Karl Barth on church growth

“The true growth which is the secret of the upbuilding of the community is not extensive but intensive; its vertical growth in height and depth. If things are well—and there is no reason why they should not be—this is the basis. The numerical increase of the community indicates that it is also engaged in this very different increase. But the relationship cannot be reversed. It is not the case that its intensive increase necessarily involves an extensive. We cannot, therefore, strive for vertical renewal merely to produce greater horizontal extension and a wider audience. At some point and in some way, where it is really engaged in vertical renewal, it will always experience the arising of new Christians and therefore an increase in its constituency, but perhaps at a very different point and in a very different manner and compass from that expected. If it is used only as a means for extensive renewal, the internal will at once lose its meaning and power. It can be fulfilled only for its own sake, and then—unplanned and unarranged—it will bear its own fruits. As the communion of saints takes place, the dominant and effective force is always primarily and properly that of intensive, vertical and spiritual growth.”

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2, 648.

The poverty of memory in the Christian church

Recently, I’ve been asked by someone in my local church if I would like to consider teaching a Sunday School series that focuses on biographical sketches of the Church Fathers.

I think it’s a good move for the church to recognize the contributions of the Church Fathers to the life of the Body of Christ, however I feel that one cannot stop with a mere study of Augustine, Athanasius, Origen, Iraneus or Clement of Rome. I believe the study should furthermore encompass that to go as far as to really study the drama of God’s History with His covenant people – that is the Church in its expression as the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic church that has been attested to in the Creeds.

I believe the study of church history in a local church setting is important in the sense that it brings every believer into a mystical family reunion whereas the Church is the household of God is not just a single nuclear family that merely comprises the local congregation but a multitude that includes every tongue and tribe from all nations.

Already I’m seriously pondering using Bruce Shelley’s classic Church History in Plain Language as the material because personally the book in its own way has helped me move away from a stunted perspective of ecclesiology towards a more wider view of God’s plan of salvation that encompasses our local church traditions and dogma.

Below is an interesting conversation with Bruce Shelley about the importance of studying church history.

"Surely one of the remarkable aspects of Christianity today is how few of these professed believers have ever seriously studied the history of their religion." - Bruce Shelley

The story of the history of the Church is a drama, a powerful drama. Why study it?

1) It gives you understanding. How did we get the way we are? A study of the drama answers that. The study of history can make you wise without gray hair and wrinkles (though one certainly cannot say the same about the writing of that history!)

2) The study of history introduces you to new friends. How else could you meet Augustine, John of the Cross, Martin Luther, John Wesley or Charles Finney? Only as you investigate the drama can you meet them.

3) You learn the price that was paid for you!

4) You avoid the pitfalls and the land mines of history. It has been said that he who is not a student of history is condemned to repeat it. The study of history is not done to exalt tradition. In fact, tradition can be enslaving. As Richard Halverson noted, "Tradition can be dangerous. It can not only modify the truth; it can replace it altogether." A study of history teaches us which traditions are suffocating and need to be avoided and which are so crucial that they must be preserved at all costs.

5) Studying history increases your effectiveness. You see what worked, what was effective. Mark Shaw said it all in the title of his book, Ten Great Ideas from Church History.

6) History enhances your endurance. When you see what those before you endured, you will be encouraged to persevere.

7) History will inspire you. Information may guide you, but inspiration keeps you going. A study of history can inspire. Hopefully, this one will.

8) History makes the dead come to life. My friend Harold Ivan Smith says "no person is dead as long as someone keeps saying their name or telling their stories." By telling this drama, the historical figures live once again.

9) The study of history humbles you by helping you to understand that there was life before you were born. John Wesley once said to Adam Clarke, "If I were to write my own life, I should begin it before I was born."

Copyright 2002, JimGarlow.com all rights reserved, used by permission

It is my prayer that as I will be a part of the journey of studying church history in my Sunday school class that we would learn from the church’s past so that we will no longer fall short in responding to the challenges posed to our faith today as I am confident that there is ‘nothing new under the sun,’ as far as the communal life of the church goes. Furthermore that the study of church history would cause to pause in awe and would be forced to bow our knees in worship to a God who has set Himself to establish a people who would bear witness to His name and His Son.

A new creed for the modern church

Creeds are used to present a systematic articulation of beliefs adhered to by a community of faith, like the Apostles Creed that most Christians in liturgical churches recite every Sunday.

Howard Paterson Professor of Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago, Dunedin, Andrew Bradstock recently formulated this piercing creed that is a piercing criticism to contemporary Christianity’s association with middle-class consumerism and capitalism in a public lecture that delivered at the University of Auckland’s School of Theology titled ‘Profits Without Honour?: Economics, spirituality and the current global recession’:

Why can't we focus more on the ties that bind us?

Me and a friend of mine had an interesting jeepney ride two weeks ago, where we encountered a jeepney driver who was also a pastor of a local Baptist church. It was on this conversation that he started to talk about how he doesn’t believe in the ‘once saved, always saved’ teaching of Baptists.

That conversation, lead me again to read on the topic of Eternal Security and Paul Little’s account of a conversation between the Charles Simeon and John Wesley provides wisdom in responding to the question of salvation in its past, present and future implications.

It is my hope that this conversation between an Simeon and Wesley will draw us to focus more on what binds us Christians if we are to talk about our salvation:

A conversation in 1784 between Charles Simeon (a Calvinist and believer in unconditional predestination) and John Wesley (a follower of Arminus, who denied unconditional predestination) can help us understand the mystery of coming to faith.

SIMEON: Sir, I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have sometimes been called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your permission, I will ask you a few questions… Pray, Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God if God had not first put it in your heart?

WESLEY: Yes. I do indeed.

SIMEON: And do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything you can do, and look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Christ?

WESLEY: Yes, solely through Christ.

SIMEON: But, Sir, supposing you were at first saved by Christ, are you somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own works?

WESLEY: No, I must bee saved by Christ from first to last.

SIMEON: Allowing, then, that you were first turned by the grace of God, are you not in some way or other able to keep yourself by your own power?

WESLEY: No.

SIMEON: What then? Are you to be upheld every hour and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother’s arms?

WESLEY: Yes, altogether.

SIMEON: And is all your hope in the grace and mercy of God to preserve you into His heavenly kingdom?

WESLEY: Yes, I have no hope but in Him.

SIMEON: Then, Sir, with your leave I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance; it is in substance all that I hold, and as I hold it; and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree. 1

Note:
1. Simeon, Charles – as quoted by Paul Little – Know What You Believe p.101-102

NT Wright on the relationship of Empire and the Gospel

Again here's another brilliant insight from my favorite contemporary theologian

The relationship of hope and faith

People who know me or at least those who take the time to read my musings on theology and the life of Christians and the Church are probably familiar with my interest in relating exploring the social dimension of a believer’s faith in Christ.

Primarily because I am a staunch believer that though faith in Christ as Lord and Saviour are personal affairs – it does not mean though that it should be a private affair wherein a believer must be contented in living a Christian life of ‘working our their relationship with God’ through misguided exercise of personal piety and overemphasis on devotional Bible-reading and prayer, however good and important those things may be for each individual Christians.

Hate me as much as you want to but I believe that Christianity is not just about us and Jesus. Because the relationship that we have with God through Jesus Christ brings us into communion with millions of others. Otherwise there won’t be a need for the Church, which exists within the world to be a visible revelation of God calling upon mankind to become subject of His present and future Kingdom.

Looking at Christianity from the perspective of individualism hurts the body of Christ and its witness as it makes it seem that this present world doesn’t matter and that our relationships with one another (however imperfect they are), are not at all important because we have a personal relationship with Jesus.

It is in line with that thought that I have resolved to talk about this social dimension of the Christian life in previous and present post as well as in the coming days as I will try to share with you my personal readings on faith as articulated from the theological reflections of fellow believers who like myself are wrestling with Scriptures in defining a faith that is not ‘dead’ but rather a faith that is transformative not only in the aspect of the individual’s sanctification but also in the life and witness of the Church at large to the world that groans for its liberation when Christ returns in glory.

So it is here that I would like to share about James W. Douglas’ insight on faith’s relationship with hope as he has written in his book Lighting East to West:

“The Christian experience of faith is in a God of hope to humanity, a loving God who will finally bring justice and peace to the world. The Christian prays, “Thy kingdom come,” knowing that when the kingdom does come, swords will be beaten into ploughshares – or more difficult to believe today that nuclear weapons will be abolished and the world’s masses freed from hunger and oppression. The Christian experience of faith is in a God who will finally transform the world as we know it, filled with violence and suffering, into a new heaven and new earth where love and truth will reign in people’s hearts and be embodied in a global community. Thus faith in God means hope for the earth, a hope for all humanity.”1

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[1] Douglas, James W. Jesus, Gandhi and the Nuclear Age: Lighting East to West p.92

Some thoughts on Sola Fide

Sola fide.

Sola fide otherwise known as the Doctrine of Justification by Faith is the controversial doctrine that distinguishes most Protestant denominations from Roman Catholicism.

This basically sums up the rift that was opened between Luther and the Medieval Roman Catholic Church.

Historic Protestant theology upholds that the only instrumental cause of justification (or being made right with God), from the human perspective, is faith. While God is the ultimate cause of justification, Protestants believe that faith in Christ through the message of the Gospel is important. There are no works, no matter how meritorious they may seem, that can add to justification. This doctrine, according to Protestants, finds its roots in the teachings of Paul but was obscured in the middle ages and restored during the Reformation.

The rift is still there and the divide is still as great (perhaps even greater) than it was 500 years ago.

I remember the countless times that I’ve seen over-zealous self-proclaimed Evangelical Protestant Apologists would fire reckless words about Roman Catholics preaching what they call: “a gospel of works.”

This is a common scene (or better yet a: ‘sticky thread’) on the Bereans Apologetics Research Ministry online discussion board, where Born Again Christians in the board would go on and on in talking about how Catholics got it wrong when it comes to salvation where in retaliation Roman Catholic apologists would more than willing to oblige in a proof-text bout that costs both of them their witness to Christ whom they both proclaim to serve.

I confess that I am among those zealous Bible Christians who at one point in my life looked forward to debates like that on the Bereans forum, I admit that I rejoiced at the fact that I can proof-text my point enough to have my Roman Catholic opponent concede his point against mine.

Even as my ego is stroked by my apparent victory in such debates I am at the same time faced with the question of how do Christians enter into a relationship with God before Luther articulated it into the doctrine that we have now come to call as ‘faith alone’. In other words how do pre-Reformation Christians get saved before it was defined as receiving Christ as your personal Lord in Savior?

Going further I am compelled to ask if: "salvation also entails believing in the Doctrine of Justification by faith?"

Before you pick up stones and start branding me as a heretic let me first makes it clear that I myself am a staunch believer of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone. However, I am also struggling with the question of Church history where whether we like it or not can trace a lineage to the Roman Catholic Church.

It is in that personal struggle with that difficulty in relating the doctrine of justification by faith alone with Church history that I am thankful that God lead me to a small bookstore called Bound in Tomas Morato, Quezon City where I was able to get a copy of Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright’s What Saint Paul Really Said for 40 pesos.

It is there he writes:

“There follows from this a vital liberating point, which I first met in the works of the great Anglican divine Richard Hooker, and for which I shall always be grateful. One is not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith. One is justified by believing in Jesus. It follows quite clearly that a great many people are justified by faith who don’t know they are justified by faith. The Galatian Christians were in fact justified by faith, though they didn’t realize it and thought they had to be circumcised as well. As Hooker said, many pre-Reformation folks were in fact justified by faith, because they believe in Jesus, even though, not knowing about or believing in justification by faith, they lacked assurance, and then sought to fill this vacuum in other ways. Many Christians today may not be clear about the niceties of doctrine; but however inarticulately, they hold on to Jesus; and, according to Paul’s teaching, they are therefore justified by faith. They are constituted as members of the family. They must be treated as such. This is not to say, of course that justification is an unimportant or inessential doctrine. Far from it. A church that does not grasp it and teach it is heading for trouble. It is to say that the doctrine of justification itself points away from itself. Believing in Jesus – believing that Jesus is Lord, and that God raised Him from the dead – is what counts.[1]”

It is fascinating to note that in my personal study of Church history that Born Again Christians seem to look at Church history in this manner:

1. Jesus finishes His earthly ministry then ascends into Heaven
2. The Holy Spirit comes to the disciples during Pentecost thus starting the Christian Church whose story was told in the Acts of the Apostles.
3. For a good number of centuries the Roman Catholic Church was there and it was evil and the supposedly ‘true church’ was re-established my Martin Luther and then we Born Again Christians in the present uphold the pure Gospel that was articulated by Luther as Faith Alone.

Please understand that I am not saying that all Roman Catholics are Christians but just the same not all professing Born Again Christians are Christians as well. All I am saying is that the problem with our ignorance of Church history puts us in a shaky foundation.

It puts us in a spot where we uphold a doctrine outside of its historical context as it was borne at the time when confession and absolution within the Roman Catholic Church could be bought by means of indulgences being sold, resulting in penance that’s borne out of a financial transaction rather than genuine contrition.

It is in this failure to recognize this context that we fail to explain it fully thus making us passionate apologists of something that we do not fully understand.

For me the beauty of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone is that it is an available response for us to personally appropriate God’s saving work in Christ, who is the author and finisher of our faith. That’s why I believe that it is not the doctrine itself that saves, but the reality that the doctrine represents.

Note

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[1] Wright, Tom – What Saint Paul Really Said p. 159

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Discipleship in a Consumer Society

People who know me well know how much time I spend at bargain sections of bookstores primarily because it is the best place to find theological books at dirt cheap prices. Two weeks ago I was able to buy a copy of John F. Kavanaugh’s Still Following Christ in a Consumer Society.

The book was first published when the “greed-is-good” decade of the 80s was just beginning, where words like ‘globalization,’ the ‘WTO’ and ‘free trade’ were still buzzwords in economic circles; and Evangelical Christianity is still getting itself acquainted with Republican Politics and yuppie middle-class consumer culture.

What captured my fancy with this book as I began to read it this afternoon is the fact that it finely articulates the subtle flaw that springs out of what most of us has come to call as neo-conservatism within Evangelical Christianity:

“The rise of the “new conservatism” is a case in point. As I see this movement, often associated with morality and a form of Christian faith, it is not conserving of what is richest and deepest in human beings, but a preserving of ourselves from the facts. It is conservatism not of principle, but of pragmatism. It hungers for the legitimations of power and prestige-especially economic, military and ideological. And it represents all suggestions that right order has yet to be achieved in our country. It is a conservatism of self-interest.

This new conservatism is the fruit of two complementary but dangerous tendencies: the tendency to separate faith from the work of justice (active love and service) and the tendency to equate faith with a particular form of social, political or national power.”

I believe that this statement is even more appropriate today more than it was in the 80s. The book is a really penetrating diagnosis of our culture of consumerism as contrasted with the personalism of the Christian Gospel, which speaks of a God who ‘became flesh and made His dwelling among us.’

In the book Kavanaugh speaks to the socially concerned, showing why working for peace and justice needs to support a culture-transcending faith. While to believers, the authors show how authentic faith requires doing justice –in our society, in our places of work, in our places of worship, and our personal lives.

The book offers glaring contrast of the Gospel’s meaning and social implication to that of the present Conservative Right’s support to post-911 foreign and humanitarian policy as well as on issues as varied as pre-emptive war, the environment, foreign debt, human rights and militant Islamic fundamentalism.

Finding God in a punk rock record

How Bad Omen’s new full-length album forced me to face up to the question of theodicy
Listening to the record reminded of this certain feeling of discomfort that I felt when I watched the NOFX concert in Manila two years ago, where after a few ignorant racial remarks NOFX then preceded to poke fun at Christians. This was not the first time that I felt this way whenever I would listen to a punk rock album or attend a gig.

As a Christian I would admit that it is in these satirized depiction of organized religion that I would always feel the sting of their sentiments, because they are poking fun at the people whom I (for better or for worse), I would consider as a brethren. I feel the sting mostly because whether I like it or not the punks’ take on my beliefs are for the most part true.

However it is also in these truthfulness of the punks’ parody of my personal faith that I find the ‘beauty of doubt’ in the way I live my life as a person of faith in the world. And Bad Omen’s new album, God Is Everywhere is one of those few records that challenges me to face the seriousness of Christianity’s failure to live up to the Gospel mandate as well as to ask those difficult questions about those that lie at the core of my belief.

In theology there exists the problem of theodicy which is defined by theologians as an attempt to harmonize the reality of evil with an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent God. I come face to face with the question of a Loving God in an evil world where injustice prevails, when I hear the song entitled as: Jesus Hates Me.

As such lyrics like:

“Look up on the sky on bended knees. Pray for forgiveness or ask for anything. Do you think God will listen to you? When everyday there are others who ask too? (God Is Everywhere),”

challenges me all the more to live a life of witness that attempts to vindicate the divine attributes of God, particularly with respect to holiness and justice.

The themes explored by the songs whose lyrics reads something like:

“When you’re in deep $h#@, God is testing you and if you don’t follow God’s rule you’ll end up in hell. (Oh God)”

Misconception comes into mind whenever I would listen to such lyrics primarily because I know full well that those of us in the faith, often fail to live up to the Gospel call of bearing witness to a Crucified and Risen Christ. It is in our portrayal of God as the sanctifier of our desires that often makes people hate organized religion and altogether the God that we worship.

I believe it is in these thought provoking questions about life and death that are expressed in the songs on God Is Everywhere that we also find a number of key affirmations of the Christian faith that ought to challenge us to confront such confusions about God and the faith we profess head-on. One of them is the reality that God shares the world’s suffering, no one will deny or at the very least remove the Easter story from the Christian narrative because it is in Jesus Christ that the Word of God suffers and dies. Human suffering touches God. God is not a distant or so enmeshed in nature that God cannot respond to suffering. Second, God can bring about good from evil. Last is the fact that, God will triumph over evil. At the heart of the central events of the Biblical story, the crucifixion and the resurrection, is the redemptive love of God. Death will be overcome and new life will become reality. God’s promise will be fulfilled. A new heaven and a new earth await those who know Jesus Christ. God frees us from the fetters that bind the present to the new future. Christ’s solidarity with the victims of evil is their liberation.

We all sit with Jesus in Gethsemane in His struggle with God-forsakenness. His prayers seem unanswered: “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death,” He says. The threat of death and destruction is real and anticipated. Jesus wrestles with the question of theodicy like us, just as the poor and faithful struggle with the violence and pain of our world. Here, prayer is the exact opposite of the “opium of the people.”

As I conclude this review I would like to remind all Christians that faith in the God of the Bible is based upon the trust that divine reality is guiding all things toward fulfilment. God’s promises to the people are also promises to fulfil creation. God has an overall purpose for creation that will be realized as the Kingdom of God.

Understanding the faith that people put in the God of the Bible requires that we see the world as the concern of God, not just our concern. After all, it was out of God’s concern for His lost children that He sought to redeem them at the expense of His own Son.

Between Pentecost and the Second Coming...

...Christians are called to live in the world. So it is imperative that we should get involved with what's happening in the world.

"The task of the Church between ascension and parousia is therefore set free both from the self-driven energy that imagines it has to build God’s kingdom all by itself and from the despair that supposes it can’t do anything until Jesus comes again. We do not ‘build the kingdom’ all by ourselves, but we do build for the kingdom. All that we do in faith, hope, and love in the present, in obedience to our ascended Lord in the power of his Spirit, will be enhanced and transformed at his appearing."
N.T. Wright
Surprised by Hope p. 143

This is one of the reminders that I think I might need to put into a permanent sticky note in my head as a Christian who oftentimes forget to keep in touch with reality as it ought to be viewed from a Christian perspective.

I am sure that I am not alone with this problem.

I often struggle with living out my faith in light of the glorious hope of Christ’s return that I in a way have at one point in my life looked forward to as an instant escape from my personal problems and my inability to live out a faith that not only actively pursues a righteous life but also that of a just society.

Again I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who has struggled with this dilemma.

I believe that we have settled for an escapist eschatology that sees the ultimate purpose for humanity as being sucked into the sky for some disembodied eternal bliss.

This eschatology, has been horribly detrimental to the Church. It has taught us to either flee from the realms of ecology and social justice because God is concerned about the “spiritual” and not the physical (Conservative Protestantism) or to care about them without much good theological reason (mainline Protestantism). If we want to actually appreciate, care and love creation and each other, then a reworking of our eschatology is in order.

This is one of the main themes of N.T. Wright's book entitled: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, which reminds us that we in the Church have, for long time now, forgotten what the Bible actually teaches about heaven, hell, and the resurrection.

Because a clear understanding of such theological themes as he said would ultimately change our view of worship, Scripture, prayer, justice, mission, beauty, and everything else. Because when we came to faith in Christ, we must remember that we entered a whole new world that was started by the resurrection of Jesus and will be completed when he returns. Our job is to live in that world.

N.T. Wright is a British New Testament scholar whom Christianity Today has described as one of the top five theologians in the world today. After serving three years as the canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, Wright became the Bishop of Durham in 2003 – the fourth highest ranking position of authority in the Church of England. Although he is quite unpopular among evangelicals Bishop Wright is one of those contemporary theologians that I admire for his honest self-criticism of present day Christendom as well as for his dry wit and God-given skill to articulate the same issues within the Christian faith that I myself am also struggling with. J.I. Packer has described Wright as “brilliant” and “one of God’s best gifts to our decaying Western Church,” and I count myself as among those like Packer who is thankful for Wright’s gift of writing about the God whom I believe.
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