|
A Response to
Mending the World
This article "A Response to Mending the
World" was copied from the United Online section "Articles and Letters"
and copied (verbatim) to the Research directory of my webpage : "Project
2000". <http://www.superiornet.net/project2000>
As can be seen, this article is a *response* to a
study produced by the United Church's Interchurch-Interfaith Committee.
The purpose of the study? In the words of the prelude (below):
The main thrust of the United Church's
Interchurch-Interfaith Committee's
"Mending the World: An Ecumenical
Vision for Healing and Reconciliation" is
found in its expansion of
the Church's understanding of ecumenism to include "the
whole
inhabited earth".
According to Rev David L. Fisher, this new
understanding of an "ecumenism" that includes "the whole inhabited
world" is an expansion of the Church's ecumenism that focused "on the
relations of Christian denominations between one another for the sake of
mission, ..." . Much as that expansion is to be applauded, it is
regrettable that the committee of Interchurch-Interfaith has not seen
fit to take this opportunity to expand its search for comprehension to
include, not only other faithstances, but all other disciplines that
(combined) make up the totality of humanity's understanding of the
environment (existence) it is part off.
In the meantime, following is the response of Rev
David L. Fisher to the document "Mending the World: An Ecumenical Vision
for Healing and Reconciliation", the text of which will be reproduced
below at the end of David's "response to ....".
UNITED LETTERS & ARTICLES
A Response to Mending the World
by David L. Fisher
David Fisher is a United Church minister serving on the Foam Lake-Leslie
Pastoral
Charge in Foam Lake, Saskatchewan. A copy of this article will be
published in the March, 1998 issue of Theological Digest and Outlook.
Prelude
The main thrust of the United Church's
Interchurch-Interfaith Committee's
Mending the World: An Ecumenical
Vision for Healing and Reconciliation is
found in its expansion of
the Church's understanding of ecumenism to include "the
whole
inhabited earth".While traditionally the ecumenical movement focused on
the
relations of Christian denominations between one another for the
sake of mission,
Mending the World breaks new ground by calling the
United Church to make a
"common cause" with individuals and
institutions of good will regardless of their
religious tradition or
faith stance. The "search for justice for God's creatures and
healing for God's creation" was named as the common cause. A resolution
asking
for, among other things, 20% of the value of the Church's
reserve fund (which
would have amounted to over $1,000,000 dollars),
as well as mandating that 20%
of General Council's human resources
be deployed in work that conformed to the
priorities of Mending the
World , was set before the 36th General Council.
Although this
General Council did not approve of such a costly resolution, it did
affirm the world-centered ecumenical vision of Mending the World.
The core of the paper which follows was written
based on the copy of Mending the
World which was given to the
delegates to the 36th General Council. It focuses
mainly on the
"Theological Foundations" section of the report.
Introduction
See to it that no one
takes you captive through hollow and deceptive
philosophy, which depends on human tradition and on the basic
principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the
fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,
and you have been given
fullness in
Christ,who is the head over every power and authority. -
Colossians 2:8,9. (NIV)
Mending the World appears to reflect post-modern
values and a panentheistic
orientation. This makes it ideally suited
as a point of departure in dialoguing with
other religions since it
makes no truth claims which could be viewed as being
absolute or
contradictory to other world-views. On issues of faith it presents
several
alternative "traditions" which some Christians subscribe to.
At the same time it
advocates the use of a "common cause" to bring
about stronger relations with
people of other religious traditions.
While this approach is helpful insofar as it
promotes tolerance, unfortunately it
appears to undermine
traditional Christian claims to absolute truth. Moreover
Mending the
World, in its quest for an environmentally friendly theology, seems to
advocate panentheism which is foreign to the Christian faith. This
has major
implications for how the United Church understands God,
and as a result would
dramatically change the nature of how we do
mission.
This paper will attempt to show how the Mending
the World is influenced by a
postmodernistic outlook, how
panentheism is espoused, and, paying close attention
to what it
means for God to be reconciling the world, how our mission as a Church
is re-prioritized.
A Postmodern View
Postmodernism is a contemporary way of viewing the
world. It is a reaction to
modernism, which held that reality could
be discovered through our senses and by
applying the scientific
method. Modernists believe that human bias could be
eliminated
through the rigorous application of observation and analysis. Whereas
modernists believe that an objective view of reality can be
realised, postmodernism
emphasises that not only our
interpretations, but also the process of selecting and
analysing
what we observe, is unavoidably laden with bias (Fidelibus & McCallum,
17).
Alister McGrath writes:
There has been a general
collapse of confidence in the Enlightenment
trust in the power of reason to provide the foundations for a
universally
valid knowledge of the world,
including God. Reason fails to deliver a
morality suited to the real world in which we live. And with this
collapse
of confidence in a universal and
necessary criterion of truth, relativism
and pluralism have flourished ( McGrath, 175).
Before beginning my studies in University, I
recall spending some time looking at
the venues of each of the
subjects sponsored by the General Arts department. A
kindly
philosophy professor stood behind a table and presented me with a
challenge:
"define reality in 25 words or less". After a moment's
hesitation I shot back: "reality
is whatever I perceive it to be". I
was unaware that my answer typified post
modern thinking. According
to postmodernism, there is no objective reality which
can be
discovered, rather only a reality which we each construct based upon our
own experience. A common consensus on truth may develop as we write
our
collective story, or what postmodernist's call a
"meta-narrative" (Fidelibus and
McCallum, 17). Yet this "truth" is
not true because it corresponds to some
objective reality of which
it speaks, rather it is true only because we believe it to be
so.
Hence there can be contradictory "truths" espoused by various people and
groups. To take a pertinent example, Christians may regard Jesus as
the Messiah
and for them this is quite true, while at the same time
Jews may deny that Jesus
was the Messiah and for them this is no
less true. In postmodernism, all belief
systems may be regarded as
equally plausible.
The inherent advantage of this way of thinking is
that it promotes tolerance and
pluralism. Yet it does so by denying
the possibility of arriving at any knowledge of
objective truth.
Postmodernism views truth as what we make it, as opposed to
Biblical
Christianity which holds that certain absolute truths can be revealed to
us
by the inspiration of God.
With respect to its theological foundations,
Mending the World reflects a
postmodernist spirit. It states that
"from the Church's beginnings, a common, pithy,
and universally
acceptable understanding of Jesus' life and significance have not
existed" (MTW, 9). It presents Jesus as a "prophet of the end time", as
"teacher of
law", as "emissary of wisdom" , as "revolutionary for
social change" and as
"revealer of the gift of grace" adding that
each of these is a "construction".
It goes on to say that, "the constructions are
always stories of faith, not history.
Even the biographical bits are
recorded by post-Easter people, and are included not
to provide some
presumed 'neutral' history of Jesus, but in order that, as John's
gospel states, 'you may believe'" (MTW, 11).
This begs the question as to the extent to which
the Bible can be relied upon to be
the revelation of any objective
truth. If there is no objective reality to which it
points, then one
could question whether it should be considered as anything more
than
a mere fanciful, albeit meaningful fiction. If this were in fact the
case, then I
would suggest that the promises "of God" as contained
within the pages of scripture
are nothing more than wishful
thinking, self-fulfilling at best, or hollow myths
making believers
most pitiful fools at worst (1 Cor. 15:15-19). This type of reading
is at odds with the United Church's founding belief in, "the Holy
Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments, given by the inspiration
of God, as containing the only
infallible rule of faith and life, a
faithful record of God's gracious revelations, and as
the sure
witness of Christ" (The Manual: The United Church of Canada, 1995, 14).
In this same spirit, Mending the World presents
four "traditions" or theories "of
atonement". It then goes on to
present three contrasting perspectives on how God's
initiative to
"reconcile and redeem" can be understood. Not surprisingly it refuses to
"adjudicate" between them. Instead it acknowledges that "this
multiplicity of views
[is] a significant issue for Christians in the
new ecumenical setting" (MTW, 16).
At issue are two things. First, the determination
as to whether the truth claims of
Christianity are unique and
necessitate a specific form of response, and second, an
assessment
as to whether these claims, while confessional in nature, are reflective
of objective truths which can be evaluated over and against
competing ways of
viewing reality. To view them as such is not to
deny the role of bias in relation to
the way that reality is
perceived. Rather, it is to affirm that reality exists apart from
our perceptions or "constructions" of it, and that in spite of bias the
relative merit of
competing "truths" can be assessed.
If the unique claims that Christianity makes about
the spiritual condition of human
beings and the necessity of
salvation are true in an objective sense, then it is a
matter of
love and compassion that they be shared with sensitivity. That is the
Good News. To present them as options like dishes in a cafeteria,
sorely lacks
appeal. The key question is this: given the competing
truth claims of various
religions, which way of looking at the world
and at God most closely corresponds
to reality?
Undoubtably the answer will be a matter faith, but
it is a faith that holds that an
objective reality exists. I would
not expect people of other religions to compromise
their beliefs by
relativizing their truth claims, even if their world view may be in
complete contradiction to my own. Real dialogue does not gloss over our
differences but respects others while holding to them.
Panentheism Espoused
Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that this
report advocates panentheism.
Pantheism holds that God is all and
all is God. It makes no distinction between
what we know as
creation, and God whom we call the Creator. Panentheism on the
other
hand, is a term that was devised by Karl C. F. Krause (1781-1832) to
describe his thought (Harvey, 172). It is best known for its use by
Charles
Hartshorne and recently by Matthew Fox. Fox's book The
Coming of the Cosmic
Christ is quoted several times in Mending the
World.
Allan Anderson quoting from, New Thought: A
Practical American Spirituality
writes
Panentheism says that all
is in God, somewhat as if God were the ocean
and we were fish. If one considers what is in God's body to be part of
God, then we can say that God is all there
is and then some. The
universe is God's
body, but God's awareness or personality is greater
than the sum of all the parts of the universe. All the parts have some
degree of freedom in co-creating with God.
At the start of its momentary
career as a
subject, an experience is God--as the divine initial aim. As
the experience carries on its choosing process, it is a freely aiming
reality
that is not strictly God, since it
departs from God's purpose to some
degree.
Yet everything is within God (Anderson & Whitehouse, 89f.).
Mending the World portrays Jesus as
"representative of humanity", "representative
of God" and
"representative of the whole of creation". It states that "the Church
speaks, then, both of the humanity and divinity of Christ. It
affirms that this Christ
is present to, and in every form of life in
the universe.[Italics mine]. 'All things
were created in Christ says
the author of Colossians, 'and in Christ all things hold
together'"
(Col. 1:17), (MTW, 17). Mending the World goes on to say that "lifting
up the image of Christ as present in and to all of life may help us
re-image and
transform our relationship to nature". (MTW, 17).
Quoting from Matthew Fox,
Mecthild of Magdeburg is recorded as
saying, "The day of my spiritual awakening
was the day I saw, and
knew I saw, all things in God and God in all things" (MTW,
18).
[Italics mine].
A close look at what is being proposed reveals a
significant and alarming logical
error. Namely, to say that all
things are in Christ is very different than saying Christ
is in all
things. It suggests that if A is in B, then B is in A. It would be no
more true
than if I were to say that because I am in Canada as I
write this, that therefore
Canada is in me. This is patently false.
There are two passages of scripture within the New
Testament which speak about
all things being in "God" or "Christ".
The first is cited above, and suggests that
nothing in all creation
exists apart from Christ. To say everything is in Christ, is to
say
that, in the words of one Bible translation, "he holds all things in
unity" (JB).
This does not imply that Christ is in all things in the
sense that we could say that
carbon is a part of every living
creature. Rather it means that all things are sustained
by him.
Hence Hebrews 1:3 speaks of Christ as "upholding all things by the word
of His power". Christ is not a part of creation, but has taken part
in creating and as
creator is separate and distinct from creation.
The second reference can be found in a famous
speech Paul made to the
Athenians. Using first an expression
suggested by the Greek poet Epimenides of
Cnossas, and then quoting
from the Phainomena of Aratus he states: "In him we
live and move
and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For
we are his offspring'". In the sense that the whole human race has been
created by
God, in that sense all human beings are said to be the
children of God. Thus Adam
himself is known as "God's Son" (Luke
3:38). Paul is not saying, contrary to what
some panentheists may
claim, that this shows that God is in all things. Rather it tells
us
that the origin of all life comes from God. In context this passage
shows that
God is not in idols made by human hands, for God does not
make His home in
"shrines made by human hands". Clearly God is not
in all things, otherwise in some
way God would be dependent on what
"human hands" could do for him (Acts
17:25).
In the few instances where God or Christ are
portrayed as being "all in all", it is the
idea of God's absolute
preeminence over all of creation (1 Cor.15:28), or the fact
that
Christ breaks down all barriers of race, class and culture which stand
between
human beings, which is being conveyed (Col. 3:11). No where
is there any
indication that Christ's individual personality
literally indwells all things.
In contrast to the mistaken belief that the Bible
teaches that God is literally in all
things, the scriptures clearly
do teach that God is in some things. Namely, God is
said to indwell
the bodies of believers. Paul writes for instance, that believers are
"God's temple" having been redeemed by God and filled with the Holy
Spirit (1
Corinthians 6:19) and that Christ in believers is the
"hope of glory" (Colossians
1:27). The United Church's Articles on
Doctrine in the Basis of Union
unambiguously state that Jesus abides
in the hearts of believers as the indwelling
Christ (Article 7) and
that the Holy Spirit "abides with the Church, dwelling in every
believer as the spirit of truth, of power, of holiness, of comfort, and
of love"
(Article 8), (Manual, 1995, 14-15). In addition, speaking
specifically about the body
of believers, the letter of Ephesians
states that God who is Father of all, is also over
all, through all,
and in all (Ephesians 4:6).
Unfortunately, the unique relationship of
"indwelling" between God and the Church
is distorted by Mending the
World insofar as it claims that "God calls the Church ...
to discern
and celebrate God's Spirit in people of other religions and ideologies"
(MTW, 4). While the uniqueness of this relationship between God and
the Christian
Church does not impose limits on God's presence or
God's working among and
through people outside the Christian Church,
it does suggest that God's redemptive
work in Christ has brought an
intimacy, direction and vocation which is unparalleled
within other
religions and ideologies. By postulating that "God calls the Church ...
to
discern and celebrate God's Spirit in people of other religions
and ideologies," the
groundwork has been laid to accept a later
proposal set forth by Mending the World
as one option among three,
namely that "all authentic religions can mediate
salvation ... (and
that) just as a parent's love is not exhausted on a first child, but
can extend equally but differently to all the children that follow, so
too God is able
to have a specific covenant with Jews, another with
Christians, another with
Hindus, and so on" (MTW, 15). Clearly this
contradicts the Biblical witness which
states in the words of Jesus:
"if you love me, you will obey what I command. And I
will ask the
Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever -
the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither
sees him nor
knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and
will be in you" (John
14:15-17).
Is it possible that the United Church could adopt
panentheism over and against the
Biblical witness? I believe the
answer is an unqualified yes!
Feminist theologian Sallie McFague, in her highly
acclaimed book Models of God,
proposes that the scriptural language
that has been used to speak about God should
be discarded in favour
of employing an alternate "metaphor" for God, namely God
as a
mother. Stephen Smith summarises McFague's proposal against Biblical
language as follows:
She sees most biblical
language for God as "patriarchal as well as
imperialistic, triumphalistic metaphors," that are "not only idolatrous
and
irrelevant" but "opposed to life." The
monarchical language of God as
King, Ruler,
Lord, and Father is the main target of Models of God. It "is
dangerous for our time" because "it supports attitudes of either
domination of the world or passivity towards it." Thus such language,
"regardless of its credentials in
Scripture, liturgy and creedal statements .
. . must be discarded" (Smith, 13).
In light of the age in which we live, an age which
is characterised by "the threat of
ecological disaster and nuclear
war", McFague writes that:
The principle insight of
liberation theologies - that redemption is not the
rescue of certain individuals for eternal life in another world but the
fulfilment of all humanity in the political
and social realities of this world
- must
be privatized to include the well-being of all life. This is the case
not only because unless we adopt an
ecological perspective recognising
human
dependence on its environment, we may well not survive, but
also, of equal theological if not pragmatic importance, because such a
perspective is the dominant paradigm of our
time and theology that is
not done in
conversation with this paradigm is not theology for our time
(McFague, 7).
In the spirit of postmodernism, McFague contends
that we "need metaphors
because all renderings of reality are
metaphorical (that is, none is literal), but in our
novel
constructions we offer new possibilities in place of others. In this
sense we
create the reality in which we live" (Smith, 13). In order
to meet this crisis,
McFague proposes several new "metaphors" for
God, namely God as a mother, as
a lover and as a friend. While
acknowledging some of the limitations of these
metaphors, McFague is
unequivocal in her belief that they represent better
alternatives
than the traditional language employed to speak of God. Of the three
images she suggests the dominant seems to be that of God as mother. She
writes:
But what if we were to
understand the resurrection and ascension not as
the bodily translation of some individuals to another world - a
mythology
that is no longer credible to us
- but as the promise of God to be
permanently present, "bodily" present to us, in all places and times in
our world? In what ways would we think of
the relationship between
God and the world
were we to experiment with the metaphor of the
universe as God's "body," God's palpable presence in all space and
time? If what is needed in our ecological, nuclear age is an imaginative
vision of the relationship between God and
the world that underscores
their
interdependence and mutuality, empowering a sensibility of care
and responsibility toward all life, how would it help to see the world
as
the body of God? (McFague, 60).
I doubt that Sallie McFague's book is a blueprint
for Mending the World .
Nevertheless the affinities between
McFague's proposal and the Mending the World
are inescapable.
Mending the World names "the search for justice for God's
creatures
and healing for God's creation as the church's first priority ... "(MTW,
1).
In the spirit of McFague's book, traditional Trinitarian
language is not to be found in
Mending the World. The transcendent
element of God's character is almost totally
absent within the
United Church's report. Both documents propose panentheism as
a
means to inspire this "earth healing". Indeed, the primary mission of
the Church
has been redefined from "making disciples" (Matt. 28:19),
to "earth healing".
Problems With Panentheism
I would contend that to accept panentheism is to
reject theism. Matthew Fox in his
description of panentheism quotes
Meister Eckhart who states that "'ignorant people
falsely imagine
that God created all things', in such a way as to say that they are
outside divinity. For "'God is in all things. The more divinity is in
things the more
divinity is outside things'" (Fox, 57). By accepting
panentheism the traditional
theistic distinction between the Divine
and the created order is dissolved.
Thus a few of the many risks of adopting a
panentheistic position would include:
the conceptualisation of
Christ as an impersonal force (for how is the personality of
Jesus
Christ contained in all aspects of creation?), the elimination of any
conceptualisation of the resurrection of the dead which includes
judgment or hell,
(for if Christ is in all how can Christ be the
judge of himself or continually be
present in hell?), the
repudiation of the belief that Christ died to save sinners (cf.
Rom.
5:8,9 - for if Christ is in all how did Christ's life end on the
cross?), as well as
trying to hold contradictory claims that God is
good when evil is acknowledged to
be present within creation and
Christ is said to be in all things.
With respect to this latter point, Craig S.Hawkins
points out that in a panentheistic
universe, ontologically evil
emanates or flows naturally and necessarily from the
very nature of
the ultimate Life Force (Hawkins, 22). If Christ is 'in all' then does
not evil flow from Christ? And what assurance do we have that God
would desire
to defeat evil at all within the world if Christ and
the world are one? If we were to
accept panentheism how could we as
a Church affirm that nothing in "all creation
will be able to
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom.
8:39b), if Christ is a part of that very evil which opposes us?
Perhaps these problems were unforeseen by the
Inter Church - Inter Faith
committee. For the Mending the World
document, rather than addressing them,
takes a different approach.
Namely it speaks of "wholeness that has been lost" and
of "mending
the world". Thus evil is seen more as a shortcoming to be made up
than as a force to be fought against. Mending the World mentions evil in
this latter
sense only once. "The 'Christus victor' tradition" it
states, "sees Jesus' suffering as a
necessary prelude to triumph
over evil". It goes on to say that, "In his victory is the
promise
and guarantee of our own. Our suffering is to be considered temporary"
(MTW, 14). Yet this interpretation of the Christus Victor tradition
fails to capture
the understanding which was elucidated by Gustav
Aulen in his book Christus
Victor. Aulen summarises this position
succinctly: "its central theme is the idea of
the Atonement as a
Divine Conflict and victory; Christ - Christus Victor - fights
against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the 'tyrants'
under which
mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God
reconciles the world to
Himself" (Aulen, 4). That unbelievers are in
bondage and in need of deliverance as
brought about by the atoning
work of Jesus Christ, that 'evil powers' exist in
opposition to God,
that there is a 'sin nature', as distinct from acts of sin, are all
themes which are ignored by Mending the World. Their absence is
consistent with
the report's broad panentheistic approach.
The Impact on Mission
Panentheism also has a predictable impact on our
understanding of Christian
mission. Mending the World calls on the
United Church to set as its first priority
"the search for justice
for God's creatures and healing for God's creation" (MTW,
1).
Logically if its starting point had been the premise that human beings
are in
bondage to evil, and that all of creation was impacted by the
sin of human beings, it
would have followed that the Church's first
priority should have been to point to the
One who is able to
transform not only creation, but also the human heart in a
redemptive way. This shift is reflected in the report's interpretation
of God's
reconciling work in relation to the world.
The document tells us that "Jesus is the one
affirmed as God's child, the one
through whom the world has been
reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:19)", and that "the
Church is united in
its affirmation that God has reconciled the world" (MTW, 14).
Yet
even these statements are in themselves incomplete and as a result
mislead the
reader. 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 reads as follows:
Now all these things are
from God, who reconciled us to Himself
through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that
God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself, not counting their
trespasses
against them, and He has committed to us the word of
reconciliation. [Italics mine].
It is most important to note that, contrary to
what the Mending the World
document suggests by its use of the past
tense "has been reconciled" and "has
reconciled" this work of
reconciliation is ongoing in the sense that it must be
accepted in
order to be efficacious. In its entry under reconciliation the
Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Kittel and
Friedrich states that:
God is not reconciled,
nor does he reconcile himself, but he himself
reconciles us or the world to himself (2 Cor. 5:18-19), while we are
reconciled to God (Rom. 5:10) or reconcile ourselves to him (2 Cor.
5:20). katallassein denotes a transformation of the state between God
and us and therewith of our own state, for
by it we become new
creatures (2 Cor.
5:18), no longer ungodly or sinners, but justified, with
God's love shed abroad in our hearts (Rom. 5:6ff.). God has not
changed; the change is in our relation to him and consequently in our
whole lives (Buchsel, 1985, 41).
It must be said that the world, in the sense of
unredeemed humanity, has not been
reconciled to God and that one of
the primary and unique roles that the Church has
been given is to be
"ambassadors for Christ" (2 Cor. 5:20) of this "word of
reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19). By suggesting that Christ's work of
reconciliation is
already an accomplished fact, a half truth since
it is true that the work accomplished
by Christ is sufficient for
reconciliation, Mending the World undermines the second
half of the
truth by not stating it: the world must accept Christ's work of
reconciliation in order for that reconciliation to occur. At this point,
the report
comes perilously close to Universalism which holds that
all are saved irrespective of
faith. This is in direct contrast to
the Biblical witness which states that faith is
necessary in order
to please God (Hebrews 11:6). True reconciliation to God, as
well as
the transformational character of the Gospel, is predicated upon the
acceptance of the Gospel. This is why Paul states: "be reconciled to
God" (2 Cor.
5:20).
Mending the World not only misses the mark with
respect to the saving nature of
Christ's reconciling work, it also
uses a broad, albeit selective definition of
"reconciliation", which
encompasses the idea of being reconciled to God's will.
Thus it
appears that God reconciles the world as my wife reconciles our cheque
book with our bank statements at the end of the month. Namely by
balancing the
figures of what is (our cheque book) with what should
be (our bank statements).
The report affirms that God was incarnate
in Jesus Christ "overcoming alienation"
(what is) "and bring(s)
about the reconciliation of the world to the divine love and
purpose" (what should be). Taking it a step further the document states
that "out of
this reconciliation comes the world's hope for
redemption, and its restoration to the
order and beauty intended by
God" (MTW, 14). This shift has significant
implications. While not
arguing against the belief that we should be reconciled to
God's
will, it must be made clear that God's will is first and foremost that
we should
be reconciled to His person, and not that creation should
be reconciled to what we
might consider the ideal for creation.
Jesus Christ stands at the centre of Christian
missionary
endeavours, not the quest for the healing of the earth.
The enormity of this shift is underscored by the
Very Rev. Robert Smith who was
the Chairperson of the Inter-church-
Interfaith committee which had been
responsible for the production
of Mending the World. In an article in the March
1997 issue of "The
Observer" in a paragraph devoted to how the report has an
impact on
our understanding of mission we read, "Our mission is working with God
to heal the world, but the church may not be the one that does it.
Certainly not by
itself" (Sinclair, 16-17). Smith indicated that,
"if the General Council accepts this
document - we will have a 'much
lower doctrine of church'. This particular branch
of Christendom
will abandon the contention that God works primarily through
God's
church" (Sinclair, 17).
The impetus of Mending the World is to shift the
United Church's approach to
ecumenism from being "church centred" to
"world centred". Yet so doing, the
effect is to undermine the
Church's witness to the redemptive work of Christ who
reconciles
humanity to God. The unique commission given by God to the Christian
Church is to share the Good News of the reconciling work of Christ whose
death
and resurrection bring the hope of eternal life to believers.
The claim that God does
not work primarily through the Christian
Church is valid only if we abandon this
task and reorder the
Church's priorities. This is precisely what Mending the World
proposes we do.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Mending the World document is
flawed. It is flawed not because
Christians should not work with
people of other religions or those with no faith at
all in order to
address the very real and pressing ecological crises and the grave
human injustices of our time. We should and we must. Rather the report
is flawed
because its approach undermines the absolute nature of
Christianity's truth claims,
and compromises the Church's witness of
Christ to the world by accepting
panentheism as a point of
departure. Therefore this report should be rejected.
Postlude
So what did the 36th General Council do with
Mending the World? As was the case
with most of the other business,
a great portion of the sessional committee's
recommendations had to
be referred to the Executive of General Council because
of time
constraints. Nevertheless the General Council was able to debate, and
eventually support the following:
Therefore be it resolved that the 36th General
Council:
1. Express its deep gratitude to the Inter-Church
and Inter-Faith Committee (ICIF)
for its persistent commitment over
10 years to help the Church discern within its
life and witness a
new understanding of ecumenism.
2. Affirm the Mending the World report:
--- a) as the fruit of faithfully pursuing the
ICIF mandate to "challenge the Church
to a vision of ecumenism which
includes the whole inhabited world." (Record of
Proceedings, 1988
GC, p. 315); and
--- b) for clearly linking the UCC's historic and
ongoing commitment to be both a
united and uniting church with
"God's work of healing, sharing the good news of
the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, and making common cause with all people of good will,
whether they be of faith or not, for the creation of a world that is
just, participatory
and sustainable"; and
--- c) as a lens
through which the work of the Church can be reviewed and assessed
in
terms of the whole world understanding of ecumenism.
It is important to note what the General Council
did not do. It did not endorse all of
the theology contained within
the report. Neither, it must be added, did it repudiate
it. Rather,
the 36th General Council and the further recommendations of the
sessional committee which will be going to the General Council
Executive, speak of
using the report as a "lens" through which the
mission of the Church may be
viewed and prioritised. Thus, the
impact of this report upon the life of the United
Church will, to a
great extent, depend on the degree to which it is embraced as
such.
Undoubtably Mending the World will have a major
impact on the agenda of the
United Church with respect to ecumenism.
However, the extent to which the
report's theology is promoted in
and reflected by the United Church remains to be
seen. Given the
report's theological underpinnings, particularly with respect to its
Christology as it pertains to panentheism, there is good reason for
concern.
Panentheism is often monistic by nature. Namely,
it holds that there is essentially
one reality, and that all other
beings are but attributes or modes of that reality.
Given this
pairing, further clarification would be helpful as to what the authors
of
Mending the World intend when they state that "... everything
that exists here has
evolved in a closed environment, and has,
consequently, been built with the same
basic building blocks of life
(and) ... in addition to the linkages we expect to find
developing
and existing in a closed system, we also affirm a connection within the
creation that has its origin in God" (MTW, 16). [Italics mine]. From
a theistic
position one would expect that the origin of creation
came not in God but from
God. If the report intends to propose
monism along with panentheism, then this
would suggest that Christ
at very least, and possibly even the first and third persons
of the
Trinity, are dependent on and perhaps even captive to matter. As such,
from
this panentheistic frame of reference, one could ask if there
is any sense in which
the United Church holds that God is
transcendent over creation. Did God create ex
nihilo or has God
always been a part and had a part in an eternally evolving
creation?
Several other important questions emerge. For
instance, if we abandon any claim to
absolute truth for the sake of
dialogue, is there really anything unique or substantive
we have to
offer with respect to Jesus Christ's commission to evangelism? Are we
"ambassadors" for Christ, or merely talkers about human traditions
and beliefs?
Can we faithfully speak about the justice and healing
work of God without any
reference to (or in some circles belief in)
life beyond the grave?
Further, given the impact of postmodernism, will
we be able as a Church to
distinguish between what we accept as
revelation from God, and what is simply a
projection of our own
imaginations upon God? Given the prominence of the
concepts of the
New Age movement, (many of which are espoused by Matthew
Fox), will
we as a denomination be able to clearly distinguish between the Creator
and Creation thereby rejecting the "divinization" of the world?
Could our
relationships with other religions lead us unwittingly to
worship and serve that
which has been created instead of the
Creator?
This a critical juncture for the United Church of
Canada. The main thrust of
Mending The World was not to redefine our
Christology, but our ecumenism. Yet,
in so doing, it has moved us to
consider a shift from Biblical theism to panentheism.
The main
thrust of the United Church's Reconciling and Making New: Who is
Jesus for the world today? a document which is currently being studied
in the
United Church, is our Christology. While panentheism does not
dominate it, it
nevertheless contains panentheistic elements. Before
adopting a panentheistic
approach, it behoves the Church to
explicitly name, and closely scrutinise, the
implications of moving
from Biblical theism to panentheism. I would contend that
these two
theological systems are incompatible, and to try to hold both
simultaneously or shift from Biblical theism to panentheism will
introduce confusion
and exacerbate the fragmentation of belief
within our Church. In turn, this would
make it even more difficult
to effectively share the "Good News of the Gospel".
We would do well
to heed the apostle Paul's admonition to the church at Galatia
not
to embrace another gospel (Galatians 1:6-9), lest we find ourselves
spiritually
bankrupt and condemned.
Bibliography
_______________. "Basis of Union" in The Manual:
The United Church of
Canada 1995. 30th ed., The Church Publishing
House, 1995.
Anderson, Allan C., and Whitehouse, Deborah G. New
Thought: A Practical
Spirituality. New York, New York: Crossroad
Publishing Company, 1995.
Aulen, Gustaf. Christus Victor. trans. A.G.
Herbert. London, England: S.P.C.K.,
1970 Edition.
Buchsel, F. Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament, Edited by G. Kittel &
G. Friedrich. Abridged in one
Volume, to reconcile. William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company: The
Paternoster Press., 1985.
Fidelibus, Jim., and McCallum, Dennis.
"Confronting the Post modern Beast", in
Good News, 1997, 15-19.
Fox, Matthew, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. New
York, New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1988.
Harvey, Van A. A Handbook of Theological Terms.
New York: Collier Book
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1964.
Hawkins, Craig S. "The Modern World of Witchcraft:
Part Two," The Christian
Research Journal, Summer, 1990, 22.
McFague, Sallie. Model's of God. Philidelpha:
Fortress Press, 1987.
McGrath, Alister E. Intellectuals Don't Need God &
Other Modern Myths. Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing
House, 1993.
Mending the World: An Ecumenical Vision For
Healing and Reconciliation , by
Robert F. Smith, Chairperson of the
Interchurch-Interfaith committee. 1997.
Sinclair, Donna. "One world, once people, one
cause," The United Church
Observer, March, 1997.
Smith, Stephen. "God's Body or God's Creation?"
Mission and Ministry: Trinity
Episcopal School for Ministry
Quarterly, 8 (Fall 1990): 12-15
|