Argument
My argument is as follows. I maintain that the word with is the most important word in theology. Hence the Prologue, which articulates that conviction as best and as succinctly as I am able. This is not an Anglican theology that sacralizes the created order by claiming divine participation in it through Christ. It is an enquiry into whether with is the pervading theme that runs through Trinity, creation, incarnation, atonement, the sending of the Spirit, ecclesiology, and eschatology.
In Part I, I come from two angles to the same arrival point. In Chapter 3 I argue that the human project in the West has been to secure life against limitation in general and mortality in particular, but that such efforts have only deepened the true predicament, which is isolation. In Chapter 4 I suggest that efforts at reconciliation fail because Christians invariably approach the situation with exasperation and impatience, whereas it turns out that there is no gospel that is not reconciliation – and restored relationship is the epicenter of God’s mission.
In Part II, I continue this introductory survey of the significance of with by first exploring, in Chapter 5, how with is the central theme, not just of Jesus’ ministry, but of the whole scriptural narrative. I then in Chapter 6 narrow down on what I judge to be the single most important story in the Bible for grasping my argument – the parable of the Good Samaritan – and show how the way the story is read reveals people’s commitments and assumptions about social engagement and their status before God. Then in Chapter 7 I offer a critique of the other three modes of engagement – working for, working with, and being for – to explain why I make the bold claims for being with that are to be found in Chapter 2.
Part III is the center of the book. Those who have perhaps read Living Without Enemies, and are convinced of the centrality of being with, and wish to know more what it involves and implies, might want simply to start here. Chapter 8 is the numerical and thematic heart of the argument. Here I outline eight dimensions of being with in philosophical and pastoral perspective. In the following chapter I suggest what it means to see Jesus as the embodiment of the phrase “God with us.” Then in Chapter 10, Chapter 11, and Chapter 12 I explore and illustrate the ways being with has been played out in a carefully chosen range of contexts.
In Part IV, I make a start on what could well be a much larger project – to imagine the implications of being with for theology and ethics. Chapter 13 offers some pointers within some of the conventional theological loci, and Chapter 14 looks in detail at one particular approach to social engagement that I judge to have promising resonances with my argument.
In Part V, by way of summary and review, I anticipate what I expect to be the two most consistent criticisms of my argument. In Chapter 15 I set out what being with means in relation to more conventional working-for and working-with notions of justice and in the process offer a model by which one may set these different approaches side-by-side as complementary forms of engagement. Then in Chapter 16 I look at suffering and consider ways in which being with clarifies what is at stake in Christian witness in the face of suffering. In the end, being with rests on a renewed notion and practice of prayer.
The book concludes in the Epilogue as it began in the Prologue, with a sermon: this time with a simple, tangible encounter that seeks to epitomize the hopefulness and humble spirit of the book, and affirms that being with one another and with God are not, ultimately, two different things.
I should add a note on style, assumptions, and forebears.
Style
I have published conventional academic monographs and works in a more homiletic vein, introductory works to ethics and other subjects, and more provocative and exploratory works in new areas. This book includes elements of all of these. I am a scholar and a practitioner, a writer and a speaker, a pastor and a broadcaster, a theologian and a priest, a preacher and an academic. It became clear in the writing that this book was going to find it difficult to settle in one genre alone. I trust this comes across as an asset rather than a defect.
The reason the style varies is that I am trying to do several things in the same book. The early chapters are seeking to persuade the reader that there really is a practical and theological problem with the way social engagement is conventionally carried out. They make this argument in a direct and somewhat popular style. I am not seeking to amass data to compel agreement; I am setting out to capture the reader’s imagination to see the world a whole different way. The theological and practical arguments cannot, in the end, be disentangled from one another, so for example in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 they are intermingled. Likewise I see the move to being with fundamentally as a conversion, and so I begin and end the book with a prologue and epilogue that suggest a whole outlook on life that I do not finally know how to communicate other than in a homiletic genre.
The surveys of biblical and theological themes are similarly not intended to offer comprehensive analysis of a century of scholarly writing on the subjects they cover. Instead they seek to paint broad brushstrokes that locate anomalies, highlight key questions, and point to fertile areas of development. Almost any chapter in the book could have developed into a book in its own right, so the challenge has been to avoid digging down into exhaustive detail but instead to keep the perspective broad and general. When it comes to the central chapters in the book in Part III, the method changes somewhat. The most significant chapter is Chapter 8, because there I do my best to articulate precisely what being with involves – and here I draw on a significant tradition including such figures as Gabriel Marcel, Iris Murdoch, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Lévinas, Giorgio Agamben, and Martin Buber. This is perhaps the only chapter in the book where I am seeking to be definitive rather than polemical or suggestive, and in order to be definitive I need to establish roots among those who have sought to be definitive before me. The other chapters in Part III are largely illustrative: the broad principles of being with are fairly easily grasped, and my sense in the main task is then to show how deeply being with is grounded in scripture and to illustrate what its commitments imply in particular contexts.
Readers will already have noticed that the language of with and for, and the categories of working for, being for, working with and being with, pervade the book. I do not put such terms within speech marks, nor do I italicize them. This may take a bit of getting used to, but it is in keeping with my aspiration to make such terms part of regular theological and ethical vocabulary. When I use a term such as working for adjectivally I hyphenate it to avoid misunderstanding – hence “a working-for solution.” They are not watertight categories, and the book is not designed to chase everything but being with out of town; but I hope the reader will quickly find they offer a helpful lens to assess ethical and theological questions.
Is therefore the whole argument of the book an exaggeration? Does healthy social engagement involve a sober balance of all the four approaches rather than a heavy steer toward one of them? I have three ways of answering this question. First, no: a request to bear in mind that this is a book primarily concerned with the plight of those who by any conventional social assessment are in a lot of trouble. Thus the three illustrative chapters are concerned not with suburban docility but with chaotic homelessness, chronic and often acute ill-health, and subjection to political tyranny, respectively. These are invariably contexts in which working-for approaches have failed or at least proved inadequate. To say it is time to consider an alternative approach is not so very radical or reckless.
Second, yes: sometimes one does need to exaggerate to get a point across, and if I offer vivid examples I am doing so to draw the reader in to what is in the end a subtler argument. In particular I stress the differences between being with and working with, even though I am well aware that there are often significant and appropriate crossovers between the two, and that working with is often the only way to gain trust in order to attempt to be with. I stress the differences in order not to confuse the necessary and the tactical with the eschatological and the teleological. Being with is, fundamentally, a teleological claim about the ultimate purpose and character of God.
Third, yes – but in a different vein: I would suggest the whole of the gospel is an exaggeration – the whole call to discipleship and nature of the church is an exaggeration; attempts by scholars and pastors to bring the message under control and make it digestible are often distortions of the character of God. God’s original decision never to be except to be with us in Christ is an absurd exaggeration of what many would prefer to deal with: a more benevolent and understated divine orientation toward our well-being. If this argument is an attempt to imitate and ponder the exaggerated character of God, then so be it. That is what theological ethics is for.
Some Assumptions
This book makes a number of working assumptions, and is most easily read alongside other works that make similar assumptions.
One is that there is no impermeable divide between doctrine and ethics. I understand doctrine as an understanding of the action of God, and ethics, particularly theological ethics, as an understanding of the most appropriate response of humankind to the action of God. It will already be clear that this book is designed to be a prime example of theological ethics – that is, a study in how human beings may best respond to the nature of God’s action in creation, the purpose of God’s action in making the covenant with Israel, the manner of God’s action in Christ, the pattern of God’s action in calling the church, and the destiny of God’s action in the final consummation of the eschaton. Being with is, I believe, a succinct term that summarizes the nature and destiny of humankind and the creation before God. Being with is the dynamic of the inner relations of the Trinity – God being with God; it is the essence of God being with us in Christ; and it is the fulfilment of the Spirit’s work in our being with one another. The last of these is the sphere generally known as ethics; but it is a sphere whose content is shaped by the previous two.
A corresponding assumption is that there is no impermeable divide between Jesus and ethics. In the terms of this study, one can regard the longstanding divide – between those who see Jesus as a model for Christian ethics and those who do not – as a tussle between working with and working for. We may perceive the Jesus-as-a-model view as a working-with approach, in that it tends to see a significant part of Jesus’ ministry and mission as establishing a template for human flourishing. The reaction against this approach, often based on a judgment about its naïvety in the face of human sin, tends toward a working-for model, since it sees Jesus’ cross (and sometimes his resurrection) as delivering humankind from the slavery of sin and death, thus achieving something to which humankind could not have aspired on its own. Being with introduces a new element into this longstanding debate. In some ways being with is an extreme version of working with, and subject to many of the same criticisms; but it also has its own criticisms of working with – and of course vice versa.
Another similar assumption that may be noted more briefly is that the inner life of the Trinity may be drawn upon as a ...
