This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

The Problem of an Ahistorical Church

In many Protestant circles today, particularly among evangelical and “emergent” groups, there is either a paradigm of primitivism (a desire to get back behind the purported historical baggage of the two thousand years of the Church's life to the “pure” first century Church—which usually means things like meeting in homes, small groups, communal structures, and so forth) or one of cafeteria-style selection of various practices and beliefs scattered throughout the history of the Church, without regard to the original setting or the historical development underlying these practices and beliefs. Occasionally, there is an inconsistent mixture of both primitivism and the cafeteria at once. What is ignored, and in some extreme cases even outright rejected, is the place, legitimacy, and authority of the historical life of the Church. That is not to say that certain elements of the history aren't espoused (few would reject the Nicene Creed or the Chalcedonian definition as touchstones and safeguards of proper Christian belief). It is simply to say that in the final analysis, the historical life of the Church lacks any real authority, other than precedent perhaps, and must be sifted through the first principles and mores of present-day Christian living, normatively on the very specific individual level.

Other evidence of this distancing of Christian thought and life from the historical thought and life of the Church is the modern predilection—among mainline groups as well as evangelicals—toward “relevancy.” Traditional theological formulae, doxological and liturgical language, and various ascetical practices, all are abandoned with relatively little afterthought on the presupposition that old means impractical and incomprehensible, the presumption that Christianity must be repackaged with every generation if it is to “make sense” to that generation.

Ironically, among the aforementioned evangelical groups, this rather cavalier stance with regard to the historical life of the Church is coupled with a dogged insistence on the historicity of Jesus. Great apologetic pains are taken to assert and defend the Gospels as historical and historically accurate accounts of Jesus' life. (I should note that there are marked instances among “postmodern” and “emergent” churches and individuals of a willingness to forgo a stubborn adherence to the importance of an historical Jesus.) In terms of the importance of history for our knowledge and understanding of the Christian faith, Jesus is divorced from his Body, the Church.

But this gives rise to several problems.

First, it calls into question Jesus' promise of the perseverance of his Church. Since Jesus built his Church in time, since his Church began as a specific and identifiable group of followers, then the historical existence, in time, of that specific and identifiable group of followers is going to be important in terms of Jesus' promise. Either Jesus' promise did not fail or it did—unless one wants to argue that the continuation of Jesus' Body, the Church, is not in any way predicated upon an historical body. But to argue that is to call into question the entire book of the Acts of the Apostles as well as St. Paul's letters to specific and identifiable Churches. Why bother recording the beginning history of the Church if such history is unimportant? Why take care to address certain matters taking place in the Church in time, if such temporal existence is not what matters? No, the choice really is a stark one: either Jesus kept his promise for the perseverance of the Church or he did not. And that perseverance must take place in time, for humans only come to be in time and only are saved in time.

Second, it separates present-day Christians from the Church Jesus founded. This separation may be relatively innocent, due to naivete or common ignorance, or it may be more intentional, an outright rejection. Certainly if one intentionally and willfully separates oneself from an historical group, then it is obvious that one has willfully ceased to be part of that group. And while it may not be obvious that one who ignorantly or naively just does not know or is not concerned about an historical group is separated from that group, surely it is not surprising that on a day to day lived level such an historical entity has no practical effect or impact on such a one. So, intentional or not, if the historical Church plays no role in the thought or behavior of an individual, it is surely the case that such a one is effectively separated from the historic Church.

And if this separation is allowed to stand, to become institutionalized, then there is a third problem: It elevates schism and division over unity as the ecclesial norm. Not only did Jesus promise the perseverance of the Church, he also prayed for its unity. Clearly schism is not Jesus' will for the Church, and more to the point, it is, Christologically and theologically speaking, an ontological impossibility. The Church can no more be divided than can the human and divine natures in the Person of Christ, nor the Persons of the Trinity from one another. And that is precisely the basis for which Jesus prays for the unity of the Church. Further, such unity is of no human creation. No human effort can accomplish the union of the natures of Christ or the Persons of the Trinity. Similarly, the unity of the Church is a divine doing, not a human one. If that unity is to happen, it is a theurgy, a work of God. So, if one is effectively separated from the Church and that separation is allowed to endure and to become formalized, then the resultant state of affairs is only schism. And not just schism, but schism as a norm, as the way things ought to be. No human effort can then undo that schism. No human effort can make of the fracturing of Christians a divine unity. All that is left is the furtherance of the logic: the proliferation of schism and division.

Fourth, it implicitly eliminates all authority except that of the individual believer. If schism is the result of separation from the historical Church in thought and life, then there is no ecclesial authority by which disputes of doctrine, worship and morals can be settled. What is left is the competition of personal authorities, each claiming the authority of the Scriptures, but in reality only effectively asserting their interpretive persuasiveness. To appeal to the authority of one's own group-in-division is not to answer the question of authority, but only to place the question one step removed. In point of fact, within schism, one's personal allegiance to such a group is wholly decided by one's own personal persuasion and/or conviction regarding that group's authority. But that group competes with other groups-in-division, offering other assertions of and appeals to authority, each group ultimately appealing to a particular personal interpretation of Scripture. Ultimately, Christians are individual islands floating in temporal chains of allegiance based on likenesses to one's own idiosyncratic understandings of Scripture (that is to say, doctrine, worship and morals).

Fifthly, then, it effectively eliminates any criteria of Gospel truth. For the only criteria are one's proficiency in persuading oneself and others of one's individual interpretation of Scripture. But such criteria differ from person to person within a group and from group to group as well. Nor is it a matter of finding the preponderance of similar criteria. Truth is not won by random sampling or majority vote.

Sixth, it reduces the Church to a mental proposition or an intellective list of self-determined characteristics. For if the ultimate authority is the individual, then the test of allegiance is not ontological but intellectual. Dogma (including pragmatic tests which ultimately hid dogmatic essentials) alone becomes the test upon which to build allegiance. Given the lack of authority and thus of authoritative truth criteria, as well as the fact of proliferating schisms, the contradictions and variations in terms of liturgy and practice become so great as to render any common denominator impossible. Indeed, it is precisely because of the lack of institutional unity that dogma becomes the sole criterion for group allegiance. But if this is so, then church membership can only be an intellective list of “core” or “essential” doctrines—which lists, of course, differ from group to group.

But if the Church is reduced to whatever group has the personally determined “proper” doctrines, then a seventh problem arises, namely, it implicitly calls into question the bodily expression of the Christian faith, elevating propositional knowledge and/or emotive passions, over deeds and behavior. If what is important in terms of group allegiance and fellowship with other Christians is dogma, then given the large institutional variations between groups, the specific contours of living the faith becomes secondary, reduced to a set of ethical propositions about behavior rather than a holistic participation in the soteriology of the Church.

And if the intellective is lifted above the bodily, then finally, and most importantly, the ignorance of Church history or its rejection implicitly calls into question the centrality of the Incarnation. The dismissal of the history of the Church is a dismissal of the Church's bodily existence. To remove the Church from its historical experience and existence is to reduce the Church to a wholly spiritual body which is not (and in some ways cannot be) identified with any one particular historical body. But if Christ had a physical and visible human body, then consistency would demand that his mystical Body, the Church, be a physical and visible entity, manifest in formal and organic structure, readily delimitable and identifiable by its forms. If the visible and formal structures of the Church, which are manifested historically, that is to say in space and time, are unimportant, then it is only a matter of consistency to turn that evaluation back onto the Person of Jesus. After all, if his mystical Body, the Church, is, in fact, not a visible entity—if what is important about the Church is its spiritual reality primarily (or even exclusively)--then why all this fuss about Jesus' bodily and historical existence?

Let me be clear here: I am not saying that each and every Christian who implicitly or explicitly rejects the historical Church necessarily adheres to each of these problems. I'm simply denoting, for the sake of clarity, what the rejection of the historical Church entails. If Christians do not find themselves following the trajectory of their rejection into these problems it is not because there isn't any problems with rejecting the historical Church, it is simply that they are inconsistent in their beliefs. They engage in non sequitors, affirming conclusions that do not follow from their premises. And, insofar as their conclusions align themselves with the thought and life of the historical Church—despite their rejection of that Church—then we do well to rejoice in their inconsistencies.

By the same token, the rejection of the historical Church does end in the problems delineated here. The objective proof is all around us. If God and our own inconsistencies for now keep us from realizing the consequences of the rejection of the historical Church, we do well to be grateful, but do better to be forewarned--and better still to repent.

Posted by Clifton at June 11, 2006 07:01 PM | TrackBack