The World As God's Body

In this essay I will attempt to review a typology of God-world relationships to see which views of creation and providence are both consonant with the Christian tradition and appropriate for the 21stCentury. Upon examining four traditional models, I would like to introduce a new concept that would prove to be fruitful upon its application to the church, the planet, and the people of the world. Models of God and the world will include; deistic, dialogic, monarchical, agential, and the world as God’s body.

The first model we will consider will be the deistic one, which arose during the 17th century scientific revolution. It is also the simplest of the five that we are going to review. It imagines God as sort of a clockmaker who winds up the clock of the world by creating its laws and then leaves it to run by itself, with the qualification that God intervenes periodically in natural disasters, accidents, and personal crises. The model has the advantage of freeing science to investigate the world apart from divine control, but it essentially banished God from the world. Of the models we will look at, it separates god and the world most thoroughly; god is externally related to the world as a mechanic is to a machine, who, after getting it going, only tinkers here and there when necessary. To me this model is sterile, distant, impersonal, and is oddly one assumed by man contemporary Christians as well as non-believers.

A second view of god and the world, the dialogic one, has deep roots in both Hebrew and Christian traditions; God speaks and we respond. It has been a central view within Protestantism and was highlighted in the 20th century existentialism. In its contemporary form, the relation between God and the world is narrowed to God and the individual. In the writings of Soren Kierkegaard and Rudolf Bultmann, this position focuses on sin, guilt, and forgiveness and has the advantage of allowing for a continuous relationship with God, but does so at the expense of indifference to the natural and social worlds. In its even more contemporary form, it embraces both Christian and New Age theologies. For Christians the focus is the god-world relationship which focuses on the saved individual, while the New Age folks approach it in a way that is to comfort and satisfied the individual. The dialogic position assumes two tracks; religion and culture with each left to run its own affairs. God and human beings meet but not in the world, only in the internal joy and pain of human experiences. The deistic model kept God and the world totally separate and the externally related, while the dialogic model allows them to touch, but only at one place, the inner human subjects.

A third model- the monarchial one, sees the relation between God and the world as one in the which the divine, all-powerful king controls his subjects and they in turn offer him loyal obedience. It is the oldest of the models, and the one that lies behind the traditional creation-providence story, and one that is still very popular in 2011. It is a personal and political model, which corrects the impersonalism of the deistic model and the individualism of the dialogic. It also underscores the deity of God, because the monarchial imagery calls forth awe and reverence as well as a sense of purpose or vocational meaningfulness, since membership in the kingdom involves service to the King. The model certainly underscores and dramatizes divine transcendence. It accomplishes on of the tasks of a model of the God-world relationship: It emphasizes the power and glory of god.

A fourth model, the agential one is also old with strong backing in both Hebrew and the Christian traditions. God is here assumed to be an agent, a person whose intentions and purposes are realized in history. God is seen as the creator and redeemer of the world, as well as its caretaker. God oversees the world in the guiding it as father, lord, lover and king. When it falls away like a rebellious child, he calls one back through divine sacrifice and compassion. This model has contributed a great deal to the traditional creation-providence story. Along with the king-real model is the backbone of that story, for it is the source of the overarching purposes and goals that are the story’s structure.

In a new and unique model, the world as God’s body as introduced by Sallie McFague, Distinguished Theologian in Residence at Vancouver School of Theology, we are encouraged to focus on the neighborhood in which we live. This model understands the doctrine of creation not to be primarily about God’s power but about God’s love: how we can live together, all of us, within and for god’s body. The world as God’s body is appropriate for our time and is consistent with the Christian incarnational tradition because it encourages us to focus on the people and the planet in which we live. It understands the doctrine of creation not to be primarily about God’s power but about God’s love; how we can live together, all of us, within and for god’s body. It focuses attention on the near, on the neighbor, on the earth, on meeting God not later in heaven but here and now. Creation modeled as God’s body supports and underscores an ecological view of the world. It is entirely opposed to the cult of individualism endorsed by modern relation, government, and economics.
In the model of the world as God’s body, God is the source, the center, the Spirit of all that lives and loves, all that is beautiful and true. This is true transcendence: being the source of everything that is. Our universe, the body of God, is the reflection of God’s being, God’s glory; it is the sacrament of God’s presence with us. Because God is incarnate, meeting God is not a momentary spiritual affair, but God is the reality that surrounds us; as all things are not only created by Him and for Him, but He upholds the universe by the word of His power. In Him we live and move and have our being. This is truly the good news of the advent, God has come to us, God is present, and we can meet with him. This is the second implication of the model; it allows us to meet God now, on the earth, at home. We do not have to go elsewhere, or wait until we die. We don’t even have to be religious, just hungry, thirsty, and have a pure heart.