A Missional Ethic

How shall the people of God determine God’s will for ethical living? Many Christians would say passionately, “By the Bible alone.” It is not my intent to challenge this answer, but to ask a necessary second question: “And how are we to use the Bible to derive our ethics?” Shall we read and apply it as if we were twelve year olds, as Mark Driscoll has suggested? As if it were written to us and for us? Shall we ignore the accidents of time and place, of the contexts and situations which precipitated its writings? Shall we respond to the commands of scripture as if we were their first hearers, living in Ancient Mesopotamia or Palestine under Roman rule?

Obviously not. (I say obviously, because it is obvious to me, but sadly not to all. Far too many wish to treat our Holy Book as the Muslims do theirs --- as though it were written by God alone, without a trace of human authorship, and without respect of time or place, timelessly establishing the culture into which it was delivered to the level of divine culture.)

If Scripture is not going to be applied to our ethic by merely picking out all the commands and attempting to follow them precisely as did their first hearers, then how is Scripture to be instructive for our ethics?

I believe the answer to this question is that we read Scripture as an overarching narrative of God’s love for the world and God’s use of election of individuals and peoples to bring about redemption. We read Scripture as not only commands, but as a story, in which we are living in the final incomplete chapter. We study the main characters, namely God and God’s people, trying to penetrate into their motivations, so that we can play our part as we ought. Like an actor, trying to portray a living human, we study Jesus, attempting to know him well enough to rightly imagine how he would live our lives, if he were us.

We must ask, what role has God meant God’s people to play in the redemptive plan? We look to Abraham, God’s first chosen person, remembering God’s covenant with him to bless all the nations through him.

We look to Israel, the people God rescued out of slavery, gave the Law, formed in the wilderness, and brought into the Promised Land, recalling God’s intent for them, that through observance of the Law, their contemporaries would say: “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” because they notice how near Yahweh is to them (Deut 4:6-7).

We look to Jesus, who by his life, witnessed to the love of God. We look to the disciples who Jesus taught to “let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Mt. 5:16). We look to the early church, who Paul instructed to not violate household order, “so that the word of God may not be discredited” (Titus 2:5).

And in each of these periods, we see that the people of God are given culturally significant ethical commands to make a good name for God. A biblical ethic is a missional ethic. The biblical way to live is the way that makes God look good. And so God’s people must at all times ask, how can we live in such a way that makes God look good? In order to do ethics missionally, one has to understand the context. (See Contextualization in Kenyan Contexts for more on this.)

I am deeply convinced that this way of doing ethics far surpasses simply cutting and pasting biblical injunctions, irrespective of context, into 21^st century USA, and yet…a missional ethic is also quite dangerous if done poorly. I will address the chief danger, and how to avoid it, in my next post.

Contextualization in Kenyan Contexts

“Driving in Kenya is organic,” said Rev. Francis Omundi as we entered one of the numberless crowded roundabouts of Nairobi. Indeed, the lines of travel on a Kenyan road bear more resemblance to the growth of trees, due to epidemic potholes, than to the routes taken by Western drivers on their well-paved roads. Regardless of your background, if you want to drive in Kenya, you must learn to drive organically; whatever your destination, whatever your vehicle, you must drive as a Kenyan.

The same principle, when applied in the field of missions, is known to scholars as contextualization. The presentation of a culturally-relevant and faithful gospel is the task of missions. In this paper I will consider the task of missiology with respect to cultural adaptation as well as reflect on the practice of contextualization in three Kenyan contexts which I was privileged to experience on my most recent visit.

The Task of Missions

Lesslie Newbigin’s introduction to missiology, The Open Secret, approaches the task of missions theologically, beginning with a series of questions which the missionary is likely to face.[1] The first question, “What right do you have to preach to us?” he meets with “By the authority of the name of Jesus,” which is to invite the counter-question, “Who is Jesus?” Answering this question, Newbigin says, is the work of Christian witness as it has been at all times and is today in all cultures.[2]

Along side of the task of declaring who Jesus is, Newbigin formulates the objective as such: “The Christian mission is thus to act out in the whole life of the whole world the confession that Jesus is Lord of all” (emphasis mine).[3] It is with these dual tasks in mind that he moves on to wrestle with the debate regarding whether missions ought be strictly a matter of “saving souls” through evangelization or if it also ought to involve such things as education, health and food assistance. Attention can not be given to this debate here other than to say with Newbigin Jesus’ “mission was not only a matter of words, and neither is ours.”[4] Jesus proclaimed the nearness of God’s kingdom, his very presence constituted that nearness, and his life was a demonstration of it. Our mission is to be modeled after his.

Mission, according to Newbigin, must be understood in Trinitarian terms as proclamation, presence and prevenience. The first two are easily understood and have already been mentioned. “Prevenience” refers to the missionary posture acknowledging that the Holy Spirit precedes the missionary. “Mission is…done by the Spirit…who always goes before the church in its missionary journey.”[5]

Newbigin spends considerable time addressing the doctrine of election, something not typically considered a missiological doctrine, but here gives it new emphasis. Election is God’s act of choosing some to be bearers of God’s blessing which is for all. “Bearers—not exclusive beneficiaries.”[6] The tendency, most clear in the life of Israel, of the elect is to view God’s blessing as exclusively for them, when in fact their uniqueness lies not in the blessing but sharing in the suffering and tribulation of God’s people.

This humble stance on the part of the mission worker is prerequisite for Newbigin’s model for mission, which I will call three-cornered missions. In any work of missions there are three independent contributors to the appropriate expression of Christianity. These three are the local culture, the Christianity of the missionary and the Bible. We will begin with the second. A missionary may, and should, go through pains to strip from the message presented that which is an alien cultural formation and superfluous to the gospel, but he will never be completely successful.[7] The message he presents will bring with it some of the trappings of his own culture, and if we hold an ecumenical view this is not altogether a bad thing; each culture has something to offer to each other, and hence the cultured Christianity of the missionary may provide helpful insight which would not be gained from a ‘pure’ gospel.[8]

The recipient culture will inevitably impact the expression of Christianity in that context. Even translation into the native language is allowing the gospel to be shaped by the available vocabulary and thought-patterns of this language. For example, each language has a word for “Supreme Being” which carries connotations specific to the culture, and this is the one which will be used for God. Hence the local concept of God is the starting place from which the gospel must begin. Though Western Christians often believe the categories available in their languages are the ones which accurately express the gospel, this is a gross misunderstanding.

Scripture, in Newbigin’s model, though interpreted through cultural grids, maintains its ability to independently critique not only the recipient culture, but also the Christianity of missionary. Thus Christianity is born in a new context out of the unpredictable evolution of these three contributors: local culture, the Christianity of the missionary and Scripture.

Newbigin relies heavily on Roland Allen, a missionary in China until 1903, for his understanding of the missionary task. After the establishment of a local Christian community through preaching, responsibility is to be entrusted to local leadership, and the missionary is to move on, not set up a permanent residence. This approach will seem radically, even perhaps irresponsibly, hands-off to some, but Newbigin advocates with Allen that it is not the work of missionaries to “impose on younger churches ethical standards laid down by the sending churches.”[9] To do for locals, what is their task of cultural application is not missions, it is merely church extension.[10]

What Newbigin says about ethical standards I believe is also the case with forms of worship and liturgy. Mission is risky business, it must risk the gospel in the hands of another Christian community, in another culture, though it will inevitably bring a cultured-Christianity into the mix. The task of mission is to proclaim the nearness of the kingdom, to live in a way that demonstrates this nearness and to enter every place with the awareness that God’s spirit is already involved in mission work there. The assumption of God’s preparatory work in each culture is the grounds for contextualization in mission.

The task of contextualization in mission has several phases. The first is for the missionary to become aware of the ways in which her own culture has formed her Christianity. This will become clearer through humble encounters with Christians of other cultures.

The second phase of contextualization is for the missionary to try to engage in mission (proclamation and presence) in a way which is as unencumbered by the missionary culture as possible and which is understandable to the recipients. This phase is what has generally been considered the whole of contextualization. It includes translation of the gospel linguistically as well as cautious explanations about what the gospel means for the culture. Thorough knowledge of the culture is the prerequisite to translation and of any application of the gospel. This cultural orientation is the bulk of the missionary task of contextualization. As the missionary absorbs the culture, the Spirit, through them, is now able to speak to the culture from the inside.

The third, and most important phase, of contextualization belongs primarily to the locals; it is the task of establishing ethical standards, liturgy and church structure which are faithful to the gospel but organic to the receiving culture. The missionary is permitted to cautiously contribute to this process but only as a peer, leaving responsibility in the hands of locals.

When contextualization has reached its goal there exists a new Christian community lead by local leaders which is the organic product of the gospel-seed grown in cultural soil. At this point a Christian community begins to have peer relationships with other communities, including those in other cultures. In these relations both communities allow their own cultured Christianities to be critiqued by one another and by Scripture.

The Maasai Context

The Maasai are perhaps the best-known traditional people of East Africa. In my visit to two Maasai communities experiencing Western-influenced development and the reading of stories of two missionaries to the Masai, I have been offered two quite divergent approaches to mission and contextualization in the Masai Context.

In 1968 Denny and Jeanne Grindall, while in Kenya as tourists began a relationship with another Western couple ministering among the Masai. This relationship turned into years spent in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya, with most time in Oloisho-oibor. From the testimony of Wallace Ohrt’s telling in The Accidental Missionaries, the Grindall’s work was almost strictly development, mostly focused on water, agriculture and basic health services.[11]

Ohrt’s book, clearly the result of lengthy discussions with the Grindalls, seems to be the product of a Western individual with little sensitivity to cultural issues. He records the perspective on the Masai situation in the words of the Grindall’s predecessors and partners:

It’s not lack of opportunity that threatens them. It’s culture. Their own culture. They cling stubbornly to a way of life that is doomed by the changes that are taking place around them.[12]

It is unfortunate that Orht portrays the work of the Grindall’s as a battle between development and the deadly way of Masai culture.[13] This compassionate assistance of the Grindall’s as a ministry of presence was certainly a blessing to Oloisho-oibor, even if it happened without much cultural sensitivity.

As a guest in Oloisho-oibor, the talk of the Christian elders made it clear that Denny Grindall had won a very positive reception both as an individual and for the gospel. As we visited among them they were most eager to show us the lake which was the evidence of Denny’s work among them. They told of how some had been resistant to Denny, but when they saw the good things he brought to the community they warmed up.

While the lake was certainly prized, the Masai elders were equally eager to tell us that Denny had been a gift from God, and as members of his church we were received as such. Additionally, two of the elders present introduced themselves as evangelists trained by Denny. How this was done I am unable to say, for Ohrt’s book included very limited discussion of the work of proclamation.

It is important to note that according to the elders, much of what Denny had done fell into disrepair and that it was only by the new, indigenous organization Simba Maasai Outreach Organization (SIMOO) that the projects were revived. I am unsure how to evaluate these series of events. The Grindall’s development projects were certainly successful in gaining a hearing and reception for the gospel in Oloisho-oibor. It is equally certain that a Christian community led by Masai leaders now seeks to “improve the living standards of the poor in Oloisho-oibor.[14] The Masai elders also seem to be engaging in the ethical and liturgical work of gospel interpretation in their context. What is unclear is whether the work of the Grindall’s directly accomplished this.

Empura is a Masai community outside of Narok being aided toward development, by World Concern, a Christian development agency. While work in Empura is more recent and less progressed it seems to bear resemblance to the work of the Grindall’s, though with more cultural sensitivity due to Kenyan staff. This model of development-first missions seems in at least one community to have yielded an interpretive Christian community among the Masai.

Vincent Donovan, a missionary for 17 years in Tanzania, would not approve. Donovan represents a divergent methodology best expressed in his own words to his bishop in 1966:

I suddenly feel the urgent need to cast aside all efforts at strategy—and simply go to these people and do the work among them for which I came to Africa. I would propose cutting myself off from the schools and the hospital…and just go and talk to them about God and the Christian message…I know what most people will say…You cannot bring the gospel to them without going through several preparatory, preliminary stages. But I would like to try.[15]

Surprising though it is, this is precisely what Donovan did. He safaried to remote communities, called together the elders, told them he was offering nothing, and asked only for a weekly audience to present the Christian message. He was received in each community with the question “If that is why you [Europeans] came here, why did you wait so long to tell us about this?”[16]

As Donovan prepared weekly presentations he struggled to refine his message down to the essential Christianity, unencumbered by his own cultural heritage. As such he was engaged in the first stages of contextualization. While he sought a pristine Christianity he also ended up laying some perhaps unintentional emphasis on the reconciliatory nature of Christ and the universality of God; he called the Masai communities to recognize that God, Engai, was the God not only of the Masai, but of all people, and therefore they must love those of different clans, different tribes. This, I believe was indeed a central part of the contextual gospel to the Masai, and was thus appropriate application of the gospel to the local culture, stage two of contextualization.

In Donovan’s book, Christianity Rediscovered,[17] he comes to many of the same conclusions as Newbigin: all Christianity is cultured, mission work means allowing Christ to take on the flesh of that culture, the application of the gospel must grow organically from the locals, God is already at work before the missionary arrives and missionaries are not to become permanent residents. But on several items they differ.

Development work as Christian mission for Donovan represents not the result of the “logic of the gospel” as for Newbigin, but evidence that missionary work is in “shambles”.[18] He accuses Christian development efforts as striving “to bring freedom or knowledge or health or prosperity to a people in order that they may become Christians” calling this a “perversion of missionary work.” Donovan shares equal concern about “progress and development for their own sake.” [19] It is clear that Donovan finds relief work not as a needed expression of the gospel, but as something too often leveraged for salvation, or elevated beyond its place of importance.

A more subtle difference is the way in which Donovan approaches Scripture.
While Newbigin considers it an independent leg of the tripod of mission, Donovan seems to consider Scripture’s cultural particularity within Palestine as so conditioned as to make it permissible to essentially re-write Scripture as if it had happened within Masai culture. The Genesis creation narrative is exchanged with Masai creation myths infused with new meaning in light of the gospel core. Jesus’ death and resurrection no longer bear as a symbol the empty tomb, but instead herald that “the hyenas did not touch him.”[20] Some might applaud these as excellent contextualization of the gospel. True, the message is intact. But what has been lost is the objectivity of the third leg of the tripod. Donovan seems to suppose that there are only two ingredients for a Christian community in a new culture: the pristine core of the gospel as delivered by the missionary and the traditional culture of the recipients. It has already been confessed that no missionary is able to de-culturize the gospel to its pristine core, but the problem with Donovan’s model is deeper.

This erroneous view bears strong resemblance to that of many Western Christians who view Christianity as only a matter between the individual and God. There is no Christianity in isolation, not as individuals, and not as cultures. Even remote peoples such as the Masai have been, through Scripture, welcomed into dialog with brothers and sisters who differ in culture.

Despite these shortcomings, if Donovan’s record is accurate it seems quite certain that he established numerous Masai Christian communities equipped to establish ethics and liturgy as organically Masai responses to the gospel. This was precisely his intent, and he concludes that mission work is

…that work undertaken by a gospel oriented community, of transcultural vision, with a special mandate, charism, and responsibility for spreading and carrying that gospel to the nations of the world, with a view of establishing the church of Christ.[21]

If Donovan’s approach lacked for failing to introduce the Masai to the larger many-cultured body of Christ, the unavailability of the Scriptures in Ma, the Masai language, and their remoteness make this offense pardonable. Though it is impossible to know how or if these communities persisted, Donovan’s approach, absent though it was of social services, seems to have effectively given the gospel into Masai hands, creating a Christian community and entrusting them into God’s hands.

Though the methodologies of the Grindall’s and Donovan are widely different, they both engaged in successful, though not complete, contextualization. The Grindall’s contextualization was primarily incarnational, or what Newbigin would call “presence.” Strong in showing the kingdom, it seems they were weaker in proclaiming it and in discerning where God was already at work. Donovan’s contextualization included healthy doses of proclamation and knowledge of the Spirit’s prevenience, but lacked a demonstration. If the success of these mission efforts is any measure it seems that even less than fully orbed contextualization is ample material from which the Holy Spirit can fashion a new expression of the one Church.

The Muslim Context

Garissa is a Kenyan town four hours west of Nairobi. Its population is 80-90% Somali, of whom nearly all are Muslim. My experience of mission and contextualization in Garissa were at the invitation of Rev. Francis Omundi, a local Anglican priest and his wife Anne, headmistress at a start-up school. It is important to understand that while Islam is a religion it is one unabashedly and by doctrine a mono-cultural one. Somali culture and Islam cannot here be clearly separated.

Mission for the Omundi’s is most immediately apparent through the establishment of the school at which Anne serves as headmistress. This is not a Christian school, but the intent for which it was established was to gain a credible presence in the community as well as a positive rapport for the Omundi’s. Education, though often depreciated, is much needed in Garissa, and thus this school serves the community, meanwhile demonstrating the goodwill of Christians with the hope of earning an audience for the gospel.

Rev. Omundi’s passion concerning mission is that it should be an African business; Africans as missionaries to Africans. This passion prompted him to create a training center for Africans, Sheepfold Ministries preparing them to reach out to unreached African peoples. The logic of this is very much in keeping with our understanding of contextualization. Whereas Westerners have much work to do in stripping their Christianity of the trappings of Western culture and attempting to visualize the gospel’s relevance in the local culture, Africans have much less of this work to do. What trappings they bring with Christianity are likely to be similar to those contextually appropriate for the recipients.

This, of course, assumes that the African missionary holds a truly African Christianity as opposed to one who has been converted to Western Christianity. According to Pastor Oscar Muriu, of Nairobi Chapel, many first generation African Christians have bought into Christianity with its Western garb. Missionaries of this group would require significant education regarding the cultural variety welcome within Christianity. Regardless of the brand of Christianity the African missionary brings, the African-missions-to-African-peoples approach often sidesteps some of the resistance due to the ill-affects of colonialism, which Western missionaries inevitably face.

The worship service is one of the most ready venues for viewing contextualization. At Anglican worship with the Omundi’s it was clear that the cultural context had affected worship in at least a few ways. Most obviously, worship and preaching were in Swahili. More telling, the women were sitting on the left and the men on the right side of the church. This certainly reflects dialog of Christianity with the local culture, for this practice is neither commanded within Scripture or Anglican doctrine. Despite these obvious marks of the local culture the structure of worship seems to have been heavily influenced by the (European) brand of Christianity brought by the original Anglican missionaries.

The missionary work of Rev. Omundi presents for me a disconnect. While stress is put on sending Africans to Africans, so as not to create a cultural hierarchy, it seems clear in the community in which he leads worship that in the negotiation of Newbigin’s triad--Scripture, traditional culture and the missionaries Christianity--the missionary’s Christianity was the prime influence. At the present there seems to have been no Somali-cultured Christian community in Garissa. This may reflect the difficulty of the work as much as the level of contextualization.

The Urban Context

The majority of my time in Kenya was spent in Nairobi, the capitol. While the other contexts discussed are mono-cultural and fairly homogenous, the African city is, according to Aylward Shorter, a “stew” of cultures, rather than a melting pot. For in African cities urban dwellers retain greater rural links, and consequently, as in a stew retain their own flavors rather than losing them in the melting pot.

In Shorter’s 1991 book, The Church in the African City,[22] he surveys the phenomena of African urbanization before offering suggestions to the Church as to its appropriate response. One of the most important realities of African cities is the huge youth population[23], weighted heavily with males. This is largely the result of migration from rural areas, particularly attractive to young men wishing freedom from social constraint or seeking education or the means to send money back home. Hence while the city has a culture of its own, there remain for most city-dwellers strong ties to rural areas.

Shorter’s plan of action for contextualization includes a prerequisite correction for what he calls “anti-urban bias”. Missionaries must trade this unpleasant view to the city for a more optimistic and biblical perspective. Eric Jacobsen’s book on the theology of the city traces its genesis in Babel to its eschaton fulfillment in the New Jerusalem, noting that the city, and not the garden, is the Christian’s ultimate destiny.[24]

The bulk of gospel incarnation, from Shorter’s perspective, involves social involvement. Primary among these he advocates for

a physical existence, not merely in the shape of a handsome place of worship, but in facilities for the community: a hall, a set of rooms, a community centre, a multi-purpose building.[25]

This community-building building is to help provide one of the missing elements of urban society, a sense of community. This priority is similar to that of Theologian Professor Jesse Mugambi who, when asked what Christians ought to do in response to the needs of the African city, urged that the Church become the place where the needs of the community can be discussed.

In keeping with this methodology, the first task of missions is to address the morbid factors of the city and help improve material and social quality of life. The community center addresses in part the social need. Materially “the Church in the city fights against disease, insanitary conditions, illiteracy, violent crime, drunkenness, drug-taking and prostitution.”[26] In addition to confronting these secondary consequences, the Church is commissioned to tackle structural injustice and administrative powers.

Also notable is Shorter’s stress on unity. The Church is to pioneer in turning cultural pluralism into multiculturalism[27] as well as engage in social action ecumenically. This need is particular to the city because while rural areas are most often dominated by one tribe and only a few denominations, the city holds many of each. This causes social dislocation but also creates the unique opportunity for unified witness and unified action.

Though bound to the limitations of Catholic structures, Shorter stresses the need for “basic Christian communities.”[28] These communities constitute a “way of being Church”[29] and attempt to make use of the gifts of each individual. While these must maintain relationships with other ecclesial communities, they provide a sense of family for the socially dislocated.

Shorter’s suggestions for urban contextualization are primarily suggestions about urban incarnation, with nothing said about urban proclamation. While at points he seems to be struggling to make Catholic models fit inorganically, he is, in the concluding chapter able to say, “It is altogether too easy to give up the struggle for African authenticity, and to adopt Western liturgical forms and Western parish movements and structures as a solution to urban pluralism and modernity.”[30]

The majority of ministries I visited in Nairobi effectively embody contextualization through social action, but the mega-churches are in danger of failing to meet the critical need for urban community among socially dislocated urbanites.

Homeless Children International is a youth home on the edge of one of Nairobi’s informal settlements. It provides housing, school help and food for youth who lack parental support. Urban Ministries Serving God (UMSG) seeks to keep the African Church informed about urban phenomena and opportunities for urban ministry. Training and seminars are offered to pastors and theological schools. Daystar University hosted UMSG representative Mike Koski for several days as he instructed ministry students regarding urban ministry in Africa. UMSG has also done research among the Samburu watchmen in the city, giving attention again to the need for urban ministry with sensitivity to the rural origins of many inhabitants.

The churches I visited in Nairobi fit the mega-church model. While such churches have the unique abilities, due to size, to advocate for justice and to enact larger scale social projects, they are also tend toward the individualistic mentality of modernism. They tend to find no need for connection with other churches and can sometimes offer little more than a crowd to those seeking true community. By contrast, the preponderance of African Instituted Churches, testified to by unceasing signs on the edges of the informal settlements, are small but may provide greater social cohesion, though these also are often isolated from one another. Perhaps the need is for large churches to become conglomerations of Shorter-type basic communities, therefore maintaining the advantages of size, while affording the benefits of intimate communities as well as thus drawing out the gifts of more members. Some Western churches, disillusioned with the mega-church model, are seeking to get all members in small groups for the same reasons.

Mission in the African city is an enormously complex task. The urban culture of modernization is everywhere in conversation with rural cultures. Rural cultures are in dialog with on another in the city. The material needs are great and the social connections are unstable. The task of contextualization in a stew of contexts requires social action on a large scale that transcends cultural particularity as well as focus ministries to meet put flesh on the gospel for specific sectors of society, while not allowing them to remain isolated from one another.

Conclusion

The Maasai, Muslim and urban contexts are ripe for the gospel. While missions was once performed primarily in mono-cultural settings it is ever more-so being required in diverse contexts. The city is home to both the Maasai and the Muslim, to the Luo and Kikuyu. Within the city there are numberless sub-cultures, numberless communities in need of the gospel.

As the world has shrunken, and we have become increasingly aware of differing cultures, the need to critique our own has dawned on the missionary task. No longer can we simply preach the gospel, we must first rediscover the gospel as it appears in another context. This discovery, this discerning of God at work already before us, must humble us as we proclaim Christ in word and deed.

Jesus spoke about a seed thrown upon good soil, which produced a harvest of 30, 60 and even 100 times what was sown. As bearers of the seed we must seek the good soil in each culture and each person we come to, planting it humbly and faithfully and waiting prayerfully for the gospel to a Christian community organic to culture.

Contextualization is the incarnational work of Jesus. Newbigin lingers on the scandal of the particularity of God that Jesus should come to one people at only one time; Jesus took on Jewish flesh. When he departed he told his disciples it was better that he go, in order that the Holy Spirit might come. And, of course, he was right. One man could not incarnate everywhere. But by God’s Spirit the Church is the body of Christ, and as such it is called to exist in all flesh, being Jesus in Masai flesh, Jesus in Somali flesh, Jesus in Kikuyu flesh. May God empower his Church to rightly discern the task of incarnating the gospel in every culture, that we may indeed make disciples of all nations, and look forward to that day on which men and women of every tongue and tribe and nation will praise God in a way authentic to their own cultural identities.

---

[1] Newbigin, Leslie. The Open Secret. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns Publishing
Company, 1995.

[2] Newbigin , 15.

[3] Newbigin, 17.

[4] Newbigin, 40.

[5] Newbigin, 56.

[6] Newbigin, 32.

[7] Newbigin, 138.

[8] A ‘pure’ gospel is neither possible nor desirable. Jesus’ gospel came in culture. Without a culture, there is no soil for the gospel.

[9] Newbigin, 131.

[10] Newbigin, 137.

[11] Orht, Wallace. The Accidental Missionaries: How a Vacation Turned into a Vocation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990. [out of print].

[12] Orht, 56.

[13] Orht, 88.

[14] From the SIMOO mission statement as included on a flier.

[15] Donovan, 13, 14.

[16] Donovan, 18.

[17] Donovan, Vincent. Christianity Rediscovered. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1978.

[18] Donovan, 11.

[19] Donovan, 10.

[20] Donovan, 148.

[21] Donovan, 144.

[22] Shorter, Aylward. The Church in the African City. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1991.

[23] According to Shorter, the typical African city population is 85% under the age of 30. Nairobi at present is somewhere near 70% according to Mike Koski of Urban Ministries Serving God.

[24] Jacobsen, Eric. Sidewalks in the Kingdom.

[25] Shorter, 76.

[26] Shorter, 78.

[27] Shorter, 81.

[28] Shorter, 98-109.

[29] Shorter, 105.

[30] Shorter, 141.

What Would John Do? Johannine Insights for Churches on the Brink of Schism

Many mainline churches are currently on the brink of a fracture over the issue of the place of homosexuals in the life of the church, among other issues. My own denomination, the PC(USA), commissioned a “Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church” whose very name highlights the nature of its inquiry: “How do we mediate between the mandates of scripture that the Church model both unified peace and behavioral and doctrinal purity?”

This is not a new question, but one as old as the Christian church itself. This document is an attempt to seek the wisdom of the experiences and texts of the Johannine community in answer to this question.

II. Why Ask John?

As we seek Johannine wisdom on this subject, one might wonder, “Why ask John?” In answer to this, let us consider the story of John and his community.

John of Zebedee, the traditional, though oft contested, author of Johannine literature speaks only once in the Synoptic gospels. This interaction is documented in Mark 9:38-40

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Matthew recalls this encounter differently, reversing Jesus’ teaching: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”[1] Here John is not specified as the provocateur of this teaching, but for our purposes it will be helpful to imagine John as someone struggling to reconcile these apparently contradictory teachings. John seems to be one caught in between striving for unity with all who are not enemies, and striving for purity, to the exclusion of any who are not ‘for us’.

This dilemma shines through in the Gospel of John, which is well known for its repeated ‘new commandment’ to “love one another.” Similarly, the theme of unity is stressed in Jesus’ prayers for his future and present disciples. In the midst of such peace-loving teaching, the Johannine literature, especially in the Epistles, indicates an apparent willingness to lose fellowship over issues of doctrinal and behavioral purity.

The Johannine community walked these paths which face the contemporary church before, negotiating the balance of unity and purity.[2] It is for this reason that we will explore Johannine ecclesiology for relevant wisdom for those who are trying to lead the church.

III. Johannine Ecclesiology

Some general remarks regarding the ecclesiological landscape of Johannine theology will set the context for our deeper interest in the themes of unity and purity.

The first characteristic of Johannine ecclesiology that must be mentioned is that it comes to us only implicitly; Johannine literature never deals with ecclesiology explicitly. Thus, for D. Moody Smith “one can at most infer a doctrine of church” (italics his).[3] This absence of explicit dealing with ecclesiology, though, is itself significant ecclesiological material. In fact, it is the absence of talk about church structure and sacraments that leads Smith to conclude that “Quite possibly John’s concept of the church is that of a community with no hierarchy, formal organization, or sacraments and inspired by the Spirit.”[4]

This quotation leads us nicely into the second characteristic of Johannine ecclesiology: equality. This is noted by many as the absence of hierarchical language. Equality of standing is founded on the understanding of the Paraclete as the leader of the church, and also as the inheritance of every believer. Raymond Brown captures this: “in the Johannine tradition the position of the Paraclete as the authoritative teacher and the gift of the Paraclete to every believer would have relativized the teaching office of any church official.”[5] Johannine ecclesiology is characterized by the assertion that the Spirit is the leader of the church and that all members have access to this one who, according to Jesus will serve two functions: reminding of Jesus’ teaching and guiding into all truth, which Jesus says they could not then bear to hear.[6] Such a dependence on the inspiration of the Spirit, without hierarchical safeguards no doubt contributed to the eventual schism.

The third characteristic of Johannine ecclesiology of note is that the Johannine community defined itself over against other groups. Brown develops this theme extensively, identifying six non-Johannine groups from the Gospel, three of which are identified as Christian Groups.[7] This characteristic is what leads many, Robert Gundry included, to label John a sectarian. It is clear through the self-definition of the Johannine community over against other groups that orthodoxy is of critical importance to them. The real threat of persecution, as mentioned in John 16:2, no doubt fueled such a trait.[8]

One expression of this sectarian characteristic is found in the understanding of those who come to Jesus. John’s Gospel departs radically from the Synoptics in the assertion that those who come to Jesus are not the sinful, but the righteous whose righteousness is exposed by the light of Christ’s presence.[9] Jesus’ evaluation of Nathanael is “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”[10] This theme is most powerfully stated in John 3:21: “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” This teaching that those of whom Jesus approves are already, in a deep way, righteous, is in step with an ecclesiology that views orthodoxy, and perhaps more importantly, orthopraxis as crucial to membership.

A secondary and linked expression of this sectarian characteristic is the notion of election. Those who come to Jesus have been given from the Father to the Son as a gift.[11] Jesus himself declares “You did not choose me but I chose you.”[12] The people of God, true disciples, the church are the already-righteous chosen. These beliefs are characteristic of Johannine ecclesiology.

A fourth characteristic of Johannine ecclesiology is that the church is embodied in the narrative of John’s Gospel in several characters. Above all, the Beloved Disciple stands in for the church, or any Johannine believer. Smith concluded his short section on ecclesiology with these words: “[The Beloved Disciple] is the paradigmatic disciple, a model not so much for the disciples contemporary with Jesus as for future disciples...Perhaps for this reason he remains unnamed, for any and all disciples of Jesus may become beloved disciples. Such disciples, whom Jesus loves, are the church.”[13] Aside from the embodiment of the church in the person of the Beloved Disciple, the man born blind is also serves as a model for all who would not shrink back from testifying of Jesus for fear of being excommunicated from the synagogue.[14]

In sum, ecclesiology is addressed in Johannine literature only implicitly, at times through embodiment in the figure of the Beloved Disciple and others. It is somewhat sectarian, with a high view of the righteousness of believers and election. Finally, it is characterized by a high emphasis on equality in which the shared inheritance of the Spirit contradicts any need for formal church hierarchy.

IV. Unity and Purity in the Johannine Texts

To posit a unified Johannine perspective on the question of ecclesiology, no less unity and purity, is not a given. The Gospel and Epistles, some would say, have significant differences on the matter. And yet, it would be grossly oversimplifying, if not misconstruing, the truth to say that the Gospel stresses unity and the Epistles, purity. These themes run through each, though not without each having distinctive emphasis. In the following sections we will examine the presence of each theme in each genre.

A. Unity in the Johannine Gospel

Two phrases capture the heart of the unity theme in John’s Gospel, “love one another” and “that they may all be one.” The first phrase is Jesus’ new commandment of love for one another first appears in John 13:34 and is repeated later in the Farewell Discourse twice.[15] This love is to mirror Christ’s love for the disciples. The implication is that it is to be sacrificial love; love which goes to great lengths. This is the love which Jesus commands. Certainly, this love for one another has the implication of ongoing efforts toward peace and unity. The new commandment as a command to unity is further developed in the Epistles, as we will see.

In Jesus’ prayer for his disciples, he petitions the Father for protection, “so that they may be one, as we are one.”[16] Shortly thereafter, the theme is repeated as Jesus prays for those who would believe in him through the word of the disciples, beginning in 17:20, “that they may be one. As you Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us...” In verse 22 Jesus says that he has given them the glory he received, so that they may be one, “I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one.” The refrain can not be missed; Jesus looks to the future of his present and future disciples and sees the need to petition for their unity.

In searching the Scriptures for a compelling text to use in urging the PC(USA) not to split over recent debates, the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church looked to John’s Gospel, namely to Christ’s High Priestly Prayer. A compilation of quotations will serve to demonstrate the way in which “that they may all be one” is used as a motto for efforts to avoid a denominational split:

On the night before he died, in the longest prayer recorded in the Gospels, Jesus prayed for us, the church of the future, lifting our names and our troubled church before God in prayer. And chief among his petitions in our behalf was has prayer that we “may all be one....so that the world may believe that you have sent me...By this everyone will know that you are my disciples [he said], if you have love for one another”

Jesus does not, it should be noted, pray that we may all be the same, or that we all agree.

Nevertheless, even as we differ and even as we contend with one another, Jesus prays that we may all be one, that we might love one another despite many differences that threaten to divide us.[17]

This use of the unity theme of John 17 is common, but raises an important question: When Jesus prays for those who will believe through the word of the disciples, to whom is he referring? To all Christians? To the Johannine Community? Brown’s view is that “when Jesus prays for those who believe in him through the word of his disciples, “That they may all be one” (17:20-21), he is praying for the oneness of the Apostolic and the Johannine Christians. Here the Johannine attitude is just the opposite of the outlook of a sect.”[18] It is well known that there seems in John to be some rivalry or comparison between Peter and the Beloved Disciple. Each is understood to represent a group of Christians, the Apostolic and Johannine, respectively. Smith notes: “Probably the intention is to honor Peter and the Christian tradition he represents, while simultaneously underscoring the value and truth of the Johannine witness and its Gospel.”[19] So it would seem that the Gospel places a high value on unification of two churches, therefore anathematizing animosity between them.

We will return to each of these phrases from a different angle as we consider the theme of the importance of purity, but first we will consider the place of unity in the Johannine Epistles.

B. Unity in the Johannine Epistles

If Jesus’ refrain “love one another” was repetitive in the Gospel, it becomes even more so in 1 John, which in its short five chapters contains the phrase six times, to the Gospel’s three. Whereas the Gospel had strayed away from ethical instructions, this Epistle is bold in its commands, most notably the command to love the brothers and sisters. In 3:12 this love teaching is expounded upon by comparison to hatred:

...we should love one another. We should not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother...we know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them.

It could hardly be clearer: love for fellow Christians is the measure of salvation.

In 3 John, the elder charges Diotrephes with refusing to welcome “the friends” and even preventing those who try to host them. In this brief letter, the elder urges Gaius not to imitate this evil but to do what is good, to host fellow Christians. [20]

Thus far we have only read the Johannine texts from the perspective of those who would employ them to maintain the unity of the church in our time. But such considerations have resulted in the conclusion that “John’s ecclesiology is based squarely on the concept of unity among believers and with Christ.”[21] As we proceed we will review these from the perspective of those who would find in Johannine literature, justification for a church split over the issue of doctrinal and behavioral purity.

C. Purity in the Johannine Gospel

The most striking argument for purity in John’s Gospel is its semi-sectarian ecclesiology. We can detect this strain in both of the phrases that we previously suggested as proof-texts for the unity theme, “love one another” and “that they may be one.” We must revisit both from a more sectarian perspective. The first we will save for the section on the Epistles, the latter we will address immediately.

Let us revisit Brown’s position on Jesus’ prayer in chapter 17. Brown understands Jesus’ prayer for unity to be directed specifically to unity between the Petrine and Johannine communities. What is important here, as we consider the stress of purity, is that if Brown is right, Jesus is not praying for the unity to extent to the “Crypto-Christians” or the “Jewish Christian Churches of Inadequate Faith.” That is, Jesus is not praying for the unity of the Johannine Christians with all other Christian groups,[22] but only with the Petrine community, who, we may assume have a pure, albeit distinct, brand of faith and practice. The conclusion might be made, then, that the very nature of the sectarian Johannine community highlights the importance of purity of doctrine and practice.

D. Purity in the Johannine Epistles

“Love one another” at first hearing sounds like a call for unity, but when contrasted to Synoptic renditions of the second greatest commandment, it seems rightly to be rather introverted. The Synoptic Jesus taught the importance of loving neighbors, and via a question went on to expand the definition of “neighbor” beyond expectations.[23] By contrast, the refrain found in Johannine literature, limits obligation to love to those within the community. Johannine love, in Gospel and Epistles alike, is a family affair. In fact, love outside of the community is not only not encouraged, but rather it is warned against. The author of 1 John explicitly enjoins not loving the world, or the things in the world.[24] The separation of the two makes clear that not only worldly possessions but worldly people themselves are not to be loved. Brown summarizes this position as “internal love and external opposition.”[25]

The elders accusation against Diotrephes for his failure of hospitality in 3 John, does not prohibit the author of 2 John from employing similar tactics: “Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who does not bring this teaching; for to welcome is to participate in the evil deed of such a person.”[26] It would seem that the importance of hospitality has given way to the importance of maintaining orthodox belief and practice.

V. Negotiating Unity and Purity

It is clear from our survey that unity and mutual love of fellow believers is important in Johannine thought, but equally clear that there are limits upon whom to love just as there are limits to whom Jesus prayed for the unity of.[27] In the final section of this paper we will consider what these limits are and, in conclusion, I will offer some preliminary thoughts regarding what insight this examination might yield for mainline churches who are also considering where to draw the line.

The author of 1 John is the most explicit about the failures of those with whom his community has broken fellowship. Assuming that the major evils listed are to be attributed to the secessionists, their chief sins are: an inadequate Christology,[28] unrepentant immorality and hatred toward those within the community. Because these are the sins which seem to legitimize no longer including other Christians within the command to love one another, a closer examination is due them.

The Christological failure of the author’s opponents are summarized as their denial that Jesus is the Christ and that he has come in the flesh.[29] It has often been suggested that the secessionists were early Docetic or Gnostic derivations of Johannine Christianity. While these suggestions are interesting, further attention is not necessary to our inquiry. What is relevant is the centrality placed upon Christology; a sufficient Christology must include recognition of the physical existence of Jesus and of his fulfillment of the salvific hopes of Israel.

The failure of practice is two-fold; entailing a failure to maintain a moral purity, as well as the principle failure to love the friends.[30] Michaels sees a link between the failure of Christology and the failure of morality in that they seem to have been unable to recognize the salvific importance of Jesus’ life and death. Instead they rather considered the ‘coming into the world’ of the Word to have been the salvifically important act. As a result of this depreciation of the importance of Jesus’ life and death, the moral behavior of believers was considered somehow less relevant to salvation. The author of 1 John rebuts this by asserting that all that have the hope of transformation into Christlikeness when he appears presently work toward purity.[31] He challenges the notion that any are without sin,[32] but rebukes this passivity, maintaining the importance of striving after righteousness.

The second failure of practice the author accuses the secessionists of is hatred of the friends. This is the sin of Cain,[33] and a sure sign that eternal life does not dwell within those who commit it. The secessionists are not to be counted among the faithful, and the author seems to feel no compulsion for unity with them, because they have harbored hatred.

It is clear that the author finds his opponents guilty of great sin, but sin is not in itself reason for excommunication, for all believers sin.[34] So how then does the author of justify excommunication of those who were once part of his community? I believe the key is found 1 John 2:19:

They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us.

D.A. Carson understands Jesus’ prayer to refer “to a unity of all true believers.”[35] It is that word “true” that the elder capitalizes on. If his opponents would have really been a part of the community, they would not have left, but since they left, he can now regard them as having failed to love the community and therefore not of the community, walking in darkness, of the world, children of the devil. [36] The secessionists ultimately are not identified only as sinful brothers, but as outsiders and enemies to the community. Somewhat surprisingly this verse suggests that they are known as such not by their doctrine or practice alone, but penultimately by their exodus from the community. Christ commanded that they abide, but instead they have gone out from the community, and therefore from Christ himself. This is what is suggested in 2 John 9; the secessionist have progressed so far that they no longer are abiding in Christ’s teaching or community.

Michaels distinguishes two varieties of sin in 1 John, that sin which leads to death, and that which does not. He asserts that the deathful sins are lying (Christological heresy) and murder (hatred toward a brother or sister). In fact, the author is uniting these sins as each “paradigms for the rejection of Christ.”[37] The author restates Jesus commandment, “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.”[38] The intention is to wrap the sins of the secessionists into a unit: they have rejected Christ in two ways, by denying him and breaking his commandment of unified love.

Back to our question: “On what grounds does the author disunite with his opponents?” Most practically speaking, he expels them only after they have deserted the community, the final expression of their desertion of teaching of Christ.

VI. Conclusion: WWJD—What Would John Do?

Many have said that the chief error of the secessionists was their inadequate Christology. I do not disagree, but wish to lay emphasis on the way in which this inadequacy is finally exposed undeniably in the mind of the author: “they went out from us.”

As debates rage about heavy matters of Christology, ordination, authority and homosexuality, many, out of zeal for faithfulness to Scripture’s teaching, have threatened to break off from their denominations if they fail to take a similar stance. John, I believe, has several pieces of wise teaching to offer in this crisis.

The first teaching is that purity of doctrine, especially regarding Christology, and practice are of the utmost importance. The second is that unity and peace among Christians is central to Jesus’ vision for the church and the church’s witness to the world. The third piece of wisdom may perhaps help us to negotiate between the first two. That is, breaking fellowship with Christians is itself a rejection of Christ and his teaching. For the author of 1 John, this was the linchpin that confirmed that his opponents belonged not to Christ, but to the world.

These insights have two very practical applications for churches in turmoil. Do not give up on unity and leave, is the first. Those who are indeed in Christ must be committed to love for one another as long as they share fellowship, which suggests they can not be the ones to initiate a schism. The second application ought to guard against the danger of accommodation: Do not cease efforts to share what knowledge of Christ you have with those with whom you share fellowship. The importance of doctrinal and behavioral purity demand that the community not stifle any voices which call for purity. We must argue and attempt to persuade, all in a spirit of love, for we speak to those with whom we share fellowship with Christ.

What would John Do? I suspect that John would boldly declare the truth, not catering to inadequate doctrine or practice, but he would do so as though he were speaking to a brother or a sister. He would not initiate a split, but neither would he passively accept error. The PC(USA) Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity is right: “one of the most compelling reasons to continue to hold on to one another is to persuade one another of the truth as God has given us to know it.”[39] The church can not give up on unity, and it can not give up on purity. Those who hope in Christ purify themselves, just as Christ himself is pure, and by this everyone will know that we are his disciples, if we have love for one another.[40] Amen, Amen.

Works Consulted

Brown, Raymond E. The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times. New York: Paulist Press, 1979.

Carson, D.A. The Farewell Discourse and Final Prayer of Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1980.

Ferreira, Johan. Johannine Ecclesiology. United Kingdom: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.

Gundry, Robert H. Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian: A Paleofundamentalist Manifesto for Contemporary Evangelicalism Especially Its Elites, in North America. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002.

Smith, D. Moody. The Theology of the Gospel of John. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church. A Season of Discernment: The Final Report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church to the 217^th General Assembly (2006) with Study Guide. Chicago: Presbyterian Distribution Service, 2005. Available on the Internet: www.pcusa.org/peaceunitypurity

---

[1] Matthew 12:30

[2] Throughout this document I will use “purity” in order to mean both orthodoxy--right belief, and orthopraxis--right behavior.

[3] Smith, 136.

[4] Smith, 136.

[5] Brown, 141.

[6] John 14:26, 16:12-13

[7] Brown, 62-87.

[8] Suggested in a lecture by Dr. R. Michaels, 11/17/2005

[9] Brown, 151.

[10] John 1:47

[11] John 17:6

[12] John 15:16

[13] Smith, 155.

[14] Brown, 72.

[15] John 15: 12; John 15:17

[16] John 17: 11

[17] Peace Unity Purity, 44-45.

[18] Brown, 90.

[19] Smith, 46.

[20] 3 John 11

[21] Smith, 152.

[22] Brown lists three non-Johannine groups of Christians: Crypto-Christians, Jewish Christian Churches of Inadequate Faith and the Christians of Apostolic Churches

[23] Luke 10: 25-37

[24] 1 John 2:15

[25] Brown, 61.

[26] 2 John 10-11

[27] John 17:9 “I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.”

[28] Smith, 58.

[29] Denial that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:22) and denial that Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:2).

[30] Jesus invites his disciples into friendship in John 15:15 and the elder uses this term in 3 John 10.

[31] 1 John 3:3

[32] 1 John 1:8

[33] 1 John 3:12

[34] 1 John 1:8

[35] Carson, 201.

[36] “of the world” - 1 John 4:51; “children of the Devil” - John 3:8-10

[37] Dr. R. Michael’s in lecture 10/27/2005

[38] 1 John 3:23

[39] Peace, Unity, Purity, 45.

[40] Purity - 1 John 3:3; Love - John 13:35

That Distasteful Presbyterian Doctrine

Congratulations! In 2006, you were chosen as TIME Magazines person of the year. I hope you appreciate what an honor this is. One of your fellow elect, Kathi, expressed her gratitude by promising to use all the wealth and fame that came with the recognition for good causes.

Sometimes people get chosen for “wealth and fame” as Kathi put it.
Other times people get chosen for...something else.

Like me for example. A while back, I was chosen to report for Jury Duty.
But I’ll tell you more about that experience later.

First, read this passage. It is a text about chosen people.

1 Peter 2:4-10

4As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— 5you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6For in Scripture it says:
"See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame." 7Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,
"The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone,"8and,
"A stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.

9But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

This text is about chosen people. It is about election.

The idea of “election” is almost never discussed without some mention of the theology of John Calvin.

Simply stated Calvin believed that before creation God chose some individuals for salvation and some for damnation. Calvin would also say that God’s choices are not based on anything we have done, nor on God’s foreknowledge of what we would do. It was pure grace, absolute and gratuitous mercy. I suppose that this is how Calvin would have understood the part of our text that says “once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.”

According to Calvin God has unconditionally and specifically elected some individuals, and rejected other individuals.

Belief in the Calvin’s view of unconditional election has lead to two dangerous responses: Fear and Complacency.

First, FEAR.

It is understandable that much fear has grown out of Calvin’s emphasis on the unconditional nature of God’s election. After all what is the difference between unconditional and arbitrary? If we believe that God’s election is arbitrary we begin to fear that through no fault of our own, we might not be elect and unable to do anything to change this. And we quickly become preoccupied with the question “Am I an elect individual?”

For help with this anxiety, I suggest we look to the theologian Karl Barth. Barth completely reworks his Reformed heritage in his doctrine of election. He asserts that there is only one rejected individual and only one elected individual and that Jesus Christ is both. Barth, I believe, would look at verse four of our text for support when it speaks of Jesus as “rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight.” Jesus is the rejected one. Rejected not only by mortals, but with the sin of the world on his shoulders rejected and forsaken by God. But Jesus is not only the rejected one, but also the elect one, the chosen one. Jesus was the elect because on his shoulders was the whole salvific purpose of God. All the purposes of God’s election of Israel were focused in him. Jesus is the one chosen by God to bring blessing to the whole world.

Election, Barth said, is only properly applied to one individual, Jesus. Before and after Jesus, election can only be properly applied to communities.

Listen again to our text, starting in vs. 9.

v. 9a “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people...

These words echo the words that God had spoken of Israel’s communal election

Exodus 19:5-6 “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”

(See also Isaiah 43:20-21)

Notice that election in both the Old and New Testament texts is not of individuals but of groups: a race, a nation, a priesthood, a people. Election is a communal possession. We are not so much the community of the elect individuals, but the elect community.

We are only elect individuals when we are participants in the elect community. (Here's where the historical Catholic doctrine "outside of the church there is no salvation" begins to make sense. ) We are only the elect community when we are participants in the only truly elect individual, Jesus Christ. We are elect as we are together “in Christ”

Our text uses the metaphor of the building built with Christ as the chief cornerstone.

Who ever is built on the cornerstone is part of the spiritual house. Whoever believes in the one chosen by God, is part of the chosen community.

Our text represents election as primarily communal. We need not fear if we are “elect individuals” we need only to trust that “whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” As we are a community who trusts in the chief cornerstone, we are the elect community.

Here we turn to the second and even more dangerous response to Calvin’s doctrine of unconditional election: COMPLACENCY.

Just as fear was a seemingly rational response so is complacency. If you believe you are elect, and that your election is unconditional then it is only a short step to assume that God requires nothing of you. If it is “pure grace” then it must have nothing to do with my actions, we think.

Our text speaks to this complacency.

v. 9ba-b “...in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”

We are not merely a Chosen People. We are a People Chosen TO do something.

We are a people Chosen TO...proclaim the mighty acts of God. I believe this is the most important truth that this text has for us. Election is purposeful.

The missionary and ecumenist Lesslie Newbigin writes about the purpose of election: “One race is chosen in order that through it God’s salvation may be mediated to others, and it may thus become the nucleus of a new redeemed humanity.”

He goes on to say that while we can not know the reason that some are elect...we can know the purpose of election: we are chosen to be, in his words, “a fruit bearing branch, a witness through whom others might be saved.”

Presbyterians are often called the “frozen chosen.” And when “frozen” refers to movement in worship, it’s a good description. One of the most painfully awkward things is to attend a Presbyterian church when there is a visiting Gospel choir inviting the congregation to sway or clap with them.

But in another sense, to call God’s people the “frozen chosen” is oxymoronic. The community God has chosen, can not be frozen, or inactive, because it is chosen to do something. We are chosen for a task.

When God’s people cease to do what they have been chosen to do, they not only deny their own election, but they begin down the road that ultimately ends in the removal of their “chosen” status. Donald Trump is not the only one who can say to unfaithful hirelings: “You’re fired!” Is this not what happened to Israel? (Mark 12:1-9) They were God’s chosen people chosen to be a blessing to the nations, but stubbornly they held onto the belief that they were chosen merely to be blessed. They viewed God as their obligated Protector, not as their mission Director.

Israel failed to live out their purpose and so their election was whittled down until all that was left of it was one man, Jesus Christ, in whom all the purposes of election would be fulfilled. Israel’s mission is revealed and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus knew what it meant to be elect. He knew what he had been chosen for. And he was about this business all the way to the cross.

And when Jesus chose the disciples, what did he choose them for? According to Luke, they were to be his disciples, but also apostles and his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth!”

Even as Israel was God’s chosen agent through which to bring salvation to the world, so was Jesus...and so were the disciples...and so are we.

We are a taste of God’s future for the world. We are evidence of the kingdom and we are the instrument through which God offers salvation in Christ to the world.

I told you I would say more about my Jury Duty experience. Actually, it was fascinating. As I walked out of the designated parking lot in Downtown LA. I looked around me at the other people on the sidewalk, many of them had in their hand what I had in mine, the Jury Summons. And we were all walking the same direction. We had been summoned. We had been called. We had been chosen.

What I noticed about us as we poured into the courthouse was that we were a veritable cross section of Los Angeles. Men and women of all ages and races. Latino, African American, White, Middle Eastern, Asian. Teen aged girls with black eye shadow and 70 year old men with canes. And we were all being called for a task. The reason we had been chosen was unknown and mysterious, but the purpose for which we had been chosen was obvious: we were chosen to serve...on a jury.

We too are Chosen to serve. So we must not be complacent.

Like Israel who was chosen to publicly worship God for the redemptive Exodus, we too are chosen to proclaim the mighty acts of God who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. We are chosen to worship and to witness. Chosen to Praise and to proclaim. Chosen to adore and to announce. We are chosen to be priests, offering sacrifices to God and reconciliation with God to the world.

We need not fear: God has chosen us out of pure grace to be his elect community. We dare not be complacent as was Israel. We have not been chosen merely to enjoy God’s benefits, but to announce and distribute them.

May our churches live out their identity as the elect, God’s people chosen to participate in bringing salvation and wholeness to the world.

We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may declare the mighty acts of him who called us out darkness into his marvelous light.”

(this is a modified version of a sermon written Spring of 2007 for a Preaching Practicum)

That the World May Know: Newbigin’s Eschatological Ecclesiology of Mission and Unity

I. Introduction

What if we placed our thinking about the church within the grand narrative of God’s ongoing redemptive work in the world? What if we defined the church not by what it has been, or even by what it is, but by that end to which it moves? The answers to these questions can be found in the ecclesiology of Lesslie Newbigin. Newbigin, who began articulating a vision for the church while he was a missionary in South India, has had enormous and irreversible impact on contemporary ecclesiology. His insights were instrumental in the early decades of the World Council of Churches, and even show up in the documents of Vatican II.

This paper will attempt to encapsulate the major elements of Newbigin’s ecclesiology. We will consider his understanding of ecclesiality, specifically in relation to the insights and failures of the Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal streams. I will show how the foundation for Newbigin’s ecclesiology is his eschatology and give special attention to the two areas of his most significant contributions: the Church’s unity and its mission. To illustrate the way Newbigin’s ecclesiology reinterprets typical ecclesiological topics, I will consider briefly Newbigin’s understanding of the sacraments. In conclusion, I will highlight several aspects of the contemporary relevance of Newbigin’s ecclesiology.

II. Newbigin in Context: South India and the WCC

It is impossible to understand Newbigin’s ecclesiology apart from consideration of the context out of which it arose. Newbigin was a missionary in South India for much of his life and it is out of his experience on the mission field that his ecclesiology emerged. Simply stated, Newbigin saw the church as the community enacting the mission of God, and as such, it must be a unified community. Christian disunity, in the context of South India, was a primary obstacle to the church’s work of mission.

Newbigin urges his readers to consider the missionary situation in which Christians are a small minority. Those who convert generally feel compelled to make a radical break with the dominant non-Christian culture. Now ostracized from society, they must be “adopted into a new family.”[1] In this context, the church “cannot divest itself of responsibility for those who it has uprooted.”[2] Also, the church engaged in mission, generally feels compelled to engage in all forms of service to the community, so as to model “a new pattern of corporate activity.”[3] The conditions of the church in a missionary context demand Christian unity. Newbigin writes about how the South India context made apparent the need for unity:

In some parts of South India where two missions have competed for the allegiance of the same villages, there are now two churches in each village each consisting of converts from one caste. The old caste-division is now camouflaged by a fine display of conviction about theological principles. In such a situation the Church contradicts its own nature. On the other hand, where one church stands in one village, claiming the allegiance of all binding all by common bonds to one Lord, the true character of the Church becomes clear.[4]

Newbigin was, in fact, a major force in the realization of a unified Church of South India. After years of effort and conversations with denominational leaders, the congregational, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches of South India united. Newbigin was able to experience unity on a local level and it persuaded him all the more strongly that unity was incumbent on the universal church. He spent many years working with the World Council of Churches hoping to bring about the “organic” reunion of the church.

Newbigin was convinced that reunion would never come about out of purely academic discussion, but would only result from Christians finding themselves confronted with the “practical issues which arise in the course of the fulfillment of the Church’s mission.”[5] To this end, Newbigin pushed for the integration of the International Missionary Council, of which he was the General Secretary, with the Division of World Mission and Evangelism of the WCC. He believed that if the WCC could center its primary attention on the work of mission, unity would be possible, in a way not possible by direct effort.

Newbigin’s ecclesiology is a product not only of his brilliant mind, but also of the contexts in which he served the church. In South India he was confronted with the hindrance disunity proved to be to the mission of the church, which he saw as essential to its identity. Through his involvement with the WCC, Newbigin had to wrestle with the ideal nature of universal unity.

III. The Trinitarian Constitution of the Church

Newbigin’s major work on the doctrine of the church, titled The Household of God, was published in 1953 and contains all the major elements of the ecclesiology that informed his ministry throughout his career. Newbigin initially engages the question of ecclesiality, what constitutes the church, by acknowledging that “We are all agreed that the Church is constituted by God’s atoning acts in Christ Jesus—his incarnation, life, death resurrection, ascension, His session at God’s right hand and the gift of the Spirit.”[6] He goes on, though, to draw attention to what he considers the real question: “What is the manner of our ingrafting into Christ?”[7]

To this question he has three answers, corresponding to the Protestant, Catholic and Pentecostal streams respectively. “The first answer is, briefly, that we are incorporated in Christ by hearing and believing the Gospel. The second is that we are incorporated by sacramental participation in the life of the historically continuous Church. The third is that we are incorporated by receiving and abiding in the Holy Spirit.”[8]

Newbigin develops this summary with a chapter devoted to each tradition, identifying its unique contribution, and its dangers, to the church.

III. a. Protestant

Newbigin resonates strongly with the Protestant affirmation that “faith is, from the human side, the constitutive fact of membership in the people of God.”[9] If faith is said to constitute the church, then the Word of Scripture as the instrument through which faith comes, can be considered a true mark of the church.[10]

The critique Newbigin lays on the Protestant tradition is in their exclusive emphasis on the Word as the means by which we are engrafted into Christ with out recognizing the importance of the continuous organic fellowship which Jesus left behind. This myopic view has resulted in two blunders, the overintellectualizing of faith and “the virtual disappearance of the idea of the Church as a visible unity.”[11]

The over-intellectualized view of faith results in the opinion that doctrinal agreement is the “one essential basis for Christian unity” without acknowledging the Spirits role as unifier.[12] This blunder is addressed by the Pentecostals, as we will see. The second error, slipping into a purely theoretical and invisible doctrine of the church, is answered by Catholic ecclesiology.

III. b. Catholic

The profound truth embodied in Catholic ecclesiology that Newbigin attempts to promote to the whole church is that “we are made incorporate in Christ primarily and essentially by sacramental incorporation into the life of His Church.”[13] The sacraments speak to the visible unity of the Body of Christ. Contrary to what some Protestants seemed to Newbigin to believe, Jesus gave his disciples “no authorized creed” but rather “the two sacraments of his death and resurrection by which his visible society would be defined.”[14]

Newbigin levels strong criticism on the Catholic doctrine of a sinless church, which is for him, prohibitive for any reunion of the church. “No honest person can deny that the Church...has in the course of its history been guilty of pride, greed, sloth, and culpable blindness.”[15] In addition, he accuses the Catholic doctrine of having stricter marks of ecclesiality than the Spirit, who is clearly present in other Christian churches.[16] In concluding his critique, Newbigin asks sarcastically why it is that Catholics teach

that though a Church be besotted with corruption, bound to the world in an unholy alliance, rent with faction, filled with false teaching, and utterly without missionary zeal, God’s mercy is big enough to cover these defects and they do not destroy its claim to be regarded as part of the Church; but that though a Church be filled with all the fruits of the Holy Spirit, if it lack the apostolic succession it is no part of the Church and all the mercy of God is not enough to make it so.[17]

III. c. Pentecostal

Newbigin is breaking new ground by including “Pentecostal” as one of the primary streams of the church, but it is not hard to see that he is attempting to develop a Trinitarian ecclesiality. He has already reinforced faith in God and inclusion in Christ’s Body as constitutive, now he requires the presence of the Holy Spirit. In fact, it is the insight of the Pentecostal churches that he hopes will break the deadlock between Protestant and Catholic perspectives.

With Pentecostals, and Irenaeus, Newbigin asserts that the activity of the Spirit constitutes the church. While Catholicism has stressed the structure of the church, and Protestantism the message of the church, Pentecostals stress the “experienced power and presence of the Holy Spirit.”[18] In the time between the ascension and Pentecost, the church, though it had the message and the sacraments, had to wait for the Spirit before they fulfilled their community defining mandate to be witnesses and make disciples. Newbigin writes: “the Church lives neither by her faithfulness to her message nor by her abiding in one fellowship with the apostles; she lives by the living power of the Spirit of God.”[19]

Newbigin’s critique of the Pentecostal stream has to do primarily with the failure to seek structured unity, which is “a decisive mark of the Spirit’s presence.”[20] Pentecostals, like Protestants over matters of doctrine, have often divided the church, “have separated themselves from their fellow Christians...claiming exclusive possession of the Holy Spirit.”[21]

The church, for Newbigin is the community of the faithful, the Body of Christ and the community of the Spirit. The very essence of the church is found in its witness, in its unity and in the Spirit’s presence. As we have already seen, all three streams are failing in at least one point to live into their essence. The challenge and opportunity this poses will be discussed under the heading “The Way to Reunion.”

IV. The Eschatological Foundation for Newbigin’s Ecclesiology

Newbigin’s ecclesiology is often rightly called “missionary” or “missional.” It is important that we also acknowledge the source of this missional ecclesiology as an eschatological view. The nature of the church can only be determined by considering the future of the church. Newbigin articulates the church’s eschatological ontology, “...the Church is not to be defined by what it is, but by that End to which it moves.”[22]

Below we will consider the features of Newbigin’s eschatological ecclesiology which drive him to a missional ecclesiology.

IV. a. The Story of Redemption

An eschatological view is always one which considers where history is moving to, but also where it is moving from. In order to assess this, Newbigin tries to encapsulate the grand narrative of creation, fall, redemption and eschaton. It is particularly redemptive history which sheds light on the nature of the church. Redemptively speaking, since the fall of humankind, God’s every action has been done with the purpose to restore humanity to relationship with himself, and proper relationships with one another and creation. Newbigin considers redemptive history through the lens of God’s election.

He chooses one to be the bearer of his blessing for the many. Abraham is chosen to be the pioneer of faith and so receive the blessing through which all nations will be blessed. Moses is chosen to be the agent of Israel’s redemption; Israel is chosen to be a kingdom of priests for the whole earth. The disciples are chosen that they may be “fishers of men” (Mark 1:17) or, in another metaphor, that they may “go and bear fruit” (John 16:16). The church is a body chosen “to declare the wonderful deeds of God” (1 Pet 2:9).[23]

Eschatologically speaking, the church is a manifestation of God’s choice to redeem humanity through chosen individuals and people. We will examine Newbigin’s doctrine of election more closely in the pages that follow. Let us now follow the thread of Newbigin’s eschatological view that sees the church as a people on the move.

IV. b. Church as Pilgrim People

God began the work of redemption by calling Abram to travel to land he did not know. Israel understood itself as an Exodus people who traveled from slavery in Egypt to the promised land where they longed for their messianic future. The church, too, is a pilgrim people. Newbigin enunciates this feature of his eschatological view of the church: “The Church is the pilgrim people of God...hastening to the ends of the earth to beseech all men to be reconciled to God, and hastening to the end of time to meet its Lord who will gather all into one.”[24] In this quotation we can see how the trajectories of the church are set by the goal of the church. As a community who will be the epicenter of the ingathering of a new humanity, the church is to hasten to the end of the earth. As a community who has yet to meet its Lord and be gathered, the church is now to acknowledge its own imperfection, its not-yetness.

This pilgrim perspective, Newbigin believes, is an antidote for the “fundamental error into which Catholic doctrines of the Church are prone to fall,” namely “subordinating the eschatological to the historical.”[25] The long-standing Catholic preference for the historical is the root of Catholic doctrines of a sinless Church, against which Newbigin rails. The Church has not yet arrived; it does not yet have “the full plentitude of God’s grace in itself now” as static, conservative Catholic ecclesiology seemed to suggest.[26]

Newbigin’s criticism gained the attention of Catholic theologians, and his notion of the Church as God’s pilgrim people found its way into Vatican II.[27] Though this did not include a repudiation of the sinlessness of the Church, it did at least theologically, if not practically, restore the eschatological to its place of primacy.

IV. c. Church as Sign, Foretaste and Instrument

Newbigin’s trademark description of the church is ripe with eschatological meaning: “The church lives in the midst of history as a sign, instrument and foretaste of the reign of God.”[28] The church finds its identity and mission in what it points to as a signe, what it tastes like as a foretaste, and what it participates in bringing about as an instrument. All three of these terms, sign, foretaste and instrument, are closely linked to the mission and unity of the church.

Newbigin rarely isolates these terms, but let us consider how they relate to one another. As a sign, the Church draws attention to the kingdom for, “The purpose of a sign is to point beyond itself.”[29] As a sign, the church admits that it is not itself the eschatological end of redemption, but rather its means (or instrument) and foretaste. We have already considered the failings of Catholic ecclesiology to be an effective sign because it has tended to point to itself as the kingdom. The mission of the church is, according to Newbigin, “itself the sign of the coming consummation”[30]

The church is not the kingdom to which it points but it is a foretaste of that kingdom. In as much as the church is a community welcoming all cultures, and in as much as it is a fellowship that actualizes the peace and justice which Christ has won for all people[31] the church is a foretaste, or an appetizer to the kingdom feast. And it is the function of “a foretaste to make us long ardently for that which is yet to come.”[32] H A unified church serves as a foretaste of the new unified humanity, hence

The Church’s unity is the sign and the instrument of the salvation which Christ has wrought and whole final fruition is the summing-up of all things in Christ. In so far as the Church is disunited her life is a direct and public contradiction of the Gospel...[33]

H

We cannot be instruments, “beseeching all men to be reconciled to God, except we ourselves be willing to be reconciled one to another in Him.”[34] H Our ability to be united testifies to our participation in Christ and the effectiveness of the gospel. Unity enables mission. If we are a foretaste, we are then able to be an instrument.

As the church points to the kingdom, and gives a visible and tastable sample of it, it also serves to usher it in, primarily through its mission. Christian mission is not only a sign of the kingdom but the “instrument of a universal and eschatological salvation.”[35]H Through the empowerment of the Spirit, the Church leads this present age to its consummation, by bringing the Gospel to all nations.[36]

Again, eschatologically speaking, history is on the way to a summing-up in Christ. The church points to this, gives the world a sampling of its flavor, and, through its mission, is its instrument. An eschatological ecclesiology must be a missionary ecclesiology for the “implication of a true eschatological perspective will be missionary obedience...”[37] The church, as a pilgrim people, is simultaneously on its way to the end of time and to the ends of the earth.

Newbigin’s twin ecclesiological themes, mission and unity, spring from his eschatological perspective: “the action of the eschatologically aware church must be both in the direction of mission and in that of unity, for these are but two aspects of the one work of the Spirit.”[38]

V. Newbigin’s Missional Ecclesiology

As we have seen, Newbigin’s eschatological view identifies the church as the instrument of God’s redemption. Hence, the church’s very nature and identity are found in its mission. This insight is perhaps the most important contribution of Newbigin to ecclesiology.

V. a Missional Election

In the grand narrative of redemption, God’s means has always been scandalously particular. Along the way God has pursued blessing for all through the choosing of one man, Abram, one nation, Israel and one man, Jesus. While Newbigin denied the analysis of Hunsberger that election was the foundation of his ecclesiology[39] he did write, “no discussion of the nature of the Church can avoid dealing with the doctrine of election.”[40] To some eyes, namely those of Calvin, the doctrine of election leads to a doctrine limited atonement. That is, the doctrine of election has seemed to many to indicate that God’s intent for redemption is not universal, but limited.

Newbigin rejects this line of thinking and announces that God elects a few not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of all. With the eschatological view that God “purposes the salvation of all” it becomes apparent that election is not for comfort, but for responsibility.[41] Furthermore, given the corporate nature of salvation, it can not come to each individual as a “direct revelation from above but only through the neighbor.”[42][a] Newbigin takes this logic so far as to say that even the elect can only be saved by receiving the gift of salvation from the non-elect.[43] He derives this from Romans 11, in which it is through the non-elect Gentiles that the elect Israelites might be saved, as well as through being grafted into Israel that the Gentiles are saved.

The purpose of election is evident in the light of history’s eschatological trajectory: “One race is chosen in order that through it God’s salvation may be mediated to others, and it may thus become the nucleus of a new redeemed humanity.”[44] The church, then, is the nucleus of the redeemed humanity, but not its totality. If it is to serve as nucleus, it must gather others into its fellowship, it must be about its mission.

Whereas Calvin’s doctrine of election causes sacraments and mission work to loose their importance (the elect need no sacrament, and the non-elect will not be saved by mission),[45] Newbigin’s doctrine of election gives the church, as the elect community, its missional identity. The church is the “instrument of God’s gracious election” and “His purpose is precisely to re-creation of the human race in Christ.”[46]

Newbigin urges that we stop looking backward to understand the reason for our election, and instead look forward to its purpose. For “if we cannot know for what reason one was chosen, we can most certainly know for what purpose he was chosen: he was chosen in order to be a fruit-bearing branch of the one true vine..., a witness through whom others might be saved.”[47] No one can know on what basis God chose Israel, or why God has chosen the members of the church, but it is clear for what task he has chosen them: “we are chosen in order to be sent.”[48] With Karl Barth, Newbigin lays the mantle of election primarily on Christ.[49] “It is He who is the elect of God, His beloved, His chosen One. Our election is only by our incorporation in Him. We are not elect as isolated individuals, but as members of His Body.”[50]

The church, as those who have been grafted into Christ, are the elect community whose identity and essence are found in their purpose. Namely, God has chosen the church so that he may save the world.

V. b. Mission as the church’s essence

If the church is to be seen primarily as the instrument of God’s saving mission to the world, mission can be rightly called a condition of ecclesiality.[b] The true church is the church in mission. A Church which is not a mission is not merely an unhealthy church, it not a church at all.[51] Mission is not merely something that the church does, mission is what makes it a church. Mission is the essence of the church.

The church has its “existence is in the act of being the bearer of that salvation to the whole world.”[52] Apart from participation in Christ’s mission to the world, there is no participation in Christ.[53]

V. c. Clergy and Laity in Mission

It is easy enough to declare that the church is the instrument of God’s mission to the world, but it is essential to attempt to speak of how this mission is to be lived out on the congregational level. Newbigin’s missional ecclesiology has significant ramifications for the understandings of clergy and laity in the church.

The primary implication of a missional ecclesiology for clergy and laity is to recognize that the whole church together, not merely the ministers, is called to be God’s instruments. Laity are to be neither spectators (as in the Catholic tradition) or hearers (as in the Protestant tradition) but active participants in worship.[54] “Everyone has something to contribute to the worship of the whole congregation.”[55]

Newbigin reflects his missionary context when he says that

a newly baptized congregation will not be trained first in churchmanship and then in missionary responsibility... . It will receive its training in churchmanship precisely in the discharge of its missionary responsibility.[56]

Those who are being catechized, Newbigin suggests, ought to, as a primary part of their instruction, be going to neighboring villages and attempting to communicate their faith.

If all members of the missional church participate in its mission and worship, what then is the role of the minister? The ordained “are made ministers in order to help the whole Church to be a serving Church and to lead it in this service.”[57] Ministers lead and equip the saints for worship and mission. Again, “true pastoral care, true training in the Christian life, and true use of the means of grace will precisely be in and for the discharge of this missionary task.”[58]

There is no loss of distinction between clergy and laity under a missional ecclesiology, rather the missionary aim of the whole church helps delineate to its members their particular role. The minister exists “to help congregations to be in fact what congregationalism hold in theory that they are, but what (without someone like St. Paul to prod them) they usually are not!”[59] Ministers must equip the church for their task because “ministry is not the monopoly of the clergy; it is the responsibility of all, and the role of the clergy is to help them to fulfill it.”[60]

V. d. The Content of Mission: Development and Evangelism

Newbigin gives some attention to the inevitable question which arises when mission is undertaken. The foremost question is “What constitutes mission?” Newbigin weighs in on the longstanding debate between those who advocate for the primacy of development or proclamation as mission. Newbigin, like many current missiologists, suggests that the two must go hand-in-hand. Development absent of proclamation is lacking:

I do not think the idea of ‘Christian presence’ can replace evangelism in the life of the Church. Jesus was not only himself the good news, but he was also himself the evangelist. His deeds were interpreted by words. ...The words interpreted the deeds and the deeds authenticated the words.[61]

Similarly, proclamation without demonstration of the kingdom through development work is incredible. Social work is not merely to be the way we win a hearing either, for “if our social work is primarily a bait to make people swallow our preaching, then we shall rightly earn the contempt of honest people.”[62] The church participates in development to model a new way of corporate life, and to serve as the foretaste of salvation it is. The church, in fact, “as the body of Christ, is intended to be...a healing society.”[63]

V. e. The Task of Mission: Contextualization

Mission can not be effectively done without consideration for the context in which the mission is to take place. Much of Newbigin’s later writings center on his efforts to assist in the church in the West contextualize the gospel for a post-Christendom society. We will make no attempt to summarize his work toward that end. It will be enough to acknowledge that the church’s fundamental missionary nature demands that it also be astute in its understanding of the ebbs and flows of the cultural contexts in which it finds itself.

Newbigin embodied this contextualization in his mission in South India. He tells of the folk-dance tunes to which biblical stories had been set in the form of Christian Kummies. “Some of the words are, of course, not suitable for dancing at all, and some times there are errors of taste in this matter. But it is worth having a few occasional crudities for the sake of printing the Gospel story indelibly on the mind of the people who will never learn in any other way.”[64]

The fundamental question of contextualization for the church in mission is “How are we to live and speak so that the world can understand the gospel?” Certainly, Scripture gives authoritative answers regarding the manner of life. We are to love one another, to be holy as God is holy, to forgive, to be one, to welcome the least of these. But Scripture’s language, it has to be admitted, is culturally conditioned. If the gospel is to be proclaimed

...it is not enough for the church to go on repeating in different cultural situations the same words and phrases. New ways have to be found of stating the essential Trinitarian faith, and for this the church in each new cultural situation has to go back to the original biblical source of this faith in order to lay hold on it afresh and to state it afresh in contemporary terms.[65]

As briefly suggested above, the effectiveness with which the church goes about its mission has much to do with its manner of living. According to Newbigin the unity or disunity of the church, as a primary expression of the manner of the church’s life, has enormous impact on the furtherance of its mission. It is for this reason that Newbigin devotes much of his ministry to the ecumenical movement as well as the unification of the churches in South India.

VI. An Ecclesiology of Unity

VI. a. Unity as Missional Imperative and Result

Drawing on Jesus’ words in John 17, Newbigin locates the necessity of church unity in its missional identity: “unity is in order that the world may believe.”[66] If the world is to be able to identify Christ’s disciples because they “love one another,” what missional impact can a divided, angry and accusatory church have?

...any breach in the unity of the Church was in violent contradiction to the very heart of the Gospel as Paul understood it. ...There is only one Christ, and he has only one body. For his members to be divided from one another is to divide Christ...[67]

Denominationalism, under which Christians claim some other source of unity than Christ, contradicts the gospel in which Christ is the source of unity for all people.

Newbigin’s belief that the church exists for its mission drives him to see disunity as an unacceptable hindrance. Unity is an important ingredient if the church is to accomplish its mission, and thereby be the church. Unity is essential to the church.

Unity is an ingredient for mission, but it is also the result of mission. Newbigin rightly credits the modern missionary movement as the breeding ground for the impetus of the ecumenical movement. When the church is attempting to do mission, it discovers how destructive and intolerable disunity is. “Everything about such a missionary situation conspires to make Christian disunity an intolerable anomaly.”[68]

While Newbigin invested much time in ecumenical gatherings he is convinced that “The reunion of the Church will never be distilled out of a process of a purely academic discussion. It will only come about when Christians find themselves compelled to make real decisions concerning the practical issues which arise in the course of the fulfillment of the Church’s mission.”[69]

More simply stated, the best hope for the church to reunite is for it to be about its mission and there discover how urgent its unity is. Mission demands unity, and mission leads to unity.

VI. b. New Humanity’s Nucleus and Priests

Unity is not only essential to the church’s mission, it is an essential reflection of its eschatological nature. Unity in the church is a foretaste of the unity of all humanity with God in the eschaton. The church is to be the nucleus of the new humanity, a humanity in which all nations, tribes and tongues are reconciled with God. The church is to be united as “a sign and a sacrament of the unity of mankind.”[70] A divided church contradicts its destiny as the nucleus of the new redeemed humanity.

As the seed of the future’s new humanity which will worship God, the church serves as priests for the world. The church worships God on behalf of the whole world, even as Israel’s priests offered sacrifices on behalf of the whole nation. Newbigin articulates the priestly role of the church:

...indeed true Christian worship is an offering on behalf of the whole of mankind. The Church as a whole is called to be God’s holy priesthood for all of the human family. ...This means, for example, that in our worship we should try to offer up to God all that is best in the art and music and thought of the world around us. All of it belongs to God, and all of it should be offered to God in our solemn acts of worship.[71]

The church serves as representative to God of the whole world, for it is the nucleus of the whole world’s future. God blesses the church for the sake of the world and the church worships God on behalf of the world. The only way to rightly represent the unified future of humanity is in a unified church. The only way to rightly prepare to be the nucleus of a redeemed and unified humanity is to be a united fellowship.

VI. c. The Way to Reunion: Repentance

If unity belongs to the essence of the church, and the church is presently so clearly not unified, how can it be said that it is the church at all? This answer to this question unlocks what Newbigin believes is the secret to reunion. Geoffrey Wainwright, in his biography of Newbigin, writes about the thrust of The Household of God:

From the beginning, it was the key purpose of Newbigin’s book “to argue that the theological clue to the problem of the method of reunion lies in the fact that the Church has its being form the God who...justifies the ungodly, raises the dead, and calls things that are not as though they were.”[72]

The church and the churches are the ungodly whom God justifies, the dead whom God raises and the thing that is not that God calls as though it was. The church fails to meet the demands of its essence, but God makes it the church regardless, out of grace.

God’s will for the church

...is that we should be His witnesses to the uttermost parts of the earth, preaching the Gospel, doing the mighty works of the Kingdom, baptizing the nations, and bringing all men into the one fellowship whose visible center is the sacrament in which we are partakers of His risen life and show forth his death till He come. There is no body of Christians which does not depart in some or all of these respects from His will.[73]

Mission, unity and the Spirit’s presence and activity are essential for the church to be the church, and yet all churches fail to meet all the essentials of ecclesiality. This is the “ultimate problem of the Church...it is at once holy and sinful.”[74] Now we can grasp the importance of Newbigin’s rejection of the Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the church.[c] He dismisses it as historical dishonesty.[75]

This essential failure of the whole church to be the church put the church in need of God’s grace, apart from which it can not claim to be the church.

The question is how the church can (and it has) deny its own nature by being divided and forgetting her missionary task, and being sinful (and not holy) can yet be “accepted by God and used as the means of His grace.” This can be so only by the “sheer grace and mercy of God.”[76]

It is here that Newbigin announces that “Simul Justus ac peccator applies to the Church as to the Christian.”[77] The Reformed doctrine of justification by faith is gospel to the church, which has failed to fulfill God’s will and conform to its own essence, even as it is good news to the individual dead in sin. The church’s failures are fatal, but they are not decisive for “the Church lives neither by her faithfulness to her message nor by her abiding in one fellowship with the apostles; she lives by the living power of the Spirit of God.”[78]

This recognition, that all churches have failed and are only reckoned churches by the sheer grace of God, opens the door for the acknowledgment of other fellowships of Christians as recipients of the same grace. They too can be seen as members of the same household with God, which is a fellowship of forgiven-failures. If only each branch of the church will acknowledge how it has failed to be the church, they will be able to extend that grace to the other branches of the church, and acknowledge them as brothers and sisters with whom they are called to fellowship.

The way to unity is repentance. If Catholics will admit that God has looked on them as the church despite their fatal failure to be this, then they will be able to see Protestants as not only sinful non-churches, but as forgiven churches. If other communities are reckoned churches by God, if God has shown them the same grace we have received, then we must be in fellowship together with them as the one church.

According to Newbigin, mission is the proper impetus for reunion, but repentance is the necessary atmosphere for its accomplishment.

VI. d. The Form of Unity

Repentance ought to lead to reconciliation, but of what form? Is it enough for each church to merely admit that the other Christian fellowships are indeed participants in the one true universal church and go on with business as usual? Newbigin answers this with a resounding “No!” and has some important words to say about what he understands to be the form of unity demanded by the gospel. Speaking on behalf of the Faith and Order Working Committee Newbigin articulated the two conditions of the desired form of unity.

First, it must be such that all who are in Christ in any place are, in that place, visibly one fellowship. Second, it must be such that each local community is so ordered as so related to the whole that its fellowship with all Christ’s people everywhere, and with all who have gone before and will come after, is made clear. That will mean at least this: a ministry universally recognized and visibly linked with the ministry of the Church throughout the centuries.[79]

The church’s unity has to be expressed both locally and universally. We will consider the implications of unity in both of these spheres.

VI. d. i. Local Unity

The first level of unity is the local. “All in each place” are to be in one visible fellowship, “not of those whom we choose out to be our friends, but of those whom God has actually given to us as our neighbors.”[80] If one is to be a Christian, she does not have options regarding with whom to fellowship, she is called to fellowship with all whom Christ has invited to fellowship with him, in that place. In The Good Shepherd Newbigin sighs over those who belong to two or three churches and says that they fail to comprehend what the church is.[81] Visible unity on the local level is essential to the missionary task. It is central to the gospel representation of Christ’s unifying power in a locale.

Later in Newbigin’s career he acknowledged that the formulation “all in each place” is not be understood as merely geographical given the various spheres in which one might be said to live. Nonetheless, geography has a good claim to being the primary element of his notion of the parish, or the bit of the world assigned to a congregation. Non-geographical spheres ought to also be considered: “if we are serious in our mission we have also to develop other forms of congregational life related to other ‘worlds’—such as workers’ groups in factories, student groups in colleges, and professional groups in the many different segments of urban life.”[82] Christ needs to be represented as one in every “bit of the world.”

Bishops will be responsible to God not only for those in their congregations, but for “all the people of [their] parish or diocese, whether they are Christian or not.”[83] Similarly, churches are accountable for acting concretely as a first-fruit, sign and instrument in their segment of the world.[84] Again, we find that unity on the local level is essential for the work of mission.

One of expressions and benefits of local unity is church discipline. Apart from local unity no church discipline can be exercised and this is, according to Newbigin, a great detriment to the church. The “only place where truly Christian discipline can be exercised at all is in the congregation” because it is there that Christians are “meeting regularly face to face, gathering round the same Table to break the same bread and drink the same cup.”[85] Because the congregation is, in the missionary context, the total environment of the Christian, remaining in fellowship there is the only way to be a Christian. “If love of the brethren does not exist here, it does not exist at all.”[86] Local unity is a pre-condition of church discipline. Discipline is used so that “the person concerned may be saved, may be forgiven, healed and restored to the Church’s fellowship.”[87] Without local unity, the erring Christian will merely find a new church, and almost inevitably remain in their error.

Newbigin’s own entry into ecumenism started with the building of a local unity, a union of the congregational, Presbyterian and Anglican churches into the Church of South India. As we have already noted, this united local church facilitated mission. The particulars of the form of unity agreed upon in the Church of South India are beyond the scope of the paper, but it is important to note that within this agreement there was a modified Episcopal system, of which Newbigin was elected a bishop. Ordained persons from each of the Presbyterian and congregational churches were, after some struggle, recognized by all. Newbigin’s vision of the polity of a reunited church will be discussed in the following section more closely.

Unity on a local level is not the only requirement of God’s will for the church – God intends the church to be one across the globe. This is why Newbigin wrote of his hopes for the South India project: “if the union in South India remains an isolated event it will have failed in one of its great purposes.”[88] Frankly, by this assessment, it did partially fail. Perhaps this is why he titled his autobiography Unfinished Agenda.

VI. d. ii. Universal Unity

Newbigin invested great efforts in seeing the unity of the Church of South India on the local level spark unity on the universal level, through the World Council of Churches. Denominations, as far as Newbigin was concerned, are not a beautiful testimony to the diversity of the church, but rather the fruit of atheistic allegiance to the sovereign autonomy of the individual.[89] He hoped that the WCC would be the agent which brought all the fractured elements of the church together in an organic visible universal unity.

The World Council of Churches, by its very nature as a council, seemed to Newbigin both the hope for reunion, as well as one of the major threats against it. The WCC posed a threat in that its participants could easily come to believe that so long as they were participating in the WCC, the unity between itself and all other participants was sufficient. Participants in the WCC prized the neutrality of the council, which Newbigin considered a decent starting place, but an unacceptable place to conclude.

I argued that neutrality could be regarded as a legitimate starting-point, but that it could not be a permanent mark of the WCC because its own existence is a kind of answer to the ecclesiological question, and it is the wrong answer.[90]

The neutrality of the WCC offered “organizational unity” not the “churchly unity” required.[91] If churches remained neutral, never coming to a place where they must admit that the other members of the Council were also part of the church, unity would never be accomplished. It was essential that all churches recognized the others as their brothers and sisters, even while aware of the ways in which they had failed to be the church. The starting place was acceptance, from there debates could be had.[92] The deepest problem with neutrality, in the form of “reconciled diversity” and “federation,” is that it offered reunion without repentance.[93] For Newbigin, this was impossible.

As for marks of an “organic union,” many suggested intercommunion. Newbigin believed that this was essential, given the nature of the Eucharist as a sacrament of unity, but feared that many would regard intercommunion “not as a step toward organic unity, but as a substitute for it.”[94]

Newbigin had in mind another mark of organic unity: “a ministry universally recognized and visibly linked with the ministry of the Church throughout the centuries.”[95] As was suggested above, this was hard to come by given the Catholic perspectives on ordination.

What would be the polity of this universal united church? Newbigin admits his belief “that it is God’s will that the Church should be episcopally ordered” and yet he denies “That Episcopal ordination is essential for valid ministry”[96] on the grounds that the validity of ministry depends not on the “conformity of the Church to God’s will, but upon the grace of God which justifies the ungodly.”[97] Polity, then, does not have to be universal, for the church to be universally one. Later in his career Newbigin articulated his assessment of the debates about polity:

...there is need for fresh thinking in the field of structure. In this matter we are polarized between the advocates of full 'organic union' and the advocates of 'reconciled diversity'. The latter slogan often seems to be a polite way of agreeing to do nothing. The former arouses understandable fears of 'monolithic structures'. This fear is understandable when one contemplates the structures to which we have become accustomed. I think that there is room for more vigorous exploration of the middle ground between these extremes, looking to visible forms of ecclesial life which would combine the variety of different forms of discipleship and spirituality manifest in our divided churches with a degree of mutual commitment and shared ecclesial life much greater than is provided in our existing councils of churches.[98]

A unified church does mean a monolithic one. A vast amount of intellectual disagreement is possible within organic unity, “though such disagreement will never be other than painful.”[99] When disagreements arise these Christians ought to “always be seeking to convince one another of the truth as they see it, and to learn from one another.”[100]

Unity was to Newbigin essential to the being of the church and hence to the fulfillment of its mission. But the church had to admit its failure to be one, as well as its failure to be in mission, in order to be able to see the way to reunion. Repentance is the critical ingredient of all efforts to achieve organic unity.

VII. Sacraments: A Case Study

I will proceed in this study of Newbigin’s ecclesiology by briefly examining how its themes are evident in the treatment of the sacraments, an important doctrine in understanding any ecclesiology. For Newbigin, baptism and the Eucharist each testify to the unity of the church and to the church’s mission.

Incorporation into Christ is signaled by “baptism into a visible fellowship which is the Body of Christ...and our participation in the life of the body is maintained by our sharing in the only loaf and the one cup in one undivided fellowship.”[101] Baptism testifies to the unity of the church universally, for all are baptized into one baptism. The Eucharist, on the other hand, is the measure of the unity of the local congregation. The fellowship around the one cup and the one loaf is the supreme evidence of unity. Newbigin draws out this theme by examining the failures of the Corinthian church whose impropriety around the Lord’s table belied a lack of fundamental unity.

As the Eucharist is the supreme testimony to the unity of the church, baptism is the supreme witness to the mission of the church. Newbigin understands baptism as “our incorporation into that action of Jesus in which he identified himself with sinful men and took upon himself the burden of their sin.”[102] By virtue of their baptism, all Christians participate in the mission of the church, therefore Newbigin tells his priests

We do not have to send missionaries to industry... . There are already tens of thousands of baptized Christians in the industries... . The difficulty is that most of them have misunderstood their baptism. [by not considering it] a commitment to be part of God’s mission to industry.[103]

Newbigin draws the clearly biblical connection between baptism and the indwelling empowerment of the Spirit for ministry by the gifts.[104] Baptism serves as the public commitment to mission, communal commissioning for mission and spiritual empower for mission. It is effectively ordination for into the priesthood of all believers.

Indeed, the sacraments are marks of the church, in as much as they announce the identity of the church as a visible unified fellowship that has been committed and been commissioned for a task. Each sacrament carries meaning regarding mission and unity. In baptism we are united with Christ, and therefore with all others who have been united with Christ in baptism, but we are also commissioned and empowered for participation in God’s mission. As we celebrate communion, our baptism is renewed[105] and we are fed and nourished by God to continue the mission, but we are also intimately united as a visible fellowship around a common table.

VIII. Concluding Reflections on Newbigin’s Contribution

As I conclude this survey of Newbigin’s ecclesiology, I wish to highlight a few pearls of wisdom which have particular relevance for the church of which I am a part, the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Like the other mainline denominations, the PC(USA)’s membership is aging and declining. Many congregations, and perhaps the denominational headquarters as well, are grasping for whatever promises survival. Newbigin’s ecclesiology has much to offer this church not among these are his eschatological orientation, his doctrine of election and his emphasis on the shared ministry.

The tendency of all institutions in decline is to fight for survival by looking to the past for what used to work. Newbigin’s eschatological orientation invites the church to look to its future, rather than its past, for guidance. In the eschatological view, a declining denomination is no tragedy, so long as the mission of the church in each place continues. Newbigin offers hope, not specifically that the denomination will revive, but that the church will persist to its ends—the end of the world and the end of time. As the PC(USA) faces the possibility of its own death without fear, resurrection becomes a possibility.

As a Reformed tradition, Presbyterians might be open to rethinking the doctrine of election. Commitment to the purpose for which the church was created is another way in which the PC(USA) can direct it efforts away from its own survival, and to mission. Striving for survival makes sense if election is understood as having benefits only to the elect. But if the election of some is for benefit of all, then survival is only a secondary concern. Reencountering the unique calling to which the church, the chosen instrument of God through which to invite all into relationship, promises to bring life to the church.

As congregations age and decline in membership, the temptation looms large to look for that special pastor who will make a church grow by his natural charisma. Newbigin’s reminder that the whole congregation, by virtue of their baptism, are participants in the mission of the church, is needed. The vitality of a church’s ministry does not depend on the pastor alone because the pastor is not the only minister in a church. A Pastor is one who equips all for the ministry of the church. This can be modeled effectively by the empowerment of the church’s elders and deacon in the ministry of the church.

Lesslie Newbigin has helped the church see itself as part of the grand narrative of God’s redemptive work in the world, which will conclude with the church as the nucleus of a unified, new and redeemed humanity. In this perspective, the church finds its identity in its destiny. As God’s elect pilgrim people it rushes to the ends of the earth in mission, and to the end of time in unity. The reunion of the church which Newbigin prayed and worked for can only come about when the churches are both in mission, and able to repent of their failures to live into the essence of the church. As the churches receive grace from the one who brings the dead to life, and calls what is not as if it is, they will be empowered to offer this grace to their fellow failed-but-forgiven churches. God has allowed all to fall into disobedience in order that he may have mercy on all,[d] and that they, in turn, look with familial love upon one another as fellow members of God’s household. When we reflect on the majesty and grace of God’s election of the church for participation in God’s mission, and for a destiny as the nucleus of humanity’s future, we must say, with Paul:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond trading out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever! Amen.[106]

---

[a] Interestingly, Newbigin’s teaching on this point was of particular offense to Hindu and modern secularist sensibilities to whom it seemed “that truth and redemption ought to be intrinsically and universally available for each individuals immediate internal apprehension.” (Heim, Mark. Review of “Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology of Cultural Pluralism.” Theology Today. July 1999.)

[b] Newbigin nowhere in my reading speaks of mission as a “mark of ecclesiality” but does call it the esse of the church. Importantly, he wants to insist that even when churches fail to embody the marks of ecclesiality, the grace of God holds them as a church. This idea is further developed under the heading “The Way to Reunion: Repentance.”

[c] Interestingly, one of the Vatican II documents, Lumen Gentium SS8, seems to be conceding something to Newbigin’s critique when it states that the church is “at once holy and always in need of purification.”

[d] This theme, one of Newbigin’s favorites, is a paraphrase of Romans 11:32.

---

[1] Newbigin, Lesslie. The Household of God. New York: Friendship Press, 1954. American Edition. p. 7.

[2] ibid, p. 8.

[3] ibid, p. 7.

[4] Newbigin, Lesslie. A South India Diary. London: SCM Press LTD, 1960. p. 50

[5] ibid, p. 128.

[6] The Household of God, p. 24

[7] ibid, p. 24.

[8] ibid, p. 30.

[9] ibid, p. 42.

[10] ibid, p. 47.

[11] ibid, p. 53.

[12] ibid, p. 52.

[13] ibid, p. 61.

[14] ibid, p. 79.

[15] ibid, p. 89.

[16] ibid, p. 105.

[17] ibid, p. 92.

[18] ibid, p. 95.

[19] ibid, p. 105.

[20] ibid, p. 115.

[21] ibid, p. 121.

[22] ibid, p. 19.

[23] Newbigin, Lesslie. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995, p. 68.

[24] The Household of God, p. 18.

[25] ibid, p. 89.

[26] ibid, p. 89.

[27] Lumen Gentium, ch. VII. Documents of the II Vatican Council, 1964. Accessed at www.vatican.va/

archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents

[28] The Open Secret, p. 110.

[29] The Household of God, p. 114.

[30] ibid, p. 142.

[31] Newbigin, Lesslie. Unfinished Agenda: An Autobiography. London: SPCK, 1985, p. 253

[32] The Household of God, p. 114.

[33] ibid, p. 149-150.

[34] ibid, p. 150-151.

[35] ibid, p. 145.

[36] ibid, p. 138.

[37] ibid, p. 153.

[38] ibid, p. 19.

[39] Hunsberger, George. Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology of Cultural Plurality. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

[40] ibid, p. 112.

[41] The Open Secret, p. 72.

[42] ibid, p. 77.

[43] ibid, p.72.

[44] The Household of God, p. 111.

[45] ibid, p. 113.

[46] ibid, p. 114.

[47] ibid, p. 111.

[48] ibid, p. 111.

[49] Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. II.2.

[50] ibid, p. 113.

[51] The Household of God, p. 163.

[52] ibid, p. 162.

[53] Unfinished Agenda, p. 138.

[54] Newbigin, Lesslie. The Good Shepherd: Meditations on Christian Ministry in Today’s World. First American Edition. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1977, p. 34.

[55] ibid, p. 32.

[56] The Household of God, p. 167.

[57] The Good Shepherd, p. 43.

[58] The Household of God, p. 146.

[59] Unfinished Agenda, p. 123.

[60] The Good Shepherd, p. 74.

[61] ibid, p. 62.

[62] ibid, p. 92.

[63] ibid, p. 71.

[64] A South India Diary, p. 63.

[65] The Open Secret, p. 27.

[66] The Household of God, p. 70.

[67] ibid, p. 73.

[68] ibid, p. 8.

[69] A South India Diary, p. 128.

[70] Newbigin, Lesslie. “...But What Kind of Unity?” National Christian Council Review 95, (1975): 487-491. Accessed at www.newbigin.net. p.4

[71] The Good Shepherd, p. 30.

[72] Wainwright, Geoffrey. Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2000, p. 86.

[73] The Household of God, p. 152.

[74] ibid, p. 56.

[75] ibid, p. 87.

[76] ibid, p. 91.

[77] ibid, p. 23.

[78] ibid, p. 105.

[79] Unfinished Agenda, p. 150.

[80] The Household of God, p. 14.

[81] The Good Shepherd, p. 87.

[82] ibid, p. 89.

[83] ibid, p. 61.

[84] ibid, pp. 88, 90.

[85] A South India Diary, p. 73

[86] ibid, p. 73.

[87] The Good Shepherd, p. 53.

[88] A South India Diary, p. 128.

[89] Newbigin, Lesslie. The Basis and Forms of Unity: Second Peter Ainslie Lecture. Mid-Stream: The Ecumenical Movement Today 23 (January, 1984): 1-11. p. 9. Accessed at www.newbigin.net.

[90] Unfinished Agenda, p. 134.

[91] ibid, p. 161.

[92] The Household of God p. 151.

[93] ibid, p. 14.

[94] ibid, p. 16.

[95] Unfinished Agenda, p. 150

[96] Newbigin, Lesslie. The Reunion of the Church: A Defence of the South India Scheme. London: SCM Press, 1960, p. xxiii.

[97] ibid, p. xxiii.

[98] Newbigin, Lesslie. “What is the Ecumenical Agenda?” Unpublished. Written in 1986. Accessed at www.newbigin.net.

[99] The Household of God, p. 52.

[100] ibid, p. 52.

[101] ibid, p. 82.

[102] The Good Shepherd, p. 99.

[103] ibid, p. 102.

[104] Newbigin, Lesslie. The Holy Spirit and the Church. Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1972. (Accessed through www.newbigin.net) p. 14.

[105] Title of article in Reform (July/August): 18, 1990. J.E. Lesslie Newbigin.

[106] Romans 11:33-36. Holy Bible. Today’s New International Version. International Bible Society. 2005.

The Goal of Ecumenism: Why and How to be One

I. Introduction

Paul rebuked the Corinthians for claiming the names of Apollos and himself rather than Jesus, with a stinging question: “Has Christ been divided?” (1 Cor. 1:13). One look around the ecclesiastical landscape with churches and denominations bearing different names invites the same question: Does the present state of the church present Christ as divided?

The ecumenical movement began with the assumption that, indeed, something is wrong about the present state of the church’s unity. What then is the task of ecumenism? All share the conviction that “it is not the task of the ecumenical movement...to create unity between the churches, but rather to give form to the unity already created by God.”[1] This paper will consider the two dominant positions regarding the proper form of ecumenism, namely, “reconciled diversity” and “organic reunion.”

I will give special attention to one of the foremost voices of the ecumenical movement, Lesslie Newbigin. With Newbigin I will argue for the urgency of unity for the church’s mission, the necessity of visible union and the primacy of local unity. I will also draw upon Newbigin to offer a theological way forward for the ecumenical movement toward visible unity.

II. Why are We Divided?

The Protestant Reformation, which began the fracturing of the church,[2] was not willing to abandon the Nicene formulation of the church as “one,” but how could it be maintained in the light of schism? Martin Luther provided the answer. He conceived and taught of the church as an invisible spiritual entity. The true church is not that which is seen and it is not tied to any one institution, namely the Roman Catholic Church, but is known only to God. This view, Luther felt, was consistent with the flesh/spirit dichotomy that he saw in Scripture. Just as works do not merit salvation, neither does visible unity constitute the one church.

This doctrine seems to have paved the way for centuries of church splits and denominational proliferation. These new “churches” could separate themselves from their churches of origin without the discomfort of feeling that they had violated the unity of the church.

Of course, the Roman Catholic Church had to wrestle with the reality of the division created by the Protestant Reformation as well. The Catholic Church had long maintained the equivalence of the “one holy catholic and apostolic church” with their institution, and the Reformation did not change this. The RCC denied that Protestants were members of the true church because they were no longer participants in what was, to Catholics, its visible form.

The question of the visibility of the church has resulted in two answers on the extremes. Some, with Luther, have claimed that the church is invisible, and therefore divisions in the visible church are no scandal to its spiritual unity. Others, such as the RCC and Christian sects, have claimed that the church is utterly visible and exists only in their own institution.

The premise of the ecumenical project rejects these two extreme views, but it continues to wrestle with their more moderate forms. These theologies of schism present two challenges to the task of ecumenism. The challenge posed by the Catholic view of the institutional visibility of the church, is to push for the recognition of the ecclesiality of other churches. The challenge posed by Luther’s view of the invisibility of the church is to refute the sufficiency of invisible church unity. We will consider both of these challenges, beginning with the question of church visibility.

III. Ecumenism and the Visibility of the Church

As we consider the proper goal of ecumenism the first question is to determine whether the one church ought to be a visible community, or whether it is sufficient to understand the church’s unity as invisible. Veli-Matti Karkainen calls this “The most hotly debated ecumenical question.”[3]

A. A Free Church Ecumenism: Church Invisibility but...

Stanley Grenz, a Free Church theologian, presents this debate as one between denominationalism, which emphasizes the invisibility of the church, and sectarianism, which promotes the visibility of the church.[4] Grenz, identifies the “great advantage” of denominationalism to be that it “allows us to affirm fellowship with Christians in churches with which our congregation has no formal fellowship.”[5] Denominationalism, though, is not without its deficit according to Grenz. It fails to see the significance of baptism as that which joins all Christians to Christ and one another, not as a mere rite of membership in the local congregation.

Grenz attempts to identify a middle way, balancing visible and invisible understandings of the church. Against denominationalism he wishes to restore baptism with its connection to conversion. Against sectarianism he wants to acknowledge the churchly nature of other Christian fellowships.[6] Although he has attempted to find a middle way, as a moderated Free Church theologian, Grenz lays the stress on the invisible nature of the church. While he wishes that all denominations recognize one another as family through baptism, he does not affirm any impulse to visible union.

B. A Roman Catholic Ecumenism: Church Visibility but...

In an encyclical letter, Pope John Paul II gives voice to the kind of sectarianism that Grenz is willing to work with.

Christians of one confession no longer consider other Christians as enemies or strangers but see them as brothers and sisters. Again, the very expression separated brethren tends to be replaced today by expressions which more readily evoke the deep communion — linked to the baptismal character — which the Spirit fosters in spite of historical and canonical divisions. Today we speak of ‘other Christians,’ ‘others who have received Baptism,’ and ‘Christians of other Communities.’ . . . There is an increased awareness that we all belong to Christ.[7]

While this letter is quite gracious to non-Catholics, it should be remembered that Vatican II also affirmed that the one church “subsists” in the Roman Catholic Church.[8] Somewhat surprisingly, Grenz and Pope John Paul II have some agreement. They each wish to essentially recognize the genuine Christianity of other fellowships without being compelled to unite with them in any formal way. They do not want their own ecclesiologies being called into question. Grenz is happy to have denominations remain without formal fellowship, so long as they do not deny their shared baptism. John Paul II, too, is willing to acknowledge a shared baptism, but not willing to question what has always been the Catholic ecumenical agenda—the return of Protestants and the Orthodox to the Roman Catholic Church. Neither Grenz nor John Paul II wish to have the ecclesial status of other fellowships result in any change in the view they hold of their own fellowship.

In sum, John Paul II expresses a commitment to the visibility of the church in the institution of the Roman Catholic Church, but he wishes to acknowledge other Christians as partners in the same baptism.

C. The Ecumenism of the WCC

The World Council of Churches, the primary organization in the ecumenical movement, expressed its first function and purpose to be “visible unity in one faith and in one Eucharistic fellowship expressed in worship and in common life in Christ.”[9] This is in stark contrast to the ecumenism of Grenz. Karkainnen notes that “With the exception of most Free churches, almost all other Christian churches currently regard visible unity as the desired goal of ecumenism.”[10]

Despite the apparent clarity of the WCC statement, there has been ongoing debate regarding the goal of ecumenism. Two positions have arisen that could be called, respectively, “reconciled diversity” and “organic reunion.”

i. Reconciled Diversity

Reconciled Diversity is quite similar to the position of Grenz. It entails the recognition of other Christian churches without seeking “formal fellowship” with them. Oscar Cullman proposed “unity through diversity—in which the New Testament metaphor of the members of the body is taken out of the context of the local congregation and applied to present denominations.”[11]

Proponents of reconciled diversity point to the diverse cultures in which the church exists as conditions which require unique expression of the faith.[12] Craig Van Gelder, author of The Essence of the Church, writes, “

...the one church is contextual and relevant to diverse cultural settings. Of necessity local churches take different forms. Such diversity is consistent with the church’s catholic nature.[13]

For Van Gelder, “[The oneness of the church] does not necessarily require some type of organizational or institutional oneness.”[14] Rather the unity that is to be had is that “Every church body must have the conviction and desire to relate to other church bodies that are part of the catholic church (italics mine).”[15] While he speaks of this relation at one point as “common fellowship” it is clear that he is not thinking of organic union, but recognition and amiability.

Miroslav Volf offers a perspective which similarly considers “desire to relate to other church bodies” [16] as important. He suggests that “the openness of every church toward all other churches” is “an indispensable condition of ecclesiality.”[17] And yet, openness to other churches is not expected to result in organic unity between them until the eschaton. The church’s unity is visible in a measured way through the openness of churches to others, not through actual fellowship with them. For Volf, this openness actually serves to point to the presently incomplete nature of the eschatological unity of the people of God which is our hope.[18] Hence, until the eschaton “there can be no church in the singular.”[19]

There is a general apprehension among advocates of reconciled diversity of institutional, organizational church unity, which they see as the unspoken aim of visible reunion.[20]

ii. Visible Reunion

The case for organic reunion is most forcefully argued by Lesslie Newbigin. Speaking on behalf of the Faith and Order Commission of the WCC, he states

We believe that the unity which is both God’s will and His gift to His Church is one which brings all in each place who confess Christ Jesus as Lord into a fully committed fellowship with one another through one baptism into Him, preaching the one Gospel and breaking the one bread, and having a corporate life reaching out in witness and service to all; and which at the same time unites them with the whole Christian fellowship in all places and all ages in such wise that ministry and members are acknowledged by all, and that all can act and speak together as occasion requires for the tasks to which God calls the Church.[21]

Notice that the unity he seeks allows a local unified presence, as well as a universal fellowship. The nature of the universal fellowship is such that members and ministers in all local churches are recognized as such by all other churches in the world. Hence, intercommunion and free exchange of clergy are marks of a visibly unified church. Universal nature of the church’s fellowship also enables it to speak to the world as one, accomplishing its God-given mission.

As to ecumenism on the local level, Newbigin participated in the reunion of the Congregational, Presbyterian and Anglican churches in South India where he served for many years as a missionary and later a bishop. He understood disunity, on the local level, as a great hindrance to mission and a contradiction to the gospel.[22]

This example of regional reunion did, in fact, constitute the making of a new and overarching institution, the Church of South India. While its polity and theology was enriched by the three traditions, the organizational nature of its unity solidified concerns in the ecumenical community that the push for “visible reunion” was really aiming at a monolithic institutional church.

Newbigin acknowledged this fear, but also critiqued his opponents.

“...there is need for fresh thinking in the field of structure. In this matter we are polarized between the advocates of full 'organic union' and the advocates of 'reconciled diversity'. The latter slogan often seems to be a polite way of agreeing to do nothing. The former arouses understandable fears of 'monolithic structures'. This fear is understandable when one contemplates the structures to which we have become accustomed. I think that there is room for more vigorous exploration of the middle ground between these extremes, looking to visible forms of ecclesial life which would combine the variety of different forms of discipleship and spirituality manifest in our divided churches with a degree of mutual commitment and shared ecclesial life much greater than is provided in our existing councils of churches.”[23]

Elsewhere, Newbigin makes more explicit his expectation that the church ought to look differently in different cultures, as advocates of “reconciled diversity” stress.[24] Hans Schwartz states what is clearly Newbigin’s view. That while cultural diversity is necessary: “the necessary cultural distinctiveness and diversity do not justify our present divisions.”[25]

Newbigin critiques “reconciled diversity” as having made intellectual agreement the standard and source of unity rather than the work of the Spirit. He traces the fracturing of the church post-Reformation to the mistaken belief that doctrinal agreement is the “one essential basis for Christian unity.”[26] The Protestant emphasis on Scripture has obscured the fact that “what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community.”[27] The unity of the fellowship which is the instrument of God is preserved not by doctrinal homogeneity, but by the Spirit of God. A vast amount of intellectual disagreement is possible within unity, though it will always be painful and will call for all to seek to convince others of the truth as they see it.[28]

“Reconciled diversity” is the perpetuation of the overemphasis on doctrinal agreement as the grounds for formal unity and a failure to recognize that we who are called to Christ are called to be together even when we fail to agree, for the church is made up “not of those whom we choose out to be our friends, but of those whom God has actually given to us as our neighbors.”[29]

A final motive for the visibility of the church’s unity is the aid that it is to the mission of the church. As a missional ecclesiologist, Newbigin believed that the church existed in its mission. In a local setting the presentation of multiple competing churches amounts to a public contradiction to the gospel. Not only are missionary dollars and energy spent inefficiently, but the advantages of church discipline are abandoned in this setting. In agreement with Volf, Newbigin stresses that the church serves as a foretaste of the eschatological humanity. But for Newbigin openness to one another is not a sufficient foretaste of unity. The unification of all humanity should be tasted in the realized, if partial, unity of the church. As such, the church’s unity is a sign, firstfruit and instrument of the kingdom of God.[30]

Thus far I have argued, with Newbigin, for the visibility of church unity. A visible community of the Spirit is what Jesus left as his witness and the visible unity of the church serves as a public sign and instrument of the eschatological ingathering of a new redeemed humanity. The following section will discuss who ought to be included in this visibly one church.

IV. Ecumenism and Ecclesiality

If visible unity is the proper aim of ecumenism, with whom is it to be sought? Hints have already surfaced to this question. As both Volf and John Paul II identified, baptism marks those who have fellowship with Christ, and therefore, those to whom all Christians are called to fellowship.

Newbigin approaches the question of ecclesiality from an unpredictable angle. Rather than offering a minimal marks of ecclesiality, so as to include as many Christians as possible, he purposefully combines the marks of ecclesiality from the major traditions, Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal: ecclesiality requires visible unity and continuity, missionary zeal, holiness and the presence and activity of the spirit. Newbigin accuses all churches of failing, in at least one of these ways, to achieve ecclesiality.[31]

If no church fulfills the requirements of ecclesiality, how then is there said to be any church at all? This crisis is the key theme of The Household of God, and opens the way for organic reunion. Newbigin argues that

the theological clue to the problem of the method of reunion lies in the fact that the Church has its being from the God who...justifies the ungodly, raises the dead, and calls things that are not as though they were.”[32]

Though the church has failed to be the church, by the grace of God, it is the church nonetheless. “Simul Justus ac peccator applies to the Church as to the Christian.”[33] And here is the key: when each church can confess that it has failed and is only a church by God’s grace, it can also recognize that, despite the failures of others, they too are the church, by God’s grace. Out of gratitude for forgiveness, the churches are then called to repentance, seeking to repair their failures of ecclesiality. This includes seeking organic, visible unity.

The question of ecclesiality for Newbigin has changed from “who lives up to what it means to be church?” to “who else, despite their failures as a church, have been called “my people” by the God who calls things that are not as though they were?” It is with these fellow forgiven communities, that we must seek full reconciliation.

Hans Schwarz also advocates for this humility and repentance, stating that the church in mission is confronted by the scandal of its disunity. This scandal requires repentance of us all. “The division into different churches and denominations is not just the fault of others. It is always also our own fault.”[34]

Repentance, then, is prerequisite to reunion. It is for this reason that Newbigin rails against federation which “offers us reunion without repentance.”[35] “Reconciled diversity” and federation are absent of repentance and are rather simply an agreement for all to feel self-justified without feeling guilty about their estrangement.

V. Setting the Goal: Openness vs. Effort

The eschatological horizon of the church is the final goal of ecumenism. According to Karkkainen, Pannenberg and Volf share a similar view:

For Pannenberg, the goal of ecumenism is the unity of all people and peoples under one God. For Volf, the church as the anticipation of the new creation under one God points to the same goal. Whatever the precise definition of ecumenism, the ultimate goal is similar.[36]

Newbigin states his ecumenism eschatologically as well, declaring that the church will be the “nucleus of a new redeemed humanity.”[37] Of course, the reality the church’s eschatological future sets its direction, but it also calls the church to confess that it is not yet the eschatological fellowship, nor will it actualize its future before the eschaton.[38]

Volf speaks of “openness of every church toward all other churches”[39] as “the interecclesial minimum of the concrete ecclesial proleptic experience of the eschatological gathering of the whole people of God.”[40] Through openness, Volf suggests, the church sets out on the path to its future. Volf finds it important to note that the future of redeemed humanity is “differentiated unity” not homogeneous unity.

I applaud Volf for grasping the eschatological significance of the form of the church’s unity, but want to go further and state that openness alone is insufficient. Indeed, openness to other churches is essential and does point, as a sign, to the incomplete, eschatological unity of humankind. But the church is not to be merely a sign of the eschatological community, but also a foretaste. While openness seems to Volf to provide a sufficient “proleptic experience of the eschatological gathering,” openness alone is too weak, too passive. If the church is to serve as firstfruit of the Kingdom unity, it must be active.

Letty Russell, a Feminist theologian, has offered hospitality as a way to talk about the church’s unity. “Hospitality is an expression of unity without uniformity.”[41] This is helpful, because it moves in the direction of activity rather than passivity. Hospitality urges the church to seek community within the limits of diversity, which are the absence of love and idolatry.[42] While hospitality is a helpful paradigm, I believe it still preserves the fundamental dilemma of efforts at union—an ongoing us/them logic.

I believe that the appropriate “interecclesial minimum” is effort, or even progress, toward familial unity. The churches can not merely be open to unity with one another, heralding that openness as a sign that unity is its eschatological future. They must also reflect and encapsulate the unity of its future. We must admit that on earth church unity will not be complete while also confessing that the church is not merely a sign, but a foretaste. It is not merely to point to something that it is not, but it is to be a real, though small, a sample of that which it points to. The church is not merely to be the aroma of the eschatological feast, but its appetizer.

VI. Striving for the Goal

The present state of the ecumenical movement is sometimes characterized by mere “openness” and at other times by genuine “effort.” How can the whole church arrive at what I have asserted is the goal, effort toward unity?

As we have seen, repentance is the catalyst for reunion, but repentance is not easily generated by councils. On the contrary councils easily tend toward stubbornness rather than humility. Newbigin, recognizing this, offers a brilliant insight.

The reunion of the Church will never be distilled out of a process of a purely academic discussion. It will only come about when Christians find themselves compelled to make real decisions concerning the practical issues which arise in the course of the fulfillment of the Church’s mission.[43]

The failures that lead to repentance and the impetus for unity are only to be found when the church is in mission. As the church attempts mission, its disunity is exposed for what it is, “an intolerable anomaly”[44] which discredits the gospel.

The power of mission to conspire against the disunity of the church is most evident on the local level. In A South India Diary, Newbigin reflects on how, when two missions competed for the allegiance of the same village there came to be two churches, each comprised of only one caste. In this situation, the disunity of the church tacitly reinforced the anti-gospel caste divisions.[45] When the church is confronted with this sad reality it will be humbled and driven to repentance. When it begins to view itself as a failed-but-forgiven church it will have the grace to extend this identity to other churches and the way for unity will be opened.

Newbigin’s attempt to assist the efforts of WCC toward unity by merging with the International Missionary Fellowship proved ineffective. Sadly, rather than impregnating the WCC with missionary impulse, the strength of the IMF’s zeal waned in the union. For this reason, I believe that the most effective beginning place for the realization of unity is local: the city, the town, the village, the neighborhood. In fact, this is how Newbigin hoped the unified Church of South India would serve, as a catalyst for more local unions. Sadly, it was largely an isolated event and therefore, according to Newbigin, it “failed in one of its great purposes.”[46]

Indeed, the union in South India did not spark widespread local unions, but it did embody the truth of the unity of the church to that bit of the world. The push to organic union, must begin organically in every place. Efforts at local union inevitably run into difficulties when attempting to explain themselves to their denominational institutions, even as occurred in South India. But this is where the pressure for change must come from.

Churches must collaborate in local missionary efforts, both social and evangelistic, in order to discover the affront their disunity is to their very nature. As they experience the Spirit’s calling that they be one, they will begin to wrestle with their denominational structures, pressuring them to allow local unity for the sake of mission.

VII. Conclusion

The church is one. Despite its failures in ecclesiality, upheld by the God who calls was is not as though it is, the church is the locus of God’s saving action in the world. As a sign pointing to the coming eschatological people of God, the church is to acknowledge that she is not yet what she will be. As a foretaste of humanity’s eschatological future, the church must embody its unity in a small, but real, measure. Toward this end, the churches must apply genuine effort. The most promising form of effort for unity is not academic discussion, but local missionary collaboration. When its mission becomes primary, the church will repent of its disunity as an affront and hindrance to the gospel, and be drawn into a unified visible life.

Works Cited

Grenz, Stanley J. Theology for the Community of God. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994.

Karkkainen, Veli-Matti. An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical and Global Perspectives. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002.

Meyer, Harding. That All May Be One: Perceptions and Models of Ecumenicity. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.

Newbigin, Lesslie. A South India Diary. London: SCM Press LTD, 1960.

_____. “The Basis and Forms of Unity: Second Peter Ainslie Lecture.” Mid-Stream: The Ecumenical Movement Today 23 (January, 1984: 1-11) p. 9. Accessed at www.newbigin.net.

_____. Unfinished Agenda: An Autobiography. London: SPCK, 1985.

_____. “What is the Ecumenical Agenda?” (Unpublished, 1986). Accessed at www.newbigin.net.

Schwartz, Hans. Eschatology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.

Russell, Letty. Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993.

Van Gelder, Craig. The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000.

Volf, Miroslav. After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998.

Wainwright, Geoffrey. Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2000.

---

[1] Veli-Matti Karkkainen. An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical and Global Perspectives. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002) p. 85.

[2] By asserting that the Protestant Reformation began the fracturing of the church I do not wish to downplay the significance of the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox church, but merely note that the Great Schism did not spark a slew of schisms as did the Protestant Reformation.

[3] Karkkainen, p. 84.

[4] Stanley J. Grenz. Theology for the Community of God. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994) p. 547.

[5] Grenz, p. 547.

[6] Grenz, p. 548.

[7] Pope John Paul II. Ut Unum Sint, (Encyclical letter on Commitment to Ecumenism, 1995) §42.

[8] While the Vatican II statement that Christ’s church “subsists” in the Catholic church is a monumental shift from previous statements of equivalence, the statement does clearly indicate a sectarianism in which the Catholic church is the supreme manifestation of the church of Christ.

[9] Harding Meyer, That All May Be One: Perceptions and Models of Ecumenicity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999) pp. 24-27.

[10] Karkkainen, p. 84.

[11] Karkkainen, p. 81. See Oscar Cullman, Einheit durch Viefalt (Tubungen: Mohr, 1986).

[12] Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998) pp. 21, 239.

[13] Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000) p. 121.

[14] Van Gelder, p. 122.

[15] Van Gelder, p. 122.

[16] Van Gelder, p. 122.

[17] Volf, p. 156.

[18] Volf, p. 157.

[19] Volf, p. 158.

[20] Karkkainen, p. 85.

[21] Lesslie Newbigin,Unfinished Agenda: An Autobiography (London: SPCK, 1985) p. 171.

[22] Newbigin writes “Everything about such a missionary situation conspires to make Christian disunity an intolerable anomaly” (The Household of God, p.H 8). Also, “In so far as the Church is disunited her life is a direct and public contradiction of the Gospel” (The Household of God, pp.H 149-150).

[23] Lesslie Newbigin, “What is the Ecumenical Agenda?” (Unpublished, 1986). Accessed at www.newbigin.net.

[24] Lesslie Newbigin, “The Basis and Forms of Unity: Second Peter Ainslie Lecture.” Mid-Stream: The Ecumenical Movement Today 23 (January, 1984): 1-11) p. 9.. Accessed at www.newbigin.net.

[25] Schwartz, Hans. Eschatology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000, p. 375.

[26] Lesslie Newbigin. The Household of God. (New York: Friendship Press, 1954. American Edition.) p. 52.

[27] Newbigin, The Household of God, p. 20.

[28] Newbigin, The Household of God, p. 52.

[29] Newbigin, The Household of God, p. 14.

[30] Newbigin, The Household of God, p. 167.

[31] Newbigin, The Household of God, p. 152 .

[32] Wainwright, Geoffrey. Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2000, p. 86.

[33] Newbigin, The Household of God, p. 23.

[34] Schwartz, p. 374.

[35] Newbigin, The Household of God, p. 14.

[36] Karkkainen, p. 160.

[37] Newbigin, The Household of God, p. 111.

[38] Volf uses this rationale to justify the need for church rules of social interaction: “However such external specification of this interaction may be articulated, it is not only an anticipatory sign of the new creation in the church, but also a sign of the distance from its eschatological goal.” 238

[39] Volf, p. 156.

[40] Volf, p. 157.

[41] Letty Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) p. 173.

[42] Russell, p. 179.

[43] Lesslie Newbigin, A South India Diary (London: SCM Press LTD, 1960) p. 128.

[44] Newbigin, The Household of God, p. 8.

[45] Newbigin, A South India Diary, p. 50.

[46] Newbigin, A South India Diary, p. 128.