Sam:
To press the issues however (and to state them starker than I mean): Keith, does your argument imply an abandonment of the old Reformational adage – Transform all of life? If so, does not that imply a different, much gloomer reading of the state of creation after the fall? Am I mis-reading you?
Keith:
I need to back up a little. I was telling Grant at breakfast a couple of weeks ago that my basic concern is that congregations (and perhaps denominations, but probably not) become real familial communities. When congregations become real communities, they tend to become heavily concerned with one another’s business. Questions such as the following emerge in authentic familial communities: Do you have enough money? Do you have work that suits you? Do we have enough money? Do we have work that suits us? How’s your relationship with so and so? Where is God calling you? etc., etc. Now, it is my contention that familial communities like this will have needs and callings that may lead them to take on projects that protect and nurture one another and the larger community (but not too large because no community of potential friends has unlimited resources). These projects may or may not include schools, hospitals, local political parties, labor unions, congregational organizing, etc. These familial communities may even discern together the best way to vote for the sake of the health of their community (which should also work for the health of other parallel communities).
So, contrary to what I might have said at 5 in the morning, I don’t think an institution or movement needs to come under the organizational auspices of a congregation or denomination to become authentically Christian. My point is the obverse: congregations have the freedom to protect and nurture one another as followers of Jesus and central participants in the Triune life. Where that leads is where that leads.
Now, about your question. The community is a part of the transforming of all of life, nothing is closed to its touch. The problem is not really the state of creation. I’m being highly sanguine about the potential for realized salvation, punctuated by the whims of the Spirit. However deep and long is the corruption, salvation goes farther and faster.
Sam:
I am still not sold on ecclisial communities (churched, etc.) being “the central participants in the Triune life”. What about non-ecclesial human communities that are bent on serving the Creator? Why privilege the ecclesial? I feel, and maybe my sentiment is skewed, that there is a kind of distrust in your rhetoric toward the non-ecclesial, or maybe, whatever is not sanctioned by the ecclesial? Am I missing your point?
Keith:
I hear two points. One, a rhetoric of distrust on my part. That makes me think a bit. Second, why privilege the ecclesial? What about non-ecclesial human communities that are bent on serving the Creator?
Let me think about your first point for awhile.
On your second query. I privilege the ecclesial for lots of reasons. First, the fullness of worship isn’t conducted and experienced elsewhere. Second, being saved always includes a call to a community that provides the matrix of your salvation. That called community is the church. The church with its structures of worship and accountability. Third, our relational potential is finite. And, if the church is a family, as I’ve been arguing, then it is hard to have more than one family (although the family can get larger and larger). I’ve got other reasons, but I have no doubt these will get you chasing lots of mental errands.
Sam:
I dare say that your ‘privileging’ of the ecclesial is begging the question. Let me explain. To explain the assertion that “the ecclisial is the central participants in the Triune life” you now assert that the ecclesial is also the locus of the “fullness of worship”, etc. This seems to simply reiterate the point without a sufficient argument to sustain the claim.
You probably expected for me to come back with the standard Reformational retort that worship has to do with all of life. (which I’ve implicitly made in the above paragraph.) And, it seems that you are making a further move and identifying the church with what in the Reformational circles is understood as the institutional sense of a church. Why not also envisage ‘church’ as a “called community” that permeates the entire social realm as ‘yeast through the dough’? That seems to be another, legitimate way to characterize ‘church’, what Kuyper, following biblical writers, would call the Body. What I am suggesting is that you are confusing two different senses in which ‘church’ can be envisaged, and, as a result, portraying church to be only an institution. Hence, there is a good deal of suspicion towards the non-ecclesial. If, however, you allow ‘church’ to be defined as ‘yeast permeated through the dough of society’ then there would be less ground for suspicion. More precisely, the same suspicion that you have towards the non-ecclesial should be aimed toward the ecclesial: unless your ecclesiology shifts toward high Anglicanism or Catholicism, it is difficult to uproot churches from the realm of divinely-ordained but humanly-constructed institutions as a Protestant. What I am hearing in much of your rhetoric is an quasi-Anabaptist argument. I am not sure what the standard argument is for exculpating churches from the same inadequacies and failures that plague the non-ecclesial.
Enough “mental errands” for now.
kstarkenburg
Sep 11 2002
11:17 am
Sam:
To press the issues however (and to state them starker than I mean): Keith, does your argument imply an abandonment of the old Reformational adage – Transform all of life? If so, does not that imply a different, much gloomer reading of the state of creation after the fall? Am I mis-reading you?
Keith:
I need to back up a little. I was telling Grant at breakfast a couple of weeks ago that my basic concern is that congregations (and perhaps denominations, but probably not) become real familial communities. When congregations become real communities, they tend to become heavily concerned with one another’s business. Questions such as the following emerge in authentic familial communities: Do you have enough money? Do you have work that suits you? Do we have enough money? Do we have work that suits us? How’s your relationship with so and so? Where is God calling you? etc., etc. Now, it is my contention that familial communities like this will have needs and callings that may lead them to take on projects that protect and nurture one another and the larger community (but not too large because no community of potential friends has unlimited resources). These projects may or may not include schools, hospitals, local political parties, labor unions, congregational organizing, etc. These familial communities may even discern together the best way to vote for the sake of the health of their community (which should also work for the health of other parallel communities).
So, contrary to what I might have said at 5 in the morning, I don’t think an institution or movement needs to come under the organizational auspices of a congregation or denomination to become authentically Christian. My point is the obverse: congregations have the freedom to protect and nurture one another as followers of Jesus and central participants in the Triune life. Where that leads is where that leads.
Now, about your question. The community is a part of the transforming of all of life, nothing is closed to its touch. The problem is not really the state of creation. I’m being highly sanguine about the potential for realized salvation, punctuated by the whims of the Spirit. However deep and long is the corruption, salvation goes farther and faster.
Sam:
I am still not sold on ecclisial communities (churched, etc.) being “the central participants in the Triune life”. What about non-ecclesial human communities that are bent on serving the Creator? Why privilege the ecclesial? I feel, and maybe my sentiment is skewed, that there is a kind of distrust in your rhetoric toward the non-ecclesial, or maybe, whatever is not sanctioned by the ecclesial? Am I missing your point?
Keith:
I hear two points. One, a rhetoric of distrust on my part. That makes me think a bit. Second, why privilege the ecclesial? What about non-ecclesial human communities that are bent on serving the Creator?
Let me think about your first point for awhile.
On your second query. I privilege the ecclesial for lots of reasons. First, the fullness of worship isn’t conducted and experienced elsewhere. Second, being saved always includes a call to a community that provides the matrix of your salvation. That called community is the church. The church with its structures of worship and accountability. Third, our relational potential is finite. And, if the church is a family, as I’ve been arguing, then it is hard to have more than one family (although the family can get larger and larger). I’ve got other reasons, but I have no doubt these will get you chasing lots of mental errands.
Sam:
I dare say that your ‘privileging’ of the ecclesial is begging the question. Let me explain. To explain the assertion that “the ecclisial is the central participants in the Triune life” you now assert that the ecclesial is also the locus of the “fullness of worship”, etc. This seems to simply reiterate the point without a sufficient argument to sustain the claim.
You probably expected for me to come back with the standard Reformational retort that worship has to do with all of life. (which I’ve implicitly made in the above paragraph.) And, it seems that you are making a further move and identifying the church with what in the Reformational circles is understood as the institutional sense of a church. Why not also envisage ‘church’ as a “called community” that permeates the entire social realm as ‘yeast through the dough’? That seems to be another, legitimate way to characterize ‘church’, what Kuyper, following biblical writers, would call the Body. What I am suggesting is that you are confusing two different senses in which ‘church’ can be envisaged, and, as a result, portraying church to be only an institution. Hence, there is a good deal of suspicion towards the non-ecclesial. If, however, you allow ‘church’ to be defined as ‘yeast permeated through the dough of society’ then there would be less ground for suspicion. More precisely, the same suspicion that you have towards the non-ecclesial should be aimed toward the ecclesial: unless your ecclesiology shifts toward high Anglicanism or Catholicism, it is difficult to uproot churches from the realm of divinely-ordained but humanly-constructed institutions as a Protestant. What I am hearing in much of your rhetoric is an quasi-Anabaptist argument. I am not sure what the standard argument is for exculpating churches from the same inadequacies and failures that plague the non-ecclesial.
Enough “mental errands” for now.