1. New Developments in Church and Theology............ 1
1.
New Developments in Church and Theology
IT IS A COMMONPLACE that the church and theology of today are involved in extensive and deep-seated change, a process which may indeed be described as a crisis. This development is reflected in a kind of thinking and living frequently characterized as secular or worldly. The idea of another world than that in which we live and work and die is losing its reality. The way God is involved in what happens in this world is more and more becoming a problem for many people.
This phenomenon, of course, is not new. Since the dawn of what is called the modern age, the process of secularization in living and thinking has made a tremendous impact on what had until then been considered as the Christian world and Christian civilization. But recently a lot of factors have worked together to accelerate the process in an unprecedented way. Those factors are not only theoretical and spiritual. Secularization is a result of our very way of life in today's society. Modern techniques automate human life, accelerate our tempo of living and working, subject us to fixed schedules and programs, allow less and less room for individuality and personal initiative, further spiritual superficiality, and form a constant threat to personal spiritual life.
The immediate, direct knowledge of what happens in the world by way of mass communication has a kaleidoscope effect: all kinds of images tumble through one another. We cannot discern the contexts; we stare at unimaginable problems which we cannot solve; we see the discrepancies in human life in their worldwide proportions; we are confronted with the sufferings of millions of people. We switch off the television and radio, because we cannot digest it emotionally. How can we bring all this into relation with God? How can we absorb all this in the closed circuit of an all-embracing perspective of faith? I cannot offer a philosophical analysis of all this, but I do understand that it forms a real threat to our Christian manner of thinking, and, indeed, to our Christian faith itself.
To be sure, reactions differ. Many people, especially older ones, experience these developments with opposition in their hearts. It is as if all the protective walls around them have been demolished, as if they are standing in a frigid blast of wind against which they have to shield themselves without the help of the old, traditional certainties. They feel that they cannot face the new problems adequately and at the same time they do not want to adapt themselves to a form of secular thinking which contradicts not only their tradition but also their deepest Christian conviction.
On the other side many people are convinced that church and theology can only survive if they are willing to reconsider their old positions in a very radical way. It is not only the old terminology, not only the schemes and subjects by which the church used to present and express its confession, which are to be abandoned in order to meet the challenge of the time. Even more has to be done. The question of what the presuppositions and criteria of Christian faith and Christian religion and of religion itself are, is to be answered in a new way. Instead of the scrupulous caution of the conservative way of thinking and living, a new consciousness of freedom and courage has to take possession of church and theology. Only in this radical way will church and theology be able to stay in the center of human life and culture instead of surviving as a mere worthless relic of what has gone by forever.
It is worthwhile to give due attention to this new approach, this "new theology," as it is already being called. What does it mean? How is it to be defined? Are we confronted here with a new form of the old liberalism? Many will contest this and maintain that this is not the case and certainly not the intention. What is intended, rather, is to give real answers to real questions raised by real people in our time. Again and again you hear of the need for that which is "understandable" and "relevant" for our day. Traditional theology — so it is said — does not reach the person of today, even if he is religious. Traditional theology gives answers, even clear answers, but not answers which match the questions that are asked today. And so a new explanation, a new hermeneutic of the message of the Bible, is necessary.
To move beyond generalities, I should like to elucidate and discuss this issue in three important areas: the doctrine of Scripture, the doctrine of Christ, and the doctrine of the kingdom of God.
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With regard to the Bible more and more emphasis is being given to what is called the indirect character of revelation. In the Bible, it is said, we are confronted with the Word of God, but with the Word of God as it was understood and interpreted by certain people at a certain time in human history. Similarly, we encounter divine salvation there. And in a sense this salvation does not change, because Jesus Christ the Savior is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. But we are other than the people of the Bible, and we can understand things only out of our own cultural, social, and anthropological presuppositions, our own spiritual environment and horizon, just as people in the Bible did. Therefore, the argument runs, we are not bound to their interpretations of and reflections on salvation. What the Bible means by "salvation," "reconciliation," "resurrection," "kingdom of God," what is expressed in the biblical titles of Jesus (Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man) might have a different meaning for us from what was meant for people two thousand years ago.
Jesus himself is normative, and the New Testament writings are the sources from which we are to know him. But the conception of salvation and the way Jesus is presented to us are not normative. Even in the gospels, the "historical" Jesus is reflected only very vaguely, and the real Jesus only in the ideas and conceptions of salvation of the evangelists and the early church. Therefore the Bible, on this interpretation, is totally human, a book about what men have experienced and have interpreted as revelation and as the Word of God in their lives. We are in a new situation. We have to give our own interpretations of what we can distinguish indirectly in their words and witness as the Word of God for us. This is seen as the consequence of the indirect character of revelation and of the human character of the interpretation of the Word of God in Scripture.
It is not easy to pass a quick judgment on this evaluation of the Scriptures. As a matter of fact, Reformed theology has always spoken of the humanity of Scripture, at least of the "human factor" in it. Although this terminology is not irreproachable, it did express in a certain way that the divine word has entered into the words of men, and not only in their words, but also in their mind and into their time. This mind cannot be separated from its humanity, nor this time from its temporality, which is to say, from its transitoriness. Finitum non capax infiniti: the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, nor the human the divine. Thus the important question is not whether the Word of God has or has not come to us through the temporal prism of the human word and the human spirit. It has. To speak of the indirectness of the divine word is something like describing the dispersion of light through a spectrum. The light remains the same, but the spectrum changes. The society of ancient Israel is a different band of the spectrum from that of our society. The same holds true of the Roman culture in which Paul lived. Therefore the old commandments, for example, about waging wars in the Book of Deuteronomy, or about the place of slaves and the behavior of women in the New Testament, are not simply applicable to our situation. For the old society is gone. The light still shines, but in another band of the spectrum.
We can go on with further examples. For instance, we encounter psychological and anthropological concepts in the Bible, such as "mind," "soul," "body," some of which cannot even be translated in our languages. We do not have adequate concepts for them, because we have in some respects other conceptions of the inner life, of the relation of "soul," "spirit," and "body," and about the very idea of what "body" is.
Study of the Bible leads us on to the insight that there is variety in the way salvation is explained and interpreted in the Scriptures. This is apparent not only when we compare the letters of Paul with others in the New Testament, which do not display the profound and rich thought of the great apostle, but even when we study the four gospels. Each gospel writer appears to have his own point of view; he arranges, interprets the gospel material in his own way, in an attempt to bring to expression the glory of Jesus as well and as appropriately as possible, with regard to his own specific purpose. This, of course, also depends on human potential, character, situation, horizon.
What has been called the "organic" (not "mechanical") character of inspiration appears increasingly to display a lot of facets. Much remains for the attentive reader of the Bible to learn; this pluriformity of interpretation of salvation in Scripture should not, however, distress and disappoint but surprise and astonish him with the manifold grace of God. This might leave the impression that the Bible is in many respects very human and time-bound. But the question remains whether the Bible thus loses its character and authority for us as the book of God's revelation.
To say that revelation in the Bible has come to us in human language and human attire and that it adapts itself to the human situation in which it has to function is totally different from saying that the Bible contains only pious, faithful, but nevertheless human reactions and interpretations of the revelation, which are as such subjected to our faith-criticism. In the former case the Bible itself is for us the word of revelation. Even then we are allowed — indeed, committed — to ask, in the light of the Scripture itself and according to the old adage that Scripture is its own interpreter, what is meant for all times and all peoples, and what is not. But this may not detract from the authority of the Word of God which has been spoken by his prophets and apostles and by Jesus Christ himself. This authority, however it is further defined, represents the absolutely unique character of the Bible as the word and the interpretation of the Word of God.
On the other hand, if the Bible is no more than human reaction to and interpretation of what men understood as God's revelation to them, we may approach this interpretation with respect and appreciation, but need accord it no more authority than that of other interpretations of the revelation, of church fathers, theologians, and pious men and women in the history of church. The Bible then is only unique to the extent that its writers were nearer in time to the source of revelation.
There can be no doubt which of these two positions is that of Scripture itself. The Bible does not qualify itself as a book of testimonies of faith and interpretations of faith, which may as well be respected as criticized. As a matter of fact, such an approach is recommended by Paul with regard to prophetical utterances in the Christian congregation: "Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil" (1 Thess. 5:19ff.) — a beautiful example of a generous and at the same time critical approach. But with regard to the Scripture of the Old Testament and to his own apostolic witness Paul speaks in a totally different way. In the same letter he writes: "And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God" (1 Thess. 2:13). Similarity, in a text in which the interpretation of Scripture itself is at stake (2 Peter 1:20, 21) there is an explicit warning against arbitrary interpretation of Scripture, interpretation that does not take into account that Scripture is not human but divine in its origin, and that the explanation must therefore be subjected to Scripture itself: "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."
This is not just a matter of so-called formal or external authority. It has its very right and reason in the fact that Scripture in all its variety, in all its changing approaches and different interpretations, does confront us with God's revelation in Jesus Christ. Therefore Scripture can say that, whatever may change in life, the Word of God is everlasting. To be sure, this is not to be taken in an atomistic or fragmentary sense, nor on the other hand as an ideal truth that everyone in each generation has to explain for himself; but, as Scripture says, as the word which was preached to you (1 Pet. 1:25). And this is the word of and about Jesus Christ, who is the same, yesterday, today, and for eternity.
This does not mean, of course, that every time and generation has to give the same answers when confronted with the Scriptures. As we already saw, the Bible itself includes various interpretations of salvation. Life is changing and people are changing in their different situations; and the reality of God's revelation is more than one prophet or apostle can bring to expression. And if Jesus Christ is the Savior of all generations, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, then the contents of the Christian message will always appear to have new answers to new questions.
But at the same time Jesus Christ is the same, and his salvation is the same. That presupposes too that amidst all human developments man himself basically does not alter with respect to what he needs for salvation. The dominant clue for all interpretation of Scripture is thus Christ, not man; it is man sub specie Christi and not the reverse. Perhaps we find here the very core of the whole argument.
No wonder, then, that every discussion about the nature of Scripture, about its authority and validity as the word of God, appears to have its proper center and focus in the person and authority of Christ himself as he is presented and presents himself to us in Scripture. No wonder, too, that in the recent theological development the emphasis on the humanity of Scripture is accompanied by interest in a new and radical way in the humanity of Christ.
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The emphasis on the true humanity of Jesus can be expressed indeed in various ways. In the terminology of new theology there is a certain preference for what is called Christology "from below"; that means an approach to the person of Jesus on the basis of his human appearance, as "the man of Nazareth." The church, as is well known, has developed a Christology "from above," speaking about Christ as the Son of God and the second person of the divine Trinity. The question is whether the humanity of Jesus has been and can be sufficiently respected in this latter formula.
Two recent Dutch theological studies, both of which have attracted a great deal of attention, have approached Christology not "from above" but "from below." The well-known Roman Catholic systematic theologian E. Schillebeeckx has given his book the typical title Jezus, het verhaal van een levende ("Jesus, the story of a living one"). It is presupposed that each generation should have its Own Christology on the basis of the story of the historical Jesus. No doubt what the church in the passing of time used to say about Jesus is important, but as a matter of fact this is not automatically understandable or acceptable to our generation. That also holds true, according to Schillebeeckx, for the names and divine qualities assigned to Jesus in the New Testament. These names and qualities do express how the early church understood Jesus as Salvator and how they defined and qualified the ultimate salvation in him. We have to do with the same Jesus. But we would like to designate him in another way, on the basis of our own confrontation with Jesus of Nazareth, our own experience of his living Spirit, and our own concept of the salvation of human life. For we are different people.
Inevitably this point of view raises the question whether the dogmatic approach to Jesus on the basis of his divinity does not take away the correct view of his humanity, indeed, does not make the true humanity of Jesus imaginary. Here the second of the two books I referred to, Christian Faith, by the Reformed theologian Hendrikus Berkhof, attracted no little attention with its argument that the doctrine of the eternal pre-existence of Christ cannot be brought into harmony with the true humanity of Jesus. The pre-existence of Jesus, Berkhof says, is a sort of later conclusion of the church. He speaks of an "ideal pre-existence": the man Jesus, in his words and deeds, in his death and resurrection (and Berkhof does not doubt this at all), so clearly shows signs of divinity that the church of the New Testament came to regard him as a pre-existent being descended from heaven, and designated him as such. Pre-existence in this perspective is thus not a qualification of the being, but of the significance of Jesus, as he proved himself during his lifetime and revealed himself after his resurrection.
It is clear that in the emphasis on the human and indirect character of revelation it is not only the divine nature of Scripture but also of Christ himself as the Son of God that is being challenged.
To be sure, this new approach to Christology cannot be faulted on the ground that it is "from below" and takes its point of departure in Jesus of Nazareth in his historical self-revelation rather than in the dogma of his divinity. For it is in this historical way — "from below," if you like — that Jesus is presented in the gospels themselves — at least in the first three. They do not start in heaven, with the second person of the Trinity, but on earth — Matthew in Nazareth, Luke in Bethlehem — and from there they go back — Matthew to Abraham and Luke (in the genealogy) to Adam.
Only in the fourth gospel is it different. There everything starts with the Word that was in the beginning with God. So perhaps we could say that in the fourth gospel not history, not the "historical" Jesus gets priority, but the dogma of the pre-existent Son of God. But the fourth gospel was the last written and its author was early referred to as the theologian. Therefore, with a view to Scripture, it cannot be wrong for the church in its proclamation before all things to preach Jesus as he appears to us in the gospel, in all his humanity and solidarity with people. He did not tread as a God over the earth: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is what the author of the fourth gospel says also.
For that reason it is rightly said that God is a God of people, that he, in his salvation, directs himself to human life in all its depth and breadth. That also means that God and man are not competitors, as if God were everything and man nothing. Quite the contrary. What is at stake is human life. That is why he who was with God became man, a God of all people, of all races, but also of all generations, not only of ancient man but also of modern man. To that extent it is true that salvation continues to take on other forms and has different implications, must be "translated" and interpreted differently. That Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever cannot be claimed as a "conservative" slogan without acknowledgment of its "progressive" meaning. What it says is that Jesus Christ can never be overtaken by time, that he is never at a loss whatever changing times may bring. He leads his church into the future. The fact that he is the same, that he is the Lord of all peoples and generations, is not only because he is the Son of God, but no less because he was a man among men. The salvation of the world is deeply anchored in the incarnation of the word, yesterday, today, and in all eternity.
But if one ought not to object to this new development in Christology which takes as its starting point the historical self-revelation of Jesus of Nazareth, the real question remains: What is meant by this historical self-revelation? Is this the confrontation with Jesus Christ as he comes to us in the gospel? Or does this approach "from below" mean that Jesus of Nazareth is only to be understood as a man and nothing more — without a doubt a marvelous, incomprehensible man, but nevertheless to be placed within the boundaries of human life and possibilities? In the latter case everything in the gospels that exceeds this human limit cannot be the image of the historical Jesus himself. Instead, it is seen as the interpretation of faith of his followers, a faith we share with them, but whose explanation of his divine significance must be recognized as something they developed as persons of that era, using the concepts of their time. We may highly respect this interpretation, but it is nevertheless not decisive or authoritative for our conception and expression of faith in Jesus Christ.
It becomes obvious here how close the relation is between our faith in Holy Scripture and our faith in Jesus Christ. For the Christ of the Scriptures, for all his humanity, reveals an authority, a power, a consciousness of being sent by God and belonging to God, which breaks through the boundaries of hu-manness. This is true not only of the gospel of John, but also of the other gospels. The old idea that it is especially the gospel of Mark which means to give a "life of Jesus" in its human development only has long since been abandoned. All four gospels proclaim to us Jesus as the Christ in a way that exceeds the limits of human biography. Undoubtedly, they do it in different ways.
The question is not whether this difference is due to a different interpretation. The method of redaction criticism has proved this clearly. Decisive for what we are discussing is the question whether the proclamation of Jesus' divine authority, of his coming from God and his being God, in its different presentations, is merely an image created by the faith of his followers, or the witness of who Jesus really and truly was, in his words and deeds, in his death and resurrection.
And this is the way the Scriptures proclaim and declare him to us. They say: He was a man, he became flesh, he dwelt among us, but exactly for that reason — that he became man and was with us — we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of the Father. Or to say it with the opening words of the first letter of John: "That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life ... we proclaim also to you." This is not only a witness of faith, but a witness of revelation. This is the real meaning of the word "witness" (martyria) in the Scriptures: life was revealed, and we have seen it and bear witness and proclaim unto you that eternal life, which has been with the Father and was manifested unto us. There is really no contradiction between faith and revelation here, but what finally counts in Scripture is not faith but revelation. One can say indeed that the Scriptures are a book of faith, but of a faith that rests on revelation and bears witness to that revelation. That is why the Scriptures are the Word of God in and through the word of man. And that is why in the attire of the Scriptures not only faith in Christ but also Christ himself comes to us.
Only in this way are the full secret, the power, the authority of the Scriptures unfolded to us. Only then do we understand that Jesus Christ was the man among men, yet not from man but from God. So we come back to the prologue of the gospel of John, to the doctrine of his divinity, not as a quality we have awarded him, not as an "ideal pre-existence," but as an acknowledgment of his glory, not only in the flesh, but, according to the revelation in the flesh, also of his glory before the world was. In this way Christology "from below" becomes also a Christology "from above," as is the case in the wonderful prologue of the fourth gospel.
Let us turn now to a third facet of contemporary developments in church and theology, the doctrine of the kingdom of God. The same trend we have seen twice in the preceding can also be noticed in this doctrine, specifically in the tremendous role that man is supposed to play in the revelation of the kingdom of God.
Until recently, under the influence of the theology of Karl Barth and others, every identification of the kingdom of God with human action was rejected as heresy. The kingdom of God, we were told, stands completely over against the world in which we live. The revelation of the kingdom does illumine our reality like a flash of lightning, but it does not coincide at all with human history and human society, not even with that of the church. The kingdom of God is entirely a matter of God's acting, and our involvement in it is only a matter of expecting, hoping, praying.
Today the climate of thinking about the kingdom of God is totally different: now it is conceived as a reality that enters human history, coincides with it in a certain sense, and moves history to its future fulfilment. That does not mean that God is no longer the subject of the coming of the kingdom. The idea is that the Lord God himself works in a horizontal way by means of man. Man is God's partner in the realization of the kingdom. Thus the kingdom is not to be sought above or behind or outside of human history, but where God and man work together in the opening of the future and the realization of a new and other world.
Closely connected to this general idea is the apparent concentration in recent theological development of everything on the social and political implications of the kingdom of God. Twenty or thirty years ago, in the heyday of existentialist interpretation, everything centered on individual man. Human history seemed to be no more than the entourage within which the individual existential confrontation with God has to take place. Now, however, things have changed radically in this respect — to the extent that the kingdom of God is seen to concern itself especially with the liberation of man in his involvement in the structures of society. Kingdom of God (so it is said) means above all a radical criticism of the dominant social and political powers in human life as the expression of human selfishness and oppressiveness on a worldwide scale. The kingdom of God does indeed mean the end of this world, but this end is not to be expected in an eschatological or apocalyptic way, as the end of human times and history, but rather as the transformation of or even violent revolution in the present structure of society by means of human intervention and human exertion. "Repent, for the kingdom of God is near" has to be understood as a radical criticism and call to conversion with respect to the acceptance of and the cooperation with the current powers and influences, which dominate human society.
This concept of the kingdom usually goes hand in hand with a fundamental criticism of the church. The church (so it is said time and again) is too much concerned with its own life and with personal salvation. As for God's kingdom in the whole world, the church contents itself with missionary work and saving souls. It is not in the center of the world, where the great problems of humanity are to be solved. Instead of being the great standard-bearer, carrying aloft the banner of justice and hope in this world, pleading the cause of the oppressed and the discriminated-against, the church adapts itself to the structures of this world as though these were not its business. At the same time, outside the church is where dissatisfaction with the existing order is taking radical shape, sometimes even displaying the impatience and power of a real messianic longing for a better world. Could it be that Christ himself is moving and working in the dissatisfaction and revolutions of the world more than in the institutions of church and Christianity? Would it therefore not be preferable for the church, instead of preserving its own identity so anxiously, to commit itself to every attempt for a better world, for more justice and peace, in this way bringing kingdom of God and history together, instead of making a separation between them?
This new approach to the idea of the kingdom of God — perhaps it is not as new as it seems — has stirred a lot of reflection and discussion about the relation of the kingdom of God to the history of the world. This reflection is in my opinion very urgent — indeed, necessary. It also requires a new and careful examination of the biblical message of reconciliation, into which we shall go in more detail in one of the following chapters, limiting ourselves here to some general remarks.
First it should not and cannot be denied that, according to the Scriptures, man is involved in the coming of the kingdom in a very essential way. When Jesus proclaims his kingdom: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me," in the same breath he instructs his disciples: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:18-19). And Paul, in the profound sayings in his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians about Christ as the head of all things, speaks in the same context about the church as the body of Christ, calling it the pleroma, the fulness of Christ who fills all in all (Eph. 1:20-23). That means, in the first place, that the church as the body of Christ and the people of God is involved in a special way in the dominion of Christ. She is his pleroma — perhaps we may say, the concentration point of his grace and dominion. But at the same time it is said that the kingship of Christ does not coincide with the church. For Christ is the head over all things, and the church is the pleroma of him who fills all things in all respects. These two aspects of the dominion of Christ must be related to one other.
Second, this dominion of Christ over the church is a spiritual one, as is said in the words which form the central theme of the epistle to the Colossians, that God "has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (1:13). But this spiritual dominion does not limit itself to the inner life; rather, it goes forth as a spiritual power into the whole life of man. Jesus himself has proclaimed the kingdom in words and deeds, and he is the one who fulfils all things in all respects. Therefore the kingdom of God has a liberating power with reference to all human relations, too. It has something to say about marriage, about slavery, about social and economic relations insofar as the liberation of human life is concerned. Hence, man's responsibility and activity is involved in the coming of the kingdom, not with respect only to his own individual salvation but with respect to all things.
In my opinion, at this point recent developments in theology do urge the church to reconsider its identity as the church of Jesus Christ in the midst of this world. It is not surprising nor without reason that under the influence of this new emphasis on human involvement in the coming of God's universal kingdom, more and more attention is concentrated on the function of the church as the medium of the kingdom in the world. The question is heard again and again: Are the structures of the church adapted sufficiently to this mediating function of the church in our time? The church is always getting a thorough sociological and psychological examination, and usually, in this respect, with a negative result.
I can imagine that many faithful members of the church are sick and tired of all this criticism constantly aimed at the church, often from people who do not excel in attending church nor in knowledge of what is really going on — or ever has gone on — in the churches. Nevertheless, the real answer with regard to this development of the doctrine of the kingdom cannot lie in defenses of the undeniable weakness and shortcomings of the church in respect of its function in human society. Rather, the question must be posed: Has the church not often lost the biblical understandings of the kingdom of God, and of its own identity and responsibility as the body and pleroma of him who is the Lord of all things? Has it not adapted itself too easily to the current structures and powers of human society, thus contenting itself with the spiritual and future character of human salvation?
Third, no matter how urgent and critical these questions are with respect to the true identity and responsibility of the churches in this world, at the same time one must be aware that this identity is in danger in more than one way. In the development of recent theology the revelation of the kingdom of God is often closely linked to all sorts of current criticism of human society, to political and social movements and ideologies insofar as they wage a battle for freedom, justice, and peace. What are the grounds for expecting the coming of the kingdom of God in what I would call such a synthetical way? Can the situation of our day be approached and judged in so positive and often even optimistic a mood, as far as the kingdom of God is concerned? Was there ever a time when even in the struggle of human beings for liberation and peace alienation from God was greater and the autonomy of man experienced and proclaimed more radically than today? Regardless of how the church has to concentrate on the universal character of the kingdom of God, it must at the same time be careful not to exchange its message for or identify it with that of human ideologies, whatever they claim to be able to do in favor of man's liberation.
Here are real temptations for the church, which resemble the vision of Jesus in the wilderness when all kingdoms of earth and their glory were offered to him. In a sense this was a real messianic prospect, but under those conditions, with utter concentration, Jesus answered, "Be gone, Satan!" The way in which Jesus was to obtain worldwide dominion was another one. It was only in the way of self-surrender, of reconciliation on the cross, that to him was given all power in heaven and on earth. So he is portrayed in Revelation 5 as the lamb standing as though it had been slain, to whom the Father rendered the scroll of history and the future.
It is only as the body of this Christ that the church has to keep reconsidering its place and calling in the world to be a church that clings to the cross of its Lord as the only way in which his kingdom has come already and is to be expected to fulfil all things in all respects. That means that the subject of the kingdom is not "we," but "he," and that our role is not just to achieve and to fulfil what once was started by God in his Son Jesus Christ. It was he who opened the way once and forever; it is also he who is continuing to fulfil all things by the power of his blood and Spirit. People are coming in as objects and as instruments of his redeeming dominion, just as and insofar as they share in his pleroma: that means as far as they live under his liberating kingship and are prepared to follow him in his compassion and selfsurrender and to obey him in his commandments concerning the needs of the world. The most severe criticism of the church, then, is that made on the basis of its own identity as the body of Christ, at the same time providing it with the only possibility to be a light, a salt, a blessing for the world.
Perhaps in this so-called post-Christian era the role of the church, more than it often used to be, is like that of the early church, which had to find its way into the future in the midst of an immense world pressing in on it from all sides. This church from the outset is warned continually to preserve its identity as the church of Jesus Christ, being as such not against but in favor of this world. A passage from the letter of Jude has often come to my mind in recent discussions. "But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And convince some, who doubt; save some, by snatching them out of the fire; on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh" (Jude 20-23).
It is all here in this beautiful passage: "Keep yourselves" as the church, as the people of God. Do not abandon yourselves as a church, whatever people say about your self-preservation. But this is not the same thing as conservatism, because you have to keep yourself in the love of God. And that is something other than to stay with yourself or with your history. For the love of God is always new, enclosing the world and all its misery.
We are also taught here about how we can preserve ourselves in the love of God: not by resting, but by "building," renewing ourselves and our church on the once laid foundation of our most holy faith. Also by praying and expecting, living in the communion of the Lord who lives and accepting from his hands the way to the future with hope and expectation. On this way we are reminded to be merciful to those in the fire between belief and unbelief, between being under the dominion of the Lord and under the power of the world. We must have compassion, not condemning too much and too quickly, but aware, too, of the danger of being contaminated by the plague or leprosy, which clings sometimes even to the clothes of those who want to touch and embrace you, bringing you back into the slavery of darkness.