In the second century Tertullian asked, “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” The unique and kerygmatic proclamation of the Christian faith, asserted Tertullian, could not accommodate itself to the leveling ethos of Hellenism and Greek philosophy and still remain Christian. We need to ask a similar question today: What does American pluralism have to do with the great ends of the church? Until this question is properly resolved the mainline denominations will not be free from their debilitating dead-end.
Americans are deeply committed to the just and equitable access of all citizens to the rights and freedoms guaranteed by a constitutional democracy. Whether we are theologically conservative or liberal, the values of tolerance, inclusiveness, diversity, and pluralism are assented to without question. We hold these values inviolably, and this gives them an inherent and ultimate place in our lives. They are so imbedded in us that we transfer them reflexively to the mission of the church, often assuming that they are interchangeable with the purpose of the church. The result is that we are now experiencing in the mainline the reverse of what happened in 17th century Puritan America, where church norms were imposed on society at large, violating certain civil rights by narrow theological concerns. Today, the broader civil concerns, as they are defined by pluralism, inclusivism, and tolerance, are being imposed intentionally or otherwise on the church, violating the church as an elect community of faith.
Consider the following. The Presbyterian Panel has consistently shown that the hierarchy of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is significantly more liberal on theological, social, and political issues than is the denomination as a whole. Those who hold a high view of Scripture and confession have long felt that denominational leaders underrepresent or exclude them from positions of influence. Those who desire to be faithful to Scripture and creed, and who wish to make their voice heard in the denomination, do so on the premise that pluralism guarantees them “a place at the table” just as it does other theological persuasions.
This illustrates our problem. The assumption behind this and similar scenarios is that pluralism, diversity, and inclusiveness are in themselves Christian objectives. The acknowledgment is rarely questioned, and all the more powerful because of it. Marvin Ellison’s recently published Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1996) voices this very point. Ellison, co-author of the antinomian 1991 Presbyterian study document, Keeping Body and Soul Together, writes, “The fundamental ground rule for liberating sexual ethics is that voices from the margins must be brought to the center of the conversation on their own terms.” Clearly, the assumption here is that pluralism, not theological and confessional orthodoxy, guarantees one a place at the table. It is this assumption that I wish to challenge.
Great Ends versus Great Society
Are pluralism, inclusivism, diversity, and tolerance ultimate values in the church? Are the values of the modern democratic state interchangeable with the great ends of the church, or are they not? And if they are not, what is their relationship to the great ends?
The Book of Order identifies the great ends of the church as:
the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world (G-1.0200).
A case can surely be made that the democratic values we cherish are presumed in various ways in the above ends; I, for one, would wish to make that case. But what is also clear—and what the mainline seems to have forgotten—is that nowhere are pluralism, inclusivism, and diversity declared the specific ends of the church. If they play a role—as I believe they do—they play a role in subordination to the great ends, not as replacements for them!
The mainline has fallen victim to its own judgments of “state churches”—whether in the Byzantine era, in Nineteenth Century Europe, or in churches co-opted by communism. It is easy to see how secular values weakened or supplanted the gospel in such circumstances. What is harder to see (and admit!) is what we have done to the great ends of the church in the name of pluralism or inclusivism. Years ago Dorothy Sayers wrote a book entitled Creed or Chaos?, in which she argued for a hard and solid Christianity over a soft Christianity. In her typical adroitness Sayers challenged the assumption that the way to make Christianity survive was to empty it of creedal content, take away theology, and substitute soft and vague concepts of Christian sentiment.
Like Tertullian, Sayers describes our predicament. We have ceased calling sinners to conversion, and church discipline is lax or non-existent. We have been less than zealous for the truth of the gospel and purity of faith. We have failed to teach our children the faith. We have been indifferent to apostasy, mission, and personal holiness. Even in social ethics, the rally cry of the mainline since the 1960s, our record is less prophetic than we imagine: after all, the pronouncements of general assemblies in the past three decades are not very different from the platform of the Democratic Party.
What can be done? The answer, I suggest, is to recover a Biblical-confessional model for the church. The great ends of the church, not sociological values and ideologies, should determine who sits at the table. One is invited to Christ’s table not because one is marginalized, or oppressed, or even, as is so often heard in Presbyterian circles, because one belongs to the hallowed “middle way” between polarizing extremes. Sitting at this table is determined by the Lord of the Banquet, who is known through Scripture and creed. It is time, as Barth and MacKay pleaded, to let the church be the church!
What is preventing this from happening? The answer, often suspected but not often voiced, is that it runs afoul of the dominant ideology of pluralism. Johann von Goethe said of himself, “In natural science and philosophy, I am an atheist; in art, a pagan; in sentiments, a Christian.” Goethe’s self-description describes our day, including much thinking in the mainline. Many mainline pronouncements and policies are content to voice vague Christian sentiments while compromising or denying the foundational doctrines of Scriptural and creedal Christianity. Goethe knew that his self-description was not compatible with “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Would that the mainline knew the same.
A plethora of denominational documents generated for study and consideration in the past three decades has energetically substituted a “first article” faith for a “second article” faith. That is to say, the saving benefits that Scripture and creed attribute solely to Christ—and which are granted to believers as gifts of grace—are now attributed to human nature. In most mainline denominations there is confusion over whether Jesus is the Lord, or a lord; whether God’s will is known uniquely from Scripture and creed, or whether God’s will is known through changing social custom; whether the love of God is known through Christ, or apart from Christ; whether apart from grace we stand condemned as sinners, or whether our nature is condoned by God; and whether the work of Christ on the cross and sanctification by the Holy Spirit alone render life pleasing to God, or whether human nature itself is sufficient to please God.
The Bible, and the creeds that derive from it, speak a language of theological and moral objectivism. Recent philosophers have developed an axiom that a truth claim cannot be established without the denial of its opposite. “If there is nothing that an assertion denies then there is nothing that it asserts either.” This is equally descriptive of truth claims in Scripture and creed. The essence of Scripture and creeds is to call things by their proper names—and impute value to the names. The Biblical-confessional world is one of discernment and discrimination between truth and error. Among the Bible’s non-negotiable affirmations is that God is one, and that God demands exclusive love and devotion in his self-revelation that culminates in Jesus Christ. Since God alone is creator and redeemer, he opposes polytheism, paganism, idolatry, and apostasy—in whatever forms they take. Most of the major creeds in church history list explicit affirmations and negations under each article of belief. The language is meant to be clear and unambiguous: truths are declared and confessed; and errors are shown incompatible with truth and condemned.
Such objectivist thinking is considered “disjunctive” today. Among the few things our experimental and permissive day is unwilling to include is confessional Christianity, which is increasingly regarded as a vice to be condemned. The pressure on the church has been so intense and effective that the mainline, for the most part, has been forced by its ultimate allegiance to pluralism to entertain a gospel of charitable respect toward views incompatible with the gospel, and equivocation and timidity for anything associated with the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jerusalem has become a suburb of Athens. When a denomination no longer subscribes in any meaningful sense to the Apostles’ Creed, or as the Apostle Paul said, to the “diapheronta” (Rom 2:18)—the things about which we cannot disagree and still remain Christian—then the church is guilty of heresy.
God is not an idea, as Adolf Schlatter used to remind Adolf von Harnack. Ideas change as times change. But God is a person, and as a person God has a specific, definable nature. To confess God means that there is also non-God, and non-God cannot be confused with God. God calls and creates a special, peculiar people for himself, and he is jealous that this people know whence they have come, why they exist, and to whom worship and service alone are due. The particularity of God is manifested supremely in Jesus of Nazareth who both attracts and repels by his presumption to be God in human form. The claims of the early church about Jesus echo his particularity: he is “the way” to the Father (John 14:6), there is salvation in no other name under heaven (Acts 4:12).
Jesus and Religious Diversity
It is commonplace today to appeal to the inclusivity of Jesus. In many respects Jesus was inclusive, for he invited outcasts within Judaism, as well as Gentiles outside it, to forgiveness and fellowship with himself in a way that was unprecedented among Jewish rabbis. But in other respects Jesus was more exclusive than his Jewish contemporaries, particularly in his refusal to replace God with Torah (or with any ideology) and in his refusal to identify the Kingdom of God with any of the prevailing sects of Judaism.
Let us first consider Jesus’ understanding of the relationship of the kingdom of God to the various sects of Judaism. The world in which Jesus lived was more religiously diverse than we often suppose. The first century pulsated with a plethora of mystery cults and Greco-Roman religions, including quasi-emperor worship. Many of these penetrated into Palestine. Judaism, often thought of as ethnically and religiously homogeneous, was actually a patchwork of royalists (Herodians), isolationists and purists (Essenes), liberation movements (Zealots and Sicarii), and renewal movements (John the Baptist and Jesus), in addition to establishment Pharisees and Sadducees.
How did Jesus interface with this diversity? Consider only the two centrist sects, the Pharisees and Sadducees. There is no record that Jesus sought to engage the Sadducees—or the Sanhedrin dominated by them—with his message and movement. There are, to be sure, isolated references in the Gospels to Jesus’ disputes with Sadducees and the Sanhedrin, but it is they—not he— who initiate contact. For his part, Jesus remained aloof from the Sadducees and from their considerable influence on Judaism.
On the other hand, Jesus did seek to engage the Pharisees with his message and movement. Why? The answer seems to be that on confessional grounds—belief in divine providence, sinfulness of humanity, resurrection from the dead, and existence of the spiritual world of angels and demons—Jesus and the Pharisees shared common ground. (That is why they disagreed so!) “Whatever [the scribes and Pharisees] say, do,” said Jesus, “but don’t follow their example?”(Matt. 23:3). The Sadducees did not share this common confessional ground with Jesus, and the New Testament leaves no record that Jesus shared the kingdom with them. Nor was Jesus’ response in this matter particularly unique. The Essenes, for instance, about whom we know a great deal today because of the Dead Sea Scrolls, are not once mentioned in the New Testament.
This brings us to Jesus’ understanding of the particularity of the kingdom of God. Jesus vigorously challenged the concept that truth—and God—are generic and unspecified. He spoke of his way as steep, narrow, and difficult, as opposed to the broad and easy way that leads to destruction (Matt. 7:13-14). He characterized his coming not in terms of harmony and tranquillity, but as a sword that cuts and divides (Matt. 10:34). The truth of the gospel has an overriding quality to it, taking precedent over all other allegiances and causing division within the most intimate relationships, “father against son, daughter against mother” (Luke 12:51-53). At point after point, the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) sets forth Jesus’ teachings in distinctive contrast to other ways. God and Mammon are opposed to one another, they divide the world, and one cannot serve them both (Matt. 6:24). Indifference to the rigorous nature of the kingdom of God has catastrophic consequences: many who assume they belong on the inside with Jesus find themselves standing outside the kingdom and hearing from the Lord, “I never knew you” (Luke 13:23-30).
The early church preserved this particularity. Peter severely rebuked Simon Magus’s attempt to reimagine the gospel (Acts 8:9-24). Those who cause division and act contrary to the doctrine once taught should be shunned, “for they do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 16:17-18). The adulterated gospel of Galatia was a false gospel, no gospel at all (Gal 1:6-10). Representatives of a false gospel in Philippi were “evil workers,” “dogs” to be shunned (Phil 3:2). The sharp rebukes of false teaching and teachers in the Pastoral Letters, and in 2 Peter and Jude, illustrate the zeal of the early church to maintain purity of faith and defend it from detractors and corrupters. Every book of the New Testament (with the exception of Philemon) mentions doctrinal error and testifies in one way or another that the preservation of the purity of faith and unity of the church consists in condemnation of false doctrine and exclusion of those who practice it.
The gospel proclaimed by Jesus produced a “crisis,” to use the language of the Fourth Gospel. It demanded hearing, discerning, deciding, following, and thus forsaking and excluding incompatible alternatives. The “table” to which Jesus invited people was not defined by Torah or the tradition of the elders, much less by the symphonic vision of Hellenism: it was defined and determined by himself.
Identity, Authenticity, and Faithfulness in a Pluralistic World
Kerygmatic Christianity is by its very nature exclusive, in the same way that marital love is exclusive. It is exclusive not out of enmity, but out of allegiance to that which is worthy of being preserved from corruption. The sin above all others of which Moses and the prophets warn Israel is the sin of forgetting—forgetting God’s oneness, forgetting the people’s peculiarity, forgetting the covenant. The great sin in Israel, in other words, is the sin of not being exclusive in relation and service to this God. In the New Testament this same accent of exclusivity falls on the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Mainline Protestantism has historically championed the ideals of liberal democracy, and in doing so it has comfortably regarded society as a social extension of the church. That accommodation is no longer possible—if it ever was. The pluralism of modern culture is not only not compatible with the great ends of the church, but increasingly inimical to them. The confusion in the mainline today with regard to cultural norms is due to our continuing to think of the church in Constantinian terms as a national institution, a Volkskirche, that gives voice to the dominant culture. That is the wrong model. The church is no longer a majority church, but a diaspora church. We need to unlearn our old ways. The task before us is neither to ape the culture, nor blindly react to it, but to pray for sanctified wisdom that the church may become a critical, confronting, and compassionate voice for salvation within the culture.
The church of former East Germany may be an instructive model for us today. During its forty years in the wilderness of communism, the church was forced to be the church neither for communism nor against it—for in either case communism would be a controlling factor—but the church within communism, holding fast to its creedal foundations, and accepting its mandate not to mirror society but to bear witness to it from the sole promise of the gospel. The allegiance of the church in East Germany to the mandate of the gospel produced an identity and power against which the state was increasingly defenseless. Although the church did not set out to overthrow communism, it played no small role in its eventual downfall.
Today we too must differentiate between the norms of society we inherit, and the greater norms of the church to which we have been called. Athens is not interchangeable with Jerusalem, nor the city of God with the city of man. Let the church be the church! We must indeed render to Caesar what is Caesar’s—equal access (even to those with whom we disagree) to the rights and responsibilities of a constitutional democracy. But we have a higher allegiance to render to God what is God’s. Let the church be liberated from a false allegiance to ideological pluralism and liberated for the great ends for which God created it—to glorify himself and bear a redeeming witness to the world.
This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 4, No. 3 (May/Jun 1998).
