Stained Glass or Transparent Glass:

On the Church and/in the World in a Post-Modern Age

David L. Johns, Ph.D., Earlham School of Religion

Introduction: the Church in/and the (Post)Modern World

Christianity has always struggled with how to respond to the modern world. Christianity will always struggle with how to respond to the modern world, whether the modern world is the 2^nd century or whether it is the 21^st century. This is not Christianity’s curse but rather its unique calling, a calling that requires continuous engagement. It is the necessary result of being a community that exists in time and yet dares to speak of other times, of being a community that enjoys the benefits of a given society, yet that anticipates another banquet. It is the result of being a community that lives in the here and now, and yet is formed in its memory of a then and there and is inspired to reshape the here and now in its anticipation of yet a future then and there. The modern world does not so much ‘close in around’ this community as it actually provides the spacial and historical context in which it may exist. Christianity often stands over against the modern world but it always does so in and with the modern world. In short, Christianity’s constant struggle is one of eschatological proportions and is, in fact, part of the vocation of being Church.

This struggle is one of vision and identity. Who are we? Who is this God who calls us into being? Who are we to be in response to this call? But this struggle is also one of location, space, and historicity; to the question “who are we to be” we are forever confronted with an additional and unavoidable question: “where are we to be.” When we ask with integrity the question “where are we to be” we find ourselves in the modern world, contemporary society, we soon find that the question is answered in the faces of children who are not our own; “where” becomes “here” and “here it is we stand, we can do no other, God help us.”

This is not an abstract or irrelevant question nor is it a question easily answered. It is not easily answered due to the concerns just mentioned. It is not abstract nor is it irrelevant because it is at heart a pastoral concern. The challenge of pastoral ministry and of churchly presence is to faithful embody the message of the Christian Gospel and, transformed by grace and animated by the Holy Spirit, to be the Body of Christ broken and given. I emphasize the words broken and given because I believe they express the mission and ministry of the Church in this time. They are certainly Eucharistic images and as such they are also incarnational images that signify the Body of Christ…but is this Body the man from Nazareth or the woman from 1^st Church? As I will suggest momentarily, in this so-called post-modern era the world desperately needs a sinful Church, a Church that in many ways is broken and that gives itself away for the sake of the (O)other. What Lutheran theologian, Gordon Lathrop says about liturgy I will claim for the entire life of the Christian community: if our theology and our discipleship is to be faithful to the great tradition of Christian faith, then they must first show us that “we are here as before God’s own face” and they must “seek to tell the truth about us and our world.” [1]

Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” acknowledged that

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the [people] of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of [humans]. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in the journey to the kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every [one]. This is why this community realizes that it is truly and intimately linked with [humankind] and its history. (GS 1)

Gaudium et Spes as a conciliar document, of course, carries the weight of doctrine in the Roman Catholic communion; however, it extends beyond that by clearly articulating an understanding of the Christian community as a fellow sojourner with the wider world community, an understanding that is compelling, notwithstanding its unambiguous optimism.

In the second or third century, an anonymous Christian wrote about his or her fellow believers and captured the ambiguous spirit of the Church in our time even more poignantly:

Living in Greek and barbarian cities…and following the local customs, in clothing and dwelling places and the rest of life, they demonstrate the amazing and confessedly unexpected character of the make up of their own citizenship. They are at home in their own countries, but as sojourners. They participate in all things as citizens and they endure all things as foreigners. Every foreign country is their homeland and every homeland is a foreign country. [2]

Two Theological Trajectories

In a brief essay that preface’s Jean-Luc Marion’s book, God Without Being, David Tracy defines the great divide in Christian theology as the internal struggle over Christianity’s proper response to modernity, or more precisely, post-modernity. Two classic strategies have developed and to a significant degree, these accurately describe the theoretical assumptions of most theological projects. The first strategy is correlational or mediating. In other words, to be in the world is to “correlate the claims of reason and the disclosures of revelation.” How do we employ reason to make sense of faith and faith to make sense of reason? But more than that, how can we demonstrate that reason and faith are in fact co-participants in articulating the same message? Traditionally, the attempt has been to develop an interpretation of the Christian tradition and connect it to an interpretation of the religious dimensions of the contemporary situation. Of course, a degree of confidence in either or both reason and revelation is necessary. When that confidence is great for both reason and revelation, as was the case for liberal Protestantism and Catholic modernism, then, according to Tracy, “the interpretations of the meaning, meaningfulness, and truth of both the tradition [as it is integral to revelation] and the contemporary situation will often prove a claim to a virtual identity of meaning between Christianity and modernity.” [3]

However, when one element of the correlation is under suspicion the mediating balance is disturbed. Consider, for example, feminism, that theological method that has a correlational propensity and yet an internal suspicion of one of the poles of correlation. Feminist scholars have largely questioned the received tradition of the Church and, with it, the biblical texts. While most feminist theologians do not dismiss the Scriptures carte blanche they have, nevertheless, raised serious questions about their uncritical appropriation. At the same time, significant weight is given to thoughtful analysis and integration of experience, of literary theory, of social scientific critique. Thus, the mediating balance between reason and revelation is tipped decidedly away from revelation. Other examples, such as process theology, could be cited. The opposite tendency may be seen in some expressions of Protestant fundamentalism and “radical critique” movements that turn from theory and place a higher value upon praxis.

The second strategy Tracy identifies is that which argues “reason functions best in theology by developing rigorous concepts and categories to clarify theology’s sole foundation in revelation.” In other words, theology’s foundation is revelation alone. Reason’s role is to clarify and amplify the voice of revelation, not to fashion a means for accommodation. A number of “intra-strategy movements” articulate this general position: post-liberals, non-foundationalists. The common thread appears to be a commitment to the notion that the correalational theoretical foundation is no foundation for theology but rather may actually impair the ability for the text to speak and to be heard. Current narrative theologies and some post-modernist theoreticians take this view.

Tracy claims that this conflict has existed since Hegel and Schleiermacher; however, I would suggest that it is evident in some form much earlier. At the turn of the first century, in a move from the more narrative structure of the synoptic Gospels and even from Paul, Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107) exhibited a proto-correlational strategy by uncritically appropriating the metaphysical categories and concerns of the pre-Socratics into his theological work. [4] As early as the 3^rd century there was discomfort with the antecedents of modern correlational thinking as is evident in Tertullian’s famous dictum: “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?” [5] A case could be built for arguing that this struggle was at the heart of the theological differences between Antioch and Alexandria.

We strain the matter to the point of rupture if we suggest that Ignatius and Tertullian perfectly represent the conflict that Tracy identifies with the 19^th century; nevertheless, the struggle for a proper response to modernity is unmistakably present in theological writings even in the earliest periods of the Church’s history.

Post-Modernity: Problems and Prospects

I have up to this point used the word “modern” simply to refer to the period of time we find ourselves in, whether we are Teresa of Avila for whom the 16^th century was the “modern world,” or whether we are Thomas Aquinas for whom the 13^th century was the “modern world,” or whether we are who we are here at this moment, those for whom the early 21^st century is the modern world. In this sense “modern” is moveable and adaptable. However, the theme of this conference is radical Christianity in a post-modern world. Post-modernity, as we know, understands ‘modernity’ as substantially different than the contemporary period one finds oneself. Modernity is largely understood to be the world created by and assumed in the so-called Enlightenment Project, that is, the philosophical foundations of the Enlightenment and the subsequent development of science, culture, religion, technology, literature, and so forth, that have been built upon this foundation.

No one is quite sure when post-modernism was born. In my view, post-modernism is more a mood than a movement. [6] Births happen in a decisive and identifiable moment; a mood may shift almost indiscernibly, then sweep over one before spreading farther. Negatively, post-modernism has been characterized as the loss of a grand narrative and, therefore, a threat to the Christian emphasis upon a theology of

creation and of calling to peoplehood; it has been described as the resurgence of romanticism and the diminishment of intellect, rationality, and purpose and, therefore, a threat to the dignity of human freedom and subjectivity. One writer has identified an irony of post-modernism and suggests that in many ways it is little more than the Enlightenment repackaged for our time:

[Postmodernism] is largely another attempt to carry out the old Enlightenment program of demolishing tradition, ritual, cult and historical narrative, except now without the Enlightenment’s faith that reason and technology can assume their place….Postmodernism is simply the Enlightenment once more with feeling—combining the worst excesses of rationalism and romanticism. [7]

With its grand story of no grand story, post-modernism may be a meta-meta-narrative in denial.

Henry Knight provides a helpful summary of five major shifts represented in post-modernity: 1) from individualism to community, 2) from rationalist foundationalism to nonfoundationalism, 3) from methodological doubt to traditioned belief, 4) from dualism to holism, and 5) from optimism to pessimism. Knight offers a proviso to this last shift by noting that in some post-modern writers there has appeared a new optimism for human endeavor. [8] Edith Wyschogrod’s fascinating study of ethics, Saints and Postmodernism, is one example of turning to the human subject again to take another somewhat more optimistic look. [9]

In addition to Knight’s summary we should note other important features. The dismantling of the Enlightenment project most certainly entails the end of a “chronological chauvinism,” that is, we can no longer assume that our time is the climax and telos of all time. Some early cartographers made a telling notion on their maps somewhere mid-ocean—ne plus ultra—“nothing more beyond.” By challenging our own patronizing of other periods of history, we are free to read again the wisdom of the ancients and perhaps recover treasures long lost from a Tradition largely dismissed by advocates of “hermeneutics of suspicion.” Post-modernity opens the way to a new (old) “hermeneutics of recovery” or a “hermeneutics of rediscovery.”

This chronological chauvinism is further disassembled by the startling realization that the works of human hands are not necessarily for the good or necessarily used for the good. Ostensibly benign calculations concerning energy and mass eventually leveled Hiroshima, and the world altering gift of the brothers Wright eventually leveled the World Trade Center towers. Perhaps humans are more complex than the trite aphorism, “humans are all basically good.” Post-modernism may even provide the space to once again speak of evil.

For all that it is and all that it is not, post-modernism is a recognition of the collapse of Enlightenment assumptions concerning the autonomous, rational Self. The implications of this collapse for art, history, theology, church ministry, literature and so on have been discussed extensively. Foundations provide more than stability, they provide location and structure, and they provide a reference point in the world. To remove the foundations that have guided our thinking for at least two hundred years (but realistically much longer than that) is more than unsettling; it is devastating.

Post-Modernity’s Promise for the Believers Church

Yet, with Barry Callen, I am hopeful and find much potential in this current cultural mood. Dr. Callen argues that the Believers Church tradition possesses a number of features that suit it well for vital ministry in a post-modern era; in fact, he implies that this rich ecclesial tradition does not so much need to adapt and accommodate to the contemporary ethos as it needs to articulate what has been its witness since the beginning.

“The current ‘postmodernism’ trend holds important potential for freshly emphasizing what have been long-standing ideals of the Believers Church tradition.” [10] In fact, post-modernity may actually free us from the categories and issues that have prevented us from hearing the full power of the Christian Gospel.

Whereas post-modernism has only recently challenged Enlightenment assumptions pointing out the failure of its philosophical assumptions, the Believers Church has since its beginning recognized that accommodation compromises the integrity of the Church. Callen notes that if there is one stance that unites the many differing denominations that are part of the “Believers Church tradition” it is that the Constantinian shift was a dreadful mistake. This shift meant the Church accommodated the dominant cultural and political order particularly by recognizing an inclusive membership, a church membership that reflected the membership of a political state. In Callen’s words, this attitude “lack[ed] significant biblical standards” and held that “even membership…is virtually automatic because of one’s place of residence, parentage, or citizenship in the realm of the prevailing political regime. In direct contrast with accommodationist inclusivism, authentic Christianity ‘demands the formation of communities based on a common adult confession of faith’” (82).

The Believers Church tradition affirms a very different vision of membership. Callen gives considerable attention to discussing just how radical this presumably simple

difference of vision really is in his book, Radical Christianity. Not only does it mean that the Church community is a voluntary society, one where Christian allegiance is not assumed by location, birth, or another’s will, it also means that the community of faith is a covenant community where discipleship and growth in Christian holiness is essential (83).

Callen illustrates how this tradition, while including a wide range of denominational histories, appears to have in common three central characteristics, characteristics which, interestingly, address some areas of post-modernist concern.

First, truth is to be defined by the person of Jesus Christ, who is the center of Christian faith.

Second, Jesus brings into existence a new social reality, the church, the community of believers who focus on Christ and together are being formed by Christ through the work of Christ’s Spirit.

Last, this new and distinctive body of believers in Jesus, because of its being shaped into the image of Christ, exercises its discipleship best by seeking to be on mission in this world in Christ’s particular way (88-89).

This first characteristic reflects the post-modern emphasis upon non-foundationalism. In a sense, the Believers Church has always been non-foundationalist, it has always recognized the insufficiency of building upon anything but Jesus Christ. According to Callen, “the faith [is] not a proposition but a Person, not a complex creed but a living Christ” (90). As such, the model for the theologian is not an abstract theoretician but the pastor/ theologian.

The second and third characteristics Callen identifies speak to post-modernist concerns regarding the priority of community over the autonomous rational Self. Jesus’ missional intent was not to introduce private salvation, an inner healing that perpetuates alienation from the (O)other. While individual dignity is affirmed it is not in service of individualism (116). Jesus’ redemptive action does not end with the cross and with the empty tomb; it does not end in a way that can be misconstrued as individualistic. Easter anticipates and encompasses Pentecost and the gifts of Pentecost are two-fold: the Holy Spirit AND the Church, and because of the grace of God through Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit IN the Church. The principle Creeds of Christianity have always included both gifts of Pentecost together in their third article. As Callen rightly notes, “A Christian convert is saved by Christ into the midst of the life of Christ’s body, the church. Salvation is not to be defined as a spiritual relation to Christ apart from a social relation to the church…The Christian by definition is a willing and committed part of the body of Christ that is to be nurturing, discipling, witnessing, and serving in the world” (119).

This radical Believers Church vision is “faith in the present tense” (86), a faith not concerned primarily with technical, theoretical abstractions but with “practical obedience and real relationship” (91). The Christian community is biblically “normed and Christ-centered” (113), a community where truth is measured by a “moral test of love” (114); it resists the formalism of “official theocratic churchdom” without becoming a private religion (122).

Dr. Callen outlines a Believers Church vision that is in simpatico with such thinkers as John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas. The Church itself is a sign of the power of God, “countercultural seedbeds of maturing believers” (122). The Church as the Church is a social reality and a social witness. The Christian community must become in its life together what it claims in its prophetic message, it must embody the Gospel and speak with flesh and blood. A wide gap exists, however, between the what is of our world and the what is to be of the eschatological reign of God; the faithful covenant community enacts the Gospel and in so doing, it narrows the gap between the what is and the what is to be. Its very life is a political act and an articulated vision of integrity (59 fn. 18, 123, 130). When the Church practices faith in this way it is itself a sign of God’s reign and a witness to the transformative power of the Gospel.

Is the Believers Church a Faithful Vision? A Critique

As I offer a critique I am aware of Thomas Oden’s rebuke of seminaries and their role in devastating the study of the Church. He writes

Amid this atmosphere [the seminary], the intentional, systematic study of ecclesiology has tended to become lost. Ecclesiology has often been pragmatically reduced to the praxis of pastoral care, church administration, homiletics, education, and community organization. When administration is reduced to management, evangelism to technique, soul care to therapeutic strategy, and preaching to rhetoric, the doctrine of the church has been misplaced. [11]

Oden is correct and I am grateful to Barry Callen for taking ecclesiology seriously enough not to diminish it to trivialities. Dr. Callen’s presentation of the Believers Church, its theology and its discipleship, is fascinating and compelling but at the end of the day I find myself only almost persuaded. Is the Believers Church vision a faithful vision for a post-modern world?

My critiques are twofold and concern both ambiguity and incarnation.

Post-modernity is distinguish by a certain ambiguity. An ambiguous time is a time in-between, a place of tension, a time when simple answers simply do not answer. With the foundations removed nothing is completely settled. If the optimism of the Enlightment could be signified by an exclamation point, the mood of post-modernity is signified by the question mark, or the ellipsis…

The Christian community lives in the betweenness of the what is and the what is to be. As already mentioned, the Church’s enactment of faith seeks in its life together to narrow this gap. However, could it be possible that there are moments when faith may require that we endeavor not to narrow the gap with idealism or with piety but simply permit the ambiguity of the “not yetness” of God’s reign to stand as a heart-breaking reminder that the “kingdoms of this world” have not yet become the “kingdoms of our God and of his Christ?” Do we believe that even the gaps can be a metaxy, a meeting place of God and humanity? Does our willingness to live in the gaps gain us a new familial appreciation for Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Pseudo-Dionysius and other apophatics? Does ambiguity lead us to pray with even greater urgency and does it lead us to pray more genuinely, “Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!?”

Ambiguity in the Church is amplified when we consider the many intersecting, overlapping, adjacent, and occasionally contradictory communities to which most of us belong. It could be argued that this condition of plural engagement is an unfortunate condition of our times and ought to be eliminated, that the Church and the Church alone ought to outline the parameters of our associations and commitments. Yet, how can this be? To maintain such a position would result theologically in a vision of the Church akin to “Church as Fortress,” a metaphor wisely rejected by the Council Fathers of Vatican II. Does faithfulness require participation in intersecting, overlapping, adjacent, and occasionally contradictory communities and could this indeed be part of the commission to “Go into all the world?”

Dr. Callen cites Stanley Hauerwas’ provocative assertion that Christianity’s problem is not one of translation (the theological trajectory of correlation) but of enactment. The Church ought to be the place that freely speaks of God without apology because “our life together does not mock our words” (187). Agreed, but does not the enactment of the Gospel require an unavoidable process of translation of prophecy into people and text into tissue? A translation of some sort is necessary to enact the Scriptures with contextual faithfulness and contextual integrity. We exhibit a profound lack of confidence in the biblical witness itself when we assume that faithful enactment of the Gospel cannot occur outside the particular cultural-linguistic context of the believing community.

Dr. Callen addresses the question of hermeneutics in conversation with Dena Pence Franz, John Howard Yoder, and Dale Brown (107-111). Each suggest that the community is the interpretive locus for reading the Bible and that the Bible is best understood by the mind of faith in the community of faith. Of course, this was an assertion of early Friends as is articulated in Robert Barclay’s Apology. If the Scriptures are best or only understood when read in the Spirit and illuminated by the Spirit who first inspired the biblical authors this assumes an attitude of faithful listening to the text. Yet, is our hermeneutic truncated when it is only a conversation with the “hermeneutical community?” Is the interpretive context of our own faith community sufficient for understanding the Gospel of our Lord who scandalized his co-religionists by fraternizing with prostitutes and tax collectors? Does the bible speak through and is it even interpreted for us in the anxiety and pain of the human condition?

An image may help illustrate this point. I am drawn to cathedrals and I generally find Quaker meeting houses to be dull, aesthetically lifeless, revealing a poor theology of creation, and severely lacking an appreciation for worshipping God with the gifts of our hands. Artisans have given us the gift of stained glass, a gift that is inspiring and breathtaking. To sit in a great cathedral such as our own National Cathedral or Chartes is to be surrounded with the truth of the Gospel etched in glass, stone, and wood. Many great cathedrals are indeed the Holy Scriptures accessible to even the illiterate. When I sit in a cathedral I am encircled by the biblical message in glass, I see it and it covers me and literally colors me as the sun’s diffused light is cast upon me as I pray. I interpret the glass and it in turn interprets me as I find my place in the salvation history it portrays. Yet, there is good theological sense in not having all the windows stained; at least one window should be clear, absolutely see-through, and this window should look out upon the city.

A window that looks out upon the city (or the location of the particular church) undoubtedly reminds me of my obligations, it reminds me that after the Mount of Transfiguration the hurting and hungry crowds await. But a clear window does more than remind me of social obligations; a clear window is a critical hermeneutical tool. As I look at the stained glass with its telling of the Gospel story I read and interpret it but always in full view of the clear glass; the clear glass speaks to me as well, it speaks such that I cannot read the Gospel without also reading the world that “God so loved.”

Perhaps the reason I am only almost persuaded by the Believers Church vision as Dr. Callen so ably describes is because it appears to be like the cathedral without a clear pane of glass. Its vision is so compelling in so many ways, but ultimately it leaves me wondering if it matters that I am here rather than there, that I exist now rather than then. By worshipping the God who has worked mightily in Israel and in Jesus Christ, I am affirming a God who is known in the historical context, a God who paid the highest compliment to humanity by becoming one of us. Does the fact of the incarnation place us in a relational connection to the world in ways that the ‘come outism’ of the Believers Church vision does not affirm and does not acknowledge? Is there an implicit denial or disapproval of creation in an ecclesial vision that hunkers down in the sanctuary and points to itself as the sign of God’s activity? Of course, we are “in but not of,” but we are most certainly “in.”

I am concerned that the Believers Church vision fails to do one important thing: speak the truth about ourselves and our world. There is an implicit tendency in the Believers Church tradition to presume a degree of purity that we do not possess. If the Church is itself a sign to the world, a community that freely speaks of God without apology because “our life together does not mock our words” (187), then our words are mocked by our life together, because, speaking the truth about ourselves and our world, our communities of faith suffer from imperfection, suffer from contradiction, suffer from sin. If the Church were to refrain from speaking of God until our life together did not mock our words then the Church would be forever silent.

The wonderful image of the Church as the spotless bride of Christ does not reveal accurately who we are, it reveals who we will be. This image of purity and holiness is an eschatological vision of the new heaven and new earth “when every tear will be wiped away and death shall be no more” (Revelation 21:1-4). September 11, 2001 reminded us just how many tears are left to cry and how death has yet to disappear.

There is great irony in being the Church. We are reminded in the Eucharist and in Creeds that as the Church we cannot be the Church. For Eucharistic communities, an ancient liturgical text exclaims over the gifts of bread and wine, “Holy things for the holy people.” In both the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creed we are told that the Church is “holy.” We examine ourselves and if we speak the truth about ourselves, we must confess that we cannot be the Church, for the Church is holy and we are not holy; we cannot draw near to the Table because it contains holy things for the holy people and if we speak the truth about ourselves, we must confess that we are not holy.

But the true gift is acknowledged in a sung response in the Ancient Liturgy of St. Mark: “Only one holy Father, only one holy Son, only one holy Spirit, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.” [12] Suddenly we realize that this act of worship is not about the holiness of this assembly of believers, but about the holiness of the triune God—a God who welcomes sinners, who dines with prostitutes and tax collectors, and whose banquet table must be filled, even if it is filled with the unlikely characters that, if we speak the truth about ourselves, we all are, each one. Yet, we are the Church. Herein lies the mystery of grace.

The point of Church is not our faithfulness but God’s faithfulness, the One who

calls us into being. The Church was never called to point to itself, the church does not exist to image itself. The Church exists to image Christ and to point beyond itself to the God who calls and confronts, the God who saves and surprises. It is in this unlikely gathering that Christ makes his home and in the early 2^nd century, Ignatius of Antioch declared: “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic ekklesia.” [13] “And if this assembly, which cannot of itself be church, is welcomed here, then it symbolizes a welcome and a meaning that matters for all the world.” [14]

Which brings us back to the proper response to the (post)modern world.

At the outset of this lecture I claimed that the challenge of pastoral ministry and of churchly presence is to be the Body of Christ broken and given. This image is incarnational. Not only does the Church provide flesh and blood for Christ’s Body, the Church is broken and given as was Jesus on the cross broken and given and as he is in his self-giving meal to his disciples and to his Church. In the ambiguity of post-modernity the phrase, “the Body of Christ given for you,” intermingles the images of the body of Jesus of Nazareth and your body and mine as members of the Body of Christ. Whose Body is broken and given in the Eucharist if it is not the Body of Christ; but who is the Body of Christ?

I made one other claim, one that in my estimation, the Believers Church may have difficulty affirming: in our post-modern era the world desperately needs a sinful Church, a Church that is in many ways broken and that gives itself away for the sake of the (O)other. Why a sinful Church? Because if we are faithful we will remember that “we are here as before God’s own face” and we must “seek to tell the truth about [ourselves] and our world.” [15]

Returning again to the image of a clear window in the cathedral, we should bear in mind that a transparent window will permit someone on the “outside” to gaze “inside.” And what will this person see? In many ways, the person will see herself in the person on the inside of the glass. This is as it should be. Calvin challenged what he saw was a dangerously dishonest and utopian idealism among the emerging Anabaptists:

In bearing with imperfections of life we ought to be far more considerate…For there have always been those who, imbued with a false conviction of their own perfect sanctity, as if they had already become a sort of airy spirits, spurned association with all men in whom they discern any remnant of human nature….they are vainly seeking a church besmirched with no blemish. [16]

The world needs a sinful Church because it needs a Church that speaks truthfully about itself; the illusions that were created by authority and maintained through the privilege of Christendom have been shattered, the veil has been lifted and as never before, we must risk being truthful. But there is another reason why the world needs a sinful Church: it is only in our sinfulness and in our brokenness that we can know grace, healing, mercy, and forgiveness. “My power is made perfect in weakness” (I Corinthians 12: 9b). The cross of Christ gives us the freedom to admit that we are not what we wish we were. But a Believers Church ecclesiology that interprets the biblical texts by itself, that lives a rigorous life of discipline and communal accountability, that understands its own existence as social statement, that points to itself as sign, is precariously close to burying the gifts of God far from the view of those who most desperately need these

gifts. In acknowledging our sinfulness we continue to be a sign, in fact, we are an even more powerful, hopeful, and life transformative sign than ever we could be by claiming to be a covenant community, disciplined and holy. By risking to be a sinful Church we embody in our bones the forgiving grace of Jesus Christ and we exhibit in our communal life the surprising wonder of God who has gathered together a collection of miscreant, stuttering, broken human beings and has dared to called them the Children of God. If it is true that the Church was never called to point to itself, to its own faithfulness, to its own holiness, to its own merit, but rather to God and to the mighty acts of God in Jesus Christ, then a sinful Church really has something to point to because by being honest about itself, it knows better than anyone else that it is only by grace that we stand (Romans 5:2b).

NOTE: The ideas in this paper are still in a formative stage; I welcome further conversation with readers as I develop these themes.

David L. Johns

Earlham School of Religion

228 College Avenue

Richmond, IN 47374

(765) 983-1543

johnsda@earlham.edu