The People of God's Presence

An Introduction to Ecclesiology

Cross, Terry L.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781493417964
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia ed etica sistematica

In an age when the church is sometimes viewed as irrelevant and inauthentic, leading Pentecostal theologian Terry Cross calls the people of God to a radical change of structure and mission based on theological principles. Cross, whose work is respected by scholars from across the ecumenical landscape, offers an introduction to ecclesiology that demonstrates how Pentecostals can contribute to and learn from the church catholic. A forthcoming volume by the author, Serving the People of God's Presence, will focus on the role of leadership in the church.

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The Church as the Means of Connecting with God?

Direct Encounters with God and Secondary Mediation in the Church

Encounters between God and Humans: Direct or Indirect?

The people of God have experienced the presence of the risen Christ directly through the presence of the Holy Spirit and the instrumentality of the Word of God; they have been (and are being) transformed by this encounter. Moreover, the people of God continue to experience the presence of God directly through the presence of the Spirit and within the gathering of God’s people for worship, instruction, ministry, and sending. Overall, this is the proposal of this book. The initial encounters with God’s Spirit in order to bring about salvation may come all at once or over many years through many means. Within such experiences, as God uses various means to connect with a human, the Spirit makes direct connection with the unbeliever’s spirit and therefore reveals the truth of the gospel in Jesus Christ. While God may have used a person sharing their experience with God, a worship service in a local church, a sunset over the Rocky Mountains, the preaching of the Scriptures on the radio, “a flute concerto, the blossoming shrub, or a dead dog”1 to initiate these encounters with us, these were secondary means to the primary or direct encounter with God. By using the words “primary” and “secondary,” I do not mean to denigrate the latter, since both are ways in which God operates in our midst. However, what I am suggesting is that within such indirect, secondary means, God confronts us in a direct, primal encounter of an “I” and a “Thou.” The Holy Spirit connects with our spirits directly. Jürgen Moltmann offers a clear description of what he calls experiences of the Holy Spirit: “We are saying that these experiences [of the Spirit] are of unfathomable depth, because in them God himself is present in us [weil in ihnen Gott selbst in uns anwesend ist], so that in the immanence of our hearts we discover a transcendent depth.”2 This heads toward what I mean by experiencing the direct presence of God. While it is true that God accommodates to us by stooping to our level with signs and symbols to mediate his presence to us, it is also true that we may experience God directly even within that mediation. Thus, while utilizing indirect means of physical, tangible signs, God still encounters us directly through his Spirit. The difficulty with this proposal is that many understandings of the church have focused on the church itself as the only means of connecting with God; the church somehow becomes the primary way by which humans can connect with God and God with them. I find this conclusion to be problematic.

It seems true to say that physical signs (media) may indeed participate in some way with the thing they are signifying, thereby opening up space for God to enter and truly encounter us. However, if the focus of our attention is on the sign and not on the presence of God within, behind, or beyond the symbol, then we have somehow missed the occasion for God’s presence to confront us directly. To be sure, missing the direct presence of God by focusing on the secondary means may not have been the intent of the authors we will survey in this chapter, but it certainly is the result of their ecclesiological proposals. The origin and continuance of the Christian life are not found in the secondary accoutrements of the church’s rituals or activities; the origin and continuance of the Christian life are found in a direct encounter of the Spirit of God with a human being, such that a transformation occurs—a passing from death to life, created anew in Christ Jesus by the power of the Spirit. “The experience of the Spirit makes Christ—the risen Christ—present, and with him makes the eschatological future present too.”3 It is my contention that this initial, salvific encounter with God—rebirth or regeneration, if you will—is the basis for calling ourselves Christians and the foundation for being engrafted into the body of Christ. “In the moment of ‘rebirth,’ eternity touches time.”4 Without such an experience in God, we are left circulating around things that look and sound churchy, but without a truly life-changing movement from death to life. Only the Spirit of God can birth us a second time and engraft us into the body of Christ (John 3:3–8). To become a Christian can take a moment when the presence of Christ encounters us and we respond positively to God’s gracious Spirit; to become Christlike, however, takes a lifetime of continual divine encounters and a life-response of obedience within the context of a community of believers where we learn together how to spend our lives for God and others, where we share life together while following Christ, and where we continue to experience together the empowering presence of the Spirit leading us away from our self-centeredness and into a life that is other-centered, just like the Triune God. To accomplish this becoming, we need the body of Christ—the church.

So then, is the church only good for making us better followers of Christ? It is certainly more than that. Through the secondary mediation of signs and symbols, I contend that God’s Spirit may encounter us directly. These are instruments through which God himself5 has chosen to meet with us. This encounter does not, however, make the instruments themselves holy—just useful. The church, then, has a role to play in spreading the gospel of Christ so that people who are encountered by the Spirit may be able to discern who this One is who confronted them.

As already noted, this proposal for a direct encounter with God does not mean there is no indirect or mediated avenue through which God engages humankind. God continues to speak and encounter us through these secondary means, but at the same time believers have something more. God has also given us his own Spirit—the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead and now works with power in us to raise us from the death of sin to the life of God (Rom. 8:9–11). The Spirit of God lives within us, assuring us that we belong to Christ (8:9). Therefore, those who are led by this indwelling Spirit of God are truly God’s children (8:14). The Spirit within us does not bring fear, but instead the certainty of our adoption into God’s family, whereby we cry “Abba, Father,” as did Jesus (8:15). This same indwelling Spirit “testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children” (8:16). Finally, the indwelling Spirit also “intercedes for us through wordless groans” (8:26b). Through the power of the indwelling Spirit of God, then, believers have the direct, immediate presence of the living God in Jesus Christ, assuring them of their salvation and adoption into God’s family as well as attesting to the Spirit’s own presence within them by praying through them with groans from their inner beings. We have the privilege of experiencing God face-to-face in this new covenant—and not solely through mediation; such encounters continue throughout the Christian life because the Spirit lives within us, leading, guiding, and assuring us of God’s very presence. This is what it means to live in Christ and have Christ live in us. I can think of no clearer biblical expression than this to describe the direct encounter with God.

Two Challenges to a Direct Encounter with God

In speaking of a direct encounter with God, I face two major challenges. First, there seem to be only indirect encounters with God, since the infinite God uses (or must use) media in order to connect with finite humans. At best, then, humans have an encounter with God that is not really with God but with the media used by God.6 This becomes problematic because humans seem to have an interpretive network centered in our brains and coordinated by means of our social network to give meaning to these media and to any experience we might have of them. Therefore, ...