| About
Jones
Book Contents
Bibliography
Essays
Postings
Readings
Responses
Contact |
The Dialectic
between Church and World
excerpt from A Grammar of Christian Faith, pp.
47-52
[Included in an attempt to explain briefly the repeatedly
references I make to the dialectic between church and world, which, I
claim, is multi-dimensional and multi-faceted.]
In the previous discussions I have had occasion to use the word ‘world’
in various connections. It is now appropriate to analyze some differentiated
meanings of this word. I have emphasized that the church exists for the
benefit of the world. This claim posits some differentiation between church
and world. This difference between church and world is conveyed in the
dictum that the church is in the world but not of
the world.[1] This points us toward a tension that exists at many levels
in the life of the church. I am referring to these many levels or dimensions
of tension between the church and the world as the dialectic between the
church and the world. The term dialectic refers to the
dynamic interaction and penultimately irreducible tension between the
church and the world.
To explain this dialectic, it is necessary to understand three
different but interrelated meanings of the word ‘world’ in
the church’s discourse:
a. the world as the cosmos of creatures created by God;[2]
b. the world as any human culture/society with its structures, relations
and relationships, powers, values, discourses, practices, and traditions;[3]
c. the world as any human culture/society infected and skewed by human
sin.[4]
From these distinctions we can conclude that there are many different
cultural/social worlds in which the church has existed in the past and
present. The church has existed in the Roman empire in the second century
and in Paris, France, Paris, Texas, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the
twentieth century, for example. Further, because every culture/society
has its own distinctive structures, relations and relationships, powers,
values, meanings, languages, and traditions, we can understand that there
are many different dimensions, spheres, and characteristics of
the particular cultural/social world in which the church exists.
These include such complexes, for example, as government, politics, economics,
education, arts, communications, and ethos. We cannot reduce a culture/society
to just one dimension or sphere. Hence, we need to be able to differentiate
among the various worlds themselves and among the different dimensions
and spheres that comprise any one world. When we use ‘world’
in a large social sense as, for example, in talking about the ‘the
American world,’ we recognize that there are within that world a
host of ‘subcultures/societies.’ In our discussion
of language I argued that these more focused social units often have their
own distinctive discourses and practices that differentiate them from
the larger social world in which they exist. Hence, we must be wary of
using ‘world’ too simplistically, even though the differentiated
concepts are important to the sort of theologizing I am proposing and
doing.[5]
As a liberative and redemptive community of persons, the church is always
some cosmologically, historically, and geographically locatable empirical
group of persons in the world in all three senses of ‘world.’
It is in the world as that cosmos of creatures created by God. It is in
the world as some specific historical and geographical social location.
It is in the world as infected by sin, which also infects the church.
Yet it is also the case that in all three senses, the world is
in the church. The church can never simply remove itself from
its social locations. Hence, we must not forget, given these senses of
being in the world and the world being in the church, that the
church is always an “earthen vessel” ever in need of grace,
renewal, and reform. [2 Cor 4.7 (RSV)]
However, as a community comprised of distinct discourses and practices,
the church itself is always a particular culture/society—or
subculture—within some larger culture/society/world.
The church has its distinct identity and differentiation
from the larger social world precisely in and through these discourses
and practices. It is in these theological discourses and practices that
the church itself diagnostically and constructively construes
the world as: (a) created by God; (b) socially arranged in complex ways;
(c) skewed by human sin; and yet also (d) the object of God’s sovereign,
gracious intention to redeem and fulfill. Hence, theologically the church
defines itself and the world by way of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and
must not succumb to the temptation of being defined and placed by the
world on the world’s own terms.
A Multidimensional Dialectic
The dialectic of the church’s relation to the world must
be multi-dimensional, discerning, and discriminating on the basis of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. H. Richard Niebuhr’s influential
typology of church and world relations in Christ and Culture can be misleading
without further awareness of the different dimensions and spheres of culture.[6]
Substituting ‘church’ for ‘Christ,’ we have Niebuhr
analyzing five different types of church/world relations:
a. Church against Culture
b. Church of Culture
c. Church above Culture
d. Church and Culture in Paradox
e. Church the Transformer of Culture.
John Howard Yoder has convincingly argued that Niebuhr’s understanding
of culture is too ‘monolithic.’[7] Culture or world is not
just one phenomenon; it is many. So, the church might be against culture
in one sphere, while quite accommodating to culture in another sphere.
But this typology, especially a, c, d, and e, can be helpful if seen as
a delineation of actual possibilities of the church’s complex multidimensional
relations to the world, in all three senses of ‘world.’ I
do affirm that these possibilities are brought together under the unified
mission of the church to witness to and participate in God’s transforming
and redeeming work for the world.
We can affirm, therefore, that the church is not opposed
to everything in every human cultural/social world in particular or in
principle. Yet the church is engaged in prophetic critique of much of
the cultural/social worlds insofar as they are skewed by human sin and
destructive of human flourishing. But this critique and opposition must
be multi-dimensional, discerning, and discriminating. The church may be
in critique of a particular government or governmental policy without
being against civil government in principle. In summary form we can say
that the critique and opposition to a world skewed by sin are
the nonviolent practices of the Gospel in which the church seeks God’s
peace and justice for the world through works of love. In this
critique of and opposition to the world, the church intends to convey
and embody an alternative way of living in the world.
In this respect the church can be countercultural. Yet even when opposed
to the world in some dimension—as countercultural—the
church is basically for-the-world as that reality on
behalf of which it exists in mission. But this being-for-the-world arises
from the call of the Gospel and is not grounded in the world’s own
discourses and practices.
The Perils and the Promises of the Dialectic
As I have said, there is an incessant dialectic between
the church and the world in which it exists and which is the object of
its mission of witness. I have said that the word ‘dialectic’
refers to the dynamic interaction and penultimately irreducible tension
between the church and the world. Let us look now at some reasons for
the dialectic.
First, the church itself is inevitably influenced and concretely shaped
by the world in which it exists. It is influenced by language, historical
memory, institutional practices, power structures, values, traditions,
and other things. This inescapable influence poses the following perils:
(a) that the church will itself be no more than a mirror image
of the world in which it exists; (b) that the church will have no distinct
Gospel-identity in differentiation from other communities in that world;
and (c) that the church’s ‘gospel’ will become no more
than what the world endorses and defines on the world’s own terms
of self-understanding and its preferred modes of truth, morality, salvation,
and hope. When these perils happen, the church ceases to be a countercultural
community that can exist with its own integrity and yet exist for the
benefit of the world. That this has often happened in the history of the
church is beyond dispute.
Second, the church properly and vigorously cultivates its own distinct
discourses and practices in order to capacitate the church’s witness
as adequate and faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This salutary
cultivation, however, can pose the following perils:
(a) that the church’s distinctness will so devolve into separation
and withdrawal from the world that it will have no effective witness for
the world and thereby will defeat its own purpose and mission; and (b)
that the church may seem to be adequate and faithful to the Gospel in
its witness but is not luminous, truthful, and transformative of the particular
world in which it exists. Thus when the church becomes countercultural
in a separation or withdrawal model,
it can easily neglect its call to witness to its contemporary world.
Third, the church intends its witness to be luminous, truthful, and transformative
for the contemporary world in which it exists. However laudatory this
intention might be, it is difficult to execute faithfully, and thus poses
the following perils: (a) that its witness may not be
so luminous, truthful, and transformative because it is a witness that
was created for another and different cultural world than the one in which
it now actually exists; (b) that the church may not concretely understand
and diagnose adequately the particular world in which it exists and thereby
its witness might miss the mark; and (c) that the church in a particular
exercise of theologizing might speak to one subculture to the exclusion
of other subcultures.
All three of these perils can be multiplied exponentially when we see
that there are also the subcultures within every large social world that
are especially attractive to or repugnant to any particular exercise of
the church’s witness. The legitimate impulses of apologetics are
repeatedly imperiled.
This penultimate dialectic between church and world poses some ongoing
diagnostic questions and issues for the Church: (a) How does the church
exists in and for the world without
being of the world? (b) How does the church know the world truly, including
knowing how the world is structured and actually organized? (c) What are
the various self-understandings (or, rationalized discourses) of the world
in its various dimensions and spheres? (d) How does the church dialogue
and converse with the world, including speaking a language that is both
distinctive and persuasively understandable? (e) What are the distinguishing
features of the Christian’s actions and life in the world, which
include the shape of Christian ethics? (f) How does the church remain
mindful of the fact that it is witnessing to various social worlds and
subcultures all the time?
The dialectic and these questions and issues will be with us throughout
this systematic theology project. Short of the eschaton, there
is no final, once-and-for-all resolution and cessation of the dialectic
between the church and the world so far as the church is always in the
world, the world is always in the church, and the church exists for the
transformative redemption of the world.
Some aspects of this dialectic can be positively construed as a dialogue
or conversation with the world: (a) to listen to the world, to
know the world’s own self-understandings, maybe better than the
world knows itself; (b) to listen to the world characterize the church
and its Gospel; and (c) to speak to the world, to address the world, to
challenge the world, to answer the questions and critiques of the world,
and to be ‘good news’ to the world. The conversations with
the world must of necessity be fluid and multidimensional. I do not believe
there is some strict ‘method’ of ‘correlation’
between church and world, such as Tillich advocates.[8] Rather, the conversation
is more ad hoc and changing in its concrete expressions as time
moves in the church and in the world.[9] But in engaging in these conversations
with the world, the church intends to be witnessing to the living triune
God for the salvific benefit of the world.
Endnotes
[1]See 2 Cor 10.3–5; Jn 17.14–18.
[2] See Jn 1.1–4, 9–10; 21.25; Acts 17.24; Rom 1.20; Phil
2.15.
[3] See Mt 4.8; Lk 12.30; Mk 8.36. For the purposes of this discussion
I will use ‘culture,’ ‘society,’ and ‘social
world’ interchangeably, unless otherwise stipulated. For other purposes
we might pursue a distinction.
[4] See Jn 12.31; 16.11; Rom 5.12; 1 Cor 1.21; Gal 4.9.
[5] See Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 1–119 for a discerning discussion
of the differences in the theories of culture that have influenced theological
reflection. Tanner also has her own proposals concerning the uses and
the limits of concepts of culture in theological analysis and construction.
Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures (New York:
Basic Books, 1973) usefully explores the role of language in the formation
and unity of a culture. His work has been influential in that contemporary
movement of theology called ‘postliberal,’ a term employed
by George Lindbeck to describe his theological perspective. See Lindbeck,
The Nature of Doctrine.
[6] H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1951).
[7] See “How H. Richard Niebuhr Reasoned: A Critique of Christ and
Culture” in Glen Stassen, D. M. Yeager, and John Howard Yoder, Authentic
Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture (Nashville, Tenn.:
Abingdon, 1996), 31–90. Yoder’s works have been especially
helpful in understanding and analyzing what I am calling the dialectic
between church and world. See John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom:
Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1984); The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical,
ed. with introduction by Michael G. Cartwright, with foreword by Richard
J. Mouw (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994); and For the Nations:
Essays Evangelical and Public (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997).
[8] See Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, 34–68. See
Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Systematic Theology: Tasks and
Methods” in Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John P. Galvin,
eds., Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, vol.
1 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 1–85, especially 55–65 on
the method of correlation. David Tracy has been searching for a method
of correlation in Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury,
1975) and The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroads, 1981).
It strikes me that Tracy’s learned exercises have a particular intellectual
culture in mind and that he never elides the perils of the dialectical
and therefore unsystematic character of the church/world multiple relationships.
[9] Hans Frei insightfully developed this occasional and ad hoc character
of theologizing in his Types of Christian Theology, ed. George
Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1992), 70–92.
Copyright© Rowman & Littlefield
|