A. The church in its fullness is all of creation coming together in Christ. God "has put all things under his feet, and made him, as the ruler of everything, the head of the Church; which is his body, the fullness of him who fills the whole creation" (Ephesians 1:22-23, JB). So then, the church is the fullness of Christ who is the fullness of the universe [1].
B. From this position follow 3 lessons for our discussions about the nature of the church: (1) The church that we know and which we can talk about is less than the fullness of the church; it only that small bit of the whole church which one person is able to come into contact with. The first lesson on the nature of the church is that the church is more than I or you can grasp. More than our local gathering, more than our tradition, more than the whole community of the people of God; the church in its fullness reaches to everything that is.(2) The church makes visible Christ's unifying lordship over the whole of creation. The second lesson about the church is that everything which God has made is focused on and drawn to Christ. (3) The third lesson is that the church is in motion, a coming together, which is aimed at and drawn in by Jesus Christ. The reality of our experience may be division and isolation, but the end and goal of all things is union with God through Christ and through Christ with the whole of the universe.
C. To speak properly of the church, therefore, we ought to say everything about everything. In reality, we are constrained to say something and not everything. Truly, we can't begin to speak about everything, not even about all that we known from our own experience and certainly not about the whole of God's creation. We can talk about particular aspects of the church, and we can do so fairly if we keep before us the vastness of what we are omitting. In the following, I propose to consider in part only the implications of the diversity of human experience on the structure of the human involvement in the church [2].
D. "The church is first and foremost, a gift of God," as Michael Kinnamon, Dean of the Lexington Theological Seminary, said to the Moravian Provincial Elders Conference [3] (Kinnamon, page 2). This truth is so self-evident that we tend to forget about it. We know, as Kinnamon says, that the church is "called into existence by God's grace in Jesus Christ" (Kinnamon, page 1), but we must continue and ask, "How is God's gift of the church seen in our lives and in the human experience?"
E. God's gift of the church is experienced in coming together in Christ. Thus Kinnamon can say that "the essential nature of the church is relational and devotional, not abstract and conceptual" (Kinnamon, page 1). First, the nature of the church is relational: The church "is primarily constituted by its relationship to Christ, which is the basis of intense relationships among his followers" (Kinnamon, page 2). We quite rightly give much attention to the fellowship found in the church, but this fellowship is only true when it is it is based on the relationship between Christ and his people [4].
F. "The church is a community whose life together – as one people – is essential to its character as a sign of of God's reconciling purpose for all creation," says Kinnamon (Kinnamon, page 2). The church shows in its own life "something of the wholeness of the body of Christ" (Kinnamon, page 7), a glimpse of the unity of all creation. The church transcends "those barriers of race, sex, culture, class, and nationality that divide persons from one another"" (Kinnamon, page 2-3). "It is not enough," Kinnamon suggests, that the church "includes those congregations in Tanzania. Something of that diversity must be lived out in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania" (Kinnamon, page 3). When the church is true to itself, which is to say that it is true to the gift of God's love, it shows within itself the unity of a very diverse creation. In this sense, "Each congregation is truly the church," a manifestation of the full unity of creation in Christ. The local congregation gains the ability to be the church because it is united with Christ and thereby has "unity with sisters and brothers in Christ gathered in other times and places" (Kinnamon, page 3).
G. Second, the nature of the church is devotional: "The church exists for the sake of praising God and participating in God's mission for all the world" (Kinnamon, page 2). The church is "a royal priesthood, ... a people set apart to sing the praises of God" (1 Peter 2:9, JB). Unity merely with each other is of no consequence; we are united with each other because we are united with Christ.
H. Our relationship to God in Christ is the central truth of the nature of the church. John Calvin [5] wrote, "The church is called 'catholic' or 'universal' because there could not be two or three churches unless Christ be torn asunder – which cannot happen!" It is true that there are diverse groups within the church, but there is also an essential unity "For they have been called not only to the same inheritance but also to participate in one God and Christ" (Calvin, IV.1.2, page 1014). The unity in which we participate, by the grace of God, is the avenue by which we are able to address the gift of our diversity. Diversity itself is created by God. In a discussion of the diversity of gifts that support the community of the church, Paul writes, "There is one Body, one Spirit, ... and one God who is Father of all, over all, through all and within all. Each one of us, however, has been given his own share of grace, given as Christ allotted it" (Ephesians 4:4-7, JB). John Howard Yoder of the University of Notre Dame, in a discussion of ministry in the church [6], comments that from this passage we may see that "the multiplicity of gifts ... is thus itself an aspect of Christ's saving work" (Yoder, page 15).
I. If, then, diversity is a part of Christ's work, it must be affirmed and not suppressed. On the other hand, diversity ought not to become an idol. "As I read scripture (especially Paul)," Kinnamon says, "diversity, understood as constitutive of unity (the diversity of gifts for common good), is a blessing; but diversity, seen as an end in itself, is an expression of the sinful human tendency to organize reality into homogenous enclaves" (Kinnamon, page 5). Diversity will no doubt give rise to disputation, but the goal must not be winning the argument but always a greater unity. John Hus in a letter [7] cautions a newly appointed priest-judge, "Do not rejoice in disputes, as is done by wicked judges" but "rather reconcile disputes" (Hus, 1, page 2).
J. We've already alluded to the social and cultural diversity within the church. There are also structural and institutional divisions, denominations, and schisms. They are not to be taken lightly – and yet there is here also a gift in the variety of traditions and structures through which we are coming together in Christ. "Multiplicity of perspectives is essential to the church's unity and is a key to the discernment of truth," Kinnamon reminds us. "A basic scriptural conviction, frequently violated in the actual life of the churches, is that no person or group possesses a full grasp of God's will. Despite God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ, Christians continue to see 'in a mirror dimly,' interpreting their experience of God's presence and promise in remarkly diverse ways" (Kinnamon, page 6) [8]. Kinnamon's claim is not merely that diversity is useful to us but that it is a great and wonderful gift. "To say that no single perspective is sufficient to capture the totality of what God has done ... is not a capitulation to relativism, but a celebration that God's 'thoughts' and 'ways' are not ours" (Kinnamon, page 6).
K. Every group within the church has both gifts to offer and burdens to confront. "I have Roman Catholic friends who tell me that their problem is to free the individual from the tyranny of the church," Kinnamon notes. "As a Disciple, my biggest problem is to free the church from the tyranny of the individual. You see how we need the witness of one another" (Kinnamon, page 6). Kinnamon's discussion of the experiences of his own denomination show how concern for the individual can obscure the awareness of even the local community, let alone the coming together of all creation. Concern for the "church", however, if it makes of the "church" something distinct from its individual parts, diminishes the value of the church's members and creates an illusion of unity which is quite different from the gift of unity in diversity which God has given.
L. Each person within the church is given both abilities and a role in the church which is unique, and from these a perspective and an understanding which is equally unique. Peter writes, "Each one, as a good manager of God's different gifts, must use for the good of others the special gift he has received from God" (1 Peter 4:10, TEV). Only by using all of these gifts of God can we properly honor God's giving them to us. Yoder concludes, concerning this, "Harmony and diversity are not in tension but complementary" (Yoder, page 17).
M. What is the practical response to this attitude? First, opening each community within the church as a window to the whole church, so far as we can know it. Second, setting our aim on Jesus Christ. Third, engaging actively in dialog with others in the church who have the benefit of a different perspective on the the truth.
N. That the church in its fullness is more than the local community is not automatically clear. To be a window to the whole church, the church at any one place will deliberately seek to incorporate the witness of the church of other times and places into its own life. This means that the local community to which we belong must live out something of the Christian witness of Tanzania, to use Kinnamon's example. Similarly, the devotion of the middle ages and the enthusiasms of the 1700's ought to be visible through the life of the modern community, whether or not any of those are primary ways for our specific community within the church to express ourselves in our particular time and place.
O. The church that we know and can make visible is always less than the full measure of the church. Expanding our understanding and increasing our sharing with the the whole of the church requires maintaining both a habit of inquiry and an attitude of welcome. This is the opposite of being exclusive or self-sufficient. "I say it is a devilish invention for our minds," as Calvin wrote (IV.i.20, page 1034), "while as yet we in the eartly race, to be cocksure about our perfection."
P. Each community of Christians has a service to offer to each other community within the church. We can set an example of seeking out those parts of the church with which we had not been familiar, we can make knowledge about our own community available to others, we can call others to remember the vastness of the whole church, and we can accept the same reminder when it is given to us.
Q. Maintaining this communication among the communities and allowing for this service to take place requires some sort of organization for the church, though we should not leap too quickly to prescibing the forms that this organization should take. In the United States, the church already functions with a variety of organizational styles, notably congregationally based democracy (such as the Baptists, Congregationalists, and community churches), hierarchies (Roman Catholic, Episcopalian), and representational democracies (such as the United Methodists). Science and culture offer us many different and often unexpected ways in which organize can be created and maintained, reflecting in different ways the variety which God placed in the full scope of creation [9]. The early Christian church seems to have maintained sufficient organization through the exchange of letters, symbolic gifts, and visits. Since the church encompasses the full richness of God's creation, it should not be surprising if all of these forms are useful to bring our various communities together in service to each other.
R. Each member within a community also has a service to offer to the community. "The dignity of every ministering person in the body of Christ," Yoder writes, "... is a present fact to be appropriated by faith in the empowering work of the Holy Spirit" (Yoder, page 53). The practice which best recognizes an individual's dignity is the one which assigns the individual a job of worth in the church. Stating the value of each person is important, but permitting each person to demonstrate their value in action is more meaningful. In Ephesians (4:12-13, JB) we are reminded that "the saints together make a unity in the work of service, building up the body of Christ." Since God has chosen us to serve, it is in the work of service that we find our unity. If any person is excluded from the work, our unity in Christ is disrupted. The church should so conduct itself that every member has a task and a ministry.
S. It is not right to concentrate responsibility for every task in the community, "gathering together under one person many diverse tasks which in the New Testament would have been widely shared among numerous people" (Yoder, page 74). Instead, some cooperative style of spreading the work to all of the people is necessary. "Just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by the ministers and by the faithful, and as the one goodness of God is really communicated in different ways to His creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source" (Lumen gentium, 63; [10]). This means that some specific responsibility should be given to each person for the advancement of the work of the church. [11]
T. The church makes visible the lordship of Jesus Christ. As the church, we are coming together in Christ, responsive to Christ's authority. "Come to the Lord," the apostle Peter writes (1 Peter 2:4-5, TEV), "... Come as living stones, and let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple." In our moving toward Christ, we demonstrate the power of Jesus over the world, unifying everything in himself.
U. "Whatever you do at all," writes Paul (1 Corinthians 10:11, JB), "do it for the glory of God." The church will, in everything it does, proclaim the God's worthiness; that is, worship. In all actions which glorify God, and particularly "in the sacrament of the eucharistic bread, the unity of all believers who form one body in Christ is both expressed and brought about" (Lumen gentium, 3). The essence of worship is to confess before Jesus and before our neighbors that "you alone are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices, O Son of God, O Giver of life, and to be glorified through all the worlds" [12].
V. To know what activites will most promote our coming together in Christ, the church must discern the will of God. In 1 John 4:1, we are reminded of the need for careful discernment: "It is not every spirit, my dear people, that you can trust; test them, to see if the come from God". On one occasion in the early church, "while they were offering worship to the Lord ... the Holy Spirit said, 'I want Barnabas and Saul set apart for the work to which I have called them'" (Acts 13:2, JB). Much later John Hus, uncertain of his responsibility in the face of persecution and finding contradictory guidance in scripture and in Augustine, wrote to some friends, "Therefore, let us pray humbly that the Almighty would deign to instruct us what I, a miserable wretch, am to do in the present case, so as not to go astray from the path of righteousness" (Hus, page 76). John Calvin noted "the fact that we often read of the prayers of the saints being heard. Why? Because they prayed, of course" (Calvin, III.xx.26, page 885). The Holy Spirit reveals God's will to the church; the church must listen and discover how we can be used in the building of the "spiritual temple" [13].
W. The church's end and goal is oneness with Christ; in the present time we are in the process of coming together. Being the church on the earth is more an activity than it is a condition. Since the church is in motion toward Christ, it is most clearly understood in activities which add impetus to this movement. These activities include worship and discernment and inquiry by each of the communties within the church. The church reaches out to people who do not recognize a place for themselves in the union with Christ. Active dialog among the various communities within the church draws all of us more tightly together into a closer union with Christ, making us also a better sign of the church in its fullness.
X. Active dialog means offering the gifts of understanding available in our own group and accepting the gifts of others. The goal of dialog calls us to maintain the various traditions and not to subsume them all into a homogeneous organization. Instead, these varied backgrounds and outlooks ought to become the content of the gifts each community within the church brings to the others. It is our very diversity of tradition, of experience, of expression which is the basis of our sharing, for if there were no differences there would be no gift to offer.
Y. The goal of active dialog is to move closer to perfect union with Christ. "There is only one truth about the world – God, the One made known in Jesus Christ and ever-present through the Holy Spirit," says Kinnamon (page 7). This is the truth of which we are all a part. Therefore, as we read in Ephesians (4:25, JB) we "must speak the truth to one another, since we are all parts of one another." Kinnamon also says, "Truth is the basis of authentic Christian community; but community is the context for discerning truth more fully" (Kinnamon, page 7). [14]. Indeed, we are wrong if we make avoiding disagreement our goal, since "conflict in the church can and should remind us that our wholeness doesn't depend on human agreement, but on the One whose love alone binds us together" (Kinnamon, page 6). Since we have this wholeness and are already united with one another through our union with Christ, we will speak the truth as to each other as friends, "for the improvement of others, as occasion offers, and do good to your listeners" (Ephesians 4:29, JB).
Z. The active dialog we are seeking is described in Ephesians (4:15-16, JB): "If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength." We may conclude with Kinnamon by saying that "it is through the discipline of speaking the truth to one another in love that the body is built up" (Kinnamon, page 6).
JB: The Jerusalem Bible. [Doubleday, 1966.]
TEV: Good News Bible: The Bible in Today's English Version [American Bible Society, 1976.]
[1] See also Ephesians 1:10-12 and Colossians 1:16-20.
[2] We ought not limit ourselves to the example of diversity in human culture, since the fullness of creation is not restricted to humanity. "The faithful, therefore, must learn the deepest meaning and the value of all creation, as well as its role in the harmonious praise of God," to use the wording of Lumen gentium (36). Nevertheless, it is fair to begin our thinking with those parts of creation which are most understandable to ourselves.
[3] Michael Kinnamon. "What is the Church?" (November 1, 1996) and "Truth and Community: Diversity in the Church" (November 2, 1996). Reprinted in ReVision, "an occasional newsletter of the Provincial Elders' Conference, Moravian Church, Northern Province", January, 1997.
[4] There seems to be more agreement in recent decades concerning these truths about the church. Kinnamon's words are not unlike those of Lumen gentium (1), for example, which defines the church as "a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race".
[5] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion; John T. McNeil, editor, Ford Lewis Battles, translator, The Library of Christian Classics [Westminster Press, 1960], Volumes XX and XXI. Calvin identifies the church by "the preaching of the Word and the observance of the sacrament" (IV.i.10, page 1024), a considerably more narrow definition than the present one. Calvin does not dispute that grace is given to all people – "As if God's generosity did not extend even to pigs and dogs!" (same page) – but he never sees beyond God's necesary judgement. Therefore, to Calvin it is clear that the elect are few; "the inheritance is entrusted to those few to whom he will sometime say, 'Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom'" (III.xxv.17, page 986). Any attempt to reconcile the present universal ecclesiology with the reality and necessity of God's judgement will have to await some future essay in soteriology.
[6] John Howard Yoder, The Fulless of Christ: Paul's Vision of Universal Ministry, [Brethern Press, 1987].
[7] Matthew Spinka, translator, Letters of John Hus [Manchester University Press, 1972]. Hus' own views on the nature of the church are found in De ecclesia.
[8] Compare Raymond Brown: "I contend that in a divided Christianity, instead of reading the Bible to assure ourselves that we are right, we would do better to read it to discover where we have not been listening. As we Christians of different churches try to give hearing to the previously muffled voices, our view of the church will grow larger; and we will come closer to sharing common views." Raymond E. Brown, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind [Paulist, 1984], page 150. This exposition of the ideal is not meant to deny the reality of division. I am reminded of Hus' assessment of the division of the church in his time: "Concerning the schism among the people, I do not believe that it can be terminated, because Christ's prophecy must be fulfilled, that He 'came not to send peace but a sword'" (Hus, [7], page 94).
[9] Optimality theory proposes that complex organization of concepts can be created by balancing a few fundamental rules in different ways. (For an example of optimality in learning language, see Alan Prince and Paul Smolensky, "Optimality: From Neural Networks to Universal Grammer", [Science, 275:1604.]) Our economic system is a modification of the concept of the free market, in which very little apparent organization allows the economy to organize itself (for the most part). Microbiology seems to be discovering that the organization of living cells is built on lines closer to Adam Smith than John Paul II; I base this suggestion on my reading of current microbiology research; for example, Vladimir V. Lupashin and M. Gerard Waters, "t-SNARE Activation Through Transient interaction with a Rab-Like Guanosine Triphosphatase", [Science, 276:1547]. And it was only a couple centuries ago that political theorists argued that no political system could function unless one branch of the government was supreme over the others. Theology has known about mutuality in the mutual yielding (perichoresis or circum[in]cessio) of the trinity (see, for example, Anthony Kelly, The Trinity of Love, [Michael Glazier, 1989], page 84, or better yet see Kelly's presentation at the Theological Institute), but the church has not generally applied the idea to organizing the communities within the church.
[10] Lumen gentium may be found in several places, including from the Christus Rex organization, http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/v3.html.
[11] Yoder is advocating "universal ministry" as being most true to the teachings of the New Testament and especially of Paul. He writes that there are no "grounds for affirming that there does exist in the New Testament church or should exist in our churches, one category of persons with no specific ministerial call, and on the other hand a few ministers more 'set apart' than the rest" (page 29). This is in opposition to the view in Lumen gentium (10) that there are both "the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood", and these "differ from one another in essence and not only in degree". Yoder proposes sharing specific tasks and not a creating a general equivalence of function. "Instead of being dismayed at the idea of the concept of ministry being vaguely diffused through the laity as a whole," Yoder writes (page 46), "why not conceive of specific ministries being assigned to all members specifically, so that what is done away with is not the specialized ministry but the undifferentiated laity?"
[12] From the Phos hilaron as printed in The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church [Seabury Press, 1979], page 118. Compare the worship described in Revelation (especially the "new hymn" of 5:9ff).
[13] For a very brief and practical discussion of some methods of discernment, see Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discpline [Harper &Row, 1978], chapter 12, "The Discipline of Guidance" (pages 150-162). The Acts of the Apostles contain a variety of instances when the Spirit directed the church, typically though not universally at times of common prayer (8:29, 10:19, 11:12, 15:28, 20:23, 21:4, etc.) This is not to deny that the Spirit may also speak more individually, as to Paul when he wrote that "my conscience in union with the Holy Spirit assures me" of the truth (Romans 9:1, JB). The story of Francis of Assisi discerning his call to preach is not unlike Hus' story. Francis is said to have asked Clare and Silvester to pray about this matter; the agreement of the answers given to each friend put Francis' doubts to rest. Raphael Brown, translator, The Little Flowers of St. Francis [Doubleday Image, 1958], chapter 16, pages 74-75. Had I time and references to hand, I would add at least the Moravians' unexpected discernment of Jesus' willingness to serve as Chief Elder and John Wesley's gradual discernment of his special mission to the working people of England.
[14] This demands much more from us than tolerance, as summarized by the admonition, "In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity." Tolerance itself is good, and has seldom enough been characteristic of the church, but the call is for us to share actively with each other. This admonition is variously ascribed to Jan Amos Comenius, the Moravian founder of modern education; to Alexander Campbell, the son of the founder of the Discples of Christ (Kinnamon, page 1); and to Peter of Maiterland (Joseph F. Eagan, Restoration and Renewal: The Church in the Third Millenium [Sheed &Ward, 1995], page 332). One can only assume that the thought was in the wind, or in the Spirit. The idea seems to be enjoying a resurgence of popularity in this century. Among other uses, it appears (without attribution) in Gaudium et spes (92) as "unity in what is necessary; freedom in what is unsettled; and charity in any case."
July, 1997
May, 2005