“It's the theology, stupid!” What if it is? What if our diagnosis of the ills of the church — shrinking numbers and diminishing expectations, based on changes in social norms, charges of irrelevance and outdated sermons and liturgy and music — misses the heart of our problem: theology, doctrine, what we believe?
Looking back at the two addresses to the Toronto-Kingston Synod in 1965 (subtitled Forty Years in the Wilderness) recalls the comment of an older minister, “Joe, you can't be an angry young man all your life!” Well, I'm trying. The young part is easy, since Easter faith is a sort of youthening process that defies common wisdom about the perils of ageing. As for anger, I hope it's Aristotle's virtuous anger characteristic of the “good-tempered” person. Mine is tinged with regret at what might have been, if we had taken more fire from our past heritage and less of its ashes. Back then the issue was our narrow commitment to the Westminster Confession of Faith, making us only a confessional church, not a truly confessing church. That particular situation has been remedied, replaced by a broader allegiance, including WCF, and expressed in our fine new subordinate standard, Living Faith.
Now that another 40 years have passed since the old battles of 1925, what is the Spirit saying to the church today? And how do we discern any word from God among the strident claims of this post-modern age of technology and hedonism, when everything has become sexualized and trivialized? Can this be a New Age for the church too? Or are we facing a steady decline in membership as society turns to others for spirituality and meaning? In Denmark over a century ago, Kierkegaard thought of how the Gospel was being reduced to “a little moralizing and a few articles of faith,” and said, “Good night, Christianity.”
The Presbyterian and Reformed motto is “always reforming.” That is, the 16th-century Reformation was a work in progress, not a finished fact. For reasons both religious and political, the Reformers selected certain concepts from late medieval theology, notably justification by faith and Christ's spiritual presence in the Eucharist, making them central. They did not re-open the doctrine of the Trinity or of the sacraments (particularly infant baptism, hardly a New Testament datum), or of a church without privileges. Our task now is to continue the Reformation. How? Let's look at the two chief items of that event, theology and good works, that is, faith and action.
FAITH
Theology, which I still regard as “the most beautiful of all the sciences,” (Karl Barth) has lost its authority in academia as well as in the public eye — and even in the church. Of course theology has changed, as it must. At my age, however, I've learned that most change is not progress. We've been through so many “theologies of” in the 60 years I've studied and taught and written: of stewardship, the laity, mission, renewal, pastoral counselling — roughly one topic every decade. I've also learned that each generation has to re-do things for itself, despite the splendid job we did back then!
Is it too simple (and too obvious for a professional theologian) to say that it's theology that counts? My anger/regret/sadness is that we have allowed, even sponsored, fundamentalism, including the politicized form of the “righteous empire” to our south. We did this by neglecting good theology, watering it down for easy consumption by the laity. We preachers have sold them short, failing to communicate what we learned in seminary (the real fundamentals) and so failing to prepare for contemporary issues. Some examples:
Item: since Genesis 1 to 11 is religious mythology, not history or science, there can be no conflict between creation and evolution, or religion and science. (One tells us why, the other how).
Item: in face of religious pluralism and how others approach God, we need to fine-tune our doctrine of God. To say “Jesus is God/God is Jesus” is a heresy (named Apollinarian), common in our worship. It slanders the Lord's humanity. Trinitarian theology is tri-unity, stressing the unitarian equally with the trinitarian. Therefore we worship only GOD — through Jesus Christ by the Spirit.
Item: we must correct the “naïve supernaturalism” that pictures God as all-mighty, a kind of heavenly potentate or engineer, God of the gaps and the zaps. No wonder the “problem of evil” is insoluble. Most who think they are agnostics or atheists blame the presence of evil on God and so find it easy to reject the heavenly Tyrant. But bare omnipotence is “a theological mistake” (Hartshorne). It's modelled on the world of physics (the power of force), not the biblical story (the power of love). It fails to approach God through Jesus the Christ and so is sub-Christian. It wants God to serve us, as if God is ours to use rather than enjoy (Augustine, echoed in our Shorter Catechism). Thus bad theology makes for bad faith, as if Christian belief is merely irrational and therefore irrelevant to the quest for the meaning of our divine-human comedy.
Item: ministers of Word and Sacrament are called and trained to be primarily expositors of scripture, communicators and pastors. Not office managers or CEOs. Yes, we need specialists in Presbytery such as counsellors. Since the Presbyterian system of government is by definition a “team ministry” (minister with session, collegial presbyters, etc), why can't we put this to use in more practical ways in view of our problem with shrinking congregations? Calvin discerned four kinds of ministers in the Bible but we know this was largely arbitrary, so where's today's imagination?
Item: if we are again in a New Testament context — a small dissident group in an alien society — can we revive New Testament forms of gathering and witness? Cells or house churches to replace our underused sanctuaries (a bad word!), missionaries-at-large (a good word!) to replace our settled pastorates? And so on…
So we must test our theology: is it authentic, loyal to its foundation? Not whether it agrees with modern society, steeped as it is in self-love and violence and hedonistic indulgence. To quote myself, in an epilogue to a recent history of heartland Presbyterianism: “What shape Christianity will have in this complex world of pluralism, technology and media hype is anyone's guess. So far we seem bemused by it all, uncertain whether to join the in-crowd by dumbing down theology and jazzing up liturgy, or to hold fast to old truths and ways.” (No Small Jewel, ed. John A. Johnston)
ACTION
Of course, living faith must issue in action (“ideas have legs”), especially on behalf of the poor and victimized — those groups identified by our Presbyterian World Service and Development. We have a special duty on behalf of justice for refugees, a world free of AIDS, peace among nations, equity in the workplace, and so on. But here's the question: is there one unique and distinctive work that only Christians perform? Are not all our good works shared by humanists, Jews, Buddhists and others? I know of no instance of purely Christian social action, one moral stance that cannot be duplicated elsewhere, including the Golden Rule, sacrifice for others, love and respect for the neighbour. Therefore the sole vocation we have, what C.S. Lewis meant by “mere Christianity,” is to be “stewards of the mysteries of faith.” That means witnesses to the Gospel. Here's the logic of faith: only a biblical theology can provide the church with its distinctive and unique character. This is the “one thing needful” as Christians. Otherwise we are saved by our works and betray both Gospel and Reformation.
Is this merely an old-fashioned complaint from a has-been lamenting the passing of the good old days? Surely the onus of proof is on those who are prepared to lose the essence of Gospel by turning to easier creeds or the busy-ness of church work, rather than attempt the difficult task of communicating our Good News “in the language and thought-forms of today” as the mandate of the Committee on Doctrine put it. After all, the Gospel is an alien Word driven into world history by three nails. If I am near right, the only claim we have to exist as an institution is that we preserve and communicate the old Story that is always relevant, the most precious thing this world contains, and the source of authentic human being.
If we do not have a proper theology, we cannot meet the needs and challenges of today. Because the arena is the field of ideas: in science, political economy, global affairs, it is the clash of ideas that is making the world go round. If there is any Word of God, surely the Gospel is its essence, and amid the cacophony of warring voices this proclaims the prophetic-apostolic witness to a living God and a living faith. When I don my philosopher's cap I see that the trouble with Christianity is that it's a historical religion, and it hinges on a specific space-time event, the singularity we call Jesus of Nazareth. Personally, I'd rather have something easier, more noble than that bloody business, more aesthetic (like the calm death of Socrates, or the Buddha). But what can you do if that's the way God chose?
In his great poem Brébeuf and his Brethren, E.J. Pratt recounts the hardships and deprivations of the Jesuit missionaries and their final tortures, particularly that of Jean de Brébeuf. He asks, “Where was the source of his strength?” And answers:
In the sound of invisible
trumpets blowing
Around two slabs of board,
right-angled, hammered
By Roman nails and hung
on a Jewish hill.
