Al and Debra Hirsch were speaking at the Christian Associates staff conference in the Netherlands last week. Al is co-author with Michael Frost of The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church and National Director of Forge Mission Training Agency in Australia. It was all good stimulating, bawdy, overstated stuff - an excellent antidote to the slow grind of church-planting. Most of us left wanting to be hip wild geese dudes like Al and Debra flying in spiritual freedom, not the fat domesticated creatures that waddle around farmyards. That’s the power of a metaphor!
The recurring problem of the tension between narrative-historical and personal-existential readings of scripture came up in conversation. Al’s not keen on an eschatology (like mine) that, on the face of it, pushes large chunks of New Testament content back into the past. He wants an eschatology that addresses the liminality of the present moment and generates communitas.
The terminology comes from Victor Turner’s study of rites of passage - the process by which members of a group make the transition from one social status to another. ‘Liminality’, as Hirsch explains it, refers to periods of seclusion from the group and ordeal - for example, the trial by nature that young boys must go through out in the bush before re-entering the village as men. ‘Communitas’ is the intensified, unstructured and egalitarian form of community that develops in liminal situations. It is found in the early church and in churches that are suffering persecution. The Hirschian argument is that this condition should be normative for the missionary people of God.
The question, of course, is whether it is possible to live in a perpetual state of liminality. The exodus and the exile were unsettling and formative experiences, but they were spasms in the history of the people of God, thresholds, transitions in and out of a state of being settled - and ideally secure and prosperous - in the land. The early church was bound to accept the Constantinian settlement and to mistake Christian civilization for new creation. Hirsch laments the fact that the Chinese church is going bourgeois round the edges.
There is something in the argument that the precarious cultural and intellectual position of the church in the post-Christendom, postmodern world is analogous to the social insecurity that the early church faced. But still, a lot of energy is going into answering the questions, developing a new consensus, alleviating the tension. The whole emerging church thing feels transitional. To misquote T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, mankind cannot bear too much liminality.
It occurs to me, incidentally, that the ‘emerging church’ is not the church that will emerge from the ruins of Christendom. It is a forward-looking conversation about what will emerge and it is an attempt to model or illustrate in small, ineffectual and often flawed ways what that renewed post-Christendom church will be like. The significance of the emerging church movement is that it helps us to envisage - experimentally, provisionally and prophetically - what the church is becoming. It shouldn’t, therefore, be taken too seriously. There’s a long way to go yet.
Al and Debra also both laid great emphasis on the centrality of Jesus and mission for our understanding of what the church is called to be. Nothing very controversial in that, but his formula christology defines mission and mission defines church got me wondering.
In the first place, at the Future of the People of God conference in 2004 Tom Wright argued for a slightly different formula: eschatology defines mission and mission defines church. So if we take as the final objective the renewal of creation (not escape to the heavens), we have a mission that is creational in scope and a church that is expansive enough and imaginative enough to embrace that mission.
Beginning with eschatology, of course, is simply another way of saying beginning with God’s calling of a people to be a renewed creation, which goes all the way back to Abraham (go forth, multiply, fill the land). The problem is that this people repeatedly becomes corrupt or trapped by history and needs saving or redeeming: from slavery in Egypt, from ‘exile’, from persistent rebellion against God. I would suggest that what Jesus or christology defines is not mission but the saving of the people for the mission of God. He came to save his people from their sins so that they could be a new humanity. The lordship of Christ over the church is likewise the means by which the people of God stays on track to fulfil that mission, above all through a willingness to give and suffer for the sake of others, a willingness to be marginalized, a willingness to locate ourselves where renewal becomes possible.
So a more complex formula seems appropriate: God calls a people to be ‘new creation’ in the midst of the world and to work out that calling in community as mission; the perennial failure of the community, however, necessitates redemption, decisively in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and renewal through the power of the Spirit of God. A string of long words demonstrates the circularity of the formula: eschatology → missiology → ecclesiology → christology → eschatology. ‘Ecclesiology’ in this case must be understood to refer to the people called since Abraham to reproduce the paradigm of a righteous, God-centred humanity.
The liminality model makes sense of this more elaborate pattern. The calling of the people of God is to model new creation, which is fundamentally a settled experience of community around the living God. Renewal is an ordeal, a crisis, an unsettled transitional experience at the margins, a narrow and dangerous path, embodied in the suffering Son of man. We can’t help but oscillate between the two.
Cripes!
“Liminality”? Cripes!
“The recurring problem of the tension between narrative-historical and personal-existential readings of scripture”
Why set the one against the other? If you have the former reading without the latter, you have some sort of sense of identity and trajectory, but without the inner energy to sustain it or to make a sustainable impact on the world. The latter reading without the former provides a fizzy experience without much sense of where it came from or where it’s going - and fails to provide much sense of identity.
The key issue with an exclusively narrative-historical eschatological reading is, it seems to me, where the focus is placed. If the main focus of eschatology is Christ himself, all well and good. If the focus is on events which are only somewhat esoterically connected with him, either in the 1st century or the future (as in the vast majority of all eschatological readings), then the cracks between the two readings become chasms.
Symbolic bridges over historical chasms
Peter, I entirely agree that there needs to be some connection between reading historically and reading subjectively or existentially. Scripture, even when it is interpreted historically, must shape the church and the spiritual life of believers today. The question is: How should that connection be established. How do we derive present meaning from an ancient text?
The fact that something is historical does not make it irrelevant. The historical narrative of the exodus remained profoundly relevant for Israel, re-interpreted through prophecy, re-enacted annually in the symbolism of the passover. Christ’s death was a historical once-and-for-all event that impacts the self-understanding, the identity, of the church today, re-enacted symbolically and narratively in the Lord’s supper, baptism, etc. There is no chasm between Christ’s death under Pontius Pilate and the martyrdom of Polycarp or the worship of the church today. So what’s the problem with locating the parousia in the first centuries (note the plural) and establishing similar symbolic or narrative connections with the faith and practice of the church?
Historical narrative speaks powerfully to us through devotional reading, lectio divina, worship, liturgy, and of course through story-telling. It does not have to be collapsed into an a-historical Word of God that is laid open to every prejudice and fancy of the pious reader.
But what on earth do you mean by ‘events which are only somewhat esoterically connected with him’? My argument about the coming of the Son of man is centrally that it has to do with the vindication of Jesus Christ in the ancient world. Had God made him Lord or not? That was hardly a matter of esoteric interest to the suffering church.
As for ‘liminality’, I don’t know how we ever managed without it.
have we arrived?
I have a feeling that I am jumping into a debate somewhere in the middle, but I have some questions, so here they are:
It seems that if anything is to be learned from history, it is the lesson that when we get comfortable we forget God. To be in “a state of being settled - and ideally secure and prosperous” is therefore a dangerous thing for Christians.
Jesus says that if we are true followers/disciples we will always be in trouble with the world.
What we have been given is a focus on mission, the mission of reconciliation, and that has to be done regardless of the external forces against us.
Does it matter whether the parousia occured in the first centuries or is yet to occur? If there is an assumption that because the parousia has ‘taken place’ the task is somehow different now and the struggle need not be as it was, that we have in some sense already arrived, then that seems to me to be a bit of a dangerous assumption. So, is it fair to say that eschatology defines the mission while Christology the means? Aren’t the two really more organically interwoven and less sequential/seperate than Andrew’s model suggests?
Live to serve : Serve to live
Liminality
Liminality
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
“Liminality (from the Latin word lÄ«men, meaning “a threshold”) is the quality of the second stage of a ritual in the theories of Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, and others. In these theories, a ritual, especially a rite of passage, involves some change to the participants, especially their social status. This change is accomplished by separating the participants from the rest of their social group (the first, or preliminary stage: separation); a period during which one is “betwixt and between”, neither one status nor the other (the liminal stage); and a period during which one’s new social status is confirmed (the final, or postliminal stage: reincorporation).
The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition, during which your normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behaviour are relaxed, opening the way to something new.”
Six of one and half a dozen of the other?
You seem to want to
You seem to want to understand the mission of the church as creational, as “renewal of creation (not escape to the heavens).” Your parenthesis argues that creation was never intended to have fellowship with God apart from on this earth. (?) You then find Abraham’s mission likewise to be creational (go forth, multiply, fill the land). By the law of identity, then, you equate “the people of God” at Abraham’s time with “the people of God” today.
However, when I look at the specifics of what was asked of Abraham, and of what is asked of the church, I find them quite distinct. Abraham was called to leave Ur, go to Canaan, and circumcise himself and his offspring. The church is called to make disciples, to baptize, to reconcile man to man and man to God, to love. Abstractly (but not to the extent of obliterating the narrative-historical forms), the church is called to be like Jesus—yes, to have Jesus’ ethic, but also Jesus’ mission of “saving people from their sins so they could be a new humanity.” And after completing his (dare I say it) “earthly” mission, according to our narrative Jesus did not bodily stick around on this earth.
In other words, my reading of Scripture—incorporating both narrative-historical and personal-existential—along with my Christology lead me to look forward to an other-worldly existence, and to intervene in this world in a way that others will join us there. For me “new creation” is a starting-point, gained through allegience to Christ (though I may not yet fully grasp who I am)—and mission, what I am to conform to and to which I am tasked to lead others.
I've addressed Chris'
Christic Eschatology
Hirsch’s space between christologically-driven mission and New Testament eschatology is too broad in my estimation. Jurgen Moltmann significantly advanced healthy missional community with his emphasis on the church leading the world toward “the future of Jesus Christ.” In essence, it is Christic eschatology that is entirely hopeful and thus encourages mission to be thoroughly adventurous. At the same time, liminality (I love the word and the concept which was also put to fruitful use by Walter Brueggemann, by the way) is made prominent as a Christic hermeneutic has as much to do with the bright future of Jesus and his Body and all of creation as it does with how New Testament texts fit into the narrative history of the past. Both are necessary.
Bawdy eh?
Hi Andrew,loved your description of the input at the conference. Not quite sure about the ‘bawdy’ though. Not that I can’t go there at times—its an Aussie thing I am sure. :-)
Re the eschatology thing. I have been thinking that why I can’t quite connect with your view of NT eschatology is related somehow to the philosophy of time combined with the nature, span, immediacy, as well as the abiding authority of God’s word. Something in me tends to think that the implications of what you are suggesting are seriously problematic to faith itself—something akin to Lessing’s “broad ugly ditch” of history. I sense historicism in your theory of eschatology. And I think historicism/s has been adequately dealt with in the various quests for the historical Jesus.
Have you ever read Paul Minear’s Eyes of Faith? Its a brilliant philosophical-theological exploration into Biblical worldview, including its concept of time and history. Your can get ery cheap second hand copies from www.abebooks.com (a great site!). I highly recommend it.
Anyhow, cheers. It was great meeting you.
Alan
Al, thanks for taking the
Alan, thanks for taking the trouble to comment. I’ve been on holiday so you may have lost interest, but I’ll reply anyway.
Bawdy? Well, yes, between the two of you, I thought so - but maybe I was just having too much fun.
The historical reading of the New Testament certainly raises the sort of problems that you identify, but I don’t think that they are insuperable or as damaging to faith as you suggest.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by historicism. A reductionist reading of the texts that excludes the faith dimension? A reading distorted by modern presuppositions? To my mind a basic driving force behind the historical approach is a respect, first, for scripture as an unavoidably contextualized document and, secondly, respect for the concrete historical circumstances of those for whom the texts were written. This second point includes respect for the faith of those who honoured Christ as Lord in the difficult period of transition in the early centuries that I think New Testament eschatology for the most part describes or foresees.
So I don’t really see the conflict between history and faith. We accept large portions of the scriptures as historically contextualized without feeling that our faith is impaired - we talked at the conference about the significance of the exodus narrative for the continuing faith of Israel. Why should it be a problem to contextualize the parousia historically if that makes good sense of the texts in the light of the Old Testament and the historical circumstances of the early church? Why should faith suffer as a consequence? Israel’s faith was always that God was active in history, would intervene to judge and save when necessary. My argument about the Son of man motif is precisely that the people of God in Christ had the same faith that God would intervene soon - or soonish - to judge and save.
In any case, I don’t think we lose the eschatological hope altogether. My point is that by contextualizing the Son of man / parousia motif, which I think we must do if we are to respect the historical and literary character of these texts, we shift our eschatological focus from the survival of the people of God (above all the survival or salvation of those who lose their lives in the ‘war’ against the beast) to the renewal of creation. Our hope is not fundamentally that we will survive but that God will not abandon this glorious world to wickedness, injustice, decay and death.
I think it is at least helpful to see how these two modes of eschatology are differentiated narratively, but this cannot be done without taking into account the historical dimension of the narrative. This is where I diverge from Wes’ position (and probably Moltmann’s) - it still looks to me like eschatology as one big bowl of soup with everything thrown in, rather than as a sequence of courses differentiated within the narrative of the meal.
At the moment I feel that the need is to rediscover the link between christology and the biblical narrative about the people of God, not least because this will help us recover the sense of purpose or mission that we agree is integral to the self-understanding of the church. The Son of man narrative has decisively redefined the people of God as a new humanity centred on the living God, and the Christ who suffered out of obedience to God remains Lord in place of all other lords for the church, but the final prospect is not intrinsically christological (because there is no more suffering) - it is that authority should be handed back to God so that he may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:24-28).
To oversimplify (overcomplicate?): Christ rescues God’s people through suffering from historical judgment to be renewed humanity in the midst of the nations of the world; but the mission is God’s and the final renewal of creation is God’s doing.
Or the other way round: God (not christology) defines mission through the restarting of creation (eg. the calling of Abraham to be a new fruitful humanity in a prosperous land); and within that narrative Jesus redefines the terms and conditions under which the people anticipates the final state of new creation.