God, Freedom, and the Body of Christ

Toward a Theology of the Church

Alexander J. D. Irving

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725258570
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie et éthique systématiques

A contribution to the end of the Church knowing itself as the body of Christ. Irving articulates a theology of the Church as that which participates in all that Jesus is in his vicarious humanity by the power of the Spirit. This is developed through a dialogical (or covenantal) frame that has its focal point in Christ, in whom the faithful love of God toward creation and the faithful love of creation toward God is actualized. The Church as the body of Christ participates in the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ. Each chapter explores a different element of this participatory ecclesiology.This book offers a constructive ecclesiology, built from the ground up on the foundation of a dialogical perspective, which has participation in Christ as its controlling center. This foundation provides the basis upon which an exhilarating vision of the Church can be built, to encourage Christians to cherish the Church as the body of Christ which participates in the triune communion through being included into the Son by the power of the Spirit and comes to reflect the triune God in its own structures.

1

Dialogue and Participation

The coincidence of individuals brings something new into being. That new thing is the relationship itself, the bond of love between the two. In a relationship each individual retains their own identity and distinct character. Just like two lengths of string that get wrapped up with one another remain two distinct lengths of string, so also individuals coalesce and remain distinct. The emergence of a relationship, then, is not like a chemical reaction. It is not the transformation of two elements into something else by their coming together. Instead, this is something much more like music. When you play several notes at one time, together they form something which none of the notes could be by themselves. They form a different unity, something textured and nuanced which is only possible by the coincidence of those particular notes. The notes that make up that new sound are not lost in that unity. It is just that their own sound is now deposited in the unity of the chord. In the same way, our lives are brought into union with the lives of others. As our lives intertwine a new reality is created, something that one life alone could never be: a relationship, a communion.

Scripture gives witness to the act of God by which creation is established as his corresponding other. In doing so, both God and creation are invested in the new thing that is made: a relationship, a covenant. The dialogue within this relationship is the faithful love from the side of God met by the faithful love from the side of creation. However, in the coming to being of something new, God and creation remain what they are in all their radical difference. At the very center of this dialogue is the person of Jesus Christ in whom God and humanity come together without losing their respective integrities and in whom the love of God for creation is fully expressed and in whom the love of creation for God is fully expressed. The Church is that which is introduced into this complete dialogue through participation in Jesus by the power of the Spirit. At every stage, therefore, our thinking about the Church needs to be properly integrated with Jesus and the Spirit. Certainly, this means that the activity of the Church is not a human response to God running parallel, but external, to Christ establishing some new relationship between God and creation. Instead, the Church is one with Jesus, participating in him as the perfect-covenant partner of the Father.

This chapter sets out the broad theological landscape within which this theological consideration of the Church sits. Its purpose is to give some orientation to the themes of covenant and participation which are so central to understanding the Church as the body of Christ. It is intended to be introductory in tone and content. The foundation for ecclesiology that is articulated here is dialogical. God made creation to be his dialogue partner, meaning that God made creation in order to share his life with it, to bless it, and to receive the response of creation. The inner rationale of creation, in other words, is covenant relation. Creation is made to be in covenant with God, whereby the actuality of that covenant is not a development of creation to a higher calling than was initially purposed but is inherent within the very rationale of creation’s existence. This covenant relationship is focused through humans, the image of God, the meeting point between God and the rest of creation through which God blesses creation and through which creation reciprocally praises God. This vocation of humanity is further concentrated through Israel which is to be a nation of priests, and, ultimately, through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the perfect image of God, the true Israel, in whom this dialogue between God and creation reaches full expression. The Church, as the body of Jesus Christ, participates in all Jesus is and as such the Church is that which is included in the reciprocal love between God the Father and Jesus Christ. In order to illustrate the theme, two aspects of the Church are coordinated to this participatory ecclesiology: worship and mission.

The Dialogue of God and Creation

Creation and Covenant

God does not need. As will be explored much more fully in the next chapter, God is free. God chose to make creation in the absolute freedom of what it is to be God. It is not as if God had something lacking in himself and so needed to create something else to answer that need. In bringing something that is not God into being, God is not determined by some other agenda that is external to his own will. It is also not as if God necessarily exists alongside something that is not God. At the very center of the mystery of the existence of creation is the fact that creation does not exist because God needs it. Nor does creation exist because God was compelled to make it, and creation certainly does not exist by sheer necessity of the way things have been, are, and always will be. This is the mystery of our existence: why does creation exist at all? Why, in his utter freedom, did God decide to make something else to exist alongside him? As Jürgen Moltmann has written, “This is the question of a child who is no longer a child.”1 Some light is shed on this mystery by the apostle Paul in the opening of his Letter to the Ephesians.

Praise be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Eph 1:3–6)

The choice of God was to create and adopt what he made into the blessing of his own life. God created so to draw what he created into relationship with himself, as adopted children through the work of the eternal Son Jesus Christ. The will of God in creating is to adopt us into positive relation with him, allowing us to share in a filial relation of sonship. We are created for the purpose of being the dialogue partner of God. We can put this another way: the mystery of our existence is answered only in the love of God. God created us in order to love us. Correspondingly, creation is to reciprocate with praise as the kindness and generosity of God is met by the thankfulness of his creatures.

Jesus Christ stands at the center of this reciprocal relationship between God and his creation. The blessing which we receive from God comes to us “in Christ.” The way we are adopted into the family of God is “through Jesus Christ.” The glorious grace of God is given us in “the One he loves.” The love of God is expressed towards creation through Jesus Christ. On the other hand, it is through Jesus Christ that we creatures respond with praise and thankfulness. As the doxology continues, we find out that God’s ultimate purpose is “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under the one head, even Christ” (Eph 1:10). All things that God has created are to be joined together under the headship of Jesus Christ, through whom “we have access to the Father by one Spirit” (Eph 2:18). This reciprocal relationship, this dialogue of the love of God and the answering love of creation, has its focal point in the person of Jesus Christ who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, reveals and enacts the love of God upon his creation and speaks back with creaturely words and lives of praise to God.

The phrase “turtles all the way down” has come to express the problem of the absence of foundations. Within the contested field of knowledge claims, it refers to the absence of a necessary truth upon which an argument may be built. What is needed is a statement which verifies itself. A truth which doesn’t slip into dependence on another in order to be shown to be true; a still and solid point of rest upon which to build. However, this phrase is not only used with respect to logical argument. The cosmos, it is said, must have a sure foundation which requires no proof from beyond itself. Stephen Hawking made use of the phrase in referring to the mystery of the foundations of the universe.

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing on?’ ‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever,’ said the old lady. ‘But it’s turtl...