Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 15

How about these offices, are they scriptural?

Question: the office of a minister of the church, the man or woman who brings the sermon each Sunday, and the office of the elder, does the New Testament sees these as two distinct offices, or are they identical?

Answer: the New Testament sees them as one and the same.

Here’s why: it’s well-known that the New Testament uses two different words to indicate the office of elder: episcopos (bishop, supervisor) and presbyteros (elder). The different names have even given birth to two distinctly different denominations: the Episcopalian Church in the USA and the Presbyterian Church allover the English speaking world. Nevertheless both episcopos and presbyteros indicate the same office: in the New Testament there is no difference between the two, they mean exactly the same thing.

So why then are there two classes of officials in the church: (1) ministers of the gospel, people who themselves have chosen this route, and are licensed to speak – ordained it is called – and may do all sorts of things, and (2) elected elders who are not allowed to do much?  

Blame it on human ambition. Somewhere, many centuries ago, there was an aspiring elder, probably a man with great oratorical gifts, who called himself – only men in those days – an ‘episcopos’ as if that were a more privileged designation, while his colleagues were stuck with the ‘presbyteros’ designation, which suddenly became a rank of less value.

In time the episcopos person became the headmaster, the leader, the man who spoke on behalf of the local group, and was given the tasks to baptize, to administer communion, to speak at important occasions, and, when churches were established elsewhere, he was chosen to be in charge of other congregations as well, and so the office of ‘bishop’ was born, and soon afterward a man was elevated to be ‘papa’ or later ‘Holy Father’ – just imagine! – indicating the head of the human institution.

We also know that, once a situation in the church is established, it soon becomes ‘tradition’ and it takes an act of God – or whatever – to change this. So far this has not happened.

Hans Kueng in his 650 page book on The Church writes that presbyters or elders are men who have to safeguard apostolic tradition against false doctrine and to lead the communities. Hans Kueng is highly regarded for his theological knowledge and insights not only among Catholics but by theologians of all religious persuasions. Born in 1928 in Switzerland, he studied in Rome, and at the Sorbonne. He has a Doctorate in the theology and has been professor of Dogmatic and Ecumenical Theology at the University of Tuebingen, Germany until the Pope said: “Enough criticism from this professor”, and suspended his license to teach.

When we compare the New Testament references to preachers and elders then the conclusion is inevitable that frequently the same words are used to indicate both categories.

In my Greek New Testament there are a lot of instances where the word ‘elder’ is used. 1 Peter 5 starts with this verse: “The Presbyters who are among you, I as a fellow presbyter, exhort you…” Here the Apostle Peter calls himself an ‘elder’ and uses the same annotation for his fellow elders. How the Roman Catholic church managed to make this ‘elder’ the head of the church, is, of course, based on Jesus’ saying when he said that “On this rock ( Peter means rock) I will build my church.”

Paul, addressing the flock in Ephesus, when he is about to leave for the last time, calls the elders there ‘overseers’ or ‘episkopoi’, a designation Paul also uses in Titus 1:7. The apostle John always uses presbyter to refer to himself, as is evident in 2 John 1 and 3 John 1. When comparing such passages as 2 Timothy 4:2 and Titus 2:7 with such texts as Acts 20:28, 1 Peter 5: 2 and 1 Timothy 3:2, then both presbyter and episkopos are used to describe the same situation, which leads me to conclude that the job description of elders and preachers run parallel and that their duties are identical.

In other words, the New Testament sees no difference between the office of preacher and that of elder. For example in 1 Timothy 5:17 – “The elders who direct the affairs of the church, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching”, the word ‘presbyter’ is used. The curious part is that the office of presbyter does not indicate an independent office, but, as in most of life, is dependent on the person’s talents. Paul often mentions this when he points out that, just as there is a variety of gifts, so is their a wide range of elders: the one elder has greater ability for a certain aspect of his or her task than another, and it makes eminent sense, also biblical sense, to take these into account. On this matter Dr Kueng remarks that ‘preaching was largely determined by the charismatic structure of the church’. In other words, those who had the gifts used them. He also writes that “the idea of ordination was presumably taken over from Judaism at more or less the same time as the idea of elders.” So again, as on so many occasions, the church simply took over Old Testament customs, so unlike Jesus and Paul who completely broke with these ingrained Jewish traditions.

It makes good sense – and good sense is often equated with wisdom – to use the talents present in a certain community. When a certain person, whether elder or not,  has the time and the gift to preach, then he or she should be used in that way. This already was the case in the synagogues which Paul and Barnabas often attended as a start on their mission work in a certain locality. There all those who could offer a word of encouragement, were allowed to speak. Both women and children were allowed to read the laws and the prophets there. Acts 13:15 makes clear that Jews who came from abroad, were given the opportunity to address the assembly. That same was true, as related in 1 Corinthians 14:26, where it clearly says that “when you come together everyone has a hymn or a word of instruction.”

It is also striking that the New Testament baptism and Communion services are not at all connected to a defined category of official functions, not even to office bearers in particular. We know that in the Old Testament a head of household circumcised his own sons and personally killed the Easter-lamb and always presided ever the Easter-meal, so it is not surprising that this practice continued in the New Testament. Actually what is surprising is that the continuation of these religious acts, now in the form of baptism and communion, remain the exclusive domain of ordained ministers, which basically means that un-scriptural clericalism is to blame.     

I can also point out that the New Testament knows no such matters as presbyteries – a gathering of regional ministers and elders – or classes in the Christian Reformed Church, a meeting of the same nature. Especially such matters as Synods or General Assemblies are totally foreign to the first church.  The real disadvantage of these large gatherings, with official minutes published in large volumes, is, that if new initiatives are introduced, not exactly in accordance with certain previously taken decisions, then these efforts usually have not much chance to succeed or even to come to the floor: there always are ‘experts in church law’ present at these ecclesiastical forums who know the precedence which often means the death for new ventures.

The curious thing about the church in general is that officials often lack the conviction that Christ will look after his own. People, also the clergy, crave for rules so that they can control the situation. The result has been that the church has erected a superstructure that exceeds all outlines the New Testament provides; there always seems to be the fear that congregations cannot manage on their own and will be overwhelmed by the events of the time unless they were assisted by an ecclesiastical edifice of human origin. All these anxieties essentially display a lack of faith in Christ and His Word, as if He would leave the church in the lurch and will not provide sufficient guarantees to safeguard his people.

In The Spontaneous expansion of the church and the causes which hinder it, R. Allen, the author, in essence writes that, if the continuity of the work in the church depends on organization, then it is plain that it is somehow different than bringing the message of Life. Human organization is necessary to make human endeavor possible. But Christ is concerned with Life itself. If the work of the church is to bring the message of Life, if it consists of bringing to people the knowledge of Christ who is Life and who gives Life, then this work cannot depend on a source that is devoid of Life. This just won’t work, because they promote a form of organization, either be design or by accident which implies that belief in human structures can take the place of Christ.

Of course, I am not against organization. In order to get matters done, some sort of coordination is needed, because, without some sort of plan in place, nothing much gets accomplished. However, in the church these actions must be either ad hoc, for the moment only, or so flexible that freedom remains assured to prevent that inflexible structures, empowered with ecclesiastical authority, obtain their own independence apart from the Word of God.

In short: churches must not be subjected to organizational systems that exceed New Testament outlines, because, once on place, they tend to stay in place for centuries.

How then shall we live to prepare ourselves for the Kingdom to Come, which is THE central question the church faces today?

In the next series of chapters I will elaborate on this in more detail, by using examples from both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 14

How biblical is the church as an institution today?

In this chapter I am continuing my analysis of today’s church organization, and will cite references to both the Old Testament and New Testament.

While I was writing this my mind went to Moses and how he, upon advice of Jethro, his father-in-law, who saw how stressed out his son-in-law was, put a decentralized governing structure in place, as recorded in Exodus 18, basically following the army model with officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. However that situation, involving millions of people traveling in desert conditions, exposed to all sorts of pressures, cannot be compared to the church today, which is localized, and more a neighborly matter than a complete nation on the march. We may sing that “Like a mighty army moves the church of God… we are not divided, all one body we…with the cross of Jesus going on before”, but that, in this day and age does not describe the church.

Jesus never liked mass meetings, avoided the cities, and preferred the country-side, even though, at times, he addressed some large gatherings.

Jesus knew that there’s no salvation in numbers. The opposite may be true. Jesus once wondered whether he, upon his return, would find faith on earth. He also said that ‘many are called, but few are chosen,’ again pointing to the relative small group of elect. I know that sounds rather elitist, so, perhaps, I am incorrect here. Nevertheless, it’s easy to hide in a large church, where spiritual immaturity may remain undetected.

So how biblical is the church as an institute today? Is it true that only the clergy may administer the sacraments?

1 Peter 2:9 is the well-known text which gives ‘power to the people.’ There is says that they are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God that they may proclaim the praises of him who called them out of darkness into his wonderful light.” That really means that all believers are priests, all those who follow Christ are office-bearers. Martin Luther, the leader of the Reformation, comments on this text when he writes that “all those who know themselves to be Christian, maybe assured that they are priests,” which means that they have the authority to administer the Word and the sacraments. He also writes that “Freedom is essential for the Christian character of the church.” He continues, “At the same time (in the Roman Catholic Church) all perspective in Christian grace, in its freedom, in the faith and in everything we possess in Christ, has disappeared, and instead we have acquired human institutions and human endeavors, and so we have become subservient to the most incapable people on earth.”

As you can see Luther was not a man known for understating his case. It should be remembered that this was right after his renunciation of the Roman Catholic Church and at the very infancy of the Protestant Reformation. In a sermon shortly after that he said “Most Esteemed Pope, I hereby declare that whoever has faith is a spiritual being and judges all things and is not judged by anyone else. And if there were a simple miller’s daughter, even a child of 9 years old that has faith and acted according to the Good News, then the Pope is bound to listen to her and submit himself to her if he were a true Christian. And all universities and scholars are bound to do the same.”

It is well for us to take these words to heart, because, slowly but surely, we have reached the same state of affairs against which Luther agitated so fiercely. Does that mean that a new Reformation is needed? Of course, for the simple reason that the church must always be reforming – semper reformanda – and has failed to do so.

For one thing, the present structure has impeded the formation of Christians coming to spiritual maturity, has prevented persons to acquire a well-thought-out vision on matters spiritual, and consequently have failed to foster a distinctive Christian life style. The author of the letter to the Hebrews (6:12-13) already complained then that, “In fact though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching of righteousness”. More about what ‘righteousness’ really means for today, in the concluding chapter. Paul makes the same point in 1 Corinthians 3:2.

Nothing really has changed in those 2000 years. Then it could be blamed on illiteracy and limited access to the Scriptures. Today I put the blame directly on the professional word proclaimers, who are failing to act as coaches, failed to make them selves superfluous. The actual fault lies squarely with the ecclesiastical structures that force officials to be compromisers, hemmed in as they are by organizational boundaries and out-dated confessions.

The simple reason for the baby-state of churchgoers is that church officers are ignoring the fact that all believers are members of a Royal Priesthood, a Holy nation, a chosen people, a people belonging to God. The result is that the term ‘frozen chosen’ applies especially to the Christian Reformed and Presbyterian Churches.

Another German theologian, P.Beyerhaus, in his German book – and I translate the title – “The independence of the young churches as a problem for missionaries,” writes that ‘In the book of Acts it is clearly shown that in the early Christian church baptisms were administered and local churches were established without the help of the apostles.” This sort of scriptural maturity, however, has been suppressed in the later churches of the Reformation thank to a rising clericalism. It is not a coincidence that the word ‘lay’ as an indication of a church member without an office, is so often used, in contrast with the clergy who have their own exclusive prerogatives.

What I intend to show is that the contemporary church development has been stymied by this development and has made the church often a sterile and life-less institution.

As stated earlier, Christ did not see it as important to leave behind an organizational model for the church. The result was that the churches of the New Testament were exposed to all sorts of influences, which the leaders conceived as a danger, forgetting the fact that Jesus is the head of the church, which means that He will always provide the necessary protection. Samuel comes to mind. When the people of Israel clamored for a king, God told him – 1 Samuel 8 – “it is not you they have rejected but me as their king.” I see a similar situation here: by instituting popes and archbishops and church officials who alone may explain the Bible, they, in essence, have committed the same sin as the people of Israel who, like their neighbors, wanted a king to rule over them, shifting the responsibility from their own shoulders to a higher authority.

So, in violence of the spirit of scripture, the church fathers created a formal organization, which basically remains unchanged until this day. There the professional preachers call the tune, and the flock, the sheep of their pasture, is as mute as those wooly creatures, giving a bleat occasionally, but never rising to greater influence.

Both in the Christian Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church we have elders. In the Presbyterian Church ministers are called preaching elders, while elected (for life) lay-elders are called ruling elders, with little or no power to rule, as ministers are not members of the congregation they serve and cannot be called to account, nor are elders allowed to chair the meetings of the church councils.

Basically the same system is in force in the Christian Reformed Church. This division of labor may be in agreement with the church order, but the New Testament doesn’t recognize this distinction. In  these two denominations both are called ‘elders’, but in reality it is the minister – often called ‘pastor’ or ‘shepherd’, perhaps to emphasize the sheepish character of their charge – who is the man or woman with the clout. Only he, or now more frequently she, may administer baptism and communion and have the license to marry.

You can read more about the New Testament understanding of ‘elder’ in the next chapter.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 13

Today’s Church and the New Testament.

I once went, on a Saturday of course, to a service at the Messianic Synagogue in Beverly Hills, a few doors away from the hotel where we were staying.  Even though the sermon was from the New Testament, all the trappings were based on traditional Jewish practices, such as wearing a yarmulke, the carrying of the Torah throughout the premises, as well as the presence of a cantor, who sang both in Hebrew and English; all in all an impressive ceremony.

Just as in Jewish traditions the books of Moses occupy a prominent place, so in the Christian church the entire Bible – both the Old and the New Testament – is central to its teaching. This means that, while Judaic worship is founded on the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, the organization and offices of the Christian church are, supposedly, all based on the New Testament. However, there is a big difference: where, in the Mosaic laws, we can find precise descriptions on how to celebrate the Jewish religious feasts, including the Sabbath, the New Testament features very little about the church’s organizational structure. What is remarkable is that, in the church whose start was recorded in Acts 2, and which grew quite rapidly, thanks to the Apostle Paul, a radical break was made with all former religious customs, although not without considerable friction. They were so drastic that even the day of worship was changed from Saturday, the Sabbath, to Sunday, the first day of the week, celebrating Christ’s resurrection. Another fundamental changes were baptism rather than circumcision and the added new feature of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, with the specific stipulation to celebrate this as a reminder of Jesus’ death and his coming again.

The tearing of the curtain in the Jerusalem temple when Jesus died on the cross was also symbolic of the change in emphasis from temple worship to freedom of location, already foretold by Jesus when he, in his unorthodox conversation with a Samaritan woman, as recorded in John 4, told her that true worship was to take place in spirit and truth, and was not bound to a specific place or building. Jesus here already hinted at the ‘truth’ being that God’s love is evident everywhere in His world and His spirit pervades all things.

Jesus himself had no use for the regulations the church leaders at his time had instigated. In the eyes of the ecclesiastical establishment he was a great sinner because he did not keep the rules they had made about the Sabbath celebration and daily life. His flouting of the temple statutes was one factor in him being condemned to death.

The apostle Paul was the most radical of all apostles in abolishing Old Testament directives, emphasizing that ‘love’ was the only condition. In Romans 13 he writes that “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for they who love their fellow creatures have fulfilled the law.”

When I read these words, then my attention is always drawn to environmental issues: how can we love our neighbors when we pollute the air and the water on which their health depend? One of the laws of ecology is that “everything is connected to everything else,” and that includes the love we have for each other and for ourselves. Another ecological law is that “there is no free lunch.” If we neglect to love our neighbor, if we neglect to love God’s creation, the bill for our misconduct is in the mail, and we will experience the consequences in our own life and in that of our children.

Just as we take for granted that the way we live today is ‘normal’, is in accordance to God’s will – and I believe that nothing is further from the Truth – so we assume that the specific church structures and organizations we have are God-given or prescribed in the New Testament. Here too nothing is further from the Truth. No wonder that, as we saw in the previous chapter, there are some grave misgivings about the church which we must take seriously.

We seldom question these regulations – mostly man-made I should add. My experience in the church is that, although very liberal opinions are never questioned and the word  ‘heresy’ is no longer heard in the church, when the rules of the Church Order are challenged, all hell breaks loose.

One of the cardinal commandments of Christian conduct is to follow Jesus. I believe we have to also follow him in organizational life. Jesus, for some reason, did not think it wise to create an organized church structure, nor are there any written statements from him. The only record we have that he could write is, when confronted with the question whether he should condemn a woman caught in the act of adultery, he wrote something in the sand. What that was is not recorded.

Although thousands followed him to see him cure diseases, only 120 were present at his Ascension. Yet churches are impressed with numbers: mega churches where ten of thousands attend are all the rage now, even though Jesus de-emphasized numbers, saying that ‘where two or three are gathered in My name, there I will be also’. Yet, at Pentecost, as related in Acts 2, thousands were attracted to the New Way, with the result that, when the New Testament churches grew, they lacked a roof to stay under.

Being constantly open to the heavens was seen as impractical, so the pragmatic leaders of the ancient church shaped a dome over its walls, a dome of which the Saint Peter’s church in Rome is an excellent example. In reality the dome replaced the Dome of Heaven, with frescoes showing supposedly celestial scenes. Once such a structure or similar coverings were in place, the church basically retained its walled-in format.

The early church was instituted during the time of the Roman Empire. Christian people then, as they are now, were born organizers, necessary, of course, when something was growing rapidly. All around them these early Christ- followers witnessed how well run the Roman Empire was and so, guess what? They used that example to fashion the church organization, built it on the same principles: the emperor become the pope, the senators became the archbishops, the bishops took the place of generals, and the priests became the officer class. And, logically, once a hierarchy was in place, the striving for power and authority influenced the development of the Christian church as well.

There are more similarities. The Pope, when speaking Ex Cathedra, became infallible in his pronouncements, just as the Roman Emperor had divine attributes. To give the church a high degree of holiness, the church itself was equated with the Kingdom of God.

After the Reformation both the Anglican and the Lutheran churches retained a power structure in which the king or the hereditary ruler was the titular head, which, in reality, meant that these national denominations not only occupied a monopoly at the expense of other religious organizations, but also robbed them of their freedom, because the secular heads the church could manipulate them for his own political aspirations.

In the Netherlands and Scotland the ecclesiastical organizations were not nearly as closely tied to the state as was the case in Lutheran countries such as Germany and Sweden, yet in the 17^th Century the State nevertheless had an enormous influence there as well. In a sense Christ’s words that in the world his followers would be persecuted, were replaced by something rather opposite: in the world you will have a monopoly, of which Russia also is a good example. Also the structure of the Reformed churches resembled the way the state itself was organized, be it not nearly as strict as the Roman Catholic Church. It’s not surprising that, where the State structure changed with the times, the way the church was fashioned remained constant.

What is equally striking is that especially the Roman Catholic and the Anglican churches resembled more and more the Old Testament structure which had a High Priest – Pope or Archbishop – and a large priestly class with elaborate robes and other religious paraphernalia so reminiscent of Old Testament prescriptions. None of these regulations have any basis in the New Testament. Actually Christ always emphasized the ‘freedom’ aspect which he so liberally showed in his own life.

So how biblical is the current church structure? Are the offices to which we attach so much importance really in accordance with New Testament writings?

More about that in the next chapter.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 12

Some radical thinking on religion

Let me start with some thoughts by America’s most distinguished literary critic, a man with more than 20 books to his credit, among them The Book of J, a thorough analysis of the books of Moses: Dr Harold Bloom, a Hebrew scholar, who knows the Hebrew bible and Christianity as few others.

In his analysis of Religion, I rely solely on his intriguing book The American religion, the emergence of the post-Christian nation.

Dr Bloom states that “I argue in this book that the American Religion, which is so prevalent among us, masks itself as Protestant Christianity yet has ceased to be Christian.”

There is a provocative statement that sounds true to me, because, as Dr Bloom writes “The American Religion, seems to me irretrievably Gnostic. It is a knowing – gnosis in Greek –  by and of an uncreated self, or self-within-the-self, and the knowledge leads to freedom, a dangerous and doom-eager freedom: from nature, time, history, community, other selves….an obsessed society wholly in the grip of a dominant Gnosticism.”

A few pages later, Dr Bloom explains that, according to Gnostic belief “Adam and Eve, all begin as disasters in some versions of Gnostic myth, which has nothing good to say about nature, and which has no hope either for our bodies or our outward souls, no hope indeed for anything confined within the limits of space and time.”

No wonder the American churches, especially the Southern Baptist and many Pentecostal churches deny the human element in Global Warming and want President Obama to fail in his attempts to endorse Kyoto.

The success of the Left Behind series and The Great Late Planet Earth, two of the most widely read books in North America, with some 60 million copies sold, clearly affirms that almost all church-goers are believers in a flight from earth to heaven, which is pure Gnostic teaching. Many of the church hymns, across all denominations, contain references to heaven being humanity’s eternal home. No wonder that Dr Bloom toward the end of his book writes, “Christianity, like Judaism before it, is not a biblical religion, despite all its assertions, since it theologies are Greek, not Hebrew, even as normative Judaism, a second century of the Common Era formulation, was compelled to rely upon Greek thought-forms.”

Another of Bloom’s insightful and simultaneously devastating observations is: “Since I am persuaded that much of what this book describes can be found also in Americanized Catholicism and Judaism, as well as in most mainline Protestantism, much of American religiosity clearly lacks spiritual content. The societal consequences of debasing the Gnostic into selfishness, and the believer’s freedom from others into the bondage of others, are to be seen everywhere, in our inner cities and our agrarian wastelands.”

It is not surprising that he approvingly quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who once lamented that “God has granted American Christianity no Reformation.”

Shocking as it may sound to the sincere, believing and committed churchgoer when Dr Bloom states that ‘the American Religion is a form of idolatry’, I nevertheless fully endorse his opinion. Perhaps Karl Marx was correct when he wrote that “religion is the opium of the people.” At any rate, since much of the success of the American Religion has a prosperity angle, where riches are seen as a direct result of going to church, the current economic malaise – which will be quite prolonged and will only get worse – will severely test this branch of Christianity.

There is no doubt that Dr Bloom opinions are controversial. He also states that one of the hallmarks of The American Religion is its anti-intellectual stance, which ensures that very few if any of current churchgoers will ever read his books or ever question their own beliefs.

Dr Jacques Ellul is a man like Harold Bloom. He has equally controversial opinions, and, I must admit, I equally treasure his.

Dr Jacques Ellul is also an author of many books, all originally appearing in French, as he was a professor of law at the University of Bordeaux. Unlike Harold Bloom, who is a Jew, Ellul is a prominent Protestant opinion maker, who has some Jewish ancestors as well.

In his book Hope in Time of Abandonment he expresses his frustrations with organized religion and especially with the preaching, much of which is boring and irrelevant.

Here are some of his words: “Modern man is impervious to the preaching of the gospel…..We still persist in pushing the message of faith, which no longer belongs to our times.”

I see here similarity with Bloom’s thesis: the mark of Gnostics is that they have ‘gnosis’ which means ‘knowledge’. Since they ‘know’ the truth, they have ceased to look. Back to Ellul: “Where man is not looking for anything, he cannot hear the Gospel. Where he is quite content, he has no need of the Gospel.” In connection  with this he quotes Jesus who said that “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick”; “Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation” (Luke 5:31; 6:24). “That”, Ellul says, “is the crucial message of the Beatitudes.” Sermons, in other words, are mostly a waste of time, as the ministers preach to the converted, who basically are beyond hearing.

In Hope in Time of Abandonment Ellul expresses his belief that God has left humanity to its own devices – something I have referred to in an earlier chapter – which means that the only matter left to humans is ‘The Hope for the Coming of the New Creation’. That’s why he writes that “Only the deep need of man today drives me to say that the center of the Christian message is hope….. I am led to opt for hope by quite another route. If it is true that the world in which we live is a world of abandonment, if it is true that God is silent and that we are alone, then, as I shall try to demonstrate later, it is under these circumstances and at this moment that the preaching, the declaration, and the living hope is urgent….What I mean quite simply, is that the central question for man ( and for the Christian) today is not whether we believe or not, but whether we to hope or not… To believe in the Lord Jesus implies hope for his return…… We are called upon to believe what we hope. We must awaken people to hope, for only there can faith take root…..It is true that if we are in the age of abandonment, then our preaching on all other aspects of the revelation is empty, obsolete, and outworn.”

Ellul does not have a high opinion of the church. “Christians as such are mostly honorable, devout, religious, warmhearted, committed and serious. No, it is not the fault of Christians, nor of a particular vice, that the archangel of mediocrity is the true master of the Church.” Later he states that “Thus we have only one choice: either be mediocre or renegade since we, the body of Christians constituting the Church system, are in an age of abandonment.”

Ellul sees the contemporary church as purely a sociological body, good for fellowship, good for socializing, good for praying and singing, but there its usefulness ends.

Just as Bloom, Ellul concludes that “Protestantism and Catholicism both have come to the end of the road as sociological realities. We cannot go back to the sixteenth century to make them alive again… Those who are out to kill or dissolve churches at all costs are wasting their time. All they have to do is let evolution and circumstance take care of it for them….Consequently, it calls for a revision of all our church life if hope is to be the center of our life and of our witness. It calls for a revision of all our activities, our administrations, our liturgies, our teaching procedures.”

Before Bloom, who wrote The American Religion in the 1990’s and before Ellul whose books date from the early 1970’s, Dr Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings and essays date from the 1930’s and 1940’s.

His books are so special because they were composed during the Hitler regime in Germany, written while he was on the run from the Gestapo – the Geheime Stat’s Polizei – as well as when he was in prison. He was hanged in April 1945, a month before Germany surrendered. The daily threats on his life give his writings an unusual poignancy.

So what does Dietrich Bonhoeffer have to say about the church and religion in general? That his opinions are well researched and biblically sound testifies to his great intellect which earned him a double doctorate in theology before the age of 25.

In 1939, while teaching in the USA, he returned to Germany to be with his church, the Lutheran church, where he was active as teacher, minister and youth leader, but later become disenchanted with their leaders because of the silent complicity of the church with the Nazi regime.

The disillusionment with the church actually started in America, where he, following a religious service he found intolerable, wrote in his diary “the whole affair was nothing but a well-mannered, opulent, self-satisfied celebration of religion”. He then already asked himself, “Are people really unaware that they can do quite well and be better off without religion?”

Two recurrent themes in Bonhoeffer’s thoughts are ‘religion-less Christianity’ and ‘a world come of age.’ Both can be traced to Revelation 21, where in verse 22 it says that ‘I did not see a temple in the City.’ The City referred to is the New Jerusalem, symbolizing the New Creation, where only those who have lived holy and godly lives while waiting for the Lord’s return, are present. In that New Creation people will not have ‘religion’. No churches, synagogues, mosques, or temples can be found there. All will adhere to ‘religion-less Christianity, as the Law of the Lord will be written in their hearts.

Bonhoeffer writes in that connection: “Christian existence does not mean being religious in any specific manner,….rather it means being a true human being.” That’s what God wants us to be: true human beings. That’s why Christ always calls himself ‘The Son of Man’ which simply means “a true human being.”

Bonhoeffer writes that “Jesus calls a person not to a new religion but to life. (That’s why) the pure teaching of the gospel is not a religious concern but a desire to execute the will of God for a new creation. Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from the world to other worlds beyond: rather, he gives us back the earth as its loyal children.”

Bonhoeffer, like Bloom and like Ellul, strongly condemns contemporary religion where he says that “We have fallen into secularism, and by secularism I mean pious Christian secularism. Not the godlessness of atheism or cultural bolshevism, but the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the earth.”

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 11

The church: the past, the present, the possible future.

 (1) The past.

 Under the influence of ancient Greek philosophy both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic churches have adopted a hands-off attitude toward creation, and have cast their eyes and desires on being in heaven.

In general Christianity saw the natural hierarchy as God being on the top, the human race, made in God’s image, a few steps below that, while all animals and plants were under human authority, with insects, a few rungs lower still, and at the bottom the micro-organisms.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote in Summa Theologica that “dumb plants and animals are naturally enslaved and accommodated to the uses of others … by a most just ordinance of the Creator.”

Thanks to the ancient Greek thinkers, such as Socrates and Plato, Life is seen as a temporary passage, and earth a temporary place. When Socrates was forced to drink poison, he did so gladly as he expected to go to a better realm after death. That sort of thinking has prevailed in the church until today. Especially Augustine (396-430) has been instrumental in separating nature from grace. Thanks to these religious doctrines the universe and the earth became de-sanctified, abandoned and left to the uses of science and technology, in essence saying that while the human race was made in God’s image, nature is different, is there to support the higher beings, and is no more than the sum of its parts, which can be used by human race.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was especially vocal here, with such claims as “Nature was to be placed on the rack”, and “enslaved”, and “Bound into service,” and “forced out of her natural state and molded.” Rene Descartes, a contemporary of Bacon, was of the same mind, writing that “The human destiny was to be masters and possessors of nature.”

 (2) The present

 That very attitude, although somewhat tempered by the current environmental dangers, is nevertheless still the dominant view. No wonder Lynn White in his famous paper on “The historical roots of our ecological crisis,” writes that “Modern Western science was cast in a matrix of Christian theology. If so, Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt. Our science and technology have grown out of Christian attitudes toward man’s relation to nature which are almost universally held not only by Christians and neo-Christians but also by those who fondly regard themselves as post-Christians. Despite Copernicus, all the cosmos rotates around our little globe. Despite Darwin, we are not, in our hearts, part of the natural process. We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim. … To a Christian a tree can be no more than a physical fact. The whole concept of the sacred grove is alien to Christianity and to the ethos of the West. For nearly 2 millennia Christian missionaries have been chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous because they assume spirit in nature.”

So far Lynn White. Of course his thesis has been strongly denied by contemporary theologians, who nevertheless insist that the ultimate destination of Christians is heaven. So, why bother about the earth when heaven is the goal? Basically there is no difference between the church’ past or its current beliefs. No wonder that the future of the church in its present form is not rosy.

 (3) The possible Future

 Here is what one commentator sees the church’s development in the near future, and I quote in full a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, dated March 10 2009 and written by Michael Spencer.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 10

The Covenant in more detail ( conclusion)

The concept of the Covenant first appeared in the life of Noah, a special man who didn’t give a hoot what others thought. He starts to build an oceangoing ship in the middle of the prairies. Noah, who did not know a rudder from an oar, who had never seen a ship or an ocean in his life, this fellow, a farmer, a wine grower who loved to imbibe of his own vintage, started to build a ship thousands of miles from any large water-body. Hilarious, really. Just something you expect from a wine-bibber. He became a tourist attraction and you should hear him thundering to the people: that if they did not turn to the Lord Creator and ask for forgiveness, and mend their ways, they would all drown. There’s where everybody burst out laughing: the punch line. Best show in town! And when it all happened, and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, Noah knew he had been right.

Both Abraham and Noah were exceptional people, men full of faith in God’s promises. All people have faith, but usually in finite things, such as science or money or their own sense of superiority. Because Noah believed in the God Creator, his family was chosen to make a new start in the world. To seal this special relationship God made a Covenant with him.

Basically this Covenant, as related in Genesis 9, is a Covenant with Creation. Six times in this short passage God repeats that the Covenant made here with Noah, is with every living creature and with the earth. In essence God says here: “People of the earth, I am the Creator. Here I now pledge to form a triad, a Covenant between three parties (1) The Earth, (2) You as my image bearers, and (3) Me, as the Head of the Covenant.”

“Remember,” God said, “the line of the Covenant is not vertical: first Me, then you, then the earth, with the earth not really in touch with Me. No, the earth, the trees, the rocks, the bees and buffaloes, all are my creatures, the works of my hands.”

Draw a triangle: put God on the top, and on the other two corners we, representing the human race, on one corner and the earth on the other one, with arrows both extending to and coming from each corner as we all are inter-dependent, because the Earth gives life to humans, but also receives input from them, while we are dependent on the earth, but can also enhance it, and God gives life to us and the earth and we give praise to God in return.
In other words, if we look after the earth and after ourselves and our fellow creatures, caring for the crocodiles in the jungle and our neighbors next door, then God will look after us.

This Covenant, said God to Noah, will endure throughout eternity. God, People, the Land: an inseparable Triad. To seal it all, God sent his Son, as the New Head of the New Covenant, Jesus, God’s Son, the heart of our religion.

Covenant. Some people call it the Blood Covenant, because in the old days a Covenant between people was always sealed with blood. Here is a Davidic example. In 1 Samuel 18 we read that David and Jonathan made a covenant. As a sign of the Covenant Jonathan, the then crown prince, took off his clothes and gave them to David. He also handed over his sword and other weapons, even more personal and valuable than clothes. And David did the same. They completely exchanged their personal belongings, as a sign and symbol that they now were one. They also did something else, not related in the Bible, but part of the general rule of personal Covenant. This ritual required an incision in their wrists. Both parties would then raise their wrists to heaven and let the blood mingle. In the incision they would rub dirt to leave a scar as a permanent sign of their mutual allegiance. They then would sit down, make a list of their possessions exchange those lists with the promise that whatever the one part owned would become the rightful property of the other. In order to seal all this they would walk in the figure of an 8 around two altars as a sign of eternity. Then the two parties to the covenant would eat a special Covenant meal, a lamb and unleavened bread, with each party bringing its own bread and offering it to the other.

They would do the same with wine, pouring the wine of the one person into the goblet of the other. Jesus, as Head of he Covenant, followed that very procedure: His blood flowed for us, His wounds are still visible as an eternal sign of the Covenant, an everlasting scar on the God of the Trinity, that whatever is God’s, is also ours. The Lord of Creation gave it all to us. He is the God of the Universe. He signed over the ownership of this cosmos to the people of the Covenant, those who confess Jesus to be their Lord, and pursue the welfare of the Kingdom.

What a comedy! The comedy is that through Christ, God and God’s people – you and I – come together, become equals. The comedy is that God shares His Infinity with our finite being. There is an unfathomable, even greater contrast between God and our selves and between, say, the Queen of England and us.

Yet God and we have become one in Jesus Christ. Look at the Lord Supper. There Jesus says the familiar words: “This is my body, given for you, and this cup is the New Covenant in my blood poured for you”: now not God, but Jesus is the party of the Covenant. God has ceded his place to the Son, and Jesus is now at the centre. Paul tells us to clothe ourselves with the cloak of righteousness, with the Lord Jesus Christ, and so become a new creation, for God has reconciled the cosmos to himself in Christ’s full-bodied Covenant language.

This shows that the Covenant idea is woven throughout the entire Bible. In essence the Bible is the Covenant story, culminating in the coming of the Kingdom. The covenant/Kingdom idea between God- Jesus- humanity, all of us men and women, and the earth, is therefore the real foundation for the meaning and purpose of creation. Creation is the visible basis of the Covenant, its ultimate realization. Creation is there because God in Jesus desires to enter into a Covenant with humanity. We, as human beings, exist because God continuously calls us to the Covenant. God makes us discover how we have to live as we more and more experience each day to live in the Covenant, in his Kingdom/creation.

All this is based on us being “created in God’s image and likeness,” which offers us the opportunity to live closer to God, and so more and more resemble Him, as men and women, as conscious persons, as we experience participating in the Covenant. The beauty of the Covenant is that it allows us to begin to fathom how God has revealed himself in creation, making us the visible representatives of the invisible God.

I base this on Colossians 1:15-20. There it says that Christ is the first-born of creation, which really means that He is the first human being, and in that capacity, as that perfect creature, he created ta panta, all things. That explains why we are his image, why we look like him, and also explains why we can be such smart, intelligent and clever people.

Jesus is the original human, the prototype of all human existence. God, in his plan of salvation, revealed himself fully in Jesus, who represents humanity for us and in this way completed creation and attained the perfect life in God.

We are created after the pattern of Christ. Through the Covenant we experience that likeness to God in a personal response of love. As Children of God, as his heirs, through the Covenant with God, we share our humanity with the Son, who is the Lord of all that exists, and through whom the universe was made. The entire creation is there because it is permanently willed in Christ by the Father.

All this sounds hard to understand. More simply put: God’s first act of creation was to replicate Himself as Jesus, the Christ, and, as the first human being, in that capacity, created all reality. In order to make us share in that act, he made, after the human race had fallen into sin, a covenant, a treaty of sorts, between Him, us and creation, so that the ultimate destination of creation, his Kingdom, the New Creation, would still come about.

And what happens when the Covenant is broken? Genesis 15 gives a vivid illustration of this. There it is related how God and Abraham covenanted. Abraham is asked to cut animals in two and both God, in the form of fire, and Abraham in person, pass through these severed animals. The cutting of these beasts illustrates that if the covenant is not kept the bodies of the parties concerned would be cut in half as punishment. Later when the Israelites abandoned the agreement, the 10 tribes were banished from the earth never to be heard from again. In essence the people of Israel were broken up for ever.

So the Covenant is for all who abide by its terms. They will, when Christ returns, share in his glorious Kingdom and continue to be active participants in the ongoing labor of love of beautifying the Kingdom, an assignment that will never cease, because Creation is Infinite as God is Infinite.