Trinity
Press International 1995 AJM
January 2002
S African
theologian d in car crash 1992
Excellent
short work (60pp) on theology and mission, incisive and thought-provoking, and
packed with all the appropriate references. Best short analysis of task of
gospel/culture that I’ve read.
1. The “Postmodern World”
We live in
a post-everything era. Michael Polanyi first asked for development of a
postcritical and postmodern philosophy in 1958. 60s and 70s brought great
upsurge of enthusiasm in world and church; all gone now.
West now is
a programmed and administered society run by technocrats; comes across as
benevolent but is in fact totalitarian. Presuppositions and spinoffs include
centralization, bureaucratisation, ecological damage, manipulation/exploitation
of human beings, relentless consumerism and chronic unemployment. Permissive
society without norms, models, traditions; immediate society without past and
often without future; people live in the present and seek instant
gratification. At same time we are inundated by deluge of info and
entertainment, mainly by TV, which produces pluralism and widespread pollution
of the mind.
‘All this
.. has for millions of people created a gap between vision and reality that, in
turn, has precipitated a crisis in their worldview and self-understanding. This
has not happened at the level of the individual only, but also in respect of
entire communities. And when such a crisis involves the dominant visions of a
particular society,… the entire society is prone to massive breakdown. The very
scaffolding on which people are standing is collapsing… The church only too
frequently responds by digging trenches and preparing for a long seige, hoping
against hope that, somehow, the threat will go away.’ 3-4
2. The legacy of the Enlightenment
Enlightenment
spawned 7 cardinal convictions, p5:
v
Emphasis
on reason suggested that the human mind was the point of departure for all
knowing
v
Reality
divided into thinking subjects, and objects to be analysed/exploited
v
Cause
and effect replaced purpose
v
High
premium placed on progress, expansion, advance, modernisation
v
Assumption
that knowledge was factual and value-free; facts were facts and values were
choices; religion was a value
v
Assumption
that all problems were in principle solvable
v
People
regarded as emancipated, autonomous individuals, no longer under tutelage of
superiors
Enlightenment
made deep inroads into W theological thinking, and virtually the entire W
missionary enterprise was predicated on its assumptions.
Enlightenment
was logical consummation of thinking since Greece. Idea from C3 that God known
through the 2 books of scripture (revelation) and nature (reason) ultimately
led to duality of faith and reason. Enlightenment was inherent in Christian
faith itself and its encounter with the world.
Enlightenment
thinkers were all Christians.
Enlightenment
never went unchallenged. There were always 3 traditions/currents of research, p
11:
1.
Organicist tradition, based on Aristotle; dominant metaphor the organism,
emphasis on wholeness/interdependence
2.
Hermetic-cabalist, occult, alchemical, spiritualist tradition; knowledge only
through mystical illumination
3.
Mechanist tradition, reviving science and maths of Archimedes with its machine
analogies.
All three
incorporated religious assumptions about the universe; by end C17th the third
had triumphed. Other 2 traditions continued. Organicist one staged comebacks –
romanticism. Cabalist one survives as parasciences. Protests against
rationalist tradition by Hegel, Mrx, Freud, Lyotard and postmodernists.
Enlightenment
brought many benefits too; the most fruitful effort ever sustained by the human
mind (Polanyi), which has enriched us mentally and morally to extent unrivalled
by any previous movement. Newbigin – the light in the Enlightenment was real
light. So it is an oversimplification to juxtapose Enlightenment and Christian
faith as foes. Solution does not lie in turning the clock back.
3. The Christian faith in a postmodern age
However,
the secularisation which followed in wake of Enlightenment has been a permanent
thorn in the flesh of the church. More and more people have discovered they can
ignore God and the church and be none the worse for it. Catholicism and
Orthodoxy have withstood the impact better. He suggests this because medieval
Catholic theology is based on a harmonious scheme of nature and supernature in
which everything fits, formulated by Aquinas:
Faith
(mystery) ® grace ® Church ® theology ® the Christian
Reason ® nature ® state ® philosophy ® the human
Look at
this in the light of Niebuhr’s analysis of the relationship between Christ and
culture, and it seems Catholic theology falls into category
Christ-above-culture, which sees no irresolvable conflict between faith and
culture, and therefore faith and reason. Protestantism saw it differently;
thomistic thesis abandoned in favour of series of oppositions, a good choice vs
a bad choice:
Faith Û Reason
Grace Û Nature
Church Û World
Theology Û Philosophy
Christian Û Human
This is
Niebuhr’s Christ-against-culture, and it introduced idea of incompatibility
between church and world. Tillich called this the ‘Protestant principle’.
Virtually all of Prot theology succumbed to the pressures of the Enlightenment
to make faith rationally plausible. Schleirmacher defined theology as sth done
by professionals for the sake of the believing community. Pastor became a
professional on a par with others – doctors, teachers, lawyers. Result was that
believers had to commute between different plausibility structures, which led
to a dichotomy of 2 unrelated worlds. The new worldview didn’t oppose religon,
but fostered a private religion that had no function in society as a whole.
Religion was relegated to the private sector and the world of values.’ In this
climate, theology cd only justify its existence in universities if it adopted
the same scientific precepts and methods as all the other disciplines that were
no longer under the tutelage of the church.. Religion lost the function it had
had in an earlier era – that of explaining the world’. 18.
W culture
continues to draw parasitically on the Christian faith; the Christian legacy
cannot be undone. Many values taken for granted as part of the Enlightenment
world are rooted in Christianity; eg the moral commandments of the Decalogue.
Religion
has been replaced by other Grand Ideologies – marxism, fascism, nazism. And
those by ‘soft’ ideologies – the American way of life, the free market system;
are effectively ‘civil religion’.
Enlightenment
rationalism is fanatically intolerant of any convictions which dispute the
orthodoxy of the scientific world view; the aim is to arrive at a residue of
knowledge which is completely determined by objectively true evidence. But with
this dogmatic scientism comes relativism – because there are no universal
norms, only individually held values, people may live as they please (this is
postmodernism defined by Lyotard as ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’. Result
of both is oppression. Both celebrate freedom, but because people have no point
of reference beyond themselve,s they can be subjugated by other people, typical
or the modern world that people can be used as objects. Guardini on Nazism:
all
these terrible things surely did not just fall from heaven or, more precisely,
rise up from hell! All the incomprehensible systems of degradation and
destruction were not just invented after everything had been in order
previously. Such monstrosities surely cnanot just be ascribed to degenerated
individuals or small groups; they derive from perversions and contaminations
that have been at work for a very long time. Whatever may be termed moral norm,
responsibility, honor, alertness of conscience, cannot just disappear from the
totality of life, unless it has been corrupted long ago already. p22-23
The
illusion that human hopes for freedom, justice, and true progress can be
realized by relyin gon reason or human resolve alone, or by the mechanics of
economic, technological, or political development, has finally exploded.
4. Contours of a missiology of western culture
Africans
and Asians find it impossible to distinguish between theology and missiology.
In West it different, because we are the heirs of Christendom, which operated
on the basis of a kind of symbiosis between church and society, and in which
there were officially no non-believers. Neill: ‘vision of a typical English
village of not more than 400 inhabitants, where all are baptized Christians,
compelled to live more or less Christian lives under the brooding eye of parson
and squire’, 28; context in which
evangelisation has no meaning. In this paradigm, theology has no interest in
the world outside the church, except in so far as chunks of the world might be
grabbed and incorporated into the church. This was how foreign mission was
first understood! Mission meant abroad; evangelism meant reconversion at home.
First usually thought more important than second. Few use ‘mission’ to refer to
situation in the West. Mission in fact refers to a permanent and intrinsic
dimension of the church’s life; not secondary to the church’s being. Brunner:
‘the Church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning’. Mission isn’t
recruiting people to our brand of religion; it is alerting people to the
universal reign of God.
In respect
of their relationship to society, Chrsitians have always been tempted to follow
one of 2 ways; both must be excluded:
v
To
undertake the establishment of a Christian society – Christendom. Problem is that
it makes a missionary stance towards society impossible.
v
To
withdraw from public life altogether. Tempting to concentrate on the religious
aspect of life and leave the rest to the secular powers, not least because
that’s what they want.
‘It belongs
to our missionary mandate to as questions about the use of power in our
societies, to unmask those that destroy life, to show concern for the victims
of society while at the same time calling to repentance those have have turned
them into victims, and to articulate God’s active wrath against all that
distorts and diminishes human beings and all that exploits, squanders, and
disfigures the world for selfishness, greed, and self-centred power.’
Wolterstorff: Christianity is not an avertive religion but a world-formative
religion. We must help people answer the q, ‘what do we hae to become
Christians for?’ We can’t build God’s kingdom on earth; it isn’t ours to
inaurgurate. But we can help make it more visible, more tangible.
Can’t
ignore the 3rd world either; solidarity is indivisible. The present
world economic system is one that presupposes the subjugation of other nations,
and seems set on maximising wealth and power regardless of the cost to society
or the environment. Made worse by 3rd world’s own corruption and
maladministration. But nonetheless, much of its misery comes from policies
emanating from the West.
God stated
to be dead prematurely; the human being is homo religiosus. Subcutaneous
spirituality persists. No nonreligious society has ever been found anywhere in
the world; the modern nonbeliever is the aberration, not the believer.
‘But by and
large the revival of religion is not evident in the mainline churches and their
Sunday services. It manifests itself outside Christianity or in groups outsie
the historical churches. Frequently our churches are empty not because th
echristian faith is unacceptable to the modern world, but because of the
‘counter-witness of believers and Christian communities failing to follow the
model of Christ’. 45.
5. The impossibility of not believing
Doubt has
become the received view; idea that we should keep our minds empty rather than
allow any but irrefutable truths to take possession of them. Most disciplines
today concede that there is no such thing as complete objectivity. But the man
in the street hasn’t cottoned onto this yet; part of our mission must be to
tell him. We must demonstrate the role that plausibility structures /
worldviews play in people’s lives. ‘Worldviews are integrative and interpretive
frameworks by which order and disorder are judged; they are the standards by
which reality is managed and pursued, sets of hinges on which all our everyday
thinking and doing turns’ 49. They are shaped by lots of factors, inc context,
social status, emotional health – both theory and practice, revelation and
experience. A worldview is both a sketch of and a blueprint for reality. 49 The
position the believer adopts is thus not irrational but eminently reasonable,
and the only possible approach to life. It follows that theology can only be
pursued from the basis of a faith commitment.
6. Conclusion
Other
ingredients of a missiology of W culture must be:
v
It
must include an ecological dimension – W global economic structure has smashed
up the environment, and the earth can’t survive if we don’t change
v
It
must be countercultural – W culture is hedonist, and the prosperity gospel is
an expression of this. We need to rediscover sacrifice, asceticism, modesty,
self-discipline. We must challenge the hedonism around us.
v
It
will have to be ecumenical – denominationalism is the religious aspect of
secularisation; it is the form that religion takes in a culture controlled by
the ideology of the Enlightenment
v
It
must be contextual; maybe we’ve lost it in the W because it never was
v
It must
be primarily a ministry of the laity – only way to bring together private and
public
v
It
must flow from a local, worshipping community