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.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
O’Donovan and American Christendom – I
Christendom is often seen as a uniquely European development. But does that really hold up?
As Oliver O’Donovan argued in The Desire of the Nations, the legal and political structure was embedded in scholastic and early modern constitutionalist theory. Its fullest expression lay in the “fruitful constellation of social and political ideas which came together in a decisively influential way in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” According to O’Donovan’s narrative, the symbolic end of Christendom arrived in the United States Constitution’s formal adoption of ecclesial disestablishment. While the early Protestant civic tradition assumed the magistrate’s explicit submission to the rule of Christ, the emerging American civic tradition dispensed with that formal conception of Christendom, and “effectively declared that political authorities were incapable of evangelical obedience.” While O’Donovan cites various Christian parties who supported this dismantling of Christendom, he argues that by accepting a formal secularity (in the more modern sense of the term) the American civic tradition “gave away more than [it] knew.” This critique of disestablishment highlights an important aspect of the early Protestants’ implicit reliance on the patronage of the civil magistrate. Certainly, in the migration from the Old to the New World, that civic tradition underwent a crucial transition. Yet, O’Donovan’s narrative gives very little attention to the uniquely American project of Christendom in Puritan New England. However, the disintegration of the Puritan Christendom raises critical questions about O’Donovan’s political narrative. In the decades leading up to the adoption of the First Amendment, late colonial Puritans were still trying to defend a civic tradition which was under direct assault by the very secular and social forces which O’Donovan laments. A reconsideration of how Christendom was reshaped by the dynamics of the Puritan experience may lead to fruitful deliberation on what conditions are necessary to maintain an explicitly theological system of civic virtue.
The civic theology of the American Puritans occupies a transitional space between the Old and New Worlds. As descendents of the Protestant civic tradition – largely mediated through the evangelical wing of the English church – the New England Puritans had inherited the concept of a “national covenant.” According to the terms of this covenant, God established conditional relationships with specific peoples in which He promised to extend corporate blessing or judgment depending on the nation’s fidelity to the terms of the covenant. In effect, this particular instantiation of Christendom implied a far more tenuous status for political legitimacy. Since the nation was under the direct lordship of Christ, the entire body politic fell under the purview of divine judgment. In the context of this “federal” theology, all citizens of the Puritan commonwealth fell under the terms of the visible-political covenant established at the founding; corporate disobedience resulted in corporate penalty, whether in war, natural disaster, famine, or other temporal means of chastening.
This synthesis of moral and political terms served to establish a basic social cohesion – or what Mark Noll has termed the “Puritan canopy.” At the same time, like the early Reformed tradition, the idea of a national covenant did not preclude certain distinctions of ecclesial and magisterial roles. For example, Jonathan Edwards wrote of how civil authorities properly “have nothing to do with matters ecclesiastical, with those things which relate to conscience and eternal salvation, or with any matters religious as religious” (emphasis original). But he clarifies that there are some civil matters which do “concern religion.” Civil interest is what lies in the general interest, and may therefore intersect with religious affairs precisely because “many things by reason of religion become their civil advantage.” That is, the civil authorities ought to defend religion because religion itself is of general public interest, even as they justify and fulfill their task in a non-ecclesial context.
This presentation of civil authority stands within the bounds of early Reformed civic theology. Yet, at the same time, it appears to open the possibility for a re-definition of ecclesial establishment. While many European forms of Protestant political power abided by the settlement of cuius regio, eius religio, the American Puritans allow for a more dynamic relationship between the body politic and divine lordship. In other words, while the nation as a whole is represented by a legitimate political authority, there is a sense in which the terms of the national covenant are not exclusively channeled through the head of state. This is not an acephalous view of society so much as it is an emphasis on the political – and therefore moral – agency of the entire nation. Within the broadly theocentric framework of the national covenant there was concerted movement for moral reform – one which could often be expressed in moral rigorism.
As Oliver O’Donovan argued in The Desire of the Nations, the legal and political structure was embedded in scholastic and early modern constitutionalist theory. Its fullest expression lay in the “fruitful constellation of social and political ideas which came together in a decisively influential way in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” According to O’Donovan’s narrative, the symbolic end of Christendom arrived in the United States Constitution’s formal adoption of ecclesial disestablishment. While the early Protestant civic tradition assumed the magistrate’s explicit submission to the rule of Christ, the emerging American civic tradition dispensed with that formal conception of Christendom, and “effectively declared that political authorities were incapable of evangelical obedience.” While O’Donovan cites various Christian parties who supported this dismantling of Christendom, he argues that by accepting a formal secularity (in the more modern sense of the term) the American civic tradition “gave away more than [it] knew.” This critique of disestablishment highlights an important aspect of the early Protestants’ implicit reliance on the patronage of the civil magistrate. Certainly, in the migration from the Old to the New World, that civic tradition underwent a crucial transition. Yet, O’Donovan’s narrative gives very little attention to the uniquely American project of Christendom in Puritan New England. However, the disintegration of the Puritan Christendom raises critical questions about O’Donovan’s political narrative. In the decades leading up to the adoption of the First Amendment, late colonial Puritans were still trying to defend a civic tradition which was under direct assault by the very secular and social forces which O’Donovan laments. A reconsideration of how Christendom was reshaped by the dynamics of the Puritan experience may lead to fruitful deliberation on what conditions are necessary to maintain an explicitly theological system of civic virtue.
The civic theology of the American Puritans occupies a transitional space between the Old and New Worlds. As descendents of the Protestant civic tradition – largely mediated through the evangelical wing of the English church – the New England Puritans had inherited the concept of a “national covenant.” According to the terms of this covenant, God established conditional relationships with specific peoples in which He promised to extend corporate blessing or judgment depending on the nation’s fidelity to the terms of the covenant. In effect, this particular instantiation of Christendom implied a far more tenuous status for political legitimacy. Since the nation was under the direct lordship of Christ, the entire body politic fell under the purview of divine judgment. In the context of this “federal” theology, all citizens of the Puritan commonwealth fell under the terms of the visible-political covenant established at the founding; corporate disobedience resulted in corporate penalty, whether in war, natural disaster, famine, or other temporal means of chastening.
This synthesis of moral and political terms served to establish a basic social cohesion – or what Mark Noll has termed the “Puritan canopy.” At the same time, like the early Reformed tradition, the idea of a national covenant did not preclude certain distinctions of ecclesial and magisterial roles. For example, Jonathan Edwards wrote of how civil authorities properly “have nothing to do with matters ecclesiastical, with those things which relate to conscience and eternal salvation, or with any matters religious as religious” (emphasis original). But he clarifies that there are some civil matters which do “concern religion.” Civil interest is what lies in the general interest, and may therefore intersect with religious affairs precisely because “many things by reason of religion become their civil advantage.” That is, the civil authorities ought to defend religion because religion itself is of general public interest, even as they justify and fulfill their task in a non-ecclesial context.
This presentation of civil authority stands within the bounds of early Reformed civic theology. Yet, at the same time, it appears to open the possibility for a re-definition of ecclesial establishment. While many European forms of Protestant political power abided by the settlement of cuius regio, eius religio, the American Puritans allow for a more dynamic relationship between the body politic and divine lordship. In other words, while the nation as a whole is represented by a legitimate political authority, there is a sense in which the terms of the national covenant are not exclusively channeled through the head of state. This is not an acephalous view of society so much as it is an emphasis on the political – and therefore moral – agency of the entire nation. Within the broadly theocentric framework of the national covenant there was concerted movement for moral reform – one which could often be expressed in moral rigorism.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Puritan ecclesiology
Somewhat counter-intuitively, David Hall suggests that Puritanism formally held to a more traditional Calvinist definition of ecclesiology – one in which visible holiness was not an essential mark of the church. The early Reformed tradition, wary of the perceived danger of Anabaptist separatism, resisted the inclination to seek “a church besmirched with no blemish.” Calvin enforced the point that the visible church would be “weighed down with the mixture of the wicked” until the end of the age. Hall argues that the “New England Way,” while notionally accepting this earlier theology, is nonetheless a “mixture of traditions – on the one hand, the Reformed system, on the other, the development of voluntarism.” In a key distinction, Puritan ecclesiology introduced the necessity for adult members to testify publically to their true experience of faith as a way to “differentiate ‘visible saints’ from counterfeits,” which eventually lead to the 1662 synodical terms of the half-way covenant.
The figure of Solomon Stoddard casts a complex shadow over the subsequent history of this ecclesial covenant. In several ways, Stoddard retrieved elements of the earlier tradition. Like Calvin, he was skeptical that the visible church was capable of accurately discerning the saints from the hypocrites. And like some of Presbyterian contemporaries, Stoddard approximated a more instrumentalist view of the eucharist as a “converting ordinance.” Consequently, he argued that the half-way covenant, by restricting access to the eucharist, had fomented a pastoral crisis that “hindered the progress of evangelism.”
While Stoddard’s argument recalls themes (largely sacramental) from earlier Reformed theology, Hall argues that it would be a mistake to view him exclusively as a defender of the classic tradition. Stoddard and his theological heirs were fervent evangelists, and were at least as supportive of the emerging evangelical “heart-religion” as was Edwards. Perhaps most striking is the way in which Stoddard recalls and intensifies the classic federal theology while simultaneously extinguishing the distinction between civil society and the congregation. On the former point, Stoddard is clear: Israel’s national covenant in the Old Testament has continuing validity in the Christian age and the New England commonwealth. (“The Nature of a church is the same under both Testaments: A Church is not one kind of thing in the Old Testament and another in the New: But it has the same essence and definition,” Solomon Stoddard, Instituted Churches [1700]. Interestingly, Stoddard sharply distinguished the continuing application of the national covenant from the defunct ceremonial Passover laws, since the his rivals appealed to the latter as legitimating the restriction of access to communion.) On the latter point, Stoddard collapses the distinction between the nation and the visible church, but crucially maintains that the invisible church of the elect cannot be extensively identified within either the citizenry or the congregation. With the invisible elect out of focus, the national covenant itself became determinative of the bounds of visible ecclesial identity (The characterization of Stoddard by his long-time antagonist, Increase Mather, helps to underscore the way in which his proposal was received in the voluntaristic American context; according to Mather, Stoddard wished to see “Enclosures about the Churches demolished, and whatever distinguishes them from the wide and wild World Extinguished.). Stoddard’s considerable influence carried the revision in parts of New England even as it encountered stiff resistance in Massachusetts from Edward Taylor (1642-1729) and both Increase (1639-1723) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728). While both sides in the debate claimed formal adherence to the half-way covenant, and were each driven by pastoral concerns, it seems evident that the integration of society and church was becoming more difficult to preserve with each subsequent generation. As Jonathan Edwards’ response would demonstrate, a split was emerging between the increasingly rationalistic civic society and the pietistic resistance within the visible church itself.
The figure of Solomon Stoddard casts a complex shadow over the subsequent history of this ecclesial covenant. In several ways, Stoddard retrieved elements of the earlier tradition. Like Calvin, he was skeptical that the visible church was capable of accurately discerning the saints from the hypocrites. And like some of Presbyterian contemporaries, Stoddard approximated a more instrumentalist view of the eucharist as a “converting ordinance.” Consequently, he argued that the half-way covenant, by restricting access to the eucharist, had fomented a pastoral crisis that “hindered the progress of evangelism.”
While Stoddard’s argument recalls themes (largely sacramental) from earlier Reformed theology, Hall argues that it would be a mistake to view him exclusively as a defender of the classic tradition. Stoddard and his theological heirs were fervent evangelists, and were at least as supportive of the emerging evangelical “heart-religion” as was Edwards. Perhaps most striking is the way in which Stoddard recalls and intensifies the classic federal theology while simultaneously extinguishing the distinction between civil society and the congregation. On the former point, Stoddard is clear: Israel’s national covenant in the Old Testament has continuing validity in the Christian age and the New England commonwealth. (“The Nature of a church is the same under both Testaments: A Church is not one kind of thing in the Old Testament and another in the New: But it has the same essence and definition,” Solomon Stoddard, Instituted Churches [1700]. Interestingly, Stoddard sharply distinguished the continuing application of the national covenant from the defunct ceremonial Passover laws, since the his rivals appealed to the latter as legitimating the restriction of access to communion.) On the latter point, Stoddard collapses the distinction between the nation and the visible church, but crucially maintains that the invisible church of the elect cannot be extensively identified within either the citizenry or the congregation. With the invisible elect out of focus, the national covenant itself became determinative of the bounds of visible ecclesial identity (The characterization of Stoddard by his long-time antagonist, Increase Mather, helps to underscore the way in which his proposal was received in the voluntaristic American context; according to Mather, Stoddard wished to see “Enclosures about the Churches demolished, and whatever distinguishes them from the wide and wild World Extinguished.). Stoddard’s considerable influence carried the revision in parts of New England even as it encountered stiff resistance in Massachusetts from Edward Taylor (1642-1729) and both Increase (1639-1723) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728). While both sides in the debate claimed formal adherence to the half-way covenant, and were each driven by pastoral concerns, it seems evident that the integration of society and church was becoming more difficult to preserve with each subsequent generation. As Jonathan Edwards’ response would demonstrate, a split was emerging between the increasingly rationalistic civic society and the pietistic resistance within the visible church itself.
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