Читать книгу Kingdom Calling - The Faith and Order Commission - Страница 9

Three critical factors can be identified as showing how secularization as thus understood affects our theological thinking in ways that are directly relevant for the participation of the whole people of God in the whole work of God. Together, these three factors provide the outline of the diagnosis that is explored in the chapters that follow. The first is a weakness of theological imagination regarding the relationship between the cardinal Christian doctrines of creation and salvation and the realities of daily life in human society. When we labour under an anaemic vision of God’s world and Christ’s saving work, we struggle to see ourselves in our regular occupations, duties and pleasures as living out our divinely given callings as those created in the divine image and redeemed by the blood of Christ, who is now risen and reigning, and in whom all things now hold together (Col. 1.17). We are inclined to see that calling instead more properly expressed in ‘spiritual’ activities and ‘ministerial’ work. And so we conform in our minds to the pattern of this world (Rom. 12.2), in which the good news of Christ is tolerated so long as it is restricted to private places of voluntary association or the believer’s inner world, but is excluded from relevance to the world which God has made and on which he has set his love, sealed forever in the blood of Christ. In short, we acquiesce as the public significance of the gospel is suppressed and our witness to Christ is thus diminished. In what follows, this factor is a particular focus in the first chapter, on vocation.

The second factor is an impoverishment of our understanding of the church. The ease with which ‘church’ is sometimes contrasted with, for example, mission, world or kingdom betrays a lack of appreciation for the fullness of the mystery of the church in Christian teaching, and its inseparability from the mission of the Triune God, the purposes of God for the world and the coming of the kingdom of God. On the other hand, too sharp a distinction between the ‘gathered’ and the ‘sent’ church can raise a certain tension as to how these two ‘modes’ of church relate to one another, which may then be resolved, somewhat unsatisfactorily, by asserting the relative priority of one mode to the other. The church exists as a network of social institutions at local, regional, national, and international levels – but the category of institution cannot exhaust its reality as sign, instrument and foretaste of God’s reign, and thinking about both ‘church and world’ and ‘clergy and laity’ needs to be undertaken with the fullness of that reality as its horizon. Moreover, perceptions that clergy are defined by their identification with the church as institution, or that the church as institution somehow sits above or aside from all other institutions within a society, clearly need to be challenged. Indeed, theological depictions of ‘church and world’ that imply a simplistic separation between two realms tend to generate a division between ‘clergy and laity’ that we will inevitably then struggle to overcome. Not surprisingly, therefore, this factor is the subject of careful attention in the second chapter, on ministry.

The third factor, closely related to the first two, is disorientation in judging how to respond to the ever-shifting currents of our culture – discerning where they need to be resisted and where they ought to be celebrated. To accept secularization as differentiation is to recognize that the church does not hold authority over the social order, and that the pervasively influential ideas in our culture will not be expressed in the language of faith and may be at cross-purposes with the church’s self-understanding and mission. And yet they cannot be simply dismissed for that reason. The church maintains that the whole of human life, especially its social expressions, belongs within God’s creation, and that the church is called to be truly and transformatively present in every human culture. This means that Christians cannot either uncritically acquiesce to or reject prevailing attitudes and assumptions, or indeed be willing to live by different truths in the ‘religious’ compartment of their lives from other dimensions of them. Instead, we must discern what God’s good, acceptable and perfect will is for our lives (Rom. 12.2). The challenges for such discernment are significant. For the perplexity which our disorientation and compartmentalization generate extends to how we frame our thinking about discipleship and ministry, where attitudes and assumptions circulating within society about work, worth and fulfilment are likely to influence us, whether consciously or not. How may the complex representations of reality which are influential in any given time and societal context be preventing us from hearing, celebrating, and supporting God’s call to all God’s people? What are we to make, for instance, of tendencies in our society to fill its members’ time with the demands of economic work, subtle pressures to compete and self-promote across every sphere of life and endless offers of cultural products for our time-consuming consumption? How do we respond to habits of assessing people’s worth based on the use they are to others, rendering those apparently useless – the very young, the seriously sick and the very old – thereby worthless? We are bound to be influenced by these developments to some extent, whether we recognize it and resist it, recognize it and accept it or simply do not notice it much at all. Do they reflect anything positive, or is it our duty simply to oppose them – and how would we do that? Although this factor is relevant to all three of the chapters that follow, it comes into the foreground in the final chapter especially, on discipleship.

Taken together, these three factors, to do with daily life and work, the church, and cultural context, make a powerful combination: a weakness of theological imagination in how Christians see their involvement in society, a limited understanding of the mystery of the church, and disorientation in the face of powerful currents within our culture about worth, work and fulfilment. In different ways, they all reflect the influence of the mentality associated with secularization that limits the authority and relevance of faith to its recognized social institutions and privatized individual practice. This mentality has the potential to affect profoundly how those who profess faith in Christ as Lord of all see themselves, the church and the world, in ways that may pass unnoticed and indeed interact with aspects of their theological thinking, yet still stand in tension with their profession. Exploring that process is critical for understanding the disease for which we are seeking pathways of healing. As we lose confidence in everyday life as the place where the adventure of discipleship unfolds, so our picture of the church correspondingly shrinks and it becomes difficult to keep its various dimensions in proportion, including the relationship between different forms of ministry.

This initial diagnosis is developed in more detail in the following chapters, which also point the way towards the corresponding pathways to healing. Such healing will draw on the treasures of Christian doctrine. Weakness of theological imagination about daily life and work emphasizes the importance of the doctrine of creation for understanding human beings as social and cultural creatures. A limited conception of the church highlights the need for a consistently missional ecclesiology to help us expand our vision. In seeking orientation so that we can respond as faithful disciples to cultural trends and their deeper dynamics in a secularizing society, our Christology should give us confidence in the presence and work of the risen Christ, who promises to accompany and guide us in every part of life.

Clearly, these factors do not solely affect the Church of England; to some degree all Christian communities in this country need to address them. It may be, however, that there are particular features of the Church of England’s history, inherited institutions and current situation that leave it more exposed than other churches to one or more of these factors, as there may be other features that give it important resources to draw on in addressing them. Learning from and with the whole Church of God – not just in this country but worldwide – has to be an integral part of the healing that we are looking for.