II
By this heading I do not mean the history of the church in the past as we can survey it today; what is meant is the interpretation of the church in a history which encroaches upon it. The church cannot understand itself simply from itself alone. It can only truly comprehend its mission and its meaning, its roles and its functions in relation to others. The one relationship which everyone comes across at first hand is the relation between his experience of the church to which he belongs and the credo ecclesiam which he confesses in that church. The relationship which reaches out further is the relation between the church and the history of Christ from which it comes, in which it lives and for whose fulfilment it hopes whenever it calls on Christ’s name. Another relation is the church’s relationship to the historical situation in the world, the situation in which it is set and which it takes into account in attempting to interpret ‘the signs of the times’. But we must see the all-comprehending reference in the church’s relationship to the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world. It is only in this last, universal context that it can grasp the meaning of its particular existence, without asserting itself in a particularist sense or dissolving in pseudo-universalism.
The church’s first word is not ‘church’ but Christ. The church’s final word is not ‘church’ but the glory of the Father and the Son in the Spirit of liberty. Because of this the church, as Ambrose said, is like the moon, which has no light of its own or for itself. If it is the true church, the light that is reflected on its face is the light of Christ, which reflects the glory of God, and it shines on the face of the church for the people who are seeking their way to freedom in the darkness.
Consequently no ecclesiology can stand on its own feet. The doctrine of the church must, as it were, evolve of itself from christology and eschatology, that is, from insight into the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world. This means that the question ‘What is the church?’ cannot be answered by a definition which pegs out the limits dividing the phenomenon ‘church’ from other phenomena, determining it by a process of demarcation. We therefore ask about the relations in which what deserves to be called the church comes about and is to be expected. The advantage of this relational ecclesiology is that it leads to an understanding of the living nature of the church. Its disadvantage is that it does not answer the question about the idea, the nature or the concept of the church with a ready-made definition. We shall put up with this disadvantage here for reasons which will emerge in the course of our discussion.
Most books about the church see the basic problem of ecclesiology as being the difference between faith and experience. ‘Everything which we call the church is only available to us in a historical and social form; yet it is not totally absorbed by that form. The church is the object of faith, an article of the creed.’ How can the church see itself as at once ‘an eschatological power’ and ‘an empirical and historical power’? What can we make of the ‘paradox’ that the churches ‘participate, on the one hand, in the ambiguities of life in general and of the religious life in particular and, on the other hand, in the unambiguous life of the Spiritual Community’? How is the ‘basis of the church’ related to the church itself? How can we talk simultaneously about the ‘essence of the church’ and ‘the form of the church?
The problem is simple and pressing enough: in the Apostles’ Creed the churches believe and confess ‘one holy Catholic church’—churches which are visibly divided, scattered and disunited; churches which everywhere look human, all too human, and certainly not holy; churches which are not universal either, but exist in the world in highly individual ways. This tension between the faith of the church and our experience of the church is not just perceived today for the first time. It has existed from the very beginning, even at the very time when the church was formulating the church’s creed. The church never existed in a historically demonstrable ideal form, a form in which faith and experience coincided. But this discrepancy constantly kept the hunger for correspondence between the two alive.
For ecclesiology this suggests two points of departure. It can start ‘from above’, unfolding the doctrine of the church as the object of faith in the framework of the confession of the triune God in the third article of the creed, which declares belief in ‘the Holy Ghost, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting’. It can then move ‘downwards’, drawing conclusions from the church’s faith for its experience and practice. On the other hand it can work in the reverse direction, beginning ‘from below’; it can describe the church as one empirical object among others, and then direct its thinking upwards in order to enquire into the theological significance of this object. That is to say: it can start from the church’s essence and then proceed to an enquiry into the actual form of that essence; or it can start from the church’s actual form, and then go on to enquire into its essence. Of course this division between the methods used by the various ecclesiologies is a simplified abstraction. But there is a real practical problem of how to link up and reconcile the theological doctrines of the church with empirical enquiries—‘How stable is the church?’ ‘Religious system and socialization’, and so forth. No theological ecclesiology can ignore the fact that the creed speaks not only about a heavenly church but also about the church down the road. And no empirical ecclesiology can avoid seeing that the church down the road is—since it is the place of faith—also the object of faith. Creed and experience are related to the same object and they cannot, for all the tension between them, be distributed between different objects. It is true that faith talks about the church in a different perspective and relation from empiricism. Faith confesses the church in the framework of the overriding confession of the triune God. Empiricism perceives the church in its social and psychological functions. But even this distribution into different facets and relations does not resolve the tension when the facets reveal contradictions.
A first solution of this problem can be sought with the help of the notion of paradoxical identity. The church is ‘at the same time’ the object of faith and the object of empiricism. It is ‘at the same time’ an eschatological and a historical power. By way of this paradoxical ‘at the same time’ it partakes of the paradox of Christ’s proclamation, which preaches the historical cross of Christ as being at the same time an eschatological saving event. Its paradoxical ‘at the same time’ corresponds to Christian existence, which is at once eschatological and historical. For the church too eschatology and history come together at the ‘instant’ when the ‘eschatological instant’ is grasped in faith. In this figure of paradoxical identity the church’s eschatological yet historical existence is understood in the framework of the Lutheran doctrine of justification. ‘The paradox that Christian existence is at the same time an eschatological unworldly being and an historical being is analogous with the Lutheran statement simul iustus, simul peccator.’ For an understanding of the tension between faith and experience of the church, the conclusion to be reached from this would be that the church is ‘one’, and at the same time many, separated and divided; that it is ‘holy’, and at the same time unrighteous; that it is universal, and at the same time particularist. If we take the Lutheran doctrine of justification seriously in its application to ecclesiology, it does not, however, follow that this paradoxical identity can be applied to every form of the church’s earthly condition. Faith in the holiness of the church can no more be a justification of its unholy condition than the justification of sinners means a justification of sin. On the contrary, it is the sharpest attack on anything that believes that it can exist by its own strength, because it frees us from this delusion. If man as a sinner is justified and sanctified, he is freed from his self-justification and released from the fetters of ‘the powers of this world’. What the forgiveness of sins just does not do is to justify his continuing sins; it cuts him off from them. The remissio peccatorum liberates men from the power of the past and therefore opens up the new future of righteous and eternal life. If the event of justification is transferred to the event of the church, then the statements about the church’s unity, holiness and catholicity are not analytical judgments about its present condition and characteristics; they are synthetic judgments about what it will be and where it will be preserved in God’s acts. If we understand the church as it has become and the church as it will be in the light of the justifying acts of God, it is not enough to point to the Lutheran phrase simul iustus et peccator, and the interpretation of the phrase as paradoxical identity becomes one-sided. For the Lutheran simul is incomplete without the further definition of the simultaneous non-simultaneity: peccator in re—iustus in spe. The present simultaneity of the just man and the sinner is accordingly the simultaneity of the transient world of sin and the coming world of righteousness. If we take this definition of the Lutheran doctrine of justification into consideration, then the paradoxical ‘at the same time’ becomes the actual dialectical process of the righteousness of God which succeeds against the transience of sin, a process which only finds its end in the ‘resurrection of the body’ and the new creation. The notion of paradoxical identity is in this way suspended in the comprehensive mental figure of the dialectical process. The ‘at the same time’ of the righteous man and the sinner is joined with the growing struggle of the spirit against the flesh. The contradiction is not paradoxically perpetuated but is grasped as a tension which presses towards its own resolution in the new creation, where righteousness dwells. Consequently the ‘at the same time’ of the eschatological and empirical church, in the sense of the event of justification, leads directly to the actual process of struggle for the truth of the church in the sense of its sanctification. This does not mean that the ‘at the same time’ and the ‘in one another’ of the church (as at once an empirical and historical power and also an eschatological one) is replaced by ‘an eternal dialectic between the two, kept going by a statement raised to a principle: that ecclesia est semper reformanda’. The ‘paradoxical identity’ cannot be replaced by an ‘eternal dialectic’, which basically speaking only states the same thing on another level. Both formulae would nullify the conflict which reaches into the eschaton of the kingdom and in which the church is set as both the place and the object of faith. Through the justification of the sinner the church is at the same time congregatio sanctorum and congregatio peccatorum. But through this event it also becomes the field of conflict between spirit and flesh, righteousness and sin, and presses, in intention, beyond its historical forms towards redemption, by virtue of its hope. However, in so extending the application of the Lutheran doctrine of justification to ecclesiology we must bear in mind that the conflict is caused by the event of the justification of the sinner and his liberation from the power of sin. It therefore reaches in its profounder depths beyond the contradiction between faith and empirical experience, for even the state of being a sinner is not one and the same as the empirical being of man, and consequently not one and the same as the empirical and historical form of the church either. Its scope reaches beyond historically possible resolutions of the contradiction between faith and experience—reaches into the eschatological hope, and brings the possible correspondences between the church as it is believed and the church as it is experienced into the dynamics of the provisional. For the creative righteousness of God corresponds ultimately only to a new creation, and not to a new church already in existence.
A second solution of the problem can be looked for by way of the notion of anticipation. Basically speaking, this picks up the ancient doctrine of sanctification, which has justification as its premise and existence in this world as its condition. Here the church is ‘at the same time’ the object of hope and the object of experience. Through the messianic history of Christ a promise and a trend has been implanted in the church which it continually both realizes and compromises, testifies to and betrays through the form it assumes in history and society. But because, through the remembering actualization of Christ’s presence, it relates this promise to itself, it is driven out beyond every historical form. It lives from the surplus of promise over its own realizations of the promise. It lives from the ‘added value’ of salvation, which is not exhausted by its historical form. The church cannot accept itself for what it is, either out of resignation or out of complacency, as long as this promise of Christ is unfulfilled. With his proclamation and through his embodiment of the kingdom of God, Christ made the church at the same time possible and impossible. He made it possible to the extent that the people of God gathers together in proximity to the kingdom of God. He made it impossible because this people presses on beyond itself to this all-fulfilling kingdom. Under the impression of the remembrance and the hope of Christ’s promise, the church will therefore see itself as a mobile and temporary phenomenon in history, which tries in every age to live up to the promise of Christ in accordance with the needs of the situation.
Here the contradiction between the church’s faith and its experience is understood in the light of the relationship between hope and reality. Hope is realized in history, but it also transcends its own incarnations. In this way the future element of the church’s hope brings the actual fact of its experience into the process of becoming. The church is essentially experienced as an open and imperfect institution because it ‘has the function of a transition to something else, to the kingdom of God’. The theological aspect of ‘the church of hope’ expands the empirical aspect from ‘the church as datum’ to ‘the church in the process of history’. The experience of the church as it has come into being is linked with the practice of the church that is in the process of becoming. The ‘wealth of past experience’ is made available for the future as ‘the wealth of untried possibilities’. In so far as that happens, the church’s hope for the kingdom of God opens up perspectives for the hoped-for church of the future, and out of the hoped-for future church guiding lines for present church action emerge in their turn. ‘The church according to its possibilities’ is realized in the historically ‘possible church’. The church in the possibility of God is lain hold of in the possibilities and powers of the Holy Spirit.
In the relationship between hope and experience the ‘nature of the church’ is conceived teleologically as the inner force that drives it. ‘The Spiritual Community is the inner telos of the churches and as such it is the source of everything which makes them churches.’ ‘The novelty of the presence of the kingdom of God is … its future: its unhistorical and non-objective futurity, which has to be continually and extremely dialectically won under the conditions of the social and religious present.’ Its unity in the face of its divisions is then an anticipatory judgment of hope, which fetches its future into its present. Its holiness in the face of its community of sinners then anticipates its future in the same way that the acknowledgment of its catholicity in the face of its particularity is an expression of its hope. Thus the church is conceived in terms of transition (transitus) and of conversion (metanoia) from sin to holiness, from division to unity and from particularity to universality. The church’s hope and experience are conveyed in the concept of anticipation.
But this view already presupposes the freedom of the church, which is created by grace. If we were to ignore that we should also be overlooking the church’s lack of social and cultural freedom too. The church would then fall victim to an illusory belief in progress such as we find in neo-Protestantism and its notions about the church in the history of the kingdom of God. Only by virtue of its remembrance of the one who was crucified can the church live in the presence of the one who is risen—that is to say, can live realistically in hope. The church only follows the promise of Christ and the trend of the Spirit when it accepts its own cross. ‘It only becomes the congregatio sanctorum by accepting its existence as communio peccatorum. It only remains the church of the risen Christ by taking on itself the destiny of the Christ who was crucified.’ The teleological relationship between the church’s hope and experience only remains eschatological in the tension of history opened up through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
A third solution of the problem can be sought with the help of sacramental thinking. Here the whole church is orientated towards the sacramental representation of the history of Christ and the eschatological future in, with and beneath the word, the bread and the wine. Sacramental thinking links together the remembrance of Christ with the hope of glory in the present tokens of liberating and uniting grace. The eschatological and the present, the particular and the universal, the heavenly and the earthly come together symbolically in the gospel and in the eucharist. Sacramental thinking is always applied in a more or less elaborate way to the interpretation of the believed and experienced church where there is talk about the being of the one in the other. This does not only mean the simultaneity of the believed and experienced church in paradoxical identity. Nor does it only mean the dialectical process of hope and experience of the church. Both ways of thinking are grounded and expanded through the sacramental statement about the existence of the one in the other.
Paul Tillich links this sacramental thinking with the Lutheran paradox ‘in spite of’:
The churches are holy because of the holiness of their foundation, the New Being, which is present in them.… The churches are holy, but they are so in terms of an ‘in spite of or as a paradox.… The churches are united because of the unity of their foundation.… The unity of the church is real in each of them in spite of the fact that all of them are separated from each other.… As was the case with respect to holiness and unity, we must also say of the churches’ universality that it is present in their particularity.
In the same way Hans Kung talks about the ‘essence’ of the church and its ‘form’ ‘Essence and form cannot be separated.… Essence and form are not identical.’ Between difference and identity lies the sacramental idea of the coinherence of the one in the other. ‘The real essence of the real Church is expressed in historical form.’ If we want to understand the essential nature of the church, then we must always pay heed to its changeable, historical form. If we want to understand its changeable, historical form, we must pay heed to its essential nature. If the ‘essence’ of the church is connected with the coming lordship of God which Jesus proclaimed, then in this respect neither an identification nor a dissociation between the church and the divine lordship are possible.
Thus the promises and powers of the coming reign of God are already evident and effective, through Christ, in the Church, which so partakes in a hidden manner in the dawning reign of God.
But then Küng dissociates once more, saying in closing: ‘It is not the bringer or the bearer of the reign of God which is to come and is at the same time already present, but its voice, its announcer, its herald.’ If the church is thus ‘not a preliminary stage, but an anticipatory sign of the definitive reign of God’, then the real presence and coinherence of this future in the form and presence of the church seems once more to be called in question.
The difference between the form and the nature of the church, as well as between the church and the kingdom of God, always forces itself upon us when we look from the present into the eschatological future. But if, reversing the process, we look from the eschatological future which, in the history of Christ, has ‘already begun’ in the present existence of the church, then we recognize the essential nature already existing in the form, and the coming lordship of God as already present in the historical church.
The point of departure for both points of view must, however, be a definite event. This definite event which ‘makes the church the church’ is the sacramental event. We mean by this the preaching of the Word of God in the human word, the presence of the coming Christ in bread and wine, and the coming of the Spirit in baptism. To such an extent the church is what it is in the light of this event.
Because this sacramental happening cannot be ‘created’ and cannot be calculated, the solution of the problem of faith and experience, hope and reality, the nature and the form of the church, has to be looked for in pneumatology. That through which we perceive the history and promise of Christ, that through which we become aware of the coming rule of God in word and sacrament and church, and through which we enter into the fellowship of the history of the triune God—this perception, this awareness and this fellowship must itself be termed God, the Holy Spirit. It is only in the history of the Spirit, which unites us with the history of Christ and is itself the history of the new creation, that all the definitions that have been given of faith and experience, paradox and dialectic, nature and form acquire their theological function and lose their partial character.
‘The church in history’ cannot be sufficiently comprehended in the momentary impression of the present tensions between faith and experience, hope and reality, nature and form. These tensions must be reflected in the wider context of the history of Christ’s dealings with the world; for that is where they come from, and that is where they lead.
The question about the meaning of the history of Christ has always been of central concern for theology. Christian theology begins with it and comes back to it again and again. Why did Christ come and what is the purpose of his coming? Why did Christ die on the cross? Why was he raised from the dead, and why did he appear to the disciples in the splendour of the divine glory?
From early times theological interpretation approached the history of Christ with this teleological question, in an attempt to grasp its meaning. It was moved to do so by the messianic character of Jesus’ mission and history itself. For the incompletion and the open-ended character of this history of Christ, pointing beyond itself, actually suggests the question. It is above all the ‘double conclusion’ of Jesus’ life (M. Kähler)—out of messianic life into a Godforsaken death, and out of this death into eschatological life—which inevitably raises the question why. The historical prophecy of Jesus must hence be assimilated into an eschatology of the history of Jesus Christ. And here the eschatological interpretation of his history must correspond to his historical embodiment of the eschatology. Hope must return to remembrance if it is not to lose its real foundation. That is why an orientation towards the history of Christ itself is constitutive for the unfolding of its eschatology. The teleological interpretation cannot be an arbitrary one. It can only bring to light what has already been plotted out. Conversely, the history of Christ cannot be properly understood other than in the light of its eschatology. This historical ‘phenomenon’ cannot in any case be grasped apart from the future for which it has significance.
We find the teleological interpretation of the history of Christ in the ‘theological final clauses’ of the New Testament. We find it in the whole Christian tradition wherever christology has been developed in conjunction with soteriology. Every statement about Christ’s incarnation, mission, passion, death and resurrection corresponds to a soteriological statement expressing the intention, goal and meaning of this history of Christ. We find it especially in Reformation theology, which leads over from the question of the substantia historiae Christi to the question of the finis historiae Christi. The mere notitia of the history of Christ is not enough for faith. Only when we lay hold on the promissio which speaks to us out of that history, because it is inherent in it and because history is its experienceable sign, do we arrive at its application (usus) and an understanding of its meaning for us. The promise of the forgiveness of sins, which justifying faith lays hold of, is itself ‘the testament’—the will which comes into force through Jesus’ death and in the execution of which the crucified Jesus lives. By discovering the promise as the meaning of the history of Christ, the Reformation also understood the history of Christ as the foundation of this promise. The promissory interpretation of the history of Christ corresponded to the christological foundation of the promise. That is why Melanchthon pressed forward from the christological perception of Christ’s natures and incarnation to the perception of his benefits, of course without wanting at the same time to resolve the person of Christ into Christ’s functions. That is why the Heidelberg Catechism in interpreting the Apostles’ Creed always asks about the uses and aids arising from the theological affirmations of faith. We take the eschatological point of departure in understanding the history of Christ by asking the meaning of that history. The promise, the use and the aim are all included in the modern word ‘meaning’. What we have called ‘the interest of Christ’ and the ‘trend’ of his history are also inherent in it.
If we follow the theological final clauses in the New Testament, we first of all come up against the theology with which Paul interprets the credal statements which he takes over from the primitive church. One can say of them that ‘the teleological principle has penetrated to the very heart of the Christian message and Christian theology’. Paul understands the history of Christ as a saving event ‘for us’. ‘υπὲρ ἡμῶν is a brief, pregnant formula describing the whole saving event.’ We cannot go into Paul’s theology in detail here, but some important teleological determinations can be distinguished on the basis of the history of Christ, when it is understood as open and inclusive, on the basis of the ‘for us’.
Since, as we know, the righteousness of God stands in the forefront for Paul; it can be said first of all that for him the justification of sinners is the meaning of the history of Christ. Christ ‘was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification’ (Rom. 4:25). The meaning of his giving of himself to death on the cross is the liberation of the sinner from the burden of sin by virtue of reconciliation; and his liberation from the power of sin by virtue of substitution. The meaning of his resurrection from the dead is our new life in righteousness. Christ is ‘for our sake made to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor. 5:21). ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us’ (Gal. 3:13). ‘For your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9). Paul again and again linked faith in Christ with the telos of justification (Gal. 2:16; Rom. 4:16; 9:11; cf. also Eph. 2:9). Here the forgiveness of sins and the reconciliation of sinners through God first of all interprets Christ’s self-giving in his suffering and death on the cross; whereas his resurrection from the dead and his exaltation as kyrios finds its present meaning in the opening up of new righteousness, new obedience and new fellowship. The two sides of the traditional doctrine of justification here correspond to the two statements made by christology. The meaning of Christ’s death is the remissio peccatorum. The meaning of his resurrection is the acceptatio personae ad vitam aeternam. The two sides of the conversion (repentance) also correspond to the double aspect of christology: In the mortificatio sui the crucified one is made present; in the vivificatio in spiritu the risen one reigns. The two can no more be divided from one another than the crucified Jesus can be divided from the risen Christ, or the risen Christ from the crucified Jesus. But if with Paul we understand justification and Christian existence in repentance as being the meaning of the history of Christ, then there is here no paradoxical identity and no eternal dialectic. Just as the raising of Christ represents a ‘surplus’ over the event on the cross and can only qualify it as a redemptive event because of that, so in the same way there is a surplus of grace in the justification of the sinner (‘much more’: Rom. 5:10). Its meaning is not totally absorbed by the forgiveness of sins but, through the operation of forgiveness, leads to new life and the new creation. That is why, in the Christian life of repentance too, the joy of the new life has a rapture greater than the pain at the dying of the old one.
If we follow the theological final clauses further, we are led beyond the event of the justification of sinners. The meaning of the history of Christ reveals itself to the godless in their justification and acceptance first of all; but it is not totally absorbed by men’s arrival at justifying faith. On the foundation of justification, without which there is no new beginning for the unrighteous, and on the basis of liberation, without which there is no new life for those in bondage, the meaning of the history of Christ is then unfolded in the new obedience (Rom. 6:8ff.), in the new fellowship (Rom. 12:3ff.) and in the manifestation of the Spirit in the charismatic powers of the new creation (1 Cor. 12:7ff.).
‘To this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living’ (Rom. 14:9). If, therefore, the justification of sinners is the meaning of the history of Christ, then the meaning of the justification of sinners is the liberating lordship of Christ over the dead and the living, i.e., the new creation in him. If we ask about the christological conclusion that follows from the final clauses in Paul, we look beyond ‘our justification’, beyond the new obedience and the new fellowship, and through these things to the lordship of Christ over past, present and future.
If we go on to enquire into the meaning of the lordship of Christ, we come up against the eschatology of the history of Christ developed in 1 Cor. 15: ‘For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death … When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one’ (1 Cor. 15:25–28). If the goal of the crucifixion and raising of Christ is his rule over everything, then the goal of his rule is the complete rule of God in which God himself is ‘everything to every one’ (av: ‘all in all’). Even the rule of Christ is provisional and limited.
The only goal it serves is to give way to the sole leadership of God. Christ is God’s representative over against a world which is not yet fully subject to God, although its eschatological subordination is in train since Easter and its end is in sight.… The regnum Christi is distinguished precisely by this very state of affairs: death has no more dominion over him, but it has over us. It (the regnum) is therefore defined by the two poles, his Resurrection and ours, and must be described materially as the realm of the power of the Resurrection in a world which has fallen a prey to death, and thus to the other cosmic powers.
The teleological question about the purpose of the history of Christ therefore leads, as it were, beyond every purpose that can be comprehended in any present and particular sense. It leads into universal eschatology. In the light of the all-embracing and fulfilling eschatological purpose, the other purposes are then included in the dynamics of the provisional. We might put it negatively and, like Käsemann, call it ‘eschatological reserve’. Or we could talk positively about an anticipatory mode of thought. For the person involved, however, justification is something final, so that he can say in comprehensive terms: ‘Where there is forgiveness of sins there is also life and salvation.’ But in view of the abundance of the promises of the history of Christ and its eschatological meaning, he will be placed in the dynamics of the provisional, or what German calls the Vor-läufige—what runs ahead; so that he is bound to say in the words of the Easter hymn:
Christ is risen, Christ the first-fruits
Of the holy harvest field,
Which will all its full abundance
At his second coming yield.
Paul’s ‘theological final clauses’ really point to the victory of the lordship of God. This lordship of God over everything is at the same time conceived of as his indwelling in everything. His rule corresponds to his glorification through the new creation, which is new in the very fact of this joy. The theological final clauses, through which the meaning of the history of Christ is grasped and which are in the first place soteriologically determined, therefore really amount to doxological final clauses. This means, conversely, that this doxology is already beginning in the saving event itself, in justification, sanctification, new fellowship and the powers of the Spirit. Where God rules he is glorified; where he justifies he achieves what is his due; where he brings a sinner to repentance and frees the oppressed he finds joy. Soteriology and doxology are therefore intertwined from the very beginning, and hence are intertwined in the end as well. Consequently, for Paul too the ultimate purpose of the history of Christ is the universal glorification of God the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit (Phil. 2:10; Rom. 11:33; 1 Cor. 15:28). In the eschatological thanksgiving of the new creation the destiny of all created being is fulfilled.
The church as the community of justified sinners, the fellowship of those liberated by Christ, who experience salvation and live in thanksgiving, is on the way to fulfilling the meaning of the history of Christ. With its eyes fixed on Christ, it lives in the Holy Spirit and thus is itself the beginning and earnest of the future of the new creation. It proclaims Christ alone; but the fact that it proclaims him is already the advent of the future of God in the word. It believes Christ alone; but the fact that it believes is already the sign of hope. In its liberation it follows Christ alone; but this is already the bodily anticipation of the redemption of the body. In the Lord’s supper it remembers and makes present the death of Christ, which leads to life; but the fact that this happens is a foretaste of the peace to come. It only confesses Jesus, the crucified, as Lord; but the kingdom of God is anticipated in this confession. This relationship between what happens and the fact that it happens can only be understood pneumatologically. The community and fellowship of Christ which is the church comes about ‘in the Holy Spirit’. The Spirit is this fellowship. Faith perceives God in Christ and this perception is itself the power of the Spirit. As the historical community of Christ, therefore, the church is the eschatological creation of the Spirit. ‘In this sense history passes into eschatology and eschatology into history.’ This transition is called the work of the Holy Spirit.
The teleological interpretation of the history of Christ coincides with the pneumatological interpretation of the fulfilment of that history’s meaning. The believer’s freedom from sin and from the godless powers of our worldly era is therefore also called ‘the power of the Holy Spirit’. The new life is ‘life in the Spirit’ and the new obedience takes the form of ‘walking by the Spirit’. The new fellowship is itself ‘the manifestation of the Spirit’ and of the powers of the new creation. Eschatologically, therefore, the Spirit can be termed ‘the power of futurity’, for it is ‘the eschatological gift’, the beginning (Rom. 8:23) and the earnest or guarantee (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5) of the future. Pneumatologically, eschatology is the work of the Holy Spirit. For through the Spirit the believer is determined by the divine future. The powers of the Spirit are the powers of life, which determine the present, extending their influence forward from the future of the new life. The fruit of the Spirit is the advance payment in joy of future blessedness, in spite of the experience of suffering; it is the advance payment in love, in spite of the experience of disappointment and hate. Consequently the whole eschatology of the history of Christ which is expounded in the theological final clauses can also be described as the history of the Spirit, a result of the workings and indwellings of the Spirit through which the future that is hoped for enters into history.
When we talk about the history of the Spirit in this sense, we do not mean the idealistic spiritual history of human subjectivity; we mean the dialectical process of interactions which is opened up and urged on by the future of the thing that is entirely new. The history of the creative Spirit embraces human history and natural history, and to that extent is to be understood in dialectical-materialist terms as ‘the movement’, ‘the urge’, ‘the spirit of life’, ‘the tension’ and ‘the torment’ which—as Marx said with Jacob Böhme—is matter’s pre-eminent characteristic.
If we dispense with salvation-history terminology and cease to pigeon-hole the teleological fulfilment of the meaning of Christ’s history in terms of salvation history, then with John we can call the sending of the Holy Spirit as such the ‘eschatology of the history of Christ’. In the farewell discourses he is called the Paraclete, whom Jesus promises to his followers, whose coming he makes possible through his departure and pleads for in his act of self-giving. He is called ‘the Spirit of truth’ or ‘the Holy Spirit’. He is the witness of Christ, who leads to knowledge of the truth. He is one with the Son and the Father. He glorifies the Father through the Son in those who belong to him. He is the giver of the eternal life of God to the world which has fallen victim to death. So when we say ‘Pentecost is the telos, the highest goal of revelation in Christ’, it is true as far as the gift of the Spirit is concerned; but if we are considering the fulfilment of the meaning of the history of Christ we also have to talk about the ‘history of the Spirit’. For ‘it is at the same time the beginning of the new time, the time of the direct and lasting presence of revelation in history.’
In its present tensions between faith and experience, hope and reality, the church will have to understand itself as part of this history of the creative Spirit. The church is the concrete form in which men experience the history of Christ. In the longer-range history of the Spirit the church is a way and a transition to the kingdom of God. It lives in the experience and practice of the Spirit from the eschatological anticipation of the kingdom. As the fellowship of Christ it is hope lived in fellowship. The experiences and powers of the Spirit mediate the presence of the history of Christ and the future of the new creation. What is called ‘the church’ is this mediation. As the church of Christ it is the church of the Holy Spirit. As the fellowship of believers it is creative hope in the world.
If we understand the church and that which makes it the church in the overriding movements and coherences of the history of the Spirit, then we must subject two ecclesiologies, the Lutheran and the Orthodox, to a critical evaluation.
Reformed theology tends to focus the history of Christ on the justification of the sinner and hence, in the third article of the Apostles’ Creed, to make ‘the forgiveness of sins’ the pivot on which understanding of the church depends. The church is essentially the community of those who are justified by faith through grace. The articulus iustificationis counts as the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. It is true here (and it is a truth that we must emphatically hold on to) that the sinner does not find the true God in any other way than through the forgiveness of sins; and that God does not achieve true man in any other way than through the forgiveness of sinners. Anything else would be an illusion about the reality of godless, unrighteous, unfree and inhuman man. For that reason an appropriate ecclesiology of the true church cannot meet us with dreams of the ideal church but only, essentially speaking, with the doctrine of justification. At the same time, it would be wrong to stop short at this concentration on the justification of the unrighteous and to overlook the purposes of the history of Christ which move through justification and reach out beyond it. For through justification the unjust man is led into the history of the Spirit, so that he becomes obedient in hope and the practice of divine righteousness. Man’s history in its relation to the history of Christ begins with the forgiveness of sins and his being freed for a new life. There can be no other beginning for the unrighteous, the unfree and the hopeless. But the beginning does not lead immediately to the end. Liberation leads to liberated life. Justification leads to the new creation. Rightly understood, therefore, the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae is a way of access to the other articles about the Holy Spirit and his creation: the resurrection of the dead, eternal life, the kingdom of God and the glorification of God through the consummation of creation. It leads to Zwingli’s ‘narrow confines of the cross’, and through those very confines into the new world of resurrection and eternal life. If it does not, then it has not been properly understood.
The ecclesiology of the Orthodox churches, on the other hand, has stressed the history of the Spirit, his continuing presence since Pentecost, the breadth of the Spirit’s gifts, the abundance of his energies and his glorification of the Father with the Son, a glorification which we can already experience and celebrate with him in the liturgy. Orthodoxy has understood the revelation of the Spirit in a trinitarian sense and resists the ‘christomonism’ of the Western churches, especially the Protestant ones. Orthodoxy understands the history of Jesus itself pneumatologically. His incarnation, his mission, his anointing and his resurrection are the works of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the divine subject of the history of Jesus. For that reason the Son of God is also present in and through the Spirit in his church, and beyond it is at work in creation. Pneumatological christology leads to a charismatic ecclesiology. What is true here, and what we must emphatically hold on to, is that faith’s experience of the history of Christ and the consummation of his history is the work of the Holy Spirit. To this extent the articulus de Spiritu Sancto is the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. But this perception of the breadth and fullness of the Holy Spirit would become unrealistic if it were not continually to begin with the work of the Holy Spirit in the forgiveness of sins and the acceptance of forsaken man. The true perception that the messianic history of Christ from his incarnation to his exaltation is the work of the eschatological Spirit must not pass by Christ’s death on the cross, through which the Father, in the Spirit of self-giving, has become the Father of forsaken men and women. The transfiguration of Christ in the Spirit of glory must not be allowed to cast so dazzling a light that our eyes are blinded to his death in abandonment by God. Pneumatic christology is only realistic when it is developed into the trinitarian theology of the cross. Consequently charismatic ecclesiology too is only realistic when it makes the Spirit manifest in the conditions of the world that were without him.
Reformed theology cannot get along without Orthodox theology’s perception of the breadth of the Holy Spirit and the abundance of the Spirit’s gifts; just as Orthodox theology is seemingly thrown back on the Reformed perception of the depths of the cross of Christ and the realistic justification of the unrighteous. We will therefore try to overcome the ‘christomonism’ Orthodoxy deplores, as well as the dangers of ‘pneumatomonism’ by presenting the church in the comprehensive sphere of the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world.
As long as reality as a whole was primarily understood as a cosmos which, ordered by eternal laws and filled with divine significance, reflected the central order of all things, the political community found its justification in the correspondence of its laws to natural law; while the church saw itself as the guardian of the revealed meaning of the whole. Just as the cosmos is the space, wrung from chaos, in which all being lives, so church and state are the forces of order against chaos in human history. In its alliance with worldly authority, the church ceases to pray like early Christianity, ‘Let thy kingdom come and this world pass away.’ It now prays that the end may be put off, because it sees itself as the power which staves off ‘the end’.
Even if the churches in the modern world have lost their earlier character as the public, moral and political forces of order, yet the services they perform in baptism, teaching, marriage ceremonies, pastoral work and the burial of the dead are primarily claimed in ‘Christian countries’ at the key points and emotional crises of life. Psychologically and in the story of the individual life, the church goes on acting as a stabilizing factor against inner chaos and uncertainty.
Since the French Revolution, however, European thinking has come to accept the interpretation of reality as a whole as history. A cosmological orientation gave way to new bearings drawn from the movements of time and from history. The present was understood in the framework of its future and its origin, and reality in the framework of its destructive and constructive potentialities. The widest framework for an understanding of the present in the light of its history was sought for in universal historical schemes. In this way the future as the field of hopes and fears took on a hitherto unknown role for the conferring of significance to historical experience and practice. This modern understanding of reality as history in the context of its potential future has been described often enough. The theologies of hope, evolution and process have taken it up and made it theologically fruitful. In this connection we must ask about the orientation of the church in the modern experience of reality as history. An orientation towards the eternal laws of the cosmos and the timeless natural laws is just as impossible as dependence on the other forces of order and authority in society. Since, with the French Revolution, ‘revolution’ per se has come to be understood as ‘the distinctive mark of our era of world history’ (F. J. Stahl) the church’s orientation towards world history has become general; for ‘history’ is only a softer word for revolution, and historical experience is simply the experience of crisis. The church therefore has continually taken its bearings from ‘the signs of the times’.
Theology under the spell of the ‘signs of the times’ is today enjoying its heyday, and indeed growing in importance, in both the Protestant and the Catholic churches. It is therefore necessary for us to investigate the real meaning of the expression. It is derived from the biblical experience of history and from the language of the Bible; but it propagated itself by way of the apocalyptic traditions, and continually cropped up in Christian history whenever world history was going through periods and moods of crisis. The modern expression ‘the signs of the times’ is in this way a form of the apocalyptic theme of ‘the signs of the end’. The question about the signs of the times even today means that people do not merely order history, split it up into periods and trace its events, in order to discover what the present kairos demands. Instead time is put to the question—asked for portents that might point to its apprehended or hoped-for end. With the question about the signs of the times, history is interpreted with an eye to its coming end. Historical experiences take place in this context of expectation, accompanied and interpreted by fear and hope.
When the Old Testament talks about God’s ‘signs and wonders’, the writers are always thinking about the way in which Israel was led out of Egypt, the particular circumstances which surrounded the people up to the passage through the Red Sea, and in which Israel’s God showed that he was mighty and that the people were his chosen people. The talk about God’s ‘signs and wonders’ is rooted in the Deuteronomistic view of history. The extraordinary circumstances which are meant point back to God and are, moreover, of such a kind that they proclaim some cataclysmic event to be imminent. Old Testament prophecy of the coming acts of God in judgment and salvation is also accompanied by corresponding signs and symbolic acts. It was only the apocalyptic writings which then went on to talk about the portents of the coming end of the world, interpreting the events of world history and cosmic changes accordingly. Here we find the common idea that the dawning of the end will be preceded by terrible cosmic changes which cannot be ignored and which announce to the well-informed what is at hand.
In the New Testament we find in Matthew and Luke the cryptic saying about the ‘sign of Jonah’, which probably means the sign that is Jonah himself ‘in the singularity of his historical manifestation’—Jonah’s call, his commission and his fate. That is God’s ‘sign’. The application of ‘the sign of Jonah’ to Jesus probably belongs to the context of ‘the sign of the Son of man’. This is ‘of such a kind that present earthly-human existence reaches its ineluctable end therein. It proclaims this end unconditionally, and this is its true significance.’ Both signs have apocalyptic functions, revealing the future. In Matthew what is meant is ‘that the parousia will not come directly, but will announce itself first. It may be that in the background is the certainty that the last act of history will begin with a final opportunity for conversion and faith.’
Further, the demand for ‘signs and wonders’ addressed to Jesus is a question about the signs of the messianic era, as well as a request for a legitimation of his mission. Because signs and wonders will accompany the Messiah as the promised prophet, the question was put to his apostles as well. Here it is important to see that the author of the Acts of the Apostles was thinking back to the event of the exodus. The new Mosaic era of eschatological redemption is recognized among Christ’s apostles from the signs and wonders which were to be expected of it. The signs and wonders ‘which now take place afresh as they once did at the exodus with its miraculous accompanying phenomena, are a pledge of the certainty of eschatological occurrence’. For Paul too (2 Cor. 12:12) the ‘signs of an apostle’ are something visible, which make an apostle recognizable as such. ‘The signs and miracles of the age of redemption which have been done by him “identify” him as an apostle of Christ.’
In the tradition of the exodus story and in the hope of the new exodus of the end-time, ‘signs and wonders’ are the visible heraldings of the salvation which frees men and redeems the world. But parallel to this we also have the sequel of the apocalyptic tradition, according to which the terrors of history and the dissolution of cosmic and human order are portents, signs pointing forward to the terrible end. So in the Little Apocalypse of Mark (Mark 13:4ff.) the question: ‘When will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?’ is answered by the words:
Take heed that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. And when you hear of wars and rumours, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines; this is but the beginning of the sufferings. But take heed to yourselves; for they will deliver you up to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.
According to these biblical traditions, the expression ‘the signs of the times’ is ambiguous. When it is combined with the mention of ‘signs and wonders’, positive pointers to the coming redemption are meant. In the apocalyptic tradition ‘the signs of the end’ mean the negative portents of the dreadful end of the world. The exodus tradition is applied to the interpretation of the messianic history of Jesus and the apostles; the apocalyptic tradition is applied to the end-time interpretation of world history and cosmic events. It is an open question whether the modern ‘theology of the signs of the times’ is talking about the signs and wonders of the coming exodus into freedom or whether it means the negative signs of threatening catastrophe. That is part of the reason for its increasing prominence and for its helplessness.
The modern orientation of the church towards ‘the signs of the times’ really follows both biblical traditions, arriving at diametrically opposite notions, depending on whether the present is read in accordance with the apocalyptic timetable or in remembrance of the exodus tradition. But while modern thinking has arrived at an independent position, thanks to its emancipation from the established forces of order and authority in state, society and church, the beleaguered and abandoned church has been taking its bearings primarily from the apocalyptic interpretation of the signs of the times.
Let us briefly consider the development of the church’s apocalyptic angle on the world in modern times. It was this that led to the church’s basically conservative decision against ‘the revolution’. ‘All revolutions are contrary to the kingdom of God’, announced the revivalist theologian Gottfried Menken at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and had a lasting effect on conservative Protestant theologians in the age of revolution. August Vilmar (whose influence has made itself felt to this century, in some quarters of the Confessing Church and in today’s evangelical confessional movement in Germany) considered in 1831 that ‘revolution’ was ‘the monster from the abyss’.
Here the evil Spirit of negation and destruction has, as far as it is able, demolished and shattered the divine order and equality of law, which is founded solely on the equality of our need for redemption; and in place of this divine equality has set up an equality which is not human but beastly.
Vilmar again and again interprets ‘the revolution’ apocalyptically as ‘the abomination of desolation’, and its results—democracy, rationalism, liberalism and secularism—as signs of the end. The Antichrist rears his head, for his followers know ‘no God, no prince, no powers that be, no order, no laws. All this is a hindrance to them, and hence they strive with all their might to destroy Christianity.’ In 1848, the year of the civil war in Germany, he wrote:
If there is a republic, then the end is near, in so far as the great divorce will take place; for if I am not much mistaken, the republic is not merely fortuitously godless; it is so essentially. If king and empire come again, then the phases will supervene much more slowly.
Friedrich Julius Stahl interpreted the signs of revolution with the same apocalyptic forebodings and assigned to the church the role of saviour of the last days. ‘Only the church can heal the nations from the sickness of revolution.’ The revolution is the sign that the world is entering ‘the apocalyptic era’ and has to prepare for ‘the final struggle’. It is true that right through history there has always been insurrection, the expulsion of dynasties and the overthrow of constitutions; but with the principle of popular sovereignty, the French Revolution introduced permanent and ‘absolute revolution’. Its nature is ‘pure and clear-cut emphasis on the principle of evil’. For that reason it is useless to want to overcome the revolution with political measures. ‘Revolution is not ended through a constitutional document.’ ‘Nor is revolution ended through mechanical power.’ There is ‘only one power that can end revolution. That is Christianity.’
For Vilmar the apocalyptic interpretation of the revolution meant logically that the divorce between believers and unbelievers was imminent. The godless and anti-Christian revolution will bring forth its own contrary in power and independence, namely the church.
When all existing worldly things are overthrown, she rises staunchly, with new power; it was she who, when the Roman empire crumbled into ruin, created a new life, and for this new life, new orders; and it will be she again who—even if this time in a different form (and, we confidently hope, a more perfect one)—will found and create a new order of things, a new order whose goal—a goal indeed invisible to worldly eyes—is none other than to prepare his people and his place for the Christ who will come again in his glory.
The church’s anti-revolutionary experience is simply the experience of the eschatological struggle between Christ and Antichrist. The church of the last days will become visible. And when ‘the abomination of desolation’ gains ground and everything tends towards the ‘last divorce’, then at the end ‘the spiritual office alone … still has a divine mandate and authority’ to prepare the way for ‘the Christ who is coming again in his glory’.
For that reason still more violent struggles will doubtless kindle round this doctrine [i.e., of the church] and far sharper divisions appear than in the case of other doctrines, not only because this doctrine cannot be understood at all unless we stand fast in those other doctrines, but also because this doctrine has to deal with our standing together, with our fellowship; and the conflict can therefore have no issue other than that of divorce; consequently the issue of this struggle will coincide with the appearance of the Antichrist.
Abraham Kuyper interpreted the storm signals of revolution and ‘modernism’ in a very similar way. For him the essence of revolution was the watchword ‘ni Dieu ni maître’—i.e., the sovereignty of the people and emancipation from all divine and state authority. And he decreed: ‘The principle of revolution remains anti-Christian and has since that time gone on eating its way like a cancer, in order to crumble away and undermine everything that was a matter of certainty for our Christian consciousness.’ Two ideologies are struggling together in a fight to the death: modernism wants to build up a world out of natural man, and to build this man out of nature; and on the other side everyone who kneels in reverence before Christ as the Son of God wants to preserve the Christian heritage for the world, in order to lead it, by virtue of this heritage, towards a still higher development. The anti-revolutionary principle is living Christianity and its purest revelation is Calvinism. Just as Vilmar preached Lutheranism, so Kuyper preaches Calvinism as ‘the only defence that is able to stand its ground for the Protestant nations against the modernism that is penetrating them and flooding over them’. Both support an apocalyptic sectarianism.
Calvinism, more and better than any other view, offers a defence of principle—and hence a defence that is impregnable—against the Spirit of the Age, which desires to rob us of our Christianity.… [For] in the Calvinist heritage … man bows his knee before God, but raises his head proudly towards his fellow men; but here, where men adhere to the standpoint of popular sovereignty, they clench their fists arrogantly towards God, meanwhile crawling as men before their fellow men, covering up this self-abasement through the fiction of a … contrat social.
Abraham Kuyper founded the ‘Anti-revolutionary People’s Party’ in Holland, and was for years its general secretary.
In these conservative traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth century the old view of the church as the power of order against chaos really still prevails; but the grounds given for this view are now no longer cosmological; they are apocalyptic. ‘The signs of the times’ take the place of the cosmic order. If revolution is the anti-Christian sign of the last days, then the hour of final separation has arrived and the church is entering the anti-revolutionary struggle as the visible and pure community of the returning Christ. The discovery of ecclesiology on the basis of this type of experience of the church becomes the preliminary step to the discovery of eschatology on the basis of the impending experiences of the final apocalyptic struggle. Here we find an apocalyptic position and role being assigned to the church, while at the same time the church is finally turned into a political force, as the power of counterrevolution.
Messianic ecclesiology developed at the same time and with the help of the same phenomena, but its interpretation was a diametrically opposite one. It too was founded on an interpretation of the revolutionary ‘signs of the times’, in their bearing on the end of history. But here the French Revolution was greeted like a messianic event. ‘The revolutionary desire to realize the kingdom of God is the propulsive point of all progressive education and the beginning of modern history,’ declared Friedrich Schlegel.
Now I maintain that, even without the spirit of the seer, one can prophesy to the human race, according to the aspects and portents of our own days, the achievement of this purpose, and thereby at the same time the further advance of the same towards still better things; for such an advance can no longer become entirely regressive. A phenomenon of this kind can never again be forgotten, because it has disclosed a predisposition and capacity for improvement in human nature,
said Immanuel Kant, and interpreted the French Revolution with concepts borrowed from Thomist sacramental terminology: It is ‘a historical sign (signum rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognosticon)’ because it shows a ‘tendency of the human race as a whole’. The fact that his understanding of the ‘historical sign’ is in the direction of ‘signs and wonders’, but not in the direction of the apocalyptic portents of the end, is shown, not only by the sacramental terminology he is drawing upon, but also by his interpretation of the Enlightenment through the symbol of the exodus as ‘emergence from a self-imposed minority’ to the freedom of adulthood and a free use of the understanding; and by his millenarian interpretation of the present as a time of transition from belief in the church to a pure belief in reason. In this again the transition takes place to the continual approximation to the church of an invisible kingdom of God on earth, which unites all men for all time.
We must also consider the history of that Protestant tradition which saw Christianity as ‘the religion of freedom’, human rights as the realization of the kingdom of God, and popular sovereignty as the coming of age of free citizens; and here we may take Richard Rothe as an example. For Rothe the revolutionary struggles for freedom are not the abomination of desolation; in his view the Enlightenment’s free use of the understanding was not atheism, neither was Christianity’s estrangement from the church a sign of its downfall. For him these things are rather ‘the signs and wonders’ of the liberating Spirit.
If we want to find our bearings in the present state of Christianity, then the prerequisite is a recognition that the ecclesiastical stage in Christianity’s historical development is a thing of the past, and that the Christian spirit has already entered its moral, i.e., its political period. If the church is the essential form of Christianity’s existence, then—and this we must honestly admit—it is nowadays in a lamentable condition; and this state of affairs did not begin yesterday either.… But Christianity in its inmost being will go beyond the church; it desires as its organism nothing less than the whole organism of human life in general, that is to say, the state. Its purpose is essentially to secularize itself ever more completely, that is, to put off the ecclesiastical forms which it was forced to assume on its entry into the world, and to put on the general forms of human existence: that is to say, the moral form of life per se.
For by secularizing itself Christianity gives moral form to society. By proceeding from particular ecclesiastical forms of existence to general political ones, it humanizes politics. The church’s approach to the kingdom of God takes place in this transition from the ecclesiastical to the moral, from hierarchy to universal Christianity, from religion to life, and from faith to political responsibility. God ultimately desires the state, the perfected state, the moral kingdom of God on earth, because he wants people who have arrived at full maturity. Once this is achieved the church will have become superfluous, since it was a transitional institution, designed for the education of men. Its goal has been reached, for it is there not for its own sake or for its own expansion but for the sake of the kingdom of God. The ‘signs and wonders’ of the history of the Spirit which Rothe saw in Enlightenment, science, independent morality, the democratic interpretation of the state, as well as a growing sense of freedom, made him conclude that the period of transition had come. ‘The pious church-goer belongs to the past.’ All that remains now is the Christian as citizen in the perfected kingdom of morality and culture. As a result of the world-wide historical illumination of the notion of morality, today ‘the Christian spirit’, which is ‘the exalted Christ himself’, is in the course of giving up its religious and ecclesiastical formations, taking on instead the general forms of morality and politics. Of course Rothe did not believe that the present political situation was already a state of perfection; but in principle Christianity had arrived at the new level in which it was a matter of a continual approach to that perfection. The ‘moral state’ which he envisaged as the final purpose of the divine history, and the freedom which he saw as the goal of the history of the Spirit, were Utopias; but they were utopias designed to regulate morality and the mature Christian’s free use of the understanding. He did not want to dissolve the church in any existing nation or state; but he wanted to raise the existing churches and nations into ‘the moral state’ which can only be one, and hence can only be a single and universal world-state.
Rothe also developed an expressly political theology on the basis of his interpretation of the signs of the times. But he did not politicize the particular churches on the basis of dogmatic premises; instead he wanted to make universal Christendom, in its coming of age, conscious of its ethical and political task in world history. It is not the clerical office which enjoys the ultimate divine mandate behind all worldly orders (as in Vilmar), but the layman; for the layman is part of the movement of the ‘Christian spirit’, which has entered into its ‘political age’. The only task now left for the cleric is the ‘skilful conduct of an … orderly retreat’. Because Christianity has left its ecclesiastical for its ethical age, it has thereby also entered its universal historical era. Rothe’s progress from the church to Christianity has as its premise the interpretation of ‘the signs of the times’ as signs and wonders of the history of the Spirit.
Did Rothe make the virtue of political Christianity out of the church’s necessity, just as, conversely, Vilmar and the apocalyptic writers made an ecclesiastical virtue out of the revolutionary necessity of the world? What do ‘the signs of the times’ say, and in the light of what expectation of the future ought they to be interpreted? The problem is just as relevant today as it was in the nineteenth century. At that time it was the French Revolution which gave European history its revolutionary keynote, whether it was interpreted positively or negatively. Today it is the protest against the North Atlantic centres of power, the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist struggles for freedom carried on by the oppressed nations, and the ever wider class conflicts which give those revolutionary keynotes a world-wide connotation. The signs have become more numerous, but they are still the signs of the same facts. The interpretations of the signs of the times through which the church tries to find its bearings in history have hardly become any more numerous. They still follow the two basic patterns of messianism or apocalyptic. The liberation of African and Asian peoples is welcomed by some people as ‘a sign and wonder’ in the history of the Spirit. Others view it with apprehension as the revolt of terrorists and the portent of the end of the world. Accordingly the opposition between the anti-revolutionary conservative choice and the revolutionary progressive choice among Christians all over the world is simply being intensified. Apocalyptic terrorism on the one hand and messianic enthusiasm on the other are threatening to lead to a split in the churches through opposing political ecclesiologies. There can be no doubt that both of them, with their obsession with the end-time, are eminently political.
Ecclesiology based on ‘the signs of the times’ remains without any theological criterion. It is true that the particular eschatological expectations provide different categories of interpretation, but the impression remains that the picture of the times takes its colouring from what are fundamentally non-theological factors, that is to say, from unspoken political interests. Dialectical theology has hence turned away from this form of pious or impious inspection of the entrails of history, seeing in the person and history of Jesus Christ the one and only ‘sign of the times’ which has any relevance for faith.
Signs of the time there are indeed; but not such as those after which apocalyptic fantasy peers. For ‘God’s Reign comes not so that it can be calculated; and none can say, “Lo here or there!” For lo, God’s Reign is (all at once) in your midst!’ (Luke 17:21).… The people, it is true, are blind to the true signs of the time; they can well enough interpret the signs of the heavens (clouds and wind) and know when it is going to rain or be hot—why can they not discern the signs of the present?… But what are the signs of the time? He himself! His presence, his deeds, his message!
This christological concentration by the church on the one sign with which it began is necessary if the church is to get away from the time-conditioned pessimism or optimism which determine the speculations of disaster or salvation history. It is unavoidable, if the political interests which tacitly dominate those depictions of our times and our morality are to be submitted to the interest of Christ.
As the church of Christ, the church lives in the ‘today’ of Christ’s messianic mission and presence (Luke 4:18ff.). All considerations about the times of world history and the hour when history will end must take their bearings from this. An allegedly higher wisdom based on a theology of history cannot take the place of the Christian proclamation. The proclamation of salvation—‘in season and out of season’, we are told—must not be replaced by speculations about a secret divine plan of salvation which we are supposed to read from the course of history. In that case the morning papers would be the Bible. But the restricted christology of ‘the signs of the times’ and the concentration of the eschatology of world history on the eschatological proclamation are themselves bound to lead to questions about history. For what is preached and maintained is one thing—but the consciousness of the time in which it is preached and maintained is another. It is impossible to overlook the fact that the proclamation of salvation is simultaneously a revelation of disaster, simply because salvation is only proclaimed and not yet consummated. It cannot be forgotten that the universal call to the decision of faith, by virtue of this decision, itself brings about the separation between believers and non-believers. Rightly though the church sees itself as the people and the vanguard of the universal kingdom of freedom, it is equally important for it to realize that through its particularity it acts like leaven to produce discord. Neither world history nor eschatology provide any explanation for this double effect of the proclamation of faith and of the church, which could help the church to hold aloof from its charge in order to withdraw into the ghetto of ‘the little flock’. But neither can christology provide any explanation through which the church could disregard the shadows of unbelief, of division and of discord which accompany it, in order to adapt itself to the progress of society.
It is in its very character as the saving leaven that the church is also the opposite; and it is in its character as proclamation of the righteousness of God that the gospel also reveals the world under the divine wrath. Just because it proclaims that salvation is near it provokes crises. Where belief comes into being, unbelief awakes. Where people lay hold of salvation, temptation comes. It is wrong to wallow in this dark, gloomy side of Christianity’s mission and expansion, let alone to seek to bring on the coming of the end with ‘apocalyptic pleasure’ over crises and downfalls. For the declared intention of the gospel is not to provoke disbelief, separation and conflict, but to awaken faith, fellowship and peace. Disbelief, separation and conflict are not a call for apocalyptic declarations which serve the self-justification of believers; they are a call solely for ceaseless and still more vigorous witness to the justifying and liberating gospel. On the other hand, however, joy in the gospel does not mean that we should not take the disbelief, the separation and the conflict seriously.
If we follow the christological concentration of the ‘signs of the times’ and if we start from the evangelical mission of the church, then the point at issue is in the first place the ‘signs and wonders’ which accompany the messianic exodus in the history of the Spirit. To discover them in the historical context of the proclamation and the spread of the gospel that leads to freedom, means perceiving Christ in the history of the Spirit. Only afterwards and in addition, and therefore to a secondary degree, can ‘the signs of the end’ then be perceived as well—the signs of the growing crisis in world history. ‘Where there is danger, the salutary also grows’, said Hölderlin hopefully. Ernst Bloch realistically expressed the reverse side of this hope: ‘Where the salutary is near, the danger grows.’ The ‘signs and wonders’ take place in the liberating history of the Spirit of Christ. But the Spirit also provokes—as well as these signs and wonders and on their behalf—the signs of crisis and danger. World history is not led towards its fulfilment in a continuous series of advances through the proclamation of Christ’s victory and through the experiences of liberation in the Spirit; on the contrary, history becomes increasingly fraught with crisis. Just because Christ is ‘the sign of the times’, crises arise round him. These are not the portents of total crisis; they are always merely signs of particular and specific conflicts. For it is not world crisis that leads to Christ’s parousia; it is Christ’s parousia that brings this world with its crises to an end. Historical and personal crises are not signs of the last judgment, for they are always historical opportunities at the same time. Hence the signs that we have spoken about are not to be understood as signs of the end, but as what they are: signs of history.
In the final paragraphs of this chapter our aim will be to explore the church’s mission and its meaning, existence and functions in the comprehensive framework of the history of God’s dealings with the world. This is as necessary as it is difficult. It is necessary, because no single life can comprehend itself without comprehending itself in the framework of the whole in which it acquires its significance. Every theology of history remains at the mercy of arbitrarily determined ‘signs of the times’ as long as it fails to grasp history itself in a trinitarian sense. It is difficult, because such an enterprise is all too easily exposed to the reproach of being remote from specific events, from experience and practice, and falls under suspicion of being a speculation with empty concepts.
Still, ‘perceptions without concepts are blind’, said Kant. The intuition or perception of the church in its field of tension between faith and experience, in its relationship to the history of Christ and to the history of the world, remains in our case blind as long as it does not press forward to the concept of the history of God’s dealings with the world. But Kant also said: ‘Concepts without intuition are empty.’ The concept of the history of God’s dealings with the world remains in our case ‘empty’ as long as it is not related to the intuition or perception of the church in the history of Christ and, further, in the history of the world.
In what follows we shall try to grasp the single event, the special experience and the particular practice in the context and in the movements of the history of God. That cannot be called ‘abstract’. To be abstract rather means isolating the single event from its history, the special experience from the context of life to which it belongs, and the particular action from its period. We isolate objects in order to know them, by separating them from their contexts, subjecting them to a single viewpoint and excluding all other aspects. This is the way we arrive at definitions and clear judgments. True, some people believe that they are thinking ‘in quite concrete terms’ when they talk about ‘the historical Jesus’ instead of about the history of Jesus’ relation with God, as this is expressed in the title ‘Son of God’; or when they talk about getting rid of a class-stratified society, instead of about the future of history as it is described through the symbol of hope, ‘the kingdom of God’. In actual fact this ‘quite concrete’ way of thinking is highly abstract, for it detaches one aspect from all the wealth of life’s interrelations and particularizes it. The intuitions, experiences and actions which are isolated from the total cohesion to which they belong then become sporadic, blind and meaningless. Abstract, isolating thinking must hence be set aside again by integrating thinking and must be guided into life. This integrating thinking—or speculative thinking, as it used to be called—has nothing to do with remoteness from practice or poverty of experience. It attempts to understand the event in its history, experience as part of the whole of life, and action in time; and in this way it tries to understand the meaning of what is individual too.
Without an understanding of the particular church in the framework of the universal history of God’s dealings with the world, ecclesiology remains abstract and the church’s self-understanding blind. This will lead almost unavoidably to the danger that the church will lend a universal claim to quite limited tasks, and will support interests conditioned by a particular period with the solemnity of the absolute.
Particularist thinking is isolated, selective and really culpably self-satisfied thinking, which nevertheless—centred absolutely and relentlessly on its selected area—comes up with the claim of being complete, of being able to do all that is necessary on its own, if necessary by force.
On the other hand, side by side with this goes the suicidal tendency to dissipate our own particularity, which cannot be universal, in another social particularity of history. These two dangers can only be avoided if we understand our own inescapable particularity in its significance for the whole. We avoid neither the false claim nor the false despair if we stop short at the question: does the salvation of the world come through the church? It is only when we reverse the question that we can move a step further: does the church come through the salvation of the world?
If a single and special phenomenon like the church wants to understand itself in the history of God’s dealings with the world, then it has to conceive itself in the movement of this history, for it is itself standing in the midst of that movement, not above it and not at its end. But how is any definite statement possible in respect of a history conceived in terms of movement? Can the knowledge which in this history is always incomplete commit itself to a concept? Knowledge is faced with the task of understanding events which are themselves caught up in movement; and thus of understanding itself in such events as knowledge kept in movement by the still moving event. When we here call the total context in which the church ought to understand itself ‘the history of God’s dealings with the world’, this means in the first place the living quality of God’s relationship to the world, which can only be understood properly through the knowledge which that relationship moves and enlivens. If we talk about ‘the trinitarian history of God’, this then means the livingness of God which has moved out of itself, which cannot be fixed by any definition, but can only be understood through participating and engaged knowledge. This circumstance is theologically expressed in the phrase that enlivened, involved and engaged knowledge of the living God comes about ‘in the Holy Spirit’. The movement of the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world includes the movement of knowledge of that history. It is not possible for this knowledge to fix the history of God to a single point. Knowledge of God in the movement of the history of God, and in its being moved through the history of God, is like the flight of a bird and has no fixed abode. It contains no Archimedean fulcrum from which one could move the world, for the world has been brought into movement, together with all its fixed standpoints. For that reason the church can only understand its own position or abode in participation in the movement of the history of God’s dealings with the world, and therefore as one element in this movement. Its attempts to understand itself are attempts at understanding the movement of the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world; and its attempts to understand this movement are attempts at understanding itself.
The determining outlook of seeing oneself in the movement of the world through the history of God, starts from the perception of the history of Christ and from the experience of the Spirit in the light of its sending.
The history of Christ is interpreted in the light of its origin. The gospels relate the history of Jesus as the history of the Messiah sent from God into the world for the purpose of salvation and anointed with the Spirit of the new creation. They present the history of Jesus in the light of his sending, his mission. For Mark, Jesus’ messianic commission begins when the Spirit is conferred on him in baptism (1:9ff.). For Matthew (1:18ff.) and Luke (1:26ff.) it begins earlier with his conception through the Holy Spirit. For John (1:11ff.) the sending of Jesus begins before the foundation of the world in the eternity of the Father. In the history of tradition, therefore, the view taken of the history of Jesus in the light of his mission is increasingly transcendent and comprehensive. Linguistically ‘sending’—πέμπειν—means primarily the sending or mission as such, the fact of sending and being sent; whereas ‘sending forth’—ἐξαποστέλλειν—stresses a ‘specific and unique’ aspect of sending. John stresses the fact of the sending of the one sent by God into the world for its salvation, whereas Paul emphasizes the sending forth of the Son ‘when the time had fully come’ (Gal. 4:4–6). In both cases the word ‘sending’ is intended to comprehend the perception of the whole appearance, history and meaning of Christ in the light of God.
If the messianic history of Jesus is understood in the light of his mission, then theological reflection must ask about the origin of and reason for this mission, in order to understand the particular appearance of Jesus in the context shown. Is the mission of Jesus a chance historical event or does it find its foundation in God himself? If its foundation is in God himself, does it then correspond to God, or does God only appear in this manner, a manner which perhaps does not correspond to him at all? If we push our question further back like this, then we cannot find anything in God which is antecedent to the sending of Jesus and in which this sending was not included. As God appears in history as the sending Father and the sent Son, so he must earlier have been in himself. The relation of the one who sends to the one sent as it appears in the history of Jesus thus includes in itself an order of origin within the Trinity, and must be understood as that order’s historical correspondence. Otherwise there would be no certainty that in the messianic mission of Jesus we have to do with God himself. The relations between the discernible and visible history of Jesus and the God whom he called ‘my Father’ correspond to the relation of the Son to the Father in eternity. The missio ad extra reveals the missio ad intra. The missio ad intra is the foundation for the missio ad extra. Thus theological reflection moves inevitably from the contemplation of the sending of Jesus from the Father to God himself. ‘These movements or processiones in the Trinity are the deepest ground for the sendings or missiones of the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ From the Trinity of the sending of Jesus we can reason back to the Trinity in the origin, in God himself, so that—conversely—we may understand the history of Jesus as the revelation of the living nature of God.
The experience of the Spirit is to be found in the experiences of the history of Christ which men have in their own history. It is the experience of faith in which the mission of Christ and the trend of his history exerts its influence in men and women. It is the experience of fellowship with Christ and through him with the one who sent him. It is, in faith and in fellowship, the experience of creative freedom for the renewal of life. This history of Christ in the Spirit is also interpreted in the light of its origin, so that it is understood as the history of God’s dealings with the world. The experiences of the Holy Spirit are comprehended in the light of the sending of the Spirit. That is why Paul puts the sending of the Spirit parallel to the sending of the Son: ‘When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son.… Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son’ (Gal. 4:4, 6).
John too traces back the experiences of the Spirit to his sending by the Father and the Son (14:26; 15:26 and frequently elsewhere). The history of the Spirit as a whole is understood in the light of its origin. That is why here too theological reflection must enquire about the origin of this sending of the Spirit. The same reasons which led from the concept of the history of Christ in the light of his sending to the eternal generation of the Son by the Father within the Trinity, lead here from the experience of the Spirit in the light of his divine sending to his eternal procession within the Trinity, from the Father, or from the Father and the Son. If this were not so experience of the Spirit could not be termed experience of God; and fellowship with Jesus, the Son, and his Father could not be understood as fellowship with God. But this is just what has to be said if the experience of Jesus and of the one who sent him takes place in the Holy Spirit. ‘In what takes place between the man Jesus and us when we may become and be Christians, God Himself lives.’ The one who liberates men and leads them into the messianic fellowship of Jesus is God the Holy Spirit, because he is the Spirit of the love of God, Father and Son ‘in himself first’.
The inference about the eternal generation of the Son by the Father drawn from the contemplation of the history of Jesus in the light of his sending and the inference about the eternal procession of the Spirit in God himself, drawn from the experience of the Spirit in the light of his sending, are theologically necessary if we are to grasp the history of Jesus and the experience of the Spirit in the totality of the divine history. Here the inference from the historical relations of the Trinity to the relations in its eternal origin has two functions. On the one hand it makes it clear that in the sending of the Son and in the sending of the Spirit men have to do with God himself; that God corresponds to himself in this history of his dealings with men. On the other hand, however, it presents the divine secret as being from the very beginning, and in its very origins, an open secret.
This second aspect deserves particular attention: the Trinity in the origin is the foundation of the Trinity in the sending, and hence the Trinity in the sending reveals the Trinity in the origin as being from eternity an open Trinity. It is open for its own sending. It is ‘open’ in order that it may ‘make itself open’—may manifest itself—in the coming of the Spirit. It is open for men and for all creation. The life of God within the Trinity cannot be conceived of as a closed circle—the symbol of perfection and self-sufficiency. A Christian doctrine of the Trinity which is bound to the history of Christ and the history of the Spirit must conceive the Trinity as the Trinity of the sending and seeking love of God which is open from its very origin. The triune God is the God who is open to man, open to the world and open to time.
In the sending of the Son and the Spirit the Trinity does not only manifest what it is in itself; it also opens itself for history and experience of history. We cannot speak of the love of God as being open to the world and time in the way that we can of the creature, which has to be open to the world and time out of ‘deficiency of being’, but we can do so on the basis of the divine fullness of being and superabundance of life which desires to communicate itself. If we therefore talk about a ‘history of the Trinity’, we do not mean a history of deficiency and death; we mean the history of the self-communicating livingness of God which overcomes death. This history of the Trinity opens up through the sending of the Son and the sending of the Spirit. But just because of that, the inference drawn from the contemplation of the history of Christ and the experience of the Spirit in the light of their sending does not yet embrace the whole trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world. The origin of this history is comprehended, but not yet its future.
If we come back once again to the contemplation of the history of Christ, we discover that this history can be viewed from two sides: from its origin and from its future. If our enquiry is directed towards the past, then this history is understood in the light of the sending and mission of Christ. If we think forwards, then it is seen from the point of view of its goal. Its origin stands in the light of his messianic mission. Its future stands in the light of his resurrection from the dead. Both perspectives belong to a full understanding of the history of Christ. It must be comprehended in the light of his sending and in the light of his glorification, in the light of his origin and in the light of his future, and in such a way that both angles are continually related to one another.
The same thing is true of the experience of the Holy Spirit. In it the meaning of the history of Christ is revealed to men through faith, new obedience and new fellowship. But in so far as this takes place, men are also set in the powers and movements of the new creation. Understood in the light of his sending, the Spirit links up with the history of Christ. Understood from the angle of his goal, he brings about the new creation. The Holy Spirit is hence both the manifesting and the newly creating power. Both perspectives belong together to the understanding of the history of the Spirit. It too must be understood both in the light of its origin and at the same time in the light of its future.
As far as an understanding of the history of Christ and the Spirit in the history of God’s dealings with the world is concerned, it follows that the perspectives of this history in the light of the sending of the Son and the Spirit must be complemented by its perspectives in the light of the glorification of the Son and the Spirit. The full implications of the history of Christ and the Spirit cannot be understood in any other way. In the light of the sending of Jesus and against the background of the order of origin within the Trinity, tradition has always stressed the incarnation, the baptism, the ministry, the passion and Christ’s giving of himself to death on the cross; and has stressed them in that order. His sending was consummated in his self-giving and his incarnation was consummated in his death. The eschatological statements about the history of Christ, his transfiguration, resurrection and exaltation and the consummation of the lordship of God, retreated into the background. There was a one-sided interest in Christ’s origin and, casting back from his history, theologians asked about the ground of that history in time and eternity. If we now enquire eschatologically about Christ’s future, the purpose of his mission and the meaning of his history, then we are not criticizing the previous doctrines about the origin within the Trinity and the trinitarian sending; we are simply taking them further, in accordance with the double understanding of the history of Christ ‘in the light of his sending’ and ‘in the light of his resurrection’. We are then looking to the trinitarian glorification and the eschatological unity of God. Starting with the origin of the history of Christ and of the Spirit from God, we come to the eschatological goal of the history of Christ in the completion of God’s history with the world.
When we consider the history of Christ in the light of its future, the concept of glory is at the centre of attention. In both the Old and the New Testaments doxa means the divine power and glory, the divine unfolding of splendour and beauty. Doxa is the term used both for the godhead of the Father and for the godhead of Christ. Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father (Rom. 6:4). He was taken up into the glory of the Father (1 Tim. 3:16). For the glory of God the Father he was exalted after he had humbled himself to death on the cross and was made kyrios over all things (Phil. 2:11). Whereas for Old Testament prophecy ‘the glory of God’ was the quintessence of the promised divine future and the hoped-for liberation of creation—‘the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Isa. 6:3; cf. 40:5)—the raising of Jesus through the glory, into the glory and for the sake of the glory of the Father means that he was raised into this promised and hoped-for divine future. For that reason the eschatological statements about the coming, liberating glory of God can be proleptically transferred to Christ. If he is raised into the coming glory of the Father, then this future is already present in him, and in him the glory has already entered into the misery of this present time. That is why in this world of sin and death the crucified ‘lord of glory’ stands for the coming ‘God of glory’ (1 Cor. 2:8; Acts 7:2). In the lordship of the one who was crucified the coming rule of God has taken on historical form. That is why the glory of the Father has appeared in the glorifying of Christ. The radiance of the divine glory is reflected in the face of Christ and through him illuminates the hearts of men, as the light shone out of darkness on the first day of creation (2 Cor. 4:6).
The eschatological statements about the glory of Christ concern his eschatological existence after the resurrection. The application of the word doxa to the earthly Jesus is considerably restricted. In Luke the angels’ hymn of praise at his lowly birth (Luke 2:9) and also his transfiguration on the mountain (9:28ff.) point to his future and can be termed an anticipation of his glorification. Only John talks about the glory of the earthly Jesus, about the glorifying of the Father in the suffering of the Son and the glorifying of the Son in his death on the cross; and he does so because he describes the whole life of Jesus from a viewpoint focused on the exalted one.
In the eschatological interpretation of the history of Christ, which sees it in the light of its future, this history is understood as the beginning of God’s glorification. The Son glorifies the Father through his obedience. The Father glorifies the Son through his resurrection and exaltation.
When we consider the history of the Spirit in the light of its future, glorification is also at the centre. Fellowship with Christ in the Spirit is the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings and the fellowship of his death. But in being this it is also at the same time the fellowship of his resurrection through newness of life and participation through hope in his life in glory (Rom. 6; Phil. 3). The mission of Christ achieves its purpose when men and creation are united with God. In this union God is glorified through men and in it they partake of the glory of God himself. That is why Christ is called ‘the hope of glory’ (Col. 1:27) and why we expect that he ‘will glorify our lowly body to be like his glorious body’ (Phil. 3:21). The power which glorifies men in the glory of God is the Holy Spirit. That is why he is called the first fruits and guarantee (av ‘earnest’) of glory (Rom. 8:23; 2 Cor. 5:5). He glorifies Christ in believers and unites them with him. Through union with Christ in the Holy Spirit the coming glory already becomes efficacious in the present life. That is why the hope of the assailed glory of the present fellowship of Christ is directed towards the unchallenged glory of the coming fellowship with God. The Spirit glorifies the Father and the Son by freeing men for fellowship with them, filling men in their freedom with joy and thanksgiving. The glorifying of the Son and the Father through the Spirit sets men on the road towards the glory for which they themselves are destined.
In the movements of glorification the experience of the Spirit is understood in the light of its future, as the first fruits and advance payment of the perfected glory of man in God’s glorification in him: the Spirit glorifies the Son and the Father in creation. Together with the Son he glorifies the Father. This trinitarian history of glorification points beyond itself to the goal of the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world. Here the thinking which directs its questions back to the origin is out of place; what belongs here is the eschatological thinking that hurries eagerly ahead towards the goal and towards the consummation. For this points the trinitarian history of glorifications towards the glorified Trinity at the end. But this will only glorify itself in the liberated and new creation. The glory of God is only completed (Rom. 11:36) when the ‘creation at the beginning’ is consummated by the ‘new creation at the end’ and when the whole redeemed existence joyfully raises the hymn of eternal thanksgiving: ‘To him be the doxa for ever and ever’ (Rev. 1:6). Wherever on the way to this goal the gospel is preached to the poor, sins are forgiven, the sick are healed, the oppressed are freed and outcasts are accepted, God is glorified and creation is in part perfected.
The eschatological meaning of the messianic mission of Christ and the Spirit lies in the glorifying of God and the liberation of the world, in the sense that God is glorified through the liberation and healing of creation, and that he does not desire to be glorified without his liberated creation.
If we compare the two directions in which the history of Christ and the Spirit can be understood in the history of God’s dealings with the world, we find correspondences, additions and one irreversible direction. The Trinity in the sending is, from its eternal origin, open to the world and to men. For with this the history of God’s seeking love is begun. The Trinity in the glorification is, from its eschatological goal, open for the gathering and uniting of men and the whole creation with God and in God. In it the history of the gathering love of God is completed. Through the sending of the Son and the Spirit the history of the Trinity is opened for the history of the gathering, uniting and glorifying of the world in God and of God in the world. The opening and the completion correspond to one another in the openness of the triune God. ‘The relationship of the divine persons to one another is so wide that it has room for the whole world’ (Adrienne von Speyr). At the end God has won his creation in its renewing consummation for his dwelling place. He comes to his glory in the joy of redeemed creation.
When we speak about the sending and the glorification, we are talking in a highly concentrated way about the triune God. The Holy Spirit glorifies Christ in the world and the world in Christ to the glory of the Father. By effecting this he unites creation with the Son and the Father, as he unites the Son himself with the Father. As the force that glorifies, the Holy Spirit is also the power of unification.
In historical reflection, we work from the sending of the Son and the Spirit back to the Trinity and arrive at the divine unity—either by going back to the Father as ‘source of the Godhead’ or by proceeding to the one divine nature behind the three persons. In this scheme, the unity of God is viewed as that which is ontologically the foundation of the sendings of Son and Spirit (or even as the foundation of the Trinity itself). In the eschatological anticipation of history, however, the unity of God contains within itself the whole union of creation with God and in God. Eschatologically, the unity of God is therefore linked with the salvation of creation, just as his glory is linked with his glorification through everything that lives and rejoices. Just as his glory is presented to him from creation through the Spirit, so his unity through the union of creation is also brought to him through the Spirit. In the eschatological considerations of historical thinking, the idea of the unity of God has a high soteriological content. For that reason it would be better to talk in this respect about the ‘union’ of God.
Unusual though this phrase may sound to the West’s way of thinking about origins, there are none the less models for it in Old Testament and Jewish thought. Franz Rosenzweig interprets the Shema Israel as follows: ‘To acknowledge God’s unity—the Jew calls it uniting God. For this unity is, in that it becomes; it is a Becoming Unity. And this Becoming is laid on the soul of man and in his hands.’ Rosenzweig relates this ‘divine union’ in prayer to that ‘cutting off of God from himself’ which is suggested in the mystical doctrine of the Shekina:
God himself cuts himself off from himself, he gives himself away to his people, he suffers with their sufferings, he goes with them into the misery of the foreign land, he wanders with their wanderings … God himself, in that he ‘sells himself’ to Israel—and what should be more natural for ‘God our Father’!—and suffers its fate with it, makes himself in need of redemption. In this way, in this suffering, the relationship between God and the remnant points beyond itself.
Is not what is here, according to Rosenzweig, entrusted to Israel, in an analogous way entrusted by Christian thinking to the Holy Spirit, who through believers ‘unites’ God by glorifying him? Does not God’s separation from himself in order to suffer with his people correspond on another level to the separation of God the Father from his Son in the cross, in order that he might suffer with the Godforsakenness of the godless and so vicariously abolish it? How much more could the glorifying of the Son and the Father in the Spirit of liberation and of fellowship then be understood as the ‘union’ of the triune God! The unity of the triune God is the goal of the uniting of man and creation with the Father and the Son in the Spirit. The history of the kingdom of God on earth is nothing other than the history of the uniting of what is separated and the freeing of what is broken, in this being the history of the glorification of God. If the unity of God were described in the doctrine of the Trinity by koinonia instead of by una natura, this idea would not seem so unusual.
Between the Trinity in its origins before time and the eschatological glorifying and unifying of God lies the whole history of God’s dealings with the world. By opening himself for this history and entering into it in his seeking love through the sending of Christ and the Spirit, God also experiences this history of the world in its breadth and depth. We must drop the philosophical axioms about the nature of God. God is not unchangeable, if to be unchangeable means that he could not in the freedom of his love open himself to the changeable history of his creation. God is not incapable of suffering if this means that in the freedom of his love he would not be receptive to suffering over the contradiction of man and the self-destruction of his creation. God is not invulnerable if this means that he could not open himself to the pain of the cross. God is not perfect if this means that he did not in the craving of his love want his creation to be necessary to his perfection.
The history of the Son and of the Spirit therefore brings about, even for God himself within the Trinity, an experience, something ‘new’. After the Son’s exaltation the relationship between the Father and the Son is no longer absolutely the same as before. The Father has become ‘another’ through the Son’s self-giving, and the Son too has become ‘another’ through his experience of suffering in the world. Through his love for the Son, who experiences the sin of the world in his death on the cross, God experiences something which belongs essentially to the redemption of the world: he experiences pain. In the night when the Son dies on the cross, God himself experiences abandonment in the form of this death and this rejection. We must add that this is a new experience for God, for which he has laid himself open and prepared himself from eternity in his seeking love. God experiences the cross, but this also means that he has absorbed this death into eternal life, that he suffers it in order to give the forsaken world his life. Because of that he does not want to be glorified in any other way than through the glorification of the one who was crucified, ‘the Lamb who was slain’ (Rev. 5:12; 7:14; 12:10ff.). In becoming the ‘eternal seal and stamp’ of the lordship of God, the one who was crucified also becomes the eternal seal of God’s glorification and of the eschatological trinity.
What applies to the experience of God in the history of the Son also applies in its own way to the experience of God in the history of the Spirit. God does not desire glory without his glorification through man and creation in the Spirit. God does not desire to find rest without the new creation of man and the world through the Spirit. God does not desire to be united with himself without the uniting of all things with him. It is in this context that the vision in Revelation belongs in which ‘Salvation (soteria) is come to (rsv ‘belongs to) our God and to the Lamb’ (Rev. 7:10; 12:10; 19:1). The ‘salvation’ which God receives in the end is offered to him through glorification, through thanksgiving and the pleasure of the new creation in redeemed existence. The world-embracing pneumatology which we find in Revelation corresponds to the no less comprehensive christology of Paul, according to which the Son only completes his obedience to the Father when everything is put under his feet, when all dominion, authority and power, and finally death itself, have been destroyed, and when he gives the lordship entrusted to him to his Father, ‘that God may be all in all’ (rsv ‘may be everything to every one’). The transference of lordship from the Son to the Father at the end-time is both the completion of the history of the liberation of the world and a happening within the Trinity. Analogously, the glorification of God in the Spirit at the end-time is also an event which perfects the world and at the same time a happening within the Trinity. God comes to his glory in that creation becomes free. Creation is perfected in that its unclouded joy glorifies God. ‘Salvation’ comprehends God and creation in the unity of doxology and soteriology.
The divine experience of history also has two sides to it. If we trace the thought of the sending of the Son consistently to the end, we are bound to talk about God’s vulnerability, suffering and pain, in view of Christ’s passion, his death on the cross and his descent into hell. God experiences suffering, death and hell. This is the way he experiences history.
If we think in the direction of the glorification, then—in view of the resurrection, exaltation and perfection of Christ, and remembering the history of the Spirit—we must talk about God’s joy (as already in Isa. 62:4–5; Zeph. 3:17), God’s happiness and felicity (1 Tim. 1:11; 6:15; Luke 15:7; Matt. 25:21; John 15:11; 16:20; Rom. 14:17; 15:13). This is the way God creates history.
God experiences history in order to effect history. He goes out of himself in order to gather into himself. He is vulnerable, takes suffering and death on himself in order to heal, to liberate and to confer new life. The history of God’s suffering in the passion of the Son and the sighings of the Spirit serves the history of God’s joy in the Spirit and his completed felicity at the end. That is the ultimate goal of God’s history of suffering in the world. But once the joy of union is complete the history of suffering does not become obsolete and a thing of the past. As suffering that has been endured, and which has brought about liberation, eternal life and union, it remains the ground of eternal joy in the salvation of God and his new creation.
In the movements of the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world the church finds and discovers itself, in all the relationships which comprehend its life. It finds itself on the path traced by this history of God’s dealings with the world, and it discovers itself as one element in the movements of the divine sending, gathering together and experience. It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfil to the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church, creating a church as it goes on its way. It is not the church that administers the Spirit as the Spirit of preaching, the Spirit of the sacraments, the Spirit of the ministry or the Spirit of tradition. The Spirit ‘administers’ the church with the events of word and faith, sacrament and grace, offices and traditions. If the church understands itself, with all its tasks and powers, in the Spirit and against the horizon of the Spirit’s history, then it also understands its particularity as one element in the power of the Spirit and has no need to maintain its special power and its special charges with absolute and self-destructive claims. It then has no need to look sideways in suspicion or jealousy at the saving efficacies of the Spirit outside the church; instead it can recognize them thankfully as signs that the Spirit is greater than the church and that God’s purpose of salvation reaches beyond the church.
The church participates in Christ’s messianic mission and in the creative mission of the Spirit. We cannot therefore say what the church is in all circumstances and what it comprises in itself. But we can tell where the church happens. The phrase ‘The church is present where …’, used in article VII of the Augsburg Confession and in article III of the Barmen Declaration, is a correct one, but it cannot be restricted merely to ‘true proclamation’ and ‘a right administration of the sacraments’. Both are included, yet we shall have to say more comprehensively: the church is present wherever ‘the manifestation of the Spirit’ (1 Cor. 12:7) takes place.
The church participates in the glorifying of God in creation’s liberation. Wherever this takes place through the workings of the Spirit, there is the church. The true church is the song of thanksgiving of those who have been liberated.
The church participates in the uniting of men with one another, in the uniting of society with nature and in the uniting of creation with God. Wherever unions like this take place, however fragmentary and fragile they may be, there is the church. The true church is the fellowship of love.
Love participates in the history of God’s suffering. Wherever men take up their cross and in their self-giving are made like the one who was crucified, wherever the sighings of the Spirit are heard in the cry for freedom, there is the church. The true church is ‘the church under the cross’.
But in suffering and under the cross the church also participates in the history of the divine joy. It rejoices over every conversion and every liberation, because it is itself the fellowship of the converted and the liberated. Wherever the joy of God can be heard, there is the church. The true church is joy in the Spirit.
Thus the whole being of the church is marked by participation in the history of God’s dealings with the world. The Apostles’ Creed expresses this truth by integrating the credo ecclesiam in the credo in deum triunum. And no ecclesiology should sink below this level.
III
‘Without Christ, no church.’ This simple sentence expresses an incontrovertible fact. There is only a church if and as long as Jesus of Nazareth is believed and acknowledged as the Christ of God. But the sentence also raises the question of the reciprocal relationship between knowledge of Christ and acknowledgment of the church. The way one thinks about Christ is also the way one thinks about the church. What one believes about him and expects from him also gives interest in the church its stamp. The doctrine of the church, therefore, where it concerns the foundation of the church and the conditions in which it exists, is indissolubly connected with the doctrine of Jesus, the Christ of God. The name the church gives itself—the church of Jesus Christ—requires us to see Christ as the subject of his church and to bring the church’s life into alignment with him. Thus ecclesiology can only be developed from christology, as its consequence and in correspondence with it.
But on the other hand the history of the Christian faith since its beginnings in the New Testament shows that the titles given to Christ, in which the churches express their faith and their hope, are historically conditioned, vary from time to time and change in substance. Like them, the self-understanding of the church is also historically conditioned, varies from time to time and changes in substance. The image of Christ and the image of the church also always reflect ‘the spirit of the age’, the political and economic circumstances, and the cultural and social conditions, in which the churches are living.
In intention faith’s consciousness is directed towards the ‘object’ of faith, but functionally it is conditioned by the situation. We must distinguish between the two if we are to uncover the tensions which arise for the Christian faith from this fact. In intention all the variable christological titles in history are related to that one fixed point which is summed up in the name of Jesus and the unique history of this person. All the christological titles, from ‘Messiah’, ‘Son of man’ and ‘kyrios’ to ‘Logos’, ‘example’ and ‘representative’, are seeking to say who this Jesus is and what he means. Their truth must therefore be tested against Jesus himself and his history, and it is here that their meaning has to be understood. In intention the statements about the church—‘the body of Christ’, ‘the house of God’, ‘God’s people’, ‘the communion of saints’, etc.—are also directed towards the person of Jesus and his history, by way of the christological titles on which they depend. Their content can only be criticized or find legitimation from this point. But functionally the church’s titles, like the titles of Christ, belong to their particular period. The church belongs to the field of tension between the history of Christ and its own contemporary history, and is itself this field of tension. If it wanted to understand itself merely out of its knowledge of the history of Christ, it would be ‘orthodox’ in the sense that it would be taking the picture of Christ and the church held in past times in an absolute sense and would be forgetting the picture’s historical conditioning. If it wanted to understand itself merely from the history of its own time, it would become the religious reflection of present conditions and movements and ought, if it were honest, to strike the name of Christ out of its title. If it accepts the tensions at the point of intersection between the history of Christ as it is realized in the present, and contemporary history, then it becomes alienated from its environment. It will men, through the present realization of Christ, be alienated from its environment in Christ’s way. The fixation of its past form through the repetition of ancient rites, symbols and formulae always leads the church into the wrong sort of non-contemporaneity with the present. It is only the present realization of the person, the mission, the cross and the future of Christ himself that brings the church into its necessary and hopeful non-contemporaneity with the present. The consciousness which is directed towards Christ will then alter the subjective conditions of its consciousness and the specific form of its existence in society. It will then, at least partly, see through the plausible complex of society, the classes, races and generations in which it has settled down, as being a complex of alienation and will get beyond the blindness of its own professional establishment.
Christ’s strange nature alienates contemporaries, and even the devout who have settled down in contemporary society. But the strangeness of Christ cannot be a matter of historical remoteness. That could be endured and overcome, as it is in analogous traditions. It must be a matter of the strangeness of his mission, his cross and his promise; for in no other way could the church’s alienation from its environment (an alienation which he brings about) be legitimated, nor would it be a hopeful alienation. It is only when the church is alienated from its environment in Christ’s way, that it can perceive and show in an alienated world that the kingdom of God which Christ has promised is our home. It is this conflict which is at issue whenever the church in its contemporary environment dares to appeal to Christ and is prepared to hear his voice and no other. It will then be drawn into his mission: the messianic liberation of those who are imprisoned in its present day. It will then be drawn into his destiny of passion and bear its cross. It will then return to his future and answer for its hope.
If the church does not see itself as ‘the church of society’, or as the ‘German’, or ‘white’, or ‘male’ church (even though it can often enough really be described as these things in terms of its actual situation), but calls itself instead ‘the church of Christ’, then it will also have to make Christ its starting point in its own self-understanding. But in what relationship does the church stand to Christ and—according to its faith—what is the relationship of Christ to the church? The answers that are given differ considerably. Christ’s priority over the church finds clearest expression in Question 54 of the Heidelberg Catechism. There the question: ‘What dost thou believe about the holy, catholic, Christian church?’ is given a surprisingly indirect answer:
That out of the whole human race the Son of God gathers, protects and upholds a community of the elect destined for eternal life, through His Spirit and Word, in the unity of faith, from the beginning of the world unto its end; and that I am a living member of the same and will eternally remain so.
The question about the being of the church is here answered by a confession of faith in Christ and what he does. The ecclesiological question is given a christological answer. The being of the church is described through the activities of Christ, who ‘chooses, gathers, protects and upholds’. The church has its true being in the work of Christ. That excludes an independent ontology of the church and permits merely the account of the history of Christ’s acts. He works through ‘Spirit and Word’ (the mention of the Spirit before the Word is surprising in a Reformation catechism but is correct in view of the breadth of the Spirit and the abundance of the Spirit’s gifts). The activity of God’s Son is universal. It extends in space to ‘the whole human race’ and in time to all generations ‘from the beginning of the world to the end’. However the pre-Christian workings of the Son of God were conceived of by the authors Ursin and Olevianus, what is meant is the spatial and temporal lack of restriction. The ‘Son of God’ is neither a lord of the church nor a cultic hero; he is the Christ of the one God for the whole human race. His choosing, gathering and protective activity creates the church, not as an institution for salvation or a cultic group, but as a brotherhood to which the individual can profess loyalty as a ‘living member’. Ultimately, the election, gathering and preservation of the church are not an end in themselves but serve ‘eternal life’, as the final goal of Christ’s activity, and of the church created out of that activity, is called. This outlook is reflected in the individual’s assurance of ‘remaining for ever’ in this fellowship. It is the assurance of hope found in persevering to the end.
What is missing in this declaration in the catechism is the positive world-wide aspect of Christ’s mission and the mission of the church. The whole human race only seems to be material for the election and gathering of the community of the saved, as if mankind were there for the church and not the church for mankind. We also miss the call to service for the world and, finally, the vision of hope for the new heaven and the new earth. The fact that the Johannine eschatology of ‘eternal life’ was chosen suggests that we have here the misunderstanding of an unworldly hope. The answer to the question about the church, with its acknowledgment of the activity of Christ (which is in this form so curiously inadequate, even though it is justifiable in content) deserves to be adhered to.
But in modern times other formulas for an understanding of the relationship between the church and Christ have suggested themselves, because the christological presuppositions of the Heidelberg Catechism have become questionable.
(i) Was Jesus the founder, or rather the foundation, of the Christian religion? This statement was made by historicism and liberal theology in the age of the Enlightenment. People started from the history of Christianity and asked about its ‘founder’ because Christianity (unlike many other religions) harks back to a central figure. Jesus of Nazareth, who taught, suffered and died under the Roman empire, must somehow have founded Christianity, rather as Romulus and Remus founded Rome, or Plato was the foundation of Platonism or Aquinas of Thomism. To this way of thinking, the ‘founder’ lays the foundation stone without leaving behind any binding regulations about what should be built on top of it, and how. One can continue to build on this foundation, or one can deviate from it. With the help of this idea, the church can certainly appeal to Jesus of Nazareth as its founder, but it need not allow itself to be disturbed in its historical development by remembrance of him. Everything that we find disconcerting about his mission, his fate and his hope can be reduced to its historical context and thus made innocuous.
(ii) Was Jesus the founder of the church as an institution? This model goes beyond the earlier ‘founder’ idea. If the church sees itself as an institution established by Jesus, and the Christian religion as a religion devised by a particular individual, then it was called into life by a legal act. At the same time it was given an unalterable testamentary definition. This is fixed by the founder’s intention and determines the form of the institution’s administration. The church then does not derive from the free ‘coming together of individuals who have been born again’. It lives according to the intention of its founder, who has preceded it, established it and determined its form. In using this model the student of the history of religions has sought to designate those religions which in addition to the deity pay attention to their founder—as has happened with Mohammed, with Moses and perhaps also with Buddha. But in the case of Christianity the picture is inadequate. It is true that by its very definition it reckons with the continuingly effective will of the founder of Christianity, but also with his irrevocable death. Apart from the fact that historically Jesus did not act as the founder of a religion and did not ‘establish’ any church, even in the literal sense—according to this picture only his intention as founder would survive his death. Interpreted as an institution set up by Jesus of Nazareth, the church would live from the last will and testament of a dead founder, but it would not live in his presence, or for his future. Its feasts—Christmas, Good Friday, Easter—would then be the ‘founder’s days’ of an institution. This would certainly take account of the difference between the present and valid intention of the founder and its temporally conditioned execution, but not of the alienation which emanates from his death on the cross, nor the hope which kindles at his resurrection. Both models see the church’s relationship to Jesus only in the context of influence emanating from a historical person. They indicate Jesus’ historical precedence over the church, but not a qualitative difference.
(iii) Was Jesus the ‘author of faith’ and the origin of the proclamation? The relationship between Jesus and the church can be depicted in a similar way when the specific character of the church is stressed. We then find continuity in the kerygma. Expressed as a christological statement, this means:
Jesus is the Word. All the activity of Jesus is centred in the Word. … That is why John always represents Jesus as saying almost nothing except that he is speaking the Word of God. For John, from beginning to end, Jesus is not meant to be the ‘historical Jesus’; he is the ‘Word’, the Word of the Christian proclamation.
Expressed as an ecclesiological statement this means:
Therefore nothing needs to be taught about Jesus except ‘that’, nothing except that in his historical life the event had its beginning and the event continues in the preaching of the community.
If then Christian proclamation and the history that communicates it coincide and are one and the same thing, then christology and ecclesiology can no longer be qualitatively distinguished, for the two meet in the doctrine of the kerygma. The name of Jesus then denotes the origin, the beginning or the establishment of the church’s proclamation. This is no different if one replaces the kerygma by faith. Jesus’ faith then becomes the historical beginning and fruitful prototype of the Christian’s faith. The continuing history of faith actually begins with the faith which Jesus calls to life. Christology and ecclesiology then coincide in the doctrine of faith. The ground of faith and the genesis of faith are here so closely intertwined that it is hard to make a logical distinction between them.
In the case of the ‘foundation’ model, the history of Christ’s work provides the continuity of christology and ecclesiology. In the ‘founder’ model it lies in the continuing action of Christ’s will. But in the model which sees Christ as the origin of faith and proclamation, the difference between Christ and the church is abolished in the kerygma or in faith.
(iv) Is the church ‘the other Christ’? This formula of the Christus prolongatus links up logically with the last one we have described.
As Bellarmine acutely and subtly observes, the name ‘Body of Christ, means more than that Christ is the Head of His mystical Body; it means also that He so upholds the Church and so, after a certain manner, lives in the Church that she may be said to be another Christ (altera Christi persona).
So we are told in the Mystici Corporis of 1943. The difference is still preserved in the quasi, but stress lies on the identification. The idea that follows from ‘the body of Christ’ image of the church, that Christ can only be called the totus Christus together with the church, goes back to Augustine. Heinrich Schlier has adopted it in his commentaries: because there is no head without a body, Christ must in the fullest sense be understood as a unity of head and body. The church is the body of Christ. The body and the head together are Christ. Christ is therefore only Christ in the full sense together with the church. He adds that through the growth of the church the universe grows towards Christ, so that through the growth of his body Christ ultimately becomes the head of the universe and the ἀνακεφαλαίωσις τῶν πάντων is fulfilled. Here too the qualitative difference between Christ and the church seems to be dissipated. The Protestant inclination to resolve ecclesiology in christology corresponds to the opposite inclination on the Catholic side. But if one really thinks at all in terms of the image of the head and the body, then one must keep in mind the irreversible descent from the head to the body: the head rules the body, not the body the head. If it were otherwise the image would break down of its own accord. On the other hand the difference between the growth of the church and Christ’s parousia must be preserved. The ἀνακεφαλαίωσις can only be hoped for from Christ’s parousia; it cannot be brought about as the result of a process of ecclesiastical growth or through the development of cosmic maturity.
This model of the church as Christus prolongatus proceeds from the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus of Nazareth and understands the church as the continuation of that incarnation. But it is then very difficult to capture the necessary difference between the incarnation of the Logos and Christ’s indwelling in his church through the Spirit. Either the incarnation must be reduced to an indwelling of the Spirit in Jesus, which is then continued in the Spirit’s indwelling in the church; or the indwelling of the Spirit must be understood as the continued incarnation of the Logos. In both cases the otherness of Christ, his mission, his death and his future for the church are all shut out. Out of the critical and liberating relationship of Christ to the church an affirmative, continuing or ‘organic’ relationship arises between the head and the body. This blurs Christ’s freedom with regard to his church. Finally, in these ideas pneumatology and christology slide into one another and merge to such an extent that their difference and solidarity within the Trinity is no longer visible. The particular work of the Spirit is subordinated to the work of Christ.
(v) Christ as the eschatological person. The old dogmatic ecclesiology started from Christ as God’s representative to the world and distinguished between the hypostatic union of Godhead and manhood in him, and the union in grace of the divine fellowship of the church through him. He is ‘the only son’; believers are through grace the adopted sons of God. Fellowship with the qualitatively different Christ was conceived of as the work of the Spirit. Modern outlines of ecclesiology incline to assume a merely quantitative, historical difference. The ‘work of the exalted Christ’ is replaced by the continuing, demonstrable history of the work of the man of Nazareth. God’s representative towards mankind is replaced by man’s representative towards God. In this way modern christology and ecclesiology ‘from below’ come close in structure to the idea of the extended incarnation, which brings christology and ecclesiology into an organic connection with one another. It is in this respect immaterial in what sense we talk about ‘the historical Jesus’ as the founder of the church; or whether we talk about the preaching and believing Jesus as the beginning and origin of the history of the proclamation and of faith; or whether we talk about a prolongation of the incarnation in the church. The relationship between Christ and the church is seen in a different light when we approach it from the end instead of the beginning. In the light of his giving of himself to death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead to be exalted as Kyrios, the differences between christology and ecclesiology, and the things they have in common, come out more clearly. As New Testament research has shown, all the christological titles are in essence founded on what happened at the first Easter. Through his resurrection from the dead Jesus was enthroned as Kyrios, the Christ of God. The resurrection establishes Jesus’ ‘eschatological position’. In him the God who is to come, with his lordship and his glory, is already present. The risen Christ represents in this transitory era of the world the God who is to come. He therefore represents the coming freedom and salvation of creation at the same time. The one who is risen is hence not a historical, private person, nor is he merely the ‘head’ person of his body, the church. In the light of the resurrection and exaltation, the dying of Jesus is therefore retrospectively interpreted as the dying of this eschatological person. This takes place when his passion is understood and preached as representative suffering and his death as a self-giving ‘for us’ and ‘for the world’. Just as he is raised in advance of all other men, as ‘the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep’, and can therefore be named comprehensively ‘the leader of life’, so he was exclusively given over to death, forsaken by God, in order to free the forsaken and to save the lost. His death took place exclusively ‘once and for all’, and is hence unrepeatably his sacrifice for the salvation of men. His resurrection shows that he goes ahead of mortal men and therefore also shows his precedence over his own followers. In the light of his crucifixion and resurrection it is impossible simply to talk about the divine person of Christ; one must speak more precisely about his eschatological person. He is not only the representative of the ‘wholly other’ God; he is also the representative of the coming God who makes everything else ‘other’. In the light of his crucifixion and resurrection it is impossible simply to talk about ‘the historical person’ of Jesus, if we mean by that a private person with a considerable effect in history. We must grasp his appearance in the open eschatological forum, as the representative of that future history in which God is God and man comes to his glory. The crucified and risen Christ represents this future of history in his person and in his whole suffering and activity.
This New Testament declaration is lost if we only start from the presence of the church and enquire back to its founder, beginning, origin or head. In the light of the eschatological person of Christ, the church does not live from the past; it exists as a factor of present liberation, between remembrance of his history and hope of his kingdom. Its remembrance of Jesus, his mission, his self-giving and his resurrection is past made present and can be termed ‘remembrance in the mode of hope’. Its hope of his parousia is future made present and can be termed ‘hope in the mode of remembrance’. If the eschatological orientation is lost, then remembrance decays into a powerless historical recollection of a founder at the beginning of things. The church can then itself take the place of hope, setting itself up as the prolongation of his former incarnation, and the aim of its growth as being his parousia. If, on the other hand, the christological remembrance is lost, then the church is filled by other hopes, visions and aims, taken over from non-Christian movements, or Pentecost pushes out Easter, and new experiences of the Spirit push out Christ. And then the criterion for choosing between the spirits disappears. It is only when the church comprehends itself in its present existence as the present realization of the remembrance and hope of Christ, that it perceives Christ’s ‘otherness’ and the openness of his future. Its main problem is not the relationship between time and eternity, or between the present and the origin; it is the relationship between history and eschatology. It is alive as long as it combines with remembrance of Christ hope in the coming God, and as long as it can link with the present existence of his mission and his self-giving the liberation of men for their true future. Then, as the community of the cross it consists of the fellowship of the kingdom—and not of church members; and as the community of the exodus—and not as a religious institution—it spreads the feast without end.
The present significance of the eschatological person of Christ for the world and his church was developed in the doctrine of Christ’s threefold office (munus triplex). We shall take up this doctrine as a regulative principle, so as to understand the church’s existence and its tasks in the light of its participation in the messianic mission, the representative self-giving and the liberating lordship of Christ.
The synoptic gospels depict the whole appearance and history of Jesus in the light of his messianic mission. They put his messianic mission under the aspect of his proclamation. His proclamation brings the gospel to the poor and calls men to repentance. His preaching is therefore ‘evangelization’ and he himself is ‘the evangelist’ of the end-time. Luke 4:18f. sums up his mission with words taken from Isaiah 61:1f.: ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’ Picking up Isaiah 35:5ff. and Isaiah 61:1ff., Matthew makes Jesus answer John the Baptist’s question with: ‘The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offence at me’ (Matt. 11:5f.). According to Matthew 10:7–8 the disciples are sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel with the same mission: ‘Preach as you go, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pay, give without pay.’ The messianic mission of Jesus embraces his whole activity and has an all-embracing meaning for his disciples as well. The word εὐαγγελίζειν has a sharply demarcated meaning in the context of this activity. The proclamation of Jesus and the disciples is mission, but his mission and theirs is not merely the proclamation. Healing the sick, liberating the captives, and the hunger for righteousness belong to the mission and go together with the preaching of the gospel to the poor.
What do εὐαγγελίζειν and εὐαγγέλιον mean in the framework of the all-embracing messianic mission?
The equivalent Hebrew expressions in the Old Testament mean: to proclaim a message of joy, to bring a message of victory, or to announce victory. Anyone who proclaims joy or victory sees himself as a messenger of good news (2 Sam. 4:10) and is viewed as such by other people (2 Sam. 18:26). In the religious sense the victory of God over the enemies of the people is proclaimed cultically (Pss. 68:12; 40:10). The man who has been saved from some desperate situation proclaims before the congregation the joyful message of ‘the mighty acts of God’. As is well known, Deutero-Isaiah and the tradition influenced by him is of great importance for the understanding of the New Testament concept. For he prophesies ‘a new exodus’ to the people in exile, and with it the coming eschatological victory of God, his final enthronement and the dawn of a new and everlasting era of salvation. Isaiah 52:7 gives us the classic passage: ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him … who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” ’ What the writer has in mind are the heralds who hurry ahead of the people returning home to Zion from Babylon, and who announce to the people waiting in Jerusalem the return of Yahweh from his exile. In that these messengers are proclaiming the royal rule of God, the new era of God’s nearness is beginning after the time of exile and alienation. Salvation, running ahead of itself, appears in the gospel. It comes into force through the announcement of Israel’s restoration, of God’s coming, and the eschatological era. The gospel is not a statement about some remote future; it is the dawn of that future in the Word. The Word is understood as creative power, like the Word of creation at the beginning. It effects what it says. In the Word the future of the royal rule of God becomes present. The gospel is already understood in the eschatological, universal sense in Deutero-Isaiah and in Psalm 96. ‘Yahweh is king’ means salvation for the world of the nations, beyond the restoration of the people of God: ‘Tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvellous works among all the peoples!… Say among the nations, “Yahweh reigns!” ’ (Ps. 96:2ff.).
Isaiah 61:1 personifies the gospel as the messianic prophet who comes in the spirit of the Lord, creating liberty, salvation and peace through his word. The gospel announces the lordship of Yahweh, which will be without limits and without an end. Anthropologically it is bound up with the saving words of righteousness, fellowship and peace. It is addressed to the prisoners, the wretched, the poor, the people forsaken by God and the hopeless, even though in Isaiah 52 the liberation of the captives of Israel seems to stand in the forefront.
The message that God has seized the power over his enslaved people is the call to the new exodus: ‘Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion.… Shake yourself from the dust, arise, O captive Jerusalem; loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter of Zion’ (52:1f.). That is why the section ends with the words: ‘For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard’ (52:11f.). The new exodus into freedom surpasses the old one through its festive character. Here the message of the coming God and his rule is at the same time and from the very beginning the call to freedom. Conversely the call to freedom is founded on, and made possible by, the approaching rule of God, already present in the gospel. In the proximity of the rule of God, what was till then impossible becomes possible. The fetters are no longer binding. They can be thrown away. Weakness is no longer unnerving. Men can lay hold of his strength. Dust is no longer degrading. It can be shaken off. In the proximity of the rule of God, that is to say, ‘petrified conditions begin to dance’. Hope becomes realistic because reality is full of every potentiality. Even though liberation of the captives is made possible through the message ‘God is king’, yet it is equally the act of men who ‘free themselves’, who repent and go forth. The message about the coming rule of God does not reduce man’s freedom; it makes it possible and empowers it. The modern alternative, according to which either there is a God, in which case man cannot be free, or man is free, but then there cannot be a God, is not valid here. Here the modern conclusion whereby faith goes with slavery and liberation with atheism is false. Here it is solely the nearness of the coming God which frees the enslaved and empowers them for their own freedom. For that reason the initial form of God’s coming rule is the gathering and exodus of the people from slavery. There is no contradiction between the hoped-for rule of God and the experience and practice of the liberated people.
The synoptic writers, in the tradition of Deutero-Isaiah, evidently present Jesus as ‘the One who brings the good news of the expected last time’. His proclamation and ministry are completely under the sign of the gospel. He preaches the gospel of the kingdom to the poor and calls captives into the liberty of the coming kingdom. The focal point of his message is that God is drawing near and will set the people free. In that sense, the exodus of the last time begins with Jesus. It begins with the broken, the captives and the blind, as Luke says, or, in Matthew’s words, with the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf and the dead. Both writers sum up the people who are primarily affected under the expression ‘the poor’. The ‘poverty’ meant extends from economic, social and physical poverty to psychological, moral and religious poverty. The poor are all those who have to endure acts of violence and injustice without being able to defend themselves. The poor are all who have to exist physically and spiritually on the fringe of death, who have nothing to live for and to whom life has nothing to offer. The poor are all who are at the mercy of others, and who live with empty and open hands. Poverty therefore means both dependency and openness. We ought not to confine ‘poverty’ in religious terms to the general dependence of men on God. But it cannot be interpreted in a merely economic or physical sense either. It is an expression which describes the enslavement and dehumanization of man in more than one dimension. The opposite of the poor in the Old Testament is the man of violence who oppresses the poor, forces them into poverty and enriches himself at their expense. ‘Riches’ are equally multi-dimensional and extend from economic exploitation, by way of social supremacy, to the complacency of the people who look after themselves in every sector of life, ignore the rights of others and do not want to have to say thank-you to anyone for anything. What is meant is an attitude, and the thing it depends on. What is meant are possessions and the violence through which they are acquired and maintained. ‘The rich’ are all the people who live with tightly clenched hands. They are neither dependent on others nor open for others. The rich will only be helped when they recognize their own poverty and enter the fellowship of the poor, especially the poor whom they have made poor through violence. If the gospel of the coming kingdom, like the first beatitude, is directed to ‘the poor’, then it can only be heard as a message of joy in the revelation of our own poverty and in fellowship with the poor. The abasement which is meant by humility is not a private virtue but the social entry into solidarity with the humble and the humbled. It is precisely as the partisan ‘gospel to the poor’ that the kingdom of God brings freedom to all men, for its brings rich and poor, healthy and sick, the powerful and the helpless for the first time into that fellowship of poverty in which it is possible to talk without distinction about ‘all men’. In a divided, unjust and violent world, the partisan gospel reveals the true universality of the coming rule of God and the indivisible liberty.
In the gospel of Jesus the specific form of the coming rule of God is the fellowship of the blind who are to see, the prisoners who are to be freed, the poor who are to be happy, and the sick who are to be healed. With them the exodus of the whole people begins. They already praise and thank God here and now in the fellowship of the wretched.