, and thus the person,
of Christ can touch us like no other form of expression. And with it we can
respond to God from the deepest places in our hearts.
Singing also facilitates community in worship, allowing the entire con-
gregation to actively celebrate Christ. One of the beauties of congregational
singing is that even those who are not gifted singers can participate joyfully
because the volume and power of the entire community in song minimizes any
mistakes or sour notes by an individual singer. Indeed, there is transforming
power in being part of a large community singing praise to God. No one who
has experienced singing with thousands of other Christians in a stadium, for
example, will forget the captivating force of that moment.
Finally, we also use music in worship because it can teach us, through its
lyrics, the truth about God and it can also cement that truth in our hearts.
Even young children, who cannot read a theology text or the Bible, can learn
much through song about the glorious nature and wonderful redemptive work
of God. Because of the power of music to teach theology, the church must take
care to make sure that its music is theologically sound. Few churches would
be interested in hiring a preaching pastor who did not have solid biblical and
theological training. The Bible is clear about how destructive false teaching can
be to the body of Christ. But given the shallow and even unbiblical theology
of many songs sung in thousands of churches each week, one wonders if the
church cares at all about the biblical and theological training of the people
who write worship songs and those who lead the church in choosing and
singing them.

Prayer

It is interesting to note that the manual for all worship in the Anglican/
Episcopal Church is called the Book of Common Prayer. The manual is filled
with prayers of praise, confession, and requests for every kind of occasion
and need in the life of the church. From its earliest days, well before the Book
of Common Prayer was written, the church has recognized that prayer is a
crucial aspect of its community life. In the book of Acts we see the church
in corporate prayer often, whether in homes (Acts 2:42) or in the temple
(Acts 3:1). Worshipping Christians prayed when they needed guidance (Acts
1:14, 24), when they were persecuted (Acts 4:23–31), and when they set apart
disciples for ministry (Acts 6:6; 13:3). Paul encourages the church to “pray
in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Eph.
6:18). He encourages Timothy to lead the church in “requests, prayers, inter-

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 109

cession and thanksgiving” (1€Tim. 2:1). The content of the church’s prayers
can generally be categorized under the headings of requests, intercession,
confession, and thanksgiving/praise.57 These categories are reflected, not
only in the few prayers we have in the New Testament text, but in hundreds
of prayers developed by the church for its liturgy. In these the congregation
regularly confessed sin, thanked God for his gracious work in Christ, asked
for help to live God-honoring lives, and often included some form of doxol-
ogy. Many of these prayers were shaped to apply to specific occasions in the
life of the church—Eucharist, Easter, Good Friday, etc.58 Others were shaped
as intercessions for various people and times—prayer for those about to be
baptized, for the sick, or for a good harvest. All these reflect the church’s
conviction that God desired to encounter his people in every event, issue,
and time of life.59 These categories have continued into the present day in
the historic Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches. The one category
of prayer that has not been as widely retained, especially among American
evangelical churches, is that of confession. Richard Leonard rightly remarks,
“Prayers of confession are not usually found in the corporate worship of
evangelical and charismatic churches; confession of sin is an act that usu-
ally accompanies individual conversion to Christ and personal counseling
situations, rather than the life of the gathered assembly.”60 The early church
recognized the value of these prayers, as they allowed for believers to deal
with unconfessed sin, clearing up barriers between the believer and God in
the process of worship.
Here is another place where the contemporary church, especially the
American evangelical tradition, can benefit from studying the liturgy of the
historic traditions. The value of studying the public prayers of the historic
church is not necessarily in reproducing them in public worship today. But
through them we can see how the church has worshipped God in public prayer,
how it has included such elements of worship as glory, love, dedication, and
confession. We also see how prayer has been used to create community, drawing
the congregation into the process through responsive prayer, unison prayer,
and in prayer for one another. If prayer is to be an act of public worship, then
the best worship leaders are those who not only encourage prayers that ad-
dress issues appropriate for the church at worship, but also those that draw
the congregation into the worship event.
Of all the prayers that have become part of the life of the church, none has
been so universally embraced as the Lord’s Prayer, or the Our Father. When
the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, this is the prayer he gave them. More-
over, it is a prayer that addresses the whole of the church’s community life as
well as its relationship to God and the world. It begins by recognizing both
the vertical and horizontal relationality of corporate worship (our Father in
heaven). Here the church looks up to a God who is both transcendent and
immanent, the One who is in heaven above and yet condescends to be known

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as Abba, the tender address of a child to his daddy. As “our” Father, he is also
the God who binds the diverse community of his church together into one
body. Cyprian of Carthage writes about this phrase:

We do not say: “My Father, who are in heaven,” nor “Give me this day my
bread,” nor does each one ask that only his debt be forgiven him and that he
be led not into temptation and that he be delivered from evil for himself alone.
Our prayer is public and common, and when we pray, we pray not for one but
for the whole people, because we, the whole people, are one.61

By the phrase, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in

heaven,” the church prays eschatologically, both placing its hope in Christ’s
return and asking him to help it live out the values of his kingdom now, values
that can be lived out only as God protects his church from the devastating
effects of temptation and evil. By asking for its daily bread, the church rec-
ognizes that even its most basic needs are supplied by a gracious God. And
by the church’s request for forgiveness, it recognizes that as bread is the basic
physical need, forgiveness is the basic spiritual need. Closing with a doxol-
ogy, the Our Father becomes a prayer that spans the theology and experience
of worship. In it the church, recognizing God’s loving Father relationship,
gathers as the community of God, inviting him to reveal his loving presence
in every area of church life, and declaring his glory as the church hopes in a
future fully redeemed by the consummation of his kingdom. Thus, we have
the ultimate example of prayer as worship.62

Conclusion

All the world worships. And worship is always relational. From the pagan cul-
tures of Abraham’s day to the present, the worship of religious idols has always
been about connection with and favor from the person of power represented
by those idols. And as Americans worship at the altar of consumerism, bowing
down before more and more stuff, worship is still about relationships. From
the college guy who saves his money for a sports car to “impress the chicks,”
to the woman who hopes for a bigger house in order to run in a more elite
social strata, we are all willing to sacrifice ourselves for and pay homage to
whatever will make us more well connected. God wants to be well connected
to his people, and his people to be connected to one another, for they, together,
are his beloved bride. It is in the church’s worship that the communal God
engages his communal bride.

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 The Church as a Worshipping Community 111

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. How might trinitarian theology shape worship?

2. How does liturgy have the capacity to enhance the relational component
of worship?
3. What are the advantages of making our worship methods more “holis-
tic,” such as employing the arts?
4. If the eschatological kingdom community is diverse, how can we bring
that diversity into our worship structures today?

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 6

The Worshipping Church Engages Culture

Worship and Culture

Those of us who are baby boomers and grew up in evangelical churches in

America experienced firsthand the birth of “contemporary Christian music”
and the ecclesial battles it spawned. The cultural revolution of the 1960s af-
fected every institution, including the church. For one of us, living in southern
California during the 1970s meant witnessing the culture shift brought to the
church by the Jesus Movement, giving rise to Maranatha music and Christian
rock bands playing every Saturday night for thousands of young people at
the original Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. On the other hand, it also meant
being lectured by ex-rock-musicians-turned-Christian, who warned Christian
teenagers to stay away from rock music, even when it had Christian lyrics,
because, as everyone knows, “volume plus pulsation equals manipulation.”1
The church has experienced a number of transitions and developments in
its musical forms. From the introduction of the Gregorian chant to the adapta-
tion of pub tunes by Martin Luther, the first person thought to have asked the
question, “Why should the devil have all the good music?” to the popular hymn
styles of Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and Fanny Crosby, the church has both
tracked with and influenced culture with its music and integrated the results
into its worship. But perhaps none of these historic developments has been as
monumental as the most recent one. For the shift in musical style precipitated
by rock music has been accompanied by an even more monumental transition
as culture has moved into the postmodern era. The purpose of this chapter

113

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 114 Exploring Ecclesiology

is not to examine the effects of rock music or even of postmodernism on the

church and its worship. Rather, we will look briefly at the relationship between
the church and popular culture, focusing specifically on what happens when
worship forms are influenced by that culture, with the goal of helping wor-
ship leaders and church members ask productive questions about adopting
contemporary forms for worship.

Culture and the Spirit of God

The main question we want to address here is, How should the church think
about its use of popular culture in its worship? And, if it does embrace popu-
lar culture in its worship forms, what are the benefits and risks of doing so?
More fundamentally, as Stanley Grenz suggested, we can ask whether popular
culture can be a “playground of the Spirit” or is only a “diabolical device” of
the devil. If popular culture belongs to the devil, then obviously the church
should not use its forms to worship God. On the other hand, if God is at work
in it, culture may offer the church powerful forms for worship.
Before answering Grenz’s question in the positive or negative, we need a
definition of popular culture. Summarizing the work of Christopher Geist and
Jack Nachbar, Grenz describes four dimensions of popular culture. It involves
“(1) the beliefs, values, superstitions, and movements of thought shared by a
large percentage of the population, which come to expression (2) in artifacts
and images of people, (3) in the arts, and (4) in the rituals or events that gar-
ner a wide following.”2 The symbols of popular culture transmit the shared
meanings by which a people understand themselves, identify their longings,
and construct the world they inhabit. And these symbols transmit meaning
by the mere fact that they are value laden. In other words, there are no truly
neutral symbols, images, or rituals of popular culture.
Whether popular culture and its symbols are inherently evil or good has
been a matter of much debate throughout the history of the church. The early
church generally advised Christians to stay away from certain events of culture
like the theater, the arena, etc., since most of the entertainment there was sexu-
ally explicit or violent. Similarly, the American fundamentalist movement and
many evangelicals have generally rejected culture symbols like movies, theater,
and the arts in general, contending that they are part of a fallen and reprobate
culture and can only degrade a person’s faith. But while there may have been
some good motivation behind fundamentalism’s rejection of culture, the results
have been detrimental to the church’s witness. For fundamentalism lost the
ability to find God in culture, developing the tendency to be unable to hear
God speak through the fallen and broken. Thus, the message of the kingdom
of God preached by Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, for
example, is still missed by most fundamentalists (and evangelicals as well),

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 The Worshipping Church Engages Culture 115

because of King’s personal infidelities.3 One wonders how a God so gagged

could speak through Caiaphas, or even a donkey. Moreover, fundamentalism
lost much of the ability to hear and understand the authentic human search for
God. More broadly, much of American Christianity has tended to view culture
through the lens of a kind of popular Calvinism that argues that culture, as
totally depraved, is incapable even of looking for God. Better the imagery of
Augustine, who identifies an emptiness of which humans are aware, and which
they desperately attempt to fill with many things, but which can be filled only
by God.4 Culture does search for God, if only to end up often being satisfied
with a lesser god, perhaps because when human culture actually encounters
the true God, he strikes us as not exactly who we were looking for.
On the other hand, liberals have sometimes acted as if any and every symbol
of popular culture can be profitable in engaging the church with God. Consider
the recent struggle of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. regarding goddess images
in their 1993 “ReImagining God” conference. Most Presbyterians responded
by doubting that a goddess image is really going to engage people with God
as he is revealed in Christ. It seems axiomatic that certain symbols simply
will not properly engage the church with God. Can one possibly imagine, for
example, how a swastika could be used in worship? There are certain symbols
inherently laden with values so antithetic to Christian worship that using them
will always be counterproductive.
But the fact is that, like it or not, as Tom Beaudoin contends, “we express our
religious interests, dreams, fears, hopes, and desires through popular culture.”5
Religious expression is a cultural reality. Christian symbols were not pristinely
“dropped from the sky.” As the incarnation so profoundly illustrates, God reveals
himself in the common. As he reveals himself through the common reality of
flesh and blood, so we engage him through the common elements of bread and
wine. Even more astounding, God reveals himself even through nonreligious
symbols of popular culture such that when Don Henley of the Eagles, for ex-
ample, proclaims in his song “Heart of the Matter” that undeserved forgiveness
is the only thing that can save us from self-destruction, we can know that we
are hearing the voice of God. At the end of the day, we conclude that culture is
both an arena from and to which God speaks, but also one that distorts God’s
self-revelation. So it is not only acceptable, but also necessary, that we bring
popular culture and its symbols into the church, for through them God engages
us and we respond to him. But since culture’s symbols can also distort both
God’s engagement and our response, we must also be wary.

The Function of Worship Forms

Moving from what popular culture symbols are to what they do, Grenz writes,
“Pop culture both reflects and affects the values and outlooks that people

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 116 Exploring Ecclesiology

construct for themselves.”6 In other words, culture reflects humanity’s search

for God, dictates to a large extent how we search for and engage him, and
shapes what he looks like when we find him. The church has used and adapted
thousands of cultural symbols for worship that reflect and shape its view of
God and of the gospel of salvation. Pulpits, kneeling benches, vestments/robes,
fish symbols, pictures of Jesus and the disciples, video screens, incense, movie
clips, etc., all affect the church’s view of God and the communication of the
gospel. The result has been a consistent tension in the church between form
and function. If the forms of worship are meant to communicate God and
his message of salvation (the function), then as culture precipitates a change
in forms, this change necessarily affects the function. The basic question the
church must address is, Do changing worship forms adapted from popular
culture facilitate an authentic encounter with God in Christ through the Holy
Spirit as described by the scriptures and as understood by historic Christian
orthodoxy? We will examine this question through the lens of several affir-
mations for worship framed by John Witvliet in his excellent book Worship
Seeking Understanding.
One: All liturgical action is culturally conditioned. Witvliet writes, “Liturgi-
cal enculturation best begins with an accurate description of existing cultural
influences on liturgical celebration.”7 Simply stated, since worship will neces-
sarily involve elements of popular culture, the church must examine its worship
forms, asking how contemporary culture has influenced its worship.
Two: The relationship between liturgy and culture is theologically framed
by the biblical-theological categories of creation and incarnation. If creation
is highly valued and understood as providing the basis for human cultural
activity, then Christian cultural engagement will likewise be highly valued and
seen as containing great potential for good. Moreover, the incarnation provides
the model for the church’s involvement with culture. The church in the world
mirrors the christological pattern. Thus, if in the incarnation, God taking on
the form and identity of a creation/culture reality in Jesus facilitates the clear-
est image of who God is, then the church must recognize that popular culture
symbols have the potential for a powerful and positive place in worship.
Three: Liturgical enculturation requires theologically informed cultural
criticism of one’s own cultural context. “The goal for all thoughtful liturgists
is not simply to arrive at an apt description of culture but rather to discern how
particular cultural traits both enhance and obscure the nature and purpose of
liturgy, and how liturgical reform can capitalize on the unrealized potential of
contemporary cultural traits.”8 Here is perhaps the key element in the whole
issue of culturally shaped worship—that of culture critique. Worship leaders
need to critique the culturally generated worship forms they use, asking whether
each form enhances or degrades authentic worship. Contemporary forms must
be examined to see if they not only engage the church through commonly un-
derstandable symbols, but also if they are able to represent God and the gospel

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 The Worshipping Church Engages Culture 117

with integrity. Few people, perhaps, would question the argument that popular
cultural worship forms have the ability to engage a broad spectrum of people in
worship with instant recognizability, understanding, and commonality. People
who already identify intellectually and emotionally with contemporary music
and computer graphics will find that they are easily drawn into the worship
experience when such forms are used. This is the positive side.
But thoughtful worship leaders and theologians have recognized that there
can be a downside as well. Donald Bloesch argues that the search for more
contemporary and comfortable worship forms can lead to a focus on the self
and one’s own comfort rather than on God, given the rampant consumerist
impulses of our culture. He writes:

Worship is now a means to tap into the creative powers within us rather than an
occasion to bring before God our sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving. Hymns
that retell the story of salvation as delineated in the Bible are being supplanted
by praise choruses that are designed to transport the soul into a higher dimen-
sion of reality.9

Worship is not about a search for meaning or experience, but an acknowl-

edgment that meaning and salvation are found in God’s incomparable act
of redemption in Christ. Methodist pastor Craig Rice agrees: “As long as
the church continues to confuse the hunger for God, extant in every human
heart, with the same yearnings that drive a market culture, and a consumerist
society, its worship will remain irrelevant at best, and an outright impediment
at worst.”10 There is no question about the fact that authentic worship will
meet people’s needs. The problem occurs when worship forms are focused on
meeting people’s “felt needs.” Each week, the church is filled with people whose
felt needs have been defined for them by a consumer culture that generally
urges them to focus on self-fulfillment. As good as it is may be to be aware of
felt needs, the role of the church in worship is not to meet felt needs, but to
show people that their real needs go deeper. Can contemporary worship forms
address people’s real needs? Certainly. But in choosing only forms that are
comfortable and familiar, there is always the tendency to cater to what people
want to hear and feel, rather than confronting them with God, whose presence
is not always so comfortable. And a God made comfortable by market-driven
worship is unlikely to confront sinners with their need for repentance or a
gospel that is fundamentally about self-denial rather than self-fulfillment.
Quoting Martin Marty, Marva Dawn remarks, when worship is driven by the
market, it “draws crowds, but it is so fully adapted to the not-yet-born-again
‘that worship becomes measured by the aesthetics and experience of those
who don’t yet know why we should shudder.’”11
Four: The extremes of either complete identification with or rejection of
a given culture are to be avoided at all costs. Here, Witvliet rightly calls for a

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dialectical approach to culture and worship forms. “In sum, the twin dangers
that cultural engagement seeks to avoid are ‘cultural capitulation,’ on the one
hand, and ‘cultural irrelevancy,’ on the other. In every instance of cultural
engagement, there must be a yes and a no, a being in but not of, a continuity
and a discontinuity with accepted cultural practices.”12 Marva Dawn agrees,
suggesting that

the Christian faith has always been odd, and we must emphasize the importance
of that dialectical pole. However, when churches take this pole to the extreme—
becoming completely alien to the culture in sticking to traditions or celebrating
them in ways irrelevant to normal life—then Christians separate themselves from
the world in a sectarianism, provincialism, or esoteric gnosticism that prevents
ministry to the culture from which they remove themselves.13

Simply put, the best array of worship forms will illustrate that the church is
both embedded in culture, speaking through its constantly changing forms
in a way that reflects the God who became part of human culture, and also a
countercultural community, one that represents transcendent values and truths
that confront culture’s fallenness.
Five: Liturgical action must reflect common elements in the Christian tradi-
tion through the unique expressions of a particular cultural context. There
must be a judicious balance of particularization and universality. Geoffrey
Wainwright remarks, “While indigenization is necessary on account of the
relevance of the Christian gospel to every culture, a concomitant danger is
that this particularization may be understood in such a way as to threaten
the universal relevance of the gospel to all cultures.”14 The point is that if we
adapt the church’s worship forms too fully to the unique forms of a particular
culture or subculture, those outside of that culture who come to the church
may have no idea of the transcendent meaning of the form and will not be
able to connect it to God or the gospel. Moreover, the unchecked use of cul-
tural forms for worship runs the risk of producing a national Christianity, or
worse, a national (American) Jesus, or a Gen-X, baby-boomer, or postmodern
Jesus, with the result that the church begins to bear witness to a God made
in culture’s own image.15
A contemporary situation addressed by this struggle of particularization in
the midst of a common faith is the practice of many large churches to try to
solve worship style frustrations by opting for both a “traditional” service and
a “contemporary” service. While this may seem like an obvious solution, we
believe it is fraught with problems. To do this is necessarily to divide a local
congregation into two congregations based on the age of the worshippers—
the older worshippers attending the traditional service, and the younger at-
tending the contemporary one. Given that most American churches already
divide the other smaller church gatherings, (e.g., adult Bible classes, youth

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 The Worshipping Church Engages Culture 119

groups, etc.) on the basis of age, where then does the church come together as
a multigenerational community to worship its Lord? Where do young people
rub shoulders with grandparent types who can share with them the wisdom
gained from decades of following Jesus in a broken world? Where do older
adults engage young people, finding their own long-held faith challenged by
the energy, hopes, and piercing questions of youth? Where do young people
learn the riches of “ancient” worship symbols, and where do old Christians
learn to worship the same God in new ways, helping them to continue engaging
an ever-changing culture? Unless it comes up with other creative and effective
ways to bring the generations together, the church that chooses this silver bullet
to end the “worship wars” will do so at a significant cost.16
Six: The constituent liturgical actions of the Christian church—including
proclamation of the Word, common prayer, baptism, and Eucharist—are
among the “universal” or common factors in the Christian tradition. And
these kinds of symbols should remain universal for at least two reasons. First,
the church is not only a multicultural community, but also a historical com-
munity, one that always finds its identity in the same God revealed in Jesus
Christ. Thus, as there are theological and relational realities that unify the
church through the ages, this unity should be reflected in a consistency of
symbols. Moreover, the use of historic forms of Christian worship allows a
congregation to understand experientially that it is not merely a present com-
munity, in danger of passing away along with other fads of modernity, but is
a community in living union with believers of all time, coming to the same
table to meet the same Jesus encountered by the disciples at the last supper
two thousand years ago. The church that is obsessed with constantly reinter-
preting itself through ever-newer symbols is in danger of forgetting who it is
and why it exists. Walter Brueggemann laments,

In a stupor of amnesia, a community may think there is only “now,” and there
is only “us.” .€.€. People with amnesia are enormously open to suggestion, blind
obedience, and easy administration. These memories .€.€. [embedded in the
church’s historical forms] make one angular, odd, and incapable of assimila-
tion. It is clear that consumerism depends upon amnesia, in which “products”
are substituted for social reference points, and in time, such “consumer values”
lead to a shameless kind of brutality.17

The worldwide Jewish community, throughout centuries of exile and op-

pression, has learned that to forget a community’s past is to lose the ability
to understand who it must be in the present and future. Thus, their insistent
motto regarding the Holocaust—“Never forget!”
But some might object, “Why do we have to retain ancient forms and sym-
bols to remember who we are and who God is? Can’t we represent enduring
realities best in the language of contemporary culture?” In regard to certain

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symbols, the answer is definitely no, which leads us to the second reason to
keep certain worship forms consistent despite a changing culture—scripture
sometimes ordains not only the function, but also the form. An obvious example
is the Lord’s Supper. To a certain extent, the form is the function here. During
the early church era, the form of Eucharist was offensive to pagans, who thought
it was a kind of cannibalism. But the church was unwilling to change the form
because it was so closely connected to the message it represented. Some have
suggested that since symbols like bread and wine do not have the same mean-
ing in all cultures as they did in the ancient Middle Eastern culture, the church
should use “cultural equivalents,” that is, symbols from each culture that have
the same meaning. The problem is that cultural equivalents are never exact, and
usually not even that close in their meaning. For example, some have suggested
using rice instead of bread in Asian cultures for the Eucharist, since rice, like
bread, is the basic food source of daily life. The problem is that bread represents
much more than this in the biblical narrative. It represents the presence of God,
as illustrated by the showbread in the Temple. Also, unlike rice, the ability of
bread to be broken is of supreme importance to the image of the broken body
of Christ. Similarly, one is unlikely to find a cultural equivalent for wine, which
represents not only a basic meal drink in the biblical text, but also life, blood,
and judgment.18 Better simply to teach people the significance of the ancient
signs and preserve them intact.19

Conclusion

So then, what is the solution to the “worship wars,” to the battle over con-
temporary versus traditional worship forms? As intimated above, the answer
must lie in a dialectical approach, a yes-and-no approach to changing worship
forms along with culture. When contemporary forms draw a broad com-
munity of worshippers more effectively into authentic engagement with the
trinitarian God, yes. When they accurately represent the biblical gospel, yes.
When they present an image of God or the gospel that lacks the fullness of
or distorts the image given by historic Christian tradition and the biblical
narrative, no. When they create unmitigated separations in the local church,
no. If the biblical image of the church is multiethnic, multigenerational, and
multicultural, then the church should prize such diversities even in the midst of
their difficulties, seeking always to bring the diverse elements of its community
into unity through worship. When it comes to the challenging dialectics of
worship and cultural engagement, Marva Dawn has said it well: “The primary
key for holding the two poles of this dialectic together is education—teaching
the gifts of the faith tradition to those who do not yet know and understand
them and teaching those who love the heritage some new forms in which it
can be presented to others.”20

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 The Worshipping Church Engages Culture 121

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. How do you know when adapting worship to cultural forms has gone
too far?
2. What would be the criteria for making worship more culturally relevant
without compromising scripture?

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Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 122 3/9/09 8:03:07 AM
 7

The Church as a Sacramental Community

Sacrilege and the Sacraments

In the movie The Godfather, Michael Corleone serves as the godfather for his
sister’s baby at its baptism into the family—God’s family of the church. During
the baptism in cold water, Michael renounces evil on behalf of the child; the
scene shifts and the viewer witnesses Michael’s men simultaneously “renounc-
ing evil” by gunning down rival Mafia families in cold-blooded murder.
In a bizarre yet memorable way, this clip illustrates two points of central
importance to our discussion of the church as a sacramental community. First,
the sacraments (or ordinances) are community events whereby we participate in
God’s story and God’s family’s life. Second, the sacraments are theo-political
events whereby we renounce evil and combat the forces of darkness and bear
witness to God’s victory in the crucified and risen Christ.1
The communal and theo-political nature of the sacraments reflects the
trinitarian and kingdom reality, which governs this volume and which must
also come to govern the daily life of the American church. Unfortunately, all
too often our ultimate family and political allegiances lie elsewhere, as in the
case of the Godfather tale above; when this happens, we reduce the sacra-
ments’ significance to sacrilegious though pious symbols for rites of passage
and private parties for niche, tribal, and nationalistic factions.
In place of this reductionistic account of the sacraments, baptism and the
Lord’s Supper are communal and theo-political events that institute and con-
stitute the church as the Triune God’s family and theo-political community.

123

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 124 Exploring Ecclesiology

The church is a sacramental community; along with the Word, the sacraments
shape the church’s life and practices so that the church might experience more
fully trinitarian kingdom life, given its participation in God’s story.
At the heart of the church’s worship is the rehearsal of the Triune God’s
story of redeeming love in anticipation of the reconciliation of all things in
Christ. As briefly noted in chapter 5, through the sacraments the church not
only retells the story, but also reencounters God himself through the presence of
Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Baptism, Eucharist, and other sacred symbols
serve as “virtual realities” through which the sacred community is drawn into
the story of redemption, and thus into Christ’s presence. Sacramental worship,
then, becomes a kind of community theater in which the church experiences
the grace of God through reenacting the gospel drama. A biblical, historical,
and communal theology of the sacraments gets beyond arguments about real
presence and institutional grace, moving Christians from all traditions to an
understanding that the Triune God’s fullest expression of his presence and
grace can be known only in his eschatological community—the church.
In what follows, we attempt to recount the biblical drama, highlighting the
central significance of the sacraments in that epic story. Attention is given to
understanding the significance of the sacraments in terms of the Christian
community’s identity, purpose, and activity. Moreover, we consider how the
various traditions view Christ’s presence in relation to the sacraments, and
how the biblical drama can make sense of these diverse perspectives. Along
the way, we will address the sacraments’ significance for the church’s existence
as a communal reality and theo-political force.2

Baptism and the Supper: Rehearsing the Biblical Drama

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper rehearse the biblical drama, just as Paul re-
hearses the biblical drama through recourse to baptism and the Lord’s Sup-
per in 1€Corinthians 10 through 12. The Corinthians had forgotten where
their true allegiance lay and what their family of divine origin was, so Paul
sets out to remind them. Given over to warring factions and class divisions
(see 1€Cor. 1:10–17 and 11:17–22), as well as idolatry and immorality (1€Cor.
6:12–20 and 10:6–22), Paul recounts Israel’s story as a warning to the carnal
Corinthians. The Corinthians had made a sacrilege of the sacraments. And
so, like many among Israel’s multitudes who ate and drank of Christ, their
own bodies were being scattered over the desert wasteland of their rebellion
(see 1€Cor. 10:3–6; 11:28–32).
As in the case of the church, Israel was both God’s family and army (though
the church’s battle is not with flesh and blood, as Eph. 6:12–17 makes clear).
The exodus narrative tells us that “the Israelites [the children of Israel, the
patriarch] went up out of Egypt armed for battle” (Exod. 13:18). Their bap-

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 125

tism into Moses at the Red Sea (1€Cor. 10:2) as well as the Passover celebra-
tion served as signs of God’s judgment on all of Egypt’s gods (Exod. 12:12)
and Pharaoh and his forces (Exod. 14:13–14). As the church recounts Israel’s
story of baptism and Passover at the exodus during its own baptisms and
Paschal celebrations, it also looks forward to its ultimate deliverance before
God from the world, the flesh, and the devil at the fall of Babylon’s whore
and the dawning of the Lamb’s marriage supper (see Rev. 18 and 19). These
acts of recollection and anticipation at baptism and the Supper are themselves
virtual and vital means of storied participation. Later we will explain what
we mean by “virtual and vital means of storied participation”; for now, we
simply want to say that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are familial and theo-
political events whereby the church recollects, participates in, and anticipates
its family’s history and destiny under God’s reign.
After Israel witnessed God’s consuming of Pharaoh in the same waters in
which they had been baptized, Israel journeyed across land, eating manna (see
Exod. 16:1–22) and drinking water from the rock (see Exod. 17:1–7). Jesus
declares that the giving of the manna foreshadows him and his work as the one
who gives himself as the bread of life (John 6:30–59), and Paul claims that the
rock from which Israel drank was Christ (1€Cor. 10:4). It is quite possible that
the Lord has both images—bread from heaven and water from the rock—in
mind when he proclaims, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will
never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).
Even so, his person is ever and only the true bread and water of life because
he is the Paschal Lamb slaughtered to bring life:

I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his
blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has
eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and
my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains
in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the
Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread
that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who
feeds on this bread will live forever. (John 6:53–58)

God commanded Israel to celebrate the Passover and Feast of Unleavened

Bread as a lasting remembrance of God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt.
Only those who obeyed the Lord by sacrificing and eating a perfect lamb
and sprinkling its blood on the doorframes of the house would be spared the
destruction of the firstborn, and only those who ate unleavened bread would
remain a part of the community of Israel (see Exod. 12). So too, only those
who eat and drink of Christ will live forever (see John 6:53–58 above).3
God set apart his firstborn son as the spotless lamb of sacrifice while
sparing Isaac as well as the firstborn males of Israel on the night the Angel
of Death passed through Egypt (see Gen. 22 and Exod. 12, 13). God com-

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 126 Exploring Ecclesiology

manded Israel to remember the Passover event annually, teaching the young,
“It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the
Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians”
(Exod. 12:27). Out of Egypt, God called his son—his national son, Israel,
and his personal Son, Jesus (see Hos. 11:1; Matt. 2:15), and on the mountain
of the Lord, God provided the ram—a foresign of his one and only Son—in
the thicket for the sacrifice in place of Abraham’s one and only son (Gen.
22:13–14; John 3:16; 8:56; Heb. 12:22–24). On the mountain of the Lord,
it has been provided.
John 6 foreshadows the ultimate Passover celebration; many of Jesus’s
disciples stumble and turn away because of his words (John 6:60–61, 66),
for his words convey that he will become a bloody, dead Messiah—the bread
of life and Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. While Peter
comprehends that Jesus alone has the words of eternal life, and so does not
turn away (John 6:68–69), he cannot fathom how these things could happen
to God’s Anointed One. Only on the night of the “final” Passover celebration
itself does the horror of it all begin to dawn.
Interestingly enough, John’s Gospel does not give an account of the institu-
tion of the Lord’s Supper, only references to the dinner as well as a discussion
of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. We find the institution of the Lord’s Supper
in Luke’s Gospel. As Rabbi and head of his family made up of his disciples,
Jesus recounts Israel’s history that evening, in accordance with the custom
instituted by God in Exodus. When he comes to the breaking of unleavened
bread and discussion of the Passover lamb, the Lord startles his disciples by
interjecting lines not in the official script (but certainly between the lines of
the Old Testament text). Here are those lines: “And he took bread, gave thanks
and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you: do
this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after the supper he took the
cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out
for you’” (Luke 22:19–20).
A few verses earlier the Lord tells his disciples: “I have eagerly desired to eat
this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until
it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:15–16). Here the Lord
is referring to his return and the marriage supper of the Lamb at the close of
this age and the dawning of the next. The Lord himself eagerly awaits that
day, just as Paul longed for that day’s appearance. And whenever the church
celebrates the Lord’s Supper, God’s people proclaim the Lord’s death until he
comes, as Paul instructs the Corinthians (1€Cor. 11:26).
Until Christ returns and raises us to new life, we participate in his suffer-
ings and death here on earth. While passing through the baptismal waters and
drinking from the cup of life, we also experience the sufferings and death of
our Lord. For these are all parts of the same story. Thus, we are baptized with
his baptism and drink from his cup (Mark 10:38–39). While we do not die for

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 127

our sins—Christ’s work alone accomplishes atonement—we die because of

our sins and the sins of the world. We must die to ourselves and to the world
and its passions, which wage war against the Spirit, if we are to enter into
the fullness of life.
Between Pentecost and the marriage supper, the church endures tribulation
at the hands of Egypt-Babylon-Rome. While the church will be spared from
God’s outpouring of wrath on the fallen principalities and powers at the height
of the apocalypse at the end of the age (God’s mark will be on our foreheads
just as the blood was on Israel’s doorposts), the church will experience op-
pression at the hands of those powers as those powers themselves endure the
“plagues of Egypt.” The same Lord who baptizes with the Holy Spirit also
baptizes with fire (Luke 3:16–17).
John the Baptist learned firsthand what it meant to identify with Jesus in
his baptism and by proclaiming the baptism with fire. Upon telling the people,
“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork
is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his
barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire,” the text tells us
that Herod put John in prison (and later at the plotting of his wife had him
executed) for rebuking him for all the evil he had done (Luke 3:16–20).
Just as John identified with Jesus, Jesus identifies with us by undergoing the
baptism of John (Luke 3:21). John’s baptism was one of repentance, and Jesus
underwent it (over against the protests of John [Matt. 3:14]) to fulfill all righ-
teousness (Matt. 3:15) and so begin the process of recapitulating all things. Mat-
thew, Mark, and Luke offer accounts of Jesus’s baptism (Matt. 3:13–17; Mark
1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22), and John’s Gospel alludes to it (see John 1:26–34).
After Jesus’s baptism (at which time the Spirit descends upon him), Jesus
is led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (see Matt. 4:1–11; Mark
1:12–13; and Luke 4:1–13). It is striking that—once again—all three Synoptic
Gospels include accounts of Christ’s temptation. And just as all three bear wit-
ness to the Spirit having descended on Christ at his baptism, all three indicate
that the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. Luke tells us that
after the temptation Jesus began his public ministry in the power of the Spirit,
at which time he proclaimed the coming of the messianic age (which would
appear with the Spirit’s anointing of the Messiah; see Luke 4:16–21). As we
are baptized into Christ through the Spirit, we participate in the messianic
age and wage war with those forces that belong to the age that is passing away
(regarding the passing away of this world, see 1€John 2:15–17).
Fourth-century theologian Cyril of Jerusalem rehearses the biblical drama
in his Lectures on the Christian Sacraments. Here is what Cyril says of the
Old Testament typology pertaining to baptism:

Now turn from the ancient to the recent, from the figure to the reality. There we
have Moses sent from God to Egypt; here, Christ, sent by His Father into the

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 128 Exploring Ecclesiology

world: there, that Moses might lead forth an oppressed people out of Egypt;
here, that Christ might rescue mankind who are whelmed under sins: there,
the blood of a lamb was the spell against the destroyer; here, the blood of the
unblemished Lamb Jesus Christ is made the charm to scare evil spirits: there,
the tyrant pursued even to the sea that ancient people; and in like manner this
daring and shameless spirit, the author of evil, followed thee, even to the very
streams of salvation. The tyrant of old was drowned in the sea; and this present
one disappears in the salutary water.4

Those preparing for baptism (catechumens) were to renounce the tyrant

Satan, his works, pomp, and service, before entering the baptismal waters.5
Upon entering the waters, the garments of their old humanity were put off,
and they were not permitted to put these garments—the lustful desires of the
flesh—on again; for the powers of the enemy had made their abode in fallen
flesh. These new believers were to triumph over the powers of the enemy by
renouncing their fallen passions, just as Christ exposed and conquered the
fallen principalities and powers through his nakedness and shameful suffering
on the cross.6 Early catechumens shed old clothing into nakedness and, ris-
ing from the baptismal waters, were clothed in the new garments of Christ.
Regarding the “old man,” Cyril writes,

May no soul which has once put him off, again put him on, but say with the
Spouse of Christ in the Song of Songs, I have put off my coat, how shall I put it
on? O wondrous thing! Ye were naked in the sight of all, and were not ashamed;
for truly ye bore the likeness of the first-formed Adam, who was naked in the
garden, and was not ashamed.7

For Cyril, baptism conveys remission of sins and adoption into God’s
family. It also signifies participation in Christ’s suffering. Cyril believed bap-
tism to be salvific.8 The sole alternative for Cyril was the baptism of blood
martyrdom.9
Cyril no doubt saw a connection between renouncing Satan’s works and
pomp and the Roman system, for the orthodox church that he served experienced
periodic repression; it had been a long time since the church was recognized as
having official religious status in the Roman system (albeit through Judaism).
In the book of Revelation, written near the end of the first century, John was
only twenty years removed from the sacking of Jerusalem; the belief that Christ
would return soon was still a pressing conviction for many. By the time of Cyril,
however, the church’s theo-political concerns had become spiritualized; there was
no real possibility of the church being viewed as a theo-political force demand-
ing serious attention. Today, however, the American evangelical church wields
great power and must recall that God’s power is displayed ultimately through
the weakness of the cross and ensuing resurrection, not by lobbying Washington
and forming allegiances with those from reigning political parties.

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 129

John’s Apocalypse is a very political book, but one in which the church of
Christ’s kingdom triumphs through weakness—not by trying to take matters
into its own hands by a show of force, but by looking to God to redeem his
people. When the church abandons a strategy of power through the weak-
ness of the cross for power over weakness, it inadvertently sets itself up as a
pseudo-state and rival to Christ’s kingdom. Alternatively, when the church sees
Christ’s kingdom as otherworldly and/or completely future, it inadvertently
creates a vacuum whereby “rival” kingdoms can flourish, competing for the
church’s ultimate allegiance; a church that takes matters into its own hands
and a church that remains silent both fail to bear witness to Christ’s eternal
kingdom in the here and now.
While Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, it does put a check on this
world’s powers. The throne-room scene in which the Lion who is a Lamb
triumphs (Rev. 5), the martyrs under the altar who dwell in the shadow of the
Almighty (Rev. 6), and the destruction of Babylon’s whore and the marriage
supper of the Lamb (Rev. 18 and 19) all bear witness to the fact that Rome’s
rule by retribution will not endure.
Like the book of Revelation, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are theo-
political in nature. As already suggested, they are also communal events. John
calls on his churches (not simply on individuals) in Asia Minor to overcome
the fallen powers in the present in view of the kingdom that will one day
come in its fullness with the dawning of the new heavens and earth. John’s
people can rejoice in the fact that, as they bear the mark of the Lamb (Rev. 7:3;
14:1)—just as Jewish homes in Egypt bore the mark of spotless lambs on their
doorposts—God will spare them from the wrathful plagues that will consume
their enemies, and will lead his people forward to feast at his table in the Prom-
ised Land (Rev. 19). The God who will dwell in their midst, tabernacling among
his people (Rev. 21:2–3), gives them the strength to persevere and to overcome
as they recollect what God in Christ has done for them, as they participate in
God in Christ through the Spirit, and as they anticipate Christ’s return, led
forward by the Spirit (Rev. 22:17)—until that day when faith becomes sight.
The scriptures and the sacraments’ theo-political and communal significance is
bound up with the reconfiguration and transformation of our time and space
as God’s people come together to recollect, participate in, and anticipate the
one who was and is and is to come. This all-encompassing sacred story and
its symbols confirm the church in its identity, purpose, and activity.

The Sacred Story and Symbols’ Significance for Identity, Purpose,

and€Activity

Through the ages, the sacred story and its symbols have served to confirm God’s
kingdom community in its shared sense of identity, purpose, and activity. It

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 130 Exploring Ecclesiology

is little wonder that Word and sacrament always go together. Such confirma-
tion of identity, purpose, and activity is bound up with the reconfiguration of
the spatial-temporal sphere, whereby God reconstitutes our lives so that they
become part of God’s overarching story of salvation history through Word
and sacrament. The sacred story reshapes our sense of time, and the sacred
symbols reshape our sense of space. No longer should we look at going to
church as making space and time for God, but as God making space and time
for us. The church is God’s communal meeting place whereby we reenact the
particular history of Israel’s Christ—the story for all times—through Word
and sacrament. When God’s kingdom community fails to rehearse the sacred
story with its symbols, God’s people lose sight of who they are and what they
are called to be and to do.
Israel was a community that lived between exodus, exile, and return, whose
sense of identity, purpose, and activity was bound up with rehearsing its story
while practicing the sacred rites. The church is a community that lives between
exodus, exile, and return—deliverance and captivity, and whose own identity,
purpose, and activity are bound up with rehearsing its story while practicing
the sacred rites. Without this awareness and conviction, the church is easily
reduced to being a voluntary association of religious, pious individuals whose
true allegiance lies elsewhere—namely, with such fallen principalities as the
state or the market.
The rehearsing of the biblical story and the remembrance of Christ in the
Lord’s Supper and baptism bear witness to Christ’s victory over the fallen
principalities and powers, which make it their ambition to separate people
from God and people groups from one another. These fallen powers operate
based on the age-old strategy of “divide and conquer.” They trick the church
into living a divided life—keeping it impotent. The movie Romero reveals that
the late Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador determined to baptize the
infants of the aristocracy, often of Spanish descent, with the infants of the
indigenous peasants, incensing the former.
William Cavanaugh claims that Romero also determined to bring the rich
and poor together to celebrate the mass. Again, the former group was incensed.
Cavanaugh claims that in spite of their protest, Romero drew sustenance and
strength from the Eucharist and resolved “to collapse the spatial barriers sepa-
rating the rich and the poor.” Romero did this “not by surveying the expanse
of the Church and declaring it universal and united, but by gathering the
faithful in one particular location around the altar, and realizing the heavenly
Catholica in one place, at one moment, on earth.”10 Romero understood well
that the sacrament serves to reconfigure our sense of space. Together with
Romero’s protest of the fallen powers for oppressing the masses and taking
their property and killing them, and his efforts in creating solidarity among
the masses by celebrating the Eucharist, it is little wonder that the fallen pow-
ers had him shot to death while he performed the mass.

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 131

Christ is present to his community in a special way in the celebration of

the sacraments. Without a vital sense of his vital presence through faith in the
Word of promise and sacramental participation, the church would not endure
assaults on its identity, purpose, and activity. Christ’s church would become
faint of heart and lose the courage and strength to confront those societal
forces that weigh against the church—seeking to reduce Christ’s kingdom
community to a voluntary association of religious individuals whose true
identity lies elsewhere.
The real presence of Christ in the sacraments strengthened Romero and his
little flock in El Salvador. The real presence of Christ in the sacraments will
also strengthen Christ’s little flock in our midst today in North America in the
face of the empire that will surely strike back for not knowing our proper place
as a ghettoized community of privatized and individualized affections.
Colonizing governmental and market forces have no trouble with Christian
communities coming together; but they would be greatly troubled if such com-
munities were to conceive of their religious symbols as conveying more than
pious sentiment, having theo-political, communal significance that calls into
question the liberalizing and individualizing forces of the state. For strength
is found in numbers, not in isolation. With this in mind, the scriptures and
the sacraments’ strategic role and placement in the sanctuary and worship
celebration serve as effective symbols of protest to what Stanley Hauerwas
calls the modern devaluation of religious communities to “arbitrary institu-
tions sustained by the private desires of individuals.”11
Romero’s baptismal and eucharistic assembly counters this modern trend,
signifying that the church is by no means an arbitrary institution, but a critical
kingdom witness sustained by God’s very public desires concretized in commu-
nal practices centered in Christian scripture and the sacraments. Over against
those liberalizing and individualizing forces that would keep the church from
realizing how potent and profound its sacred text and symbols are, scripture
urges God’s people not to stop meeting together as some are in the habit of
doing, but to encourage one another as they see that day approaching when
they will enter into the Promised Land with all God’s people throughout the
ages (Heb. 10:24–25; 11:39–40). Through Christ the sacrificial lamb and great
high priest, God’s people have been called to ascend—even now—Mount
Zion, which is in the Promised Land (Heb. 12:22–24). The result of such
remembrance and rehearsal will no doubt bring about the shedding of their
own blood in some instances and the confiscation of property and imprison-
ment in other instances but will also give way to eternal life in all instances
(see Heb. 10:32–39). Such hope sustains and transforms the community, as
God’s people live now in light of what will be.
Churches fall prey to liberalism’s devaluing and reducing of Christ’s church
to “arbitrary institutions sustained by the private desires of individuals” when
they fail to rehearse the gospel story and/or reconfigure sacred space around

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 132 Exploring Ecclesiology

the sacraments. One instance of this failure resulted from the eclipse of biblical
narrative beginning in the modern period. Hans Frei’s The Eclipse of Biblical
Narrative chronicles this.12 Modern attempts to justify scripture’s legitimacy
as fundamentally a textbook for gleaning doctrinal truths (fundamentalist-
evangelicalism), exemplifying moral and philosophical ideals (liberalism), and
demonstrating relevance for practical living (seeker-sensitive Christianity) fail
to register that the Bible is the paradigmatic story and that it envelops ours.
The ancient and medieval perspective that God’s story is all-encompassing is
profound and life-giving; once we make the shift in our thinking from trying
to find a place for God in our lives—carving out a place for his story in our
faith journey—we find that God has actually made us participants in the story,
which constitutes reality and makes our lives relevant and worth living.
Another instance of the failure to rehearse the gospel story and/or reconfig-
ure sacred space around the sacraments resulted from the neutralizing of sacred
space in the 1980s for the purpose of making seekers feel more comfortable.
The neutralizing of sacred space involved the removal of crosses and other
specifically Christian symbols from places of prominence in church sanctuaries
and centers of worship. Now some will argue that while such neutralizing of
sacred space was appropriate at the time, given seekers’ wariness of sacred
symbolism in the modern world, the reemergence of sacred symbolism among
postmodern seekers today makes it necessary to bring back sacred space.13 In
contrast, we would argue that such a pragmatic perspective (one that suggests
that it is all right for churches to neutralize or revitalize sacred space based on
the type of seeker it targets) fails to comprehend that religious symbols are
not ornamental window dressings but constitutive signs of the eschatological
kingdom’s presence in our midst. If indeed “the medium is the message,” the
theo-political kingdom community’s message has been lost with the neutral-
izing of the sacred medium and is by no means rediscovered if “postmodern”
churches revitalize space as sacred simply to infuse their worship services with
a certain mystical ambiance.
God’s eschatological kingdom community—when faithful to God’s call-
ing—seeks to break down divisions between rival groups, including Jews and
Gentiles, males and females, slaves and free, through reenactment of the scrip-
tures through such practices as table fellowship. The Lord’s Supper summons
people from various demographics to sit down together, calling for the eradica-
tion of barriers of hostility between various groups within the church.
How unfortunate when coffee bars overshadow or displace the Lord’s Sup-
per in churches today. Those who gather together for a coffee at Starbucks are
most often friends or “affinity groups,” who together often represent a narrowly
defined demographic. Moreover, a coffee at Starbucks often conveys leisure
and expendable income on the one hand and the not-so-leisurely competitive
nature of the free market trade enterprise on the local, regional, national, and
global levels. The presence of a Starbucks-like coffee bar in a church certainly

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 133

sends mixed signals, for its niche, leisurely, and competitive free market ambi-
ance and impulses influence and neutralize the church’s own communal and
theo-political identity, purpose, and activity. The medium is the message, or
at least inseparably related to it.
While people go to Starbucks to drink coffee and hang out with their friends,
God’s people often fail to recognize the corporate significance of baptism and
the Lord’s Supper. Instead, they conceive these sacred practices in very personal
and individualistic terms, looking to the sacraments to sustain them in their
cultivation of their individual, personal relationship with Jesus. American evan-
gelicals have tended to make the communion event “a me and Jesus moment”
where we take communion in isolation in the privacy of our pews or chairs
with eyes closed. One of us grew up Lutheran, and looks back with profound
appreciation for having had to go up with others to the communion rail, kneel-
ing with outstretched arm and hand before the table to take communion with
others, including the sick, the elderly, and the rich and poor alike.
How is it that we have turned the event of communion into a form of isola-
tion? If we were to take seriously its theological import, we would realize that
communion can never be taken in isolation. While one could choose to drink
a latte in isolation, one can never do so in the case of the Lord’s Supper. Even
the elderly person confined to a bed at home does not take communion in
isolation. One of our students is a lay leader in a Lutheran church; whenever
the pastor goes to the home of a bedridden person to administer the sacrament,
the pastor offers bread from the same loaf and wine from the same cup from
which the congregation has eaten and has drunk. Even the bedridden person
partakes of the whole Christ with the whole community. In eating from the
one loaf and drinking from the one cup, the community partakes of Christ,
and through Christ God’s people commune with one another in the Spirit.
Over against the neutralizing tendencies noted above, we need to return
to a premodern conception of sacred space, where we actually see ourselves
as participating in the signs and symbols themselves, and where the church is
viewed as a microcosm of the entire universe. To enter into the church is to
enter into God’s universe. The Eastern church father Maximus the Confes-
sor speaks of the church as an image of the visible and invisible universe, a
microcosm, which is “not divided in kind by the differentiation of its parts.”
Distinct spaces that make up the interior of the church building, such as the
nave and sanctuary, function as sections of the entire church.14 In like man-
ner, the immaterial and material dimensions of reality are distinct though
inseparably related, as Maximus reflects:

The wise thus glimpse the universe of things brought into existence by God’s
creation, divided between the spiritual world, containing incorporeal intelligent
substances, and this corporeal world, the object of sense (so marvelously woven
together from many natures and kinds of things) as if they were all another

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 134 Exploring Ecclesiology

Church, not built by hands, but suggested by the ones we build; its sanctuary is
the world above, allotted to the powers above, its nave the world below, assigned
to those whose lot it is to live in the senses.15

Martin Luther King Jr. also views the church as a microcosm. Its structure
reflects God’s universal restructuring of creaturely reality and redemptive
purposes. In King’s “Afro-Baptist sacred cosmos,” one perceives the divinely
determined hierarchy that “acts as a critique of every human law and institu-
tion.”16 In King’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, God’s power is
centered in the imposing pulpit and Bible. A humble communion table stands
before the pulpit, and saint and sinner are seated in front of the table. One’s
seat in the church reflects one’s status in the congregation. The pulpit looms
over the congregation, with the pastor’s throne just behind it. The choir sits
behind the pulpit and throne, with the choir representing the angelic host,
scaling upward toward the heavens. A cross hangs above and behind the choir,
and a portrayal of Jesus on “colored glass” rises above the cross.17

The preacher occupies a place in the hierarchy of the divine cosmos as the one
who is authorized to proclaim God’s lordship over other powers. Because the
preacher has been called directly by God, he also has a privileged perch outside
the hierarchy as the one who can “see” how God’s purposes are unfolding in
the whole world.18

King would later view the church—this “Afro-Baptist sacred cosmos”—as

the ark of the covenant, which he would take with him in his civil rights
campaigns.19 “Ebenezer’s worship (and worship space) not only built a world
for Negro survival but institutionalized a permanent critique of a world in
which survival is all one can hope for.”20 Sacred space can serve as a prophetic
witness against the fallen principalities and powers as a visible sign of God’s
eschatological kingdom.
Cyril of Jerusalem certainly viewed sacred space as just such a prophetic
witness and visible sign. In his discussion of baptism, he writes:

First, ye entered into the outer hall of the Baptistery, and there facing towards the
West, ye heard the command to stretch forth your hand, and as in the presence of
Satan ye renounced him. Now ye must know that this figure is found in ancient
history. For when Pharaoh, that most cruel and ruthless tyrant, oppressed the
free and high-born people of the Hebrews, God sent Moses to bring them out
of the evil thraldom of the Egyptians. Then the door-posts were anointed with
the blood of the lamb, that the destroyer might flee from the houses which had
the sign of the blood; and the Hebrew people was marvelously delivered. The
enemy, however, after their rescue, pursued them, and saw the sea wondrously
parted for them; nevertheless he went on, following in their footsteps, and was
all at once overwhelmed and engulfed in the Red Sea.21

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 135

Cyril later explains that the reason the catechumen, during the baptismal
rite, faces west to renounce Satan is that “the West is the region of sensible
darkness, and he being darkness, has his dominion also in darkness.” And so,
“ye, therefore, looking with a symbolical meaning towards the West, renounce
that dark and gloomy potentate.”22
Upon renouncing Satan while facing west in the outer chamber, “there is
opened to thee the paradise of God, which He planted towards the east, whence
for his transgression our first father was exiled; and symbolical of this was thy
turning from the west to the east, the place of light.”23 While Satan is associated
with the west and darkness, Christ—the morning star—is associated with the
east and light. Entering into the inner chamber, the initiate undresses, is anointed
with exorcized oil, and is “led to the holy pool of Divine Baptism, as Christ was
carried from the Cross to the Sepulchre.” Upon confessing faith in the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, the initiate descends into the water and ascends from the water
three times, “covertly pointing by a figure as the three-days burial of Christ.”24
Cyril claims that while the new believer does not literally die, is not literally
buried, does not literally rise again—“the imitation” being a figure—the “salva-
tion is in reality.”25 “Imitation” here should not be taken to mean “unreal.” Given
the ancient emphasis on symbol, the believer enters through the virtuality of the
symbol of baptism into the actual experience of Christ’s passion, death, and
resurrection life. As stated at the outset of this chapter, baptism, the Eucharist,
and other sacred symbols serve as “virtual realities” through which the sacred
community is drawn into the story of redemption and thus into Christ’s pres-
ence. As we have indicated, sacramental worship becomes a kind of community
theater in which the church experiences the grace of God through reenacting
the gospel drama in space and time. Such reenactment reconfigures our sense of
identity, purpose, and activity. In this drama we die to the unreality of sin—the
world, flesh, and devil—and live to God’s reality of righteousness made possible
through Christ’s atoning work in the power of the Spirit.
Discussion of “imitation,” “virtual reality,” and “Christ’s presence” require
further exploration. These and similar terms go to the heart of the historic
debate over “real presence” in the sacraments—one that arose with Luther’s
attack on the Roman Catholic Church’s view of the sacraments in The Baby-
lonian Captivity of the Church. For the sake of ecumenical dialogue as well
as Christian experience, it is important to understand the basic categories and
terms of this debate in order to get past the age-old divide in search of more
profound communion.

“The Babylonian Captivity” Revisited: The Real Problem of Real Presence

Martin Luther’s historic treatise, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church,

was an attack on the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine of the sacraments.

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 136 Exploring Ecclesiology

The most significant and far-reaching aspect of his critique was his discussion
of the Eucharist. Outraged over what he saw as the Roman Catholic Church
hierarchy’s apparent belittling of God’s sovereign purposes, and holding people
captive, keeping them from experiencing Christ, Luther claimed that the priest
has no power to make the Eucharist effectual to the recipient. Thus, the sac-
rament does not operate by a power from within itself (ex opere operato).
Rather, it is effectual only by faith, which is itself the gift of God. As Luther
says, “Nothing else is needed for a worthy holding of mass than a faith that
relies confidently on this promise, believes Christ to be true in these words
of his [Christ’s words of institution at the Last Supper], and does not doubt
that these infinite blessings have been bestowed upon it.”26
Luther also challenged the teaching that Christ is sacrificed at the celebra-
tion of the mass. It is important to pause and note that contrary to popular
Protestant opinion, official Roman Catholic teaching denies that Christ is,
in the mass, sacrificed time and time again. According to The Catechism of
the Catholic Church, “The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents
(makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and be-
cause it applies its fruit.”27 This making present of the once-for-all sacrifice is
called anamnesis.28 The Roman Catholic Church also claims that “the sacrifice
of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice.”29 Even
though Protestants often misunderstand official Catholic teaching, there was
no misunderstanding the import of Luther’s challenge to the Catholic doctrine
of the mass as sacrifice; Luther called into question the indispensability (and
thus the societal power) of the Catholic institution as a medium of grace.30
Luther rejected the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation,31 which the
Council of Trent summarizes as follows: “By the consecration of the bread and
wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the
substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the
wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church
has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.”32 Luther’s own view is
often mistakenly termed consubstantiation (a medieval teaching that claimed
that Christ is locally present to the elements).33 Rather, Luther has been quoted
as saying that the body and blood of Christ is truly present “in, with, and
under” the elements of bread and wine in a mysterious and nonlocal manner.
As stated at the Marburg Colloquy in conversation with the Swiss, “Christ
is truly present, that is substantively, essentially, though not quantitatively,
qualitatively, or locally.”34
The Marburg Colloquy (1529) brought together various Protestant leaders,
including Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Bucer, and Oekolampadius. While
Zwingli is often thought to claim that the Lord’s Supper is merely a memorial,
here he advanced the view that Christ is spiritually present. For his own part,
Luther maintained that however Christ is physically present, his presence is
of no benefit apart from faith. Perhaps the chief difference between the two

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 137

Reformers was that Luther claimed that Christ is physically present, and
Zwingli held that Christ is only spiritually present.
Beyond Marburg, the debate between followers of Luther and Calvin over the
real presence of Christ relates to the communion of natures in Christ’s person.
Whereas the Lutheran tradition maintains that Christ’s human nature relates
directly to the divine nature in Christ’s person—and so participates in the divine
attributes such as omnipresence, the Calvinists maintain that Christ’s human
nature relates indirectly to the divine nature through Christ’s person. Given
this claim, the Reformed argue that the human nature does not participate in
the divine nature and its attributes, such as omnipresence. Thus, whereas the
Lutherans maintain that Christ’s human nature is present everywhere (though
not locally) that he chooses to make himself known, the Reformed maintain
that Christ’s human nature is located in heaven, where Christ is seated at the
right hand of God.35 While those following Calvin emphasize that Christ is
truly present to the believer in the sacrament, it is the Spirit who makes Christ
in his humanity present by lifting our hearts to heaven (sursum corda) to the
place where the God-Man is seated at the right hand of God.36
While all Protestant traditions maintain that faith must be present for
the sacrament to be efficacious, the Baptist heritage does not share Luther’s,
Zwingli’s, and Calvin’s conviction that Christ is really present at the sacra-
ment. Rather, the Lord’s Supper is an ordinance and a memorial. That is, the
Lord’s Supper is not a sacrament whereby the grace of Christ’s presence is
mediated to the believer at the table; moreover, from the Baptist perspective,
the Supper functions exclusively as a memorial—a time to recall what Christ
has done for us.37
We certainly share our Baptist brothers and sisters’ view that we do indeed
recall what Christ has done for us in his atoning work when we gather at the
table. This notion is profoundly biblical and existentially significant. The
Lord himself said that whenever we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we are to
celebrate in remembrance of him (1€Cor. 11:24–25). However, scripture also
teaches that we participate in Christ at the table (1€Cor. 10:14–22), as well
as anticipate his coming when we gather there (Luke 22:14–18).38 Thus, the
church is called to approach the table from a heart and mind-set of recollec-
tion, participation, and anticipation on account of the Lord Jesus, who was,
and is, and is to come.
As we recollect Christ’s work at the table, the ascended Christ presents
himself to us in the power of the Spirit and quickens within us a sense of
anticipation as the day draws near for his return. While the elements of bread
and wine have no sacramental significance in and of themselves, their proxim-
ity to Christ at the table celebration makes them significant. In his rebuke of
the Corinthian church for taking part in pagan feasts, Paul says that the food
offered to idols and the idols themselves are nothing; nonetheless, the food
and idols participate in the presence of the demons to which they are offered

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 138 Exploring Ecclesiology

and which they signify. Paul warns the Corinthians against participating with
demons at these feasts, especially as these same Corinthians participate with
Christ at his feast as his followers. One cannot participate in both celebrations
without arousing the Lord’s jealousy and judgment (see 1€Cor. 10:18–22). As
Paul will say in the next chapter, many of them have become sick and have
fallen asleep for eating and drinking at the table in an unworthy manner
(1€Cor. 11:27–32). The Lord is present at the table to bless and to judge those
who participate in his presence.
The conviction that we participate in Christ’s presence at the table is a
radical notion; we dare not take access to the table lightly. While the classic
Protestant critique of the Roman Catholic Church’s theology and practices
concerning the Eucharist was radical in its historic context, the claim that
Christ is present at each celebration of the table never ceases to be radical: the
Lord himself is present at the table, ever near. Thus, in place of the typical
evangelical mantra that we should not celebrate the Lord’s Supper often, so
that it does not become rote (often bound up with a memorialist perspective),
we would argue that Christ presenting himself time and time again—not as a
corpse but as the one who was dead but who is alive forevermore—can never
get old. It is ever new. The problem with Christian worship—including the
proclamation of scripture, prayer, and celebration of the Supper—becoming
rote stems not from the sacred and radical practices of rehearsing the bibli-
cal drama through Word and sacrament themselves, but from God’s people’s
calloused hearts and dull minds.39
Equally radical is the Radical Reformation’s emphasis on community life.
While we disagree with our Anabaptist friends, who often do not place the
same amount of importance on celebrating the Lord’s Supper as other tradi-
tions do, we admire their commitment to community life. There is something
to be said for their view that each and every daily meal should be a profoundly
spiritual experience. Moreover, those belonging to the Quaker tradition claim
that every meal is a Lord’s Supper. They also believe that all of life is sacramen-
tal, and that membership in Christ’s body requires an inner transformation
of the whole of one’s life, not observance of an external rite such as baptism
or the Eucharistic celebration.40
Quakers aspire to a very integrative spirituality. We share their aspiration
for an integrative spirituality. Thus, while we believe that there is a qualitative
distinction between celebration of the Lord’s Table and all other occasions
for table fellowship—for the Lord’s Supper was celebrated as the fulfillment
of the Passover celebration—this ultimate meal should shape our Christian
existence and community life profoundly, including other forms of table fellow-
ship. Many within the Radical Reformation and Quaker traditions often have
a more profound sense of community life than those from other traditions;
perhaps this is because they see the church as a remnant community and thus
are more attentive than most to attempts to reduce the church to a voluntary

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 139

association of pious individuals whose true allegiance belongs to promoting the

state and/or market’s well-being—a modern form of Babylonian captivity.
All too often, Christians celebrate the Lord’s Supper in a private and indi-
vidualistic manner, reflecting only upon their relations with God, failing to
account for one another as members of Christ’s countercultural kingdom com-
munity of the new humanity. Adapting Anabaptist theologian John Howard
Yoder’s claim that Jesus is the head of the church, which is “a community of
consumption,”41 the church’s practices such as table fellowship bear witness
to the identity, purpose, and activity of the new humanity, where race, class,
and gender divisions are consumed. Again, to commandeer Yoder’s words:

The very existence of the church is [the church’s] primary task. It is in itself a
proclamation of the lordship of Christ to the powers from whose dominion the
church has begun to be liberated€.€. . The Church must be a sample of the kind of
humanity within which .€.€. economic and racial differences are surmounted.42

The church—and communion within it—is a foretaste of the eschatological

kingdom’s transformation of creaturely life. Such a view of the church is
radical and reflects a radical conception of its practices, including the Lord’s
Supper and table fellowship generally. The significance appointed to Chris-
tian table fellowship also reflects a priestly conception of the entire Christian
community—all believers are priests. Here they are taking forward one of
the most profound claims of the Protestant Reformation—the priesthood of
all believers.
In light of the preceding point, it is worth returning to Luther’s debate with
the Catholics over the Eucharist. Luther rejected the practice that only the
ordained priest—and none of the laity—could drink from the cup.43 While the
Catholic Church maintained that Christ addressed his words, “Drink you all
of it,” to his apostles, Luther retorted that all believers are priests.44 Luther’s
call for taking back the captive cup from the trophy case in Babylonian Rome
was ultimately a call for freeing the captive Christian from a Christian caste or
class system where those of the cloth belong to a higher Christian class. This
claim was considered radical in Luther’s day, not unlike his view of translat-
ing the Bible into the language of the common people. Such radicalism had
led to the disinterring and burning of pre-Reformation figure John Wycliffe’s
body and the burning of John Huss.
While Luther’s views of the Eucharist were radical in his day, his views
concerning baptism were conservative. While his doctrine of the Eucharist led
him in the direction of congregationalism (the church is made up of believ-
ers only), his doctrine of baptism led him in the direction of the state church
(the church is in an alliance with the state; thus, all citizens are baptized
into the church). For this reason, Roland Bainton terms it “the sociological
sacrament.”45 Luther’s doctrine of the sacraments shaped his doctrine of the

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 140 Exploring Ecclesiology

church, and the church’s relation to society at large,46 just as his doctrine of
justification by faith shaped his view of the sacraments.47
As Protestant evangelicals following the basic lines of Luther’s thought, we
wish to stress the personal nature of salvation. Salvation comes by faith. Yet
given our ecumenical conviction that God is at work in the various Christian
traditions, we wish to highlight the significance of faith without wishing to
undermine the manifold ways in which the various traditions understand the
mode of salvation by faith’s reception. Thus, while we do not believe that
people are saved by water baptism, we do believe that people who think their
water baptism is instrumental to their salvation are saved in the same way
that others are—by trusting in God’s promise to save them through Christ.
Faith itself, on our view, is the gift of God’s grace granted to us in Christ by
the Holy Spirit.
Moreover, while we do not believe that water baptism as such saves, we do
believe that God uses creaturely means for bearing witness to himself, and to
serve as symbols that participate in the salvation event. God himself became
human to save us. We do not worship Christ’s humanity, but the God who
became human; the God who became human saves us, not Christ’s humanity
as such. While water from the spring, bread from wheat, and wine from the
vine do not save us, they function as participatory signs of God’s recapitulat-
ing work whereby God heals the creation and uses the creation to serve as a
healing balm for humanity.
Advocates of water-baptismal regeneration will no doubt draw attention to
Acts 2:38 in response, where Peter talks of the need to repent and be baptized
to receive forgiveness for sin and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. However,
in Acts 4:4, there is no mention of baptism when it speaks of people believing
and being added to the church. In Acts 10, Cornelius and his household receive
the Holy Spirit before being baptized with water (Acts 10:44–48). While we
cannot say that water baptism is regenerative, we must say that it is critical for
people to be baptized with water. For one, it plays a symbolically significant
role in bearing witness to the biblical drama of salvation beginning with the
exodus. Moreover, it is a visible sign of an inner reality—baptism of the Holy
Spirit. The Bible always closely correlates spiritual and creaturely dynamics
(note the use of water-like imagery to describe the new birth in Titus 3:5),
even while at times distinguishing them (Jesus draws from the new covenant
language of Ezekiel 36 when explaining the new birth by water and the Spirit
to Nicodemus in John 3, while also remarking that flesh gives birth to flesh
and the Spirit to spirit). Lastly, water baptism is critical to one’s corporate
identification with the visible church, as can be seen in passages already men-
tioned (Acts 2:41; 10:45–48). This all harkens back to the exodus event where
the people of Israel passed through the Red Sea, emerging out of it as the
people of God. Similarly, as the people of God passed through the Jordan
River, they became the people of God in God’s Promised Land. So, passing

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 141

through water is always an illustration of entering into God’s community in

God’s sacred space. Against this backdrop, water baptism signifies the con-
ception of Christian communal life. Similarly, the Lord’s Supper pertains to
the cultivation of that life, just as was true of the Passover celebration in the
Hebrew Scriptures.
There are various views of the significance of water baptism. Catholics
and Lutherans see water baptism as regenerative (as in the case of an infant
who is baptized). The Reformed tradition views water baptism as signify-
ing entrance into God’s covenantal community, though without it serving
as regenerative (thus, a baptized infant is viewed as a participant in God’s
covenantal community; as the child grows and becomes cognizant of the
gospel, the individual in question is urged to believe, participating fully in the
covenant community). Baptists hold that water baptism is a public testimony
to an internal reality that has already happened (in this case, only believing
individuals are baptized).
On our view, water baptism does not regenerate anyone. However, baptism
by water serves as a participatory sign in salvation history, functioning as a
creaturely pointer to God’s saving actions in our lives. We also maintain that
believer baptism makes best sense of scripture’s teaching on baptism (although
the New Testament teaches that whole households such as that of Lydia as
well as the jailer in Philippi were baptized [see Acts. 16], it is at best an infer-
ence to state that infants were included in their numbers). While the practice
of infant dedication is nowhere mentioned in the New Testament as a practice
of the first-century church, the same holds true for infant baptism—nowhere
is it specifically mentioned. However, there are numerous texts that talk of
believers being baptized. While we think that believer baptism makes better
sense of the New Testament material on baptism, we also believe the church
has demonstrated little sense in turning baptismal waters into a divisive subject;
baptism is intended to unite people, not divide them. With this historical and
contemporary context in mind, along with the New Testament’s very clear
emphasis on unity, we suggest that a theology of unity supersede a particular
theology of infant or believer baptism; thus, we honor the baptism of infants
and do not feel it is necessary for those baptized as infants to be rebaptized
unless it is a matter of their conscience.48
As important as particular views of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are, a
theology of unity as well as of the Triune God’s sovereign presence and working
in these sacramental events must take center stage. On our view, the church is
not a dispenser of God’s grace. Christ and the Spirit are God’s sacramental
presence in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. While baptismal and table events
are human events, they become divine events when they are practiced in faith
in the faithful Christ through the Spirit. Just as the bread and wine participate
in God’s sacramental presence—the Son and Spirit—through the miracle of
grace, faith is itself the miraculous creation of the Triune God. So the sacra-

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 142 Exploring Ecclesiology

ments in and of themselves do not save us, but they are indissolubly joined
to the saving presence of God in Christ through the Spirit. For God always
works in our midst through creaturely means.
Christ in the Spirit is the sacramental presence of God; while the visible signs
or symbols of baptism and the Lord’s Supper participate in Christ’s sacramen-
tal reality through the Spirit every time God’s people gather to celebrate them,
they do not constitute that sacramental, christological (and pneumatological)
reality. Christ alone gives himself to us through the Spirit in these creaturely
acts; and so, he alone constitutes God’s sacramental grace through the Spirit
in our midst. Christ mediates himself to his people in the Spirit through Word
and Sacrament. The church does not add to Christ’s finished work but lives in
view of it, bearing witness to Christ’s saving work through these participatory
symbols. We participate in these symbols that Christ constitutes, even as we
participate in Christ himself, who was and is and is to come.
Emphasis on the Triune God’s presence and constitution of the sacramental
community along with God’s creation of faith in the believer safeguards against
institutionalism in any form. Revisiting the biblical story and revitalizing sacred
space around the sacraments do not automatically convey faithful witness. Nei-
ther the sacraments nor those who administer them have power in themselves
to make the sacraments effectual (ex opere operato). However, rediscovery of
the biblical story and sacred symbols goes hand in hand with revival of God’s
people’s hearts and lives. Sacraments and personal faith mutually reinforce
each other. Through God’s divinely appointed means of scripture and the
sacraments, God draws us into the sacred drama as active participants.
While revisiting the biblical story and revitalizing sacred space around the
sacraments can enhance but do not automatically convey faithful witness to
Christ, failure to move forward in Christian discipleship has little or nothing
to do with promoting a particular mode or form of baptism. The problem
lies elsewhere—in the individual’s heart and in the church’s preaching and
teaching. As Geoffrey Bromiley writes,

Where infant baptism, or paedobaptism, as it is sometimes called, is practiced,

it is right and necessary that those who grow to maturity should make their own
confession of faith. But they do so with the clear witness that it is not this which
saves them, but the work of God already done for them before they believed.
The possibility arises, of course, that they will not make this confession, or do
so formally. But this cannot be avoided by a different mode of administration.
It is a problem of preaching and teaching. And even if they do not believe, or
do so nominally, their prior baptism as a sign of the work of God is a constant
witness to call or finally to condemn them.49

All major traditions rightly reject cheap grace in the face of God’s costly grace
revealed in Christ, exhorting and inviting Christ’s followers to follow in his
footsteps. This christologically-driven emphasis on discipleship should serve

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 143

as a common thread that would bind together the various baptismal tradi-
tions, even for those otherwise divided by the waters that were intended to
consume divisions. We should not be fighting among ourselves, but fighting
together against our mutual enemy of the world, the flesh, and the devil in
our daily lives.
The preceding discussion on the call to discipleship leads us to say that we
must encourage people to guard against depending upon the faith of their
parents or their own past merits and rituals to carry them spiritually; instead
they must be encouraged and challenged to respond personally and repeatedly
to Christ’s call on their lives. The Christian life is a process, not a static event
relegated to one’s past. Thus, we must be very careful to caution people against
thinking, “I’m saved because I’ve been baptized; and so I can live however I
please” or its counterpart, “I prayed a prayer at a crusade and got saved, and
so now I can just sit back and coast.”
We must teach Christ followers to grow up to maturity in view of the as-
cended Christ who was perfected through suffering and who represents us as
our perfect High Priest before the Father’s throne. This same Jesus who has
begun a good work in us will carry it on to completion at the day of his ap-
pearance (Phil. 1:6). This very same Jesus who rose from the dead and who has
ascended to heaven saves us and inspires and equips us for every good work and
service in the power of the Spirit for the glory of God. This same Jesus frees
us from modern-day versions of the Babylonian captivity—whatever they may
be—as we reenact the biblical story and participate in Christ’s kingdom work
through his sacramental presence in and through baptism and the Eucharist
in the power of the Spirit.

The Babylonian Captivity and the American Church

One way in which the American church experiences its own form of Baby-
lonian Captivity is by falling prey to the propaganda machine that claims
that America was founded as a Christian nation, that God wishes to reclaim
America for himself as a Christian nation, and that our ultimate allegiance
to Christ’s kingdom comes through allegiance to America.50
When this perspective dominates our thinking, it is very hard for us to grasp
the pastor’s words at the presentation of the newly baptized—whether they
are infants, teenagers, adults, or seniors—as our true brothers and sisters dur-
ing a worship service. Instead of seeing these believers as vitally connected to
the body, we see them as belonging primarily to their nuclear families, family
stock portfolios, and the state. For unlike inclusion in these other institu-
tions, the ecclesial family is made up of an apparently random assortment
of consumers joined together by warmhearted, religious sentiment. On this
view, spiritual union is based on a voluntary and possibly even momentary or

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 144 Exploring Ecclesiology

short-term contractual commitment one to another. We need to get beyond

this way of thinking and view the church community as bound together even
more profoundly than those communities based on biological, economic,
and legal ties.
In the end, it is very difficult for us to see ourselves as a sacramental com-
munity made up of those who have died to their old way of life and have
embarked on a new journey that will never grow old and never end. As we
write these words, Fourth of July festivities are taking place. The church must
recognize how America divinizes national holidays such as today, secularizes
Christian ones, as in the case of Christmas and Easter, and gives priority of
place to national symbols—even over Christian ones. So much for it being one
nation under God—it often seems like America is one nation over God!51
This calls to mind the story one pastor lived to share. During one Sun-
day worship service, he decided to challenge people’s allegiance to Christ by
draping the American flag over the communion table. He then proceeded to
administer communion. When it came time to lead people to drink from the
cup, he purposively poured the grape juice on the flag. People were horrified.
One of the elders later told this pastor that at first he was outraged, but that
later, after pondering it awhile, he realized that the pastor was trying to help
God’s people see where their true loyalty lay. After all the people left church
to go home, a man burst into the pastor’s study—without knocking. He came
right up to the pastor, violently thrust his finger into the pastor’s chest several
times, and said, “Don’t you ever, ever do that to the American flag again!”
The Babylonian captivity in Luther’s day stemmed in part from the clergy’s
fear that the laity would spill the wine—Christ’s precious blood—that had been
consecrated and administered during the service to purchase their salvation.
The Babylonian captivity today manifests itself in the fear on the part of the
laity that the clergy will spill the grape juice on such things as the American
flag, which was purchased by the precious blood of countless Americans.
Without intending to disparage patriotism and America’s national sym-
bols, the church must come to see that its ultimate loyalty belongs to Christ’s
kingdom, to which we pay tribute at each celebration of the Eucharist. By no
means simply a memorial to the war dead, the eucharistic celebration is just
that—a celebration of the one who died and rose and lives forever, who reigns
with God and will return, and whose kingdom knows no end.
The American church does not presently experience the red martyrdom
so prevalent in Cyril of Jerusalem’s day. Nor does it promote the notion that
baptism in blood alone suffices as an alternative to water baptism for salvation.
Nor does the American church promote the white martyrdom (monasticism)
so prevalent in Luther’s day, which exemplified the religious caste system of the
medieval Christian community. At that time, only the clergy and people of the
cloth could drink from the cup. While not calling for red or white martyrdom
today, we must call on the church to cherish its sacred symbols that bear witness

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 The Church as a Sacramental Community 145

to the fact that we the church belong to Christ and his kingdom. The church is
by no means a voluntary association of religious individuals. The Christian’s
ultimate allegiance lies with Christ’s church, not with the state or market or
nuclear family. The church’s sacred symbols cannot be reduced to sources for
cultivating pious emotion in the individual believer. Rather, baptism and the
Eucharist signify that we the church are citizens of God’s kingdom, stakeholders
in God’s economy, and members of God’s family. As the saying goes, we drink
to remember, while others drink to forget. As we eat the bread and drink the
cup, let us remember who Christ is and what he has done for us. May we also
remember who we are as those whose old master (Pharaoh—Exod. 14) and
marriage partner (the law of the old economy—Rom. 6–7) have been buried
in baptism as we have been raised to experience captivating though liberating
loving marital union with Christ our Lord.

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. How would you respond to those who argue that celebrating the Lord’s
Supper weekly robs it of its freshness?
2. How do we guard against the sacraments becoming simply institutional
mechanisms for salvation?
3. In what ways is Christ uniquely present when the church celebrates the
Lord’s Supper?
4. How could the church make the celebration of baptism and the Lord’s
Supper more communal?

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 8

Sacraments and the Search

for the Holy Grail

It seems like everyone is searching for the Holy Grail—Monty Python, Indi-
ana Jones, Dan Brown, and Joe Christian, who’s in search of more authentic
communion. And that’s just it. The Holy Grail is not ultimately some cup or
Mary Magdalene’s bones, but authentic communion centered round Jesus of
Nazareth at the table.
One of us grew up in a church that practiced closed communion—only
those who viewed the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper in the same way that the
church did could take communion there. This was very unsettling. “Closed
communion” seemed to suggest that a relationship with Christ is not sufficient
to gain access to the table. “You have to think the same way we do” about
what goes on in the bread and wine at the table to gain access.
While we deeply appreciate the theological significance of the various tradi-
tions’ views of the presence of Christ to the sacraments, we appreciate even
more the theological significance of visible unity in the body of Christ—the
church. In a day when more and more people go to Dan Brown to get their
dose of religion, and to the local pub to find true community, it is more and
more important that the church delve deeply into the divine mystery of com-
munion between Christ and his people that occurs at the table. As vital as our
various views of Christ’s presence to the elements at the table are, even more
fundamental is the conviction that Christ is present to his people at the table,

147

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 148 Exploring Ecclesiology

and the difference that this conviction should make in our communion with
one another and in our witness to the surrounding world.
How wonderful it would be if Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Orthodox,
Reformed, Baptists, and others could come together and partake of the table
together. How sad it is that the table that is intended to build communion is
often at the center of theological debates and church factions. For those of
us in the Protestant tradition, the rift occurred as early as Luther’s famous
debate with Zwingli during the Marburg Colloquy (1529). Though church
history is a very complicated affair, and factions emerged over other matters,
it is a tragedy and tragic irony (from which the Protestant church has never
really recovered) that Luther and Zwingli broke off ecclesial fellowship over
their respective views of communion.
Communion should not ultimately be about coming together with those
who think or act or look like me. Neither should it simply be about God and
me. It is about God and his people coming together to wine and dine as par-
ticipants in Christ through the Spirit in recollection of Christ’s finished work
and in anticipation of his return.
Arnold T. Olson of the Evangelical Free Church once said that communion
should be for believers only—but all believers.1 We agree with this claim. Now,
no doubt, someone will say that we are putting limits on access to the table,
just like those we are critiquing. Yes and no. The only limit is faith in Christ,
but that is because the Lord’s Supper from its inception was intended to be
Christ’s own family’s meal. Having said that, there is always a standing invita-
tion to this family celebration—the invitation always stands open to anyone
who would believe on the Lord Jesus, irrespective of his or her theological
distinctives, ethnicity, economic level, and maturity. Of course, believers need
to examine themselves before they come to the table, as Paul exhorts (1€Cor.
11:28)—not that they measure up to one another’s expectations, but that they
come to receive of Christ’s measureless overflow; not that they believe every-
thing rightly or exactly in the same way, but that they look to the One in whom
they believe; not that they have their acts together before they come, but that
they make sure not to hinder others from coming through their actions, and
that they realize that communion is just as much about our relationship with
one another in the body as it is about our relationship with our living head.
The church mentioned earlier now claims to practice open communion.
However, while one no longer needs to be a confirmed member of that par-
ticular church and its denomination, one must believe the same way about the
presence of Christ to the elements as that church and denomination. Their
communion service materials add to this stipulation Paul’s warning that those
who eat and drink of the Supper without discerning the body of Christ eat
and drink judgment on themselves (1€Cor. 11:29).
Our own interpretation of Paul’s warning goes further and is based upon his
rebuke of the Corinthians earlier in this passage. The rich Christians were not

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 Sacraments and the Search for the Holy Grail 149

sharing with their poor brothers and sisters in Christ the abundance of their
provisions at the meal. In fact, while the rich Christians wined and dined together
in the dining room of the house church there in Corinth, the less-privileged
believers stood outside in the courtyard looking in. These rich Christians had
failed to discern the body of Christ—the whole church at Corinth. As a result,
they had eaten and had drunk judgment on themselves (1€Cor. 11:29).
Gordon Fee claims that the sociological divisions in the church at Corinth
between the “haves” and “have-nots” manifested themselves in the celebration
of the Lord’s Supper, which was probably part of a common meal. Fee says
that in Corinth it was “sociologically natural for the host to invite those of
his/her own class to eat” in the dining room while others ate in the courtyard.2
Fee later writes, “For those who think of themselves as ‘keeping the traditions’
the actions noted here probably did not register as of particular consequence.
They had always acted thus. Birth and circumstances had cast their lots; so-
ciety had dictated their mores.” For Paul, in contrast, “Those mores at the
Lord’s Supper were a destruction of the meaning of the Supper itself because
it destroyed the very unity which that meal proclaimed.”3
Based on this understanding of the background context to Paul’s words, we
maintain that for Paul “discerning the body of Christ” entails that we should
no longer eat according to the customs of our culture, but according to the
social mores of Christ’s kingdom, for this is not some common meal, but the
uncommon meal of Christ. To discern rightly here includes acting rightly to-
ward others (while also discerning the significance of Christ’s presence at the
meal), which entails making sure that we do not hinder others from coming
to the table. All are welcome, regardless of economic standing and the like.
To say “regardless of economic standing” is not to say that the table has
no regard for economics. The table signifies or symbolizes the economics and
politics of Christ’s kingdom. If only churches—regardless of their views along
other lines—valued economic redistribution and fought against consumerism
and its commodification of human identity.
Consumerism entails getting what we want, even things we did not origi-
nally want—or need—and as much as we can possibly get. “Stuff” wins out
over people, and those with the most stuff win, or in more biblical-sounding
terms, people were made for stuff, not stuff for people.
Instead of giving ourselves to consuming stuff, we the church should give
ourselves to consuming and being consumed by Christ himself. For as John
Howard Yoder once said, Jesus is the head of “a community of consumption.”4
In place of consuming humans (homo consumens), Christians become increas-
ingly consumed people (homo consumendus). Such consumption occurs not
through buying and selling, but as the result of being bought at a steep price
with the blood of Christ to the end of interpersonal communion with God
through Christ by the Spirit. And all of this is exactly what we celebrate at
the Lord’s family feast.

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 150 Exploring Ecclesiology

Such good news should liberate us from being enslaved to consumerist

impulses. But the fear of scarcity often dominates our thinking. Walter
Brueggemann puts it this way:

Though many of us are well intentioned, we have invested our lives in con-
sumerism. We have a love affair with “more”—and we will never have enough.
Consumerism is not simply a marketing strategy. It has become a demonic
spiritual force among us, and the theological question facing us is whether the
gospel has the power to help us withstand it.5

As important as the issues so often debated about the real presence of Christ
in the Supper are, even more important is the issue before us now. The story of
God’s abundance inspires communion, whereas the headline news of scarcity
bound up with consumerism destroys it. Which storyline will win out? If only
Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants could come together to get the word
out through shared practices at the table and beyond that God’s abundance
is truly abundant. This is the real question now facing us as the church.6 As
Brueggemann says wistfully in a different context,

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if liberal and conservative church people, who love

to quarrel with each other, came to a common realization that the real issue
confronting us is whether the news of God’s abundance can be trusted in the
face of the story of scarcity? .€.€. The great question now facing the church is
whether our faith allows us to live in a new way.7

Brueggemann goes on to speak of Jesus’s sacramental orientation that

proclaims the good news that the world is saturated with God’s abundant
generosity. The sacramental orientation of Jesus demonstrates that “the world
is filled with abundance and freighted with generosity. If bread is broken and
shared, there is enough for all. Jesus is engaged in the sacramental, subversive
reordering of public reality.”8 “The profane,” on the other hand, “is the opposite
of the sacramental.” It signifies “flat, empty, one-dimensional, exhausted. The
market ideology wants us to believe that the world is profane—life consists of
buying and selling, weighing, measuring and trading, and then finally sinking
into death and nothingness.”9 Jesus’s view of economy is quite different and
“transforms the economy by blessing and breaking it beyond self-interest.
From broken Friday bread comes Sunday abundance.”10
One of the best examples of living in view of God’s generosity rather than
out of the fear of scarcity comes not from the rich Christians in Corinth, but
from a few poor Christians in Chicago. In his book The Case for Christmas,
Lee Strobel recounts the story he wrote when he worked as a journalist for
the Chicago Tribune.
It was Christmas time, and Strobel was given the assignment to write a story
about a poor, inner-city family. At the time, Strobel was an ardent atheist,

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 Sacraments and the Search for the Holy Grail 151

and he recounts how he was a bit stunned by the Delgado family’s attitude,
despite their difficulties. The sixty-year-old Perfecta—wracked with pain from
the debilitating arthritis that kept her from working—along with her two
granddaughters, Lydia and Jenny, now lived in a very small and very empty
two-room apartment, having been burned out of a roach-infested tenement.
With only one small table in the kitchen and a handful of rice, and without
furniture, rugs, and wall hangings, they hung their hopes on Christ. The two
girls possessed no clothing, save one short-sleeved dress for each, and they
shared a worn and thread-bare sweater. Strobel recounts how the girls would
have to walk a half-mile to school each day, braving the bitter Chicago winter,
taking turns wearing the sweater when the biting temperatures became too
much for the one without. Despite these circumstances, the family never be-
came bitter. Perfecta spoke with great confidence about Jesus’s presence and
faithfulness to them. Strobel writes, “I never sensed despair or self-pity in her
home; instead, there was a gentle feeling of hope and peace.”
After Strobel finished the article, he was given more high-profile assignments.
But the story wasn’t over. On Christmas Eve, he found his thoughts wandering
back to the Delgados and their confidence in Christ’s care for them. Strobel
recounts: “I continued to wrestle with the irony of the situation. Here was a
family that had nothing but faith, and yet seemed happy, while I had everything
I needed materially, but lacked faith—and inside I felt as empty and barren
as their apartment.” There wasn’t much meaningful news to write about on
Christmas Eve, and so Strobel made a visit to the Delgado home.
He couldn’t believe what he saw and heard when he arrived. The outpour-
ing of compassion from his readership was overwhelming. New appliances,
rugs, and furniture filled the little apartment, along with a host of Christmas-
wrapped presents, a big Christmas tree, bags filled with food, lots of cash,
and all kinds of winter clothing. As overwhelming as the overflow of compas-
sion was, the atheist Strobel chalked it off to Christmas goodwill. What truly
overwhelmed Strobel was the Delgados’ response:

But as surprised as I was by this outpouring, I was even more astonished by

what my visit was interrupting: Perfecta and her granddaughters were getting
ready to give away much of their newfound wealth. When I asked Perfecta why,
she replied in halting English: “Our neighbors are still in need. We cannot have
plenty while they have nothing. This is what Jesus would want us to do.”
That blew me away! If I had been in their position at that time in my life, I
would have been hoarding everything. I asked Perfecta what she thought about
the generosity of the people who had sent all of these goodies, and again her
response amazed me.
“This is wonderful; this is very good,” she said, gesturing toward the largess.
“We did nothing to deserve this—it’s a gift from God. But,” she added, “it is
not his greatest gift. No, we celebrate that tomorrow. That is Jesus.”

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 152 Exploring Ecclesiology

To her, this child in the manger was the undeserved gift that meant every-
thing—more than material possessions, more than comfort, more than security.
And at that moment, something inside of me wanted desperately to know this
Jesus—because, in a sense, I saw him in Perfecta and her granddaughters.
They had peace despite poverty, while I had anxiety despite plenty; they
knew the joy of generosity, while I only knew the loneliness of ambition; they
looked heavenward for hope, while I only looked out for myself; they experi-
enced the wonder of the spiritual, while I was shackled to the shallowness of
the material—and something made me long for what they had.
Or, more accurately, for the One they knew.11

The Delgados embodied the sacramental orientation of which Bruegge-

mann speaks. Their case for Christmas is also the case for Good Friday, Easter,
and the recapitulation or transformation of all life, which the Lord’s Supper
anticipates. In fact, it is fair to say that the Delgados in some mysterious way
were the body and blood of Christ to Strobel—so much so, that he wanted
to know this One in whom they believed.
Their case for Christmas made a case for the authenticity of the story of
God’s abundance and typified the sacramental reality of the church in its
union with Christ. The Corinthians, on the other hand, made a case for the
myth of scarcity and the profane. Whereas the atheist Strobel discerned the
body of the overwhelmingly generous Christ in the poverty-stricken Delgados,
spurring him on toward faith, the rich though spiritually bankrupt Christians
in Corinth denied Christ by failing to discern his presence in their poorer
brothers and sisters.
Just as Jesus fed the five thousand and there were still some basketfuls of
fish and bread remaining, and just as Jesus fed the Delgados and they gave
away out of their abundant hearts at Christmas time, so Jesus will feed us too
throughout the year—so that we can share with others. There is always room
for more at his table—and so, there’s no need for closing the door.
Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree ministry at Christmas time is one way our
churches can share the bounty of the Lord with others, in this case the fami-
lies of those closed off from society, behind closed doors in prison. Another
way is for churches to get involved with the Advent Conspiracy, which several
emergent-church pastors across the land have created. The “conspirators”
of this initiative have determined to encourage their congregations to resist
“Herod’s empire” of greed during the Christmas season by giving of them-
selves relationally, by taking a percentage of the money they would have spent
on themselves for presents, and putting that money toward building wells for
clean drinking water in impoverished places around the world.
Closer to home in terms of the Lord’s Supper, our churches can follow the
lead of those congregations that take an offering for the poor of the church
after the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, following the tradition of the early
church. Also following the tradition of the early church, churches today could

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 Sacraments and the Search for the Holy Grail 153

take the opportunity to celebrate the agape feast those weeks they celebrate
the Lord’s Table, hosting potlucks where everyone who is able brings a dish
and everyone has a place at the table to eat—though not alongside their niche-
group friends. Churches in the same region can even share their resources with
one another: those more affluent churches can share their financial resources
with their counterparts for much-needed facilities and supplies, and their
counterparts can share the abundance of their hope in Christ in the midst
of their difficult circumstances, so that those more affluent churches become
immune to “affluenza.” When we truly take seriously the gospel of God’s
abundance and the economics of the table, we will surely defeat the myth
of scarcity and find the Holy Grail. However, when we close our minds and
hearts to the gospel of the kingdom and the economics of the table, we close
ourselves off from true and lasting communion and effective witness.12
Communion should not be closed off to those who view the presence of
Christ to the elements differently from me, but to a way of being that is closed
off to God’s generosity and marked by the fear of scarcity. The most important
issue is not the presence of Christ to the elements, but the presence of Christ
to you and me as we gather at the table to share in God’s abundance with one
another, and as we go forward from the table refreshed and renewed.
Let’s ask ourselves these two questions: Are we the church being transformed
into the body and blood of Christ time and time again through the celebra-
tion of the Eucharist? And is Jesus living in, with, and under us as we relate
to one another? If we can say “yes” to both questions, then we have discerned
rightly the body of Christ.
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jones goes in search of the Holy
Grail. Finally, he locates its resting place. So too does a Nazi. A knight stands
guard over a vast array of chalices, including the Holy Grail. The knight is
the least of their worries, though. Neither Jones nor the Nazi know what the
Grail looks like, and each of them gets only one chance at choosing correctly.
They must drink the contents of whatever chalice they choose, and the liquid
in every cup other than the Grail is lethal. The Nazi goes first and chooses the
most ornate and expensive-looking chalice. After drinking from the cup, he
shrivels up and dies, upon which the knight says, “He chose poorly.” Jones is
next. He recalls that Jesus was a Jewish carpenter, and so he chooses the most
common of all the remaining cups. He drinks from its contents and lives. He
has chosen wisely.
As stated near the outset of this chapter, we live at a time when more and
more people go to Dan Brown to get their dose of religion, and to the local pub
to find true community. Given this situation, it is more and more important that
the church delve deeply into the divine mystery of communion between Christ
and his people that occurs at the table. How will the world discern rightly that
we—the church—are the body of Christ if we ourselves do not discern rightly
what really matters? While we continue to wrestle with questions concerning

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 154 Exploring Ecclesiology

Christ’s presence to the elements at the table, let’s wrestle even more with ways
of how to welcome all believers to the table, and to redistribute the bounty of
the Lord’s abundant harvest inside and outside the church, keeping in mind
the difference this conviction will make in our communion with one another
and in our witness to the surrounding world.

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. How should our understanding of the Lord’s Supper as communion

help us get beyond divisions in churches and divisions between various
church traditions?
2. In the biblical culture, eating a communal meal was often about wel-
coming the alien and the stranger. How could our practice of the Lord’s
Supper more fully reflect this idea?
3. How should the event of communion inspire us to move beyond race
and class barriers?

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 9

The Church as a Serving Community

The first task of every Christian is the edification of the community of

believers.
Howard Snyder1

The life of the church in the world is always meant to be incarnational. As

such, the church is to represent in its service to humanity the incarnation of
Christ, who came not to be served, but to serve. This is a chapter about the
church as a serving community. As such, it is not a chapter on the church as a
community that serves the world. That subject is taken up in the chapter on
the church as a missional community. Here we look at the church as a com-
munity where believers love and serve one another. For although the church is
commanded to serve all persons, it is especially called to serve other believers,
following Paul’s admonition in Galatians to “do good to all people, especially
to those who belong to the family of believers” (6:10). It is perhaps here that
the word community, which is included in several of the chapters of this book,
finds its fullest expression. For while worship, the sacraments, and mission
are all activities that should be done in community and themselves engender
community, it is in the act of loving service to its own that the church builds
community in its fullest sense. It is also important to note that when we talk
about service in this chapter, we mean it in a broad sense. Service is not just
about helping people with their physical needs, but is holistic, including such
services as teaching, using spiritual gifts, praying, sharing goods with others,
and even church discipline.

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 156 Exploring Ecclesiology

Foundations of the Church’s Service

Trinity

In his consideration of the role of the trinitarian God in the function of the
church as a community of service, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes,

When God’s Son took on flesh, he truly and bodily, out of pure grace, took on
our being, our nature, ourselves. This was the eternal decree of the triune God.
Now we are in him. Wherever he is, he bears our flesh, he bears us. And where
he is, there we are too€.€.€. Christian community means community through and
in Jesus Christ. Everything the Scriptures provide in the way of directions and
rules for Christians’ life together rests on this presupposition.2

The service of the church flows out of the self-giving love of the trinitarian
God who gives himself as a servant to humanity. Orthodox theologians, with
their social doctrine of the Trinity, contend that self-giving and self-sacrifice is
not merely a function of the Son, but of all three members of the Trinity. Thus
God, by nature, is a self-sacrificing God. In the eternal “I–Thou” relations of
the Trinity, he is a loving and serving God.3 This has practical ramifications
for the church as a serving community. Bishop Kallistos Ware writes,

Our social programme, said the Russian thinker Feodorov, is the dogma of the
Trinity€.€.€. The human person, so the Bible teaches, is made in the image of
God, and to Christians God means the Trinity: thus it is only in the light of the
dogma of the Trinity that we can understand who we are and what God intends
us to be. Our private lives, our personal relations, and all our plans of forming
a Christian society depend upon a right theology of the Trinity.4

To be human in the image of the trinitarian God means to love others with
a love that is costly and self-sacrificing. If the Father loved us enough to give
his only Son for us, we also should lay down our lives for one another.5 This
pattern is played out across the spectrum of New Testament writings.
In the Synoptics, the Son of Man comes to give himself as a ransom for a
captive and broken humanity (Matt. 20:28). In John, the Father sends the Son
into the world to give his life for his sheep, an act that is an outpouring of the
trinitarian Father/Son relationship, where the shared glory of Father and Son
is manifest in the Son’s self-sacrifice for humanity. Then the Son, speaking to
his disciples as master, having just washed their feet, tells them that if the one
who is God in the flesh serves them in this way, so should they serve one another
(John 13:12–17). Further in John’s thinking, out of the overflow of the love
between Father and Son, the Holy Spirit is sent to serve the disciples by being
the comforting presence of Jesus and the loving presence of the Father in their
midst (John 14:15–21). In Paul, the Father exalts the Son on account of his

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 The Church as a Serving Community 157

humble decision to take on the form of a servant, giving his life for the church.
Here the trinitarian equality between Father and Son does not preclude the Son’s
self-humiliation and service, but births it. This self-giving then becomes the
example of the attitude that the church should have in its own service—“Your
attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5–11).
Further, this trinitarian mutuality of love that flows out from God in ser-
vice to the church serves not only as the church’s example, but also as its em-
powerment for service. For the God who gives gifts to the church gives them
as “the same Spirit,” “the same Lord,” and “the same God” (1€Cor. 12:4–6).
Out of the loving relationality between the persons of the Trinity, the church
is given gifts that foster loving service. Miroslav Volf writes: “The reciprocity
among Trinitarian persons finds its correspondence in an image of the church
in which all members serve one another with their specific gifts of the Spirit,
imitating the Lord through the power of the Father. Like the divine persons,
they all stand in a position of mutual giving and receiving.”6

Eschatology

The service of the church is also a foretaste of its eschatological hope. In

the Hebrew Scriptures the eschatological hope of the people of God includes
the hope for a Messiah who comes as a servant (Isa. 53). And Amos argues
that one of the reasons God will crush Israel is that the rich and powerful
oppress the poor among the people of God (Amos 2; 5). Only an Israel that
changes its ways and cares for the needy will be restored in the eschaton. The
ideal image of the people of God is of a community of those who care for
and serve one another.
The New Testament carries on and expands this eschatological hope through
its theology of the kingdom of God. Jesus tells his disciples that the one who
is greatest in the kingdom is the one who will be a servant (Matt. 23:11). Fur-
ther, the servant who will be honored at the coming of Christ will be one who
has been faithful in his master’s absence to take care not just of the master’s
financial resources, but also of other servants in the household of God (Matt.
24:45). And, perhaps most striking, those who will enter the kingdom are the
“righteous,” who in serving other disciples have actually ministered to Christ
himself (Matt. 25:34–46). Resoundingly, the kingdom of God is depicted as
a community of servants.
In Paul the kingdom of God is a realm of other-centered loving service.
In Romans 14, the kingdom of God is not about self-centeredness in matters
of food and drink, but about humbly caring for others in the church, doing
what leads to peace and edification. In 1€Corinthians 13, the highest value in
anticipation of the eschaton (the perfect) is love for others. Further, the return
of Christ becomes a motivation for service to his church now. Recognizing the
difficulty of other-centered service, Paul speaks especially to areas where such

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 158 Exploring Ecclesiology

service is toughest, addressing those relationships that often create the deepest
animosities—husband/wife, parent/child, master/slave. He calls for humble
service to one another motivated by a love for God and in the knowledge that
Christ will one day come again and judge believers on the basis of how they
have served and cared for one another (Eph. 5:25–6:9).

Priesthood of the Believers

In addition to our two theological foundations for the whole theology of the
church (Trinity and eschatology), the priesthood of believers is an important
foundation for the church’s ministry of service. In the Hebrew Scriptures,
priests were first and foremost servants of the people, doing their work in order
to connect the community to God, and God to the community. In the New
Testament, we find that the direct relationship of each believer to Christ, the
ultimate high priest, makes the whole church into a holy priesthood, which
not only gives each believer direct access to God through Christ, but also the
ability to connect others to God by loving service (Heb. 4; 1€Pet. 2). As priests,
believers when they serve one another represent God to one another through
the person of Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit.
Despite the fact that the theology of the priesthood of the believer has
been emphasized most among Protestants, it is an aspect of other traditions
as well. Vatican€II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church clearly recognizes
that nonclergy have significant priestly functions.

Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood
of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless
ordered one to another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priest-
hood of Christ€.€.€. The faithful indeed, by virtue of their royal priesthood,
participate in the offering of the Eucharist. They exercise that priesthood too
by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a
holy life, abnegation, and active charity.7

In the Orthodox tradition, this priestly ministry of the laity is often referred
to as “the liturgy after the liturgy.” Believers continue to carry out the priestly
function of the church as they minister to one another beyond the official
liturgical services of the church.

The Goal of Service: A Redemptive Community, Reflecting the Values

of the Kingdom

As we noted in our discussion of the church as an eschatological community, the

church is birthed by the kingdom of God and is meant both to bear witness to

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 The Church as a Serving Community 159

the kingdom and to reflect its values. As believers serve one another, represent-
ing Christ to one another, broken but redeemed persons engage other broken
persons with the redemptive love of Christ to bring personal and communal
transformation. The New Testament discusses many values of the kingdom that
are designed to be reflected in the redeemed community of the church. Without
repeating our discussion of the kingdom from chapter 3, the following represent
some of the values reflected in the various New Testament writers.
In the Synoptics several values stand out. First, the kingdom has come to
create a community where people are freed from captivity to Satan, a value dem-
onstrated by Jesus’s many exorcisms. In Matthew 12, Jesus explains that he casts
out demons by the promised power of the Holy Spirit. He then illustrates the
significance by portraying himself as the one who enters the strong man’s (Satan’s)
house and steals his possessions (human beings held captive). The issue here is
not fundamentally being freed from demonic oppression, for surely very few
persons were in such a state. Rather, it illustrates that the world is held captive
by structures that keep people from seeing God and being attracted to him for
who he is. Thus, Jesus tells the Pharisees that their true father is not Abraham,
but the devil. When Jesus releases people from such captivity, they see him for
who he is and become captivated by him instead. In the church we perform this
service when we introduce people to Jesus Christ and help them build a relation-
ship with him that frees them from captivity to sin and self.
Connected to this, we also see in the Synoptics that the kingdom looks to
build a community where sinners are met with grace and forgiveness. Jesus
demonstrates this value often by embracing “sinners” and pronouncing their
forgiveness. Perhaps the most powerful illustration is found in his parable of
the prodigal son. Here, the most shameful of sinners is welcomed back by a
forgiving father, and not just to be forgiven by him personally, but also to be
received by grace back into membership in the community. Thus, the father
in his service to his lost son is the head of a community of servants that func-
tions by grace.
Third, the portrayal of the kingdom in the Synoptics anticipates a commu-
nity where those captive to physical brokenness and social barriers are freed.
Of course, Jesus’s miracles of healing illustrate this kind of service. For while
Jesus sometimes connects physical healing with forgiveness of sin, sometimes
he just heals people without addressing sin. Moreover, in his healing of the ten
lepers, his main concern beyond the physical healing is that the healing will
allow them to reenter the community—thus, he tells them to go show them-
selves to the priests in order to be declared clean. The community envisioned
by the kingdom is also one where the social barriers of gender and race are
broken down. Women and Samaritans are embraced by Jesus in a way that
shatters the status quo cultural and religious restrictions of his day.
In the theology of John, service is centered on the giving of oneself for oth-
ers and, in so doing, becoming like God in Christ. God so loved that he gave

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 160 Exploring Ecclesiology

(John 3). The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John 10). The
greatest love is to lay down one’s life for a friend (John 15). Here, everything
Jesus does is redemptive, from giving his own life for the redemption of his
followers to washing his disciples’ feet (John 13), symbolically redeeming them
from the “grime” of the world and then instructing them that they should
perform the same kind of redemptive service for one another.
In Paul we find a number of themes pertaining to Christians serving other
Christians and building a redemptive community. All of his letters refer in some
sense to his hope that the believers will become mature in the faith. We see this
goal of maturity clearly connected to service in Ephesians 4. In verses 1 through
6, he talks about the loving service that should be characteristic of the church
because of its foundational oneness in the trinitarian God. Then he shows how
this service is exemplified through the spiritual gifts of individual believers, the
goal being that the entire body is built up, moving toward maturity in Christ,
which includes doctrinal fidelity and character formation, all of which develops
as each member serves for the benefit of the whole body. In chapter 5, Paul
engages the bride image to illustrate the humble, loving, and submissive service
that should characterize the church. Then he addresses marriage, parenting,
and slavery directly, calling on the church to become a community where these
relational structures will be revolutionized, rising above the brokenness and
immaturity of a fallen culture. Further, in Philemon, through his request for
the master to receive back his runaway slave Onesimus, Paul illustrates that in
the church, culture’s hierarchies of service are to be reoriented such that now
a master and his slave serve each other as brothers in Christ.
Finally, James talks about works, which for him focus primarily on relation-
ships between church members and are the fruit of authentic faith in Christ.
His goal is to give us a picture of a community freed of personal animosities
and social prejudices. Wisdom, lived out though other-centered and nonpreju-
dicial love, creates a community that experiences healing.

The Means to Redemptive Community

The goal of building a redemptive community that reflects the values of the
kingdom of God is unquestionably a daunting one. It is one thing to describe
the biblical goal of a loving, serving church. It is quite another thing to get
there. The following are several of the means the writers of the New Testament
consider necessary for the church to move in the direction of its ideal.

Love

At the heart of the church’s success in creating a serving community is

love. The biblical idea of loving others is always fundamentally an outgrowth

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 The Church as a Serving Community 161

of love for God—and before that, of God’s love for us. We love God, John
says, because he first loved us (1€John 4:19). Similarly, authentic loving service
to others is a product of and a response to God’s love for us. As the church
receives the love of God in Christ, so its members are transformed to respond
in loving service to one another. In his treatise “The Freedom of the Chris-
tian,” Luther argues that a Christian is “a perfectly free lord of all, subject to
none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”8 Luther
understood that law cannot motivate truly loving service; only the gracious
love of God, which creates faith, can do that. The person of authentic faith,
Luther says, thinks this way:

Although I am an unworthy and condemned man, my God has given me in

Christ all the riches of righteousness and salvation without any merit on my
part, out of pure free mercy, so that from now on I need nothing except faith
which believes that this is true. Why should I not therefore freely, joyfully, with
all my heart, and with an eager will do all things which I know are pleasing
and acceptable to such a Father who has overwhelmed me with his inestimable
riches? I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbor, just as Christ
offered himself to me.9

Here, Luther reflects not just the teaching of the New Testament, but of
the entire scriptures, as illustrated by Jesus’s summation of the law as love for
God followed by love for neighbor. The sequence is irreversible. One cannot
truly love his neighbor until he is captivated by and responds to the love of
God. Thus, for John’s Jesus, the community that comes to be known by its
members’ love for one another is the community that has come to understand
the sacrificial love of its Lord, who laid down his life for his friends. This love
is the primary means by which the church becomes a serving community.

Grace

Thomas à Kempis writes, “The purpose of righteous men depends on the

grace of God more than on themselves and on their own wisdom. Man pur-
poses, but God disposes. The way that a man shall walk in the world is found
not in himself, but in the grace of God.”10 The particular insight of grace as
a means of creating serving community is that, unlike love, which may act in
response to a deserving object, grace immediately recognizes that its object
is undeserving. The presupposition here is that church members serve one
another as sinners serving sinners. But if service in the church is from sinners
to sinners, the grace that empowers this service must come from beyond the
church. Paul gets at this by arguing that as the community encounters the grace
of God in Christ, it becomes a community that lives in and by that grace, its
members manifesting grace to one another. Grace is given to the church in

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 162 Exploring Ecclesiology

order to, in turn, be expressed by the church. In Ephesians 4, just preceding

his discussion of service through the means of spiritual gifts, Paul tells us that
the foundation for these gifts is grace (Eph. 4:7; cf. Rom. 12:4–6). And this
grace does not come to us as a quantity or substance or as an ability, but as a
person. The grace Paul speaks of is relational. For it comes to the church as
the God who is over all and in all through the person of Jesus Christ by the
Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:4–6). This relational encounter of grace is then, for Paul,
the means by which believers come to be “humble and gentle, bearing with
each other in love” (4:2).

Gifts

Hans Küng writes,

All charisms are expressions of God’s grace and power, in the Spirit. They all
point to the one great charism of God, the new life which has been given to us in
Christ Jesus; .€.€. In the fullness of Christ’s grace the riches of spiritual gifts are
revealed to us€.€.€. Whether a man is an apostle, a prophet, teacher, evangelist,
a bishop or a deacon, whether he consoles, exhorts, forgives, loves—all these
things are gifts in Jesus Christ and point to him who is and does all these things
in his own person. Charisms are the revelations, in concrete and individual form,
of the charis, the power of God’s grace.11

In the theology of Paul, the gifts (charismata) flow naturally from grace (charis)
as a means of service. Gifts are not primarily tools to get the work of the
church done. Rather, to use spiritual gifts is to be an instrument of God’s
grace to others.12 And because grace is relational and comes to us through
Christ, through the gifts we not only encounter God’s grace in each other,
but we actually encounter in each other Christ, the grace giver. This function
is carried out through the church’s existence as the body of Christ. As the
head, he and his grace flow to the rest of the church through the parts. Peter
confirms this fact, declaring that when believers use their gifts they administer
God’s grace in its various forms, suggesting that those who teach speak the
very words of God to the church (1€Pet. 4:10–11).
The effects of this theology for service are profound. Instead of merely
thinking of their service as getting a job done in the church, believers can
envision themselves as being a channel of Christ’s grace, and even of Christ
himself to their brothers and sisters. This may be easier to see with the most
high-profile gifts, such as teaching, which more naturally lend themselves to
the idea of God communicating to his people. So this theology of gracious
service may be particularly encouraging to those with low-profile gifts and
places of service. Consider, for instance, the woman helping an active toddler
to color pictures of a Bible story, allowing the child’s mother and father a few

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 The Church as a Serving Community 163

minutes of freedom to worship, pray, and hear God’s word without interrup-
tion. What thoughtful parents would fail to recognize that in this gift they are
receiving the grace of God himself?
The purpose of spiritual gifts as they facilitate an encounter with Christ
and his grace, says Paul, is to build up the church for service. Vatican€II’s
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church says,

It is not only through the sacraments and the ministrations of the Church that
the Holy Spirit makes holy the People, leads them and enriches them with his
virtues. Allotting his gifts according as he wills .€.€. he also distributes special
graces among the faithful of every rank. By these gifts he makes them fit and
ready to undertake various tasks and offices for the renewal and building up
of the Church.13

While the purpose of the gifts is not simply to accomplish the work of the
church but to relate Christ and his grace to others, this relational grace trans-
forms believers into persons who desire to help accomplish the goals of the
church. These transformed persons then serve the church through their own
God-given gifts.
For the church to function well, then, individual believers need to be aware
of their particular spiritual gifts. They can serve others in the way that most
effectively ministers the grace of Christ. Paul says that God sovereignly dis-
tributes gifts to believers, which means that God, not the church member,
determines how he will minister his grace through each person (1€Cor. 12:7).
In the evangelical church in America, the awareness of spiritual gifts has led
to what may be a typically American approach to discovering one’s gift(s).
Many of us, at some point in our church experience, were given something
akin to a “spiritual gift test” designed to determine where we were gifted.
Some churches have even required that parishioners take these tests in order
to determine the area of service in which they should participate. Pastoral
experience, however, has demonstrated the less-than-satisfactory value of
such tests. What they tend to show is what respondents like doing or what
they wish they could do. They do not necessarily indicate whether a person
is actually gifted for such tasks.
Given that spiritual gifts are bestowed through relationship and, first and
foremost, perform a relational function, it would seem that discovering one’s
spiritual gift(s) is something that should take place relationally. Since the gifts
are designed to build up the church, it makes sense for a person’s gift to be
confirmed not only by her or his desire to perform a ministry for which that
gift is required, but also by the recognition of others in the church that, indeed,
this person is gifted for this area of service. There should be some sense of
the church saying, “When you do this, we are blessed and sense the ministry
of Christ.” In this scenario, perhaps the most effective way for parishioners to

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 164 Exploring Ecclesiology

discover their spiritual gifts is simply to serve in a variety of different minis-

tries and let the church tell them where they are gifted. Confirmation of gifts
meant to edify the community, then, are discovered in community rather than
in the isolation of the self.14

Teaching

The church is a Word-centered community. In our chapter on worship we

talked about the Word as an element of worship. In this chapter we understand
the teaching of biblical truth as a crucial element of service. Teaching the
truth about God and humanity in Christ serves the church in several ways. It
meets the church’s constant need for the message of grace. It helps to protect
the church from humanity’s tendency to conform its ideas about God to the
prevailing whims of culture. Also, the prophetic aspect of the Word shows the
church what a redemptive, Christ-honoring community looks like and urges
it to pursue that kind of community life. The biblical emphasis on teaching
and learning the scriptures is so strong that one could rightly conclude that,
at least in a nonprofessional sense, the church should be filled with biblical
theologians.
This commitment to the service of teaching God’s word to God’s people runs
throughout the biblical metanarrative. Concluding the Torah with a second
giving of the law in Deuteronomy, Moses creates the Shema (Deut. 6:4–5),
encouraging Israel that a crucial way for them to love the one God is to learn
his commands, to memorize them, and to teach them to their children so that
they can know the character of the God who has drawn them into his story of
redemption. For the priests and rabbis to teach the law to the people of God
was a great service to them, for its statutes became a lamp (Ps. 119:11) to guide
them in the way of righteousness and wisdom. After the return from captivity,
when the teaching of the scriptures had been greatly diminished, Ezra gathered
all the priests together to teach Torah to the returnees, making sure they not
only heard it but also understood its significance for life (Neh. 8:12).
The early church also recognized the importance of the teaching of God’s
Word in the church. The book of Acts shows that the people dedicated them-
selves to the teaching of the apostles as diligently as to prayer and the Eucharist.
And the apostles recognized that, while the church had many needs, the most
important aspects of service they could provide would be to pray and teach
the word (Acts 2:42; 6:2).
For Paul, teaching the Word was a major area of service for those who could
do it well. Living in a world a lot like ours, with a different religion on every
corner, Paul charged his young pastor friend Timothy with these words:

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke
and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will

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 The Church as a Serving Community 165

come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own
desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what
their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth
and turn aside to myths. (2€Tim. 4:2–4)

Timothy was to serve the church by preaching the Word, the message of truth
entrusted to believers. It was what Paul called “well-grounded teaching,” which
is the literal translation of the phrase “sound doctrine.” But Paul also told
Timothy that lots of people would not want teaching to be well grounded.
They would prefer a kind of truth that was flexible to meet their individual
needs. Timothy was to serve the church by reading the scriptures and teach-
ing them faithfully, being careful not only about how he lived his life, but also
about how he taught the scriptures. Here we see an element of Paul’s teaching
consistent with all his letters—faithful teaching of the scriptures is connected
to a faithful life (1€Tim. 4:13–16). As he argues in Colossians, teaching the
truth about God serves the church as a means of moving everyone toward
maturity in Christ. This apostolic emphasis on the importance of teaching
as a service to the church was carried on in the sub-apostolic era as well. For
example, The Didache (ca. 120) admonishes the church to take proper care
of those who teach and serve the church as leaders, making sure that they are
paid generously from “the firstfruits” of the “wine-vat” and the “threshing-
floor,” for they are your “chief-priests.”
Not all Christian traditions over the last century, however, have been equally
committed to teaching the scriptures. In America, we in the evangelical tra-
dition have taken pride in the place we have given biblical teaching in the
church. But as evangelicals, we the authors are concerned that our tradition
has begun to lose its historical commitment to teaching theological truths
rooted in the Bible.
David Wells, professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, writes,

I have watched with growing disbelief as the evangelical Church has cheerfully
plunged into astounding theological illiteracy€.€.€. The effects of this great change
in the evangelical soul are evident in every incoming class in the seminaries,
in most publications, in the great majority of churches, and in most of their
pastors.15

This does not mean that evangelicals have stopped receiving religious input.
Indeed, the airwaves and Christian bookstores are crammed with religious
material being consumed in ever-greater quantities. But the focus and content
of much of this material are troubling. Through a subtle means, the church is
being stripped naked of its protective theological clothing.
First, in line with culture’s postmodern shift, there has been a move over
the past couple of decades from what is true to what works. A perusal of the
bookshelves of Christian bookstores would lead one to believe that if one wants

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 166 Exploring Ecclesiology

to make a lot of money today in the Christian book market, writing a book
on theology may not be the best way to go.16 But write about how Christians
can make their lives better, and you just might have a best seller. American
evangelical Christianity is being turned into a “how to” religion. And, unfor-
tunately, most of the “how tos” reveal an unbiblical focus upon self. Nowhere
is this focus more obvious than in Christian marketing and advertising. One
would think that what Christians want to know most is how to be happy,
how to be financially prosperous, and how to lose weight while being filled
with the Holy Spirit. Christian bookstores are filled with titles like God’s Key
to Health and Happiness, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, The Weigh Down Diet,
Feeling Good about Feeling Bad, and How to Become Your Own Best Self.
Certainly, the church must work to show how a biblical faith is made real in
everyday life. But we are concerned that, too often, personal growth and sat-
isfaction take precedence over truth. Accordingly, another thing that concerns
us is the growing trend in many evangelical churches to focus adult education
on topics that help people have a better life but do not contain much biblical
content. Many church schedules are filled with classes on how to improve
marriage, how to manage your money, how to be better parents, and how to
build a relationship that leads to marriage without ever dating. Surely, these
are important subjects, and the church should be addressing them. But one
wonders, where are the classes on the theology of Christ, of sin, of salvation,
of the scriptures, and of the trinitarian nature of God? These fundamentals
of theological education often seem nowhere to be found and have often been
replaced by classes on methods for solving our personal issues.
The ultimate consequence of Christianity centered on personal issues and
self-improvement is that theology becomes therapy, the search for righteousness
is replaced by the search for happiness, holiness by wholeness, and truth by
feeling, and God’s sovereignty is diminished to whatever it takes to have a
good day.17 Christians become consumers who shop the church like they do a
shopping mall, delighted to find something to meet every felt need. But with
Christianity as consumerism comes a strange emptiness and the discovery
that their genuine need for meaning cannot be met by consumerism. That
meaning can instead be provided only by the biblical truth about God and
his self-sacrificing redemption of the world in Christ.
This need of the church for an increase in biblical teaching and literacy is
not limited to the evangelical Protestant church, of course. Several years ago
a noted Roman Catholic scholar and author of many books remarked, “The
title of my next book is going to be Sermons Should Be Longer. One simply
cannot mine the treasures of the word of God in fifteen minutes.”18 Nor does
this critique mean that the answer for this generation is a return to a form of
public service in the church common among evangelical churches for many
decades, one where all other elements of the service are merely a “warm-up”
for the teaching of scripture.

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 The Church as a Serving Community 167

Prayer

One of the great acts of the church in loving service to its members is to
pray for them. In the New Testament narrative, community prayer plays a
major role in the life of the church. Before the foundation of the church at
Pentecost, Jesus demonstrates the value of prayer for the community of God
by placing his hands on children and praying for them (Matt. 19; Mark 10).
He urges his disciples to pray corporately, teaching them to pray, “Our Father,
who art in heaven€.€.€.” After the church is established, community prayer is
an important feature in the life of the church. Immediately after the ascen-
sion narrative, Luke shows the disciples as a group of men and women who
were “constantly in prayer” (Acts 1:14). In Acts 2, we see that prayer is at the
center of community life for the church. Teaching, fellowship, the Eucharist,
and prayer created a community where believers cared for one another, shared
their goods for the benefit of all, and saw miraculous signs in their midst. It
was a community that engaged its culture positively, drawing many people to
confess faith in Christ and to become members of the church.
In Paul, prayer is also a critical component in church life. More than telling
the churches what they should pray for, Paul serves as an example by tell-
ing the churches what his prayers are for them. The overwhelming motif of
Paul’s prayer for other believers concerns their spiritual maturity. He prays
that the church will, by the Spirit, come to know Christ more fully and the
great power of his resurrection for a changed life in a world captive to Satanic
influence (Eph. 1:18ff) and that they would know and be transformed by
the great love of God through the indwelling of Christ in their hearts (Eph.
3:16ff). He prays with confidence that God will keep moving the church on
to maturity in Christ (Phil. 1:4–6), and for spiritual wisdom to live a life that
honors Christ and bears fruit through good works (Col. 1:10). As the gifts
of the spirit facilitate an encounter with Christ and his grace, so prayer for
other believers results in God engaging them with himself, his love causing
personal transformation leading to changed lives that reflect Christ. Thus,
prayer for others in the church, even when done while apart from them, serves
the church relationally.
In addition to modeling prayer, Paul does give the church instructions for
community prayer. But these instructions are quite general. He encourages
the church at Ephesus to pray “on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and
requests” (Eph. 6:18). And he urges the Philippian church simply to make its
requests known to God (Phil. 4:6). The assumption in all of this is that God
will answer prayer for the church, that believers will see him do powerful
things. But for Paul, at the heart of all this prayer is still relationship. He tells
the Ephesians to pray “in the Spirit” and assures the Philippians that if they
present their requests to God with the expectancy of thanksgiving, the peace
that comes from God will guard their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

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 168 Exploring Ecclesiology

This relational effect of community prayer is at least as important in Paul’s

thinking as are answers to particular prayers. What God gives in response to
prayer is not only answers, but himself. The value of this fact for the church
is not to cause the people of God to diminish their expectancy that God will
“move mountains” through prayer, but to increase their awareness that what
the church needs more than anything else is Christ himself. Thus, when church
members pray for one another, they minister God’s grace to one another by
deepening their relationships with Christ and through Christ, with one an-
other. As a final note on how prayer serves the church, its relational value is
also at the heart of why verbal prayer is so important. If one member prays
for another member silently, is there no benefit, since God hears and answers?
Certainly, but there is not nearly as much immediate benefit as there is when
a person in need actually hears a brother or sister in Christ interceding for
him or her. Further, touching someone while praying for them enhances this
relational benefit even more. Thus, the practice of the early church was to lay
hands on those for whom they were praying (i.e., Acts 6:6; 8:17; 28:8; 1€Tim.
4:14; 2€Tim. 1:6).

Healing

Another important image of the church as a serving community is that of

healing. In John’s eschatological picture of the New Jerusalem, which is his
symbol for the church in its final state as Christ’s perfect bride (Rev. 21:9ff),
he envisions the Tree of Life straddling the River of Life. Its fruit is produced
every month, and its leaves, John tells us, are for the healing of the nations
(Rev. 22:1–2). Here, the people of God are reunited to the source of health and
life from which they were banned after the fall, and in a profound fulfillment
of prophetic vision, the nations come to Jerusalem to be healed, an image that
leads the reader to ponder not only their salvation, but also their reconcilia-
tion with Israel. Later in the same chapter (vv. 12–14), Jesus’s words suggest
that the church ought to be living now in light of this eschatological picture
of the perfectly healed church.
Much has been made of healing as a ministry of the church. From the
time of the apostles to the present, the church has been seen as a place where
people receive healing, sometimes even in a miraculous way. In the power of
Jesus and following his lead, the apostles healed many people of incurable
maladies simply by praying for them, touching them, or proclaiming healing
in the name of Christ. Unfortunately, when people in America today think
about healing in connection with the church, the default image is most likely
of dramatic healing services on Christian television, where flamboyant televan-
gelists “heal” sick and crippled people. These images are met with a general
cynicism born not only out of numerous movies about fraudulent healers,
from Elmer Gantry to Leap of Faith, but also from many reports of public

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 The Church as a Serving Community 169

“healings” that turned out to be little more than magic tricks or momentary
psychosomatic relief.
The biggest disaster in all this is not the fake healings, but the development
of an image of healing in the church as primarily a ministry to individuals to
relieve them of their physical illnesses or, of perhaps equal value in American
popular Christianity, their credit card debt.19 Surely, there are many miracu-
lous physical healings in the biblical narrative. And the history of the church
is filled with ministries devoted to the healing of the body. Early medieval
Benedictine houses (from the sixth through the ninth centuries) pioneered
hospitalization and hospice care, and numerous current Catholic orders are
dedicated to caring for the sick. A hallmark of Protestant missions in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been the building of hospitals and
the training of medical personnel to care for the sick and the dying. But in
the biblical narrative, such healing is never meant to be seen as the primary
goal of the ministry of healing. It is more often a pointer to a much deeper
and more enduring healing. At the heart of the church’s ministry of healing
is the healing of relationships.20 Of course, as the greatest commandment is
to love God, so the primary relationship to be healed in the church is the one
between humans and God. The second relationships to be healed, and by no
means a distant second (“and your neighbor as yourself”), are those between
the members of the church themselves.
In his famous play No Exit, existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
concludes that “hell is other people.”21 If one of the fundamental charac-
teristics of sin is self-centeredness, Sartre is on target. Fallen human beings,
who at their core are motivated to fill their own emptiness and satisfy their
own desires, are ever inclined to see others as tools to accomplish these
ends rather than as valued creations of God to be cherished even above
themselves. Thus, the New Testament is filled with hopes that when people
enter into relationship with Christ, their relationships to others will be
transformed. Disciples transformed by Christ, their Master, are to wash
their fellow disciples’ feet. Those who are constantly sinned against by
their brothers are to forgive them seventy times seven. And in the church,
says Paul, believers are to consider other believers more important than
themselves, serving them as a means of creating relational harmony and
healing natural animosities. He comes even to the point of naming names,
calling on Euodia and Syntyche to be at peace with each other. They have
both helped Paul in proclaiming the gospel. But if the good news of Jesus
cannot bring peace between fellow church members, how can it speak of
peace to a relationally torn world?
This theology of the church as a place of healing is expressed most clearly
in the book of James. Illustrating his cynicism regarding the possibility of true
faith without works, James suggests that if a person who professes faith sees a
brother or sister without food and clothing and does nothing to bring healing

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 170 Exploring Ecclesiology

to his or her brokenness, his faith is false. It is important to recognize James’s

notation that the broken person is a brother or sister. He is talking about the
church here, and his whole theology of healing is focused on this community.
Moreover, James’s theology of healing, while it includes physical and even
economic aspects, is primarily relational. In chapter 2:1–7 he addresses the
deep relational separation between rich and poor, which is part and parcel
of the world’s system. James argues that if the church shows favoritism to
the rich, it only perpetuates the separation between socioeconomic classes.
Further, the church perpetuates the brokenness of the poor when it affirms
the rich, giving them special treatment in the church even as they continue to
oppress the poor, even the poor in the church. Even further, perpetuating this
social sickness perpetuates the brokenness of the rich by allowing them to
go on thinking that their wealth and power gives them complete control over
their lives (4:13–16), ignoring the sovereignty of God from whom all good
things come (1:17).
In chapters 3 and 4, James talks about the power of the tongue to degrade
people made in the image of God. Driven by insecurities and corrupt desires,
the tongue creates a fire of warfare and animosity in the church, leading those
who should be loving each other to slander each other instead. This, says
James, is not the peacemaking wisdom that comes from above, but is satanic.
The church that looks to the world to satisfy it will self-destruct instead, for
the world and its goods can lead only to self-consumption. But when believers
look with patience for the coming of Christ, they learn to be patient with one
another (5:7–9). Instead of attacking one another out of their brokenness,
they learn to bring healing. James closes his book (5:13–19) with an image
of the church as a community of people broken by circumstances (trouble),
sickness, sin, and rebellion (wandering from the truth). Into this community
comes healing brought by prayer, confession and forgiveness of sin, account-
ability, and perhaps even medicine (oil).
We note again: in James’s healing ecclesiology, healing takes place in the
community of the church. Believers are not told to get healed outside the church
so they can be well enough to join the community. The fact is that everyone in
the community is sick and broken. But too often, persons with certain kinds
of brokenness have not been allowed to be honest about their struggles and
find help in the church. For those of us who grew up in the fundamentalist-
evangelical church in America, alcoholism used to be an example of one of
these “untouchable” kinds of sicknesses. Often, Christians struggling with
alcohol were told either to keep quite about it or to get themselves together
before coming to the church. Perhaps the idea was that a church full of strug-
gling alcoholics would damage its image. Unfortunately, it is actually this
rejection of the broken sinner, the result of a view of discipleship based on
behavior modification through law rather than heart transformation though
grace, that damages the image of the church. The church is not meant to be a

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 The Church as a Serving Community 171

community of people who have finally become whole, but a hospital for sinners
looking for wholeness in the community where Christ is Lord.
Thankfully, many churches in the evangelical tradition today have become
places of healing for those struggling with alcohol and drug abuse. The same
cannot be said though, for those struggling with homosexuality, who are
generally told that they still need to stay in the closet. So today, the believer
struggling with same-sex attraction is often relegated either to keeping quiet
and struggling alone or to abandoning the biblical faith altogether, reject-
ing his Christianity or joining a church that affirms the unbiblical idea that
homosexuality is a gift from God. Indeed, the church will take another giant
step toward being a place of true biblical healing when pastors can walk to
the front of the church with another man and say, “Hi. This is my friend Bob.
He struggles with homosexuality. He’s looking for healing and hope so he can
walk in obedience to Christ. He needs us to walk with him.”
Perhaps every image of the church can be overdone. The church is clearly to
be a place of healing, and believers are meant to serve one another by helping
one another to heal. But some theologians have pointed out that the church must
be careful not to become simply a therapy center where Christianity is presented
as one more self-help strategy to help people feel better about themselves.22 True
enough. For the church, the ultimate goal can never be to make people feel bet-
ter, but to exalt Christ in the community of the church, knowing that he alone
is the answer to all human brokenness. Augustine spoke well in saying that all
human hearts are restless until they find healing by resting in Christ.23 In the
church created by the Triune God, believers serve by helping one another find
rest in Christ, bringing healing in a here-and-not-here, now-and-not-yet way to
all manner of maladies—physical, social, racial, emotional, and spiritual.

Sharing

Calling for authentic Christian community is his book The Church at the
End of the 20th Century, Francis Schaeffer writes:

Here is something striking: the Greeks are sending money to the Jews. As the
church at Antioch cut across the whole social spectrum, from Herod’s foster
brother down to the slave, the church and its community also cut across the
difference between Jew and Gentile—not only in theory but in practice€.€.€.
Let me say it very strongly again: there is no use talking about love if it does
not relate to the stuff of life in the area of material possessions and needs. If it
does not mean sharing of our material things for our brothers in Christ close
at home and abroad, it means little or nothing.24

From its earliest days and throughout its history, the church has recognized
the biblical mandate to serve the community of God’s people by sharing ma-

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 172 Exploring Ecclesiology

terial goods with those in need. Justin Martyr in his First Apology (ca. 150)
speaks of the regular practice of taking collections in the context of Christian
worship for aid to widows, orphans, and the sick in the church. The writer
of the Shepherd of Hermas (ca. 150) stresses the importance of the church
ministering to widows, orphans, and the needy in a spirit of Christian hospital-
ity. Ambrose (ca. 339–397), in his first act as Bishop of Milan, distributed his
great wealth to the Christian poor. The Beguines were members of sisterhoods
founded in the Netherlands in the twelfth century and called extra-regulars,
as they were neither lay nor monastic. They served the sick and indigent as
Christian charities. John Calvin in his Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1542) out-
lines the role of the deacons to provide for the administration of the work
of charity in the church. Seventeenth-century popular Catholic spirituality
is famous for its emphasis on independent lay confraternities with emphasis
on ministering to the material needs of believers. The devotion of the Sacred
Heart, Holy Family, and St. Joseph, being some of the most popular new lay
associations that operated under close clerical supervision, and reformers like
John Etudes and Jean-Jacques Olivier were all well known for their Christ-
centered encouragement to ecclesiastical charity.
One of the most striking scenes in the biblical story of the church meets
us in Acts 2.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to

the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many
wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were
together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods,
they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together
in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with
glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts
2:42–47)

Regarding the material charity of the church in the New Testament era, Car-
mel Pilcher writes,

In the early Church every Christian came to Sunday Eucharist with something
to share: bread or wine, oil or clothes. Everyone, that is, except the widows and
orphans or an itinerant or stranger who had nothing to give. These poor became
the beneficiaries of the gifts—gifts that were brought to the table along with
the bread and wine that would be blessed, broken and shared in Eucharistic
communion. At the end of Eucharist the gifts not consumed were given to those
in the community who needed them in the coming week.25

Throughout the New Testament, the practice of sharing material goods with
those in need characterized the church and the teaching of its leaders. In dra-

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 The Church as a Serving Community 173

matic contrast to the young men Jesus condemned for pledging money to the
temple that should have been spent caring for their parents, the members of
the early church considered as family persons who had no blood relation to
them, sharing their own possessions or even selling them to provide money for
those in need. This, along with the teaching of the apostles and miraculous
signs, served to attract many people to Christ. For believers who sacrificed of
their own wealth to meet the needs of the poor reflected the very character of
the trinitarian God who sacrificed the riches of his own Son to meet human-
ity in its poverty. As Paul says it, “For your sakes he became poor so that you
through his poverty might become rich” (2€Cor. 8:9). And, echoing Jesus’s
contention that true religion takes shape in love of neighbor, James argues
that true religion consists in coming to the aid of orphans and widows in their
distress (James 1:27).
In a nation where success is often described in terms of material possessions,
where “he who dies with the most toys wins,” and where advertisers spend
millions to convince people that they deserve the benefits of their product, no
matter how much they have to increase their credit card debt to get it, encour-
aging the church to share its wealth with others can be a tough sell. In fact, if
one were to come to know the church simply by watching the most popular
television preachers and visiting their websites, one might come to think that
the purpose of the church is to get more money and possessions, rather than
to share them. And statistics also have a story to tell. Among church members
of eleven primary Protestant denominations (or their historical antecedents)
in the United States and Canada, per-member giving as a percentage of in-
come was lower in 2000 than in either 1921 or 1933. In 1921, per-member
giving as a percentage of income was 2.9 percent. In 1933, at the depth of the
Great Depression, per-member giving grew to 3.3 percent. By 2000, after a
half-century of unprecedented prosperity, giving had fallen to 2.6 percent.26
Research by the Barna Group suggests that one factor in this decline in giv-
ing among Christians is the growth in credit card debt in America, including
among church members.27
The point of this section is neither to analyze giving trends among Chris-
tians nor to provide fodder for pastors to scold the church for its lack of giv-
ing. Rather, it is to remind the church of the beauty of sharing with others
out of love for Christ. In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus teaches his disciples that
when they give to other followers of Jesus who are in need, it is as if they are
giving to Jesus himself. And the rewards for such sharing would be blessing
from the Father and great enjoyment of the eschatological kingdom. In his
farewell address to the Ephesian elders, Paul urged them to help the weak be-
cause Jesus had taught them that it is more blessed to give than to receive. In a
world that exalts material possessions, those possessions tend to be protected
to the point that they eventually possess the persons who own them. But the
early church learned to see God as the ultimate owner of their goods, freeing

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 174 Exploring Ecclesiology

them from possession by their material wealth and leading to a much greater
wealth—that of being used by Christ to bring redemption to his disciples in
need (Acts 4:32–35).
A healthy church is a place of sharing, a place where people hold on to their
material possessions lightly, recognizing that there is no ultimate joy, no final
satisfaction in wealth or possessions. Indeed, even though God has created
all things for us to enjoy, the relational trinitarian God has made us such that
only when material things are shared with others in love and self-sacrifice are
they most satisfying. For it is only when we share our wealth with others that
wealth has the ability to allow us to encounter Christ. It is ultimately to him
that we give. As an eschatological community, the church gives of its wealth
now in light of what will be—not because material goods will have no mean-
ing in the eschaton, but because in that day it will be our joy to give all that
we have to God (Rev. 21:23–24). And to give to others now is to give to him
(Matt. 25:34–40).

Conclusion

The church is getting ready for a wedding, one that celebrates her own marriage
to Christ. Like any bride, the church wants to look her best for the occasion.
And her expectant groom not only anticipates a bride who will arrive without
spot or wrinkle, but is even by her side long before the wedding, serving her,
helping her to become what she is meant to be. For the groom-to-be incarnates
himself in the lives of his people, expressing his transforming grace to them
through their loving service to one another. Thus, for the church, wedding
preparation is not about clothing, hair, and makeup, but about believers serv-
ing one another. The members of the church serve one another as instruments
of Christ’s loving kindness and grace, which transform the human heart,
resulting in the growth of godly character, Christlikeness, and unity. All of
this, in anticipation of the day when the church will be made perfect through
ultimate union with her groom.

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. What areas of brokenness and sin most need to find healing in the church
today?
2. How can the church be a healing community to these people?
3. How does the church display grace that is nonjudgmental on the one
hand, while calling for change on the other?

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 10

Church Discipline—The Lost

Element of Service

Ask a room full of pastors what they dislike most about pastoral ministry,
and you are likely to hear the words “church discipline” again and again.
Few church leaders, especially those most aware of their own brokenness,
enjoy confronting church members regarding sinful behavior. Moreover, in
situations where a pastor or elders are called in, it is usually an occasion of
grievous sin, often one that has been going on for some time and comes with
serious collateral damage.
We have chosen to discuss church discipline as a form of cultural engagement
for the church as a serving community for two reasons. First, church discipline
needs to be highlighted because it is both rarely practiced well and not often
discussed in ecclesiology texts. Second, church discipline engages culture in a
strange way in that when a church member is unrepentant of serious sin, the
scriptures call upon the church to treat him as if he is no longer a member
of the community, sending him, as it were, back to the culture of the world,
from which he came. This chapter will not offer a comprehensive theology or
strategy for church discipline.1 We will offer some biblical principles, survey
some of the struggles of the historic church, and finally, recount a real story
of church discipline. For only when we see church discipline in the light of
redemptive story will we be encouraged to press on in practicing something
so difficult.
The biblical narrative is clear about the need to address sin in the commu-
nity with disciplinary action. The Mosaic law provides many specific means

175

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 176 Exploring Ecclesiology

of discipline for specific offenses. But the New Testament, while it is clear
that disciplinary action for serious sin must characterize the church, is far
less specific about the methods and standards for such discipline. The foun-
dational New Testament passage on church discipline is Matthew 18:15–20.
Here, Jesus tells the disciples that the sinning person must be confronted, by
more than one person if necessary. Ideally, all church discipline would stop
here, with the sinning person recognizing his sin, repenting, and asking for-
giveness. But Jesus goes on to address the situation where the sinning person
does not respond to confrontation, in which case the elders are to approach
him. And if this does not bring about repentance, he is to be reported to the
entire church. If he still refuses to listen, he is to be treated as a Gentile and
a tax collector, as an outcast from the community. Along with this comes
Jesus’s affirmation that whatever is bound by the church and its leaders on
earth is bound in heaven. Thus, the church has clear authority over the life of
the sinning believer. In John 20, Jesus tells the disciples that if they declare a
person’s sins to be forgiven, then they are forgiven, and if not, then they are
not. In the midst of various interpretations, most agree that the church is given
authority in issues of community sin.
Paul is also clear about the necessity for confronting sin in the church. In
1€Timothy 5:1–2, he encourages Timothy to appeal to members of the church
individually about their sin. In 2€Timothy 4:2 and Titus 1:13, he urges sharp
rebuke for those who reject sound doctrine. In 1€Corinthians 5, Paul admon-
ishes the church to confront a member who is having a sexual relationship
with his stepmother, calling upon them not even to eat with him, which in
the very least means removing him from participation in the Eucharist. John
also addresses discipline for sin, telling the church that they should intervene
with God on behalf of a brother or sister who is caught in sinful behavior
(1€John 5:16–17).
In the midst of the scripture’s clear call for the church to discipline sinners,
it is crucial to understand that the ultimate purpose of church discipline must
always be redemption, not judgment. Marlin Jeschke writes,

Too often in the history of the church the meaning of the gospel, though recog-
nized in missionary proclamation, has been forgotten when it comes to discipline.
Then the church has taken another track: charges, courts, trials, condemnation,
punishment—in short, legalism and casuistry. We forget that what meets people
initially as good news always remains the good news of the power of God’s
grace. It frees them from sin in order that they might live in conformity with
God’s gracious intention for humankind.2

While Christ’s grace is a fierce grace, demanding repentance and life change,
it is grace nevertheless. As the gospel of God’s grace in Christ is no shallow
system of behavior modification, neither is church discipline. Grounded in the

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 Church Discipline—The Lost Element of Service 177

gospel, it is always a call to respond to the unconditional holy love of God. Only
when church discipline arises out of this foundation can it be redemptive.
The redemptive purposes of church discipline involve both the sinning in-
dividual and the community. The hope for the individual is that he or she will
repent of sin and be restored to a place of healthy fellowship in the community
(Gal. 6:1–2). The discipline of the church, like that of a loving parent, is never
meant to disable, but to heal (Heb. 12:7–13). In the case of those involved in
false teaching, discipline is meant to restore them to a place of being “sound in
the faith” (Titus 1:13).3 As wholeness is restored to individuals, so it is restored
to the community. Christ’s vision of his church is as a bride without spot or
wrinkle. Only when the church is willing to address the sin of community
members can she keep moving toward her ultimate status as Christ’s pure
bride. And only when the church deals with sin redemptively can it exhibit the
kind of gracious healing that appeals to the needs of a broken world.
The postapostolic church recognized this biblical mandate for disciplinary
and restorative measures regarding sin in the lives of members of the com-
munity. But the lack of a clear biblical system for addressing sin in the church
left the church in a situation where there was struggle and disagreement about
methodology. H.€B. Swete writes,

To those who believed the message and repented of the sins of their past lives
Baptism was an absolution in full. Upon this point there is a remarkable con-
sensus of Apostolic and other early testimony. The case of post-baptismal sin
was less simple, and it does not seem to have been dealt with at first in a com-
prehensive way.4

The earliest postbiblical witnesses show that while church leaders recognized
the need for repentance in the case of major sin, there was no system of pen-
ance. Ignatius, for example, seems to use metanoia (to turn around) only in
reference to conversion of non-Christians.5 And Polycarp speaks of a scandal
that occurred among church elders but is content to show his grief and pray
that the offender may come to repentance.6 By the end of the second century,
different approaches to postbaptismal sin were developing that were strongly
opposed to each other. Bishop Callistus of Rome, for example, seemed willing
to forgive those guilty of sexual sin and, after penance, to readmit them to
communion. Others preferred the position of Tertullian, who argued that all
previous sin was forgiven at baptism, but that Christians should not return to
their sinful ways. If they did, there was only one more opportunity for repen-
tance, after which repentance could not be repeated.7 Ultimately, the church
rejected the extreme approach of Tertullian, opting instead for the develop-
ment of a penitential system. In this system, the main penalty for major sin
was removal of the offender from the Eucharist, sometimes for a long period
of time, depending on the seriousness of the sin. As the importance of the

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 178 Exploring Ecclesiology

Eucharist began to rise as an insurance of one’s ability to remain in a state of

grace, in other words, to stay saved, removal from it became monumental.
By the Middle Ages, the system of penance for sin had become immense and
complicated, its penalties often decided by precedent. The one sure thing was that
the church was completely authoritative regarding excommunication, penance,
and readmittance to the Eucharist. With the arrival of the Protestant Reforma-
tion, this penitential system was eliminated for a large section of the church.
This does not mean that the church no longer practiced discipline—just that the
Roman Catholic system no longer applied. Further, with the splintering of the
Reformation came the end to any unified approach to church discipline.
In the American church, with its historic diversity of Christian traditions
and denominations, this lack of unity has only become exacerbated. Even
evangelicals with their commitment to the infallibility of the scriptures have had
little success in bringing any consistency to the practice of church discipline.
Often, when a member of an evangelical church has been excommunicated
on the grounds of major sin and an attitude of unrepentance, he simply goes
down the street to the next evangelical church from another denomination
and is received without question. In the Middle Ages, the power of excom-
munication was found in the fact that all the doors of the church would be
closed to the unrepentant sinner. Today, a fractured church is unable to present
such a united front, and church discipline often is of little or no effect. Here
is another reason for more ecumenical partnerships.
Nevertheless, this unfortunately weakened and faded status of the practice
of church discipline should not be taken as a reason for abandoning it. Just as
a good parent does not give up the discipline of his or her children even when
they don’t seem to respond, so the church must continue to practice healthy
discipline among its members, not only because it is biblical, but because when
it does work, the results can be profoundly redemptive.
There are many stories of the redemptive power of church discipline, even
when the sin is serious and the effects devastating. The rest of this chapter
will be dedicated to one of these stories, as told by the pastor who guided the
discipline process.8

We have had a situation here in St. Louis that I want to tell you about. Some
of you know the story, but most of you do not. I do not relate it to you for any
sensational effect and certainly not to bring notoriety to the individuals involved,
for that is the last thing they want. But I do it because I believe there is an il-
lustration here of God’s grace that can have a powerful effect on our church.
About nineteen months ago a family came to our church to visit. They liked it
right away and decided that they wanted to make this their home church. They
hadn’t been here but a few weeks, however, when the husband and wife both
came to me individually to share their story, basically saying, “Before we try to
put down any roots, we want you to know who we are and what we have done
so that if we aren’t welcome, we’ll know it right away.”

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 Church Discipline—The Lost Element of Service 179

Theirs was as troubling a story as I’ve ever heard. He had been the pastor
of an evangelical church in St. Louis County, and she had been his secretary.
They got involved in an immoral relationship with one another, and when it
was discovered, they separated from their spouses, eventually divorcing their
spouses and marrying each other. That is a very brief description of a very
complicated and drawn-out process, but I think I’ve said enough to establish
that they were guilty of sin that was very heinous in God’s sight, as well as
very destructive to the body of Christ. As was most appropriate, both the local
church and the denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, carried out
discipline against this couple.
In His great grace God refused to turn His back on them, and through the
conviction of the Holy Spirit they began to desire to be restored to fellowship
with God and with God’s people. They started attending a church in the area
which welcomed them and gave him an adult Sunday School class to teach. It
wasn’t long, however, before they realized that the doctrinal integrity of that
church was suspect. After all, if they were so readily accepted without any
concern for their recent past actions, it was not surprising that serious heresy
was being tolerated in other areas in that church.
So they left and showed up at our church in the early summer of 1985. When
I heard this story I said to myself, “Lord, why us? We’re a new church in a de-
nomination that is new to St. Louis. We’re trying hard to build relationships
with the P.C.A. What we don’t need is an issue like this to divide us.” But then
I realized something I have known all along intellectually, but perhaps never
before accepted so practically, and that is that the Church is a hospital, and if
the hospital shuts the doors of its emergency room, where are the desperately
needy to go?
So what began that day was a process of confrontation, confession, forgive-
ness, and healing that has taught me something new about the marvelous grace
of our loving Lord. I am not going to go through the whole story, but I do want
you to know that our elders decided right from the beginning that while we
would welcome this family into our church, we would not ignore the discipline
of another evangelical church. We told them that if they wanted to join our
church, they would have to take steps to seek forgiveness and restoration from
their former church and denomination, which would also require confession
and perhaps even restitution to their former spouses.
When I first suggested this to them I remember getting looks of unbelief and
protests like “You’re asking the impossible! We could never go back to those
people after the way they rubbed our faces in the dirt.” But God specializes in
things thought impossible, and slowly changes of attitude began to take place.
It started with letters to the former spouses, expressing repentance and seek-
ing forgiveness. Not surprisingly, those letters were received with considerable
skepticism, but we refused to let that stop us.
Later, meetings were scheduled with the elders of the former church, and
more meetings with the presbytery, where public confession was made and
where spiritual leaders from our church also bore witness that there had been
true repentance in this couple’s lives. Forgiveness and restoration did not come
easy for the former church or denomination, and that’s understandable, for the

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 180 Exploring Ecclesiology

consequences of this sin had been devastating for them. But though they moved
slowly, they did move deliberately. They appointed a committee to consider the
issue of restitution to the former spouses, and they worked with us to resolve
a number of difficult issues.
Recently, the elders of that church voted unanimously to rescind the excom-
munication and to commend this family to the care of our church. Two days
later, the local presbytery of the P.C.A. also voted to remove the censure and to
commend them to our care. Yesterday our Elder Board voted unanimously to
receive Norm and Paula Smith into the membership of our church.
It is, admittedly, highly unusual to discuss such a matter with an entire church,
especially in a worship service. But the public nature of the sin and the wide-
spread publicity it received demanded, we felt, a public restoration. We didn’t
want anyone to hear of this matter by gossip or grapevine and wonder whether
the elders knew of it or wonder whether the Smiths had ever repented. We were
also concerned that other evangelical churches and denominations know that we
do not consider ourselves an independent group doing our own thing. Instead
we view our church as part of the body of Christ, working with the rest of the
body of Christ to present a united front for the gospel in the city of St. Louis.
I have shared these things only with the permission and agreement of our
entire Elder Board and with Norm and Paula’s permission. And now I’m going
to ask them to come forward as I extend to them the right hand of Christian
fellowship. I want you to know that they are being accepted as full-fledged
members, and they are not under any kind of probation. The elders would
not have accepted them into membership if they were not convinced that their
repentance was real. As repentant and restored Christians, we will treat them
as eligible for service in the body as we do all other members.

Not all stories of church discipline turn out this well. But when they do, it
is a beautiful picture of the gospel, one that shows how the good news goes
beyond the event when an individual hears the story of God’s grace in Christ
to live on within the community of Christ’s church where his fierce grace,
dispensed through his obedient people, brings healing not just to individual
sinners but also to the whole community of God’s people. Thus, the practice
of church discipline is a crucial component in the creation of the church as a
serving community. When it is practiced well, erring members of the church
are saved from the brokenness of unrepentant sin, and the community is saved
from the loss of beloved servants. Pastor Andrus has said recently that in all
his years of ministry he has never known another couple more committed to
faithful service in the church than this couple, healed by the painful process
of church discipline. May the pain of the process never dissuade the church
from the potential joy of the outcome.9

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 Church Discipline—The Lost Element of Service 181

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. How have you seen church discipline done poorly in the church?
2. How have you seen church discipline become redemptive in the
church?

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Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 182 3/9/09 8:04:04 AM
 11

The Church as an Ordered Community

If one thing is certain in this world, it is that, for us, the Church precedes the
Gospel.
Henri de Lubac1

For myself, I believe that any period of Christian history for which ecclesiology
and polity are the driving issues is decadent by definition.
Paul F. M. Zahl2

As the community built upon Jesus Christ, the church is an ordered community.
As her head, Christ rules his body and is the source of all its true authority.
In the New Testament we see a number of regular and ordered patterns for
church life. Among other things, the church meets regularly (Heb. 10:25), cel-
ebrates the Eucharist (1€Cor. 10–11), gives to the poor (Rom. 15:26; Gal. 2:10),
develops a liturgy, and practices church discipline (1€Cor. 5). We also see that
in order for the church to manage these regular functions and remain true to
the purpose and mission of Christ, he has given the church gifted persons who
function in specific offices to lead and guide it under his authority. Throughout
its history the church has established organizational and governing structures
to preserve its identity and accomplish its mission.
In this chapter we engage the issue of church polity, considering how the
church has structured and governed itself for leadership and service. We will
survey the three major historical forms of church polity (the episcopal, the

183

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 184 Exploring Ecclesiology

presbyterian, and the congregational), examining the biblical and theological

rationales for each and suggesting positives and negatives for each one as
structures managing the church as the people of God. The central issue will
be to understand how each form of church government mediates the authority
of Christ, as head, to the rest of the body. But first, in order to understand
authority before looking at authority structures, we will offer some general
principles for leadership in the church suggested by other chapters in this
text.

The Trinity and Authority in the Church

If church leadership is to reflect the nature and character of God, then it

must reflect his trinitarian existence. Church leadership structure, then, must
function on the basis of community and interdependence. As each person of
the trinitarian God always acts in concert with the other members, so church
leadership is most authentic when it moves forward with consensus. Such com-
munity and interdependence is illustrated at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15,
when the apostles and others agree on an appropriate action for the church.
Of course, how the church reflects the Trinity in its leadership structures
depends on whether its view of the Trinity is fundamentally hierarchical or
egalitarian.3 In any case, no church structure that creates a functional dicta-
torship of one person—be it an episcopal church or an independent church
that is congregational in name but, for all intents and purposes, is ruled by the
senior pastor—reflects a trinitarian model of leadership. For in the trinitarian
structure, the Son and the Spirit do not serve merely as objects to carry out
the Father’s will, but as subjects with the Father in every act of God. Thus,
God always acts trinitarianly.
Here the metaphor of the church as the bride is crucial. For the apostle
John, who sees the church as Christ’s bride (Rev. 21–22), the church is invited
into the community of love and unity created by the Father and Son in the
Spirit (John 17; Rev. 3:20). In Ephesians 5, Paul speaks of the very nature
of the church in terms of the relationship between husband and wife. In so
doing, he makes it clear that Christ, the husband, is head over the church,
his wife. Yet as head, Christ also gives himself sacrificially for the church,
for his primary purpose is not self-aggrandizement, nor simply the exercise
of his power. His glory and the exercise of his power takes place in his own
self-giving for the benefit of the church. It is the father/son, husband/wife
love, unity, and service, empowered by the Spirit, that is meant to permeate
the church so that the world may know that the church belongs to Jesus
(John 13; 17). Thus, church government, in order to be legitimate, must be
able to express authority as well as self-sacrifice, and must be able to create
authentic unity.

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 The Church as an Ordered Community 185

Eschatology and Authority in the Church

In chapter 3 we saw that the church is an eschatological community and suggested

that this means the church should always be looking forward to its ultimate
existence and character, drawing these future realities back into the present as
much as possible. This methodology has a key role to play as the church works
out its theology of government and leadership.4 One of the key images of the
eschatological church is that of a unified community, the bride, under Christ as
husband and Lord. The now and not-yet eschatology of the New Testament
draws the future kingship of Christ into the present through his living lordship
over the church. For it is not simply the principles of Christ that guide the church;
it is the very presence of the risen Christ who rules the church, in person and in
anticipation of his future, personal rule over all creation.
Regarding the lordship of Christ in the church, the various models of church
polity would each argue that their structure most clearly represents such lordship
to the church.5 Episcopal structures would argue that Christ’s lordship is person-
ally represented in the bishop. Congregationalists might argue that his lordship is
expressed in the scriptures through the Reformation principle of sola scriptura.
But perhaps the issue here is not structure as much as it is the environment cre-
ated by the church. To conform to the eschatological image of Christ’s lordship,
the leadership of the church must create an environment that communicates to
the people that Jesus Christ is the ultimate authority over the church in all areas
of faith and practice. In a world forever changed by the effects of postmodern
thought, this does not mean that every church in every era and in every location
will understand in the same way how the lordship of Jesus Christ is to be lived
out, nor will they come to the same conclusions on theological issues. What it
does mean is that the church understands that Jesus speaks with total authority
on theology, morals, and on the very life of the church, and that when culture
contradicts the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, Jesus is given priority.
Here the lordship of Jesus Christ means that his church, while not anticul-
tural, is always countercultural. For the church, culture is to be understood
through the lordship of Jesus and not vice versa. Church leaders will exemplify
this reality in the healthiest way when they communicate to the congregation
through a variety of means that their leadership is always in submission to
Christ himself through submission to the Word of God and to the teachings of
historic Christian orthodoxy. In the episcopal system this may take the form of
leaders submitting themselves to the historic teaching tradition of the church
as a product of the scriptures. In the congregational church it may take the
form of a more direct submission to the scriptures themselves. In the episcopal
tradition, a weakness at times has been to allow teaching tradition and the
teaching office of the church to be authoritative in spite of the lack of solid
biblical evidence. On the congregational side, the tendency has at times been
to tout the authority of the scriptures on their interpretation of an issue, while

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 186 Exploring Ecclesiology

ignoring the fact that two thousand years of biblically based historic orthodoxy
would beg to differ.6 The issue here concerns how exactly the church accesses
the lordship of Jesus Christ and reflects it in its faith and practice.
The ultimate lordship of Jesus Christ will be manifest at the parousia as
he returns to earth to rule directly as Lord. In the absence of this direct rule,
Christ has left his church with the need to function through mediated author-
ity. In the American evangelical tradition, which is largely congregational, the
general philosophy of authority has been that the scriptures are the supreme
intermediary authority in the church and that any believer may question or
even reject any other authority simply by turning to the scriptures. Depend-
ing on the Reformation principles of sola scriptura, the priesthood of the
believer, and the perspicuity of the scriptures, congregational polity suggests
that each believer is allowed to judge the authority and/or doctrinal accuracy
of any official church teacher or teaching simply through his own study of the
Bible.7 In practice, however, the senior/preaching pastor of the church actu-
ally becomes the main authority in the church, interpreting the scriptures for
the congregation. In noncongregational systems, the contention is that God
has ordained certain officers and teachers of the church both to explain the
truths of scripture and to determine how those truths are to be lived out in
the life of the church.
So, which system of church government is best suited to draw the eschato-
logical lordship of Jesus Christ back into the experience of the church today?
We would argue that each church polity has strengths and weaknesses in this
regard. The congregational system is most likely to recognize the scriptures
alone as completely authoritative in the church. As such, the scriptures are the
most powerful means for Christ’s lordship to be mediated. In church govern-
ment systems that emphasize an authoritative tradition or teaching office, there
is always the danger of these sources taking precedence over the Word of God.
The downside of the congregational system can be that the scriptures, which
always must be explained and interpreted in order for Christ’s lordship to be
applicable, may be left without any authoritative interpretation, opening the
door to understandings of the scriptures, and thus of the lordship of Christ,
that depart from the faith of historic orthodoxy. Often, the strength of church
polities that emphasize teaching tradition and historic teaching authority is
that they protect the church from unorthodox interpretations of the scriptures
and, thus, improper understandings and applications of Christ’s lordship.8
So if, as we have suggested, there is no clearly ordained, biblical form of
church government, how must the various forms of church government em-
phasize their strengths and guard against their weaknesses in helping the
church experience the eschatological lordship of Jesus Christ? Bottom line,
the leadership of every church, regardless of its polity, must look beyond
itself, consistently bearing witness to Jesus Christ as Lord. In congregational
churches the leadership needs to help the congregation understand that sub-

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 The Church as an Ordered Community 187

mission to Christ as Lord goes beyond the freedom of each individual or even
the local church as a whole to interpret that lordship on its own. Aware of the
tendency of the individual and even of a local church to interpret the lordship
of Christ for its own purposes and its own comfort, influenced by its own
cultural context, the healthy congregational church will look beyond itself. It
will seek to understand the lordship of Christ through both the mainstreams
of historic orthodoxy and the multifaceted lenses of the contemporary church
in its various cultural, ethnic, and denominational representations. In this way
the church protects itself from provincial and convenient misunderstandings
of Christ’s lordship. In churches where the congregation is not structurally
connected to church authority, it is the leadership that must be most vigilant
to look beyond itself. In light of the tendency of power to create a greater
hunger for even more power, leadership must look to the self-giving nature of
Christ’s authority. Moreover, it must look to the future image of the church
as Christ’s perfect and loving bride so as to seek a unity that is not coerced,
but is the result of a congregation captivated by the love of Christ, exempli-
fied in its leaders.

Spiritual Gifts, Office, and Authority in the Church

One of the key issues that must be addressed to develop a proper theology of
church order is the relationship between official leadership and spiritual gifts.
The question can be framed simply: is authority in the church primarily gift-
based or office-based? Like most questions of this type, the answer is likely
to be both. If the biblical text and its portrayal of the life of the early church
is to be the primary source of instruction on this issue, the evidence is a bit
ambiguous. For leadership in the early church is viewed through the lenses of
gifts, office, and even character without there being a clear means of connect-
ing any of these to authority in the church. One of the important aspects of
the promise of the kingdom of God in the Hebrew Scriptures is that there will
come a time when God will no longer speak exclusively through the official
authority figures of the nation of Israel, but will one day pour out his Spirit
upon all people (Joel 2), with the result that many who are outside of official
authority structures will become mouthpieces of God to the people of God.
The initial event of this Spirit-gifted empowerment to speak for God oc-
curs on the day of Pentecost. And while this first manifestation of the Spirit
falls upon the twelve, who were given unique leadership roles by Christ, both
in the early church and for the eschaton (Matt. 16:17–19; 18:18; 19:28), the
manifestation subsequently spreads throughout the church, with the result
that Paul not only encourages the members of the church at Corinth to desire
the gift of prophecy (1€Cor. 14:1, 39), but also tells them that anyone in the
church who has a prophetic word from God is eligible to share it with the whole

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 188 Exploring Ecclesiology

church (1€Cor. 14:29–31). This does not mean that there is no longer a need
for official leadership structure in the church, or that all church members are
empowered by the Spirit to have an equal voice in leading the congregation.
For it is also clear that the early church had official leaders. Paul appointed
elders in the churches he planted and, as an apostle with a unique authority
from Christ, gave them authority to rule the church (1€Tim. 5:17; Titus 1:5).
Peter also urged the elders to rule well (1€Pet. 5:1–4).
So what we see in the early church is an interplay between Spirit-giftedness
and official leadership. In this interplay the church recognizes the authority
vested in the leadership office, yet also understands that God may speak
and work through those gifted by the Spirit who are not official leaders.
Paul argues both in 1€Corinthians and in 1€Thessalonians that prophecies
must be tested, presumably to confirm that they are truly words from God.
But the other assumption is that if their source is God through the Spirit,
they are proclamations to be regarded with respect and obedience by the
church (1€Thess. 5:20–21). Regarding this authority of Spirit-empowered
persons who may not be official leaders, Bengt Holmberg writes: “The most
important basis for the legitimate exercise of power or, in other words, for
the exercise of authority in the Primitive Church is proximity to the sacred
(Christ and His Spirit).”9 Arguing for the priority of giftedness in leadership
in the NT church, Gordon Fee writes that “those who have been recognized
by the community as a whole to be gifted for ministry and leadership should
receive the ‘laying on of hands’ on that basis alone.”10 To connect church
leadership primarily to giftedness rather than to office necessarily dimin-
ishes the gap between clergy and laity, since all members of Christ’s church
are gifted to represent him and to minister his grace to the rest of the body.
Miroslav Volf writes,

Since the members of the church are interdependent, their life must be character-
ized by mutuality. The church is a community “of mutual giving and receiving”
(Phil. 4:15). The “charismata of office” must be integrated into this mutuality.
Officeholders do not stand opposite the church as those acting exclusively in
persona Christi. Since the Spirit of Christ acts in them not by the power of their
office, but rather in the execution of their ministry, their actions do not differ
in principle from those of any other member of the church.11

What we see in the NT narrative is that Spirit filling and giftedness are pre-
requisites for positions of leadership. This pattern is illustrated in the choosing
of servant leaders to deal with administrative problems in the church in Acts
6. Here, the choice of Spirit-filled men to lead the church in these issues illus-
trates how responsibility/leadership is given on the basis of appropriate Spirit
gifting and character. Ronald Fung summarizes his research on the interplay
between gift and office in the NT:

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 The Church as an Ordered Community 189

We have repeatedly pointed out, in discussing [relevant] passages, the priority of

the Spirit or his gifts in the mutual relations of function, gift, and office. It is the
charisma, not the office, that creates the ministry: the office is but the channel
through which the office-bearer may exercise the given charisma for a particular
function; and the church’s appointment to office (where such is involved) is but a
sign of recognizing a person’s spiritual gifts and a response to God’s will made
known in the bestowing of those gifts.12

Another illustration of the relationship of Holy Spirit gifting to authority in

the early church is the role of Pricilla as instructor of Apollos. As a woman,
she surely held no official office in the church (e.g., she was not an elder), yet,
as a Spirit-gifted teacher, she instructed Apollos in theology, even correcting
his errors so that he could teach more effectively (Acts 18:24–26). The implica-
tion of the story is that both Luke and Paul respected her teaching and gave it
a certain place of authority that had nothing to do with office.
By the Middle Ages the Catholic hierarchy had developed such that authority
became primarily a function of office. But even during this period, the issue
of Spirit filling and giftedness rose to prominence, even over the power of
religious office. One need only recall the influence of mystics like Catherine
of Siena, whose Spirit-inspired visions were revered to the point that she was
given personal audiences by popes. Other mystics of the period were held in
similarly high regard.
With such biblical and historical precedents in mind, the church should
always consider the role of the Spirit in its authority structure. This may be
taken into account in at least the following ways: If it is the consensus of the
church that an official leader does not show signs of Spirit filling and/or Spirit
gifting, his authority should not be unquestionable. Also, choosing persons for
leadership/authority should not be simply a matter of determining their skills
and experience (e.g., the idea that successful CEOs always make good elders),
but a matter of considering indications of Spirit filling and Spirit gifting. Of
course, the logical question that follows is, What or who determines when
a person is gifted for church leadership? The overwhelming evidence of the
New Testament is that the whole congregation must be involved in recogniz-
ing those gifted for leadership.
In Acts 6, the apostles look to the people to identify those who are Spirit-
filled and gifted for servant leadership. In Paul’s epistles, the church recognizes
those who have the character necessary for leadership. In this sense, church
leaders, at least initially, are not made but recognized. No amount of train-
ing can instill a gift that God has not given. If this is true, it should have a
significant effect on the student populations of our seminaries, at least in
the case of those who seek to be pastors. As professors of theology, it is our
experience that there are some students in seminary preparing to be pastors
who may not be gifted to be pastors. Perhaps an important qualification that

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 190 Exploring Ecclesiology

every seminary should look for in those who desire to train specifically for
pastoral ministry is a strong affirmation from the congregation of which the
prospective pastor is a member, something that says, “This person is gifted
for church leadership. When she leads, we want to follow. We just need you
to train her so her gifts can be maximized.” This kind of recognized gifted-
ness, combined with godly character, creates leaders who do not need offices
to have influence, but who will be appointed to offices by congregations who
want to follow their lead.

Church Polity and Authority

Throughout its history, the church has ordered itself in various ways. But all
of these forms can be subsumed under three main church polities—episcopal,
presbyterian, and congregational. The episcopal structure is the most hierar-
chical. The word episcopal is a transliteration of the Greek word episcopos,
from which we get the word bishop. Churches with episcopal polity are con-
nected to a larger denomination that is ruled by bishops. Each bishop is the
senior authority figure over all the churches, including their priests/pastors in
a particular region. The bishops together, then, become the ruling body for
the entire denomination. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church, there is
one bishop who holds authority over all the rest, the pope.
The word presbyterian is a transliteration of the Greek word presbuteros,
which means “elder.” In presbyterian polity, each church is ruled by elders, who
make up a body called the session. Representatives from local church sessions
then form a ruling body for a town/city called a presbytery. Representatives from
various presbyteries form a ruling body for a region and are called a synod.
Finally, representatives from the various synods form the General Assembly,
the highest ruling body in most Presbyterian denominations.
In the congregational system, the highest human authority in each church
is the whole body of voting members. Here the congregation generally must
vote on the budget and the hiring of pastors, and can actually veto a decision
by the pastors and/or elders. Many congregational churches are members
of denominations and so submit to the leaders or national assembly of the
denomination on such issues as ordaining pastors, church constitutions, and
an agreed-upon doctrinal statement. Other congregational churches are com-
pletely independent, having no authority outside of the local congregation.
In the following pages we look at some of the support offered for each of
the three main polities, both from the scriptures and from the perspectives
of those traditions that hold to them. Then we suggest some strengths and
weaknesses of each. It should be said that we do not argue for any of the three
polities as “the biblical one” or the “God-ordained one,” though many do.13
We contend that the scriptures simply do not present a clear argument for

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 The Church as an Ordered Community 191

any particular church polity. Thus, the most important issue for each church
is not to reconsider the fidelity of its polity to scripture and church tradition,
but to consider the strengths and weaknesses of its system as a means for
ordering the people of God.

Episcopal Church Polity

Briefly, the historical background of the episcopal system goes back to the
early church, which had elders who were spiritual leaders of the local churches.
As local churches multiplied and more oversight was needed, one elder was
chosen to be bishop and eventually became the leader of the elders of several
churches. We know that this structure was already in place by the end of the
first century, for Ignatius, in his letter to Smyrna, contends that where the
bishop is, there is the church of Jesus Christ.14 As churches spread throughout
a city, the bishop became known as a metropolitan bishop. These bishops then
became the major leaders of Christendom, especially the bishops of the five
patriarchates—Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Antioch.
By the middle of the third century, the bishop of Rome began to be recognized
by many as the premier bishop of the church, since he ruled in the traditional
city of the martyrdom of Peter. This led to the establishment of the papacy.
Biblical support for the episcopal system would include Jesus’s statement
to Peter in Matthew 16 that he would build his church upon him and give him
the keys of the kingdom of God.15 While this passage has been highly debated
over the years, with non-Catholics often arguing that Jesus did not mean here
that he was building his church upon Peter, but upon Peter’s confession or upon
himself as the rock, the prevailing opinion among Protestant scholars now is
that Jesus did indeed mean here that he would build his church upon Peter.
The resistance among Protestants to this interpretation comes from the fact
that the Roman church uses this passage to support the idea of Peter as the
first pope. But even if Jesus does mean here that he will build his church upon
Peter, that does not necessarily lead to the papacy. Two chapters later Jesus
repeats his intention to bestow the keys of the kingdom, but here that bestowal
is not to Peter alone, but to all the apostles (Matt. 18:18). But whether one
understands this passage as pointing uniquely to Peter or to all the apostles,
it is reasonable to argue that Jesus indicated a unique kind of authority in the
church for the apostles, who form a kind of plurality of bishops to instruct,
manage, and rule the early church.
In the episcopal system, the authority of this body of bishops is seen to be
handed off to each succeeding generation of bishops in a concept known as
“apostolic succession.” Even for those churches that do not trace this succes-
sion back to Peter and opt for one supreme bishop, as does the Roman church,
it is often understood to be a continuum of ruling and shepherding tradition
that goes back to the apostles and is meant to continue throughout the church

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 192 Exploring Ecclesiology

age until the return of the Great Shepherd. Another claim for biblical support
for this system, though more anecdotal, is found in the fact that James seems
to emerge as the lead bishop of the church in Jerusalem and presides over the
Jerusalem council, where the other leaders seem to defer to him.
The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is constituted through the
theology of apostolic succession, arguing that the official pastoral ministry
of the church was invested by Christ first and foremost in the apostle Peter,
and subsequently in each successive bishop of Rome. Pastoral authority flows
from Christ to the Bishop of Rome (the Pope), and from him to the other
bishops and to the rest of the community of ordained priests.16 Thus, we see
that in the Catholic Church, both the role and the authority of the bishop
are tied primarily to the office and not to the person or to the gifts given him
by the Holy Spirit.17
The episcopal theology of the Orthodox Church differs from Rome in
ascribing authority to the five patriarchs and the ecumenical councils (rather
than the papal system). Orthodoxy does insist on the infallibility of the
church as a whole but is built less around earthly authority structures and
more around the mystical union of the church with Christ. Bishop Kallistos
Ware argues that the relationship between God and the church is illustrated
in the hierarchy. As the image of the Holy Trinity, the church is ordered
after the unity in diversity of the Trinity; there is a coinherence that leads
to freedom and authority, unity without totalitarianism. Thus, like the
Father’s position over the Son and Spirit, the bishop can hold a position
of headship or authority over the rest of the church without expressing an
inequality of personhood or value. In the church’s hierarchy, the bishop
is the living image of God on earth and fountain of the sacraments from
which come salvation. The bishop is endowed with the threefold power of:
(1)€ruling: he is appointed by God to rule the flock (“He is a monarch in
his own diocese”18); (2)€teaching: he receives a gift from the Holy Spirit to
act as teacher of the faith, and his highest act is the sermon at the Eucha-
rist; (3)€sacraments: the bishop is the fountain of the sacraments. Again,
according to the Trinitarian ethos, the bishop is not set up over the church
but holds office in the church. It is not the bishop alone who is the guardian
of the faith, but the whole people of God fill that role. The bishop is the
proclaimer of the truth, but all are stewards of the truth.
Laypersons are also crucial in Orthodox Church order, for the church
is not only hierarchical, but also charismatic and Pentecostal. The Spirit is
poured out on all God’s people. So even though there are offices of bishop,
priest, and deacon, all the people are prophets and priests. The “charis-
matic” side of the church means that each has gifts from the Spirit for the
good of all. There is no ultimate conflict between the hierarchical and
charismatic aspects of the church. A key concept of Orthodox structure is
sobornost, which refers to the organic unity of the church.19 Each member

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 The Church as an Ordered Community 193

contributes to the common work of the church, doing his or her job with
the help of others. There is both individuality and community. Sobornost
expresses the idea that even though the church is hierarchical, governed by
the bishop who represents God, there is also equality of all members. It
is the Spirit who creates the church and its structure, and all believers are
interrelated through the Spirit.
Still addressing episcopal polity, but switching to the perspective of the
Roman Catholic Church, one of the fundamental issues that affects what
it means for the church to be an ordered community consists in whether it
is the gospel or the church that takes temporal priority in Christianity. For
Protestants, the gospel is always primary. Sola fides is first about sola scrip-
tura. One places faith in Christ through the message of the Bible and then
enters the church. This is not the Roman Catholic view, which argues (as
illustrated at the outset of the chapter in the quote by theologian Henri de
Lubac) that the church takes priority. Lubac rejects the idea that the gospel
existed before the church. The books from which the gospel comes, he says,
were produced and verified by the church and thus cannot be separated from
the tradition of the church. There has never been Christianity without the
church. This fact means that the community, along with its structure, is
foundational for all else. The gospel is not about a new relation of individu-
als to Christ, but about a new people of God. The church is not a group of
individuals who have come together after having believed in Christ. There is
no possibility of nonecclesial Christianity. Because Christ and his message
are so tied to the church, “the essential structures of the Church are not
‘ancient forms’ which could be abandoned any more than the fundamental
dogmas of our faith are out-of-date ideas in which a change of language
would leave nothing subsisting.”20
The doctrine of apostolic succession also argues that an episcopal system is
not only biblical, but also crucial for God to dispense his grace to the church
effectively. Lubac writes,

The Body of Christ is not an invisible Church or an invertebrate people. It is

always owing to the immediate mediation of pastors that this maternal func-
tion of all and of each one can be exercised, whether in relation to the Word of
God in the individual soul or with regard to the community as a whole. For it
is through them, successors of the first apostles, that the divine life continues
to be transmitted, and it is they who have the responsibility of seeing to it that
the “virginity” of the faith is preserved both intact and fruitful. They are the
“co-workers of God” among us; they are the “dispensers of the mysteries of
God” for us.21

Another conception of the episcopal system is that held by theologians like

Anglican Paul Zahl. For him, the episcopal polity is good for the church but
is not the essence of the church. Stated differently, “Episcopal church order is

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 194 Exploring Ecclesiology

not constitutive of the church.”22 While the church may function best under a
hierarchical system, it is not necessary for the church to be the church.23

Strengths and Weaknesses of Episcopal Polity

There are several advantages of an episcopal form of church government.

One is that a hierarchy tends to hold the church together in tough times and
even amid disagreements. Especially when there is a sense of apostolic succes-
sion, such that the authority of the bishops is considered to be given by God,
church splits are very unlikely. As a Presbyterian addressing two disagreeing
Catholic scholars commented, “One of the amazing things about you Roman
Catholics is that you can come here and take opposing sides on an important
theological issue, yet, when the debate is over, you still remain Catholic. When
we Presbyterians disagree on doctrine, we just form a new denomination.”24
While many congregationalists would object that the need to remain under the
authority of a hierarchy can cause Christians to remain under the authority
of those who teach heresy, a cursory examination of denominational splits
would likely reveal that most such splits were not really the result of heresy.
The doctrines of many Presbyterian and Baptist denominations are so similar
to that of other denominations in their traditions that one wonders why they
have to remain separated. Surely the inability of the church to work out its dif-
ferences, resulting in a plethora of competing denominations, does not reflect
Christ’s hope for unity illustrated by his prayer in John 17, nor the love for
each other by which the world is supposed to know that we belong to Jesus.
Despite the downsides, episcopal systems do tend to keep the flock together
and often protect it from heresy rather than fostering it.25
Another strength of episcopal systems is that they tend to value tradition. There
is very little structural motivation for valuing tradition in a church where the local
congregation, formed a few years or decades before, is the final authority in all
matters. But the episcopal polity by nature understands authority to be passed
on from generation to generation of bishops. Zahl notes that “the importance
of tradition in the shaping of Episcopal Christianity is high. A besetting weak-
ness of popular evangelicalism and Pentecostalism is the idea that the good
news is new, that the gospel came to us just yesterday.”26 One of the problems
of congregational systems, which tend not to value history and tradition, is that
they fall prey to the fallacy that their interpretation of the scriptures is the most
accurate and authoritative, with little awareness that their interpretation is always
a product of their own culture. An appreciation of tradition listens to the voices
of many interpreters who have struggled with how to express the tenets of the
faith in eras when they were reacting to completely different issues. In this way
tradition, properly understood and applied, becomes a filtering system. It helps
the church to recognize and understand those doctrinal issues that really matter
and have always been a concern to the church.

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 The Church as an Ordered Community 195

Presbyterian Church Government

Presbyterian polity usually argues that there are two main offices in the
church, elder and deacon. Elders are the main overseers of the church, respon-
sible for its spiritual well-being, its doctrinal purity, and church discipline.
Generally, two kinds of elders are recognized: ruling elders and teaching elders.
Both serve on the session together, but teaching elders are those recognized
as having a spiritual gift of teaching, while ruling elders are responsible for
administrative leadership. Deacons compose the second office of the church
and are generally responsible for the financial and physical issues of church
life, often caring for the needy and managing church property.
Theologians who hold to the Presbyterian system of church government
generally look to the early church for support, noting that the church adopted
many of the practices and forms of the synagogue, which was ruled by a group
of elders. Indeed, the early church congregations were run by elders, but as
noted above, soon the elders of the various metropolitan congregations began
the practice of choosing one elder to whom they would all be accountable.
Thus, even if the earliest churches did have some measure of independence
and were run by elders, this system soon gave way to a system of bishops that
ruled the entire (Western) church until the Protestant Reformation. While the
episcopal form took over in the subapostolic period, the Reformers, reacting
to what they saw as the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, generally es-
tablished elder-rule churches, believing they were more supportable biblically.
Early on, the move to Presbyterianism came from the influence of Calvin.
Luther, while he eventually rejected the papacy, did not reject Episcopal polity.
Chad Owen Brand and R. Stanton Norman write:

In Geneva, Calvin organized the churches into a fourfold-ministry of pastors, elders,

doctors (teachers), and deacons, though he tended to conflate the office of teacher
with that of pastor€.€.€. Calvin argued, against episcopacy, that there is only one
level of ordained ministry (the elder), not two (elder and bishop), and that there are
two kinds of elders in the New Testament—teaching elders and ruling elders—a
conviction that arose from his interpretation of 1€Timothy 5:17.27

To this day, churches in the Reformed tradition generally operate via a Pres-
byterian system.
Biblical texts that support Presbyterianism are found throughout the New
Testament. Luke’s account of the early church mentions elders in Jerusalem,
and Paul and Barnabas took funds for famine relief to the elders in that church.
In Acts 14:23 and Titus 1:5, we read that elders were appointed to lead churches.
And in 1 Peter 5, we see that the elders of each church have authority over the
members. Numerous other passages speak of elder rule, including 1€Timothy
3:4–5; 1€Thessalonians 5:12; Hebrews 13:17. With the passing of the apostles,
these elders were to continue to be the leaders of the local churches.

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 196 Exploring Ecclesiology

While the supporters of episcopal polity look to the Jerusalem Council

in Acts 15 for support, so do Presbyterians. By the time of the council, there
would have been a number of local congregations in Jerusalem. The council
brought together the elders of those churches to decide an issue for the good
of the whole church. For supporters of presbyterian polity, the issue at the
council is not the singular authority of James, but the communal authority of
the elders. They contend that ecclesiastical authority was shared by a plurality
of elders, not just James or even the apostles.28
While supporters of Presbyterian polity do offer theological arguments,
their main contention is that the scriptures clearly represent this polity as
ordained by God. They see a plural leadership of representatives going all
the way back to Moses, his group of elders, and the priestly body of Israel.
And since Reformed theology sees a high degree of continuity between the
testaments, it makes sense that God’s ordained system of government for
the church would reflect the plurality of that of Israel. While supporters of
other polities may agree that there is significant evidence for other systems in
the scriptures, Reformed theologians tend to argue that the scriptures clearly
present presbyterianism as God’s ordained polity. To depart from it or to add
to it is to depart from or add to the scriptures.29

Strengths and Weaknesses of Presbyterian Polity

One of the strengths of presbyterian polity is that even if, as we suggest, it is

impossible to determine one form of church government that is clearly ordained
by scripture, there is probably more narrative support for an elder-run church
than for any other. There are numerous references to elders being appointed
to churches (Acts 14:23; 1€Tim. 5:17; James 5:14; etc.), and the passages that
enumerate the qualifications for elders imply that there is a plurality of them
for each church (1€Tim. 3; Titus 1). On the other hand, it must be said that
having multiple elders in the church does not preclude either an episcopacy
or a congregational polity. Elder rule, by the very nature of its structure, also
has the benefit of making leadership in the church a community affair. No
single person can commandeer the church for his own purposes, and major
decisions must be made with contributions from a variety of persons, help-
ing to take personal agendas out of the equation of leadership and direction.
Further, since the pastor is subject to the elder board, he not only can be kept
from making mistakes, but can be protected from attacks and encouraged in
difficult times by other leaders.
There are also downsides to presbyterian polity. In many elder-run churches,
the elder board is a self-perpetuating body, choosing its members without any
input or confirmation from the congregation. This can lead to the discon-
nection of the leadership from the congregation and also the perpetuation of
a certain kind of personality, leading to a board that may not represent the

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 The Church as an Ordered Community 197

congregation broadly. Further, in order to maintain church unity, elder-run

churches need to work hard to make sure that the elders balance their author-
ity to make official decisions with the importance of developing consensus on
important decisions that affect the entire congregation.

Congregational Polity

Historically, congregationalism surfaced in the post-Reformation period.

A significant minority of English Puritans, rejecting the episcopal system of
the Church of England as too reminiscent of Roman Catholicism, insisted
on congregational polity.30 Baptists, generally identifying with the Anabaptist
movement, with its communal and democratic ethos, were also congrega-
tional. Later, the Scandinavian Free Church movement rejected the hierarchi-
cal system of the state churches and opted for congregationalism as well.
Congregational polity became a significant part of the American landscape
early on with the Baptists and later with the Scandinavian immigrations of the
nineteenth century. Congregationalism also fit easily with America’s demo-
cratic impulses.31
Support for the congregational form of government comes from various
passages. In Matthew 18 and 1€Corinthians 5, for example, the whole church
is responsible for church discipline. In Acts 6 and 2€Corinthians 8 we see that
the whole church chooses its leaders. Further, at the Jerusalem council, it is
not merely the apostles who establish its major decision, but the whole church
(Acts 15:22). Moreover, the local church is the focus of Acts and the epistles,
where there is little support for higher authorities beyond the local church.
Theologically, the Reformation principle of the priesthood of all believers
is a central issue for those who argue for congregationalism. Paige Patterson
contends that this priesthood is witnessed by the scriptures in numerous
places, and in 1€Peter 2:5–9 is described regarding its nature. “In those
verses the followers of Christ are said to constitute a ‘spiritual house’ made
up of ‘living stones’ for the purpose of exercising a ‘holy priesthood.’” 32
The upshot is that the congregation, made of up believing members, has
direct access to God, without the need of any intermediary besides Christ
himself. For Congregationalists, this “democratic” access to God affects
not only salvation or worship, but becomes the defining factor in church
structure and polity. Since the individual believer is responsible before God
for his spiritual state, so also the congregation is the final locus of respon-
sibility for the life of the local church.33 Accordingly, Miroslav Volf argues
that the general priesthood of the church is not a function of the officers
of the church, but of all the individual members. He writes that “although
one should in particular not underestimate the preeminent significance of
officeholders, who have an indispensable role in the church, the whole life
of the church is not ordered around them. Different persons can become

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 198 Exploring Ecclesiology

soteriologically ‘significant others’ for other persons.” 34 This being the

case, the authority structure of the church should not be monocentric, as
in episcopal polities, but polycentric, with the congregation playing a major
role in the authority structure.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Congregational Polity

At least by nature of its structure, congregationalism allows the most space

for individual members to have a voice in the direction and life of the church. If
individual members believe that the leadership is taking the church in unwise
directions, they can vote against the policies and decisions of the leadership,
even working together with other members, joining their voices to call upon
the leadership to reevaluate or change course. On the positive side, congre-
gationalists argue that their structure “is more capable than other polities of
developing loyalty to and support of the congregation€.€.€. Participating in
decision-making helps Christians to be able to say meaningfully, ‘our church.’” 35
Congregational polity is also most effective at connecting giftedness to influ-
ence. In this system, those with spiritual gifts of teaching and leadership, but
who are not officers of the church, may still bring their gifts to bear on the
decision-making process of the church.36 Those who hold to congregationalism
also often argue that it is the most effective system in keeping the congrega-
tion involved in the process of church discipline, which they believe is clearly
mandated in Matthew 18.37 The more church discipline is relegated to the
control of bishops and elders, the less it becomes a community issue, and the
less effective it is in calling the whole church to holiness.
As with other church polities, the strengths of congregationalism can also be
the source of its greatest weaknesses. The caricature of a Baptist annual busi-
ness meeting, where one obnoxious and vocal member can derail an important
policy decision reached by a unified leadership and offered to the congregation
for confirmation, is based on the experiences of many who have grown up in
congregational churches. While the democratic ethos of congregationalism
gives the most space for all members to be heard, it also allows for members
who have influence beyond their actual wisdom and knowledge to undermine
the work of the leadership of the church.
Another weakness of congregationalism, especially in the case of those
churches that do not belong to a denomination, is that its emphasis on in-
dependence tends to weaken the local church’s connection with the church
universal. Episcopal churches, and especially the Catholic Church, where final
human authority subsists in the papacy, have a built-in structure for ecclesial
unity. Pope Benedict€XVI has argued recently, for example, that the inclusive-
ness of the church, embracing communions outside the Roman Church, is
not eliminated by, but is rooted in the unity created by apostolic succession
through the Bishop of Rome back to Christ himself.38

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 The Church as an Ordered Community 199

L.€Roy Taylor, a Presbyterian, has also expressed concern in this regard

about congregationalism. He writes, “Throughout the centuries, the church
has recognized herself as unique—one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. While
independence fits well with rugged American individualism, and the entrepre-
neurial spirit, it is the least suitable form of church government to express the
universality and oneness of the church.”39 Indeed, the exodus of thousands
of churches from their denominations during the Bible Church Movement in
the twentieth century has led to a structural disconnection of the one church
of Jesus Christ in America as in no other place on earth. Congregationalism
has doubtless played no small part in this scenario.

Conclusion

Perhaps the most obvious downside to any system of church government is that
they all put power and authority into the hands of broken, sinful people. And
as with civil governments, the most efficient systems (dictatorships) are also
those most susceptible to abuse; the most inclusive ones (absolute democra-
cies) easily suffer from disunity and inefficiency. Even churches that argue that
only one of the traditional forms of church government is truly biblical must
still address these issues. For adopting the “right” church government is no
guarantee of a proper use of authority. So we come back to the need not just
for biblical structures of government, but also for biblical principles.
A biblical situation of church authority must exhibit the principles of both
power and sacrifice. Elders are to rule the church (1€Pet. 5), but they are to do
so with humility, exemplifying the self-sacrifice of Christ, the one true shepherd
of the church. For all shepherds in the church are also sheep, dependent upon
the rest of the flock for spiritual life, and equally in need of the guidance and
grace of Christ. A biblical situation of church government will also focus on
the principles of unity and connectedness. The spiritual unity of the church
is not ultimately a product of the church’s leaders, but of the life that comes
from being the people of God in union with Christ through the Holy Spirit.
Thus, biblical leaders and structures will foster inclusion and ownership, rec-
ognizing that the Spirit of God brings the life of Christ to the church through
the gifts and service of all the church’s members. Finally, in recognition of the
fact that the abuse of power can be a function not just of individual persons,
but also of whole communities, a church with a healthy leadership structure
will always seek accountability from outside itself. As the church in Jerusalem,
with James as its leader, listened to all the voices of the church in a time of
controversy—to the congregation as well as to the apostles, to an apostle to
the Jews (Peter) as well as to the apostle to the Gentiles (Paul)—so the es-
chatological community of God in any era, no matter what its governmental
structure, must listen to voices from across the spectrum of the church, making

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 200 Exploring Ecclesiology

sure to avoid a parochial leadership and any structure that has become blind
to all but its own agendas and perspectives. For leaders in the contemporary
church, this means listening to the voices of the church across denominational
divisions, across cultural divisions, and across the span of church history. Will
churches that operate through biblical and healthy governmental structures
always agree on issues of church leadership? No, but that does not mean they
cannot live at peace with one another.

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. Why do so many people have such negative views of church authority

figures today?
2. What difference does Christ’s sacrificial lordship make for church leader-
ship dynamics, including such matters as decision making as a church
body?
3. What strengths and weaknesses does your church background bring to
authority in the church?

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 12

The Role of Women

in the Ordered Community

Since the very nature of church order involves power and authority, the issue
of gender has repeatedly surfaced in the church’s discussions of polity and
leadership. From the story of the fall in Genesis 3, where harmony between man
and woman is broken, the role of women (and men) has been an issue in the
biblical metanarrative. And passages like 1€Corinthians 11–14 and 1€Timothy
2 show that a woman’s role in the church was controversial in the life of the
early church. In this chapter, we look at church polity and leadership through
the lenses of biblical eschatology as a way of considering the role of women
in the ordered community of the church.
We recently heard Dr. Alice Matthews asked if she thought it would be
possible for egalitarians and hierarchicalists to lead a church together.1 She
responded, “Well, it has to be, doesn’t it?” While she may be right, one wonders
if the church has a structure for such a possibility. Extensive exegetical studies
of key passages on women’s roles have been helpful, but nowhere near decisive.
Every single major controverted passage can boast of scholars on both sides of
the issue who contend that the best exegesis supports their conclusions. Perhaps
the best we can expect from exegesis on this issue is that it demonstrates that
neither perspective on a given passage is without credible support.2
But there are other ways of looking at the issue, and, given our juxtaposition
of ecclesiology and eschatology in this book, we suggest that connecting these
two streams of theology may give us at least one road around the impasse.

201

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 202 Exploring Ecclesiology

Indeed, the dialectic of the kingdom of God may be the best possibility for
navigation between two positions that remain quite polarized. Our thesis is
that if we view the church as a community that is fundamentally eschatologi-
cal, drawing its future back into the present, we will necessarily move to a
more egalitarian philosophy of leadership in the church, even if we remain
hierarchical in our view of leadership in the family. A couple of necessary sub-
sidiary elements of the thesis are that the eschatological image of the church
is essentially egalitarian, and that the family is a temporal community whose
leadership structure should not be uncritically adopted as the paradigm for
leadership structure in an eschatological community. Regarding Paul, whose
theology is clearly at the center of the debate, we will argue that he suggests
a fundamental reconception of social structures in the church, moving clearly,
albeit cautiously, in an egalitarian direction.

The Egalitarian Future of the Church

First, we need to ask whether the eschaton reveals a structure for the church
of the future that is hierarchical or egalitarian. And, if it is hierarchical, does
it retain a family-based authority structure, transferred from the hierarchy of
husband/wife? While it is impossible for us to understand a great deal about
the structure of the economy of heaven/the eschaton, there are certain indi-
cations that give us a basic idea and also help to differentiate it from present
hierarchical structures. One very interesting indication comes from Jesus
himself when his detractors try to trap him in an insoluble dilemma of both
cultural and theological significance (Matt. 22:23–32). The Sadducees sug-
gest a scenario where a man marries a woman, then dies, leaving her without
children. Then, following the levirate marriage law, each of his six remain-
ing brothers successively marries her and dies, leaving her childless until,
finally, the woman herself dies. Which husband, they ask, will this woman
be married to at the resurrection? Jesus responds that in the eschaton, the
community of God will not be structured on the basis of marriage between
men and women, for human marriage will no longer exist. This means that
even if there is a hierarchy implied in the creation order of Adam and Eve as
husband and wife, that hierarchy does not apply to the eschatological people
of God, the community of the resurrection. To be more specific, husbands
will not be authoritative over their wives in heaven any more than there will
be a seemingly unending line of fathers, going all the way back to Adam, who
are authoritative over their children.
In Ephesians 5, we find another indication of the egalitarian nature of
the eschaton and, indeed, the church of the eschaton. Paul’s somewhat cryp-
tic statement at the end of the passage, that what he is really talking about
is the relationship between Christ and the church, is clearly eschatological.

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 The Role of Women in the Ordered Community 203

Paul looks forward to the eschaton, when Christ, having fully redeemed the
church by his self-sacrifice and resurrection and final victory over sin, will
present the church to himself as his spotless bride. A key point here is that
the ultimate husband/wife relationship is not the one between a man and a
woman, but between Christ and the church. As such, the ultimate picture of
the church, metaphorically speaking, is as one person—the bride of Christ.
Thus, the eschatological structure of submission is between the church and
Christ, not between husbands and wives, who together constitute the one
bride of Christ.
But we must also ask a second question—even if the eschatological com-
munity of God will not function on the basis of the social structure of mar-
riage between men and women, do we have evidence that this eschatological
reality should be drawn into the church in some way now? Here again, Paul’s
theology helps us. As we noted above, he argues in Galatians and Ephesians
for the elimination of social hierarchies in the community of salvation based
on God’s revelation. To him the church is the fulfillment, at least in anticipa-
tory form, of the eschatological promise of the one community of the people
of God, including both Jew and Gentile, both slave and free, both male and
female. If Paul is calling for Jews and Gentiles, freemen and slaves to come
together in the church on an equal footing, he is also calling for men and
women to do so.
Obviously, Paul is not simply reporting that this is the way things are in the
Galatian and Ephesian churches. In fact, they are not that way. His vision is
based on seeing the church as a community of persons who are, individually
and corporately, “in Christ.” And while Paul recognizes that believers are
truly “in Christ” now and raised up with him even in his heavenly existence
at the right hand of God, the full application to life of this union with Christ
awaits the day when Christ will appear in glory. But in the meantime, believ-
ers are to see themselves in view of the eschaton. They are to set their minds
on their status as being seated with the resurrected Christ (Col. 1:1–4). For
Paul, this practice of believers viewing their present lives through the future,
in Christ, is never meant simply as an individual one, but also as a practice of
the church. Thus, if the community of the future is one where social barri-
ers between men and women are broken down, then they should begin to be
broken down in the church now.3
We suggest that Paul advocates this kind of trajectory for the church in
all of his discussions of house-code social structures, including parent/child
and master/slave. While Ephesians 6 pictures a parent/child hierarchy, at least
until the child is grown, Ephesians 4:14–16 suggests that, in Christ, through
the gifts of the Spirit, the church ultimately comes to a point where no one
is a “child” (infant) anymore, for all have “grown up into Christ,” the head.
Thus, in the church, there is a goal of equality based on spiritual maturity, a
maturity that has nothing to do with age.4 And it is clear that the church is to

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 204 Exploring Ecclesiology

move toward this eschatological goal now. Further, the master/slave structure
is revolutionized by the fact that, ultimately, there is only one Master (6:5–9),
who will one day be clearly revealed as Lord of all (Phil. 2:10–11). Thus, the
church should begin now to recognize that there is but one Master of all who
belong to him.

The Family, the Church, and Structures of Authority

This brings us to another important issue. The church has not typically looked
to the biblical description of its eschatological identity for principles of leader-
ship structure, but has looked to the family and, specifically, to a patriarchal
image of the family.5 This, of course, has led to a patriarchal paradigm of church
leadership. Moreover, some theologians have argued, on the basis of passages
like Ephesians 5, that since family metaphors are used for the church, church
leadership must reflect the leadership structure of the family. Vern Poythress,
for example, argues that since the Bible uses family authority language such
as “father” and “husband” to describe the structure of the church, this means
that just as men are in authority in the home as fathers and husbands, so men
must be the authority figures in the church.6 But this argument is unconvincing,
because, among other reasons, Poythress simply assumes, without warrant,
that the similarity of language necessitates interchangeability of leadership
structure. Further, Poythress seems to ignore the fact that two persons can be
related to each other through more than one family metaphor. For example,
the New Testament says that Christ is actually our brother. But he is also our
Lord. So, there are certain ways in which we relate to him as brother—as a
“fellow heir”—while in other contexts we relate to him as our total authority.
Poythress continues to argue for the authority structures of the family being
transferred to the church when he says that Paul “advises Timothy to treat
an older man ‘as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older
women as mothers, and younger women as sisters.’” This would indicate
that, in certain contexts, Timothy should see older men as deserving of a
certain respect and authority due to age. Yet in the very same book, Paul tells
Timothy, “Command and teach these things. Don’t let anyone look down on
you because you are young” (1€Tim. 4:11–12), a text Poythress ignores.7 Here,
Timothy functions not as a son or as a young man in deference to older men,
but as a brother and a pastor commanding older men from his position in
the authority structure of the church. To apply this to the role of women in
the church, hierarchicalists, even if they are right about a husband’s authority
over his wife, need to recognize that the Christian man is related to his wife
not only as husband, but also as a brother in the church.
Still, even if we establish that the church of the eschaton does not function
on the basis of such earthly, social categories as husband/wife, parent/child,

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 The Role of Women in the Ordered Community 205

and master/slave, and even if we can show that Paul intends that the church
view itself through the lenses of the future, a question remains. Does Paul
anywhere suggest how these structures should be transformed in the actual
life of the church? Perhaps the book of Philemon gives us some clues. As Paul
sends Onesimus, the runaway slave whom he has led to Christ, back to his
master, Philemon, he encourages Philemon to receive him back, “no longer
as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” (Philem. 16). Of course,
Onesimus’ “brotherhood” relationship with Philemon has nothing to do with
blood or even marriage—it is an ecclesiological bond. As men who are now
both in Christ, they have a new relationship, not necessarily in the household,
but in the church. And as we know, Philemon was not addressed in this letter
simply as a Christian man, but as the man in whose house the church met.
Thus, the letter to Philemon demonstrates how, in the church, social rela-
tionships are transformed—the master/slave relationship is overturned in the
church in favor of the egalitarian relationship of brothers. Interestingly, while
it cannot be proven that it is the same Onesimus, early church literature speaks
of an Onesimus who became a bishop. If this is the same man, and, if he still
remained the servant of Philemon, what we have is a situation where, in the
church, one of the most powerful hierarchies of the ancient world is turned
on its head such that while Philemon was in authority over Onesimus outside
the church, inside the church the situation was just the opposite.
If then, Paul’s theology of the transformation of social barriers in Christ
argues for the movement of Onesimus the slave to a place of ecclesial equality
with his master, does this not come to bear also on the situation of women,
who are addressed by Paul in the same list of house codes as slaves and masters?
In essence, what happens in the biblical narrative is that the church becomes
the new family unit that for believers, takes priority over all other authority
structures, even the birth/marriage family.8 The family structure of the church
is fundamentally one of brother/sister equality. What this means for the church
of Paul’s day is that certain hierarchies are transformed within the church even
if they remain the same outside the church.
How might this paradigm transform the role of women in the church?
Theologically, it means that in the church, a wife’s primary and eschatological
relationship to her husband is one of brother/sister, taking priority over the
temporal husband/wife relationship. Applying this idea to a specific circum-
stance in the church, it means that a woman could remain in submission to
her husband’s authority in the home, yet function in the church as an elder/
leader, his ecclesiological equal or, perhaps, an authority over him. Some who
argue for a hierarchical relationship of husband as the authority over his wife
contend that it is impossible for a woman to have a place of authority in the
church and still reflect submission to her husband in the marriage relationship.9
We contend that this is no less workable than an employee being an elder at a
church attended by his boss or a seminary student being the pastor of a church

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 206 Exploring Ecclesiology

attended by one of his professors. Might this be a place of possible rapproche-

ment for egalitarians and hierarchicalists? Even if one sees a temporal structure
of hierarchy existing in the home now, could it not be that in the church, as
the eschatological community, we can move toward egalitarian ministry that
more accurately reflects the ultimate values Christ for his bride?

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. Whatever your view of women in church leadership, what are ways in

which women can be empowered to bring their persons and gifting to
bear on building up the whole church body?
2. How do you think your cultural background affects your view of the
role of women in the church?

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 13

The Church as a Cultural Community

Christ, Culture, and the
Sermon on the Mount Community

Christ’s Church’s Multifaceted Relation to Culture

The church is a cultural community. It is Christ’s eschatological kingdom

community, itself a culture that engages other cultures from Christ’s kingdom
vantage point.1
There can be no monolithic view of the relation of Christ to culture, for
there is no ideal culture. God’s kingdom culture embodied in the church always
takes particular form in concrete contexts. This chapter on the intersection
and concrete engagement of Christ’s church as a culture (which itself varies
in diverse locations and over time) with other cultures involves an important
claim. The claim is that the church as a culture in its relation to other cultures
is to be multifaceted and dynamic, in no way static, always particular, never
abstract, ever contemporary, never remote. A quote attributed to Martin Luther
states it well: “If you preach the Gospel in all its aspects with the exception
of the issues that deal specifically with your time, you are not preaching the
Gospel at all.”
We could do no better than to look to the Lord himself to see how to preach
the gospel in a manner that deals specifically with our own time. For his story
includes our own. We will approach the subject through analysis of Christian

207

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 208 Exploring Ecclesiology

scripture, giving focused attention to the Sermon on the Mount. In the Sermon
on the Mount and its surrounding context, we find indications of the Lord Jesus
radically embracing and confronting the culture of his day. As the God-Man,
Jesus is of his time and for his time, while transcending and transforming it.
The church as Christ’s kingdom community envisioned in the Sermon on the
Mount takes its cue from its Lord; just as Jesus’s engagement of culture is
multifaceted, so too must ours be.
Within this framework, we will draw attention to the church’s post–New
Testament history. We will take a special look at one of our Lord’s finest follow-
ers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45), who sought to live out the Sermon on the
Mount in the highly charged and challenging circumstances of Nazi Germany.
The church’s relationship to culture has been understood in dramatically dif-
ferent ways throughout its history, with models spanning a continuum from
separation to transformation. We find various models exemplified in Bonhoeffer
and the Christian community he envisioned. We will see that outside culture,
there is no church. But outside the church of the Triune God’s eschatological
kingdom, there is no ultimate redemption of culture.

Christ and Culture, the Beatitudes, Bonhoeffer, and Beyond

In what follows, we will survey various models, taking our cue from H.€Richard
Niebuhr’s fivefold typology in Christ and Culture2: “Christ of Culture,” “Christ
against Culture,” “Christ and Culture in Paradox,” “Christ above Culture,”
and “Christ Transforming Culture.” We use Niebuhr’s types because of their
widespread currency.3 We will not follow Niebuhr’s order, depiction, valuation,
and illustration of these types in a slavish manner; each type serves a useful
purpose and has a role to play as part of the church’s overarching framework
for engaging other cultures.
Positively framed, Jesus exemplifies each of the five types: Jesus is of culture
as its protagonist, against culture as its antagonist, God’s “yes” and “no” to
culture as the divine and human dualist, above culture as the great synthesist,
and the one who decisively transforms culture as the ultimate transforma-
tionalist. Given such exemplification, the church’s aim in engaging culture
is a straightforward one—to be about Christ-centered cultural encounters.
However, what is signified by this aim defies simplistic forms of engagement.
Bonhoeffer and his writing exemplify the multifaceted orientation required
of every theologian and of every Christian community in interfacing with
the cultural situation.
On the one hand, Bonhoeffer writes, “The present is not where the present
age announces its claim before Christ, but where the present age stands before
the claims of Christ.”4 On the other hand, he claims, “The word of the church
to the world must .€.€. encounter the world in all its present reality from the

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 The Church as a Cultural Community 209

deepest knowledge of the world, if it is to be authoritative.”5 While there is

much more to be said, these introductory remarks suggest that we have our
work cut out for us. What better place to turn first for assistance for tackling
this mountain of a task than to the Bible and to what the Lord himself said
in his longest and most famous sermon—the Sermon on the Mount.

Christ of Culture—Christ as Protagonist

The Sermon on the Mount—Jesus’s state of the union address—follows

on the heels of Matthew’s discussion of Jesus’s baptism with the Spirit. The
Spirit descends as a dove from the Father (Matt. 3:13–17), leads Jesus into the
wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Matt. 4:1), and then grants Jesus the
power to begin his public ministry (Matt. 4:17). Matthew provides a summary
statement of the Lord’s radical intervention on behalf of the people:

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the

good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the
people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who
were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed,
those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds
from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan
followed him. (Matt. 4:23–25, TNIV)

The people gravitate to Jesus and his band of disciples (Matt. 5:1–2) because
he speaks profoundly and acts redemptively in addressing their concrete situ-
ation. They flock to him and are in awe of him, for he speaks with authority
(Matt. 7:28–29) and acts authoritatively (see Matt. 8–9)—unlike their religious
leaders (Matt. 7:29). In other words, Jesus is “relevant.” We will return to this
word later, to clarify its meaning. For the time being, it is sufficient to note
that Jesus is one who is a man of his times—he is from the people and for
the people. To employ Niebuhr’s categories, one might say that here the Lord
exemplifies the “Christ of culture” model of cultural engagement.
Often, this phrase is taken negatively, as if to say that the person or group
in question has compromised biblical convictions for cultural relevance. We
will return briefly to discuss this phenomenon historically. Before doing so,
however, it is important to stress that if one is not of culture, one is also com-
promising biblical faith. For the eternal Word left heaven’s security to accom-
modate himself to our creaturely and worldly limitations in dependence on
the written Word and Spirit, all to redeem the creation from its fall to decay
and destruction. Jesus could transform humanity only by becoming one with
us in our concrete cultural setting. For as Gregory of Nazianzus said, “the
unassumed is the unhealed.”6

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 210 Exploring Ecclesiology

Bonhoeffer’s life bears witness to the Lord’s incarnational orientation.

Bonhoeffer was truly a man of his time, whose allegiance to Germany was
so deep that he was willing to endure great sacrifice. During Hitler’s reign,
Bonhoeffer could have stayed in America to avoid the mounting pressures on
the church and its leaders, but instead he determined to return to Germany
to identify with the people, saying that he could not serve in the rebuilding
efforts after the war if he did not endure the tragedies that had befallen the
people. This is what it means to be “of the culture” in a positive sense.
The “German Christians,” as they were called, typify the negative sense of
what it means to be “of culture.” They were church leaders who proclaimed an
Aryan gospel apart from and beside the gospel of Jesus, and did so in service
to the Führer—Lord Hitler—and to his Third (millennial) Reich (kingdom).
The Barmen Declaration, written in protest of this capitulation, alludes to
this Aryan gospel in the following denunciation:

We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to
acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this
one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s
revelation€.€.€.
We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which
we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords—areas in which we
would not need justification and sanctification through him.7

These German Christians provide us with a negative example of the “Christ

of culture” model. Following the spirit of the age, they compromised their
witness to the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth for power in the public square. The
result was that they failed to proclaim the gospel in the power of the Spirit.
Similarly, the fundamentalist-evangelical church in North America (of which
we are a part), like its liberal antagonist, is in danger of exchanging the gospel
of Christ’s kingdom for the gospel of American power. United Methodist
bishop William Willimon argues regarding Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the
religious Right, and the religious Left:

Pat Robertson has become Jesse Jackson. Randall Terry of the Nineties is Bill
Coffin of the Sixties. And the average American knows no answer to human
longing or moral deviation other than legislation.
Again, I ought to know. We played this game before any Religious Right
types were invited to the White House. Some time ago I told Jerry Falwell to
his face that I had nothing against him except that he talked like a Methodist.
A Methodist circa 1960. Jerry was not amused.8

Many conservatives and liberals have missed out on identifying the church’s
witness in terms of the power of the cross. All too often, we place our con-
fidence in legislating this or that morality as if it—not Christ’s justification

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 The Church as a Cultural Community 211

of sinners through his cross and resurrection and his promised return—will
save us here and now.
Being “relevant” does not necessarily entail that we let culture shape the
gospel to make it appealing. The gospel creates its own relevance. Followers of
Jesus are not salespeople, selling a product, but witnesses who are testifying to
a kingdom, and are participating in the life of the king as his people who give
and receive from his abundance. While it is important to be relevant to culture
in terms of meaningfully communicating the gospel, even more important than
the answer to the question “Is God relevant to culture?” is the answer to the ques-
tion “Are the church and surrounding cultures relevant to the Triune God, who
indwells, interrupts, and invites the society at large to participate in the church as
the eschatological kingdom culture here and now?” The church is called to be a
cultural community shaped first and foremost by the eschatological kingdom of
the Triune God that Jesus proclaimed and embodied in the power of the Spirit.
This trinitarian and eschatological shaping will undoubtedly make the church
relevant to God and will also undoubtedly (on occasion) lead the church into
conflict with the world at large. In fact, going against the surrounding society in
a redemptive manner in view of God will make the church as a distinctive culture
most relevant to the world round about it, for the church will be challenging the
surrounding cultures in view of what they most need to hear.

Christ against Culture—Christ as Antagonist

While Jesus identified with the surrounding culture in which he lived, he

also confronted it head-on, in view of God’s kingdom reality. Jesus chal-
lenged the dominant religious structures of his day, where legalists paraded
righteousness but did not practice it, externalized spirituality, and ostracized
those who did not live up to their self-imposed standards. In Matthew 6:1–8,
Jesus confronts such hypocrisy. Although religious, these spiritual guides are
human-centered—seeking after human glory, not God’s (Matt. 6:2, 5). As
John makes clear in his own Gospel, unlike the religious rulers, Jesus seeks
God’s glory (see John 2:24–25; 5:41–44).
It is interesting to note that the Lord prefaces his remarks on these hypocrites
with an exhortation to enter through the narrow gate, for “small is the gate
and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:14). No
doubt Jesus’s disciples were overwhelmed that the Lord told them, “I tell you
that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers
of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20).
Those who think that moralistic religion is actually more demanding than the
spirituality Jesus embodies and espouses should think again.
Those who aspire to a righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees will
sense their brokenness or bankruptcy before God.9 Jesus demands that we die
to our attempts at justifying ourselves so that we might truly live. As the first

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 212 Exploring Ecclesiology

of the beatitudes makes clear, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). Such poverty in spirit is the result of the Spirit’s
movement in our lives. Just as the Spirit drove Christ forward into the wilderness
to face temptation and embrace self-denial, the Spirit brings us to the end of
ourselves, and forward as participants in God’s kingdom. When the kingdom
of God dawns and dwells in us, we perform righteous deeds; however, the flip
side is not true, for a bad tree does not bear good fruit (Matt. 7:16–20).
Human power fails us when it comes to the transformation of the human
heart. Only God can perform this work, and it is very costly. It cost the Triune
God his Son, and it costs us our lives as well—taking us to the end of ourselves.
We must die to ourselves and depend wholly on Christ for our life and righ-
teousness, as Bonhoeffer himself reasons in his depiction of Luther. According
to Bonhoeffer, Luther had gone to the monastery void of everything but his
piety. But piety does not justify. God had to strip him even of his devotion.10
Grace takes us to the end of ourselves, as well as to the end of obedience to
Christ, no matter where it will lead us.
Bonhoeffer’s Luther championed grace, not as cheap, but as costly.11 Grace
costs us our lives, whereas salvation by works leaves us intact. Works salva-
tion is very otherworldly and worldly at the same time. It separates “saints”
from simple Christians and “the humble work of discipleship,” and turns “the
self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the
‘religious.’”12 “The monk’s attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a
subtle form of love for the world.”13 But it is not only pious self-assertion that
is worldly. The attempt to obtain grace at the cheapest price is also worldly.
God’s grace will cost us our day-by-day existence as well as our lives.14
In commenting on Matthew 5:3 (the poor in spirit), Bonhoeffer writes,

They are the “poor” tout court (Luke 6.20). They have no security, no possessions
to call their own, not even a foot of earth to call their home, no earthly society
to claim their absolute allegiance. Nay more, they have no spiritual power, ex-
perience or knowledge to afford them consolation or security. For his sake they
have lost all. In following him they lost even their own selves, and everything
that could make them rich. Now they are poor—so inexperienced, so stupid,
that they have no other hope but him who called them.15

For Bonhoeffer, poverty or affluence is not in and of itself the goal. Rather,
“everything depends on faith alone .€.€. It is possible to have wealth and the pos-
session of this world’s goods and to believe in Christ—so that a man may have
these goods as one who has them not.”16 For Bonhoeffer, such self-abandoned
faith has an eschatological component: “This is an ultimate possibility of
the Christian life, only within our capacity in so far as we await with earnest
expectation the immediate return of Christ.”17

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 The Church as a Cultural Community 213

Bonhoeffer speaks to the difference between Jesus’s disciples (old and

new) and the system of affluence and influence: “Jesus knows all about the
representatives and preachers of national religion, who enjoy greatness and
renown, whose feet are firmly planted on the earth, who are deeply rooted in
the culture and piety of the people and moulded by the spirit of the age.”18 A
church that is “moulded by the spirit of the age” can never be led by the Spirit
of freedom—the Spirit of the messianic age; nor can it offer hope of libera-
tion to those so molded. Karl Barth wrote that if the church is to remain free,
it must never demand rights and recognition from the state: “Whenever the
Church has entered the political arena to fight for its claim to be given public
recognition, it has always been a Church which has failed to understand the
special purpose of the State, an impenitent, spiritually unfree Church.”19 It
must concern itself with Christ’s all-encompassing demand upon its own life.
Only then can it offer hope to this decaying and darkening world. The church’s
hope is not in this world as such, but in the in-breaking of the Triune God’s
eschatological kingdom in this world. As an authentic witness to the Triune
God’s eschatological kingdom, the church offers hope to the world.
Bonhoeffer speaks of the church as a mediatory people called out from the
world, yet for the world, by the reigning and returning Christ:

Amid poverty and suffering, hunger and thirst, they are meek, merciful, and
peacemakers, persecuted and scorned by the world, although it is for their sake
alone that the world is allowed to continue, and it is they who protect the world
from the wrath and judgement of God. They are strangers and sojourners on
earth (Heb. 11.13; 13.14; I€Pet. 2:11). They seek those things that are above,
not the things that are on the earth (Col. 3:2). For their true life is not yet made
manifest, but hidden with Christ in God. Here they see no more than the re-
flection of what they shall be. Here all that is visible is their dying, their secret
daily death unto the old man, and their manifest death before the world. They
are still hidden from themselves, and their left hand knows not what their right
hand does. Although they are a visible society, they are always unknown even
to themselves, looking only to their Lord. He is in heaven, their life is with him,
and for him they wait. But when Christ, who is their life, shall be manifested,
then they too shall be manifested with him in glory (Col. 3.4).20

The church is a kind of firstfruits that offers hope to the world of deliverance
from God’s judgment and wrath.
The preceding discussion demonstrates that Jesus and his disciple Bon-
hoeffer, as well as truly faithful Christian communities, cannot be identified
simply with either pole—“Christ of culture” or “Christ against culture.”
Their means of engagement is just too complex; in light of their example, the
contemporary church—no matter its location—should also engage the society
at large in a multifaceted manner. Unfortunately, our own cultural heritage—
the fighting fundamentalistic-evangelical movement—often fails to recognize

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 214 Exploring Ecclesiology

the need for complexity. Its adversarial orientation fails to reflect Jesus’s and
Bonhoeffer’s redemptive countercultural engagement of the society at large
on behalf of that society’s own redemption through the mediatory witness
of the church. The same could be said of the religious Left. By the sound of
the culture-war rhetoric, one might be led to believe that Jesus came to save
us from liberals or conservatives—dependent, of course, on one’s partisan
political vantage point!

A Transitional Note on the Christ and Culture Spectrum

As we have suggested, each of Niebuhr’s models possesses some merit, for

they are all reflected in some measure in the Gospels. The two noted at length
so far—Christ as protagonist of culture and Christ as antagonist of culture—
become extreme when not balanced with the others. Jesus’s and Bonhoeffer’s
lives illustrate the truth that we flesh out various models of cultural engagement
at various times and places, sometimes at the same place and time.
Niebuhr’s remaining models—the dualist, the synthesist, and the trans-
formationalist—stand somewhere on the spectrum between the protagonist
and antagonist perspectives. Similarly, they stand somewhere between the
eschatological extremes of the “now” and the “not yet.” Geoffrey Wainwright
argues that with the antagonist position, one finds an eschatology of the “not
yet,” perhaps even of the “never”21; with the protagonist position, the “now”
overwhelms the “not yet.”22 According to Wainwright, both forms of spiritual-
ity are “cripplingly deficient from the eschatological point of view. Either the
Kingdom of God can never be achieved or its achievement was never necessary
in the first place.”23 A dialectic between both poles—“now” and “not yet”—is
required if we are to fully account for the biblical story.
This “now-and-not-yet” pattern is found at the outset of the Sermon
on the Mount: a present-tense description or prescription is followed by a
promise of future realization and reward. Note how each beatitude in Mat-
thew 5:3–10 begins: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” “.€.€.€those who mourn,”
“.€.€.€the meek,” “.€.€.€those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,”
“.€.€.€the merciful,” “.€.€.€pure in heart,” “.€.€.€the peacemakers,” “.€.€.€those
who are persecuted because of righteousness.” Each beatitude gives rise to
promises of certain future blessings: “theirs is the kingdom of heaven,”
“they will be comforted,” “they will inherit the earth,” “they will be filled,”
“they will be shown mercy,” “they will see God,” “they will be called sons
of God,” “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” This kind of people—namely
Christ’s poor in spirit and persecuted community—are blessed, for they
will be blessed. They follow in the footsteps of Jesus and the prophets and
participate in the kingdom that is to come (Matt. 5:11–12).
Jesus speaks to his community of followers in the Sermon on the Mount
(see Matt. 5:1–2), describing to them what the eschatological community of

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 The Church as a Cultural Community 215

the Triune God looks like, what its values are, and how it lives out Jesus’s
mandate and mission. The church today is called to live out the Sermon on the
Mount as Jesus’s community in the present. The message we seek to proclaim
in heart, word, and deed is a message of judgment and hope. It is a message for
and against culture, accounting for the cross and the resurrection. The Christ
of culture orientation, on its own, does not account for the judgment of the
cross. The Christ against culture orientation, on its own, does not account
for the transformative work of the resurrection. The following three models
offer mediating possibilities.

Christ and Culture in Paradoxical Relation—Christ as Dualist

The dualist position is the most difficult one to understand because it is

paradoxical. Niebuhr describes the dualist position as follows:

The dualist joins the radical Christian in pronouncing the whole world of human
culture to be godless and sick unto death. But there is this difference between
them: the dualist knows that he belongs to that culture and cannot get out of
it, that God indeed sustains him in it and by it; for if God in His grace did not
sustain the world in its sin it would not exist for a moment.24

Luther spoke of the Christian life in paradoxical terms. Believers are wholly
righteous and wholly sinful, simultaneously and throughout their lives.25 One
also finds a paradox in Luther’s view of the church’s relation to the state:

There are two kingdoms, one the kingdom of God, the other the kingdom of
the world .€.€. God’s kingdom is a kingdom of grace and mercy, not of wrath
and punishment. In it there is only forgiveness, consideration for one another,
love, service, the doing of good, peace, joy, etc. But the kingdom of the world
is a kingdom of wrath and severity. In it there is only punishment, repression,
judgment, and condemnation to restrain the wicked and protect the good .€.€.
Now he who would confuse these two kingdoms—as our false fanatics do—
would put wrath into God’s kingdom and mercy into the world’s kingdom; and
that is the same as putting the devil in heaven and God in hell.26

Niebuhr argues that such a distinction is not a division. The kingdoms of

God and the world are “closely related. The Christian must affirm both in a
single act of obedience to the one God of mercy and wrath, not as a divided
soul with a double allegiance and duty.”27
Regardless of how one reads Luther, many Lutherans at the time of Hitler
maintained that the two-kingdoms thesis meant for them that they submit
to Hitler in the sphere of the state and to Christ in the sphere of the church.
Barth’s objection to Luther’s translation of Romans 13 is relevant on this
point. Barth argues that “Luther’s translation speaks of ‘being subject’€.€.€.€,

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 216 Exploring Ecclesiology

which is something dangerously different from what is meant here. The last
thing this instruction implies is that the Christian community and the Chris-
tian should offer the blindest possible obedience to the civil community and
its officials.”28 Barth maintains that the church is to subject itself to Christ
in the sphere of the state, for Christ’s kingdom includes both the church and
the secular domain. Neither the church nor the state, then, is an end in itself.
Thus, the church must not subject itself to the state in blind obedience.29 Both
church and state are instruments of the kingdom, and they submit to each
other only in their respective service to that one kingdom.
Dualists today among fundamentalist-evangelicals—and liberals, for that
matter—often fail to recognize the church and state as mutually subject to
Christ.30 Earlier we stated that many conservatives and liberals have missed out
on identifying the church’s witness in terms of the power of the cross. Such
moves on the part of fundamentalist-evangelicals and liberals are bound up
with inadequate attention to ecclesiology and eschatology. Both movements
often tend to individualize the faith rather than to conceive the faith in social
or ecclesial terms.
Cynthia Moe-Lobeda’s critique of H.€Richard Niebuhr’s brother, Reinhold
Niebuhr, could be made against fundamentalist-evangelicalism as well. Moe-
Lobeda states that liberalism and Reinhold Niebuhr embraced two conflicting
claims: (a) “personal relationship with God” is “the centerpiece of faith” and
(b) “personal relationship with God” is “not a centerpiece” of the Christian’s
political and public life. These two conflicting claims

reflect the theological anthropology of liberalism’s legacy€.€.€. That anthropology

is viewed clearly in the work of Reinhold Niebuhr who held that the individual
is the primary human unit in relationship with God; the self—although a so-
cial being—stands before God as an individual. The result is a public–private
dichotomy in which the moral knowledge and norms that faith offers are un-
derstood and enacted by individuals, rather than by social groups.31

Both the religious Right and the religious Left often make the individual—
rather than the church—the primary human unit for the Christian’s political
and public life. Many today view the church as a voluntary association of
religious individuals, whose true allegiance lies elsewhere. (The explicit or
implicit endorsement of political candidates/parties from pulpits and opening
of doors to them to share their wares, come election time, impact negatively
the church’s understanding of itself as a distinctive polis with its own political
practices, such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper.) Such emphasis on the pri-
vate and/or individual has negative consequences. As Moe-Lobeda argues,
“The social construction of human–divine intimacy as private has served the
interests of established power structures, for singularly private relationship
with God cannot issue in public challenge.”32

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 The Church as a Cultural Community 217

The privatization-individualization-subjectivization of the faith in Bonhoef-

fer’s day created a vacuum for a monster such as Hitler to arise,33 and it serves
as a serious warning to us in the States today. Bonhoeffer’s close friend and
colleague Eberhard Bethge found nothing benign about Reverend Falwell’s
church, with its emphasis on “American Christianity.” While having a great
admiration and affection for the United States, Bethge was deeply troubled
when he entered Falwell’s church:

As we entered the foyer, an usher stepped forward and gave me two badges to
fasten to my lapel: the one on the left said, Jesus First, and on the right, one
with an American flag .€.€. I could not help but think myself in Germany in
1933€.€.€. Of course, Christ, but a German Christ; of course, “Jesus First,” but
an American Jesus! And so to the long history of faith and its executors another
chapter is being added of a mixed image of Christ, of another syncretism on
the American model, undisturbed by any knowledge of that centuries-long and
sad history.34

If only the badge opposite Jesus had been the church! While a promoter of
nationalistic Chistianity today may appear more benign than Hitler, there is
nothing benign about public/private dualities and dichotomies. Such dichoto-
mies weaken and threaten the church’s pure witness as a public—Christ’s
kingdom community.
Let us be clear: while there is a distinction between church and state, there
is no public/private dichotomy for Christian existence. The church is called to
engage the state as a public facing another public, not as a subsidiary of the
state. The failure of the church to see itself as a distinct public engaging other
publics (such as the state) is likely “one reason it is susceptible to becoming the
bearer of national and other identities and projects, securing for itself thus as a
national or civil religion a measure of public relevance within the framework of
the public arena of society at large,” as Reinhard Hütter argues.35 This failure
of self-understanding and subservience to the state also signify that the church
loses its prophetic voice to speak out in society at large.36
Biblically speaking, the church—not the individual or the state—is the
primary human unit in effecting God’s kingdom purposes; for the embodi-
ment of Christ’s kingdom mission is the church, not the isolated individual
Christian, and certainly not the state. The privatization of faith to the realm
of the individual is nontrinitarian, for the Triune God is by nature social and
communal. Such privatization is also due to an imbalanced eschatology of
the kingdom.
Emphasis on the individual and preoccupation with the distant future (with-
out seeing that the church is the now of the not-yet kingdom) lead to the im-
proper politicization of the faith, whereby the church becomes subservient to
the state. Where there is inattention to this communal and contemporaneous
trinitarian eschatological kingdom reality, those least suspected of politicizing

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 218 Exploring Ecclesiology

the faith—dispensationalists—are sometimes most guilty of it. Given such

inattention, supposed rapture-and-retreat fundamentalists following the lead
of the late Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye of the Left Behind series fame, and Pat
Robertson have aligned themselves with the Republican Party to take back
centers of power for God and country. Their strange mixture of pretribu-
lation theology and postmillennial practice fails to account for the fact that
Christ’s kingdom community must radically confront the world’s kingdoms
and parties with its proclamation and participation in Christ’s story of cross
and resurrection.37
The historical move by many mid-twentieth-century classic dispensational-
ists to limit the Sermon on the Mount’s import to Israel and keep it off-limits
for application to the church’s engagement inadvertently keeps the church
off-limits from the public sphere as Christ’s kingdom community—a city on a
hill. Capitol Hill ends up replacing it! The Sermon on the Mount makes clear
that the Lord of the church publicly engages and confronts the fallen powers.
Our Lord does not privatize the faith. He and his kingdom were viewed as a
threat to the Romans. This is disclosed in the Sermon on the Mount where
Jesus tells his community of disciples to turn the other cheek and carry the
load a second mile, and at his trial when he tells Pilate that his kingdom is not
of this world. His kingdom is a kingdom of grace, mercy, and love, as Luther
maintains (see above), not that of retribution; and so, his kingdom threatens the
very foundations on which “the Romans” have built theirs—then and now.
Jürgen Moltmann argues that while Pilate was mistaken in taking Jesus to
be a “Zealot rebel,” he clearly perceived Jesus with his divine “law of grace”
to be an affront to “the Pax Romana and its gods and laws” of oppression
and retribution.38 Jesus was not a political revolutionary in the manner of the
Zealots; in fact, for all his affinities to them, he stood in diametrical opposition
to their vision and aims at key points. Thus, while both Jesus and the Zealots
condemned the mistreatment of the poor, Jesus, contrary to the Zealots, “did
not call upon the poor to revenge themselves upon their exploiters.”39
Jesus’s kingdom of grace and mercy is not one of passivity, however. Walter
Wink says of turning the other cheek and walking the second mile that Jesus
is instructing his followers: “Do not continue to acquiesce in your oppression
by the Powers; but do not react violently to it either. Rather, find a third way,
a way that is neither submission nor assault, flight nor fight, a way that can
secure your human dignity and begin to change the power equation.” Jesus’s
teachings are meant to “recover for the poor a modicum of initiative that can
force the oppressor to see them in a new light.” This approach makes it pos-
sible for the oppressed to oppose the enemy while holding out the possibility
for the enemy to become just. “The logic of Jesus’ examples in Matthew
5:39b–41 [turning the other cheek] goes beyond both inaction and overreac-
tion to a new response, fired in the crucible of love, that promises to liberate
the oppressed from evil even as it frees the oppressor from sin.”40 Jesus avoids

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 The Church as a Cultural Community 219

the extremes of acquiescence and violent reaction by creating the church as

an alternative politics—the theo-political communal presence of the not-yet
eschatological kingdom that submits all judgment to God and loves the enemy,
thereby destabilizing the kingdoms of this world.41
This reflects a certain dialectical two-kingdom approach. The church does
not take up arms, but it does fight. The problem with many two-kingdom
positions surfaces when people indeed acquiesce, saying that Jesus’s politics
of living in authentic community (in which we turn the other cheek and go
the extra mile) has no bearing on the public Christian life. It is a text re-
served simply for improving our state of mind and interior soul life. This is
a common occurrence in the evangelical church and reflects a spiritual and
hermeneutical abnormality. As a friend once said, he knew that something
was wrong with evangelicalism when so much of his Gospels class in his
Christian college consisted of being taught what Jesus didn’t really mean
by what he said.42
For Bonhoeffer, Jesus really did mean what he said. That is why Bonhoeffer
found it so hard to join in the assassination plot against Hitler. He never sought
to justify his actions; but he also could never justify the separation of powers
where the Christian submits his soul to God and his body to the state.43 While
Bonhoeffer struggled with the Lutheran two-kingdom view as well as Jesus’s
words about turning the other cheek, he believed he must join the resistance
movement in its assassination plot, regardless of the consequences. This shows
that Bonhoeffer was no pure dualist; it also shows him to be a representative
figure for all of us in dealing with the host of complexities surrounding cultural
engagement and different approaches so many of us embody in our day-to-day
lives, including the synthesist orientation to which we now turn.44

Christ above Culture—Christ as Synthesist

With the synthesist model, while culture needs “to be purified and lifted,”
there are positive dimensions to it.45 There is an end to which culture strives
through supernatural enablement. On this model, grace does not destroy
but perfects nature (gratia non tollit sed perficit naturam), as many Roman
Catholics and other defenders of natural theology maintain.
Hints of the synthesist orientation may be found in several places in the
Gospels. The synthesist model is incarnational and organic.46 God’s kingdom
sprouts and grows in the world like a mustard seed and spreads like flour
through dough (Matt. 13:31–33). Jesus often appealed to people’s secular
or earthy sensitivities in his images and parables of the life of the kingdom.
He made use of birds and lilies (Matt. 6:25–34) and shrewd managers (Luke
16:8–9), and affirmed the faith and contriteness of pagan tax collectors while
rebuking the religiosity and pride of the Pharisees (Luke 18:9–14). Jesus says
in the Sermon on the Mount that “evil” parents know how to give good gifts

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 220 Exploring Ecclesiology

to their children, going further to say that God gives even better gifts, and
more abundantly (Matt. 7:9–11).
These hints of how the secular and pagan can have sacred ends calls to
mind a story that John Doberstein recounts from Bonhoeffer’s student days.
While participating in one of Barth’s seminars in Bonn, Bonhoeffer quoted
the earthy saint Luther approvingly: “The curse of a godless man can sound
more pleasant in God’s ears than the Hallelujah of the pious.”47 This secular
sentiment also surfaces in Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, writ-
ten near the end of his life. Bonhoeffer speaks there of man come of age.
Humanity no longer needs the hypothesis “God” to function in life. Faced
with this state of affairs, as well as with the emptiness and absence of the
all-powerful God who rescues us from gaps (deus ex machina)—who had not
liberated Germany and the church from the Hitler menace—Bonhoeffer finds
God’s presence and fullness in the weakness and poverty and sorrow of the
God-forsaken God on the cross. As he writes,

God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without
him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15.34). The God
who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God
before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without
God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and
powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is
with us and helps us. Matt. 8.17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by
virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.48

Bonhoeffer is not calling for a Christ-less and churchless spirituality, but a

“religionless Christianity” where Jesus is viewed as “the man for others” and
the church as his body that “exists for others.” As Bonhoeffer notes, “The
Church is the Church only when it exists for others.”49 We must stop looking
to God to intervene in our struggles and remove us from crises, and instead
face those crises with the awareness that God suffers our affliction with us,
and calls us to identify with others in their suffering.
While we do not deny that there are times in the church’s history when
God has intervened with his righteous right arm to redeem the church from
oppression and suffering, we also realize that the church has often failed to
see that God so profoundly and pervasively demonstrates his omnipotence
through the weakness of the cross—in Christ and in his church. The church is
growing most rapidly today in places where it is poor and oppressed, whereas
in America most “growth” is through transfer of membership and attendance.
When the church realizes that Jesus’s identity is in and with and for others in
the midst of affliction, and that it too is to exist for others in this way, it will
gain ultimate affluence and influence with God.
We as the church have much to learn from secular humanity’s coming of
age, for it teaches us that we too, as God’s church, need to come of age. This

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 The Church as a Cultural Community 221

worldly age served as a stepping-stone if not a foundation stone for Bonhoef-

fer to recognize more and more clearly that

it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One
must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether
it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!),
a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-
worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and
failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely
into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God
in the world—watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That I think is faith, that
is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian (cf. Jer. 45!).
How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in
God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?50

Worldly affluence and political influence—success by our standards—are

often counterproductive by God’s standards. Bonhoeffer’s own abiding influ-
ence is in many respects the result of his having died to affluence and influence—
giving up everything to gain Christ. Bonhoeffer understood well that it is the
poor in spirit, the meek, those who mourn and who are persecuted because
of their union with Christ, who are truly affluent and influential.
Bonhoeffer’s form of discipleship and “religionless Christianity” did not
take him out of the world, but further into it. While persecuted, he gave himself
all the more fully to bringing about a more just society. In fact, he suffered at
the hands of those who claimed to speak for the Christian God—Hitler and
the German Christians—even while suffering for those Jewish people who did
not share his Christian beliefs. He gave sacrificially of himself to take back
Germany from the nationalistic Christians for the “unbelieving” people of
God, seeking to build on new and better German foundations. As a result of
reading Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, one such unbelieving
Jewish person told Eberhard Bethge—the volume’s editor—that he was now
“beginning to see for the first time why Jesus could be regarded as divine.”51
We American evangelicals have gained a lot of influence in centers of
American power in recent years but have lost America’s heart in the process.
The appearance of taking back America for our own kind of people and
Jesus for ourselves needs to be replaced by the reality of giving up our lives for
America, just as Jesus, “the man for others,” gave of himself unreservedly for
the people of his day—irrespective of their relation to him. The “God of the
gaps” and “Take Back America” way of thinking needs to give way to God in
the gallows. This will involve getting our hands dirty and moving increasingly
toward downward mobility and heterogeneity in our church life and outreach.
Instead of going back to the religion of our founding constitutional fathers,
who did not truly see all humans as created equal (Jefferson, for one, owned
slaves), we will seek to go back to the religion founded by Jesus that has hardly

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 222 Exploring Ecclesiology

taken root in our nation and religion. We will become slaves for Christ so
that everyone else might become truly free in body and spirit through him,
especially the poor and other “least of these” groups (and so that we ourselves
might become truly free in the process).
The church can serve as a preservative and penetrating light in society only
by facing persecution for its union with Jesus joyfully (see Matt. 5:11–16), and
by not seeking to preserve itself, like the religious leaders of Jesus’s day did by
sacrificing Jesus to preserve the people, the temple, and their own position (see
Matt. 27:18 and John 11:45–53). A transformation of the American church’s
spirituality is in order. Before it can take the sawdust out of the nation’s eye,
it must take the plank out of its own (see Matt. 7:3). Only then can it serve as
a reforming and transforming force in the culture at large.

Christ Transforming Culture—Christ as Transformationalist

Now we come to the last of the five categories—Christ as the transformer of

culture. This view of Christ’s engagement of culture requires culture’s radical
purification, but not its replacement. Here the positive reality of the creation and
incarnation balances consideration of the negativity of the fall.52 On this model,
there appears to be no division of history into two autonomous spheres—sacred
and profane, according to Wainwright.53 The church is to be an “adumbration,”
“perhaps even an anticipation of the final Kingdom of God.”54
The Sermon on the Mount certainly portrays Christ’s community as an
anticipation of the final kingdom of God, and Christ himself as the one who
inaugurates and eventually consummates that kingdom. In fact, as we have
noted in an earlier chapter, the Sermon on the Mount and its surrounding
narrative signify that Jesus recapitulates or transforms Israel’s history. After
Jesus submits himself to John’s baptism—a baptism of repentance—to identify
with his people (Matt. 3:13–17), the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness to
undergo temptation by the devil for forty days and forty nights (Israel had
undergone temptations and trials for forty years) (Matt. 4:1–11). Upon his
return, he begins his public ministry, proclaiming in word and deed that the
eschatological kingdom is at hand in his person (Matt. 4:12–25). Then Jesus
goes up the mountain to give the law of the kingdom (whereas Moses went
up the mountain to receive the law) (Matt. 5:1–2). His disciples become the
new teachers of the law, standing in the line of the Old Testament prophets
(see Matt. 13:10–23).
Jesus is the ultimate prophet, priest, and king—summing up, perfecting, and
transforming the whole of the Old Testament story so that it becomes part of his
own. This calls to mind the opening lines of the letter to the Hebrews (1:1–3):

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times
and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom

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 The Church as a Cultural Community 223

he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The
Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being,
sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification
for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

God speaks conclusively through his Son, the prophet Jesus, who is also the
great high priest, who has provided purification for humankind’s sin once
and for all, and who now sits enthroned as God’s ascended and reigning
Messiah.
No wonder the writer of Hebrews can say that whereas Moses was faithful
in all God’s house, Jesus, God’s Son, is faithful over all God’s house. Christ’s
church is that house—holding firmly to the hope that is ours in Christ (Heb.
3:1–6). And no wonder Jesus says that he has come to fulfill or perfect the law
and the Prophets in his person (see Matt. 5:17–20). Jesus counters the tradi-
tions that distort the law and deepens the law’s significance, especially as it
bears witness to him (see Matt. 5:17–6:8; 7:12, 24–29; see also Luke 24:25–27).
John’s Gospel reveals that Jesus casts his shadow over the law and Prophets
as he serves as antitype for its various images. He is the ultimate bread of
heaven (see John 6:30–35; cf. Exod. 16:1–22), the true light of the world (see
John 8:12; cf. John 7:1–10 and Lev. 23:33–44),55 the Good Shepherd (see John
10:1–18; cf. Ezek. 34:1–10), the resurrection and life (John 11), and the good
and true vine (see John 15:1–8; cf. Isa. 5:1–7).
The law of Moses and the traditions of men certainly shaped the culture
in which Jesus was embodied, which Jesus had come to confront, redeem,
perfect, and transform. And yet, Jesus did not consummate the kingdom in
his first coming. This point is often lost on the church. The founding fathers of
Calvin’s Geneva and the proponents of Manifest Destiny in the United States
failed to recognize the line of demarcation between the “now” and “not yet”
of Christ’s kingdom. The church, not the state, is God’s eschatological polis—
the city set on a hill. While the gospel is the politics of Christ’s kingdom, and
intersects and impacts this world’s polis and politics, the church must never
be confused with the latter.
Whereas classic forms of dispensationalism have tended to subsume the “now”
of the kingdom under the “not yet,” theonomist versions of covenant theology
have tended to subsume the “not yet” under the “now.”56 These moves parallel
their respective approaches to Israel’s relation to the church. Dispensationalism
has often tended to divide Israel and the church,57 whereas covenantal theology
has often tended to displace Israel in favor of the church.58 In contrast to both
perspectives, there is a distinct though inseparable relation between Israel and the
church according to which Christ is Lord over Israel and the church, and where
the church is the fulfillment (not replacement) of Israel.
Calvinists such as John Winthrop and many other early colonists journeyed
to America to create a Christian society.59 They looked at the church as the

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New Israel and at America as a new Promised Land, which they were destined
by God to inhabit and rule. When nineteenth-century advocates of Manifest
Destiny took up the call, it spelled disaster for the Native peoples of the land.
Such proponents of Manifest Destiny treated the indigenous peoples like the
Canaanites in Joshua’s day.
Bonhoeffer gave much thought to what Germany would look like in the
event of Hitler’s overthrow. Though Bonhoeffer was too Lutheran to entertain
any hope of a nation where the church becomes the state,60 he did hope and
plan for a better future for Germany and for the church. In Letters and Papers
from Prison, he speaks against a “silly, cowardly kind of optimism,” on the
one hand, and those pessimists who “think that the meaning of present events
is chaos, disorder, and catastrophe; and in resignation or pious escapism .€.€.
surrender all responsibility for reconstruction and for future generations.”
Bonhoeffer will stop hoping and planning for a better earthly future only once
the day of judgment dawns: “It may be that the day of judgment will dawn
tomorrow; and in that case, though not before, we shall gladly stop working
for a better future.”61
The church in America today should work for a better future for the church
and for America—as the church first and foremost—always seeking to bear
witness through its own practices such as baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and
redistribution of resources on behalf of the poor to the politics and economics
of the coming kingdom in light of which it engages the society at large. At the
outset of this chapter, we indicated that the church is a cultural community
that is shaped by the surrounding culture and that prophetically confronts
that culture for the latter’s own ultimate transformation. Outside culture,
there is no church. But outside the church of the Triune God’s eschatological
kingdom, there is no ultimate redemption of culture. The church is joined to
Jesus as his body and bride. As such it is called to embody his kingdom values
and proclaim them in word and deed to the surrounding world.

A City on a Hill

In 1630, John Winthrop preached a sermon titled, “A Model of Christian Char-

ity,” in which he warned the Puritan colonists of New England that the world
would be watching them as they would “a city upon a hill.” Drawing from the
imagery of salt and light in the Sermon on the Mount, Winthrop wrote:

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people
are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have
undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall
be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths
of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake.

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 The Church as a Cultural Community 225

We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their
prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good
land whither we are going.62

The church as a public, as a distinct culture engaging other particular publics

and cultures, must seek to be that city on the hill that sheds its light in such
a manner that those who see it would be led to glorify God rather than curse
it. The church can be this shining light only as it demonstrates charity toward
its members, and toward the world at large.
The Puritan community did not always practice the love toward one an-
other that Winthrop’s sermon on charity commended. Nor are the Puritans
usually remembered for exercising charity and tolerance toward those who
believed differently than they did. As a result, they opened the mouths of the
American church’s enemies to speak evil of the ways of God. We no longer
live under Christendom or in a utopian Christian society, though many Chris-
tians still long for it and lobby on Capitol Hill for it. While the church will
always have its fair share of enemies, the church must ever live to bless those
communities with which it coexists, rather than seek to take back America
from its enemies or wall itself off from them as a separatist society. As Christ’s
eschatological kingdom community, the church should not aspire to be taken
out of this world, but to exist as salt and light among this world’s kingdoms
and their communities as firstfruits and as a witness to that kingdom that will
be consummated when Christ returns.
It is not the church’s role to judge the world, but to serve it. It is not the
American church’s place to take back America or its cities like Portland, Or-
egon, where we minister, but to “love on Portland,” as Pastor Rick McKinley
of Imago Dei Community often says. And in place of a God-of-the-gaps-
who-will-come-to-rescue-us-from-this-evil-world theology of disengagement,
we need a God-in-the-gallows theology of engagement framed by the same
Jesus who did not come to take back Jerusalem from his enemies, but to give
up his life for his enemies on Golgotha outside the city’s gates so as to win
them over to God.
Whereas Christ the transformer of culture has often presupposed Chris-
tendom and a church-state’s use of force to impose its rule, the church in
America today can go forth as Christ’s alternative kingdom culture in pursuit
of transformation of the surrounding cultures in our pluralistic society only
by bearing its cross. But bearing the cross alone is not sufficient to calm fears.
For the cross has often been used to promote Manifest Destiny’s ambitions. As
Native American Vine Deloria Jr. said, “Where the cross goes, there is never
life more abundantly—only death, destruction, and ultimately betrayal.”63
The American church today must not simply bear the cross but be willing to
be hung upon it on behalf of the surrounding world—and in the gallows too,
like Bonhoeffer before us. The transformationalist kingdom model espoused

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 226 Exploring Ecclesiology

here is Christ-centered, cruciform, and ecclesially framed.64 Otherwise, we

may transform Christ and his cross—distorting them—to serve as illustra-
tions of the hardships we will face before we climb the mountain and set up
our standard on the hill in the city of the New Jerusalem through which the
Potomac River runs.
In “Armaments and Eschatology,” John Howard Yoder wrote, “People who
bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe,”65 even while work-
ing against the grain and against the stream in a society dominated by the
culture wars. The complex figure of Bonhoeffer serves as such a witness to
this universal pattern, as he hung in the gallows on behalf of the endangered
Jewish people and in view of his hope for a transformed Germany. Unless a
kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it can bear no fruit (John 12:24).
Only as Christ’s followers bear their persecution joyfully rather than bitterly
can they serve as Bonhoeffer did as salt and light and as a brilliant city set
upon a hill that leads others to glorify our Father in heaven (Matt. 5:11–16;
cf. Heb. 11–13).66

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. What is your view of the church’s relation to the state?

2. Based on that understanding, how should the church engage culture?
3. For Christian politicians, how should their faith affect their roles as
public figures?
4 For Christian politicians, how should their membership in the church
affect their roles as public figures?

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 14

Getting Past the Ghettoizing

of the Gospel in Today’s Culture

A friend of ours serves on staff at an emergent church that puts a lot of re-
sources into the arts and social justice. Someone he knew commented that
while this was all fine and good, wouldn’t it be better to put a lot more focus
on the gospel instead? Now, the church in question is very intentional about
integrating its arts and social justice emphases into its proclamation of the
gospel of Christ’s kingdom. The question signifies a certain Christ-against-
culture orientation, whereas our pastor friend and his church convey a Christ-
as-transformer-of-culture model developed in chapter 13.
The misguided comment noted above is but another indication that we in
the evangelical community have so often ghettoized the gospel, reducing it to
a gospel tract. While it may be helpful, sharing tracts with people about get-
ting right with God does not exhaust the gospel message. More will be said
about the meaning and scope of the gospel in the next chapter (“The Church
as a Missional Community”). For now, we will focus on how we can get out
of the Christian ghettoizing of the gospel to a few spiritual laws accompanied
by Christian songs and illustrated by art that bears the fish label (with or
without the American flag). In their place, we need to gain God’s kingdom
perspective, where we envision the whole creation—human and nonhuman—
as participating in salvation’s drama (see Rom. 8:22–23, for example), and
where we see that God the grand artist comes to restore and transform his
ruined Rembrandt from the social ills that have defaced it.

227

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 228 Exploring Ecclesiology

The compartmentalizing of the gospel in terms of the arts and social justice
can take several forms. Some churches value only Christian music and social
ministry produced within and by the Christian subculture. Others engage
in bait-and-switch tactics, using “secular” art and promoting social justice
as marketing tools to show seekers how hip and relevant these churches are,
drawing seekers in, and then introducing them to the real gospel.
The first orientation fails to recognize that it is not the Christian subculture
that has cornered the market on art and social justice. The Triune God—the
God of the universe—is the great artist who redeems his masterpiece from
decay and destruction and social inequities, bringing about the new creation
at the dawning of the new heavens and the new earth (see Rev. 21–22). God’s
redemptive and creative work in creation is not limited to the church’s endeav-
ors. Even the secular sphere participates in this grand production in profound
and amazing ways. And so, there need be no such label as “Christian” music
or “Christian” art. There is just art—good or bad. And Christians should
engage in righting social wrongs no matter how they reflect on the Christian
subculture’s wholesome self-image.
The second orientation fails to recognize that since God is the great artist,
there is no need to engage in bait-and-switch tactics—baiting people with
the arts and social justice before switching over to share the gospel. For the
gospel does not use art and social justice—the gospel is all about art and social
justice. As the master playwright, God graphically depicts the way things are
and also offers hope by disclosing to us the way things should and will be in
view of the One who was, and is, and is to come.
God enters into our stories and weaves them into his epic saga through the
Son and Spirit. As God’s supreme icon or image, Jesus enters into the depths of
creaturely and cultural life (see, for example, John 1:14, 18; and Heb. 1:1–3),
and through the Spirit’s manifold workings, takes shape in the vast host of
cultures with the intent to redeem the vast array of cultures and make all things
new. (See Acts 1 and 2, where Jesus continues to minister through the church,
and where the Spirit particularizes Jesus’s work to diverse peoples in their
own languages; see also God’s declaration in Rev. 21:5 that all things are being
made new.) The church is called to participate in Christ’s story through the
Spirit in word and deed, reenacting the grand Christmas and Easter pageant
through their own Christmas and Easter pageantry, in ways that communicate
to the variety of cultures in which it finds itself.
Talk of Christmas and Easter pageantry and nativity sets calls to mind
Jonathan Larson’s play Rent. The story is raw and real, and it contextual-
izes many of the gospel’s features to life in urban America at the turn of
the new century. The play begins on Christmas Eve in New York City at the
end of the second millennium. A group of young artists and their friends
seek escape from the virtual reality of corporate America, the commercial-
ized big city, and cyberspace. Some of the characters are suffering from

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 Getting Past the Ghettoizing of the Gospel in Today’s Culture 229

homelessness (there is no room in the inn—Holiday Inn—on Christmas

Eve, once again) and dying of AIDS and drug addictions. They are also
suffering from the absence of lasting meaning. Everything is for rent, even
love. They do have one another, though—at least for the moment. In the
end, they find that they have more than the moment, for one of those who
dies comes back to life, resurrecting life, hope, and meaning out of a culture
of death and despair.1
It would be interesting if some church were to show the movie version of
Rent at Christmastime or Easter, followed by a discussion of the redemptive
themes the movie presents. While authentic community takes a backseat to
virtual reality, urban renewal, commercialization, and technological sophis-
tication in the dominant culture, there is a remnant in Rent that sees right
through its impersonalizing lures. We also need to probe beneath the sur-
face of the Christmas story to know that it is not ultimately a commercial
aimed at getting people to buy stuff. Nor is it ultimately about nativity sets
or shepherds with staffs and wise men bearing gifts. It is about God’s gift to
us—himself through the person of his Son. God’s gift is not something, but
someone. In light of the fact that God has given himself through the person
of his Son to poor and despised shepherds, we can give of ourselves to others
in similar situations.
In this light, Christians’ battles to keep nativity sets in public parks strike
us as odd and miss the whole point of Jesus’s life and teaching. Jesus would
have been much more concerned about helping the homeless—modern-day
shepherds—watching out for their flocks (one another) in the parks at night.
As an artist friend once said, we Christians often get caught up painting the
flea and missing the dog.
Rent sheds more light on the heart of the gospel than many literal “Chris-
tian” gospel pageant productions do. Why is this? It is because we often turn
the truth into fiction by failing to probe the story’s depth to its core meaning;
we turn Jesus’s bloody, sweaty, and tear-infested birth into a gift-wrapped,
porcelain-faced Christ child peacefully asleep on a silent night. Also, we often
fail to incarnate the gospel truth in our own lives as well as fail to use artistic
media that are true to who we are as messengers of the message. We need to
concern ourselves with the truthfulness of the message, the messenger, and
the medium in our gospel productions.
Here we turn from Jonathan Larson to John Steinbeck and Johnny Cash,
beginning with Steinbeck’s discussion of the truthfulness of the biblical mes-
sage. In East of Eden (which reenacts the story of Cain and Abel), one of
Steinbeck’s characters—Lee, the Chinese servant of Adam Trask—says that
the story of Cain and Abel is “the best-known story in the world because it is
everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul€.€.€. I think
this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul—the
secret, rejected, guilty soul.”2 Elsewhere, Lee says that “no story has power,

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 230 Exploring Ecclesiology

nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.”3 And
again, “And here I make a rule—a great and lasting story is about everyone
or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply
personal and familiar.”4 Someone listening to Lee finally remarks: “Lee, you
better keep your complications out of the machinery of the set-up churches or
there might be a Chinese with nails in his hands and feet. They like complica-
tions but they like their own.”5 The “set-up churches” on every street corner
claim to have a corner on the truth, but they often fail to delve into the dark
corners of the human soul, as Steinbeck so masterfully does.
While the biblical message or story is true regardless of whether we believe
it or not, one reason why it has such enduring power and lasts from generation
to generation, and why its themes appear time and time again in a vast array of
artistic forms from Rent to East of Eden, is that we feel in ourselves that it is
true, and true of us. It is true of us because we derive our being from the one
who wrote the script. Not only Rent and East of Eden, but also those stories
void of biblical symbolism, can illuminate the gospel story from particular
angles. Tales upstream and downstream in history from Christ may point to
God’s story—like Greek tragedies and fertility cult legends of gods coming
to earth, dying and rising again.
While one finds resonance between the biblical story and other tales, it is
not an illustration of the ongoing quest of the human spirit for immortality,
one myth among many. For as C.€S. Lewis claimed, this story is not myth
alone, for “if ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be
just like this.”6 It is the myth become fact, for it is God’s primal story with
humanity from which all other stories derive their redemptive pattern and
significance. But such recognition is not enough. It must also become factual
and significant in our lives as its messengers.
This brings us to Johnny Cash and the movie Walk the Line, which chronicles
much of Cash’s life. There is a beautiful scene early on in the movie where
a young Cash and his band are auditioning at a record studio, hoping to cut
their first album. They’re singing a Jimmie Davis gospel tune about Jesus
saving them, having peace within, and wanting to shout it out. The man for
whom they’re auditioning—Sam Phillips—stops them and tells them gospel
like that doesn’t sell. When pressed, Phillips says he doesn’t believe Cash. He
later adds:

If you was hit by a truck and you were lying out there in that gutter dying, and
you had time to sing one song, one song people would remember before you’re
dirt, one song that would let God know what you felt about your time here on
earth, one song that would sum you up, you’re telling me that’s the song you’d
sing, that same Jimmie Davis tune we hear on the radio all day about your peace
within and how it’s real, and how you’re going to shout it? Or would you sing
something different, something real, something you felt? Because I’m telling you
right now, that’s the kind of song people want to hear, that’s the kind of song

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 Getting Past the Ghettoizing of the Gospel in Today’s Culture 231

that truly saves people. It ain’t got nothing to do with believing in God, Mr.
Cash. It has to do with believing in yourself.7

While we would qualify the last statement to read, “It has nothing to do with
beliefs. It has everything to do with whether or not you really believe in this
stuff or not,” the point on the need to keep it real still stands. In the movie,
Cash then goes on to sing one of the songs he wrote while in the Air Force,
“Folsom Prison Blues.” After watching this scene, one of our sons remarked
that he didn’t like the first number because it was dull and dry, but really liked
the second because it had soul. Based on the movie’s rendition, it’s no good
talking or singing or writing about saving souls if our own souls haven’t been
saved.
The movie also chronicles Cash’s recovery from drug addiction and his
conviction that God had given him a new lease on life. After his recovery, Cash
looks over his fan mail, and realizes how many of his fans are behind bars
in prison. Testimony after testimony reveals that his songs such as “Folsom
Prison Blues” really touched the souls of those imprisoned. That’s what led
him to do a concert at Folsom. The record producer mentioned earlier was
right. The only songs we sing that will save others are those songs that have
saved us, whether they have Christian lyrics or not. As one of our students
remarked after watching the Cash–Phillips audition scene, “Are we smoking
what we are selling?” The message is important. So too are the messenger
and medium.
In the evangelical community, we have spent so much time burning and
banning rock albums for back-masking, the drumbeat, and the like, and have
invested hardly any time banning the singing of “Christian” songs that mask
and imprison our hearts, or which fail to free those behind bars. The medium
must fit the messenger’s response to the message. What is Bach without the
harpsichord and baroque? And what is Cash without the guitar, rock, country,
and the blues? The message and medium are one.
As already noted in our worship chapter, when we were growing up we
heard such claims as “Volume plus pulsation equals manipulation.”8 In other
words, people who listen to rock ’n’ roll at high decibels succumb to the rock
’n’ roll pied piper’s not-so-subliminal advances. If so, wouldn’t it make sense
to return the favor with Christian alternatives? As Larry Norman, the father
of “Christian rock,” cried out, “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good
Music?” Moreover, if volume plus pulsation equals manipulation, why not
ban John Philip Sousa’s marches and Promise Keepers’ rally renditions of
Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” fearing that they too could
become manipulative?
The debate is not isolated to rock ’n’ roll in the Anglo-dominated evangeli-
cal subculture. Today, in Native American Christian circles, there is a debate
about the use of native drums in worship. Some—even Native Christians—

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 232 Exploring Ecclesiology

claim that native drums are from the devil and so cannot be used. One can
only wonder where Native Christians came upon this idea. Without drums,
our Native American Christian brothers and sisters might as well tap their
feet to the beat of some polka accompanied by the accordion. Fortunately,
Lakota Sioux Christian leader Richard Twiss brings sound theological judg-
ment to bear on the situation:

Because we are all so prone to be culturally egocentric, the temptation is to con-

sider our worldview the biblical and correct one, shunning all others as unbibli-
cal and wrong. Worse yet is our habit of judging cultural ways—songs, dances,
rituals, etc.—to be sinful when there is no clear violation of Scripture.9

Twiss also claims, “Because music is flexible and able to be reinterpreted, old
Indian music styles can become sacred or Christian, not by reason of form
but through context and meaning.”10
If Luther could turn bar tunes into hymns, we can certainly do the same
today—no matter the instrument or melody. Bound up with context and mean-
ing, it’s all about what’s going on inside the one singing or playing.11 Without
singing songs that have touched us in the way they have touched us, we will
never touch others and reform the church.12 It has nothing to do with banning
and burning albums, but everything to do with whether or not our own souls
are set on fire by the songs we sing.
Of course, we must concern ourselves with bearing authentic witness to
the biblical drama centered in Christ. Such authentic witness will highlight
one or more of the following aspects: “the goodness of the original creation,”
the creation in bondage to the fall, “its liberation,” or its future glorification.13
Cash’s song “Folsom Prison Blues,” as well as his remake of the Nine Inch Nails
song “Hurt,” certainly highlights creation’s bondage. And by identifying with
the plight of those in bondage, it also sets the stage for their own hoped-for
redemption. Cash’s profound honesty and heartfelt conviction that God had
radically redeemed him comes through in his music and speaks volumes to
multitudes of people, bearing witness to God revealed in Christ.
What does “Christian” music or Christian art in general in the evangeli-
cal subculture communicate to people? While the response will certainly be
varied, one of our friends once remarked that so much of what passes for
Christian art is like pornography. For example, the surreal, otherworldly, and
nostalgic outlook of so much Christian art promises us—at least many of us—
something we cannot have.14 Perhaps such art receives some of its inspiration
from fundamentalism’s otherworldly eschatology, as well as from its rejection
of culture, which resulted in its not being able to hear God speak through the
fallen and broken, as noted in the chapter on worship.15
Rent’s Jonathan Larson, Steinbeck, and Cash, on the other hand, provide
us with avenues into our souls, and the tragic side of life, through their atten-

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 Getting Past the Ghettoizing of the Gospel in Today’s Culture 233

tion to the fallen and broken. It is only as we face life head-on that we can find
redemption. For Christ did not avoid the pain and plight of creation’s travail,
but gave himself over to be swallowed up in darkness and death in order to
bring new life to the creation, transforming it from the inside out.
While much of Christian art in evangelical circles fails to engage reality au-
thentically, and so is ultimately un-Christian, the French Catholic artist Georges
Rouault’s pictures of clowns and prostitutes bear witness to Christ. In fact,
his clowns were often Christlike in appearance. Rouault painted clowns and
prostitutes because he saw in them “a certain religious aspect.” Like Christ, they
“were humiliated and had to bear their humiliation.”16 And yet, the fact that
his suffering is interwoven with theirs means that their hoped-for redemption
is interwoven with the salvation he authors. Rouault’s Christ engages reality
authentically, being incarnated in the world of blood, sweat, and tears.
Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks of the connection between Christ and the
clown in Rouault’s work: “If the clown is the representative and summing up
of all that is humanly grotesque, his portrait is bound, imperceptibly and in
a continuous process, to turn into the image of Christ.”17 Balthasar points
to such works as Christ with the Crown of Thorns and the Old Clown as
examples of this connection.18 Don’t We All Wear Makeup? also bears witness
to the similarity between the classic clown and Christ.
Certainly, like Christ, the clown sums up “all that is humanly grotesque,”
embodying the tragic element in humanity. The caption to Rouault’s work
The Old Clown, 1917–1920, reads, “Behind our glittering masks, we all hide
a tormented soul, a tragedy.” One commentator notes, “This is the message
that Rouault sought to convey in his pictures of clowns.”19 Balthasar says
that “it is in the clown that the most open image of human existence is to
be found: wanderer without a homeland, unarmed and exposed, in the very
ridiculousness of his costume revealed in all simplicity.”20
It is worth noting that in Rouault’s work, for all its emphasis on tragedy,
there is profound hope. In fact, there is a translucent quality to his work, re-
flecting his training as an apprentice to a stained-glass maker in his youth.21
This translucent quality adds iconic significance to his work, including his
paintings of clowns, offering us a window into the divine.
Rouault’s iconic clowns serve as parabolic witnesses to Christ and his king-
dom, for Christ is the archetypal human representative and cosmic clown.
Balthasar speaks of Christ as the cosmic clown at the close of his discussion
on folly, idiots, and the like, where the individual clown is superseded by the
cosmic antitype:

Here the clown image and the whole metaphysics of that “principal reason”
(Myshkin), which in this chapter we have seen as honest, foolish, indeed idiotic
reason, is superseded. The games of the fools from Parzival to Don Quixote
and Simplicius were a merry prelude to the seriousness of the Idiot, but now the

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 234 Exploring Ecclesiology

destiny of that lonely individual has become the destiny of mankind, a destiny
which, at the point where human existence was proclaiming its senselessness
and idiocy, has been taken up by the gentle divine Idiot on the cross. He silently
contains everything in himself and imprints on everything His form, the form
of the divine mercy, for which it is a matter of sublime indifference whether its
glory is manifested invisibly in earthly beauty or in ugliness.22

Christ—the cosmic clown—is the destiny of humankind, imprinting his divine

mercy on all, manifested in beauty as well as ugliness. The church serves as a
doorway through which the nations may enter, offering itself as an iconic win-
dow into Christ’s glory made manifest in the grime and filth of daily life.
The emergent church mentioned at the outset of this chapter uses icons in
worship, enhancing their sense of participation in the ancient drama of salva-
tion as it unfolds in the contemporary world.23 As participants in this drama,
these contemporary saints function iconically, missionally—providing people
a window into how God is at work in our world, celebrating the divine beauty
disclosed in the messiness and brokenness of life.
The integration of the arts into this church’s mission is one reason for the
creation of its Worship and Arts department. The Worship and Arts depart-
ment oversees various art communities, including those for visual artists,
musicians, writers, songwriters, photographers, dancers, filmmakers, and
response groups to popular movies and books. These communities within
the church serve as catalysts to help these artists bring their gifts to bear on
edifying the body at large. The pastoral leaders in this department mentor
the various artists, helping them integrate their art and faith, which in turn
assists in the edification of the body and its proclamation of the gospel to the
surrounding community.24
Not only is it important for Christian leaders to mentor artists, but also
it is important for Christian leaders to mentor all believers in the arts, since
the arts relate to a fundamental part of our being as humans and as Chris-
tians. We are wired to search for the true, the good, and the beautiful; and
careful attention to the arts helps us on our journey. The arts can be of
service to us as we bear witness to all people—Christian and pre-Christian
alike—of the profundity of the gospel story, which is the ultimate story to
which all other stories bear witness. Besides the use of various forms of
artistry such as sculpture and dance and painting in evangelistic ministry,
it is equally important that intentional efforts be made to incorporate these
various forms into Christian worship. All too often, we settle exclusively
for music. As important as music is to worship, it engages only one part
of the human person. Audible and visible forms of artistic expression alike
are needed if we hope to worship God with our whole being. Not only
should we be concerned for the incorporation of the arts into Christian
worship, but also we should be concerned for the incorporation of the arts

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 Getting Past the Ghettoizing of the Gospel in Today’s Culture 235

into Christian education programs. Thus, those responsible for Christian

education in local churches could develop classes on the gospel and litera-
ture, referencing Shakespeare’s and Steinbeck’s works among others in their
depiction of the gospel story through the arts. The same goes for the gospel
and film, whereby educators make use of films like Rent, Magnolia, and Les
Misérables in their classes.
To return to the discussion of mentoring artists, as with any profession
it is important for the pastoral leadership of a given church to help artists
integrate their art with their faith. Taking responsibility for mentoring artists
is especially important today, and for several reasons. First, the arts have so
often been neglected in the church, being viewed as ornamental and not as
constitutive of the Christian faith. But the arts do have a significant role to
play and are constitutive of the faith, for as has already been noted, God is
the grand artist, and creation and church are his masterpieces.
Second, given that the Triune God is the grand artist, whose supreme mas-
terpiece is the church, artists have a very significant role to play in church life.
Artists who were filled with the Spirit were instrumental in the building of the
tabernacle (and temple) and the ensuing worship there (see Exod. 35:30–36:1;
cf. 1€Chron. 22). Further to this same point, as the temple of the Holy Spirit
and bride of Christ, the church is to adorn herself in preparation for the mar-
riage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6–9). Given the profound intimacy of the
marriage feast, it is very important that artists skilled in their trade and mature
in faith help to prepare Christ’s community for worship and the celebration
of the Lord’s Supper as a foretaste of what’s to come.
Third, as the body of Christ, we are the embodiment of the divine life in
the world. In view of Christ’s incarnation and his headship, art that emerges
from Christ’s church must be incarnational and missional. These artists must
embody their faith in the surrounding community, serving as extensions of
Christ’s body. The role of artists as missional witnesses is especially signifi-
cant today. Rationalistic accounts of the faith no longer have staying power.
Rationalism has often served to fragment human identity, reducing people to
thinking machines, suppressing their passion, sense of hope, meaning, and
purpose.
In this light, one of the most compelling proofs of the Christian faith today
is its beautiful, holistic hope founded upon the good news that as the grand
artist the Triune God restores his ruined Rembrandt. God is not reactive, but
creative. God does not discard his defaced and disfigured masterpiece, start-
ing from scratch. Rather, God enters the creation through his Son and Spirit,
pouring his very being into its restoration, transforming it from the inside
out. And so, the church as Christ’s body bears witness to the Triune God’s
artistic genius and passion as it displays God’s mercy and manifold glory to
those around it, offering hope in the midst of darkness, a foreshadowing and
foretaste of wondrous things to come.

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 236 Exploring Ecclesiology

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. How can the arts serve as a manifestation of the gospel?

2. How would you respond to the following question: “Why should the
devil have all the good music?”

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 15

The Church as a Missional Community

The Being-Driven Church

The Missional Movement of Christ’s Church

We now come to the final two chapters of the book; we also come full circle
to the place where we began. In the first chapter, we spoke of the church as
a trinitarian community, which is being-driven. Its purpose and activity flow
forth from the church’s identity, which is constituted through its communion
with the Triune God. In this chapter, we speak of the church as being-driven,
as missional: its being is identified as that which turns upward, outward, and
downward in communion with God, its own members, and the world.
God’s own being is the Father, Son, and Spirit turning outward toward one
another in the divine life, and expressed in the Father’s sending the Son and
Spirit into the world. Through the Spirit, the Father sends the Son into the
world. Through this same Spirit, the Son is driven into the wilderness, lifted
upon a cross, and raised from the dead. In turn, with his ascent, the Father and
Son send the Spirit into the world to birth, indwell, and empower the church.
This same Spirit who unites the church to Christ sends the church into the
world to bear witness to Christ in word and deed until the end of the age.
The aim of this chapter is to trace God’s missional movement in and through
the church. Along the way, we seek to answer the following questions, and in this
order: What are the meaning and significance of the missional church? What

237

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 238 Exploring Ecclesiology

are its direction and destination? What is its message, including the relation
of word to deed? And what is the scope of salvation that it proclaims?

The Meaning and Significance of the Missional Church

The church is God’s people on the move—a community of sojourners destined

for the Promised Land. God led the people of Israel out of bondage in Egypt
to freedom in Canaan (Exod. 13:21–22). So too, the Lord goes before the
church by day and by night as it journeys forward as a witness to God among
the nations, ever in search of its eternal home. As the Lord himself commands
and promises, “Go and make disciples of all nations€.€.€.€, and surely I am with
you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:19a, 20b).
It is important to differentiate the missional church from a church with
a missions program. “A church with a missions program” may suggest that
bearing witness is one aspect of the church’s identity, purpose, and activity.
This limited view compartmentalizes missions to something the church does
outside its walls, rather than seeing missions as expressing the church’s mis-
sional being poured out through the Spirit into the world. “Missional church”
signifies that bearing witness is constitutive or reflective of the church’s being
or identity and, as a result, its entire purpose and activity. The church’s being
is not static but dynamic, as it is driven by God into the world. The church’s
missional being results from its union by faith with the God of Triune love,
whose loving being is communal and co-missional.1
God’s loving triune being is communal and co-missional, for God is three
persons in communion turning outward toward one another and downward
toward the world in holy love. As God’s people, the church ascends by faith in
Christ through the Spirit of love and downward with Christ by the outpoured
Spirit of love toward its neighbor—the world at large.2 Thus, the church par-
ticipates in the Triune God’s own missions—the Father’s sending the Son and
Spirit into the world.
As the Father forms the church, through the Son and Spirit, in worship and
loving service, into a distinct cultural community, the church turns outward
toward the world. The formation of the church’s communal and co-missional
being or identity gives rise to its distinctive purpose and activity as a community
that bears witness to God among the nations. This missional and witnessing
orientation has always been true of God’s people.
While people often seek to make a name for themselves rather than bearing
witness to God’s name, as in the case of Babel (Gen. 11:1–9), we find in the
person of Abram, or Abraham, a faithful witness. God calls this Gentile to
leave his people and homeland, and to go to the place God will give him (Gen.
12:1). God makes him the first Jew and the father of the Jewish nation (Gen.
17:9–14), as well as the father of all people of faith—Jew and Gentile (Rom.

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 The Church as a Missional Community 239

4:11). Following God’s example, Abraham and his family were a people on
the move, bearing witness to God’s faithfulness among the nations. All who
have the faith of Abraham belong to this missional people—looking for a city
and homeland that is to come (Heb. 11:8–10; 13:14).
God’s name-bearing people—Israel—were on the move when Moses led
them out of Egypt. God continues to call and lead his children out of Egypt
through his Son (Matt. 2:15; Rev. 7), just as he called Israel—his son—out
of bondage at the exodus (see Hos. 11:1). We should never put down roots
in an ultimate sense—telling God we are staying put! When we do, we cease
being obedient and missional. Our missional orientation is bound up with
our belonging to another city and kingdom, whose foundations are from God
(Heb. 13:14).
A church whose orientation is to put down roots and remain stationary is
often a church whose members seek only to minister to their “own kind of
people.” God intended not only to bless Abraham and his descendants, but
also to make him a blessing to all nations (Gen. 12:1–3). Not only did Christ
intend to build his church in Jerusalem, but also he purposed to send his fol-
lowers out through the Spirit to be his witnesses in Judea, in Samaria, and
throughout the whole earth as well (Acts 1:8).
Unfortunately, as with mission-less churches today, Israel and the early
church often lost sight of their missional purpose. When God led Israel out of
Egypt, many Egyptians went with them (Exod. 12:38). Moses and Israel did not
try to keep Egyptians—whose ruler had oppressed them—from experiencing
God’s glory, power, and love. But later Israel was more closed to outsiders, as
in the case of the prophet Jonah. Jonah was upset that the Assyrians repented
of their wicked ways when he warned them of God’s impending judgment.
He wanted God to judge Israel’s enemies (Jonah 4:1–3).
The same problem continues on in the New Testament. While Jesus was
raised in Nazareth, began his ministry in Galilee of the Gentiles, and reached
out to prostitutes, tax collectors, and Roman soldiers, his disciples were sur-
prised to find Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman (John 4:27) and calling little
children to himself (Luke 18:15–17). Samaritan women and little children held
little value in that culture—no doubt, they contributed very little to the GNP.
It was not until persecution hit the Jerusalem church that the believers began
spreading out as gospel witnesses throughout the greater region (Acts 8:1–4).
Peter’s own particular Jewish upbringing made it painfully difficult for him
to comprehend the news that God had removed the wall of division between
Jews and Gentiles (Acts 10:9–16). After the Cornelius episode, Peter realized
that God’s grace in Christ by the Spirit comes to the Gentiles in the same way
that it comes to the Jews (Acts 10:44–11:18). However, due to peer pressure, he
refused to have table fellowship with Gentile believers when Jewish believers
came to Antioch from the church in Jerusalem. His actions led Paul to rebuke
him (Gal. 2:11–14).

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 240 Exploring Ecclesiology

For his own part, the former Pharisee—Paul—became all things to all
people to reach them for Christ. In his former life as a Pharisee, Paul quite
possibly crossed land and sea to convert people, and yet shut them out of the
kingdom—making them twice the sons and daughters of hell as he was—he
through strict enforcement of the legal codes (Matt. 23:13–15). However, after
his conversion on the Damascus Road, Paul became a Jew to the Jews and a
Gentile to the Gentiles, so that by all possible means he might save some (1€Cor.
9:19–23). Paul would not allow cultural forms to be imposed upon gospel
content. Paul did not want a legalistic reading of the law to be a stumbling
block, nor to be a stumbling block himself. For Paul, Christ was the stumbling
block to Jews and Gentiles as the cornerstone of God’s house in which Jews
and Gentiles were now full and equal members (Eph. 2:11–22). Paul would
allow for cultural particularities such as circumcision and un-circumcision
to remain. But he would not sit back quietly and tolerate Peter’s breaking
table fellowship with Gentile Christians, since through the Spirit Jewish and
Gentile believers were one flesh as members of Christ’s body and called to sit
at the same table as members of God’s household (Eph. 2:11–22).
The church made up of Jews and Gentiles is a mobile home, whose cor-
nerstone is the incarnate Son of God. It is a community in pursuit of Christ
and will not find what it is looking for until Christ—their cloud and pillar of
fire—establishes his people in the Promised Land. The church goes out into
the world and reaches out to all people so that people from every nation might
become members of God’s household and royal nation. The church goes forth
throughout the earth until the end of the age, when Christ’s kingdom will
arrive in its fullness.

The Direction and Destination of the Missional Church

We can learn a lot about people from where they are headed in life. Their di-
rection or trajectory in life and final destination influence their purposes and
activities. The same goes for the communal and co-missional God. As communal
and co-missional, God promises to come and live among the community he
names as his own people (1€Pet. 2:10), to make his people one with his Son as
a mature body and spotless bride (Eph. 5:25–32), and to build his people into a
glorious temple in which God lives by his Spirit (1€Cor. 3:16). Everything God
does is to this end. As communal and co-missional, God purposes to live among
his people, to be one with his people, and to indwell his people. The church’s
identity is rooted in covenantal communion with the Triune God as the people
of God, the body and bride of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Spirit. These
images are determinative of the church’s missional purpose and activity.
As the people of God, the church represents the transcendent and eternal
Trinity, who exists in eternal, interpersonal communion beyond creation, but

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 The Church as a Missional Community 241

who turns outward to create fellowship with humanity. This personal God calls
us to himself to be his people—a people for his name’s sake. As the body and
bride of Christ, the church engages culture through incarnational presence and
witness as Christ ministers through his people in the world. This personal God
touches the world through the church. As the temple of the Holy Spirit, the
church invites the world to know and experience God through his presence in
the community of believers. As God’s named people, the church is relational,
identifying others by name and identifying with them. As Christ’s body and
bride, the church “incarnates” God’s presence to others. As the temple of the
Holy Spirit, the church invites others to enter into God’s presence. We will
take up each item in turn.

A Place Where Everybody Knows Your Name

The theme song for the television show Cheers says the pub (Cheers) is a
place where everybody knows your name. Would it not be wonderful if the
same thing could be said of our local churches? While alcohol has a way of
making many people become more transparent, letting their guard down,
those filled with God’s Spirit truly become more transparent and authentic
and relate to others interpersonally, identifying with them and calling them by
name. It all follows from the fact that the Triune God is irreducibly personal,
and that the Father graciously discloses himself to us through the personal
presence of the Spirit of his Son in our lives.
We cannot reduce God’s tri-personal identity to three roles or functions,
for they are irreducibly Father, Son, and Spirit, who reach out relationally,
and express and manifest their persons through their distinctive activities and
roles. The personal God who enters into our lives by his Spirit calls each of
us by name. God’s personal address and determination to make us his people
signify that God values us as human persons, not as mere functionaries to be
exploited for profit.
In America, those of us who belong to the dominant Anglo culture tend
to categorize and value people in terms of their gifting and vocations. In this
light, we tend to identify ourselves by our respective job titles and descriptions
when we introduce ourselves to others. In Native American settings, on the
other hand, people tend to identify and value themselves and others by way of
their respective families and extended family networks. The latter resonates
much more readily with scripture than the former.
As was stated in a previous chapter, we must be careful to guard against
attributing value to people based solely on their gifting and service in the
church; people express themselves through their gifts for building up one
another. Their gifting and acts of service express rather than establish and
exhaust who they are. This follows from the fact that we are created in the
image of the Triune God as persons in communion. This orientation safe-

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 242 Exploring Ecclesiology

guards against commodifying people, whereby we turn human persons into

impersonal cogs that keep the goods and services assembly line of free-market
American spirituality going.
Lesslie Newbigin argues that the “post-Enlightenment project” absorbs
“all human activity” into “labor.” Human activity becomes “an unending
cycle of production for the sake of consumption.” Against this backdrop,
“what does not enter the market is ignored.” Thus, homemakers (as well as
small children and the elderly) are not perceived as having much significance.
Their work does not assist the market—while the “gambling syndicate, arms
salesman and drug pusher” do.3
A true familial community is a place where the strong and the weak, the
healthy and the diseased, the young and the old, the wise and the simple live.
So many of our churches bearing the name community in their titles need to
be very intentional so as not to succumb to the pressures of free market spiri-
tuality and target only the strong, the healthy, the young, the wise, and the
successful so as to survive and thrive. Such “success” comes at the expense of
building true community and bearing witness to God’s own targeting practices
revealed in scripture.
God chose Israel from among the nations—a small and insignificant slave
people by the world’s standards—to be his people and bear his name. Then
God chose from within Israel the twelve apostles to build Christ’s church.
Most of them were unschooled and ordinary (Acts 4:13). Not many of us
were significant before God chose us and brought us into his family (1€Cor.
1:26). God does this so that others will take note that we have been with Jesus
(Acts 4:13), and that our own boast would be in God, and not ourselves (1€Cor.
1:27–31). For we are bearers of his name—the Lord (“Let him who boasts
boast in the Lord”). Bearing his name should be the source of our security
and significance as the people of God, not the respective names of our various
churches—the First Church of Cephas, Apollos, or Paul.
God makes his home with us as his named people. He does so through his
Son and Spirit, who bear his name. As the church goes forth as the people who
bear God’s name and are called to be a community “where everybody knows
your name,” it invites the surrounding world to come along and experience God’s
named presence in their midst. God’s identity and missional activity of inter-
personal communion in our midst make it possible for us to name our churches
“community churches.” As the body and bride of the incarnate Christ, God also
makes it possible for us to reach out toward the world as participants in Christ’s
incarnate presence through our union with Christ in the Spirit.

A Place Near You

Luke tells us in Acts 1:1 that he had written about “all that Jesus began to
do and to teach” in his previous book (the Gospel of Luke). Here he is sug-

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 The Church as a Missional Community 243

gesting that Jesus’s ministry continues through his church. As the body and
bride of Christ, the church participates in Christ’s incarnate presence in the
world through the Spirit. Thus, like Christ before them, the church community
must live among the people—in the flesh. We see evidence of this approach
to ministry in Acts 5:

The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people.
And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade. No one
else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.
Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were
added to their number. As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and
laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some
of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jeru-
salem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them
were healed. (Acts 5:12–16)

It was certainly the case that, as with Jesus before them, the apostolic com-
munity’s presence would have been missed if they were to have closed up shop
and left town.
If we were to leave town, would anyone know? While our buildings would
stay put, are our facilities placed in strategic locations to impact the com-
munity at large? While megachurches’ presence is felt in terms of the space
they occupy, these churches must ask themselves whether they serve as salt
and light in the surrounding communities. Gretchen Buggeln writes, “In
what congregations build and where they build it, they say something about
their relationship to the surrounding culture. They also demonstrate what
is important in their rituals and beliefs.” She also notes, “Intentionally or
not, buildings communicate what really matters to their builders.”4 Audito-
rium churches in the nineteenth century were designed and situated in key
metropolitan areas to play a significant public role in culture, not to serve
as spiritual oases.
No doubt, the locations of many evangelical auditorium churches on the
outskirts of town bear witness not simply to the lack of spacious vacant lots
in cities but also to the impact of the fundamentalist-evangelical church’s
retreat from the public urban square following the “Scopes Monkey trial” in
the early twentieth century. As a result of its forced exodus, the fundamentalist-
evangelical church developed a fortress mentality, where the holy remnant
sought refuge from the onslaught of an ungodly culture by retreating to the
outskirts of the city (the city was often viewed as the den of wickedness, since
the dominant liberal political and religious institutions were often stationed
there).
Harper’s Magazine’s Jeff Sharlet comments that “contemporary funda-
mentalism has become an exurban movement.” In keeping with this move,
he writes that

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 244 Exploring Ecclesiology

it has reframed the question of theodicy—if God is good, then why does He allow
suffering?—as a matter of geography. Some places are simply more blessed than
others. Cities equal more fallen souls equal more demons equal more tempta-
tion, which, of course, leads to more fallen souls. The threats that suffuse urban
centers have forced Christian conservatives to flee—to Cobb County, Georgia, to
Colorado Springs. Hounded by the sins they see as rampant in the cities (homo-
sexuality, atheistic school-teaching, ungodly imagery), they imagine themselves
to be outcasts in their own land. They are the “persecuted church”—just as Jesus
promised, and just as their cell-group leaders teach them.5

While the evangelical church has regained political influence in recent years,
as witnessed by the 2004 presidential election, in which megachurches played
a key role in the reelection strategy,6 its influence is often felt most strongly in
Washington, DC, and overseas, not in urban centers closer to home, especially
in communities of disrepair.
Related to the problems noted above is the predominance of the commuter
church phenomenon, tied to the breakdown of the family and the bankrupt
prosperity gospel movement. Here is what John€M. Perkins has to say to these
matters:

The breakdown of the family, the commuter church, and the prosperity gospel
erode the foundations of our society. The split-apart family, the back-and-forth
commuter church, and the leave-the-poor-behind prosperity gospel success story
do nothing to stem the poverty, crime, and violence that we see played out on
the evening news. In contrast, families who stay together, churches that main-
tain a vital presence in a community, and those who abandon their upwardly
mobile ways to identify with others less fortunate than they are preserve society
and guard against the deterioration of local communities across America. The
evangelical church has to recreate family and community by becoming an in-
carnate presence in society rather than remaining transient and self-consumed,
by proclaiming the gospel of reconciliation rather than the gospel reduced to
church growth and success. If we truly incarnate the church in a community,
then we are better able to participate in God’s redemption of the poor from
oppression and act out divine jubilee justice.
All too often, we think of the church simply as a building with programs
aimed at making sure the church survives and thrives. On this model, people
do everything possible to keep the show going. This view of the church is not
missional. And as far as the poor in the surrounding community are concerned,
they are viewed simply as a side issue—simply the beneficiaries of our charity.
In some cases, we may actually go so far as to invite these beneficiaries of our
charity to church. But charity does not build community. It fosters dependence
on the one hand and separation on the other hand—keeping the poor at the far
end of our outstretched hand.7

Evangelicals often point to the breakdown of the family and call for safeguard-
ing family values, but as already suggested and noted in Sharlet’s piece, the

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 The Church as a Missional Community 245

family values campaign often gives the appearance of calling for the protection
of Christian families from a pagan world, not calling for Christian families
to serve that same world.
God’s incarnation in a broken world has import for the church’s witness
today as his body. Christ gave himself “for the least of these.” As Christ’s body
in the world today through its union with Christ’s Spirit, the church must reach
out as Christ’s compassionate embrace to those in need. The church must be a
place—a haven of rest—near and for the least of these. While much attention
over the years has been given to the church as Christ’s body in church growth
circles, the focus has largely been internal: know and exercise your spiritual
gifts so as to make the church function most effectively. Of course, it is vitally
important that we help people use their gifts and resources as well-functioning
parts in service to the whole body; but it is also vitally important that the
church see itself as Christ’s body sacrificially serving the world.
One of our friends directs a ministry for the homeless in northern Cali-
fornia. He has an increasingly significant sphere of influence in his county,
working with political and business leaders to help address the social ills that
plague the region. He is an outspoken evangelical Christian who does not
compromise his biblical convictions. But his missional life and holistic, com-
passionate service create space for his views to be heard. Our friend longs for
his evangelical brothers and sisters to give themselves as Christ’s hands and
feet to the community at large rather than putting their hands in their pockets
and incubating themselves in the Christian bubble.
Giving ourselves to others entails being where they are. We cannot expect
them to come to us. We have to go where they are. God relocated from heaven
to earth to reach a lost world. So too we must relocate, living among those who
do not yet confess Christ. Not only must we make space for others, but also
we must make time for them. In Jesus, God makes space and time for us.8
We know how hard it is to make time for people outside Christian confines.
As professors at a Christian school and leaders in churches, we spend much
of our time rubbing shoulders with believers. We have to be intentional about
getting out of those friendly confines time and time again to make friends
with those who do not share our uniquely Christian convictions. The social
causes we ourselves embrace (such as concern for the homeless and the envi-
ronment) bring us into contact with beautiful people who are created in the
image of the Triune God, yet who often inhabit other worldview universes.
While we are peculiarly Christian, many of our social instincts shaped by our
biblical perspectives overlap with those from other traditions. We go through
(not around) our convictions in search of bridge-building opportunities in
the public square.
Church leaders must be intentional about making sure they and their con-
gregations are not consumed by church activities aimed at edification. Atten-
tion to outreach is equally important. Perhaps this will entail encouraging

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 246 Exploring Ecclesiology

members to join softball teams with no church affiliation, or to join reading

or arts and crafts groups at community centers. It may also entail encourag-
ing members to consider putting their children in public schools and getting
involved in parent–teacher organizations. Parents committed to home schooling
must make sure that their children are engaged somehow in the community
at large. Whole churches can minister missionally by identifying needs in the
community and reaching out to address those needs.
Just as God ministers in the world through his two hands—the Son and
Spirit—we are his hands and feet through our union with Christ in the power
of the Spirit. As the body of Christ, the church with its buildings goes out
to the world, serving as Christ’s hands and feet and as a shelter from life’s
storms. As the church is in the world, we will have ample opportunity to invite
the world inside. Like Jesus, we must live among the people, tabernacling in
their midst, while also inviting them to tabernacle with us as God’s temple
community.

No Place like Home

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the tabernacle and later the temple served as
the places where God’s glory dwelt, and where the nations could come and
seek God. King Solomon bears witness to this reality during his prayer at the
dedication of the temple in Jerusalem. He cries out,

As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come
from a distant land because of your name—for men will hear of your great
name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when he comes and
prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do
whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know
your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this
house I have built bears your Name. (1€Kings 8:41–43)

Against this backdrop, it is little wonder Jesus was incensed when he cleared
the temple in Jerusalem—his own people had turned God’s house of prayer for
the nations into a market at the expense of the nations (Mark 11:15–17).
In Luke’s account, Jesus clears the temple and weeps over Jerusalem’s
approaching destruction (Luke 19:41–46). Even so, scripture reveals God’s
promises to restore Jerusalem’s and its temple’s fortunes. God will vindicate
Jerusalem in the sight of the kings of the earth, giving Zion a new name, and
adorning the sanctuary with the wealth of the nations (Isa. 60:13; 62:2). God
will marry Jerusalem (Isa. 62:4–5). Revelation tells us that the city of the New
Jerusalem—the bride of Christ the Lamb—will descend from heaven (Rev.
21:9–11). The bride will bear the names of the twelve tribes of Israel and the
twelve apostles (Rev. 21:12–14) as the one people of God. There will be no

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 The Church as a Missional Community 247

temple, for the Lord Almighty and the Lamb will be the temple (Rev. 21:22).
The kings of the earth will bring their splendor into the New Jerusalem (Rev.
21:24). So too the leaves of the Tree of Life—which stands on either side of
the River of Life flowing down the middle of the great street of the city—will
bring healing to the nations (Rev. 22:1–2). The Spirit and the bride will invite
all who are thirsty to come and take the free gift of the water of life from that
river (Rev. 22:17).
In light of that day, the church must open its doors wide today. It is one
thing to be in the world. It is quite another to open the church’s doors to the
nations. We often hear Christians say that the communities in which they
live are very homogeneous. This is rarely the case, even in very wealthy com-
munities. The question is how open are our eyes and our hearts. In one of
the wealthier suburbs in the Portland area, there are growing numbers of
Hispanic families—some of whose breadwinners are migrant workers. Also,
due to gentrification in Portland, many poorer families are leaving the city
and moving into apartment complexes in the surrounding suburbs.
While we could give numerous examples of churches opening their doors,
we will briefly draw attention to one in particular. One church in the Portland
area that has been quite intentional about reaching out to diverse communi-
ties shares its facilities with an Asian congregation, makes certain that its
leadership team is inclusive of diverse ethnicities, and has birthed a church
on its premises that ministers to the skateboarding population. The church
has continued to serve as salt and light in its neighborhood and region even
as its surroundings have become increasingly diverse. Of course, there have
been some tensions. Some members have recommended that the church locate
elsewhere, and others have left the church. But the leadership has determined
(in our estimation rightly) to remain. Sometimes being missional will require
of us as God’s temple community that we stay put.
Sometimes being missional will also require of us as God’s temple com-
munity that we reappraise our priorities. We cannot allow our rightful
concern for protecting our families and preserving church facilities to keep
us from reaching out and welcoming those who do not belong to our target
audiences. One of us recalls a concerned layperson remarking that homeless
people would start coming to church if the leadership kept on talking about
caring for the downtrodden. Their presence would pose a risk for church
members’ children’s safety. While our children’s safety should certainly
be a priority given Jesus’s own concern for little children who are so often
neglected, such rightful attention to our children’s well-being should not
keep us from being concerned for others who are also so often neglected.
We should not speak in either/or here, but in terms of both/and. Besides,
if our children have no exposure to society’s fringe elements, how will
they be prepared to engage them missionally and redemptively when they
do cross paths?

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Concern for church premises has kept at least one church we know from
opening its doors to those “less fortunate.” The leadership of the church in
question had no difficulty sending short-term missionaries to Mexico and
having them stay with the Mexican believers while they built church facilities.
But they were not willing to let these same Mexican believers come and stay in
their own church facilities when the opportunity presented itself. The leader-
ship feared that the Mexican believers would get the facilities dirty. If that is
how they relate to fellow believers with whom they have had fellowship, just
imagine how they must relate to nonbelievers of the same kind! Not only has
the church leadership in question mistakenly equated external cleanliness with
godliness, but also they have mistakenly equated short-term missions programs
with being missional, proving themselves to be the least fortunate of all.
Once again, though, there is hope. Above mention was made of a church
with a skateboarder ministry among unchurched youth. When the ministry
began, these youth could often be found skateboarding on the cement floor
of the church’s cavernous basement. Many of the older church people com-
plained about the dust swirling about and carrying over into the kitchen. All
their complaining stopped, however, as soon as the first set of skateboarding
youth came forward to make public their new confession of faith in Christ
and to be baptized. In fact, some of the older congregants set about to con-
struct a building on the premises with state-of-the-art skateboarding ramps
for the youth. Today, news of Skate Church has spread far and wide. While
not every church will build a skateboarding facility, a missional orientation
may lead many to use their facilities for providing ESL (English as a second
language) classes, job-training seminars, neighborhood association meetings,
and nomadic shelters for the homeless.
As the temple of the Holy Spirit, the missional church is called to welcome
sinner and saint alike (and by the way, every Christ-follower is a sinner and a
saint alike), those who possess much and those long dispossessed. When we
fail to act upon our missional calling as God’s temple community existing
for the nations (which will include any group whom we deem foreign) and as
God’s healthcare provider for sinners, it suggests that we have lost direction
and sight of our destination.
In this light, concern for the missional state of our buildings and facilities
must give way to a more fundamental concern—the state of our own souls.
Often, we lock ourselves in our buildings, shutting the world out because our
own souls are enslaved.9 God needs to free us from ourselves if we are to be of
service in the liberation of others. When our souls are freed, we will respond
with compassionate concern for those being released from various forms of
imprisonment.
Groups ministering to those recently released from prison or who have
finished rehab programs for sexual or substance abuse addictions tell us how
difficult it is to find communities in which their people can be spiritually

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 The Church as a Missional Community 249

nurtured. We as the church community must see that there is no such thing
as normal sin. All sins are abnormal, and we are all in desperate need of the
divine physician’s healing touch. Only when we see that apart from Christ we
are as desperately lost as the prostitutes, demon-possessed, and tax collectors
to whom Jesus ministered will we experience full redemption. Only then can
we bear witness to Jesus as the good news so that others might experience
redemption too. Only when we have heard Jesus calling us to leave behind our
red-light districts, only when we have heard his summons to us to come out
from among the tombs, only when we have heard his invitation to us to come
down from our trees of self-imposed isolation will salvation at last come to
our house, and through our houses of prayer to the nations.

In Sum—Seeking and Saving the Lost

Our direction and destination as God’s missional church entail being a

missional people bearing God’s personal name in whose communal midst this
personal God dwells. Our direction and destination also entail our participat-
ing in Christ’s incarnate presence as his body and bride in the community at
large. Lastly, our direction and destination entail our being the temple of the
Holy Spirit, welcoming others into our fellowship as a sanctuary for saints
and a hospital for sinners. We identify personally with others, “incarnate”
God’s presence to others through union with Christ in the Spirit, and invite
them to enter into God’s presence as members of his community, seeking and
saving the lost.
Jesus’s encounter with Zacchaeus exemplifies this missional orientation
of seeking out the lost so that they might be saved. In Luke 19, Jesus and his
followers were on the move—passing through Jericho on what would be his
final journey to Jerusalem. The crowds surrounded Jesus. This made it impos-
sible for a little man and chief tax collector named Zacchaeus to get close.
So Zacchaeus climbed a tree to get a good look at Jesus. Zacchaeus was very
wealthy as a result of his trade as an employee of the Roman government,
which also made him an enemy of his own people (Luke 19:1–4). Perhaps this
was one reason he climbed the tree. When Jesus passed beneath the tree, he
looked up and called to Zacchaeus by name. Jesus instructed Zacchaeus that
he would be coming to his house for dinner. This caused a great stir, leading
the crowds to grumble. How could Jesus eat with sinners? (Luke 19:5–7). But
as Jesus himself said, “The Son of man came to seek and to save what was
lost” (Luke 19:10).
Jesus always went where the religious establishment would not go. He went
to where the “sinners” were. But he did not leave it there. As the incarnate
presence of God, Jesus turned people back to God. In this case, Zacchaeus
repented of having cheated people, and he promised to repay them four times
the amount along with giving half his possessions to the poor. And so, he

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fulfilled the law of Moses, which required making restitution before a priest
(Lev. 6:1–5). Salvation had come to Zacchaeus’s house, as the great high priest
himself declared (Luke 19:9). Jesus identified Zacchaeus, and identified with
him. As the incarnate Lord, Jesus incarnated God’s presence to him, while
others refused to go near him. Lastly, Jesus drew Zacchaeus back into fellow-
ship with God. Like Jesus, we must be on the move, bearing the message of
repentance and forgiveness in his name.
Christians can become more intentional about identifying with others as
God’s people, “incarnating” Christ’s presence, and inviting others to become
members of the Holy Spirit’s temple community by being active in church
small groups and home communities. Such intentionality makes it possible for
us to know one another’s names—especially if we belong to large churches.
As members of small groups and home communities, we can get involved in
social outreach in the community at large. As we minister to people spiritu-
ally, emotionally, and physically, they may choose to become members of our
home communities and, eventually, vital participants in the church at large.
This is what happened in Acts 5, noted above as Peter and the rest of the be-
lievers ministered to the sick and those tormented by evil spirits. As a result
of the apostles’ performing “many miraculous signs and wonders among the
people” in Solomon’s Colonnade, “more and more men and women believed
in the Lord and were added to their number” (Acts 5:12, 14).
Having addressed our calling as the church to go forth as the people of
God, the body and bride of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Spirit, we now
turn to the gospel message itself and the relation of word to deed in gospel
proclamation.

The Gospel Message of the Missional Church

The message of the missional church is the hope-filled gospel of the eschato-
logical kingdom. The gospel of this kingdom is the good news that God the
Father loves us—even us, who have turned our backs on him and who have
risen up against him—and invites us to enter by repentant faith into saving
relationship with himself through his Son in the Spirit, in which we receive
forgiveness of our sins. Not only, though, have we turned against God, but also
we have turned against one another and against the rest of God’s creation.
Thus, our salvation involves the ultimate transformation of body, soul, and
spirit in Christ’s redeemed community in a renewed cosmos, to which the
church itself presently bears witness.
The whole gospel that we proclaim is for the whole person in the whole
community in the whole world. Salvation is all-encompassing, involving our
relationship with God, with one another, and with the creation in its entirety.
Salvation also involves the redemption of our entire being. The early chapters

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 The Church as a Missional Community 251

of Genesis bear witness to the personal, corporate, and cosmic dimensions of

sin and hoped-for salvation.
As this epic story reveals, God placed our first ancestors—Adam and Eve—in
a garden to nurture and care for the creation and to be fruitful and procreate,
multiplying across the whole earth (Gen. 1:28–30). As those created in the
image of the Triune God, they existed to live in loving communion with God
and one another on earth (Gen. 1:26–27). However, they rebelled, determining
to displace God rather than to exist in loving communion (Gen. 3:1–7).
Their rebellion against God severely impacted their relationship with one
another and the rest of creation. Adam blamed Eve for their first act of rebel-
lion, and Eve blamed the serpent. As a result of their rebellion, God foretells
that the man would rule over the woman, the woman would undergo severe
agony in bearing children, and the whole creation would experience travail (see
Gen. 3:12–21). The very next chapter tells of how their firstborn son is the first
murderer, killing his own brother (Gen. 4:8), resulting in his restless wandering
on the earth, which will no longer bear fruit for him (Gen. 4:11–12).
The aftermath of humanity’s sinful ways spells the utter dissolution of the
entire creation. However, God promises to redeem his fallen creation even as
he pronounces judgment. The first gospel promise recorded in scripture is
found in Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will
strike his heel.” So begins the cosmic warfare between the serpent, or dragon,
and God’s promised deliverer, the Messiah, that climaxes with his crucifixion
and resurrection as Lion of Judah and Lamb of God, and which culminates
in the last battles recorded in Revelation (see Rev. 19–20). The Tree of Life in
Eden’s garden that is transplanted to the New Jerusalem is the tree on which
the Messiah dies outside Jerusalem in order to bring life to all.
God purposes Israel to be a people for his triune name’s sake that will
prepare the way for the Messiah, whom the Spirit will unite to his people—
the new Israel, the church—as head and husband to body and bride in the
new heavens and earth. The Spirit and bride invite all who are thirsty to come
and drink from the water of life and to make preparations for the eternal
kingdom. In that kingdom’s principal city—the New Jerusalem—to which
the nations will bring their wealth, there will be no bloodshed, no tears, no
pain; the lamb will lie down with the lion, and the Lion who is the Lamb,
who takes away the sin of the world, will reign with God and his people in
the fullness of the Spirit.
The gospel message is hope-filled and holistic, encompassing every area of
life. It also requires holistic proclamation—in word and deed—by a people
whose faith is formed by the divine love. Its scope is also all-encompassing—
having a bearing upon all people. Having reflected upon the content of the
gospel message, we now turn to consider the holistic nature of gospel proc-
lamation in word and deed by a people whose faith is formed by divine love.

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 252 Exploring Ecclesiology

In closing, we will speak to the matter of the all-encompassing scope of the

gospel address.

The Holistic Proclamation of the Gospel Hope

The church is called to bear witness to Christ’s kingdom in the world in

word and deed (Matt. 28:18–20, esp. 20a; Acts 2:40–47; Acts 3:1–4:4), just
as Jesus proclaimed the kingdom in word and deed (Matt. 4:23; 9:35; Luke
4:16–21; 5:17–26; 7:18–23). In fact, Christ’s word is deed: Jesus speaks, and
things happen; people are healed and demons are cast out.
Jesus spoke with authority (Matt. 7:28–29), and lived with it too (Matt.
8:1–4). It is necessary to do both. However, in our day, the church has in many
respects lost its authority and right to speak. The only way we can regain this
right and authority is not by power politics but by creating the space with
sacrificial lives for our views to be heard. Key to our struggle is fighting against
the disease of “affluenza.”
Conservative evangelical Christian theology often removes issues of justice
and this life from Jesus and his kingdom. Jesus is our substitute, who died to
save us from sin and to bless only those who are poor in spirit. On this view,
sin and righteousness are viewed simply in spiritual terms. Liberal Christian
theology often reduces Jesus to a social revolutionary and his kingdom to a
fulfillment of this life. On this view, Jesus died as the representative of the
poor, identifying with them in their plight. Here the tendency is to reduce the
poor in spirit to the poor.10
In contrast to these extremes, Jesus died for the sins of the world as our
substitute and representative, seeking to save us from sin, which impacts every
area of our lives—spiritual, social, physical, and psychological. Thus, for
example, Jesus is concerned for the poor in spirit and the poor (Matt. 5:3;
Luke 6:20). It is a both/and, not an either/or. As Gordon Fee and Douglas
Stuart write,

In Matthew the poor are “the poor in spirit”; in Luke they are simply “you
poor” in contrast to “you that are rich” (6:24). On such points most people
tend to have only half a canon. Traditional evangelicals tend to read only “the
poor in spirit”; social activists tend to read only “you poor.” We insist that both
are canonical. In a truly profound sense the real poor are those who recognize
themselves as impoverished before God. But the God of the Bible, who became
incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, is a God who pleads the cause of the oppressed
and the disenfranchised. One can scarcely read Luke’s gospel without recogniz-
ing his interest in this aspect of the divine revelation (see 14:12–14; cf. 12:33–34
with the Matthean parallel, 6:19–21).11

Of course, one would pray that all—rich and poor—would be poor in spirit.
In fact, the poor are more often poor in spirit than the rich, as Jesus suggests

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 The Church as a Missional Community 253

in his statement about the rich young ruler in Luke 18:25. Moreover, those
disciples to whom Jesus speaks in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and Luke’s
Sermon on the Plain include his closest band of followers, who had left every-
thing to follow him (see Luke 18:28).
Jesus came to save whole people—body, mind, and spirit. At the outset
of his public ministry recorded in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus applied Isaiah 61:1–2
to himself: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to
preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the
prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to
proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:17–19).With the inception of
Jesus’s public ministry filled and empowered by the Spirit (see Luke 4:14), the
great year of Jubilee, the messianic age, has dawned. While justice, peace,
and healing will not be complete until the messianic age is consummated, the
messianic age of justice, peace, and holistic health has dawned in Jesus. And
so, his community must proclaim the gospel of Christ’s kingdom’s advance
holistically—in word and deed.
As stated above, Jesus proclaimed the gospel in word and deed. When John
the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he were truly the Christ and
if the eschatological kingdom had truly come, Jesus was casting out many
demons and healing many people of various diseases and illnesses, as well as
blindness (Luke 7:18–21). Jesus responded:

Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive
sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead
are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who
does not fall away on account of me. (Luke 7:22–23)

When Jesus spoke, the dead were raised, the lame walked, the blind saw. The
one through whom God created all things as the living, active Word is the
same one through whom God will redeem all things—as the incarnate Word,
who is the firstborn of the new creation and from the dead. Jesus’s words and
deeds constituted the eschatological kingdom’s presence in his first advent,
and the church is called to bear witness and participate in Christ’s kingdom
presently through the Spirit in word and deed.
While John had expected Israel’s total deliverance from the Roman oppres-
sors and complete restoration of Israel’s fortunes with Jesus’s coming, and
while oppression did not cease, profound deliverance in a variety of ways did
come to God’s people with Jesus’s inauguration of the eschatological kingdom.
The church continued to bear witness to God’s eschatological kingdom having
dawned in Jesus, as the rest of the New Testament makes clear.
We have already drawn attention to Acts 5:12–16 in this chapter. In Acts 3,
Peter heals a crippled man—who, by the way, was not a member of the church.
The man had asked for a handout, but came away with much more—his legs

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 254 Exploring Ecclesiology

and feet restored. Peter did not have any silver or gold, but he did not leave
gospel proclamation in the realm of word only. Peter proclaimed healing to
him:

Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Taking him by the right hand,
he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He
jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple,
courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. (Acts 3:6–8)

The proclamation of the gospel in word and deed led this man to give glory
to God, and those who beheld him in the temple were filled with amazement
(Acts 3:9–10).
Later, when the decision was made for Peter, James, and John to focus on
the Jews, and Paul and Barnabas on the Gentiles, those reputed to be pillars
of the church gave one stipulation: to take care of the poor, which Paul said
was the very thing he and Barnabas were eager to do (Gal. 2:9–10). Jesus’s
own brother, James, gives warning to rich oppressors (James 5:1–6) and says
that the religion that God “accepts as pure and faultless” is “to look after
orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted
by the world” (James 1:27). James places much emphasis on faith in action.
So too does John. While addressing believers’ relations with one another, he
writes, “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but
has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us
not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1€John 3:17–18).
Although John is talking specifically about Christian fellowship, the other texts
already noted reveal that such care and concern must extend to Christians’
engagement of the world at large.
Such proclamation must not end with Jesus and the first Christians. As
his body here on earth, the church must ever seek to live in light of what will
be when Jesus comes again, proclaiming the gospel in word and deed. While
we are wary of speaking of a “Social Gospel,” the gospel is social. Whether
or not we would use the phrase “liberation theology,” theology is liberating.
While the church can never be reduced to a social program that exists to
promote civil society, its inherent communitarian sociality means that it will
fight injustices waged against humanity in word and deed. It will resist the
reductionistic commodification of humans’ identity from people created in
the image of God for communion to units of productivity and production
whose sole purpose is market expansion—regardless of whether the market
be “religious” or “secular.”
The church’s own identity is an unconditional given, enacted in God’s gra-
cious disclosure, wherein God comes to us in Christ and the Spirit and unites
us to himself forever. Thus, the church’s identity is not based on the legalistic

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 The Church as a Missional Community 255

contractual arrangements dependent upon the ever-fluctuating whims of mar-

ket preference. With this in mind, as the church proclaims the gospel in word
and deed, it must remain ever mindful that its identity is not reduced to words
and deeds. The collapsing of the church’s identity to its purpose and activity
makes it difficult to guard the church from being reduced to a market or social
program. As stated in the first chapter, the church’s identity must shape its
missional purpose and activity. And so, its proclamation in word and deed is
ultimately founded in faith formed by divine love. There is no autonomy. As
with Israel, the church can do nothing apart from its participation in God’s
story in Christ through the Spirit. It must remain in the divine vine (see John
15; see also Isa. 5), by faith formed by the divine love.

By Faith Formed by Divine Love

In his first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est (“God Is Love”), Pope Bene-
dict€XVI speaks to these matters. The pope chose “to speak of the love which
God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others” because
God’s name is often wrongly “associated with vengeance or even a duty of
hatred and violence.”12 After reflecting upon “the unity of love in creation and
salvation history,” the pope turns to discuss the church’s practice of love.
The pope guards against reducing the church to a social program by
rooting the church with its practices in the Trinity. The church’s practice
of charity is itself “a manifestation of Trinitarian love.”13 Charity is not
something the church should neglect, leaving it to others, for it “is a part
of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being” through the
church’s union with the Triune God.14 While engaging in a life of charity
and concern for justice, the church’s role is not “to bring about the most
just society possible.” This is the state’s task. 15 And while the church’s
charitable ministries work alongside other organizations, the pope is care-
ful not to reduce the church’s charitable activity to “just another form of
social assistance.” The pontiff safeguards against such reduction in part by
emphasizing that the church’s love of neighbor is a “consequence deriving
from” believers’ “faith” and is “independent of parties and ideologies” or
the attempt to impose the faith on others.16
Fellow Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks of how
such love is founded in the Ultimate Love in whom believers trust, who allowed
others to impose upon him. Absolute faith is reserved only for the ultimate
deed of love revealed in and as Jesus Christ; such divine love gives rise to a
response of absolute faith.17 It follows from this that “Christian action is
therefore a being taken up into God’s action through grace, being taken up
into God’s love so that one can love with him.”18
Over against moralism and antinomianism, such love calls for a response
of love—nothing more and nothing less. As Balthasar writes, “Love desires

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 256 Exploring Ecclesiology

no recompense other than to be loved in return; and thus God desires nothing
in return for his love for us other than our love. ‘Let us not love in word or
speech, but in deed and in truth’ (1€John 3:18).”19
Whereas moralism involves the love of law, and antinomianism the love
of lawlessness, pluralism signifies the love of a nameless deity who places
no limits on competing loves (for there can be no competing loves when the
object of love is amorphous, nebulous, and objectless). In contrast, the Bible
calls on us to respond in faith and faithfulness, in deed and in truth, to the
One who is a jealous lover, who loves us absolutely through his eternal cov-
enant in Christ. Balthasar looks at Old Testament Israel as a warning to the
church when he writes:

The jealous God, who makes a gift of himself in the covenant, desires in the
first place nothing other than his partner’s zealously faithful love—for him.
Indeed, we must love absolute love and direct our love to the Lover, setting
aside all other relative and competing objects of love. To the extent that we do
not remain absolutely faithful to absolute love, these objects turn into idols.
The bridegroom and the bride in the Song of Songs have no children; they are
everything and sufficient for one another, and all their fruitfulness lies enclosed
within the circle of their mutual love.20

Later, he writes, “Unconditional priority must be accorded to the placing

of oneself entirely at the disposal of divine love.”21 All other action follows
from this prior act of responding with the whole of one’s being to God as
the absolute love.22
God is absolute love—the absolute lover, who is jealous for his people and for
their love. Our hope who is this God who loves us jealously and who pours out
his love in Christ into our hearts through the Holy Spirit does not disappoint.
He will destroy those Pharaohs and Caesars who oppress his people. He also
invites all peoples—Egyptian, Roman, Greek, barbarian, and Scythian—to
enter into his covenant community with believing Israel through Christ in the
Spirit; in faith, hope, and love, in word and in deed, in action and in truth.
This last point leads us to a discussion of the scope of salvation, which entails
such questions as the “target audience” of the church.

The All-Encompassing Scope of the Gospel Message

As stated above, God is jealous for his people, and God invites all peoples
to enter into his covenant community through Christ Jesus in the Spirit. It is
crucial for the church to proclaim the gospel in word and deed and through
faith formed by divine love to all people, for as Peter himself declares, “Salva-
tion is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by
which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12, TNIV). This is the same name to which

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 The Church as a Missional Community 257

Jesus refers when he declares, “All authority in heaven and on earth have been
given to me. Therefore go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them
to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always,
to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:19–20). And this is the same name that
God discloses to Moses at the burning bush, the name that Moses is to make
known to Israel when he declares God’s word to Pharaoh: “Let my people
go” (Exod. 3–5).
In Acts 2, we are told that God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven
heard Peter declare the good news of salvation in Jesus’s name and responded
in faith. Thousands more responded to the apostles’ message of salvation
through faith in Christ Jesus in Acts 4. The rulers’ response to the apostles’
message in Acts 4 was not unlike the reception Moses received in Pharaoh’s
court—one of complete rejection. Both Pharaoh in Exodus 5 and the rulers
of Israel in Acts 4 were troubled over the commotion Moses and the apostles
were creating among the people. In each episode, we find that the commotion
is the result of God’s messenger reaching out compassionately—to the enslaved
people of Israel in Moses’s case (Exod. 5), and to a crippled man in Peter’s
case (Acts 3; see Peter’s words in Acts 5:8–12). The deliverance of Israel and
of this man results from the proclamation of God’s message in God’s name
in word and deed.
Moses proclaimed the kingdom of the Lord in word and deed. The words,
“Let my people go,” were accompanied by deeds of judgment—from Moses’s
staff/serpent swallowing Pharaoh’s court magicians’ snakes to the outpour-
ing of plagues on Egypt. The Lord Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God as
the living word enacted in history, bringing God’s people out of bondage to
Pharaoh-Caesar—a deliverance that has begun but will not reach its fulfillment
until the consummation of all things. As “Lord” (see Rom. 10:9–13), Jesus
is the named God through whom Moses led the people out of Egypt into the
wilderness, and in view of whom Peter established the church in the Diaspora,
both moving God’s missional people toward the Promised Land.
Both Moses and Peter invited the nations to participate in this missional
journey. They even welcomed those hailing from those nations that had long
oppressed them—Egyptians and Romans alike joined them (Exod. 12:38; Acts
10:44–48). Peter’s words spoken in the centurion Cornelius’s house are apt here:
“I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts
men from every nation who fear him and do what is right” (Acts 10:34–35).
Unlike Pharaoh, who scoffed at Moses’s report that God had spoken and
would act on behalf of his oppressed people, the centurion Cornelius feared
God and came to trust in Jesus as “the one whom God appointed as judge of
the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). As a God-fearer, Cornelius rejected the
ancient and widespread doctrine of the essential namelessness of God presup-
posed by the adherents of the Roman pantheon of the gods. Pharaoh, on the

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 258 Exploring Ecclesiology

other hand, may have presupposed this doctrine in his dismissal of Moses’s
report: “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not
know the Lord and I will not let Israel go” (Exod. 5:2).23
Such a deity is useful to Pharaohs and Caesars, who would unite various
peoples under their imperial rule. As Edward Gibbon remarks, during the
time of the Caesars all forms of worship were “considered by the people
equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrates equally
useful.”24 Nameless deities are equally useful to magistrates who would
use and abuse people for extending their rule and building their empires,
as Pharaoh did in the case of Israel. A people whose deity is ultimately
nameless, and who have forgotten their history, language, and name, are
never an imposing threat to the fallen powers’ imperial rule. While Israel
had not forgotten its history, language, or name, Pharaoh was not aware
of Joseph (Exod. 1:8), and until Israel’s deliverance under Moses, neither
Pharaoh nor Israel knew of God’s name as the Lord. An oppressed people
who are convinced that their named God is the all-sovereign deity are al-
ways a threat to the fallen powers, whose own sovereignty is thereby called
into question.
Further to a previous point, a nameless god and a nameless people can be
commodified, as in the case of Caesar, who employed the pantheon to serve
his empire centered in the great Babylon and extended through her kings and
merchants throughout the world to profit from the peoples of the earth (Rev.
18). The named people of the named God, however, cannot be commodified.25
This God’s people cannot be reduced to numbers. While the 144,000—God’s
righteous remnant—can be slain, they can never be eradicated; for they bear
God’s name and await God’s deliverance and judgment. God’s righteous
remnant overcome the fallen powers by the blood of the Lamb and by the
word of their testimony, not shrinking from death, for they bear the name of
the Triune God (Rev. 3:10–12; 12:11; 14:1–5) and will reign with this named
God forever (Rev. 3:21–22).26 No wonder the church that takes its calling as
witness to this deity seriously has always been a threat to the fallen principali-
ties and powers.
While the church has often used God’s name in vain by practices of domi-
nation, exploiting “God” for its own ends, it could only use God’s name in
vain by refusing to act in light of that name as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.
The God of Israel makes himself known in Jesus of Nazareth (Heb. 1:1–3).
As John writes, “No one has ever seen God, but God the one and only who is
at the Father’s side has made him known” (John 1:18). The church that bears
witness to the Living Word and Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world will not sacrifice others for its sake but will sacrifice itself for the world’s
sake in bearing witness to its Lord.
The answer to imperialism’s rule is not pluralism’s nameless deity, no matter
how right the concern of those who have espoused this doctrine to safeguard

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 The Church as a Missional Community 259

against oppression.27 The answer to imperialism’s rule is the church’s witness

to the named deity—revealed in the center of salvation history as the crucified
and risen Jesus—through the church’s own missional and sacrificial witness
on behalf of the world.
While we are not certain of his Christology, Martin Luther King Jr.’s practice
resonates profoundly with a truly orthodox conception of the co-missional
God’s acts throughout salvation’s history. Steeped in the biblical narrative,
King functioned as a modern-day Moses with his missional campaign to
protest the fallen principalities and powers’ oppression of his people: “Let
my people go.” In view of Jesus’s love ethic and Gandhi’s method of civil
disobedience, King writes,

We will match your capacity [that of Whites] to inflict suffering with our capacity
to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force€.€.€. Do to us
what you will and we will love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children;
send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities and drag us
out on some wayside road, beating us and leaving us half-dead, and we will still
love you. But we will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer.28

King drew strength from the biblical narrative, from the outpouring of God’s
Spirit of love, from his community’s own resolve, and from his hope that God
will someday fully redeem his people, leading them into the Promised Land.
We no longer live under Jim Crow laws of segregation, where God’s
authentic witnessing church suffers physical abuse. But we do live under
commodity-oriented consumer-based segregation and all the suffering this
commodity-oriented consumer culture creates, with people’s identities re-
duced to their tastes and talents/abilities, and how much they are able to
purchase and consume. The commodity-oriented consumer culture drives
much of the church growth movement today, and leads to the separation
of ethnicities and economic classes in churches because of these churches’
predominant focus on taste, abilities/talents, and individualistic preference.
The church that caters to the commodity-oriented consumer culture also
reduces people’s identities to their drives and choices, purposes and activi-
ties, whereby they become mere tasters with gifts, enslaved and used for the
advance of free-market religion and ecclesial empires.
The God of the gospel of Jesus Christ engages all people as people, not
as slaves to an empire’s expansion, whether that empire is a state or market
or church. The God of the gospel of Jesus Christ engages the whole per-
son, not reducing people’s identities to their purposes, activities, tastes, and
abilities. That is one reason why we speak first and foremost of the church as
being-driven. When we replace people’s names with numbers and reduce their
identities to purposes, activities, tastes, and abilities, we tend only to target
our outreach based in tastes and abilities to those whose tastes and abilities

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 260 Exploring Ecclesiology

give our churches the most bang for their buck (namely, the most tasteful and
able—the “preferred target audience”), thereby separating people along race
and class lines.
Evangelical Civil Rights and Community Development leader John M.
Perkins challenges the commodity-oriented, consumer culture and all that it
entails for communities in disrepair noted earlier in this chapter. His robust
Christology and missional reading of the Bible provide him with the theological
resources to promote a biblically based model of community development—
over against commodity development—of relocation (living with people who
are different from us—those of different races and classes), reconciliation
(being made right with God and these other people), and redistribution (shar-
ing talents, skills, resources, and lives with these same people who, like us, are
created in the irreducibly interpersonal image of the named God) centered in
the church. The God revealed in Jesus and worshipped in the church makes
possible authentic community development and restoration of communities
of dysfunction—making rich and poor, black and white, male and female
function as the one communal people (not individually packaged products)
they are called to be as bearers of the same family name—that of the God
revealed in Jesus Christ.
The God revealed in Jesus Christ is the necessary condition for the possibil-
ity of human existence as communal—where we are irreducibly personal and
interpersonal, not commodified and segregated. The church must proclaim
this named deity, not setting forth disclaimers that the Trinity is the greatest
mystery of the Christian faith and so we should leave this doctrine alone. A
church that leaves this God alone not only fails to see that the Triune God is
revealed mystery, but also unwittingly replaces this God with an unnamed deity,
functionally or explicitly. The explicit replacement comes from the religious
pluralist, who says that God is beyond naming. The functional replacement
comes from the evangelical pragmatist, who says (explicitly or implicitly)
that reflection on the Triune God—the God whose name is Father, Son, and
Spirit—is irrelevant for Christian practice.
Espousing a nameless deity—explicitly or functionally—opens the door to
the commodification of religion and the commodification of human identity.
The choice (activity) of the customer is sovereign and free, whatever it might
be. The church made up of a community of tasters and consumers, picking
and choosing the deity it demands, and falling prey to the demands placed
on it by the consumer culture and free-market economic empire of which it
is a part, becomes a shopping mall of base consumption. This evolution of
the church entails the commodification of human and ecclesial identity and
the eroding of the biblical ideal of a community of profound communion
centered in the self-sacrificing authority of Jesus Christ.29
Jeff Sharlet’s 2005 Harper’s Magazine article exposes this problem. Sharlet
interviewed the former head of the National Association of Evangelicals and

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 The Church as a Missional Community 261

former senior pastor at New Life Community Church, Ted Haggard. In what
follows, it is by no means our intent to ridicule Rev. Haggard, who during
his tenure as president of the NAE supported several key initiatives such as
promoting environmental stewardship among evangelicals as well as religious
and cultural tolerance in America among those from across the ideological
spectrum. However, it should be noted that Haggard did not need to leave
either position based on his views of free-market spirituality, but because of
marital infidelity. The NAE or Haggard’s church did not see a problem with
the former; our point is a criticism ultimately of evangelicalism as a whole,
for Haggard simply articulated in an explicit and straightforward manner
the heart of the dominant evangelical church’s missional or not-so-missional
paradigm.
According to Sharlet’s Haggard,

“Free-market globalization” has made us so free, he realized, that an American

cell-group system could be mature enough to function just like a market. One
of Pastor Ted’s favorite books is Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Love
Tree, which is now required reading for the hundreds of pastors under Ted’s
spiritual authority across the country. From Friedman, Pastor Ted says he learned
that everything, including spirituality, can be understood as a commodity. And
unregulated trade, he concluded, was the key to achieving worldly freedom.30

Christian leaders must “‘harness the forces of free-market capitalism in our

ministry.’ Once a pastor does that, his flock can start organizing itself accord-
ing to each member’s abilities and tastes.”31 After quoting Haggard as saying
that “evangelical” stands for being pro-free market and pro-private property,
Sharlet quotes from and discusses Haggard’s book Dog Training, Fly Fishing,
& Sharing Christ in the 21st Century, where Haggard reflects on the kind of
church he believes “good Christians” desire:

“I want my finances in order, my kids trained, and my wife to love life. I want
good friends who are a delight and who provide protection for my family and
me should life become difficult someday€.€.€. I don’t want surprises, scandals,
or secrets€.€.€. I want stability and, at the same time, steady, forward move-
ment. I want the church to help me live life well, not exhaust me with endless
‘worthwhile projects.’” By “worthwhile projects” Ted means building funds
and soup kitchens alike. It’s not that he opposes these; it’s just that he is sick
of hearing about them and believes that other Christians are, too. He knows
that for Christianity to prosper in the free market, it needs more than “moral
values”—it needs customer value.32

One can only hope that the reason Sharlet’s Haggard does not speak about
soup kitchens is because he thinks (albeit mistakenly) that the free market
enterprise left to itself will inevitably do away with poverty.

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 262 Exploring Ecclesiology

Christianity Today’s Tim Stafford quotes Haggard as saying, “Free markets

have done more to help poor people than any benevolent organization ever
has.” It appears that for the former head of the NAE, the best way to fulfill
the biblical mandate to care for the poor is to promote the free-market society.
While acknowledging that Jesus never mentioned free markets, but instead
told the rich young ruler to sell all and give to the poor, Haggard responds in
Christianity Today by saying, “Jesus was in the 1st century .€.€. and we’re in
the 21st century.”33
Soup kitchens or not, the free-market enterprise that Haggard espouses can
enslave people and keep us from reaching out and freeing those long oppressed.
In contrast, John Perkins is a capitalist of a higher order, who, while going
beyond soup kitchens, also goes beyond the not-so-free market by promoting
economic development that strategically elevates the poor out of poverty. His
three principles of relocation, reconciliation, and redistribution mentioned
earlier are intended to help the poor and dispossessed take ownership of their
communities. True freedom requires equal footing. Freedom as in autonomy
leads to abuses and the sole survival of the economic fittest. A laissez-faire
approach to the market is both lazy and unfair. In opposition to the advocate
of the autonomous market, Perkins seeks to change the underlying structures
that enslave people to welfare in the U.S. and to ensure that the capitalistic
venture proceeds on level ground.34
Over against Haggard’s view and in keeping with Perkins’s model, God frees
the church to embrace an economic order that runs counter to the dominant
culture’s economic enterprise. As Lois Barrett points out, “The alternative
economics of the church has .€.€. spread beyond its members to various pro-
grams of helping the poor, establishing hospitals and mental health institu-
tions, building homes, and sharing food. The church is called to an alternative
economics that puts needs ahead of wants.”35
The church that is united to the Triune God must not commodify human
identity or espouse free market spirituality (with its instrumentalist reduction of
people to their abilities and tastes) and all that it entails for economics gener-
ally; for the church belongs to the alternative economic order of the kingdom,
which is founded in the interpersonal and communal identity, purpose, and
activity of the Triune God, who although he was rich, became poor so that
we might become the riches of God (2€Cor. 8:9). The church is its reconciling
and redistributing members, which follows from the fact that its own being
is contingent upon and reflects the interpersonal, communal being of the
outwardly oriented and downwardly mobile God.36
Churches should focus on living in keeping with their being as the com-
munion of persons newly created in the image of the outwardly oriented and
downwardly mobile Triune God, united with God and one another through
Christ in the Spirit. Here one values relational identity descriptions and eco-
nomic practices that flow from communion with the Triune God and God’s

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 The Church as a Missional Community 263

people and guards against reducing individual churches and individual mem-
bers’ significance to what they can produce and consume.
Further to the preceding points, the former head of the NAE should have
rethought commodification of spirituality, given his participation in the Judeo-
Christian tradition and role in championing the plight of the human unborn.
Regarding the former item, Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew
Congregations of the British Commonwealth, says that

the fatal conceit for Judaism is to believe that the market governs the totality of
our lives, when it in fact governs only a limited part of it, that which concerns
the goods we think of as being subject to production and exchange. There are
things fundamental to being human that we do not produce; instead we receive
from those who came before us and from God Himself. And there are things
that we may not exchange, however high the price.37

Regarding the latter item, Kendall Soulen claims,

The market, of course, promises to make the consumer king, and encourages
us to think that we are in charge. But the market charges a high price in return,
namely, the increasing commodification of human life itself. To take just one
example, as genetic knowledge becomes more complete and available to con-
sumers through law, prospective parents will be subject to pressure to screen
their pregnancies in order to screen out inefficiencies such as mental retardation,
genetic disorder, etc.38

While authentic witness to the Triune God will arise from outside the walls of
the church, such as through Rabbi Sacks of the British Commonwealth and the
Hindu revolutionary Gandhi in India, or through our Unitarian Universalist
activist friends in the States, whose concern for the dispossessed often puts
orthodox Christians such as ourselves to shame,39 the church of the Triune
God bears direct witness to this God through its close proximity to scripture
and the sacraments. Outside the Trinity, there is no salvation, no redemption,
not even for the church. Outside the church of the Triune God, there is no
salvation.40
Having said this, the missional church is neither stationary nor exclusion-
ary. It is called to be a community on the move, attacking the gates of hell,
releasing captives, and giving of itself for the sake of the least of these for the
greatest of all—Jesus. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned taking his
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (which stood as a visible witness against the
fallen principalities and powers41) with him on his civil rights campaigns,42 the
church is a community of people called to relocate, reconcile, and redistribute
its wealth on behalf of all people—inside and outside the church, especially
the downtrodden—for Jesus’s sake. The church that relocates, reconciles, and
redistributes wealth in this way moves out as a missional witness to the com-

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 264 Exploring Ecclesiology

munal and co-missional God, who wages war against the whore of Babylon
and the merchants with whom she committed adultery, and against Pharaoh
and Caesar, who impose their nameless deity and imperial rule on peoples for
their own economic gain. This missional church prefigures the day when the
city of the New Jerusalem—Christ’s holy bride—will be a place where

the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splen-
dor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.
The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will
ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only
those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. (Rev. 21:24–27)

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. What kind of dialogue should the church establish with non-Christian

faith traditions?
2. What is the relation of the gospel to social justice?
3. What does it mean for the church to be missional today?
4. How can consumerism affect negatively the church’s missional
orientation?

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 16

From Building Programs

to Building God’s Missional Kingdom

Jesus Loves All the Little Children—but Do We?

We grew up singing, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the
world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus
loves the little children of the world.” Jesus does love all the children of the
world. But do we love all the children who live near us? Evangelical Christians
have rightly emphasized sending missionaries to foreign fields. But all too often
we evangelical followers of Jesus do not exist missionally among those who
appear foreign to us in the cities, suburbs, and towns where we live.
One of our students serving on staff at a church in the Portland area de-
scribed that church’s outreach strategy in the surrounding community. Soon
after she had joined the church staff, she was told that the decision had been
made to bypass reaching out to a lower-income apartment complex and to
“target” a well-to-do subdivision (which was probably very homogeneous,
given that race and class tend to track one another in the United States).1 The
rationale was that the church would get more “bang for the buck” from well-
to-do converts and transfer members, and that this move would help them
with their facilities and building program. The student was appalled, to which
another staff member replied, “I’m sorry we told you.”
In fact, we do not only the poor but also the rich a disservice when we go
this route. In our affluenza-stricken culture, one of the best ways to reach the

265

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 266 Exploring Ecclesiology

rich is through ministry among the poor and with the poor. Even people disil-
lusioned by Christianity marveled at Mother Teresa and were fascinated in
hearing what she had to say about Jesus. Her life of service among “the least
of these” created the space for her views to be heard even among the great-
est. And no doubt, we have all heard the testimonies of American Christians
returning from short-term mission projects in Mexico. Mexican believers
who were so rich in Christ yet so poor by the world’s standards profoundly
impacted them.

Taking Aim at Common Church Growth Strategies: “Target” Practice

Our missions programs must bear witness to the missional God at work
in the world. So too must our building programs and strategic plans for
missions outreach in the community. God is always reaching out. While
Jesus died for the whole world, and there are many rich people who love
God and give sacrificially to his kingdom work, the Bible tells us that God
has determined to fill his kingdom with the weak and foolish, the poor and
despised (1€Cor. 1:18–31; James 2:5). In fact, the rich are often the hardest
to reach; their riches can keep them from being rich toward God, as in the
case of the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18–30). If this is so, why do we put
an inordinate amount of resources into targeting people in more well-to-
do communities? 2 Many of America’s most highly publicized churches are
located in affluent suburbs.
One youth minister serving in an affluent Seattle suburb said that it is easy
to reach inner-city youth for Christ, because they sense their great need. He
added that it is a far greater challenge to reach out to wealthy youth in the sub-
urbs, because they believe all their needs are already met. So his church pours
money into fun programs designed to reach these wealthy (and sometimes
jaded) youth in order to try and convince them otherwise. In our estimation,
his church would be much better off if the leaders were to take much of that
money and put it toward ultimate adventure weekends for these youth—service
projects among the homeless, the poor, and the sick. Such encounters help all
of us come face-to-face with our own spiritual wandering, poverty of soul,
and sickness unto death—leading us to new and renewed life in Christ.
Once, when one of us was exhorting a group of Christian youth workers to
reach out to the poor, one of them responded, “But God loves the rich too.”
Who would question this point? If evangelical outreach is any indication, it
is obvious that God loves the rich. Apart from notable exceptions like Shane
Claiborne, it is less obvious that God loves the poor.3 So often, we target the
rich because we want to climb the social ladder and be successful. But God
gives special attention to the poor.4 James rebukes his readers for targeting
the rich, saying, “Listen, my dear brothers: has not God chosen those who are

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 From Building Programs to Building God’s Missional Kingdom 267

poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he
promised those who love him?” (James 2:5).
This does not preach well in a culture driven by consumerism and the ac-
cumulation of stuff. People are encouraged to seek to get whatever they want
when they want it at the least cost to themselves, and to climb the social ladder.
And so, they associate with those who will help them advance and succeed in
acquiring a greater share of the good life. Those who are spiritually inclined
bring this mind-set into the religious realm. We want relational security, won-
derful families, and good jobs. How would dealing with race and class issues
help us put in place the programs that will help us get what we want? And if
we want to build churches fast, we are tempted to focus all of our energies on
engaging high achievers, who will reach out to their high-achieving friends. To
reach them, though, we figure that it will likely mean downplaying downward
mobility and heterogeneity.
We all face this struggle, no matter where we are on the social ladder.
The poor do not want to be poor. Who would? Even the poor are tempted
to disengage from those around them in order to succeed in life, and the
prosperity gospel only encourages them along these lines. John Perkins puts
it this way:

The prosperity movement is heavily accepted among the poor but has done very
little in terms of real community development at the grass roots level. It takes
people’s attention away from the real problem, and if those people succeed it
encourages them to remove themselves from the very people they ought to be
identifying with and working among.5

The prosperity gospel teaches that the children of the world whose families
succeed financially are precious in God’s sight. It teaches that these golden
and greenback children bear the mark of God’s favor, not those who are poor
in spirit, or who identify with the poor.
Now what does the biblical gospel say about the favor of the Lord? Does
not the favor of the Lord rest upon those who lovingly identify with and work
among the downtrodden? For as scripture says,

If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and mali-
cious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the
needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night
will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy
your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be
like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people
will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you
will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
(Isa. 58:9b–12)

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 268 Exploring Ecclesiology

Talk about a truly significant church building program—building ancient

ruins and raising up age-old foundations!
Certainly, God wants the church to minister to people to help them build
meaningful relationships with their neighbors and cultivate wholesome families.
For God’s greatest commands are to love God with all one’s heart and one’s
neighbor as oneself (Mark 12:30–31), and the command to honor one’s parents
is the first command that comes with a blessing (Eph. 6:1–3). But God redefines
neighbor to include our enemies, the downtrodden, and those who fall outside
our affinity groups, as evidenced in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke
10:25–37). And while Jesus certainly cared for his mother, he also said that his
true mother and family members were those who obeyed God’s word (Luke
8:19–21). Lastly, scripture never demeans hard work. But the goal of such work
should never be the sheer accumulation of wealth; it should be the right use of
wealth, good stewardship, and redistribution of resources (Luke 12: 13–34). We
must reshape our relational, familial, and vocational values in light of Christ’s
countercultural and upside-down kingdom values. Christ himself became poor
so that we could become rich toward God. As Paul declares, “For you know the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he be-
came poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2€Cor. 8:9).
Now what about those who say that the poor, blacks, and women are better
off reaching their groups than the rest of us are? Isn’t it better if we just sup-
port such niche groups and let them reach their own kind? To the contrary, in
light of scripture, it is in the best interest of our nuclear as well as our church
families that we reshape our family values to reflect Christ’s kingdom values
and reach out missionally to those outside our own subcultures.
This brings to mind a Christian lawyer friend of ours who moved his family
out of the suburbs into the inner city. He and his wife have a grown son and a
couple of teenage daughters. Friends of theirs asked them how they could do
this to their daughters—moving them into the godforsaken inner city. Our friend
said that their son—now a successful businessman—is the one who has lost
out. Their son has not been the beneficiary of the social exposure and kingdom
perspective that their daughters have been. While we do not live in the inner city,
we think it important that our children become vitally connected to those who
live outside our affinity group structure. Our children need such exposure for
kingdom living in the twenty-first century. For us to move forward along these
lines, we need to redefine success and reframe mission so that we will begin
living out a more profound dream and uncommon kingdom vision.

Redefining Success and Reframing Mission: Living Out the Dream

We need to redefine success. We can so inoculate our children against the

world that they lose all kingdom perspective and become irrelevant to God.

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 From Building Programs to Building God’s Missional Kingdom 269

We must look beyond the prosperity gospel and its definition of success to
the good news of God. The prosperity gospel in whatever form encourages
us to associate with those who will help us climb the social ladder. The gospel
of the kingdom, on the other hand, encourages us to journey with Jesus by
becoming outwardly and downwardly mobile and reaching out to those who
look, act, think, and smell different from us.
Jesus builds his kingdom community by breaking down affinity group divi-
sions between people groups (Gal. 3:28), including racial, class, and gender
divisions. Living for Jesus means that we are to die to our sins, not cater to our
fleshly desires. Consumerism keeps us in bondage to our fleshly desires. Just
when we think it is time to die to our selfish desires, the consumer gospel tells
us that we should get whatever we want, and as much of it as possible. After
all, God placed us in America, and so we are to chase the American dream.
Consumerism teaches us to want things we would not otherwise want, kind
of like the story of humanity’s fall in the Garden (Gen. 3). The creation stories
(Gen. 1 and 2) tell us that Adam and Eve were doing just fine, content in God’s
ordering of their lives. But then the serpent came and planted a thought and
a desire in their minds and souls: “Your lives lack meaning because you’re so
naïve. You will only be fulfilled by becoming wise in the ways of the world.
It’s quick and easy, and can be accomplished in just two easy steps: first, pick
the fruit; second, eat it. It will change your lives!”
Not only does the consumerist ideology trick us into thinking we need
things we do not need, but also it inspires the fear of scarcity within us. The
two are connected. While we do not need more than what we need, and should
shape our desires to reflect our needs, fear creeps in and tells us that there is
not enough to go around for today, or for tomorrow. While the people of Israel
were told to take only the amount of manna they would need for the day (ex-
cept for the Sabbath preparations on the sixth day, when they were instructed
to take double), many of them sought to hoard as much as they could for the
future. All the excess manna rotted (see Exod. 16:14–30).
We find the same problem with the rich fool. He built more barns to hoard
away the wealth he had made rather than become rich toward God and share
his possessions with the poor. As a result, he rotted. In contrast to the rich
fool, Jesus exhorts his followers to be faithful servants who give to the poor
because God has given them the kingdom. We can give because God has given
to us (see Luke 12:13–34). Are our churches storehouses for the poor or for
the rich? Are we storing up wealth to give away to others, especially the poor,
or to keep things to ourselves and “our kind of people”?
So, what would our churches look like if they were to become more mis-
sional? They would use their building complexes to serve the complex needs
of their surrounding communities. Such services might include housing
medical clinics and using their church fellowship halls for nomadic homeless
shelters.

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 270 Exploring Ecclesiology

A friend of ours who runs a nomadic homeless shelter in partnership with

local churches in Solano County, California (Mission Solano), has recently
been building a multimillion-dollar complex with the help of churches, the
city, and local businesses. Many partnering churches, afraid that the new facil-
ity might mean they were no longer needed to provide shelter, requested that
they still be allowed to house homeless people in their church facilities. They
did not want to miss out on the blessing of receiving for giving.
For those churches without buildings or those in need of acquiring more
space, they may consider entering into long-term rental agreements with public
schools for use of their facilities for Sunday worship so as to put much-needed
resources into the school systems. They may also wish to purchase or lease
buildings for church office spaces and the like in diverse areas of their towns,
so as to increase their visible presence in the communities at large. Imago
Dei Community in Portland models this approach. Churches must be very
intentional about blessing the surrounding communities, asking themselves
if these surrounding communities would miss them if they were to close their
doors and leave town.
Missional outreach might also include (for example) paying the expenses
of some Mexican pastors and some of their people to come and assist them
on short-term mission projects to reach out more effectively to the increasing
numbers of Hispanic families in their own communities. To do so, they will
need to see that missions outreach goes both ways, and that we all need one
another as members of the body of Christ. Thus, the American church must
see that it needs to be on the receiving as well as the sending end.
Missional outreach requires great intentionality, patience, and modeling. “In-
tentionality” suggests that the church in question at the beginning of this chapter
reach out to the lower-income apartment complex as well as to the well-to-do
subdivision. “Patience” suggests that it requires significant time and instruction
to help people see that such expansive outreach is biblical and resonates with
God’s heart and kingdom perspective. “Modeling” suggests that leaders live it out
themselves in their people’s midst. Just as we need to model such intentionality,
patience, and exemplary lives, we need models who will encourage us.
We find great intentionality, patience, and modeling in the life of the
apostle Paul. Paul reached out to Jews and Gentiles and rich and poor, and
was very intentional about making sure these various groups all worshipped
and had table fellowship together. Such outreach and church growth initia-
tives were by no means easy. The letter to the Romans and first epistle to the
Corinthians indicate as much. In Rome, the Jewish believers looked down
on the Gentile Christians (Rom. 2), and the Gentile Christians looked down
on Jews (Rom. 11:13–24). In Corinth, the rich did not share their abundance
with the poor at the agape feast (1€Cor. 11:17–34). Paul was patient with
these various groups, even while urging them on to maturity—no doubt
because of God’s long-suffering love of Paul, who prior to his conversion

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 From Building Programs to Building God’s Missional Kingdom 271

had despised the poor and powerless Christ, and prized Jewish people over
the Gentiles. Paul also modeled God’s kingdom perspective when he rebuked
Peter for succumbing to Judaizing peer pressure by refusing to have table
fellowship with Gentile Christians in Antioch (Gal. 2:11–14). The same
modeling is evident in Paul’s refusal to have Titus circumcised, and in his
defense of Gentile Christians’ equality in Acts 15. Both moves could have
jeopardized Paul’s standing in the apostolic community. The same possible
fate may be in store for us.
The fate of the late Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was certainly tragic,
yet heroic. He was martyred for his courageous solidarity with the poor in-
digenous people, who suffered numerous injustices at the hands of the ruling
class. Romero’s solidarity carried over into his administration of baptism and
Holy Communion. The movie Romero documents how he refused to provide a
separate baptismal service for the baby of one of his wealthy friends of Span-
ish descent. She did not want her baby baptized with Indian babies. Romero’s
refusal angered her, and she told him that he had abandoned his own people.
William Cavanaugh tells of how on another occasion Romero brought the rich
and poor together to celebrate the mass. Although the wealthy were infuriated,
Romero drew courage and comfort from the theo-political significance of the
Lord’s Supper and resolved “to collapse the spatial barriers separating the rich
and the poor.” Many North American evangelicals lack such resolve, for they
think the rich and poor are united as members of the universal church, and so
do not have to worship together. They fail to understand that they are called
to bear witness here and now to this eschatological reality. Romero did not
bring the rich and poor together “by surveying the expanse of the Church and
declaring it universal and united, but by gathering the faithful in one particular
location around the altar, and realizing the heavenly Catholica in one place,
at one moment, on earth.”6
For all our talk of being practical, we leave church unity in the realm of
generalities and abstractions when we refuse to bring Christians from diverse
backgrounds together in worship. The words of Martin Luther King Jr. ring
true today—Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m. is still the most segregated hour
in America.

There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church.
You have a white church and you have a Negro church. You have allowed segre-
gation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in
the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at
eleven o’clock on Sunday morning to sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”
and “Dear Lord and Father of All Mankind,” you stand in the most segregated
hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the
entertaining world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian
church. How appalling that is.7

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 272 Exploring Ecclesiology

Such appalling generalities and abstractions suggest to the world that there is
more reconciling power in the world than in the church. Such a specter impacts
negatively our claim that the good news of Jesus Christ is life-transforming,
and makes it look as if the wine of the Lord’s Supper is nothing more than
an opiate of the masses.
Many North American Christians fail to understand that we are called to
bear witness here and now in particular places at particular times to Christ’s
eschatological kingdom’s realization of equality and inclusiveness in our wor-
ship, including our baptismal practice and celebration of the Lord’s Table. We
also fail to recognize that Romero and King’s strategic confrontation of segre-
gation broke down the cultural barriers that keep many people from entering
into the church. The church in El Salvador grew as the masses flocked to hear
Romero and like-minded priests speak. Even to this day, King is America’s
most-recognized preacher. His sermons and service to the black masses in-
spire scores of diverse peoples to this day. Like our Lord before them, Romero
and King proclaimed in word and deed the year of Jubilee. While many were
incensed by their message and lives, the multitudes revered them (see Luke
4:14–44).
Pastors like Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church—one of
the most well-known proponents of targeting “niche communities” to grow
the church—are beginning to get this message. There is hope. Just attend to
Hybels’s words:

Willow Creek started in the era when .€.€. the church growth people were saying,
“Don’t dissipate any of your energies fighting race issues. Focus everything on
evangelism.” It was the homogeneous unit principle of church growth. And I
remember as a young pastor thinking, “That’s true.” I didn’t know whether I
wanted to chance alienating people who were seekers, whose eternity was on
the line, and who might only come to church one time. I wanted to take away
as many obstacles as possible, other than the Cross, to help people focus on
the gospel.
So now, 30 years later, .€.€. I recognize that a true biblical functioning com-
munity must include being multi-ethnic. My heart beats so fast for that vision
today. I marvel at how naïve and pragmatic I was 30 years ago.8

Like Hybels, we have a dream that one day Jesus’s church will not only love
all the children of the world, but also love all the children who live near us. We
have a dream that one day little children will not be judged by their parents’
skin color or bank accounts, but by the fact that Jesus loves them. We have a
dream that one day in our community little red and yellow boys and girls will
join hands with little black and white boys and girls, and those children from
gated communities with those from trailer parks, as brothers and sisters to
sing, “Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

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 From Building Programs to Building God’s Missional Kingdom 273

Prepare the way for the Lord’s visitation in the consumer wasteland by
reaching out to all people with the gospel. Make straight the highway for our
God. The Lord will raise every valley and lay low every mountain and hill.
The Lord will level the rough ground and rugged places so that the church
will no longer put obstacles before the people, keeping many of them out
with their targeting practices. On that day, the glory of the Lord will be re-
vealed, and all humankind will see it together. May the coming kingdom of
the nonhomogeneous and downwardly mobile God inspire us to hew out of
those towering building programs of despair cornerstones of living hope to
bear witness to God’s triune name.

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. What are the upsides and downsides of building churches based on

“target” audiences?
2. How do trinitarian and eschatological images impact the way we think
of diversity in the church today?
3. How can middle-class churches reach out to the poor in a way that
draws them into the church community as equals?
4. What would you make of the following statement? “The best way to
reach the rich is to help the rich be reached by the poor.”

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Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 274 3/9/09 8:05:49 AM
 A Postmodern Postscript

Postmodernity has heightened our awareness of the cultural forces that shape
us. Theologians writing about the church must demonstrate a heightened
awareness of those cultural forces that shape the church in the postmodern
age. Moreover, it is important for theologians writing about the church to
speak of specific ways in which the gospel of the Triune God’s eschatological
kingdom must shape the church if the church is to serve as an authentic wit-
ness to the gospel in the postmodern era.1 These are two reasons that we have
included cultural reflection chapters in this book. In what follows, there are
specifically three themes we wish to highlight on how to envision ecclesiol-
ogy culturally in the current cultural milieu. These themes are particularity,
purity, and peace, and they bear directly on the well-being of the church and
ecclesiology in a postmodern era.

Particularity

Each church and each ecclesiology reflects a distinctive culture or cultures.

This point is often lost on the fundamentalist-evangelical church. Dating back
to the “Scopes Monkey trial,” the fundamentalist-evangelical movement has
commonly seen itself as existing outside culture, given that it was forced out
of the public square. Regardless of its relationship to the prevailing culture
around it, a given church is itself a cultural community with its own language,
spoken or unspoken rules of conduct, expectations, and the like.
While it is possible to discern authentic and inauthentic expressions of the
gospel and church in a given culture, it is impossible to separate the gospel and
the church from culture. What Lesslie Newbigin says about the gospel bears
directly on our understanding of the church, especially since the church is the
“hermeneutic” of the gospel.2 As Newbigin sees it, “The idea that one can or

275

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 276 A Postmodern Postscript

could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel
unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion.”3 Newbigin is surely
correct in his assertions, given the inseparable relation of Christ’s deity to his
concrete humanity, and Christ to the church. Just as it is impossible to separate
Christ’s deity and humanity—he is forevermore Jesus of Nazareth—so too
it is impossible to separate Christ from the church, for the church is his body
and bride. What is true for Christ must be true for his church as well.
Both church culture and the culture surrounding it always take particular
form. As stated in chapter 13, the intersection and concrete engagement of
Christ’s church as a culture (which itself varies in diverse locations and over
time) with other cultures involves the claim that the church as a culture in its
engagement with other cultures is to be multifaceted and dynamic, in no way
static, always particular, never abstract, ever contemporary, never remote. Thus,
the culture of the church in Portland, Oregon, will be different from that of the
church in Portland, Maine. So too the respective Baptist and Lutheran church
cultures in the inner city of Chicago will be distinctively different from their
Baptist and Lutheran church counterparts in rural Illinois. The same holds true
for ecclesiology. Theology must always bear witness to the gospel’s universal
truth claims in particular cultural forms, including analysis of ecclesiology.
There is no such thing as an abstract culture, just as there is no such thing as
an abstract Christ, an abstract church, or an abstract proclamation of Christ’s
Word. Christ himself took cultural form in a particular place and time. John
writes: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John
1:14). Paul exclaims: “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent
forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law” (Gal. 4:4, nkjv). Just as
Jesus becomes human in a particular place and time, so Christ’s body as the
church always takes particular form in concrete cultural contexts through the
particularizing work of God’s Spirit. The whole church is present in particu-
lar cultural locales, such as Corinth (1€Cor. 1:2). Christ, in the power of the
Spirit, uniquely addresses each of the seven distinctive churches designated in
Revelation 2 and 3 according to their cities.
The question, then, is not whether a given church or ecclesiology is encultur-
ated, but what that particular church’s culture is. Fears arise at this point for
many conservatives: they may see us as coming dangerously close to reducing
the gospel and the church to a predicate of a given culture, taking away from
the gospel’s and the church’s universal claims. Such concerns, while understand-
able, are premature and unbalanced. Such concerns are premature in that we
are adamant in maintaining that the eternal Word becomes creaturely flesh;
as enculturated, the Word remains transcendent. Such concerns are unbal-
anced in that we must also maintain that while transcendent, the eternal Word
always remains enculturated; there is no such thing as a bodiless and culture-
less Jesus. Along these lines, belief that the true gospel is unenculturated is
dangerous, in that it betrays blindness to one’s own cultural reception of the

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 A Postmodern Postscript 277

gospel and, following from this, to the possible suppression and eradication
of other (legitimate) gospel enculturations.
Concern for bearing authentic witness to the gospel involves giving careful
consideration to legitimate and illegitimate gospel enculturations. While we
do not share the rejection of an overarching biblical metanarrative, as some
postmoderns contend, we do reject the Western and modern monopoly on the
reading of that biblical metanarrative. 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.
With this in mind, there is a need for hermeneutical suspicion and humil-
ity. One way in which the church in the West can practice such hermeneutical
humility is to listen attentively to non-Western church traditions, so as to
learn of the gospel anew. Newbigin exhorts the Western church to become
sensitive to its own particular tendencies in the direction of syncretism and
to listen more attentively to the gospel proclamation as presented through
non-Western world categories. By listening and learning from these other
presentations of the gospel, the Western church will become more aware of
its own gospel enculturation and perceive more keenly how to proclaim the
gospel to its own audience. The Western church will also realize that the
gospel, while enculturated in Western forms, is not limited to those forms,
but transcends them.4
The non-Western church could certainly assist the Western church in several
areas. We will mention only two here. The first concerns individualism, and
the second concerns consumerism. We have discussed each of these problems
in the course of this volume. Let us begin with individualism. In chapter 2,
we mentioned how one of us learned a great deal about community life from
a church made up of Middle Eastern Christians living in the States. Whereas
in the West, we often define human identity in terms of what we as individu-
als do and accomplish, those in the non-Western world often define human
identity in terms of who we are in relation to others in our immediate or
extended communities. The latter orientation—communal identity—must
come to serve as the foundation for how we as Christians and churches and
theologians grade our purposes, activities, and accomplishments. The making
of money, building of churches, and writing of books should serve people,
not the other way around. We must guard against leveraging the church and
spirituality as religious means to serve our own advancement as church lead-
ers, religious scholars, and tent-making Christians.
This brings us to materialism and consumerism. Those who view human
identity in terms of production often tend to reduce human worth to what
we have accumulated as individuals. No doubt, this is one reason why we in
the West consume more than those from the non-Western and developing
world. In consumerist America, he who dies with the most toys wins, or, put

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 278 A Postmodern Postscript

differently, those who consume the most are more valuable than the rest. One
of our friends—a Native American Christian leader—once said that while he
often faces the syncretistic charge for use of native drums in worship, Anglo
Christians have no trouble receiving the money in the offering plate from
those corporate executives who have made their money through greed (at
times, we would add, at the expense of indigenous peoples around the world).
Our compartmentalized view of spirituality in the West makes it possible for
Sunday Christians to exist—even to the point that we can take dirty money
acquired during the week and launder it in time to put it in the offering plate
on Sunday to legitimate illegal trade. No wonder Native Americans could never
quite understand the white man’s god’s greed—why this god lusted so for the
gold, trees, and fur, raping the land to fulfill his desires under the doctrine
of Manifest Destiny (noted in chapter 13). Having raped the land from shore
to shore, this god has turned his attention to other lands’ shores—and their
mountains and forests too.
The affluent Western church can learn a thing or two from the church in
the developing world, which has not yet fallen prey to the Western god and its
materialistic disease—affluenza. How often have we heard the testimonies of
short-term missionaries returning from foreign fields, and about how churches
in impoverished nations are often much better off spiritually than we are in
the West? It is only by engaging adequately the particular enculturation of
the gospel and church within one’s own cultural forms and the forms of other
cultures that one is able to safeguard against cultural and ecclesial imperial-
ism and its bearing on wealth, among other things. The truly international
gospel and ecumenical church are those that take account of the incarnation
and particular presence of the Word in the plethora or plurality of cultures
through the Spirit, not seeking after an amorphous gospel and church.
Kanzo Uchimura, a leading Japanese Christian scholar of Japan’s Meiji era
(1868–1912), takes aim at those in the West who contend for an amorphous
Christianity:

A Japanese by becoming a Christian does not cease to be a Japanese. On the

contrary, he becomes more Japanese by becoming a Christian. A Japanese who
becomes an American or an Englishman, or an amorphous universal man, is
neither a true Japanese nor a true Christian.5

Uchimura goes on to speak of Paul, Luther, and Knox as those who “were
not characterless universal men, but distinctly national, therefore distinctly
human, and distinctly Christian.”6 He adds that those Japanese who convert
to Christianity as “‘universal Christians’ may turn out to be no more than
denationalized Japanese, whose universality is no more than Americanism or
Anglicanism adopted to cover up their lost nationality.”7 We must deconstruct
calls for an amorphous Christianity, gospel, and church by particularizing our

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 A Postmodern Postscript 279

churches and ecclesiologies and by accounting for the plurality of ways Christ
is manifest through the church in diverse cultural settings.
While the Lord becomes “incarnate” in given cultures through his church in
the power of the Spirit, he remains free to become enculturated in new forms.
The Lord himself became incarnate in a given culture while ever remaining Lord
in relation to that culture. The distinction between the “now” and “not yet” of
the kingdom helps to safeguard against the divinization of a particular cultural
form. While a particular church and church age participate in the kingdom,
they do not exhaust the kingdom. Rightly conceived, contextualization does
not spell domestication. As Newbigin again writes, “The word of God is to
be spoken in every tongue, but it can never be domesticated in any.”8
Particularity and plurality do not in themselves spell the domestication
and relativizing of the church. All too often, though, the church has been
domesticated and relativized when the ambition exists to make the church
profitable by reducing it to a functionary of the state or a mere participant
in the nurturing of civil society, or by transforming it into a business selling
religious products. The church can profit society only when it remains the
church—purely and simply. The only way to safeguard against such abuses is
for the church to remain constant in its witness to the Triune God, who breaks
into time and space through the Son and Spirit to establish the eschatological
kingdom here on earth. This brings us to the second theme we wish to discuss
for the development and doing of ecclesiology in a postmodern age.

Purity

A growing number of younger evangelicals are sensitized to the gospel being

reduced to this or that political platform or a formula used to make a profit.9
In addition to being alert to these and other cultural trends, many of them
long to see the gospel concretized in the life of the church as the Triune God’s
eschatological community. Unfortunately, individualistic spirituality and fu-
turistic eschatology have created a vacuum for inauthentic expressions of
community and politics to surface.
Attention was drawn to Stanley Hauerwas and Mark Sherwindt’s claim
in chapter 13 that “without the Kingdom-ideal, the church loses her identity-
forming hope; without the church, the kingdom loses its concrete character.” 10
From their perspective, the abstracting of the kingdom ideal from the church
can lead to the underwriting of any notion of a just society.11 For these au-
thors, the church is the “now” of the “not yet” kingdom. Once this frame of
reference is lost, the church so readily becomes a predicate of not-so-heavenly
kingdoms.
Purity, not profitability in terms of affluence and influence, must mark
the church. Only a pure church is a truly profitable church. Only then does

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 280 A Postmodern Postscript

it serve the world as salt and light, as God’s Sermon on the Mount commu-
nity. With this in mind, sanctification pertains not simply to the individual
and invisible. It also pertains to the corporate and visible church. Bonhoef-
fer claims that “sanctification is .€.€. possible only with the visible church.”
The visible church is set apart from the world in the world. The church (not
America)

is the city set on the hill and founded on earth by the direct act of God, it is
the “polis” of Matt. 5.14, and as such it is God’s own sealed possession. Hence
there is a certain “political” character involved in the idea of sanctification
and it is this character which provides the only basis for the Church’s political
ethic. The world is the world and the Church the Church, and yet the Word of
God must go forth from the Church into all the world, proclaiming that the
earth is the Lord’s and all that therein is. Herein lies the “political” character
of the Church.12

Bonhoeffer lived downstream from the demise of the Corpus Christianum

and the marriage of church and empire in Europe. Today we are witnessing
the demise of Christendom in America: we no longer (not that we ever did!)
live in a Christian nation. While the religious Right is engaged in last-gasp
efforts to take back America, a church that is culturally sensitive to being a
beacon of light yet founded firmly as that city on a hill (Matt. 5:14–16) will
speak missionally and prophetically as a witness to that coming kingdom
in which it participates as that kingdom’s community here on earth here
and now.
Ecclesiologies written in the postmodern climate would do well to take to
heart this post-Christendom context and realize that the demise of this unholy
marriage between Christianity and the American nation makes it possible for
the church to be a pure and truly profitable witness to the unadulterated gospel.
The fundamental problem with Christendom—old and new—is its belief that
European or American society is throughout a Christian world; this belief
makes it very difficult to see the non-Christian world and impedes “a genuine
encounter of the Gospel and man,” as Karl Barth said.13 The “strange” and
foreign gospel’s confrontation of nominal Christendom is required if there is
to be a true and vital encounter between gospel and world.14
Such vital encounters will mean that ecclesiologies from this perspective
will call for the church to be less worldly and more worldly at the same time:
less worldly in that the unholy alliance between church and state/American
society is destroyed; more worldly in that the church can engage the state and
society more authentically as God’s polis in the world—the communal and
co-missional people of the Triune God’s eschatological kingdom. Only then
can it be a pure church. But purity and authentic particularity also involve the
demonstration of peace and a profound sense of unity in the visible church—
inside and outside the walls of our respective churches.

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 A Postmodern Postscript 281

Peace

We live in a post-Christian age that is often hostile toward the church. Since
this is the case, why are we at war with one another? We must come to terms
with the fact that we—the variety of members within a given church and
the variety of churches—need one another to survive. We will never work
together until we sense our need for one another and make peace. This point
was brought home to us several years ago. A Christian minister laboring in
one of America’s depressed inner cities said to us that it was only when the
various ethnic churches in his urban community realized that they could not
survive without one another that they got beyond their petty differences and
turf battles and worked together. With this example in mind, we need to move
beyond comfort zones based on ethnicity and economics, along with com-
petition over an increasingly smaller religious slice of the American cultural
pie and contentious debates over doctrine, to seek after unity in the body.
Otherwise, we will continue sending a very clear message to the surround-
ing, cynical world that our God’s gospel is powerless to break down divisions
among his people.
The church is a now-and-not-yet eschatological community birthed by the
nonhomogeneous Triune God, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Since this is the case, why do we have visions for our respective churches that
compete with God’s ultimate, eschatological vision for his church? As the
eschatological community of the Triune God, we need to live now in light of
what will be. Our outreach must become as vast as God’s expansive missional
program, whereby we engage the world at our doorstep, not simply those who
appear most like us.
We evangelicals have much to offer the greater body of Christ in terms
of our emphasis on reconciliation and relationships. But our individualistic
and antistructural bent also proves problematic when it comes to addressing
pressing race and class problems (among others) in the American church and
broader culture.15 This bent disables us and makes it difficult for us to see
how our homogeneous structuring of the church caters to individual personal
preference and comfort levels. As a result, certain groups and their concerns
are marginalized, while others (often those belonging to the dominant culture)
advance. J.€I. Packer puts it this way:

Evangelical Christianity starts with the individual person: the Lord gets hold of
the individual; the individual comes to appreciate certain circles—the smaller
circle of the small group, the larger circle of the congregation. These circles
are where the person is nurtured and fed and expanded as a Christian. So, we
evangelicals are conditioned to think of social structures in terms of what they
do for us as individuals. That’s all right, but it does lead us to settle too soon for
certain self-serving social structures. And we are slow to pick up the fact that

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 282 A Postmodern Postscript

some of the social units that we appreciate for that reason can have unhappy
spinoff effects on other groups.16

In light of these dynamics, it is important for us to move beyond promoting

relationships and community with those with whom we feel most comfort-
able to promoting relationships based on the biblical model of community
and neighbor love.
Philip Yancey’s development of a point made by Henri Nouwen noted in
chapter 2 deserves repeating here:

Henri Nouwen defines “community” as the place where the person you least
want to live with always lives. Often we surround ourselves with the people
we most want to live with, thus forming a club or a clique, not a community.
Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form
a community.17

Such “shared vision” involves the eschatological vantage point that people
from every tongue and tribe will worship together at the throne. Evangelical
ecclesiologies must attend to this eschatological vision in seeking to assist
the church in bearing authentic witness to the gospel of the Triune God in
our increasingly cynical and hostile culture.18 In the face of such hostility, we
must look increasingly to Christ, who is our peace and who has the authority
and power to make peace between warring and hostile factions in our world
today.
Paul speaks to this matter when he addresses Christ’s authority and power
to remove the ancient and deep-seated division between Jews and Gentiles:

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the
barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with
its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new
humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both
of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He
came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who
were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
(Eph. 2:14–18, TNIV; italics added)

This passage has bearing not only on the Jew–Gentile divide, but upon all
other divisions in Christ’s community, so that God might construct a holy
temple in which God dwells through his Spirit with Christ as its cornerstone
(see Eph. 2:19–22).
The evangelical emphasis on personal relationship also has much to offer and
much to hinder ecumenical partnerships. Positively speaking, evangelicals have
much to contribute to ecumenical partnerships. It is encouraging, for example,
to read the assessment of evangelical contributions in the Princeton Proposal

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 A Postmodern Postscript 283

for Christian Unity: evangelicals have much to offer to the greater church com-
munity given “their vitality, their zeal for evangelism, and their commitment
to Scripture.” The statement goes on to say that evangelicals “demonstrate a
spirit of cooperation with each other and sometimes with others that breaks
down old barriers, creates fellowship among formerly estranged Christians, and
anticipates further unity. The free church ecclesiologies of some evangelicals
bring a distinct vision of unity to the ecumenical task.” This is an encouraging
sign, given how often the broader ecclesial and theological community has
looked askance at the evangelical tradition, including the supposed contribu-
tions it might bring to bettering ecclesial life and ecclesiology.19
Evangelicals have often been guilty of the same tendency, looking askance
on the contributions of those from other traditions. The Princeton Proposal
suggests that evangelicals often fail to discern living faith beyond their walls.
Out of concern for the whole body, it is important that evangelicals “accept
invitations to participate” in ecumenical dialogues, “discern and celebrate
living faith beyond their boundaries,” “practice hospitality and pursue catho-
licity” (as in unity with the whole church), and use “their resources” not only
to benefit their own causes and concerns but also to “work for the health of
all Christian communities.”20
Evangelical scholars have been so concerned with defining who we are as
evangelicals in contradistinction from other members and parts of Christ’s body
that we have been largely negligent in defining ourselves in relation to them.
While doctrinal distinctives are important and must not be minimized, we must
never allow our respective distinctives to keep us from seeking after unity.
Part of the problem stems from the historic fundamentalist–modernist
divide, when evangelicals left mainline Protestant denominations and their
seminaries in droves to found independent Bible schools and church traditions.
The wounds associated with the religious-theological culture wars between
left and right that were part and parcel of this migration are still often open,
visible, and painful today. We must pray together that God would heal these
wounds and make us one. Instead of various traditions trying to triumph over
one another, they should put down their swords and take up their chisels,
shovels, and picks to build a stronger community made up of formerly dis-
parate but now reconciled parts, realizing that we are stronger together than
we are separate, and that no church tradition makes up the entire house. At
best, each tradition could claim for itself that it manifests best the definitive
skeletal structure, requiring other traditions to flesh it out. No church tradition
should exaggerate the role it has in building up Christ’s body or denigrate the
role of other traditions. Just as there are various members in every church fel-
lowship, making up the one body, so each church has a role to play in building
up the universal church.
A theology of unity and peace must undergird our desire for theological
accuracy. Thus, we must not stop short at our differences or go around them,

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 284 A Postmodern Postscript

but go through them to ecumenical dialogue and partnerships. The same

zeal that has led evangelical evangelists of the fundamentalist–modernist era
to create broad platforms at their crusades and prayer rallies for those from
various traditions to participate and take ownership must carry over into min-
isterial alliances and theological explorations, as in the writing of evangelical
ecclesiologies in the postmodern and post-Christian era.
This is by no means an easy task. Without a living and firm eschatological
hope in the Triune God removing all divisions in the body, we evangelicals and
non-evangelicals alike will not have the strength to fight for unity and peace in
the here and now. But with such hope in this God of holy love whom all of us
as God’s people are called in faith to worship lovingly in the Spirit and in the
Word of truth, we will have the strength and sustenance to serve the church
sacrificially and lovingly in the diversity of cultures, as God’s missional people
in the world. As we move forward in view of our wedding day, may we look
to our God, who by his Spirit reorders the church as one through Word and
sacrament in view of Christ’s life. In like manner to husbands being called
to love their wives in view of Christ’s love for the church, so too we as God’s
people should love Christ’s body as we do our own lives as members of that
same body in view of our Lord’s example to whom the apostle bears witness:
“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleans-
ing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to
himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish,
but holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:25–27, TNIV). As Christ’s witnesses, may
we give ourselves to this same end until that day. For while the church may
have stains and wrinkles, blemishes and warts here and now, it is still Christ’s
bride and, as such, will be more beautiful than we could ever imagine then
and there.

S t u dy Q u e s t i o n s

1. How does your particular culture shape your understanding of the

church?
2. What specific ways would you like to see the gospel of the Triune God’s
eschatological kingdom shape the church’s witness in our postmodern
setting?

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 284 3/9/09 8:05:51 AM

 Recommended Readings

Introduction

Donald Bloesch. The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission. Christian

Foundations. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005.
Tony Campolo. Letters to a Young Evangelical: The Art of Mentoring. New York:
Basic Books, 2008.
Edmund P. Clowney. The Church. Contours of Christian Theology. Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity, 1995.
Kenneth J. Collins. The Evangelical Moment: The Promise of an American Religion.
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005.
Everett Ferguson. The Church of Christ: A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.
Thomas N. Finger. A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology: Biblical, Historical, Con-
structive. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004.
Veli-Matti Karkkainen. An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical and
Global Perspectives. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002.
Dan Kimball. They Like Jesus, but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Genera-
tions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007.
John Meyendorff. The Orthodox Church: Its Past and Its Role in the World Today,
with selected revisions by Nicholas Lossky. 3rd ed. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1996.
Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. Nash-
ville: Thomas Nelson, 2003.
Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom. Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment
of Contemporary Roman Catholicism. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005.
Thomas P. Rausch. Towards a Truly Catholic Church: An Ecclesiology for the Third
Millennium. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2005.
Robert Saucy. The Church in God’s Program. Chicago: Moody, 1972.

285

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 285 3/9/09 8:05:52 AM

 286 Recommended Readings

John G. Stackhouse Jr., ed. Evangelical Ecclesiology: Reality or Illusion? Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2003.
———, Evangelical Landscapes: Facing Critical Issues of the Day. Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2002.
D. Elton Trueblood. The People Called Quakers. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press,
1985.
Timothy Ware. The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993.
Robert Webber. Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern
World. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1999.

Chapters 1 and 2

Avery Dulles. Models of the Church. New York: Image, 2002.

Stanley J. Grenz. The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of
the Imago Dei. The Matrix of Christian Theology. Louisville: Westminster John
Knox, 2001.
Colin E. Gunton. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. 2nd ed. London: T&T Clark,
2004.
Joseph Hellerman. The Ancient Church as Family. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001.
Paul Louis Metzger, ed. Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology. London: T&T
Clark, 2005.
Paul S. Minear. Images of the Church in the New Testament. Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 2004.
Lesslie Newbigin. Household of God. London: SCM, 1953.
Miroslav Volf. After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.
John Howard Yoder. The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel. Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1985.
John D. Zizioulas. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. New
ed. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2004.

Chapters 3 and 4

Scott Bader-Saye. The Church and Israel after Christendom: The Politics of Election.
Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2005.
Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock. Progessive Dispensationalism. Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 1993.
Stephen Bouma-Prediger. For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision of Creation
Care. Engaging Culture. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.
Brian Daley. The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 286 3/9/09 8:05:52 AM

 Recommended Readings 287

Oliver Davies, Paul D. Janz, and Clemens Sedmak. Transformation Theology: Church
in the World. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2008.
Everett Ferguson. The Church of Christ: A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.
Stanley Hauerwas. The Peaceable Kingdom. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1983.
George Eldon Ladd. The Presence of the Future. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.
———, A Theology of the New Testament, edited by Donald A. Hagner. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.
Jürgen Moltmann. The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic
Ecclesiology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.
Paul Santmire. Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian
Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000.
N. T. Wright. The New Testament and the People of God. Minneapolis: Fortress,
1992.
John Howard Yoder. The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.

Chapters 5 and 6

Simon Chan. Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community. Downers

Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006.
Rodney Clapp. A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society.
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996.
Marva Dawn. Reaching Out without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for
the Turn-of-the-Century Culture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.
Aidan Kavanaugh. On Liturgical Theology. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2002.
Ralph Martin. Worship in the Early Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964.
Henri Nouwen. With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life. Mary-
knoll, NY: Orbis, 1994.
Robin Parry. Worshipping Trinity: Coming Back to the Heart of Worship. Bletchley,
UK: Paternoster, 2005.
Alexander Schmemann. For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy. Crest-
wood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973.
James B. Torrance. Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace. Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996.
Bernd Wannenwetsch. Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens. Oxford Studies
in Theological Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Robert E. Webber. Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narra-
tive. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008.
John Witvliet. Worship Seeking Understanding: Windows into Christian Practice.
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003.

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 288 Recommended Readings

Chapters 7 and 8

Kurt Aland. Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock,
2004.
Roland H. Bainton. “The Wild Boar in the Vineyard,” in Here I Stand: A Life of Martin
Luther. Nashville: Abingdon, 1978.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994.
William T. Cavanaugh. Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political
Act in an Age of Global Consumerism. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2002.
———, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ. Challenges
in Contemporary Theology. London: Blackwell, 1993.
Cyril of Jerusalem. Promise and Presence: An Exploration of Sacramental Theology.
Bletchley, UK: Paternoster, 2006.
John E. Colwell. Lectures on the Christian Sacraments: The Procatechesis and the Five
Mystagogical Catecheses. Edited by F. L. Cross. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1986.
Christopher J. Ellis. Gathering: A Theology and Spirituality of Worship in Free Church
Tradition. London: SCM, 2004.
Walter A. Elwell, ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Aca-
demic, 1984, s.v. “Baptism, Believers’” and “Baptism, Infant” by G. W. Bromiley.
Joachim Jeremias. Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries. Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock, 2004.
Aidan Kavanaugh. The Shape of Baptism. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1991.
Martin Luther. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church in Three Treatises. Philadel-
phia: Fortress, 1966.
Maximus the Confessor. The Church, the Liturgy and the Soul of Man: The Myst-
agogia of St. Maximus the Confessor. Translated by Dom Julian Stead, OSB. Still
River, MA: St. Bede’s, 1982.
Alexander Schmemann. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. New York: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988.
James White. Sacraments as God’s Self-Giving. Nashville: Abingdon, 2001.
———, The Sacraments in Protestant Practice and Faith. Nashville: Abingdon,
1999.
John Howard Yoder. Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before
the Watching World. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2001.

Chapters 9 and 10

David Bartlett. Ministry in the New Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Life Together. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 5. Edited by
Geffrey B. Kelley. Translated by Daniel W. Bloesch and James H. Burtness. Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 1996.

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 Recommended Readings 289

Marva J. Dawn. Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2001.
Hans Küng. The Church. Garden City, NY: Image, 1976.
Stephen Seamands. Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian
Service. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005.
William Willimon. Proclamation and Theology. Horizons in Theology. Nashville:
Abingdon, 2006.
John Howard Yoder. The Fullness of Christ: Paul’s Revolutionary Vision of Universal
Ministry. Elkhart, IN: Brethren, 1987.

Chapters 11 and 12

Chad Owen Brand and R. Stanton Norman, eds. Perspectives on Church Government:
Five Views of Church Polity. Nashville: Broadman and Holman Academic, 2004.
Raymond Brown. Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections. Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock, 1999.
Steven Cowan, ed. Who Runs the Church? 4 Views on Church Government. Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.
Stanley J. Grenz and Denise Muir Kjesbo. Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology
of Women in Ministry. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995.
Henri de Lubac. The Motherhood of the Church. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989.
Ronald Pierce, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, and Gordon D. Fee, eds. Discovering Biblical
Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity,
2004.
John Piper and Wayne Grudem, eds. Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood:
A Response to Evangelical Feminism. Wheaton: Crossway, 1991.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. God’s Word: Scripture—Tradition—Office. San Francisco:
Ignatius, 2008.
Alexander Strauch. Biblical Eldership: An Urgent Call to Restore Biblical Church
Leadership. Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth, 1995.
Miroslav Volf. After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.
William Webb. Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of
Cultural Analysis. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001.

Chapters 13 and 14

Jeremy S. Begbie. Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music. En-
gaging Culture. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
———, Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts. Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1991.

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 289 3/9/09 8:05:52 AM

 290 Recommended Readings

D. A. Carson. Christ and Culture Revisited. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.

Craig A. Carter. Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective.
Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007.
Rodney Clapp. Border Crossings: Christian Trespasses on Popular Culture and Public
Affairs. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2000.
Andy Crouch. Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling. Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity, 2008.
Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor. A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture.
Engaging Culture. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003.
Colin E. Gunton. The One, The Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture
of Modernity. The Bampton Lectures 1992. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
Robert K. Johnston. Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue. Engaging
Culture. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.
D. Stephen Long. Theology and Culture: A Guide to the Discussion. Eugene, OR:
Cascade, 2008.
George M. Marsden. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of
Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1980.
Paul Louis Metzger. The Word of Christ and the World of Culture: Sacred and Secular
through the Theology of Karl Barth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
John Milbank. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. 2nd ed. London:
Blackwell, 2006.
Lesslie Newbigin. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
H. Richard Niebuhr. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951.
Jaroslav Pelikan. Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Glen Stassen, D. M. Yeager, and John Howard Yoder. Authentic Transformation: A
New Vision of Christ and Culture. Nashville: Abingdon, 1996.
John R. W. Stott. The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). Edited
by J. A. Moyer and John R. W. Stott. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1978.
Paul Tillich. Theology of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Robert E. Webber. The Secular Saint: A Case for Evangelical Social Responsibility.
Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004.

Chapters 15 and 16

William J. Abraham. The Logic of Evangelism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.

Hans Urs von Balthasar. Love Alone Is Credible. Translated by D. C. Schindler. San
Francisco: Ignatius, 2004.
Lois Barrett, ed. Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness. The Gospel
& Our Culture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

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 Recommended Readings 291

Pope Benedict XVI. Deus Caritas Est: God Is Love. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006.
David Bosch. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Mary-
knoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.
Paul W. Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner, eds. The Study of Evangelism. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2008.
Darrell L. Guder. The Continuing Conversion of the Church. The Gospel & Our
Culture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
———, ed. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North
America. The Gospel & Our Culture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.
Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian
Colony. Nashville: Abingdon, 1989.
Philip D. Kenneson and James L. Street. Selling Out the Church: The Dangers of
Church Marketing. Nashville: Abingdon, 1997.
Paul Louis Metzger. Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer
Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007.
Harold Netland. Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.
———, Encountering Religious Pluralism: the Challenge to Christian Faith and Mis-
sion. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001.
Lesslie Newbigin. Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986.
Bruce Nichols, ed. In Word and Deed: Evangelism and Social Responsibility. Exeter,
UK: Paternoster, 1985.
John M. Perkins. Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development.
Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993.
———, Let Justice Roll Down. 3rd ed. Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2006.
———, With Justice for All. 3rd ed. Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2007.
Soong-chan Rah. The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural
Captivity. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009.

Postscript

Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds. In One Body through the Cross: The
Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
Stanley J. Grenz. A Primer on Postmodernism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.
Craig Ott and Harold A. Netland, eds. Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in
an Era of World Christianity. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.
James K. A. Smith. Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and
Foucault to Church. The Church and Postmodern Culture. Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2006.

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 Appendix
Types of Ecclesiology

High church ecclesiology: High view of church history and tradition.

Emphasizes the liturgy and, above all, the Eucharist. Churches are
generally structured episcopally (i.e., through a hierarchy of bishops
who stand in communion with one another). Emphasizes salvation as
membership in the church through participation in the sacraments.
Generally holds to infant baptism. Close connection between baptism
and initiation into the broad community of faith.
Low church ecclesiology: Generally suspicious of history and tradition.
Emphasizes the Bible as the church’s ultimate authority, and preaching
is more central than the Eucharist or the liturgy. Churches tend to be
structured congregationally (i.e., governed by the local congregation itself
or through one or more elders appointed by congregations). Emphasizes
salvation as the subjective appropriation and confession of faith in
Christ. Generally holds to believers’ baptism. Close connection between
salvation, baptism, and committed discipleship in community.
Strong ecclesiology: Holds a high view of the role of the church in the economy
of salvation. Understands that the church is the means by which God
is at work in the world. A strong view of the church as the ongoing
embodied presence of Christ in the world. The church participates in
the mission of God to redeem the world. Membership in the visible
church community is indispensable to Christian life and the shape of
Christian salvation.
Weak ecclesiology: Holds a humble and limited view of God’s role for the
church in his plan of salvation. The church exists to strengthen and
instruct the believer and to witness to God’s work of salvation that

292

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 Appendix 293

takes place solely through God’s action. The church does not participate
in God’s action but points away from itself to God’s action outside of
human effort. The emphasis is on the invisible church, the universal body
of all people who believe in Christ throughout the world. All Christians
are members of this church, and that is what is primary. Membership
in a local congregation is for edification and growth, but is not central
to salvation.

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 Notes

Introduction
1. Dan Kimball addresses people’s attraction to Jesus and disillusionment with the church
in They Like Jesus, but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2007). The overwhelmingly popular reception of Donald Miller’s book Blue Like
Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003) bears
witness to spirituality’s increasing appeal in contemporary culture and the decline of appeal
in organized religion.
2. See the article “My Mother, the Church” by Nancy Kennedy and her references to a re-
cent Gallup poll on this subject: http://www.chronicleonline.com/articles/2007/06/19/columns/
grace_notes/grace770.txt.
3. Tony Campolo attributes to Augustine the statement that “the church is a whore, but
she’s my mother.” Campolo refers to this claim in his appeal to young evangelicals not to leave
organized religion and the local church because of its whoredom, but to passionately commit
their lives to the church because it is their maternal lifeline to God. Tony Campolo, Letters to a
Young Evangelical: The Art of Mentoring (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 68.
4. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1960), Bk. IV, Ch. 1, 1016.
5. Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writ-
ings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 604.
6. Kimlyn J. Bender, “The Church in Karl Barth and Evangelicalism—Conversations across
the Aisle,” 5. The paper was presented at the conference “Karl Barth and American Evangelicals:
Friends or Foes?” June 27, 2007, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. Bender
refers the reader to Kenneth J. Collins, The Evangelical Moment: The Promise of an American
Religion (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 33.
7. John G. Stackhouse Jr., Evangelical Landscapes: Facing Critical Issues of the Day (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 28.
8. The statement, while brief, addresses the Bible, the Trinity, the person and work of Christ,
the Holy Spirit, salvation, sanctification for a godly life, and the resurrection to heaven or hell,
but not the church, other than to affirm that there is a spiritual unity among believers. See www
.nae.net/index.cfm?FUSEACTION=nae.statement_of_faith.
9. Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment
of Contemporary Roman Catholicism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 145.

294

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 Notes to Pages 16–20 295

10. Bruce Hindmarsh, “Is Evangelical Ecclesiology an Oxymoron?” in Evangelical Ecclesiol-

ogy: Reality or Illusion? (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), ed. John G. Stackhouse Jr.,
15–37. Hindmarsh himself believes that evangelicalism has its own “ecclesial consciousness,”
if not a developed specific ecclesiology per se.
11. Instead of saying that evangelicals don’t have an ecclesiology, it may be better to say that
the majority of evangelicals have a weak ecclesiology. A weak ecclesiology is characterized by a
minimalist view of God’s role for the church in his plan of salvation. It tends to emphasize the
individual Christian and sees the church as existing primarily to nurture the believer. A weak
ecclesiology also highlights the “universal” and “invisible” nature of the church to the detri-
ment of the “local” and “visible” church. By contrast, a strong ecclesiology emphasizes that
vital participation in a local and visible church community is indispensable to the cultivation of
Christian life and shaping of salvation, and that the church as the ongoing embodied presence
of Christ in the world is the Triune God’s primary means for advancing his kingdom mission,
not the individual Christian or another agency or organization. The reader is encouraged to
look to the appendix at the close of this volume titled, “Types of Ecclesiology,” formulated by
Halden Doerge. One of the aspirations for this book is that evangelicals will come away with a
greater desire to foster a strong ecclesiology that nonetheless resonates with their largely non-
hierarchal and non-liturgical orientation and sensibilities.
12. Many Dispensationalists typically would not affirm that the church is promised in the
Hebrew Scriptures, but that the church is there only in mystery form. Moreover, certain Re-
formed would maintain that the church is not simply promised in the OT, but actually present
there as well.
13. We recognize that many Reformed churches and most Pentecostal and charismatic churches
may identify themselves as evangelical. But they are also rooted in movements separate from the
American evangelical movement and so are considered separately in this argument.
14. It has been typical for preachers in evangelical churches to preach verse by verse through
whole books of the Bible rather than to preach topically and use biblical passages to support
their points. Nevertheless, over the last few decades, topical preaching has been on the rise sig-
nificantly. Also, in some evangelical churches, the “praise chorus” section of the worship service
now rivals the sermon in terms of time and emphasis.
15. This antipathy for traditional liturgy is an example of how evangelicalism, while moving
beyond fundamentalism, remained connected to its fundamentalist roots.

Chapter 1 The Church as a Trinitarian Community: The Being-Driven Church

1. In her discussion of God’s “intrinsically relational and communicative nature” in Jonathan
Edwards’s thought, Amy Plantinga Pauw speaks of Edwards’s agreement with Richard Sibbes’s
notion of the spreading goodness of God. Amy Plantinga Pauw, The Supreme Harmony of All:
The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 126–27. Note
also her references to Sibbes and Maximus the Confessor on 127.
2. For an example of this approach, see Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church: Growth
without Compromising Your Message & Mission (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995). While
Warren’s five purposes are certainly biblical (see 103–7), and while he is right in claiming that all
too often our work for God crowds out our worship of God (103), he needs to make clear that
our purposeful worship and love for God flow out of God’s loving us into being as his people.
3. See chapter 6 of Paul Louis Metzger, Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions
in a Consumer Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), for a discussion of the co-missional
God. See also George R. Hunsberger’s discussion of this theme in “Missional Vocation: Called
and Sent to Represent the Reign of God,” in Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the
Church in North America, ed. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 82.

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 296 Notes to Pages 21–24

4. For an in-depth treatment of various New Testament images of the church, see Paul S.
Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox,
2004).
5. Irenaeus writes that God did not need help in “accomplishing of what He had Himself
determined with Himself beforehand should be done, as if He did not possess His own hands.
For with Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom
and in whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying,
‘Let Us make man after Our image and likeness’; He taking from Himself the substance of the
creatures [formed], and the pattern of things made, and the type of all the adornments in the
world.” James Donaldson and Alexander Roberts, eds., Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 1,
The Writings of Irenaeus, by St. Irenaeus, trans. Alexander Rovers and W. H. Rambaut (Edin-
burgh: T&T Clark, 1867), 487–88.
6. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1–3 (New
York: Macmillan, 1959), 37.
7. Ibid.
8. See Karl Barth’s discussion of the divine plural in Genesis 1:26 in Church Dogmatics, III/1,
The Doctrine of Creation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958),
191–92. In addition to rejecting with others the interpretation that the divine plural is merely
“a formal expression of dignity,” Barth also rejects the modern dismissal of the early church’s
exegesis. He writes that “it may be stated that an approximation to the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity—the picture of a God who is the one and only God, yet who is not for that reason
solitary, but includes in Himself the differentiation and relationship of I and Thou—is both
nearer to the text and does it more justice than the alternative suggested by modern exegesis in
its arrogant rejection of the Early Church (cf. for instance, Gunkel).” Quoting Genesis 1:26, the
early-second-century theologian Irenaeus writes: “Now man is a mixed organization of soul and
flesh, who was formed after the likeness of God, and moulded by His hands, that is, by the Son
and Holy Spirit, to whom also He said, ‘Let Us make man.’” Writings of Irenaeus, 463.
9. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 36.
10. The terms transitive and intransitive apply to verb types. A transitive verb is one that
requires a direct object, while an intransitive verb does not require a direct object. We are employ-
ing these terms to refer to different kinds of love—that love that requires another, versus that
love that is self-focused. God’s love always requires a direct object: God loves another. Sinful,
self-centered love is the kind of love that does not have an object other than itself. It is in this
sense that we refer to it as intransitive.
11. This position stands in marked contrast to John Piper’s adaptation of the Westminster
Confession in his book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, 2nd ed. (Sisters,
OR: Questar, 1996). For a fuller treatment of this position, see Paul Louis Metzger, “The Half-
way House of Hedonism: Potential and Problems in John Piper’s Desiring God,” in CRUX 41,
no. 4 (2006): 21–27.
12. See, for example, Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crest-
wood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 10.
13. God recapitulates the creation, taking it beyond its original state. As the recapitulated
cosmos, God transforms the creation, taking it forward to a state beyond what Adam and Eve
could ever have imagined. To recapitulate a story is to revise it and transform it in its retelling.
Irenaeus taught that in Christ the story of Adam was recapitulated, but this time as a defeat
of sin rather than a defeat by it. God had intended for Adamic humanity to mature and grow
beyond its initial condition, but that process was interrupted by the fall into sin. Christ’s refusal
and overcoming of sin makes it possible for the human story to resume its dramatic movement
toward maturity and wholeness.
14. Barth states it well in his discussion of Colossians 1:15–18 and its relation to Genesis
1: Paul “has no abstract Christological interest in this equation. Or rather, this Christological

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 Notes to Pages 25–31 297

equation has at the root an inclusive character, so that it is also an ecclesiological and therefore
even an anthropological equation.” Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, 205.
15. It is well worth noting at this point that at the giving of Christ’s Spirit at Pentecost to
build the church we find the reversal of Babel. Everyone present at Pentecost hears God’s glad
tidings to bless humanity in Christ spoken in their native tongues (Acts 2:5–12). Because God’s
glory is communal and communicative, God shares it with his people so that they might be one
and might reflect God’s love in Christ to the world (John 17:22–23). See the perceptive com-
ments of J. Kameron Carter on recapitulation as the “pentecostalization of the world” in “Race,
Religion, and the Contradictions of Identity: A Theological Engagement with Douglas’s 1845
Narrative,” in Modern Theology 21, no. 1 (2005): 58–59.
16. On the subject of the Jewish people not commonly referring to God as “Father,” see
D. A. Carson, The Sermon on the Mount: An Evangelical Exposition of Matthew 5–7 (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 1978), 62.
17. Joseph Hellerman, The Ancient Church as Family (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 221.
18. Many theologians throughout the history of the church have understood the Angel of
the Lord to be the pre-incarnate Christ.
19. In the Hebrew Scriptures prior to the building of the temple, the tabernacle (which was
a holy tent) represents God’s presence and the way in which he dwells with his people. In this
volume, we often use the term “Hebrew Scriptures” to refer to the thirty-nine books of the “Old
Testament.” We use these terms (“Old Testament” and “Hebrew Scriptures”) interchangeably,
because “Old Testament” on its own could wrongly be taken to signify that these writings are
no longer applicable.
20. While it was not Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) who began the discussion of this issue,
it is to his name that Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (“Outside the church there is no salvation”)
is attached historically. Cyprian’s concern was for those heretics and schismatics who found
themselves outside the church, primarily because of their own voluntary separation from it.
He writes: “Whoever breaks with the Church and enters on an adulterous union, cuts himself
off from the promises made to the Church; and he who has turned his back on the Church of
Christ shall not come to the rewards of Christ: he is an alien, a worldling, an enemy. You cannot
have God for your Father if you have not the Church for your mother€.€.€. Whoever breaks the
peace and harmony of Christ acts against Christ; whoever gathers elsewhere than in the Church,
scatters the Church of Christ€.€.€. If a man does not keep this unity, he is not keeping the law
of God; he has lost his faith about Father and Son, he has lost his life and his soul.” Cyprian
of Carthage, The Unity of the Catholic Church, in Robert L. Ferm, Readings in the History of
Christian Thought (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1964), 435.
21. See Heiko Augustinus Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1989), 183–84.
22. Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writ-
ings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 604.
23. Righteousness on this account is more than forensic. God declares us righteous because
we are one flesh with Christ through the Spirit. Thus, righteousness is ultimately participational
and relational. See Paul Louis Metzger, “Mystical Union with Christ: An Alternative to Blood
Transfusions and Legal Fictions,” in Westminster Theological Journal 65 (2003): 201–13. See
also Veli-Matti Karkkainen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Col-
legeville, MN: Liturgical, 2005).
24. Luther, Freedom of a Christian, 604. Hosea is addressing Israel, but Paul claims that
God’s people, to whom Christ is married, includes Israel and the church. From our perspective,
the “church” is a New Testament reality. Having said that, believing Old Covenant Israel is in
Christ and therefore part of the church now.
25. John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) (Leicester,
UK: InterVarsity, 1978), 39.

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 298 Notes to Pages 32–36

26. Luther claims that the believer in Jesus does not live “in himself, but in Christ and in
his neighbor. Otherwise he is not a Christian. He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor
through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath
himself in to his neighbor. Yet he always remains in God and in his love.” Luther, Freedom of
a Christian, 623.
27. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Since Christ entrusted to his apostles
the ministry of reconciliation [a footnote at this point in the text refers the reader to Jn. 20:23
and 2 Cor. 5:18], bishops who are their successors, and priests, the bishops’ collaborators,
continue to exercise this ministry. Indeed bishops and priests, by virtue of the sacrament of
Holy Orders, have the power to forgive all sins ‘in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit.’” Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications,
1994), sec. 1461, 367.
28. It is important to safeguard the balance between the church as a visible and invisible
reality. The Catholic catechism speaks of the church as both “visible and spiritual.” Catechism,
sec. 771, 203. The Reformer John Calvin gave special consideration to the church as invisible,
in part so as to guard against the excesses of Roman Catholic institutionalism in his day, on the
one hand, and nominal Christianity on the other. However, Calvin sought to maintain balance
between consideration of the church as visible and invisible. See John Calvin, Institutes of the
Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), Bk. IV, Ch.€1, 1016,
1021–24. In view of the fundamentalist–modernist controversy, many evangelicals left main-
line denominational structures in the early to middle part of the twentieth century to found
independent Bible churches. Fundamentalist-evangelicals tended to emphasize the invisible over
the visible, though they also certainly saw the need for some form of organization and structure
as well as the importance of making visible their faith in community. In our day, due to certain
forms of religious pluralism, the excesses of American individualism, disillusionment with the
local church, and the consumerist ideology (church shopping), some believers have gone even
further, completely abandoning active participation in local, visible, concrete manifestations
of the invisible church. While it is important to safeguard against the excesses of ecclesial insti-
tutionalism and nominal Christianity—thus, the need for emphasizing the invisible church—it
is equally important to stress that the invisible church ever takes concrete form in local, visible
assemblies.
29. Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1985), 1033.
30. See the discussion of the American religious enterprise and free market spirituality in
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in
Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 17.
31. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds. In One Body through the Cross: The Princeton
Proposal for Christian Unity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 42–43.
32. We are not suggesting the elimination of denominations or ecclesiastical traditions. We are
concerned for the cultivation of grace wed to truth and partnerships between groups. One example
is the partnership between evangelicals and Catholics. See “Evangelicals & Catholics Together:
The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium,” in First Things 43 (May 1994): 15–22.
33. According to John Zizioulas, the Spirit conditions and constitutes Christ and the church.
The Spirit also makes of Christ the eschatological human. See John D. Zizioulas, Being as
Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1997), 111, 130, 139.
34. Such consummation in eternity is not static. The relational union, while perfect, will
continue to deepen. Gregory of Nyssa also conceives of our eternal state in dynamic terms.
See his section titled “Eternal Progress,” in Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses (New York:
Paulist Press, 1978), 111–20.
35. Colin E. Gunton, Act and Being: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes (London:
SCM, 2002), 146.

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 Notes to Pages 36–43 299

36. Ibid., 118.

37. The reader can find a picture of the icon at http://www.valley.net/~transnat/trinlg
.html.
38. Boris Bobrinskoy, The Mystery of the Trinity: Trinitarian Experience and Vision in the
Biblical and Patristic Tradition, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Sem-
inary Press, 1999), 12.
39. Ibid., 141.
40. Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, The Works of God (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 19. The quotation from Jonathan Edwards is found in the Miscellanies,
(entry nos. a–z, aa–zz. 1–500), The Works of Jonathon Edwards, vol. 13, ed. Thomas A. Schafer
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994).

Chapter 2 The Trinitarian Church Confronts American Individualism

1. Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related
Subjects, ed. Paul Edwards, with an appendix on the “Bertrand Russell Case” (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1952), 42.
2. See for example George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shap-
ing of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1980), 153–98.
3. See Rudolph Nelson, “Fundamentalists at Harvard: The Case of Edward J. Carnell,”
Quarterly Review 2, no. 2 (1982), for an example of this orientation. While rejecting liberal in-
stitutions and starting their own theological schools, fundamentalist-evangelical scholars desired
to receive credible degrees, and so they attended these bastions of liberal scholarship. According
to Nelson, these early fundamentalist-evangelical leaders were also motivated to attend Harvard
and similar schools because of their desire for “encountering the Beast of Scholarly Unbelief in
its own labyrinth and emerging with new confidence and new powers” (84).
4. The notes in the margins of The Serendipity New Testament for Groups place much
emphasis on the individual. Under “Reflect” for the discussion based on salvation in Romans
3:21–31, four out of five of the questions read: “If you had to explain the gospel from this pas-
sage alone, what would you say? When did the message of God’s grace become real to you?
What difference is it making in your life right now?” The next question deals with groups: “What
prejudices and barriers exist in the church today?” It concludes, though, with, “How could you
help to break them down?” Lyman Coleman, ed., Serendipity New Testament for Groups, 2nd
ed., New International Version (Littleton, CO: Serendipity House, 1987), 306.
5. Brian D. McLaren, A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 130.
6. See David F. Wells’s discussion and critique of “Self-Piety,” chapter 4 of No Place for Truth,
or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993).
7. In a former era, churches competed with one another based on doctrines and sacraments:
who had the best beliefs and best practices? Today, competition often takes the form of which
churches are the best family-services providers.
8. Pastors today often note how many families in their churches do not come to church dur-
ing sports seasons. Sports teams no longer give deference to Sundays and Christian worship.
Nor do many families in the church. These families would do well to take to heart the writer of
Hebrews’ exhortation in Heb. 10:24–25.
9. Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2002), 17.
10. According to George Hunsberger, “both members and those outside the church expect the
church to be a vendor of religious services and goods.” See George R. Hunsberger, “Missional
Vocation: Called and Sent to Represent the Reign of God,” in Missional Church: A Vision for
the Sending of the Church in North America, ed. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

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 300 Notes to Pages 44–51

1998), 84. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark speak to the matter of the survival of the fittest in the
free-market religious system in America: “Religious organizations must compete for members
and .€.€. the ‘invisible hand’ of the marketplace is as unforgiving of ineffective religious firms as
it is of their commercial counterparts.” See Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of
America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1992), 17.
11. Robert E. Webber critiques the individualized notion of salvation—“enlightenment
evangelism”—in Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World
(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1999), 143–46. See also Everett Ferguson, The Church of Christ:
A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), chapter 3.
12. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, rev. ed., ed. Eberhard Bethge (New
York: Macmillan, 1967) 203–4.
13. Maximus the Confessor spoke of the church in microcosm terms. See St. Maximus the
Confessor, The Church, the Liturgy and the Soul of Man, trans. Dom Julian Stead, OSB (Still
River, MA: St. Bede’s, 1982), 66–67, 69. So too did Martin Luther King Jr. See Richard Lischer,
The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word That Moved America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 16–17.
14. Philip Yancey, “Why I Don’t Go to a Megachurch,” Christianity Today, May 20, 1996, 80.

Chapter 3 The Church as an Eschatological Community

1. Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000),
479.
2. Eschatology technically means “last things,” not “future things.” So biblical eschatology
is not merely about events that are future from where the church finds itself in history. Eschatol-
ogy, from the standpoint of the biblical prophets, is about the events that fulfill God’s plan to
redeem his creation from the fall and to bring his people into everlasting, perfect relationship
with him. Thus, some eschatological events, such as the cross, burial, and resurrection, have
already happened. Others, such as the second coming of Christ, remain future.
3. Several books that explain and chronicle the development toward this consensus are: George
Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974); George Eldon Ladd,
A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974); Darrol Bryant and Donald
Dayton, The Coming Kingdom: Essays in American Millennialism and Eschatology (Barry�
town, NY: Rose of Sharon Press, 1983); Shirley Jackson Case, The Millennial Hope (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1958); W. G. Kummel, Promise and Fulfillment: The Eschatological
Message of Jesus, trans. Dorothea Barton (London: SCM, 1971); Timothy Weber, Living in
the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism: 1875–1982, 2nd ed. (Grand
Rapids: Academic Books, 1983); and Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock, eds. Dispensationalism,
Israel and the Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).
4. For examples of first-century Jewish messianic expectations, see intertestamental literature
such as Psalms of Solomon 17, The Testament of Judah 24, 1 Enoch 48, and IV Ezra 13.
5. George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1993), 336.
6. Typically, dispensational premillennialists, while they understand Revelation to describe an
actual future period of human history known as the “great tribulation” immediately preceding
the second coming of Christ, do not see the church as being present during this period, having
been “raptured” at the beginning of this seven-year tribulation. Thus, John’s image of the church
as the suffering people of God is not a part of dispensationalists’ interpretation of Revelation.
However, the rest of the images presented here still apply, since they are images of the victorious
church that returns with Christ at his second coming to begin the millennial period. Nondispen-
sational premillennialists and those who hold to nonfuturist or nonhistorical interpretations of
Revelation understand the entire book as being descriptive of the church.

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 Notes to Pages 52–55 301

7. There are numerous issues in the way we have approached this chapter—the relationship
of the church to the kingdom of God, the church as the promised people of God, the ultimate
image of the church as a multiethnic world community, etc.—which raise the question of the
relationship between the church and Israel. The history of this discussion has resulted in a
general polarity. Either Israel has been replaced by the church, which is the “new Israel,” mean-
ing that the nation of Israel is no longer a unique factor in the future of the people of God,
or the church is a community separate from Israel in God’s plan. In this second scenario God
will, in the last resort, fulfill his historic promises to Israel, bring the nation as a whole to faith
in Christ in the last days, and return to earth to rule the millennium from the nation of Israel.
Numerous mediating positions have also been suggested. Our position, briefly, is that we do not
subscribe to a replacement theology that makes Israel of no account in the future of the people
of God. Rather, we find evidence to believe that God may still work with Israel in a unique way
at some time in the future, perhaps as a factor in the events of Christ’s second advent and mil-
lennial rule (Rom. 9–11). But neither do we subscribe to the view that sees the church as a kind
of parenthesis in history, essentially fading into the background of the biblical narrative of the
eschaton, while Israel again becomes the focus of the biblical idea of the people of God. The
ultimate biblical vision of the people of God is the vision of the church, one people, Jew and
Gentile, living together forever in union with Christ and each other in the worship and service
of God. For further discussion of the church and Israel, see Scott Bader-Saye, The Church and
Israel after Christendom: The Politics of Election (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2005).
8. The scholar most influential in bringing American evangelicals to this position in the middle
of the twentieth century was George Eldon Ladd. His work, originally published in his Jesus and
the Kingdom, later retitled The Presence of the Future, became the basis for what has become
the consensus position among dispensationalists and nondispensationalists as well.
9. Historical surveys of the eschatology of the early church are rare. One excellent exception
is Brian Daley’s The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. See also J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San
Francisco: Harper Collins, 1978), 459–89.
10. Cyril Richardson, Early Christian Fathers (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 93.
11. Ibid.
12. Early church adherents include Papius, Pseudo-Barnabus, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertul-
lian, and Hippolytus.
13. Influential teachers of dispensationalism in America include C. I. Scofield, Lewis Sperry
Chafer, John Walvoord, Dwight Pentecost, and Charles Ryrie. All of these were connected to
Dallas Theological Seminary, which remains the most prominent institutional proponent of
dispensationalism in America.
14. William E. Blackstone, Jesus Is Coming (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1908), 82–84. Our
contention is that when Paul speaks in Ephesians of the church as a “mystery,” he does not mean
that the Hebrew Scriptures did not anticipate it or even speak of it. Rather, the church fulfills
God’s promises about a future kingdom for his people, Israel, without eliminating the idea that
God may still have future plans for ethnic/national Israel as part of his kingdom promises.
15. In this chapter, when we speak of evangelism vs. social action/engagement, we have the
following definitions in mind. By evangelism we refer to the practice of verbal proclamation of
the gospel by Christians to non-Christians for the purpose of introducing them to the saving
message and person of Jesus Christ and calling them to faith. By social action/engagement we
mean those actions taken by the church for the betterment of human beings and society. This is
to be understood in the broadest terms and could be represented by the church working for such
things as better living conditions for the poor, better health care, better race relations, racial and
gender equality, etc. We understand and agree that these actions can be and are seen by many
to be forms of evangelism. But in this discussion, we will address evangelism and social action
as different but complementary endeavors.

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 302 Notes to Pages 55–63

16. This oft-repeated line was spoken by the famous radio preacher J. Vernon McGee but is
usually attributed to D. L. Moody.
17. Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Pea-
body, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 78.
18. Augustine, City of God, 20.9, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaaf,
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 430.
19. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 5.
20. Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1968), 99.
21. Jonathan Edwards, “Some Thoughts concerning the Revival of Religion in New England,”
The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2 vols., ed. John E. Smith. (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1772), 2:353.
22. For further information on this idea, see Conrad Cherry, God’s New Israel: Religious Interpre-
tations of American Destiny (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); and Paul Boyer,
When Time Shall Be No More (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992).
23. See Donald Dayton, “Millennial Views and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Amer-
ica,” in The Coming Kingdom. For an excellent study on the relationship of millennial move-
ments to social crises, see Michael Barkun’s Disaster and the Millennium (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1974). Among his descriptions of the sensitivities of these communities to
crisis, he remarks that members of such movements perceive themselves moving into a new form
of religious piety and from error to truth. They also see themselves reacting against inequities
perceived in traditional institutions. These sensitivities would be represented in the reactions of
dispensational fundamentalists against society and mainline Christianity.
24. Austin Flannery, OP, ed.,Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents,
rev. ed., Lumen Gentium (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1987), 48. See also Henri de Lubac, The
Splendor of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 156–59, 238–39.
25. See Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock, Progressive Dispensationalism (Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 1993).
26. Cyprian of Carthage, On the Unity of the Church, 13–14, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5,
eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 425–26.
27. Two key problems common to the critique of the Reformers were that the institution of
the church had become more authoritative than the scriptures and that the church had become
more instrumental in distributing the grace of God than the Spirit of God himself.
28. See, for example, Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988);
Dennis Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000).
29. John Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.7. Note Calvin’s departure from medieval Catholicism here.
All baptized members are not necessarily true members of the church, since they might actu-
ally be unbelievers. Thus, Calvin’s definition of the church is more individualistic than insti-
tutional. On this point see John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological
and Ecumenical (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 57ff, where Yoder traces this separation of
the visible and invisible church to Constantine. Also, see Robert Webber’s discussion of this
idea in his Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 1999).
30. We will discuss this further below as we examine the theology of Paul in the chapter
“The Church as a Serving Community.”
31. Ladd, Presence of the Future, 268.
32. G. L. Alrich, “Our Comforting Hope,” Our Hope 21.8 (February 1915): 180.
33. The positive side of this emphasis on evangelism was a renewed effort in missionary
activity. Dispensationalists were important in the foundation of the Student Volunteer Move-
ment and other such missions organizations. As a result, premillennialists became the force in
overseas missions at the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Great emphasis

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 Notes to Pages 63–80 303

was placed on bringing the good news of Christ to as many people as possible, as quickly as
possible, before the Lord’s return.
34. J. E. Conant, “The Growing Menace of the ‘Social Gospel,’” in Fighting Fundamentalism:
Polemical Thrusts of the 1930s and 1940s, ed. Joel Carpenter (New York: Garland, 1988), 61.
35. For a brief discussion of Luther’s theory, see Robert Webber, The Secular Saint (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1979). See the more extensive discussion of Luther’s theopolitical views
in Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2004), 59–71.
36. See his chapter on the church in Carl Braaten and Robert Jensen, eds., Christian Dogmat-
ics, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 179–248.
37. Ibid., 2:247.
38. Donald Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 69–81.
39. For an excellent article on this work, see D. Bentley Hart, “The ‘Whole Humanity’: Gregory
of Nyssa’s Critique of Slavery in Light of his Eschatology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 54,
no. 1 (2001): 51–69.
40. Ibid., 55.
41. For a summary of the place of women in the ancient world, see Klyne Snodgrass, Ephe-
sians: The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996).
42. Walter Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978).
43. The emphasis here is on the community rooted in the presence of the King with his people.
Similarly, in Exodus 33, Moses argues that the only way the nations will know that Israel is the
people of God is if God is with them.
44. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, Bk. 3, Ch. 24, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, 458.
45. Flannery, ed., Lumen Gentium, 48. See also Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church
as Worshipping Community (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006).
46. See Karl Barth, The Preaching of the Gospel (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963).
47. Given the nature of Christ as the ultimate sacrifice, we would argue that, for the church,
this aspect of reconciliation of believers around the altar is represented in the Eucharist. See the
chapter below on the church as a sacramental community.
48. See Thomas N. Finger, Christian Theology: An Eschatological Approach (Scottdale,
PA: Herald Press, 1989), 2:247–69, for an extended discussion of the “already/not yet” in the
apostolic church.
49. Note that Ephesians 2:11–22 is a restatement of this same basic argument by Paul. Gen-
tiles, who were once outside of the promise given to national/ethnic Israel, are now brought
near to God through the blood of the cross. But again, Paul’s vision here is not merely one of
individual salvation of Gentiles but of the reconciliation of alienated segments of society, Jews
and Gentiles, into one body, one building, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone. On this point
see N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 1994).
50. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 21.
51. For a full discussion of the place of the church’s eschatological battle against the demonic
in the theology of Paul, see Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness: Principalities and Powers
in Paul’s Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992). See also Walter Wink, The Powers, 3
vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1984–92).
52. Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis I: On the Rites before Baptism, 3–6.

Chapter 4 Eschatology, the Church, and Ecology

1. Tom Sine, “Who Is Tim LaHaye?” Sojourners (September/October 2001): 2.
2. Jonathan Wilson, “Evangelicals and the Environment: A Theological Concern,” Christian
Scholars Review 28, no. 2 (1998): 301.

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 304 Notes to Pages 80–84

3. Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155, no. 3767
(1967).
4. It must be noted that premillennialists, both in the early church and in twentieth-century
dispensational thought, have had a clear theology of the perfection of creation in the kingdom
of God. But classic dispensationalists, since they tended to see the kingdom as essentially future,
did not draw its environmental implications back into the present.
5. Richard Young, Healing the Earth: A Theocentric Perspective on Environmental Problems
and Their Solutions (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1994), 139.
6. Paul Santmire, Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian Theology
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 133.
7. David Garland, Colossians/Philemon: The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1998), 94.
8. At this point, a comment is in order on the tension created by 2 Peter 3, which presents
an image oriented more toward destruction and re-creation than to renewal and transforma-
tion. It must be conceded that Peter’s language leans toward destruction rather than renewal
with his use of the word “destruction” and his reference to the basic elements of the cosmos.
On the other hand, the textual evidence leads most scholars to conclude that the word at the
end of verse 10 should be “laid bare” rather than “burned up,” which sounds like purification
rather than destruction.
Peter himself used renewal-type language in his speech in Acts 3. In verse 21 he says that
the Messiah must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything. Peter’s
imagery also relies heavily on Isaiah, who often mixes imagery of destruction/newness with
those of renewal/transformation. The NT also uses both kinds of imagery in the same pas-
sages. Revelation 21:1 indicates the passing away of heaven and earth, while verse 5 talks of God
making all things new, which sounds like renewal. In contrast to Peter, Paul’s eschatology of
the cosmos in Romans 8 simply cannot be read in terms of destruction. Paul clearly has healing
and transformation in mind.
In summary, the Bible speaks in paradoxical terms on this issue, while not contradicting
itself. The fact is, that both renewal/transformation and destruction/replacement are present in
the text, so both must be embraced. The text speaks of something that is obviously impossible
for us to understand. So it uses various images from our current frame of reference, doing the
best it can in human terms to explain a reality beyond the bounds of our comprehension. For a
comprehensive exegetical consideration on this text, see Douglas Moo, 2 Peter/Jude: The NIV
Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 200–202.
9. Francis Schaeffer, “Pollution and the Death of Man,” in The Complete Works of Francis
Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, vol. 5 (Westchester: Crossway, 1982), 37–76.
10. Ernest Lucas, “The New Testament Teaching on the Environment,” Transformation 16
(1999): 98.
11. For further discussion on how creation has a voice, see Rodney Clapp’s comments on
how nature praises God by being itself: Rodney Clapp, Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality
for People, Not Angels (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004), 128–30.
12. We are not environmental scientists, but common knowledge of environmental issues
would suggest a number of concrete ways in which the church can be involved in creation care.
An obvious issue is recycling. Church offices should recycle or use as scratch paper the reams
of corrected or unused documents that often end up in the trash. Aluminum soda cans from
large church picnics should be gathered and turned in to metal recyclers. Churches can get
involved in cleaning up the environment near the church property, perhaps adopting a highway
or organizing trash removal crews. Churches can also volunteer to help with reforestation where
the land has been stripped by logging or by natural disaster. Church building managers can get
their power companies to do energy audits, perhaps not only helping them use less energy, but
bringing a cost savings that could be turned into money for missions. Churches can intentionally

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 Notes to Pages 85–91 305

use ecologically friendly methods of landscaping and gardening. Finally, preaching is important
in creation care as well. Pastors need to make their parishioners aware when the Bible affirms
God’s care for his creation. They also need to teach that damaging the environment often dam-
ages people, often affecting the poor more than others. For more information on creation care,
consider the following organizations: Restoring Eden, the Christian Environmental Network,
and the National Association of Evangelicals (all of which can be reached online). Also consider
watching Bill Moyers’s excellent PBS documentary Is God Green?

Chapter 5 The Church as a Worshipping Community

1. Donald Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 117.
2. Similar statements come from theologians across the spectrum of Christian traditions.
Reformed theologian Donald Bloesch argues that theology is both dogmatic and doxological
(ibid.). Charismatic theologian Rodman Williams writes that worship is the primary function
of the church. See Rodman Williams, Renewal Theology: The Church, the Kingdom and Last
Things (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 87. Anglican theologian Rowan Williams suggests
that theology should be divided into celebratory, communicative, and critical dimensions. Rowan
Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), xiii.
3. Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 1.
4. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 1.22.1.
5. Robin Parry, Worshipping Trinity (Bletchley, UK: Paternoster, 2005), 102–21.
6. Cf. Augustine, On the Trinity, Book 9; Jonathan Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” in The
Works of Jonathan Edwards. Vol. 21: Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith, ed. Sang Hyun
Lee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 186–89.
7. See Parry, Worshiping Trinity, 112–15.
8. Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom, 6th ed., vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker
Books, 1993), 59.
9. James B. Torrance, Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity, 1996), 39.
10. We see this in Harnack, for instance, where religion is essentially turned into ethics. For
him, Christ is not the God who engages us relationally, but only an example of God’s charac-
ter. See also G. K. Chesterton’s provocative discussion of this theme in Orthodoxy (New York:
Image Books, 1959), 141–42.
11. The latter of these was the result of much of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
liberal Christianity, illustrated by theologians such as Adolf von Harnack and Henry Nelson
Wieman.
12. Our thanks to Dr. Ray Lubeck, professor of Hebrew Bible at Multnomah University, who
helped us understand the theology of worship in the Psalms.
13. Cf. Kallistos Ware, “The Earthly Heaven,” in Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contem-
porary Reader, ed. Daniel B. Clendenin (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1995), 12. See also
Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY:
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973).
14. This idea is in conflict with the practice of the homogeneous unit principle, elucidated
by Donald McGavran, Peter Wagner, and others in the 1970s. The homogeneous unit principle
has become a guiding principle for much church growth in the megachurch era. The idea is that
if a church targets a particular segment of society and shapes its programs to attract just those
people, it will create an affinity group and the church will grow faster. Does it work? It would
appear so, from the explosive growth of many megachurches, especially those that are white
and upwardly mobile. But a question we find rarely asked is, “What kind of church does this
strategy create?” Our own sense is that this strategy will almost always fail to create a church
that looks anything like the one at the end of the biblical metanarrative. The church today needs

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 306 Notes to Pages 91–96

to seriously rethink this approach. Interestingly, Bill Hybels, who used such narrow targeting
strategies to build the iconic Willow Creek Community Church, has begun to consider some of
the downsides in his interaction with minority pastors. See the interview published in Christianity
Today 49, no. 4 (April 2005). Also see Paul Louis Metzger, Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and
Class Divisions in a Consumer Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).
15. Cf. Walter Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1978), and J. Barton Payne, The Theology of the Older Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1962).
16. Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea
of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958).
17. Ralph Martin, Worship in the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 14.
18. Otto, Idea of the Holy, 140.
19. Marva Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for the
Turn-of-the-Century Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).
20. Søren Kierkegaard, Devotional Classics, eds. Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith (San
Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993), 107.
21. It is clear in Acts 10 that worship/praise was a component of the manifestation of the
Holy Spirit. Because this event is just one example of a paradigm illustrated in chapters 2, 8,
10, and 19, it is assumed that worship/praise was a part of each of these events, even if praise
is not specifically mentioned.
22. Paul gets at this idea as well in Ephesians 4, explaining that the grace of Christ, even
Christ himself, is mediated to us through one another in the church through the practicing of
the gifts of the Spirit.
23. An obvious practical response to this theology is that worship leaders should strive to use
worship forms that foster community rather than individuality, that invite the congregation into
participation rather than mere observation. One example of a common worship-leading practice
that discourages community is the presence of music leaders who stand in front of the audience
singing with their eyes closed. This posture does not engage the community but disengages the
leader from everyone around him or her, giving others the impression that this person is having
his or her own “me and Jesus” moment, and that no one else is included.
24. The subject of the relationship between the priesthood and the laity in the Catholic and
Orthodox communion is a complicated one. Both continue to contend for a substantive differ-
ence in the role, authority, and position of the priest as mediator. In the Catholic Church, there
is a significant amount of latitude among theologians as to how distinct this separation actually
is. And to be sure, Vatican II, especially in the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, raised the
level of involvement of the laity in all areas of church ministry, including the celebration of the
sacraments. For a brief explanation of the Catholic view, see Richard McBrien, Catholicism (Oak
Grove, MN: Winston Press, 1981), 679–80, 808–11. For a brief comment on the Orthodox view,
see John Karmiris, “Concerning the Sacraments,” in Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Theology,
22–23. For a more extended treatment, consult Schmemann, For the Life of the World.
25. See, for example, Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,
1985), 1056–57; Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 1003;
and James Montgomery Boice, Foundations of the Christian Faith (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-
Varsity, 1986), 589.
26. The glory-focused theology of John Piper, author of Desiring God, has become very
popular in evangelical circles in the last decade, but it is not without its detractors. To encourage
glorifying God, even with the added attraction of enjoying him, before loving God always raises
the danger of a duty-based glorification, which departs from the relational ethos of the God
who initiates encounter with humanity by loving humanity. To put it succinctly, “Though one
can glorify God without loving God, one cannot love God without also desiring to glorify God.
Put differently, the person who loves God longs to glorify God, while the person who glorifies

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 Notes to Pages 96–101 307

God does not necessarily love God.” Paul Louis Metzger, “The Halfway House of Hedonism:
Potential Problems in John Piper’s Desiring God,” Crux (Winter 2005) 41:4, 21–27. See also
Arthur McGill’s trinitarian account of divine glory in Death and Life: An American Theology
(Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1987), 66–69.
27. Deuteronomy 5:10; 6:5; 7:9, 12, 13; 10:12, 19; 11:1, 13, 22; 13:3, 6; 19:9; 21:15–16; 30:6,
16; 20; 33:3.
28. Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994),
491.
29. Cf. texts like Isaiah 1 and 58, Malachi 2, etc.
30. Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evanglicalism for a Postmodern World
(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1999), 99.
31. Note that Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encouragement for parishes to provide a Latin
mass is not a return to pre–Vatican II ideas. He is simply allowing for the traditional mass for
those who desire it.
32. For the historical background of the fundamentalist/modernist controversy, cf. George
Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York: Oxford, 1982), and Mark Noll,
American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
33. Considered a segment of evangelicalism, churches of the Pentecostal and charismatic
traditions would argue correctly that they have always been characterized by a high level of
congregational participation in worship. It has not, however, been a participation through the
means of historic Christian liturgy, but instead has created a liturgy largely its own. For his-
torical background, cf. Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals in American Culture
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), and Vinson Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit:
100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, 1901–2001 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson,
2001). See also the fascinating contribution of Pentecostal theologian Simon Chan, who seeks
to bring into conversation the participatory aspects of Pentecostal worship and the riches of the
Catholic and Orthodox liturgical traditions. Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshipping
Community (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), esp. 147–66.
34. It is our contention that the “breaking of the bread” here is the Lord’s Supper. This break-
ing of bread seems to be an actual part of the worship service, as opposed to the communal
meal that took place apart from that service. Also, Luke uses the concept of breaking bread to
refer to the Eucharist, both in the passion narrative and in the story of the disciples on the road
to Emmaus in Luke 24. See also Marva Dawn, Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 98–100.
35. Cf. his Letter to the Ephesians 20:2, and Letter to the Smyrnaeans 7:1.
36. Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapter 67 in Richardson, Early Christian Fathers, (New
York: Macmillan, 1970), 287–88.
37. The Apostolic Tradition is an early manual for church life, which includes forms of wor-
ship. It comes from the third century and is the earliest extrabiblical example of worship and
service forms in the church.
38. Some groups have been reticent to use forms they do not see in the Bible. The Church of
Christ, for example, has traditionally not used musical instruments. And some very conserva-
tive Reformed churches practice what is known as the regulative principle of worship, which
uses only those worship forms seen in the scriptures, reasoning that God has ordained the only
proper forms of worship and that no one should be forced to worship in a way that God has
not ordained. For examples of a strong regulative principle of worship, see John Murray, Col-
lected Writings of John Murray, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), 165–68; and the
Westminster Confession of Faith, 20.2. For a more moderated view, see Edmund Clowney, The
Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995), 117–36.
39. Carl E Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds. Christian Dogmatics, vol. 2 (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1984), 231.

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 308 Notes to Pages 101–109

40. Ibid., 232.

41. Ibid., 233.
42. All references in this section are taken from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
(Ligouri, MO: Ligouri Publications, 1994), sections 1066 and following.
43. Ibid., 1082.
44. Ibid., 1091.
45. Christian Theology by Erickson, Foundations of the Christian Faith by Boice, and Sys-
tematic Theology by Grudem. Boice and Grudem each use the term once, Erickson not at all.
46. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 1012, note 14.
47. Robert Saucy, The Church in God’s Program (Chicago: Moody, 1972), 177–90.
48. Webber, Ancient-Future Faith, 109. See also Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics of
Christian Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 68–69.
49. Webber, Ancient-Future Faith, 107.
50. Adalbert Hamman, ed. The Mass: Ancient Liturgies and Patristic Texts (Staten Island,
NY: Alba House, 1967), 20. For another important early church testimony to the importance
of the scriptures in worship, see the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, Part IV, 35. Here the
believers are urged to get to church as much as possible to hear the instruction from God’s
Word, through which the believer will hear God speaking and encounter the Holy Spirit. Thus,
the scriptures are understood to be an important way of encountering God relationally, not just
learning about him intellectually.
51. This is seen in the typical evangelical practice of celebrating the Lord’s Supper only
monthly or quarterly instead of weekly.
52. For an explanation of the various views of the Eucharist, see below in “The Church as
a Sacramental Community.”
53. For discussions on this idea, see Eddie Gibbs, Church Next: Quantum Changes in How
We Do Ministry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000); Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church:
Vintage Christianity for New Generations (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003); Tom Beaudoin, Vir-
tual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998).
54. This imagery of Christ as the host of the table is often lost on those church traditions
that pass the bread and the cups through the pew-seated rows of worshippers. This practice
makes it difficult for believers to sense that they are coming to the table to meet Christ there.
For an extended discussion of this imagery in the Eucharist, cf. Henri Nouwen, With Burning
Hearts: A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994).
55. Saucy, Church in God’s Program, 184.
56. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God, 492.
57. This pattern of prayer has commonly taken the form of the acronym “ACTS,” for “adora-
tion, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication” as a way for Christians to memorize a biblical
pattern of prayer. To see how prayers have fit into the liturgy of the church throughout its history,
cf. Frank C. Senn, Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).
58. There are many sources for traditional church prayers. One of the most common and
accessible is the Book of Common Prayer. In the United States it is published by the Episcopal
Church as a representative of the Anglican communion worldwide. The most recent edition is
from 1979, and it is available online in its entirety.
59. Good sources for examples of prayers of the church from its early years to the pres-
ent include Hamman, ed., The Mass; R. C. D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming, eds., Prayers of the
Eucharist: Early and Reformed (New York: Oxford, 1980); and The Book of Common Prayer.
Excellent ancient sources include The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (third century) and
The Apostolic Constitutions (fourth century).
60. Richard Leonard, “Service of the Word,” in The Complete Library of Christian Wor-
ship, vol. 1, The Biblical Foundations of Christian Worship, ed. Robert E. Webber (Nashville:
Star Song, 1993), 304.

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 Notes to Pages 110–119 309

61. Nicholas Ayo, The Lord’s Prayer: A Survey Theological and Literary (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 121.
62. The value of corporate recitation of well-known prayer can also be experienced by cor-
porate proclamation of the historic creeds, a practice largely abandoned by evangelicals in the
twentieth century. Reciting the Nicene or Apostles’ creeds, for example, can give a congregation
a sense of unity with the entire church throughout the ages and also provides a valuable way for
people to memorize the key theological foundations of the Christian faith.

Chapter 6 The Worshipping Church Engages Culture

1. An ex–rock drummer argued for this formula in a local church attended by one of the
authors in the early 1970s. There are other evangelicals who have recently argued more positively
concerning rock music. See Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor, A Matrix of Meanings: Finding
God in Pop Culture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003).
2. Stanley Grenz, “(Pop) Culture: Playground of the Spirit or Diabolical Device?” Cultural
Encounters: A Journal of the Theology of Culture 1, no. 1 (2004): 17.
3. In the 1960s, it would have been typical in evangelical churches to hear people speak dis-
approvingly of Martin Luther King because he was suspected of connections to communism.
More recently, it is his sexual infidelities that are mentioned as cause for doubt.
4. Confessions of St. Augustine, 1.1.
5. Tom Beaudoin, Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X (San Fran-
cisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), xiv.
6. Grenz, “(Pop) Culture,” 15.
7. John Witvliet, Worship Seeking Understanding: Windows into Christian Practice (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003) 115.
8. Ibid., 118.
9. Donald Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 131.
10. Ibid., 135.
11. Marva Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for the
Turn-of-the-Century Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 98.
12. Witvliet, Worship Seeking Understanding, 119.
13. Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, 59.
14. Witvliet, Worship Seeking Understanding, 119.
15. One of the most dangerous examples of culture co-opting the church for its own self-
image is when churches put the American flag on the platform next to the symbols of Jesus and
his church. The church is to bear witness to the biblical trinitarian God and to his good news
of redemption in Jesus Christ. To connect those things to America through the flag is to baptize
the role and activity of the United States in the world as if it represents the agenda of God. To
do this is to seriously undercut the church’s witness in a world where American policies and
activity are often despised as arrogant and immoral.
16. Another form of this same issue pertains to ethnic churches. For example, should a church
made up of Vietnamese immigrants remain a Vietnamese church indefinitely? This is a difficult
question. Clearly, there is a need for immigrant churches that worship in the language of the
worshippers, for only then can they worship with understanding. But three generations later,
when most of the members of the church are Americans and native English speakers, should the
church work to preserve itself as a Vietnamese church? The upsides include the preservation of
ethnic culture and the ability to reach out effectively to other Vietnamese. But the downsides are
significant. Such a church will be virtually unable to connect to anyone outside its own ethnicity.
Also, as successive generations begin to identify more as Americans than as Vietnamese (we do
not suggest that this is either a good thing or a bad thing), they will find it increasingly difficult
to worship in a Vietnamese church. The sad reality today is that many churches in this situation

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 310 Notes to Pages 119–128

are splitting, the young people leaving to form a new American church, thus losing the wisdom
of age and ethnic culture. A better solution would entail some maintenance of ethnicity along
with the adoption of more culturally relevant forms.
17. Walter Brueggemann, Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism: Living in a Three-Storied
Universe (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 121.
18. We would contend, obviously, that baptism is the same kind of unchangeable symbol.
For water, and even the practice of pouring it, being immersed in it, and passing through it,
represents so many important theological realities in the biblical narrative, there is just no way
to duplicate that meaning with any other symbol.
19. Creative worship leaders have done a number of things to draw young people into authentic
worship while still using more traditional forms. Examples include: taking classic hymns and
rearranging the music, making its feel more contemporary while still maintaining the traditional
words; and telling the history behind certain hymns (e.g., Horatio Spafford’s composition of It
Is Well with My Soul after learning of the drowning of his children in a shipwreck), investing
the hymn with a power and relevance that transcends its cultural form.
20. Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, 59.

Chapter 7 The Church as a Sacramental Community

1. The term theo-political conveys our understanding of the church as God’s (theo-) polis
(political)—a kind of city with its own governmental and political structure. This structure is
shaped by the church’s identity as Christ’s kingdom community. The sacraments of baptism
and the Lord’s Supper are events that signify incorporation and continuation in Christ’s polis
and its governance. 1 Peter instructs the Christian community to show respect to all authorities
established by God for Christ’s sake (1 Pet. 2:13–17). Having said that, 1 Peter also distinguishes
the Christian community from all other groups and domains in the same context, specifying that
the church is “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God”
(1 Pet. 2:9). Thus, while it is important that the church exist in this world as an agent of God’s
peace among the nations, it is also vitally important that the church maintain its distinctiveness
from all other powers, given its singular existence as the Triune God’s kingdom community.
2. Before we get going, it is important to note that consideration will focus on the sacraments
of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. For much of its history, the Roman Catholic Church has
claimed that there are seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, the Lord’s Supper, marriage,
ordination, penance, and extreme unction. Protestantism has recognized two: baptism and the
Lord’s Supper. Given the ecumenical nature and scope of this volume, our intent is not to discuss
the five debated “sacraments,” but to focus consideration on the two that have been recognized
by the three major branches of the church—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant (apart from
a few exceptions in the case of the latter). There are enough debates concerning just these two
sacraments to keep us busy! Our ultimate purpose in discussing these two sacraments—baptism
and the Lord’s Supper—is to help the reader reflect seriously on what it means to think of the
church as a sacramental community.
3. Many Protestants do not see John 6 as a eucharistic passage, while Roman Catholics and
Orthodox do. But given that John does not narrate the Last Supper (whereas the Synoptic Gospels
do), we believe that John 6 conveys John’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper.
4. Cyril of Jerusalem, Lectures on the Christian Sacraments: The Procatechesis and the
Five Mystagogical Catecheses, ed. F. L. Cross (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1986), 54.
5. Ibid., 54–56.
6. Ibid., 59.
7. Ibid., 59–60.
8. Ibid., 61–62.

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 Notes to Pages 128–136 311

9. Ibid., xxx. As a result of Cyril’s teaching, and later Augustine’s, Roman Catholics and
Lutherans, for example, hold that water baptism actually saves. This is one of the reasons why
Catholics and Lutherans baptize infants. As they see it, water baptism remits original sin. Typi-
cally, those traditions coming from Calvin and the Anabaptists reject baptismal regeneration.
The Reformed tradition arising from Calvin affirms that baptized infants are made participants
in the covenant community, much like circumcised infants in the Hebrew Scriptures. For the
Reformed, infant baptism is efficacious as a sign and symbol of grace, but is not regenerative.
The baptism of infants confers on them grace that will assist these infants toward salvation
and godliness later in life but will also confer judgment on the baptized if they do not eventu-
ally believe and grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord. Baptists do not see baptism as
salvific, or even as a means of grace, but rather as an external sign of an inner reality that comes
through personal faith in Christ. For those in the Baptist tradition, only those able to assent in
faith and who believe (thus, not infants) should be baptized. Thus, baptistic churches perform
baby dedications but reject the practice of infant baptism.
10. William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political
Act in an Age of Global Consumerism (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2002), 122.
11. Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 124.
12. See Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).
13. See Robert E. Webber’s discussion of the neutralizing of sacred space in the 1980s in
Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 1999), 108.
14. Maximus the Confessor, The Church, the Liturgy and the Soul of Man: The Mystago-
gia of St. Maximus the Confessor, trans. Dom Julian Stead, OSB (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s,
1982), 68.
15. Ibid., 69.
16. See Richard Lischer, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word That
Moved America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 17.
17. Ibid., 16.
18. Ibid., 17–18.
19. Ibid., 17.
20. Ibid.
21. Cyril of Jerusalem, Lectures on the Christian Sacraments, 53–54.
22. Ibid., 54–55.
23. Ibid., 57–58.
24. Ibid., 60–61.
25. Ibid., 61.
26. Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church in Three Treatises (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1966), 158.
27. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994), 344
(italics added).
28. See ibid., subsection 1103, 286 (italics added).
29. Ibid., 344 (italics added).
30. Each tradition—Catholic and Protestant—wishes in its own way to safeguard the doc-
trine of God’s sovereignty. Each succeeds, and each fails. Catholics are right to emphasize
God’s sovereign working in the church, and Protestants are right to emphasize God’s sovereign
working in the individual believer’s life. However, pre–Vatican II Catholics were wrong in saying
that the church mediates Christ’s presence, in that they tended to make the Roman Catholic
Church alone sovereign (while some argue that the present pope has gone a long way to correct
this abuse, others raise concern over the recent statement put forth by the Congregation for the

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 312 Notes to Pages 136–137

Doctrine of the Faith: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/

rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070629_responsa-quaestiones_en.html). Protestants have gone in the op-
posite direction by making the individual believer sovereign through his or her faith (although
Luther sought to guard against this tendency by arguing that God creates the faith). In contrast
to both extremes, God is sovereign through his Son and Spirit in uniting himself to the church
and in creating faith.
31. Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 143–52.
32. Council of Trent (1551): DS 1642; quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 347.
While the Orthodox Church has often employed the term transubstantiation, Kallistos Ware
claims that the term “enjoys no unique or decisive authority” in the Orthodox Church. Nor
does its use in the Orthodox Church “commit theologians to the acceptance of Aristotelian
philosophical concepts” (as it has in the Roman Catholic Church). Ware also notes that while
the Orthodox have always “insisted on the reality of the change” from bread and wine into
the body and blood of Christ at the consecration of the elements, the Orthodox have “never
attempted to explain the manner of the change.” See Kallistos (Timothy) Ware, The Orthodox
Church (Baltimore: Penguin, 1963), 290–91. What Ware says of the sacraments’ significance for
the Orthodox Church can also be said for the Roman Catholic Church and possibly even the
Lutheran Church: “The chief place in Christian worship belongs to the sacraments or, as they
are called in Greek, the mysteries” (281).
33. See Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon,
1978), 108.
34. Ibid., 249. See also “The Marburg Colloquy and The Marburg Articles, 1529,” in Luther’s
Works: Word and Sacrament, IV, vol. 38, trans. Martin E. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1971), 58–61.
35. See the following works for a discussion of this christological theme: Richard Muller,
“communicatio idiomatum/communicatio proprietatum,” in Dictionary of Latin and Greek
Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1985); Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3rd ed.,
rev. trans., Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1899), 331; Heinrich
Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics: Set out and Illustrated from the Sources, with a foreword by Karl
Barth, ed. Ernst Bizer, trans. G. T. Thomson (Great Britain: George Allen & Unwin, 1950; reprint,
Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 432–33; Karl Barth, The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the
Christian Religion, vol. 1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 159.
36. See Richard Muller’s entries “sursum corda” and “unio sacramentalis,” in Dictionary
of Latin and Greek Theological Terms. Calvin writes: “For, in order that pious souls may duly
apprehend Christ in the Supper, they must be raised up to heaven .€.€. Scripture itself also not
only carefully recounts to us the ascension of Christ, by which he withdrew the presence of his
body from our sight and company, to shake from us all carnal thinking of him, but also, whenever
it recalls him, bids our minds be raised up, and seek him in heaven, seated at the right hand of
the Father [Col. 3:1–2].” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), vol. II, Bk. IV, Ch. XVII, part 36.
37. For a nuanced example, see Christopher J. Ellis, Gathering: A Theology and Spirituality
of Worship in Free Church Tradition (London: SCM, 2004). Whereas the Catholic understand-
ing of memorial signifies that Christ’s work is re-presented at the table, the widespread Baptist
understanding of memorial signifies that Christ is not re-presented but simply remembered.
For the majority in the Baptist heritage, Christ’s finished work at the cross remains an event of
history, and his work’s present significance is reserved to its existential impact on the believer’s
life. On this view, Christ is present at the table gathering in the same manner that he is pres-
ent to any other spatial event. It is worth noting here that an evangelical Baptist who holds to
Christ’s real presence in the sacraments is John E. Colwell. See his work, Promise and Presence:
An Exploration of Sacramental Theology (Bletchley, UK: Paternoster, 2006).

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 Notes to Pages 137–149 313

38. It is worth noting that in Luke 24 the very words of institution used at the Last Supper
are used again here. For Luke, this is a model for the church in its post-resurrection encounter
with the risen Christ at the table. It is also worth noting that only when the Lord breaks the
bread while restating the words of institution that the disciples who were present recognized
him (and not when he had earlier disclosed to them all that the scriptures said of the Messiah
on the road to Emmaus).
39. If we follow this logic to its illogical conclusion, we would pray only once a month and
read the Bible once a month to preserve prayer and scripture reading as special events.
40. For a helpful introduction to the Quaker view of the sacraments, see D. Elton Trueblood’s
chapter “A Sacramental World,” in The People Called Quakers (Richmond, IN: Friends United,
1971). For a thorough overview of the variegated Anabaptist theologies and practices, see Thomas
N. Finger, A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology: Biblical, Historical, Constructive (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), esp. 184–97.
41. John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before
the Watching World (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 1992), 17.
42. John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994),
150.
43. Luther, Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 142.
44. Bainton, Here I Stand, 108.
45. Ibid., 110.
46. See ibid., 108–9. Three current theologians whose theologies and ecclesiologies are vitally
shaped by their appreciation for the Eucharist are the Roman Catholic William Cavanaugh, the
Greek Orthodox John Zizioulas, and the Lutheran Robert Jenson.
47. See Bainton’s discussion in Here I Stand, 110. It is worth noting though that, as in the
case of the Lord’s Supper, Luther believed that faith was critical for water baptism to prove ef-
ficacious (first by the notion of implicit faith in the child and then later by the faith of a child’s
sponsor).
48. See Geoffrey Bromiley’s articles on infant and believer baptism in Walter A. Elwell, ed.,
Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1984), s.v. “Baptism, Be-
lievers’” and “Baptism, Infant.” For further discussion of this question, see Joachim Jeremias,
Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004); and Kurt Aland,
Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004).
49. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, s. v. “Baptism, Infant,” by Bromiley.
50. For a well-articulated defense of God’s providential designs for America as a nation
under God, see Stephen H. Webb, American Providence: A Nation with a Mission (New York:
Continuum, 2004). See also his debate with William T. Cavanaugh in Cultural Encounters: A
Journal for the Theology of Culture 2, no. 2 (2006): 7–29; Cavanaugh’s article “The Empire
of the Empty Shrine: American Imperialism and the Church,” Webb’s response to Cavanaugh,
and Cavanaugh’s reply.
51. On this point, see N. T. Wright’s discussion of the function of symbols within the cul-
tural worldview of Jesus’s time in Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994),
369–442. Wright’s analysis is quite helpful in diagnosing our own need to radically subvert and
challenge the dominant symbols that order the Christian life in America today.

Chapter 8 Sacraments and the Search for the Holy Grail

1. Arnold T. Olson, Believers Only (Free Church Press, 1964). While the free church tradition
must guard against so universalizing the body that it fails to localize it at a given place, those
church traditions that practice closed communion (no matter their emphasis on the visible church
being the universal church) end up facing the same danger.
2. Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, The New International Commentary
on the New Testament, vol. 7 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 533–34. Craig Blomberg argues

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 314 Notes to Pages 149–163

that Paul’s vision for the church in 1 Corinthians bears relevance for homogeneous groupings
in the church-growth movement today. Craig L. Blomberg, 1 Corinthians, The NIV Application
Commentary, 6 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 239.
3. Fee, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 544.
4. John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the
Watching World (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 1992), 17.
5. Walter Brueggemann, “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity,” Christian Cen-
tury, March 24–31, 1999, 342.
6. By no means do we wish to suggest that the solution to the problem of the loss of the
“common table” is a simple one. Catholics and Orthodox believe that the Sacrament of Orders
is required for a true Eucharist. If Catholics and Orthodox came to the table with Protestants,
they would in effect be renouncing Catholicism and Orthodoxy. For Protestants to come to the
table with Catholics or Orthodox, they would have to renounce their Protestant traditions and
become Catholic or Orthodox.
7. Brueggemann, “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity,” 344–45.
8. Ibid., 346.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. The quote is taken from Lee Strobel, “Making the Case for Christmas,” found at Faithful
Reader.com. See http://www.faithfulreader.com/authors/au-strobel-lee.asp. The article is based
on The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005).
12. More will be said of these matters in chapter 16.

Chapter 9 The Church as a Serving Community

1. Howard Snyder, Community of the King (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1978), 75.
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 5, ed. Geffrey B.
Kelley, trans. Daniel W. Bloesch and James H. Burtness (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 33.
3. Sister Nonna Harrison writes, “It is wrong to think that in the Trinity self-emptying
and deference to another person belong specifically to the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Self-
emptying that is everything else, begins with the Father. The Son and the Holy Spirit respond
to His humble love by offering the same back to Him, so Their relationship is mutual.” “The
Holy Trinity: A Model for Human Community,” St. Nina Quarterly 3, no. 3 (April 2005): 5,
http://www.stnina.org/journal/art/3.3.2.
4. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, 1997), 208.
5. See Timothy Ware, “The Human Person as an Icon of the Trinity,” unionwithchrist.org.
6. Miroslav Volf, “The Trinity and the Church,” in Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic
Theology, ed. Paul Louis Metzger (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 170.
7. Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 361. For an excellent pre–Vatican
II discussion of the priestly involvement of the laity, see Yves Congar, Lay People in the Church
(London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1965).
8. Martin Luther, “The Freedom of the Christian,” in Martin Luther: Selections from His
Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 53.
9. Ibid., 75.
10. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (Garden City, NY: Image, 1955), 54.
11. Hans Küng, The Church (Garden City, NY: Image, 1976), 247–48.
12. Snyder, Community of the King, 79.
13. Austin Flannery, OP, ed., Vatican Council II: The Concilier and Post Conciliar Documents,
rev. ed. (Boston: St. Pacel Editions, 1987), 363. We understand that there are differences in the
Catholic and Protestant understandings of grace. The Catholic idea of infusion is problematic,
in our view. But the typical evangelical Protestant idea of legal imputation is also problematic,

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 Notes to Pages 164–176 315

in that it is too narrow. For more on this, see Paul Louis Metzger, “Mystical Union with Christ:
An Alternative to Blood Transfusions and Legal Fictions,” Westminster Theological Journal
65 (2003): 201–14.
14. Another area of interest for the theology of spiritual gifts as a means of creating redemp-
tive community pertains to ministry in the church as either gift-based or office-based. This topic
will be addressed in the chapter “The Church as an Ordered Community.” Also, since both the
descriptions of the various gifts and the debate about whether the so-called charismatic gifts
are still active are subjects addressed by many authors, we will not cover them here. Several of
the most recent sources for these discussions are: Kenneth Berding, What Are Spiritual Gifts?
Rethinking the Conventional View (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2006); Bruce Bugbee, What You
Do Best in the Body of Christ: Discover Your Spiritual Gifts, Personal Style, and God-Given
Passion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005); Stuart Calvert, Uniquely Gifted: Discovering Your
Spiritual Gifts (Birmingham: New Hope, 1993); J. I. Packer et al., The Kingdom and the Power:
Are Healing and the Spiritual Gifts Used by Jesus and the Early Church Meant for the Church
Today? (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1993).
15. David Wells, No Place for Truth, Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 4.
16. An Internet perusal of Christian bestseller lists just confirms this assertion.
17. See David Wells for these and similar observations.
18. Comment made by Dr. James Hitchcock to a group of evangelicals in St. Louis, Mis-
souri, in 1994.
19. See John Perkins’s critique of the prosperity gospel among the poor: John M. Perkins,
Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development (Grand Rapids: Baker Books,
1993), 71.
20. Consider, for example, Jesus’s proclamation to a crippled man that his sins are forgiven,
addressing his relational healing with God before considering his need for physical healing.
21. Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 45.
22. See Wells, No Place for Truth, and Donald Bloesch, Donald G. Bloesch, The Church:
Sacraments, Worship, Ministry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002).
23. Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.
24. Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, in The Complete
Works of Francis Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, vol. 4, A Christian View of the Church
(Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1982), 64.
25. Carmel Pilcher, RSJ, “A Culture of Sharing: Truthful Eucharist,” Dies Domini: Year of
the Eucharist, 2005, www.cathnews.com/eucharist/reflections.php.
26. John L. Ronsvalle and Sylvia Ronsvalle, The State of Church Giving through 2000 (Cham-
paign, IL: Empty Tomb, 2002), 40.
27. George Barna, Barna Research Archives: Money, Barna Research Group, www.barna.org.

Chapter 10 Church Discipline—The Lost Element of Service

1. While there are surprisingly few books written on church discipline, the following re-
sources should be considered. In addition to books on the subject, most denominations have
standards and practices for church discipline, especially in the case of pastoral sin, which can
be accessed by contacting those denominations directly. J. Carl Laney, A Guide to Church Dis-
cipline (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1985); Don Baker, Beyond Forgiveness: The Healing
Touch of Church Discipline (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1984); Marlin Jeschke, Discipling in
the Church: Recovering a Ministry of the Gospel (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1988); Church
Ethics and Its Organizational Context: Learning from the Sex Abuse Scandal in the Catholic
Church, ed. Jean M. Bartunek, Mary Ann Hinsdale, and James F. Keenan (Lanham, MD: Row-
man & Littlefield, 2006).
2. Jeschke, Discipling in the Church, 30.

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 316 Notes to Pages 177–185

3. See Laney’s chapter on the purpose of church discipline for more on this (Laney, Guide
to Church Discipline).
4. H. B. Swete, “Penitential Discipline in the First Three Centuries,” in Studies in Early Chris-
tianity, vol. 16, Christian Life: Ethics, Morality and Discipline in the Early Church, ed. Everett
Ferguson (New York: Garland, 1993), 249.
5. Ephesus 10.1, Philadelphia 3.2, 8.1, Smyrna 4.1, 5.3.
6. Philadelphia 6.1.
7. Swete, “Penitential Discipline in the First Three Centuries,” 257.
8. This story took place in a Midwest church where one of the authors joined the pastoral
staff toward the end of the events. The names of those involved have been changed for privacy.
While the author was a firsthand witness to some of the events, the recounting of the story
comes from a sermon by Rev. Michael P. Andrus, the senior pastor who shepherded the process
of discipline, on the day the sinning believers were welcomed into church membership by the
entire congregation.
9. Some would argue that the biblical thing to do in a situation like this would be for this
husband and wife to divorce and go back to their previous spouses. We believe this is misguided.
First, the result would be to break yet another one-flesh relationship to go back to another one.
Second, God has demonstrated that in his grace he brings redemption to those who carry on in
such a marriage after having come to a place of confession and repentance. This is illustrated in
God’s beautiful irony of ultimately bringing the Messiah into the world through David’s sinful
relationship with and marriage to Bathsheba.

Chapter 11 The Church as an Ordered Community

1. Henri de Lubac, The Motherhood of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1982), 8.
2. Paul F. M. Zahl, “The Bishop-Led Church: The Episcopal or Anglican Polity Affirmed,
Weighed, and Defended,” in Perspectives on Church Government: Five Views of Church Polity,
ed. Chad Owen Brand and R. Stanton Norman (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Academic,
2004), 210.
3. Thus, both Pope Benedict and theologian John Zizioulas, representing Catholic and
Orthodox traditions, argue for a hierarchical church structure based on a hierarchical model
of the Trinity. On the other hand, Miroslav Volf understands the Trinity to be more egalitarian
and thus argues that congregational polity is more reflective of the trinitarian essence. See Volf’s
arguments against Joseph Ratzinger and John Zizioulas in After Our Likeness: The Church as
the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1997), 236.
4. Perhaps at this point it would be helpful to add a note of explanation regarding the five-
hundred-year-old disagreement between Catholics (and Orthodox as well) and Protestants on
the issue of authority in the church. Since the Reformation, Protestants have contended that the
Bible is the premier authority in the church, which connects the church to its ultimate authority,
Jesus Christ. This is the essence of sola scriptura. And as a result of centuries of animosity and
misunderstanding, Protestants have accused the Catholic Church (and thus the Orthodox by as-
sociation) of making church tradition and the Magisterium (teaching office held by the bishops)
authoritative over the scriptures. Catholics and Orthodox, on the other hand, have argued that
the lack of any unified interpretive authority leaves Protestants without the means to judge the
propriety of any person’s own understanding of the Bible. Both of these accusations are unfair.
Simply put, the Catholic understanding of authority never puts tradition or the teaching office
over the Bible. Rather, all three work together with tradition and the teaching office accurately
explaining, reflecting, and guarding the truth of scripture. For a detailed explanation of this
process, see the Vatican II document Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum,
Austin Flannery, OP, ed., Vatican Council II: The Concilier and Post Conciliar Documents, rev.
ed. (Boston: St. Pacel Editions, 1987). Equally, in mainstream Protestant thought, sola scriptura
has never meant that the Bible needs no authoritative interpretation for the church. The very

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 Notes to Pages 185–192 317

existence of guiding documents such as the Lutheran and Reformed catechisms, the Augsburg
Confession, and the Westminster Confession witnesses to the awareness Protestants have that
the Bible must be properly interpreted and understood in order for its authority as the Word of
God to be implemented in the church. A brief but helpful explanation of the Protestant idea of
biblical authority can be found in the chapter titled, “The Power of God’s Word: Authority,” in
Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985).
5. For example, congregationalist James Leo Garrett cites English Baptist Alex Gilmore: “The
Church is not, and must never be regarded as, a democracy, for the power is not in the hands of
the demos but of the Christos: it is a Christocracy.” James Leo Garrett, “The Congregation-Led
Church” in Perspectives on Church Government, 179. Similarly, The Dogmatic Constitution
on the Church, from Vatican II, argues regarding the church, “It is also a flock, of which God
foretold that he would himself be the shepherd, and whose sheep, although watched over by
human shepherds, are nevertheless at all times led and brought to pasture by Christ himself,
the Good Shepherd and prince of shepherds, who gave his life for his sheep.” Flannery, Vatican
II, 353. Thus, in the episcopal system, the authority of bishops, and even of the pope, is always
subservient to and representative of the complete and unique authority of Jesus Christ as Lord
of the church.
6. For example, Protestants would cite the papal proclamation of the immaculate conception
of Mary, seeing it as an example of an overreaching episcopal authority, able to establish dogma
with little or no biblical evidence. Those in the episcopal tradition might refer to incidences like
the rise of cult leaders Jim Jones and David Koresh and their ability, within the congregational
system disconnected from interpretive tradition or episcopal authority, to claim that they alone
are the true interpreters of scripture, and therefore completely authoritative in all they teach.
7. The perspicuity of the scriptures is the idea that the Bible, in its fundamental affirmations,
is clear and therefore understandable. It is not necessary for it to be mediated or explained by
some other authority.
8. For example, the Catholic catechism explains regarding the role of the bishops: “The
mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by
God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium’s task to preserve God’s people from
deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true
faith without error.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publica-
tions, 1994), 890.
9. Bengt Holmberg, Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority in the Primitive Church as
Reflected in the Pauline Epistles (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978), 198.
10. Gordon Fee, “The Priority of Spirit Gifting for Church Ministry,” in Discovering Bibli-
cal Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy, ed. Ronald Pierce and Rebecca Groothuis
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 249.
11. Volf, After Our Likeness, 231.
12. Ronald Y. K. Fung, “Function or Office? A Survey of the New Testament Evidence,”
Evangelical Review of Theology 8, no. 1 (April 1984): 39.
13. We do believe that scripture ordains offices (elder, deacon, pastor), but not a particular
system of authority. Also, some would argue that many churches today use systems that are
really hybrids of the traditional models. We will not address these.
14. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to Smyrna, 6.
15. Interestingly, in medieval and Renaissance art, the pope is often known by the fact that
he has keys hanging from his belt.
16. The Catechism states: “The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the ‘rock’ of
his Church. He gave him the keys of his Church and instituted him shepherd of the whole flock.
‘The office of binding and loosing which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of
apostles united to its head.’ This Pastoral office of Peter and the other apostles belongs to the
Church’s very foundation and is continued by the bishops under the primacy of the Pope. The

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 318 Notes to Pages 192–199

Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter’s successor, ‘is the perpetual and visible source and foundation
of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.’ ‘For the Roman
Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full,
supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise
unhindered.’” Catechism, 881–82.
17. This idea is not new to the church but goes back at least to Augustine who, in his argu-
ments against the Donatists, contended that God dispenses his grace through ordained clergy
by virtue of their office and this grace is not undercut even by the existence of some sin in the
life of the bishop/priest.
18. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, 1997), 249.
19. Veli-Matti Karkkainen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity,
2002), 22.
20. Lubac, Motherhood of the Church, 30–31.
21. Ibid., 85.
22. Zahl, “Bishop-Led Church,” 213.
23. This issue of the hierarchy as fundamental to a faith community being called a church is
addressed by the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in the document
Dominus Iesus, published in August of 2000 under the authority of Pope John Paul II. Groups
without a hierarchy are called “ecclesial communities,” rather than churches proper.
24. This remark was made by Dr. Beldon Lane, Professor of Historical Theology, St. Louis
University, at a conference where one of the authors was in attendance.
25. For example, the Catholic catechism remarks that it is the Magisterium’s task “to preserve
God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of
professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at
seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates.” Catechism, 235.
26. Zahl, “Bishop-Led Church,” 237.
27. Brand and Norman, Perspectives on Church Government, 18.
28. See L. Roy Taylor, “Presbyterianism,” in Who Runs the Church? 4 Views on Church
Government, ed. Steven B. Cowan (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 81.
29. Taylor, Reymond, Berkhof, and Boice, for example, all argue this point.
30. This kind of separatist Puritanism is exemplified in Robert Browne’s Reformation without
Tarrying for Any (1582), and the Savoy Declaration (1658), which was a separatist response to
the Westminster Confession of Faith.
31. See Cowan, ed., Who Runs the Church? 135–38 for history.
32. Paige Patterson, “Single Elder Congregationalism,” in ibid., 139.
33. James Leo Garrett argues that Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of believers led to his
argument that the Christian congregation has the right to judge all teaching, to call pastors, and
to dismiss them if they are heretical. See “Congregation-Led Church,” 174.
34. Volf, After Our Likeness, 226.
35. Garrett, “Congregation-Led Church,” 193.
36. This idea of connecting giftedness directly to influence in the structure of the church and
its leadership is a key issue in the significant debate among American evangelicals on the issue of
women in leadership. To see examples of the connection between gifts and women in leadership,
see the website of Christians for Biblical Equality (cbeinternational.org/new/index.shtml).
37. See Garrett, “Congregation-Led Church,” 188, and Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 934.
38. For his most extensive discourse on this topic, see his Dominus Iesus: On the Unicity and
Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, published in August of 2000.
39. Taylor, “Presbyterianism,” 236.

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 Notes to Pages 201–207 319

Chapter 12 The Role of Women in the Ordered Community

1. Dr. Matthews is Lois W. Bennett Distinguished Associate Professor of Educational Min-
istries and Women’s Ministries at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.
Also, for this work, egalitarians are defined as those who contend that women have the right
to an authority equal to that of men in both marriage and the church, or at least in the church.
Hierarchicalists are those who believe that the Bible argues that men are to take the ultimate
human authority roles in both the home and the church.
2. It is also interesting to notice how exegetical interpretation of the key passages has changed
in the last couple of centuries in light of women’s movements. Linda Mercadante, in a summary
of her master’s thesis on changes in the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11, noted correctly that
Calvin was illustrative of his paternalistic era. His commentary contends that the prophecy Paul
refers to in the passage is authoritative teaching, which means that women could not have done it,
with or without a head covering. Moreover, he contends that not only wives, but also all women,
are created inferior to all men and are to be in subjection to them. Today of course, even most
traditionalist interpreters of this passage would interpret it quite differently, allowing that women
were permitted to prophesy, precisely because the prophecy mentioned is not a proclamation akin
to authoritative teaching. Moreover, few would venture to contend for Calvin’s radical subjection
of the entire female gender to men. Mercadante is careful to note that egalitarian interpretations
are also subject to their cultural settings. Cf. Linda Mercadante, “The Male–Female Debate:
Can We Read the Bible Objectively?” Crux 15, no. 2 (June 1979): 20–25.
3. This is not to suggest that there are no proper hierarchy structures in the present church
or even in the church of the eschaton. But authority structures in the present church are based
on such things as community-recognized gifting, and character (Acts 6; 1 Tim.; elders/deacons,
etc.), or a specific commission by Christ, such as Paul’s call to be an apostle to the Gentiles and
their churches. Moreover, authority in the church of the future, such as we are able to under-
stand it, seems to be based on faithfulness to Christ in the present, not on gender (Rev. 3:21;
20:6; Matt. 19:28–30).
4. Paul appears to apply this issue to Timothy when he advises him to continue in his authori-
tative teaching role, not to allow anyone to look down upon him simply because he is young.
5. Cf. examples of this trend in articles by Vern Poythress and George Knight in Recovering
Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, ed. John Piper and
Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1991).
6. Vern Poythress, “The Church as Family: Why Male Leadership in the Family Requires
Male Leadership in the Church,” in Piper and Grudem, eds., Recovering Biblical Manhood
and Womanhood.
7. Schreiner also ignores this verse in his similar commentary on the same passage. Cf. Two
Views on Women in Ministry, ed. James Beck and Craig Blomberg (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2001), 211.
8. See Joseph Hellerman’s excellent work The Ancient Church as Family (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2001) for an extensive discussion of the church as ultimate family structure.
9. Note that we are not arguing here for or against marital hierarchy in the home.

Chapter 13 The Church as a Cultural Community: Christ, Culture, and the Sermon
on€the Mount Community
1. “Culture” may be defined as the totality of human activity in all spheres, both work and
leisure, and includes language and social norms—whether spoken or unspoken—that shape
people’s lives and worldviews and guarantee rites of passage in society. Culture is also taken to
refer to the heights of human achievement in the realms of the sciences, the arts, ethics, or sports.
Lastly, culture may be seen to refer to the whole of a particular society or civilization, which may
be viewed either as inclusive of the church or as distinct from a society’s religious or spiritual

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 320 Notes to Pages 208–215

counterpart. In this essay, we are thinking specifically of culture as a community with a given
language and social norms, which shape that community’s values, actions, and practices.
2. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951).
3. For other helpful treatments of Christ’s relation to culture through the centuries, see the
following works: Robert Webber, The Secular Saint: A Case for Evangelical Social Responsibility
(Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004); Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in
the History of Culture, with a new preface by the author (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1999). The latter book shows Christ’s impact on culture through the various epochs; each age’s
predominant image of Christ presented here provides a lens for viewing that particular era.
Two important critiques of Niebuhr’s paradigm are: Glen Stassen, D. M. Yeager, and John
Howard Yoder, “How H. Richard Niebuhr Reasoned: A Critique of Christ and Culture,” in
Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996);
and Craig A. Carter, Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective (Grand
Rapids: Brazos, 2007).
4. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, edited and with an introduction by Edwin H.
Robertson et al. (London: Collins, 1970), 306.
5. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; quoted in Larry Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resis-
tance (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1972), 25.
6. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101, “To Cledonios,” in Patrologia Græca, vol. XXXVII,
col. 181C; quoted in Erwin Fahlbusch and Geoffrey William Bromiley, eds., The Encyclopedia
of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), s. v. “Salvation, The Orthodox Tradition,”
by Dan-Ilie Ciobotea.
7. Karl Barth, “The Barmen Declaration”; quoted in Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s
Confession under Hitler (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 239–40.
8. William H. Willimon, “Been There, Preached That: Today’s Conservatives Sound like Yester-
day’s Liberals,” Leadership: A Practical Journal for Church Leaders 16, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 76.
9. John R. W. Stott speaks of poverty in spirit as “spiritual bankruptcy” in The Message of
the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), The Bible Speaks Today, ed. J. A. Moyer and John
R. W. Stott (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1978), 39.
10. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1959),
50–51.
11. Ibid., 50–53.
12. Ibid., 50–51.
13. Ibid., 51.
14. Ibid., 52–53.
15. Ibid., 120.
16. Ibid., 90–91.
17. Ibid., 91.
18. Ibid., 120.
19. Karl Barth, “The Christian Community and the Civil Community,” in Against the Stream:
Shorter Post-War Writings, 1946–1952, ed. R. G. Smith, trans. E. M. Delacour and S. Godman
(London: SCM, 1954), 31.
20. Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, 303–4.
21. Geoffrey Wainwright, “Types of Spirituality,” in The Study of Spirituality, ed. Cheslyn
Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright, and Edward Yarnold, SJ (New York: Oxford University Press,
1986), 595.
22. Ibid., 596.
23. Ibid., 597–98.
24. Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, 156.
25. Luther writes that “a Christian man is righteous and a sinner at the same time, holy and
profane, an enemy of God and a child of God. None of the sophists will admit this paradox,

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 Notes to Pages 215–219 321

because they do not understand the true meaning of justification.” Martin Luther, Luther’s
Works, vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians, 1535, chapters 1–4, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis:
Concordia Publishing House, 1963), 232–33.
26. Martin Luther, “An Open Letter on the Harsh Book against the Peasants,” in Luther’s
Works, vol. 46, The Christian in Society, ed. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967),
69–70. See also Bonhoeffer’s dialectical depiction of the relation of Christ, church, and state
in Christ the Center, trans. Edwin H. Robertson (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978),
63–64.
27. Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, 172.
28. Karl Barth, “The Christian Community and the Civil Community,” 24.
29. See ibid., 29.
30. We use the term fundamentalist here as a qualifier to signify that not all evangelicals are
fundamentalistic in their engagement of culture.
31. Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2002), 106.
32. Ibid.
33. See also Alan J. Torrance’s discussion of the situation at the time of Hitler in his introduc-
tion to Christ, Justice and Peace: Toward a Theology of the State in Dialogue with the Barmen
Declaration, by Eberhard Jüngel, trans. D. Bruce Hamill and Alan J. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1992). Torrance speaks of how nationalism’s rise in Germany led to the subjectivizing
of spirituality and the relativizing of the “imperatives of the Gospel” (xi). See also Paul Louis
Metzger, The Word of Christ and the World of Culture: Sacred and Secular through the Theology
of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 165–66.
34. Bethge’s remarks are found in John W. de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit: Bonhoeffer’s
Friend Eberhard Bethge (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 200–201.
35. Reinhard Hütter, Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1999), 11.
36. See Kristen Deede Johnson, “‘Public’ Re-Imagined: A Reconsideration of Church, State,
and Civil Society,” in A World for All? Trinity, Church and Global Civil Society, ed. William F.
Storrar, Peter J. Casarella, and Paul Louis Metzger (forthcoming with Eerdmans), 14–15.
37. Falwell was a very complex figure. As an antagonistic fundamentalist distancing himself
from secular America, he promoted the model of Christ against culture. As a reconstructionist
trying to take back America, he promoted the model of Christ as the transformer of culture. He
also inadvertently promoted Christ and culture in paradox, given his subjugation of the church
to the state in promoting culture’s transformation. Falwell functioned as a kind of dualist in that
he did not see the church as the primary agent for bringing about society’s transformation; for
this he turned to the state. The church was awarded a subservient role to the state in bringing
about society’s transformation.
38. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criti-
cism of Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 143–44.
39. Ibid., 141.
40. Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (New York: Double-
day, 1998), 110–11.
41. Suffice it to say that Jesus’s claim that he is king, and that his kingdom is here though
not yet fully realized, and will be realized at his second coming, has always made the Caesars
apprehensive. Barth was ousted from Germany in the early 1930s for claiming in the Barmen
Declaration that there is no other Führer (or Lord) than Jesus Christ. Japanese pastors during
World War II were imprisoned for preaching the return of Christ. The problem for Führers and
Tojos, Caesars and Caiaphases alike, is that the resurrected and reigning Jesus serves as a check
on their ambitions and spoils their garden parties.

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 322 Notes to Pages 219–224

42. See Bonhoeffer’s discussion of interpretive sophistry when dealing with Christ’s claims,
in Cost of Discipleship, 87–91.
43. Regardless of how Luther intended them, his remarks that while the body is under Caesar’s
authority, the soul is under God’s alone certainly opens the door for Christians to offer blind
and reckless submission to the state. See Martin Luther, “Temporal Authority: To What Extent
It Should Be Obeyed,” in Luther’s Works, vol. 45, The Christian in Society, ed. Walther I. Brandt
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1962), 111. Ultimate authority over our souls and bodies belongs to the
One who alone can throw both soul and body into hell (Matt. 10:28). See William T. Cavanaugh’s
discussion of the problem of separating authority over the body/temporal and the soul/spiritual
in Roman Catholic circles in the section, “The Minimum of Body,” in Torture and Eucharist:
Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 157–65.
44. Chapter 14 will provide a distinctive entry point to consideration of the synthetic approach
that differs from the discussion set forth in the immediately following section.
45. Wainwright, “Types of Spirituality,” 598.
46. Wainwright claims that the incarnation and resurrection receive particular attention in
the synthesist model; this orientation bears the marks of the biological and the infused, which
impact the entire race of humanity (ibid., 598). Wainwright presents 2 Tim. 1:10 (the infusion
of divine life into the whole race through Christ) as representative of this form of spirituality
(598–99).
47. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; quoted in John W. Doberstein, “Introduction,” in Dietrich Bonhoef-
fer, Life Together (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 9.
48. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge, rev. ed. (New
York: Macmillan, 1967), 188.
49. Ibid., 203.
50. Ibid., 193–94.
51. Eberhard Bethge, “Foreword,” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, xv.
52. See Wainwright, “Types of Spirituality,” 603.
53. See ibid., 604.
54. See ibid., 605.
55. It is quite possible that Jesus proclaimed, “I am the light of the world,” against the
backdrop of the lights from the booths scattered on the hills surrounding Jerusalem during the
Feast of Tabernacles.
56. Theonomists maintain that the church is to strive to make America a Christian nation
where God’s law set forth in the Hebrew Scriptures is enforced. For a representative work, see
Gary North and Gary DeMar, Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, What It Isn’t (Tyler, TX:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1991).
57. See the critique of classic forms of dispensationalism as it concerns the separation of
Israel and the church in Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock, Progressive Dispensationalism (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 1993), 50–51.
58. See the discussion of supersessionism (the church displacing Israel) in Scott Bader-Saye’s
Church and Israel after Christendom: The Politics of Election (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2005),
67, 74, 76.
59. See Perry Miller’s discussion of Winthrop in Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1956), 4–6.
60. Thus, he was no theonomist. But he was no Anabaptist either. Unlike Anabaptists,
Bonhoeffer was not reticent to get involved in confronting and/or promoting governmental or
social structures as a Christian. Usually when Anabaptists get involved socially, they speak as a
community. It would be out of character for them to seek public office. While Bonhoeffer does
not see the church as a voluntary association of religious individuals whose ultimate public
allegiance is to the state, he did see that he as an individual Christian had a public role beyond

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 Notes to Pages 224–231 323

participation in Christ’s polis, the church. Thus, he involved himself in various efforts nationally
and internationally in the fight against the Nazi menace.
61. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, 16.
62. The quotation is taken from John Winthrop (1630), “A Model of Christian Charity,”
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/charity.html.
63. Vine Deloria Jr., God Is Red (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 1994), 261.
64. Niebuhr’s typology is neither Christ-centered, nor cruciform, nor ecclesially framed.
Concerning Jesus, he writes: “[Christ] is not a center from which radiate[s] the love of God and of
men, obedience to God and Caesar, trust in God and nature, hope in divine and human action. He
exists rather as the focusing point in the continuous alternation of movements from God to man
and from man to God.” Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, 29. When Christ in his particularity as the
crucified and risen Messiah is not taken seriously in our reflections on the church’s engagement
of culture, the danger exists that the church will take matters into its own hands when facing
the world’s opposition, rather than entrusting judgment to God. Christ’s cross instructs us to
undergo judgment and persecution, and Christ’s resurrection encourages us to hope in God to
deliver and redeem us in his time and in his way. Furthermore, Christ’s particular embodiment
in the church does not figure significantly in Niebuhr’s reflections on Christ’s relation to culture
either. Without seeing the church as key to the matrix, Christ is abstracted from his concrete
embodiment in culture. And when Christ is abstracted from the church, there is nothing to
safeguard the Christian individual from being conformed to the patterns of the fallen powers,
including the state or market. Christ and his kingdom are crucial to the church as its transcendent
ground, providing firm hope. The church is also of critical importance in that the church is the
concrete manifestation of Christ’s kingdom, providing the context for the demonstration of this
hope as contemporary witness. As Stanley Hauerwas and Mark Sherwindt write, “Without the
Kingdom-ideal, the church loses her identity-forming hope; without the church, the kingdom
loses its concrete character.” Stanley Hauerwas and Mark Sherwindt, “The Kingdom of God:
An Ecclesial Space for Peace,” Word & World 2, no. 2 (1982): 131.
65. John Howard Yoder, “Armaments and Eschatology,” quoted in Stanley Hauerwas, With
the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology (Grand Rapids: Brazos,
2001), 6.
66. According to Paul Minear, salt was essential to the temple liturgy and worship in the
ancient world. Paul Minear, “The Salt of the Earth,” in Interpretation 51 (January 1997): 34.
The sacrifices themselves were salted. According to Jesus, persecution-suffering-sacrifice is a key
trait of faithful discipleship. Jesus’s disciples’ saltiness was and is indissolubly related to their
suffering for the faith. As Minear notes, when disciples avoid suffering for the gospel, they lose
out on the power (saltiness) of the gospel (see 36).

Chapter 14 Getting Past the Ghettoizing of the Gospel in Today’s Culture

1. Jonathan Larson, Rent (Finster & Lucky Music, 1996).
2. John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Steinbeck Centennial ed. (New York: Penguin, 2002),
268–69.
3. Ibid., 266.
4. Ibid., 268.
5. Ibid., 269.
6. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1955),
222.
7. The quotation is taken from the 2006 DVD for 20th Century Fox’s Walk the Line, directed
by James Mangold.
8. See Brad Harper’s “Response” to Stanley J. Grenz’s essay “(Pop) Culture: Playground of
the Spirit or Diabolical Device?” in Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture
1, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 27–30. In addition to Grenz’s article, along with the responses offered to

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 324 Notes to Pages 232–234

it, the reader is encouraged to look to the following sources on God’s redemptive engagement
of pop culture: Robert K. Johnston, Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2000); Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor, A Matrix of Meanings:
Finding God in Pop Culture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003).
9. Richard Twiss, One Church, Many Tribes: Following Jesus the Way God Made You
(Ventura: Regal Books, 2000), 113.
10. Ibid., 125.
11. A great example of this is found in comparing Depeche Mode’s, Marilyn Manson’s, and
Johnny Cash’s respective renditions of “Personal Jesus.” Cash uses the same basic tune and words
as the other two, but infuses the tune and words with new meaning through his intent.
12. It is one thing for people who have used native drums for demonic purposes as non-
believers to say that they themselves cannot use such drums in Christian worship because of
their numerous past personal associations. It is quite another for them to say that other Native
Christians who worship God authentically and truthfully through the use of native drums
cannot use them. Anything not done from faith is sin, and anything done according to biblical
faith is righteous.
13. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/3.1, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, ed. G. W.
Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), 123.
14. See, for example, the discussion of Thomas Kinkade’s art in Marco R. della Cava, “Thomas
Kinkade: Profit of Light,” in USA Today, March 12, 2002. An artist friend of ours saw an exhibit
of Kinkade’s work and was pleasantly surprised to find in one corner of the exhibit paintings
of Christ and of life in general that reflected an edgier and messier side to human existence. He
spoke with one of Kinkade’s representatives, asking why we don’t see more of these kinds of
works from Kinkade. The agent said that while Kinkade loves these works, they don’t sell. The
consumer demands his more surreal-looking art.
15. Also, as argued in the chapter on worship, while culture certainly distorts God’s reve-
lation, God also speaks through cultural forms. And so, while we need to be careful, we must
also be creative. It is important that we make use of cultural forms in the church, for even the
language we speak is part and parcel of the given culture. We can never speak truthfully if we
do not speak meaningfully to those around us. How can we expect those in the surrounding
culture to listen and hear us in the church if we are not listening to them?
16. Gerhard Perseghin, “Georges Rouault Emphasizes the Religious in His Works at the
Phillips,” in Catholic Standard, July 8, 2004, 13.
17. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. v, The
Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 203.
18. Ibid.
19. José María Faerna, ed., Rouault, trans. Alberto Curotto, Great Modern Masters (Cameo/
Abrams, Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 25.
20. Balthasar, Glory of the Lord, 202.
21. See Perseghin, “Georges Rouault Emphasizes the Religious,” 13.
22. Balthasar, Glory of the Lord, 204. It should be noted that indifference, according to
Balthasar, is positive; it involves love for another and a disregard for one’s own desires. See
also David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), especially 336–38.
23. While icons can certainly be abused, icons can enhance our worship experience. One
of the roles of icons is to enhance our sense of communion with the great cloud of witnesses
throughout church history, and to help us see ourselves as participants in the ongoing drama of
salvation. The incarnation serves as the ultimate justification for icons in the Eastern church.
For Christ is the supreme window into God’s glory offered in the creation. As the ultimate
image or icon of God, Christ’s representation stands for the Ancient of Days on the ceiling of
St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Portland, Oregon. In Rublev’s Icon of the Holy Trinity, the

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 Notes to Pages 234–255 325

three angelic messengers who visited with Abraham by the tree of Mamre stand in place of the
divine persons. Contrary to popular Protestant opinion, the Orthodox clergy do not teach their
people to worship icons, but to use them as windows and guides in worship. There is a theological
science to iconography, which also serves to guard against abuse. In addition to the limit placed
on representing naked deity, icons possess a translucent quality, guiding the viewer through them
into the realm of the divine. Moreover, iconographers alter perspective and dimension in their
work to guard against confusing their icons with ultimate reality itself. Now we look through
a glass dimly, so to speak; then we shall see face to face.
24. We wish to thank Josh Butler of Imago Dei Community, Portland, Oregon, for his insights
and reflections in the course of writing chapter 14.

Chapter 15 The Church as a Missional Community: The Being-Driven Church

1. The discussion of communal and co-missional reflects the influence of George R. Hunsberger
in “Missional Vocation: Called and Sent to Represent the Reign of God,” in Missional Church:
A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, ed. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1998), 82. See also David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology
of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991).
2. This view reflects the influence of Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, in Martin
Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 623.
3. Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 30–31.
4. Gretchen T. Buggeln, “Sacred Spaces: Designing America’s Churches,” Christian Century,
June 15, 2004, 25.
5. Jeff Sharlet, “Inside America’s Most Powerful Megachurch,” Harper’s Magazine 310, no.
1860 (May 2005): 50.
6. A 2005 New York Times Magazine article on a megachurch in Surprise, Arizona, claims
that as with “many fast-growing exurbs,” the typical Surprise resident “is a young, white, mar-
ried couple of modest means. These are people that the Republican Party has always run well
with—its conventional wisdom among political analysts that young, middle-class couples raising
children tend to be conservative—and in 2004 the G.O.P. made a strong play for exurbanites.
Megachurches were a key part of the strategy.” Jonathan Mahler, “The Soul of the New Exurb,”
New York Times Magazine, March 27, 2005, 37.
7. John M. Perkins, “Afterword,” in Paul Louis Metzger, Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and
Class Divisions in a Consumer Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 174–75.
8. We are indebted to Karl Barth at this point for this spatial and temporal incarnational
framework.
9. The fine arts and pop culture bear witness to the view that many perceive the church to
be without doors or that the church locks its doors—keeping people in or out. The reader is
encouraged to reflect upon Vincent Van Gogh’s Church of Auvers and the movie Chocolat as
possible instances of this perception.
10. For a good summary of various models of evangelism’s relation to social action, see
Tokunboh Adeyemo, “A Critical Evaluation of Contemporary Perspectives,” in In Word and
Deed: Evangelism and Social Responsibility, ed. Bruce Nichols (Exeter: Paternoster, 1985). See
also John Perkins’s excellent discussion of the holistic nature of the gospel—moving beyond
the conservative and liberal impasse—in chapter 13, “The Whole Gospel,” in John M. Perkins,
Let Justice Roll Down, with a new foreword by Shane Claiborne (Ventura: Regal Books, 1976),
98–108.
11. Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth: A Guide
to Understanding the Bible, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 125.
12. Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1. See http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict
_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html.

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 326 Notes to Pages 255–259

13. Ibid., 11.

14. Ibid., 13.
15. Ibid., 14–15.
16. Ibid., 17–18.
17. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, trans. D. C. Schindler (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2004), 100–102.
18. Ibid., 116.
19. Ibid., 107.
20. Ibid., 107–8.
21. Ibid., 108. See also Balthasar’s The Heart of the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1980) for further development of this theme.
22. Balthasar and Luther speak of faith and love’s relation in very similar terms. Whereas
medieval Catholicism often spoke of union with God through our acts of love (faith formed by
love), and Protestant Scholasticism often speaks of justification by an act of faith apart from
consideration of God’s active love poured out into our hearts through the Spirit, Balthasar and
Luther before him maintained that God’s absolute love ushers forth in a response of faith. For
Luther’s view, see The Freedom of a Christian, in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings,
ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 585–629.
23. For a discussion of this theme, see R. Kendall Soulen’s essay, “‘Go Tell Pharaoh,’ Or,
Why Empires Prefer a Nameless God,” in Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of
Culture 1, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 51–52.
24. Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Jones
and Co., 1826), 1:18.
25. Soulen’s essay (noted above) has served as a source of inspiration for this section of the
chapter. See also Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1991).
26. Robert Mounce maintains that the 144,000 are the entire body of saints. He writes: “In
chapter 7, 144,000 were sealed against the woes that lay ahead (7:4–8). Now the same number
stands secure beyond that final ordeal. The repetition of the number is not to ensure an exact
identification between the two groups but to point out that not one has been lost. John’s sym-
bols are fluid, and, in fact, the number 144,000 of chapter 14 corresponds with the innumerable
multitude found in the second vision of chapter 7. Both portray the full complement of the
redeemed throughout history.” Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, rev. ed., The New
International Commentary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 265.
27. Gordon Kaufman maintains that the apostle Paul turned Jesus’s story of total sacrifice
of the self “into ultimate prudence and self-aggrandizement; it also laid the foundation for later
Christian imperialism” with the development of the doctrines of Christ’s deity and the Trinity.
The claim that salvation was found only in Christ led to the church having complete control over
salvation, and in turn to such horrors as the Crusades and Inquisition. See Gordon D. Kaufman,
God-Mystery-Diversity: Christian Theology in a Pluralistic World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996),
115. See also Gordon D. Kaufman, In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1993), 378–79; and Theology for a Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: West-
minster Press, 1985), 50. Paul Molnar responds to Kaufman’s critique of orthodox Christology
by saying, “It does not seem to occur to Kaufman that events like the inquisition and crusades,
as well as the idea that salvation can be controlled by the Church, result whenever Christians
do not take seriously enough Jesus’ uniqueness as the one Lord of life.” Paul D. Molnar, “Myth
and Reality: Analysis and Critique of Gordon Kaufman and Sallie McFague on God, Christ,
and Salvation,” in Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture 1, no. 2 (Summer
2005): 33. Kendall Soulen argues that in actual fact religious pluralism’s proposal is the age-old
theology of empire. See Soulen, “‘Go Tell Pharaoh,’” 54.

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 Notes to Pages 259–263 327

28. Martin Luther King Jr., Stride toward Freedom (New York: Ballantine Books, 1958), 217.
For King, “Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method” for
the civil rights movement. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson
(New York: Warner Books, 1998), 67.
29. For an important work on the market model’s negative impact on the church, see Philip
D. Kenneson and James L. Street, Selling Out the Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1997). See also Rodney Clapp’s significant discussion of consumer capi-
talism in “Green Martyrdom and the Christian Engagement of Late Capitalism,” in Cultural
Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture 4, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 7–20, and his analysis
of consumer capitalism’s development in “The Theology of Consumption and the Consumption
of Theology,” in Border Crossings: Christian Trespasses on Popular Culture and Public Affairs
(Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2000), 136–56, and in Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional
& Modern Options (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 48–66.
30. Sharlet, “Inside America’s Most Powerful Megachurch,” 48.
31. Ibid., 47.
32. Ibid.
33. Tim Stafford, “‘Good Morning, Evangelicals!’ Meet Ted Haggard: The NAE’s Optimistic
Champion of Ecumenical Evangelism and Free-Market Faith,” Christianity Today, November
2005, 44.
34. See the following work for Perkins’s treatment of the 3 R’s of community development:
John M. Perkins, With Justice for All, with a foreword by Chuck Colson (Ventura: Regal Books,
1982), chapters 6 through 18. See his treatment of owning the pond and community development
in John M. Perkins, Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 1993), 119.
35. Lois Barrett, “The Church as Apostle to the World,” in Missional Church: A Vision for
the Sending of the Church in North America, ed. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1998), 122. See also Eugene McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon: Notes toward a
Theological History of Capitalism,” in Modern Theology 21, no. 3 (2005): 429–61.
36. In addition to the problems already noted, it is worth adding that whenever we separate
the church from its people as well as focus on people’s abilities and tastes rather than upon them
as persons in communion with God and others, we end up promoting the commodification of
spirituality and ultimately competition between churches in the free market of religion. This
less-than-personal worldview conveys a contractual model of relations between an individual
church member and the church he or she attends. As long as the church delivers the goods and
services to satisfy the member’s tastes, and the member delivers on abilities so that the church
can continue appealing to customer tastes, the partnership continues. The union dissolves
once something better comes along. The union is only as deep as the quality of the goods and
performance of services provided.
37. Jonathan Sacks, “Markets and Morals,” First Things, no. 105 (August–September,
2000): 28.
38. Soulen, “‘Go Tell Pharaoh,’” 55.
39. Both of us have participated with Unitarian Universalists in forums concerning creation
stewardship and care for the poor, and have been moved by their intellectual and moral resolve
and empathy toward such pressing issues, longing to see more of such conviction and compas-
sion in the evangelical community we call home.
40. The reader is encouraged to refer to the following missional resources that affirm on the
one hand the particularity and supremacy of Jesus Christ to which the church bears ultimate
responsibility for authentic witness and, on the other hand, the possibility of authentic witness
to Christ occurring outside the walls of the church: Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/3.1, The
Doctrine of Reconciliation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961);
Paul Louis Metzger, The Word of Christ and the World of Culture: Sacred and Secular through

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 328 Notes to Pages 263–271

the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), chapter 4; Newbigin, The Gospel
in a Pluralist Society; Pope John Paul II, Dominus Iesus: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/
congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html; Bosch,
Transforming Mission.
41. See the discussion in chapter 7 of King’s imaginative construal of the significance of
Ebenezer Baptist Church’s sacred space.
42. See Richard Lischer, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word That
Moved America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 17.

Chapter 16 From Building Programs to Building God’s Missional Kingdom

1. Sociologists Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith argue that race impacts every sphere,
including economics, politics, education, and “social” and “religious systems.” They define a
racialized society—that is, a society defined along racial lines—in the following terms: “A racial-
ized society is a society wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life
opportunities, and social relationships” (italics original). Emerson and Smith add, “A racialized
society can also be said to be ‘a society that allocates differential economic, political, social, and
even psychological rewards to groups along racial lines; lines that are socially constructed.’” Mi-
chael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem
of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 7. The quote within the quota-
tion is taken from Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Amanda Lewis, “The ‘New Racism’: Toward an
Analysis of the U.S. Racial Structure, 1960s–1990s,” unpublished manuscript, 1997.
2. Church growth people always ask: “Who’s your target audience?” For example, Rick War-
ren tells the reader to target the “typical unchurched person your church wants to reach.” See
p. 169 of his chapter, “Who Is Your Target?” in The Purpose Driven Church: Growth without
Compromising Your Message & Mission (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995). While Warren
encourages churches to “target” people, we are not claiming that he calls on churches to target
the rich over against the poor. All of us must be careful not to give preferential treatment to
some over against others.
3. See Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2006). See also the Christianity Today feature essay on Claiborne and the
emergence of ordinary though radical monastic communities in depressed urban settings. Rob
Moll, “The New Monasticism,” Christianity Today, September 2005, 38–46. For a thorough
exposition of the nature and practices of this movement, see Rutba House, ed., School(s) for
Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2005).
4. Besides the fact that many churches that employ “targeting” terminology focus on more
well-to-do communities, “targeting” is problematic for a variety of other reasons. In Consuming
Jesus, the claim is made that “demographic targeting is not the same as deliberate contextu-
alization. ‘Targeting’ as cultivating intentional contact is basically benign; but ‘targeting’ as a
marketing strategy is problematic. The set of practices built into demography militate against
whole-person and whole community analysis. In contrast, contextualization (as I am using it
here) involves thick description and life-on-life involvement from one person to another person
in a given community, and it accounts for sensitivity to that community’s language and loca-
tion.” Paul Louis Metzger, Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer
Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 53. “Targeting” also connotes shooting, impacting
from afar, remaining in control, and making others subject. We are grateful to Rodney Clapp
for bringing these connotations to our attention.
5. John M. Perkins, Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 1993), 71.
6. William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2002), 122.

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 Notes to Pages 271–283 329

7. Martin Luther King Jr., “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” in A Knock at Midnight:
The Great Sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson and Peter Holloran
(London: Little, Brown, 1998), 30–31.
8. Bill Hybels; quoted in Edward Gilbreath and Mark Galli, “Harder than Anyone Can
Imagine,” in Christianity Today, April 2005, 38.

A Postmodern Postscript
1. Three helpful books on the relation of Christian faith to postmodernity are Stanley J. Grenz,
A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); James K. A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of
Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, The Church and Postmodern
Culture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006); and Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Faith:
Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1999).
2. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 222.
3. Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 4.
4. Ibid., 146–47. One sustained attempt at moving beyond such Western hegemony is Glo-
balizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity, edited by Craig Ott and
Harold A. Netland (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006).
5. Kanzo Uchimura, “Japanese Christianity,” in Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 2, ed.
Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1958); reprint, H. Byron Earhart, ed. Religion in the Japanese Experience: Sources and
Interpretations, The Religious Life of Man Series, ed. Frederick J. Streng (Belmont: Wadsworth
Publishing Company, 1974), 113.
6. Ibid., 113.
7. Ibid., 114.
8. Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, 147.
9. See Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004).
10. Stanley Hauerwas and Mark Sherwindt, “The Kingdom of God: An Ecclesial Space for
Peace,” Word & World 2, no. 2 (1982): 131.
11. Ibid., 131.
12. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, rev. ed. (New York: Collier Books,
1963), 314.
13. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV/3.1, The Doctrine of Reconciliation (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1961), 20.
14. Ibid.
15. See Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion
and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and chapter
2 of Paul Louis Metzger, Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer
Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).
16. J. I. Packer, quoted in “We Can Overcome,” Christianity Today, October 2, 2000, 43.
17. Philip Yancey, “Why I Don’t Go to a Megachurch,” Christianity Today, May 20, 1996, 80.
18. Two important texts dealing with theory and practice as to how to foster multiethnic
churches are: Mark DeYmaz, Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church: Mandate, Commitments
and Practices of a Diverse Congregation, J-B Leadership Network Series (SanFrancisco: Jossey-
Bass, 2007); Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim,
United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003).
19. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., In One Body through the Cross: The Princeton
Proposal for Christian Unity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 55–56.
20. Ibid.

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 Subject Index

Advent Conspiracy, 152 spirit, 140–42 Catechism, 101, 136

affinity group, 132, 268–69, modes of, 141–44 Cavanaugh, William, 130, 271,
306n14 baptismal regeneration, 140–41, 314n46, 323n43
affluenza, 153, 252, 265, 278 312n9 charismatic movement, 16, 103,
Alcoholism, 170–71 Baptist, 15, 137, 141, 148, 194, 197, 296n13, 308n33
Alrich, G. L., 62 198,176, 312n9, 313n37, charity, 102, 158, 172, 225, 244, 255
Anabaptist, 138–39, 197, 312n9, Barmen Declaration, the, 210, Christ and culture, 17, 41, 52, 65,
314n40, 323n60 322n41 160, 164, 207–26, 227–29,
Anamensis, 136 Barrett, Lois, 262 232–35, 259–60, 276
Andrus, Mike, 9, 180, 317n8 Barth, Karl, 71, 213, 216, 220, 280, protagonist, 208–11, 214
Anglicanism, 108, 148, 309n58. See 297n8, 297–98n14, 326n8 antagonist, 208, 210, 211–14
Bender, Kimlyn, 15 dualist, 208, 214, 215–19
also Zahn, Paul
synthesist, 208, 214, 219–22
Antinomianism, 255–56 Benedict XVI, 198, 308n31, 319n23 transformationalist, 222–26
American, 20, 34, 45, 57–58, 110, Bertrand, Russell, 39 Christians
115, 118, 143, 144, 163, 169, Bethge, Eberhard, 217, 221 American, 34, 99, 114, 118–19,
197, 210, 217, 221, 227, 242, biblical drama, 86, 124, 127, 140, 166, 221, 231–32, 232, 266, 270,
261, 271, 280, 281, 310n15. See 142, 232, 271, 272,
also Christians; Patriotism Bloesch, Donald, 13, 64, 117, German, 208, 210, 217, 221,
dream, 41, 269 306n2, Native American, 231–32, 278
Middle Eastern, 277 Middle Eastern, 43, 277
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 21–22, 44,
Apostolic Constitutions, 104–5 Christology, 259, 260, 327n27
156, 208, 210, 212–14, 217,
apostolic succession, 17, 191–93, union with Christ, 29–32, 35–36,
219–21, 224, 226, 280, 322n26, 44, 54, 67, 70, 94, 96–97, 145,
198 323n42, 323n60 192, 199, 203, 222, 242, 245–46,
architecture, 47 Book of Common Prayer, 108–9, 249, 255,
Church, 17
309n58, 309n59 Christendom, 191, 225, 279–80
arts, 111, 114, 227, 234–35, 228,
born again, 11, 40–41, 45, 117 Church
236, 246 hospital for sinners, 37, 171, 249
Brand, Chad Owen, 195
Augustine, Saint, 56–57, 115, 171, in heaven, 17, 51, 70–71,
Bromiley, Geoffrey, 142
295n3, 306n6, 312n9, 319n17 membership, 61, 138, 159, 180, 220,
Brown, Dan, 147, 153
226, 293, 294
Brueggemann, Walter, 81, 119, sanctuary for saints, 249
Bainton, Roland, 139–40, 314n47
150, 152 wholeness of, 166
bait-and-switch, 228
Bucer, Martin, 136 Church growth movement, 244,
Babylonian captivity of the
Buggeln, Gretchen, 243 259, 315n2
Church, 135, 139, 143–44,
baptism, 32, 57, 75, 119, 123, transfer growth, 220
124–25, 127–30, 133, 138–39, Calvin, John, 11, 61, 137, 172, 195, civil society, 217, 254, 278–79
145 223, 299n28, 313n36, 320n2 Claiborne, Shane, 266–67
believer, 57, 101, 134–35, 141, 293, Calvinism, 115, 137, 224, 312n9 Clapp, Rodney, 328n29, 329n4
314n48 Capitalism, 261, 328n29 community development, 9, 260,
water, 126, 128, 140 Cash, Johnny, 229, 230, 315n11 267

330

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 330 3/9/09 8:06:12 AM

 Subject Index 331

Communion Enlightenment, 40, 54, 104, 106, Guder, Darrell, 296n3, 300n10,
open, 148–49 242, 301n11 326n1
closed, 147, 153 environment, 79–84, 261 Gunton, Colin, 9, 36
community oriented, 133, Erickson, Millard, 34
communitarian sociality, 245–55 eschatology Haggard, Ted, 261–62
Conant, J. E., 63 kingdom, 48, 50, 53–57, 59, 61, 65, Hauerwas, Stanley, 131, 279
Constantine, 53, 56–57, 100 72, 157–58, 217 healing, 29, 31, 49, 64–68, 71,
consumerism, 13, 76, 110, 119, now/not yet, 48, 51, 55, 185, 214,
72, 80, 81, 83, 140, 159, 160,
149–50, 166, 267, 269, 277 217, 279
168–71, 174, 177, 179, 180,
contextualization, 279 ethnicity, 32, 148, 280
247, 253
Corpus Christianum, 279 Eucharist, 17, 53–54, 88, 90, 96,
Hellerman, Joseph, 27
Council of Trent, 136, 313n32 99–101, 106–7, 109, 119–20,
heterogeneity, 221, 267
covenant, 20–21, 24, 26, 43, 58, 69, 124, 130, 138, 139, 143–45,
Hitler, Adolf, 210, 215, 217,
72, 88, 93, 96–97, 134, 140–41, 147, 153, 158, 164, 167, 172,
219–21, 224
240, 256 176–78, 183, 293
Consubstantiation, 136 hierarchical, 73, 136, 160, 184,
covenant theology, 223
Real presence, 106, 124, 131, 201–6
conversion, 13, 15, 57, 92–93, 100,
135–37, 150 Holy Grail, 147, 153
109, 177, 240, 270–71 Transubstantiation, 136 Holy Spirit in culture, 113–20
creed, 16, 87, 100, 101, 103 Eusebius, 56 home communities, 250
Cyprian of Carthage, 60, 110 evangelical conservative, 15, 40, homelessness, 229, 245, 247, 248,
Cyril of Jerusalem, 75, 127, 128, 210, 216, 252 266, 269–70
134, 144 evangelicalism, 15–16, 40, 80, 106, homogeneous, 247, 265, 272–73,
144, 219, 261 281
Dawn, Marva, 92, 117–18, 120 evangelism, 13, 44, 55, 63, 66, 76, Homogeneous Unit Principle, 272
democracy, 197–99 272, 282 homosexuality, 171
Deloria, Vine Jr., 255–56 ex opere operato, 136, 142 hospitality, 37, 282
de Lubac, Henri, 193
household of God, 9, 26, 27, 32,
denomination, 15, 17, 61, 99, 148, Falwell, Jerry, 210, 217–18 74, 140, 157, 240
173, 178–80, 187, 190, 194, family human identity
198–200, 283 values, 20, 27, 41, 76, 244–45, 268 as contract, 43, 144, 255
dialectical, 30, 52–53, 55, 59–60, nuclear, 41–45, 143, 145, 268 being-driven, 19–20, 237, 259
118, 120, 219 Fee, Gordon, 149, 188, 252, commodified, 258, 260
Didache, the, 165 Finke, Roger, 299n30, 301n10 Hunsberger, George, 296n3,
discipline, Church, 96, 155, Florovsky, George, 85 300n10, 326n1
175–80, 183, 195, 197, 198 Free Church ecclesiology, 148, Huss, John, 139
discipleship, 142–43, 170–71, 212, 197, 282 Hütter, Reinhard, 217
221, 293 free market, 34, 132–33, 242, Hybels, Bill, 272
dispensationalism, 54–55, 60, 259–60, 261, 262
62–63, 218, 223 Frei, Hans, 132 icon, 37, 104, 228, 233, 234
divine name, 25 Fundamentalism, 13, 15, 16, 40, iconography, 326n23
Doberstein, John, 220 99, 114–15, 132, 170, 210, Ignatius of Antioch, 54, 177, 191
Dulles, Avery, 303n28 213–14, 216, 218, 232, 243, images of the Church
275, 283 body, 16, 18, 19, 20, 23, 28, 29 31,
Eastern Church, 23, 85, 90, 133, 32, 33, 35, 36, 42, 44, 62, 88, 104,
325n23 ghettoize, 131, 227 108, 136, 147, 148, 149, 160, 162,
ecclesiology 179, 180, 183, 190, 235, 240, 241,
global theology, 79–80, 84
ecclesial theology, 12, 13–17, 47, 242, 251, 254, 271, 282, 283,
God of the Gaps, 220–21, 225 bride, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22, 24, 28,
55, 108, 196, 205
God in the Gallows, 221, 225 29–30, 33, 35, 37, 42, 48–49, 52,
high church ecclesiology, 293
low church ecclesiology, 293 gospel 67, 110, 160, 174, 177, 184, 185,
enculturation, 277–78 203, 206, 224, 235, 240, 241,
strong ecclesiology, 293, 296n11
hermeneutic, of 275, 277 246, 247, 249, 250, 251, 256, 264,
weak ecclesiology, 293, 296n11
message of, 62, 92, 116, 177, 193, 276, 184
economics, 26, 27, 32, 63, 139, 144, 227, 230, 250–51, 256 children, 11, 26, 31, 265
153, 224, 260, 262, 264, 280 prosperity, 11, 244, 267, 269 family, 20, 27, 37, 41, 42, 43, 45, 74,
class, 73, 76, 90, 148–49, 170, 259, proclamation, of 92, 176, 210, 227, 76, 123, 143, 145, 155, 173, 202,
ecumenical theology, 12–13, 17, 26, 234, 250, 251, 252–55, 276–77 204–5, 268
34, 90, 135, 140, 148, 178, 192, scope of, 227, 251–52, 256–64 image of God, 21, 22, 23
278, 282–83 Greek Orthodox, 214n46 image, Christ as the ultimate
Edwards, Jonathan, 37, 58–59 Gregory of Nazianzus, 209 image of God, 23, 24
Egalitarian, 184, 201–2, 205–6 Gregory of Nyssa, 65 mother, 11, 12, 27, 70, 90
emergent church, 152, 227, 234 Grenz, Stanley, 47, 97, 107–8, temple, 14, 16, 19, 28, 32, 40, 50,
Emerson, Michael, 329n1, 330n15 114–15 51, 52, 70, 74, 89, 93–94, 98, 108,

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 332 Subject Index

173, 222, 235, 240, 241, 246, 247, Luther, Martin, 47, 84, 113, New Jerusalem, 28–29, 48, 52,
248, 249, 250, 282 135–36, 207, 231 83, 84, 89, 168, 226, 246, 247,
image of God, 42, 120, 170, 192, Lutheranism, 63, 101, 133, 137, 251, 264
245, 251, 254, 262 141, 219, 276, 312n9 niche, 13, 18, 123, 133, 153, 268,
Imago Dei Community Church, 272
225, 270 Manifest Destiny, 223–25, 278 Niebuhr, H. Richard, 208, 216
Imperialism Marburg Colloquy, 136–37, 148 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 216
cultural, 259 marriage supper of the Lamb, 12, Noll, Mark, 16
ecclesial, 278 18, 35, 125, 126, 129, 235 Norman, Larry, 231
incarnation, 33, 50, 65, 81–82, 104, Marsden, George, 300n2, 308n32 Norman, R. Stanton, 195
115–16, 155, 210, 219, 222, Martyr, Justin, 100, 105, 172, Nouwen, Henri, 45, 282
235, 241, 245, 278, 323n46, 302n12 Nystrom, Carolyn, See Noll, Mark
325n23 martyrdom, 53–54, 128, 144, 191
independent churches, 99–100, Mass, 99, 105–6, 130, 136, 271, Oekolampadius, John, 136
180, 184, 190, 283 308n31 Olson, Arnold T., 148, 314
individualism, 13–14, 39–46, 44, materialism, 277–78. See also Onesimus, 160, 205
199, 277, Consumerism order, 14, 23, 28, 61, 63, 84,
injustice, 254, 271 Maximus the Confessor, 133, 96, 101, 103, 107, 110, 169,
Institutionalism, 40, 142, 299n28 296n1 183–200. See also leadership;
invisible church, 34, 133, 193, McGavran, Donald, 306n14. polity
279, 294 See also Homogeneous Unit Ordinance, 14, 16, 123, 137. See
Irenaeus of Lyons, 21, 56, 70, Principle also baptism; communion;
75, 86 McLaren, Brian, 40 sacrament
McKinley, Rick, 9, 225 orthodoxy, 13, 116, 185–86, 187,
Jenson, Robert, 37, 314n46 Melanchthon, Philip, 136 192,
Jim Crow laws, 259 medieval synthesis, 59 outreach, 20, 64, 221, 245–46, 250,
John Paul II, 319n23 memorial, 106, 136, 137, 138, 144 259–60, 265, 266, 270, 281
justice, 31, 56, 66, 73, 77, 227–28, metanarrative, 79 83, 164, 201,
244, 252, 253, 255 277, 307n14 Packer, J. I., 281
Methodist, 15, 210 Patriotism, 144. See also American
Karkkainen, Veli-Matti, 13 Middle Ages, 56–57, 59, 61, 105, penance, 178–78, 311n2
Kenneson, Philip, 328n29 178, 189 Pentecostal, 16, 192, 194, 308n33
King, Martin Luther Jr., 134, 259, Middle Eastern, 24, 120, 42–43. Perkins, John M., 9, 244, 260,
263, 271 See also Christian 262, 267
Kinkade, Thomas, 325 Miller, Perry, 58, 323n59 personal preference, 15, 32, 281
kingdom of God missions, 169, 238, 248, 266, Philemon, 160, 205
definition of, 48 Piper, John, 297n11, 307–8n26
303–4n33
relation to church, 49, 50, 52–77 pluralism, 256, 258–59, 299n28
short-term 248, 266, 270
Küng, Hans, 162 missionaries 248, 265, 278 polity, Church
Mission Solano, 270 Congregational, 185–86, 190, 194,
Ladd, George Eldon, 62, 266–69, 196, 197–98
modeling, 270–71
287, 301–3 Episcopal, 183–84, 185, 190,
modernism, 106 191–94, 195, 196, 197, 198
LaHaye, Tim, 79, 218 Moe-Lobeda, Cynthia, 216–17 Presbyterian, 190, 194, 195–97
Larson, Jonathan, 228–29, 232 monasticism, 144 Polycarp, 177
leadership Moltmann, Jürgen, 218 Postmillennialism, 55, 59, 218
bishop, 185, 190, 195, 198 Mother Teresa, 266
deacon, 172, 192, 195
Postmodernism, 13–14, 40, 104,
moralism, 255–66 113–14, 118, 132, 165, 185,
elder, 188, 189, 190, 195–96, 198,
199 mosaic, 17–18, 69 275–84
pastor, 184, 186, 189–90, 196, Moyers, Bill, 305–6n12 poverty, 152, 212, 213, 220, 244,
204, 235 261–62, 266, 268
pope, 189–92, 255 nameless deity, 24, 256, 257–58, Pragmatism, 16, 132, 260, 272
Lewis, C. S., 320 260, 264 prayer, 108–10, 167–68
liberalism, 40, 55, 99, 102, 106, National Association of Evan- Premillennialism, 54, 59, 301n6,
115, 131–32, 150, 210, 214, gelicals (NAE), 15, 260–61, 304–5n33
216, 243, 252 305–6n12 Presbyterian, 15, 115, 179, 184. See
liturgy, 16, 33, 64, 71, 88, 92, nationalism, 322n32 also polity, Church
100–02, 109, 116, 183, 293 neighbor, 32, 73–74, 151, 161, 169, Priesthood of believers, 33, 95,
local Church, 16, 34, 42, 51, 120, 173, 238, 255, 268, 281 139, 158, 197, 319n33
187, 190–91, 194–95, 197–98, Newbigin, Lesslie, 242, 275–78 Princeton Proposal for Christian
235, 241, 270 New Life Community Church, 261 Unity, 282

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 Subject Index 333

program, 15, 44, 235, 238, 244, separation of Church and State, universal church, 16, 90, 109, 119,
248, 254, 255, 265–73, 281 34, 145, 213, 218, 280 130, 199, 271, 276, 183, 194
Protestantism Sharlet, Jeff, 243–44, 260–61 Universalism, 263
mainline Protestant Church, 16, 283 Sherwindt, Mark, 279, 324n64 Urs von Balthasar, Hans, 233, 255
mainline Protestant liberalism, 40 Sibbes, Richard, 296n1
public-private, 41, 131, 216, 217 skate church, 247–48 virtual reality, 99, 104, 124, 135,
purpose-driven, 20, 259 small groups, 250, 281 228–29
Smith, Christian, 329n1 visible church, 11, 34, 59, 61, 64,
Quaker, 138–39 Snyder, Howard, 155 133, 140, 279–80, 293
Sobornost, 192–93 Volf, Miroslav, 157, 188–89
recapitulation, 152 Social voluntary association, 130–31,
reconciliation, 82, 95, 101, 124, action, 13, 76, 302n15, 326n10
138–39, 145, 216, 323n60
244, 260, 262, 281, 299n27, class, See economics
304n47, 304n49 gospel, 254
justice, 77, 227–28 Wagner, Peter, 306n14
redistribution, 149, 224, 260,
program, 254–55, 266 Wainwright, Geoffrey, 118, 214,
262, 268
structure, 27, 73–74, 76, 160, 222
reenactment, 53, 103, 132. 135 202–5, 281 Ware, Kallistos, 156, 192
Reformation Sola fides, 193
post, 197 Ware, Timothy, 313n32
Sola scriptura, 185, 186, 317–18n4, Warren, Rick, 43, 296n2
pre, 139
radical, 138–39 Soulen, R. Kendall, 263 Webber, Robert, 99, 104
Reformed tradition, 16, 63, 64, 96, spiritual gifts, 155, 160, 162–64, Wells, David, 165
137, 141, 148, 195, 196, 312n9, 167, 187–90, 198, 203, 245 Western Church, 195, 277–78
317–18n4 Stackhouse, John, 13, 15
Westminster Confession, 16,
relocation, 260, 262 Stafford, Tim, 262
318–19n4
Rent, 228–30, 232, 235 Starbucks, 132–33
White, Lynn, 80
Rembrandt, 23, 227, 235 Stark, Rodney, See Finke, Roger
Willimon, William, 210
religion, 11, 17, 104, 147, 153, state church, 57, 129, 139, 197
Willow Creek Community Church,
164, 166, 173, 211, 213, 217, Steinbeck, John, 229–30, 232, 235
272, 307–8n14
221–22, 254, 260, 306n10 Street, James, See Philip Kenneson
Wink, Walter, 218
Religious Right and Left, 210–11, Strobel, Lee, 150–52
Stuart, Douglas, 252 Winthrop, John, 58, 224–25
214, 216, 283 worship
righteousness, 29–31, 33, 56, 70, success, 41, 160, 173, 221, 242,
act, 85, 98, 103
71–75, 135, 161, 164, 166, 244, 268–72
community, 94–95
211, 252 symbolism, 132, 230 contemporary, 106, 113–14, 116–17
Roman Catholicism, 17, 59, 61, syncretism, 217 dedication, 97–98
95–96, 99, 101, 135–36, 138, drama, 99–103
tabernacle, 27–28, 50, 81, 89, 93, encounter, 91–93
166, 178, 190, 192, 193–95,
104 235, 246 eschatological, 88–91
197, 198, 219, 255, 299n28,
target audience, 247, 256, 260 glory, 97
Vatican II, 59, 70–71, 99, 158, 163,
Taylor, L. Roy, 199 location, 93–94
307n24, 308n31, 312–13n30
Tertullian, 177 love, 96–97
Romero, 130
theological methods music, 107–8
Romero, Oscar, 130–31, 271–72 prayer, 108–9
Rouault, Georges, 233 Biblical, 12, 13, 48, 61, 72, 80, 108
Historical, 12, 13 primary task of church, 85
Rublev, icon of the Holy Trinity, 36 regulative principle, 308n38
theonomy, 223
symbol, 103–5
theo-political, 123–24, 125,
Sacks, Jonathan, 263 table, 106–7
128–29, 131, 132, 133, 219, 271 word, 105–6
sacrifice, 97–98
tithing, 173 Trinitarian, 86–88
sacramental community, 123–25,
Torrance, Alan, 322n33 Wright, N.T., 314n51
129–33, 135, 137, 138, 139–45
Torrance, James, 87, Wycliffe, John, 139
sacred space, 37, 94, 129–35,
totus Christus, 37
141–42
Trinitarian Yancey, Philip, 45, 282
Satan, 49, 52, 67, 74–76, 81, 128, community, 14, 18, 19–21, 45,
134–35, 159, 167, 170 85–87
Year of Jubilee, 244, 253, 272
Saucy, Robert, 103, 107 God, 97, 98, 120, 156, 160, 166, Yoder, John Howard, 139, 149,
Scopes Monkey Trial, 243, 275 173–74, 217 226, 303n29
secular, 44, 49, 74, 76, 144, 216, Two-kingdom theory, 202, 215, 219
219, 220, 221, 228, 254, 271 Zahl, Paul, 183, 193
seeker-sensitive, 17, 132 Uchimura, Kanzo, 278, 330 Zizioulas, John, 9, 317n3
segregation, 259 unity and diversity, 17–18, 192 Zwingli, Ulrich, 136–37, 148

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 333 3/9/09 8:06:13 AM

 Scripture Index

Genesis 3:14 25 7:12 96–97, 51 98 31 72 Malachi

1 21–22, 24, 3:15 25 308n27 51:16–17 98 32:38 24 2 308n29
82, 84, 269, 3–5 257 7:13 308n27 87:6 11 42 73 3–4 72
297 5 257 10:12 308n27 105:4 12 45 221
1:9 107 5:1 26 10:19 308n27 106:4–5 12
Matthew
1:26 297n8 5:2 258 11:1 308n27 107 88 Ezekiel
11:12 308n27 107–150 88 1:23 28
1:26–27 21, 6:3 25 10 93
12 125 11:22 308n27 110 88 2:15 126, 239
251 20:10 91
12:12 125 13:3 308n27 119:11 105, 3:14 127
1:28 22 34:1–10 223
1:28–30 251 12:27 126 13:6 308n27 164 3:15 127
36 49, 70, 140
2 269 12:38 239, 257 18 68 3:13–17 127,
Song of 37:27 24
2:18 22, 24 13 125 19:9 308n27 209, 222
Solomon 43 89
3 24, 68, 201 13:18 124 21:15–16 4 70, 75
3:1–7 22, 251 13:21–22 238 308n27 2:16 29 4:1 209
Hosea
3:8 24 14 145 30:6 308n27 4:1–11 127,
1:1–2 11
3:12 22 14:13–14 125 30:16 308n27 Isaiah 222
3:12–21 251 30:20 308n27 1:9 30 4:12–25 222
15:1–8 97 1 308n29
3:15 23, 25, 49, 33:3 308n27 1:10 30, 73 4:17 209
16:1–22 125, 5 255
67, 74–75, 2:19–20 31
223 5:1–7 223 4:18–20 39
80, 251 1 Samuel 2:23 30
16:14–30 269 6 92 4:23 252
3:16 22 35:1 81 11:1 126, 239
17:1–7 125 10:18 91 4:23–25 209
3:17–19 23 23:20–21 27 37:32 11 5:1–2 209, 215,
4 23 1 Kings 42:7 50 Joel
25 93 222
4:8 251 33 304n43 8 94–95 49:6 73 2 49, 70, 187 5:3 31, 212,
4:11–12 251 35:30–36:1 235 8:27 93 49:13 107 2:32 11, 25 252
8 91 40:34 27 8:41–43 246 49:22 73 5:3–10 214–15
11 24 53 157 Amos
5:6–9 73
11:1–9 238 Leviticus 1 Chronicles 55:12 84, 107 2 157
12 24, 68, 5:8 212
22 235 56:5 11 5 157
91, 73 6:1–5 250 58 308n29 5:11–12 214
12:1 25, 238 16 93 58–59 73 5:11–16 222,
23:33–44 223 Ezra Jonah 226
12:1–3 239 58:9b–12 267
12:2 25 26:12 24 1:1–8 94 60–66 72 4:1–3 239 5:14 279–80
12:3 25 60:13 246 5:14–16 280
17:9–14 238 Deuteronomy Nehemiah 61:1 50 Micah 5:17–20 223
22 125 5:10 96–97, 8:12 164 61:1–2 253 5:4–5 32 5:17–6:8 223
22:13–14 126 308n27 9:18 91 62:4–5 246 6:4 91 5:20 211
6:4–5 164 5:23–24 73, 95
Exodus 6:5 308n27 Psalms Jeremiah Zechariah 5:27–32 73
1:8 258 7:9 96–97, 19 84 2:6 91 1:67–79 89 5:33–37 73
3 25 308n27 29:3–10 97 30–31 72 2:10–11 73 5:38–39 73

334

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 Scripture Index 335

5:39b–41 27:51 32 18:10–14 31 10 160 4:4 140 8:21 73–74

218–19 28:18–20 25, 18:15–17 239 10:1–8 223 4:12 246–57 8:22–23 227
6:24 252 252 18:18–30 266 11 51, 223 4:13 242 8:30 70
6:19–21 252 28:19a 238 18:25 253 11:45–53 4:23–31 108 9–11 302n7
6:1–8 211 28:19 25, 62 18:28 253 12:24 226 4:32–35 174 9:25 30
6:19–21 252 28:19–20 27, 19 249 13 160, 184 5:3–4 87 10:8–13 25
6:9 26 49, 257 19:1–4 249 13:12–17 156 5:8–12 257 10:13 25–26
6:2 211 28:20 28 19:5 39 14 28, 51, 71 5:12–16 243, 10:17 29
6:5 211 28:20b 238 19:5–7 249 14:3 28 253 12:1–2 98, 107
6:25–34 219 19:9 250 14:15–17 28 5:14 250 12:4–6 162
6:9 86 Mark 19:10 249 14:15–21 65, 6 70, 188, 13 215–16
7:3 222 1:1–15 49 19:41–46 246 156 189–90, 197, 14 157
7:9–11 220 1:9–11 127 22:14–18 137 14:18 36 320n3 14:17 70
7:12 223 1:12–13 127 22:15–16 126 15 160, 255 6:2 164 15 66
7:14 211 2:17 31 22:19–20 126 15:1–8 223 6:6 108, 168 15:26 183
7:16–20 212 3:33–35 27 24 308n34, 16 28 8 93
7:28–29 209, 6:17–20 56 314n38 16:7–17 28 8:1–4 239 1 Corinthians
252 10 167 24:25–27 223 17 184, 194 8:12 62 1:2 34, 276
7:29 209 10:38–39 126 24:30–32 17:11 26–27 8:17 168 1:10–17 124
8–9 209 11:15–17 246 106–7 17:11–12 10 92–93, 140, 1:13 34–35
8:1–4 252 12:30–31 268 25–26 307n21 1:18–31 266
8:17 220 13 53 John 17:17 105 10:9–16 239 1:26 242
8:26–27 81 14:26 107 17:20–23 26 10:34–35 257
1 50–51, 89 1:27–31 242
9:35 252 17:21 34 10:42 257–58
15:34 220 1:1–15 49 2:6–16 71
10 65 17:22–23 10:44–48 140,
1:14 27, 28, 2:10 29
10:7–8 55 Luke 298n15 257
228, 276 3 20, 70
10:17–20 55 17:23 17, 26 10:44–11:8 239
1:46–55 89 1:18 26, 228, 3:16 19, 27–28,
10:28 323n43
2:13–14 107 258–59 19–22 51–52 10:45–48 140 94, 240
10:30 39
2:28 89 1:26–43 127 19:26–27 27 13:3 1–8 5 176, 183, 197
12 75, 159
2:36 89 1:32–34 28 20 51, 176 14:23 195–96 6:12–20 124
12:22–32
3:16–17 127 1:50 39 20:17 26 15 184, 196, 7 53
49–50
3:16–20 127 2 89 271 7:4 43
13:10–23 222 Acts
3:21 127 2:18–25 28 15:22 197 9:19–23 240
13:31–33 219
3:21–22 127 2:24–25 211 1 228 16 141 10–11 183
16 49, 65, 60,
4:1–13 127 3 140, 159–60 1:1 242–43 18:24–26 189 10–12 124
191
4:14 253 3:16 26, 126 1:3–8 62 19:8 62 10:2 125
16:18 55, 75
4:14–44 272 3:34 28 1:8 239 20:25 62 10:3–6 124
16:17–19 187
4:16–21 127, 4 50–51, 86, 89 1:14 108, 167 28:8 168 10:6–22 124
18 197–98
18:3 31 252 4:7 39 1:24 108 28:23 62 10:14–22 137
18:15–20 4:17–19 253 4:27 239 2 52, 70, 93, 28:31 62 10:18–22
175–76 5:27 39 5 26 167, 228, 137–38
6:20 212–13, 5:10 96 257 Romans 11 69, 96,
18:18 55, 187,
191 252 5:18 26 2:5–12 298n15 1–4 69 320n2
19 167 6:24 252 5:41–44 211 2:14–39 60 2 270 11–14 201
19:28 187 7 70 6 126 2:34 88 3:9–20 31 11:17–34 270
19:28–30 7:18–21 253 6 311n3 2:38 140 2:24 26 11:24–25 137
320n3 7:18–23 49–50 6:30–35 223 2:40–47 252 3:21–31 300n4 11:26 88, 107,
20:28 156 7:22–23 253 6:30–59 125 2:41 140 4:11 238–39 126
22:23–32 202 8:19–21 268 6:35 125 2:42 95, 100, 4:25 103 11:27–32
22:30 11 9 60 6:53–58 125 105–6, 164 5 70 137–38
22:44 88 10 65 6:60–61 126 2:42–47 172 5:5 29, 86 12:4–6 157
23:11 157 10:25–27 268 6:66 126 2:42–48 70 6–7 145 14:1 187–88
23:13–15 240 12 53 6:68–69 126 2:42–48 93 7:1–3 43 14:39 187–88
24–25 53 12:13–14 269 7:1–10 223 3 257 8 66, 70, 82, 11:28 148
24–29 223 12:13–34 268 7:9 96 3:1 108 84, 86, 11:29 148–49
25:34–40 174 12:33–34 7:12 96 3:1–4:4 252 305n8 11:17–22 124
25:34–46 157 252–53 7:37–39 28 3:6–8 253–54 8:1 70 11:28–32 124
26:29 88 14:12–14 252 8:12 223 3:9–10 254 8:15 66 12:7 163
26:30 107 15:3–7 39 8:56 125–26 3:21 305n8 8:15–17 29 12:12–31 33
27:18 222 18:9–14 219 8:58 25 4 93, 257 8:19–22 56 12:13 86

Harper_Ecclesiology_LAC_bb.indd 335 3/9/09 8:06:14 AM

 336 Scripture Index

13 157 4:16 32 3:4 213 11:39–40 131 Revelation

13:12 35 4:30 87 3:16 88, 107 12:7–13 2–3 276
14 96, 103 5 167–68, 84, 12:22–23 90 3:10–12 258
14:26 103 202–4 1 ThessalonÂ�ians 12:22–24 131, 126 3:20 184
14:29–31 187–88 5:1–14 19 4–5 53 13:14 239 3:21 320n3
15:3–5 103 5:18 95, 97 5:12 195–96 13:17 195 3:21–22 258
15:45–49 35 5:18–20 87 5:20–21 188 4 86
5:18–21 71 James
4–5 51, 86
2 Corinthians 5:19 107 1 Timothy 1:27 173, 254 4:11 97
3:12–18 71 5:25–27 29, 284 2 102 2:1–7 74, 170 5 86, 107, 129
3:17 103 5:25–32 12, 240 2:1 108–9 2:5 266–67 6 129
5:1–10 90 5:25–6:9 158 2:1–4 33 3 170
7 239
5:17 56 5:26 29–30 2:5 33 4 170
7:3 129
5:18 299n27 5:28–31 29 3 196 4:5–5:6 74
12:11 258
6:16 24 5:29–30 28 3:4–5 195 4:13–16 170
14:1 129
8 197 5:29–32 19 4:11–12 204 5:1–6 254
14:1–5 258
8:9 173, 262, 268 5:31 43 4:13–16 105, 165 5:7–9 170
18 129, 258
5:32 31–32 4:14 168 5:13–19 170
Galatians 6 75, 203 18–19 125
5:1–2 176 5:14 196
6:18 167 19 52, 129
2:9–10 254 5:17 188, 195–96 5:15 33
6:18 108–9 5:16 33 19–20 75, 251
2:10 183
6:12–17 124 2 Timothy 5:19–20 33 19–22 51–52
2:11–14 239, 271
6:10 74 19:6–9 12, 235
2:19 74 1:6 168
6:1–3 268 1 Peter 19:9 69
3:16 25 1:10 323n46
20 51, 90
3:28 77–78, 269 4:2 176 2 158
Philippians 4:2–4 164–65 2:4–10 28 20:6 320n3
3:28–29 32
1:4–6 167 2:4–12 36 21–22 20, 47–48,
4:4 276
4:6 26 1:6 143 Titus 2:5–9 197–98 83, 67, 184, 228
5:13–15 73–74 2:5–11 86, 157 2:9 33, 311n1 21:1 305n8
1 196
6:1–2 177 2:9–11 25 1:5 188, 195 2:9–10 64 22:1–2 28–29,
6:10 155 2:10–11 204 1:13 176–77 2:10 19, 30, 240 246–47
3:3 97 3:5 140 2:11 213 21:2–3 129
Ephesians 4:6 167–68 2:13–17 311n1 21:2 28–29
1:18 167 4:15 188 Philemon 4:10–11 162 21:3 28–29
1:20–23 36 16 205 5 195, 199 21:5 228
2:11–22 240 Colossians 5:1–4 188 21:9 168
2:11–22 307n49 1 23, 24, 82 Hebrews 21:9–11 125
2:13–16 32 1:1–4 203 1:1–3 23, 35, 228, 2 Peter 21:12–14 28–29,
2:14–22 32 1:10 167 258 1:3–4 29 246–47
2:14–18 282 1:12–13 69 2:14 76 3 305n8 22:17 28, 246–47
2:19–22 282 1:15–18 297n14 3:1–6 223 21:22 28–29,
3 75 1:15 23 4 158 1 John 246–47
3:4–6 32 1:16 84 9:14 35 2:15–17 127 21:22–23 89–90
3:6 32 1:18 23, 28, 69 10:24–25 131, 3:2 51 21:23–24 174
3:16 167 1:18 23–24 300n8 3:17–18 254 21:24 246–47
4 307n22 2:9 23 10:25 94, 183 3:18 256 21:24 29
4:1–6 160 2:10 23 10:32–39 131 4 22 21:24–27 264
4:3 32 2:15 75 11–13 226 4:8 19, 29 22:1–2 168
4:4–5 28, 32 3:1–2 313n36 11:8–10 239 4:9 161 22:17 129
4:7 162 3:1–14 35 11:10 36 4:19 96
4:14–16 203 3:2 213 11:13 213 5:16–17 176

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