Imago Dei

Ironically, the word community has become a buzzword of late in western culture; ironic because it is virtually only within western culture where we find an almost complete lack of authentic community. In spite of the majority of people living in urban areas surrounded by a wealth of resources, capital and people, how could a Gallup Poll rank us among the loneliest people in the world?4 This has prompted Charles Reich to quip that we are one vast, terrifying anti-community.5 In such a dismal relational wasteland, one would think that churches would act as a beacon of hope; bright points of community drawing to them the lonely massesuntil of course, we think back to our own churches and realize that we need to agree with Crabb that churches are rarely communities. More often they are social machines that run smoothly for a while, break down, then are fixed so they run smoothly again or noisily chug along as best they can.6 In a lonely world, Christians without community has become the hallmark of the contemporary church.7 So where did it all go wrong? What about those ideal sounding descriptions of first century Christian communities in Acts and in the Pauline literature? Did they experience authentic Christian community? Is it even possible to speak of Christian community as different then any other community? Is there anything unique about Christian community that can proffer hope to a lonely world? As is the case with most things that are lost or missing, its wise to go back to when we last had them, in this case In the beginning, God. Some might argue that this is an illegitimate

Randy Frazee, The Connecting Church: Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001), 24. 5 quoted in Julie A. Gorman, Community that is Christian: A Handbook on Small Groups (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1993), 78. 6 Larry Crabb, The Safest Place on Earth (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1999), xiv. 7 Lyle D. Vander Broek, Breaking Barriers: The Possibilities of Christian Community in a Lonely World (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2002), 12. Almost 80 percent of Americans who believe in God assert that participation in a church community is not a necessary part of their faith. Statistics from George Gallup Jr., The Unchurched American 10 Years Later (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Religion Research Center, 1988).

starting point since with the collapse of foundationalism all metanarratives have become unprivileged. But this makes the assumption that Christianitys validity or existence has foundationalist roots. Since it wasnt until the enlightenment that reason has been made the interpreter of the Christian faith,8 this assumption is incorrect. Postmodernitys corrective was to point out the indeterminacy of all our knowledge. Thus in the postmodern world [again, a somewhat misleading classification that implies concrete borders, butwhatever], both believers and nonbelievers are people of faith. One has faith in the story of the Bible; the other has faith in the story of reason, science, some other religion, or the god of his or her own making. The case for the Christian faith is no longer reason against reason but faith against faith in opposing stories.9 In other words, it has once again become possible to speak of the invisible. In recognition of this, disciplines such as psychology and sociology carved out their own spheres of inquiry to be able to ask those sorts of questions that science couldnt. These disciplines considered themselves sufficient to answer questions of What is the nature and purpose of humanity?, in a very true sense dislodging theology as the Queen of Sciences. They have, even in their postmodern garb, taken on the project of positing universals for human behavior in direct contradiction of their self-professed epistemological humility. As such, they take as their starting point, man or woman himself or herself. This may be legitimate in a Kantian universe, but since reason has been exposed as a faith among other faiths, it no longer can be given automatic priority. Autonomous humans in isolation from God may amass all sorts of information about the human being; but without seeing persons in relation to God, we cannot know them as they truly are and as they were meant to be.10

Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 99. Ibid., 84. 10 John D. Carter and Bruce Narramore, The Integration of Psychology and Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1979), 55.
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Part of the problem is psychologys and sociologys inability to ask questions that cross the ontological divide; having made the practical assumption that God does not exist, these disciplines appear[s] content to study phenomenal facts, regardless of God and the ultimate significance of those facts.11 In essence, in attempting to theorize about the nature and purpose of humanity, they limit its description to the creation side and remain silent regarding the creator side (the two divisions of the Nicene Creed), hence the inability to cross the ontological divide. And such a failure to explore noumenological criteria means that a powerful reality of life has been ignored.12 Questions regarding the meaning of life and how it is to be lived are outside their realm of inquiry, so to believe that science [specifically, psychology and sociology] is a way to decipher the divine, that technology can capture Gods photograph, is to deify mans handiwork. And that, both religious mystics and scholars agree, is the essence of idolatry.13 Only theology is equipped to ask questions on either side of the ontological divide because it is the only discipline able to speak[s] of an event that is both empirical and transcendent,14 which is, God crossing that divide by becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ, by living and dying as a human being in history, and by being raised from the dead. Therefore, beginning with Genesis1 is not only legitimate, but is also the only way to arrive at truth regarding the condition of mankind. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7), and since all truth ultimately comes together in God, we assert that

Eric L. Johnson, Christ, The Lord of Psychology, Journal of Psychology and Theology 25 (No. 1 1997): 16. Donald R. Bardill, The Relational Systems Model for Family Therapy: Living in Four Realities (New York: Haworth, 1997), 27. 13 David G. Myers and Malcolm A. Jeeves, Psychology: Through the Eyes of Faith (SanFrancisco: Harper Collins, 2003), 214. 14 Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, An Interdisciplinary Map for Christian Counselors: Theology and Psychology in Pastoral Counseling, in Care for the Soul: Exploring the Intersection of Psychology and Theology, ed. Mark R. McMinn and Timothy R. Philips (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 227.
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theology engages all human knowledge in its task of articulating the Christian belief-mosaic in a relevant manner.15 The primary difference between theology and psychology is that theology begins with Gods self-revelation in Scripture, nature and history, whereas psychology usually begins with human behavior as observed by other peopleTheology can have priority only because of its starting point.16 This does not mean that unbelievers cannot discover truth, but they can only describe the meaning of a thing that makes it different from other things.17 To describe its divine significance requires faithful knowledge. Theology, then, and not sociology as a scientific discipline, must engage as our ultimate basis for speaking of the church as community.18 But what do we find In the beginning, God? We find two things that are relevant to our question: 1) a God who creates male and female, humanity, in his own image, the imago dei and 2) a God who creates ex nihilo. To begin with, what does the imago dei--the likeness of humankind to Godrefer to? Most would agree that this image is not referring only to God the Father but also includes the other two participants of the Trinity. So to envision imago dei, we need to have a clearer picture of the Trinity. Much of evangelical thought has emphasized the Trinity by either its ontological, structural, functional or economic (how God relates to the world) characteristics. But increasingly, the imago dei has been rediscovered in light of its immanent (how the three persons of the Trinity relate to each other) characteristics. Since love is the essence of the immanent Trinity (John 17:23-26; 1 John 4:8, 16), imago dei should not be pictured as analogia entis

Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in A Postmodern Context (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 25. 16 Stephen M. Clinton, A Critique of Integration Models, Journal of Psychology and Theology 18 (No. 1 1990): 17. 17 Johnson, Christ, The Lord of Psychology, 16. 18 Grenz, Beyond Foundationalism, 227.

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[analogy of similarity] but analogia relationis,19 or analogy of relationship. Because God is ultimately none other than the divine trinitarian persons-in-relationship, a relationship characterized by mutuality that can only be described as love, the imago dei is ultimately human persons-in-loving-relationship as well.20 Although this understanding of the imago dei cannot be held dogmatically, the social Trinity, shorn of certain angularities and excesses, is probably the most biblically faithful and theologically redolent theory now available.21 [italics mine] This concept of imago dei (especially) must also accept the second point; that God creates ex nihilo. Any theology that denies ex nihilo; that there was a beginning,22 requires humankinds going back behind the given word of God to procure its own knowledge of God. This possibility of a knowledge of God that comes from beyond the given word of God is humankinds being sicut deus; for from where can it gain this knowledge if not from the springs of its own life and being?23 In so being sicut deuslike Godhumanity denies also its imago dei for in its state of sicut deus, humanity claims for itself, as an autonomous, libertarian creature, the freedom to create ex nihilo its own image. And as opposed to imago dei the image of God as representation,24-sicut deus demands that the image come from humanity itself; it is self representing. Since an accurate representation of the trinitarian reality requires a communal expression, clearly the image is not totally present in the form of individual humanity but more completely as cohumanity.25 Therefore, any image that claims to represent the trinitarian God but is not faithful
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1-3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Vol. Three, ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd. Minneapolis: Fortress press, 1997, 65. 20 Grenz, Beyond Foundationalism, 228. 21 Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., The Perfect Family: Our Model for Life Together is found in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Christianity Today 32 (March 1988): 26. 22 Bonhoeffer writes, Luther was once asked what God was doing before the creation of the world. His answer was that God was cutting sticks to cane people who ask such idle questions. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 31. 23 Ibid., 116. 24 G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God, Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1962), 114. This concept deals with man as he actually is, the non-autonomous and non-independent creature. 25 Ray Anderson, On Being Human (Pasadena: Fuller Seminary Press, 1982), 73; quoted in Gorman, Community that is Christian, 30.

to the communal dimension of the immanent Trinity as well, is a false representation arising out of a sicut deus motivation and can never result in a true depiction of Christian community. Oneness is primarily a divine mode of being that pertains to Gods own existence, independently from and prior to any of his works of creation. Whatever community exists as a result of Gods creation, it is only a reflection of an eternal reality that is intrinsic to the being of GodThus, when he creates in his image, he creates community.26 The Fall, humanitys desire for being sicut deus, has marred the imago dei to such a degree that humanitys attempts at social ordering fall far short of the ideal reality. In fact, the effect of sin is the very creation of individuals as such, that is, the creation of an ontological distinction between individual and group,27 and has resulted in the understanding of self as individuated, isolated and in control of its own destinya social and historical creation.28 Here it is where we discover what was lost; a wounding of our relationship with God as a result of our active rebellion, a strategy to go it alone (Prov. 14:12). This woundedness of our primary relationship with God effects every aspect of every secondary relationship we have with creation and everyone and everything in it. The fall has resulted not only in our loss of relationship with God but also of a deliberate, intentional, and violent rejection of our former union with God in the garden and thus a death and decomposition of human structure. The Spirit of God, which had been united with the human structure of personhood, was wrenched from humanness, and man, void of any relation to the transcendent, was turned loose to his own arrogant self-assured confidence that he could go it alone without God.29 This thinking has given rise to a culture in which freedom means spatial independence.30
Gilbert Bilezikian, Community 101: Reclaiming the Local Church as Community of Oneness (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1997), 16. 27 William Cavanaugh, The City, in Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge, 1998), 184; quoted in James K. A. Smith, The Church as Social Theory: A Reformed Engagement with Radical Orthodoxy, in The Community of the Word: Toward an Evangelical Ecclesiology (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 2005) 221. 28 Rodney Clapp, Tacit Holiness: The Importance of Bodies and Habits in Doing Church, in Embodied Holiness: Toward a Corporate Theology of Spiritual Growth, ed. Samuel M. Powell and Michael E. Lodahl (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 1999), 66. 29 Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 85. 30 Vander Broek, Breaking Barriers, 104.
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But the trinitarian God did not leave us in our sicut deus condition. For even while humanity had its face set against God (Rom. 5:8; 2 Cor. 5:19), God was in the process of healing the wounded relationships through the reconciling work of Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:18). Since [Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God [who was working] through him to reconcile to himself [God] all things (Col. 1:15, 20), it is clear that imago dei can be seen as the trinitarian Gods active movement of reconciliation towards humanity - a restoration of the particular union the Trinity had enjoyed with Adam and Eve in the garden - the profound mystery of Eph. 5:31-32. The work of reconciliation is triune. It has its deep ground in the eternal purpose of the Father, who wills creatures for fellowship. This purpose is established by the Son, against all creaturely defiance and in mercy upon creaturely distress, overcoming alienation and reconciling us to God. The office of the Holy Spirit is then to apply to creatures the benefits of salvation, in the sense of making actual in creaturely time and space that for which creatures have been reconciled fellowship with God and with one another.31 In essence, we can say that the whole purpose for which the Word came was to restore lost mankind to fellowship with God.32 And as such, Christ is not the bringer of a new religion, but rather the one who brings God,33 for the end of salvation is the reintegration of human persons in communion, both with God and with others.34 The question now becomes: How will this reconciliation manifest itself in both its vertical and horizontal dimensions? Or stated differently: What form will accurately image the trinitarian God and the reconciled-restored-renewed-remembered communion or fellowship that now exists as a present reality (although not yet perfected)? In some way we need to show not only that

John Webster, The Church and the Perfection of God, in The Community of the Word, 101. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM Press, 1959), 212. 33 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jesus Christ and the essence of Christianity, in A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990), 56. 34 Webster, The Church and the Perfection of God, in The Community of the Word, 82.
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we have become members one of another, but also that we as restored community, we-in-theplural, have become a remarkable image of God.35 In the Old Testament, this form came in the shape of the People of Israel, who were to live in such a way as to bring testimony to the one true living God (Deut. 4:5-7). But even then, their witness also pointed to the fulfillment of Gods plan to bring salvation to the ends of the earth and for all people (Isa. 49:6) through the work of Jesus Christ. Presently, the church is the form of common human life and action which is generated by the gospel to bear witness to the perfect word and work of the triune God.36 And even though the community God calls to represent Gods presence on earth has always been a profoundly ambiguous witness [both Israel and now the church]nevertheless, it has been a chosen instrument.37 Therefore, an accurate depiction or imago dei is the church where the Spirit of God is forming a people who are the expression of Gods redeeming work in the world. They are the people in whom the dwelling of God is forming a new creation. They are Gods witnesses in the world38 (Eph. 3:10). But realizing that Gods people are to be a worshipping and witnessing community and that both these duties belong to the whole Church as the Church,39 we then have to ask; what is the church and how does it differ, if at all, from Christian community? The first thing we need to say was emphasized by the Apostle Paul through the application of a very daring metaphor: the church is the body of Christ on earth!40 (Co. 1:24; 1 Cor. 12:27; Eph. 1:22-23). In correctly identifying it as a metaphor, we still acknowledge this as a perfect

Plantinga, The Perfect Family, 27. Webster, The Visible Attests the Invisible, in The Community of the Word, 96. 37 Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 262. 38 Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 113. 39 John R.W. Stott, One People: Laymen and Clergy in Gods Church, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1968, 25. 40 Paul D. Hanson, The People Called: The Growth of Community in the Bible (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), 512.
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metaphor that describes a truth. In itself a truth, a doctrine, or a religion need no space for themselves. They are disembodied entities but the Body of Christ takes up space on earth. That is a consequence of the IncarnationHence the Body of Christ can only be a visible Body, or else it is not a Body at all.41 But once we acknowledge this reality, there is the great danger of drifting into immanentism; in somehow subsuming Christ into the church, we feel that as his living body, we are in fact a contemporary expression of Jesus Christ Himself in our world. We, the church, continue His incarnation.42 Is this so? Has Christ stopped being incarnate? Has he lost his humanity? If all things hold together in him (Col. 1:17) and the fullness of the deity live in him in bodily form (Col. 2:9), how can one say that his incarnation, his dwelling among us (John 1:14), was only a temporal act? Christ humbled himself and took on bodily form as his act of restoringreconcilingus to God. Is this not an ongoing act? When we speak of the church continuing Christs incarnation, does it not place the function of Christ within the church? That in effect allows for two incarnations and thus two loci of salvation. Such logic stems from our sicut deus inclinations and reveals, once again, our proclivity towards the idolatrous desires of the old Adam. Unfortunately, such incarnational language is prevalent in emergent writings. Even Webber [usually more muted and mature in this area] stumbles when he writes that the early church apologetic may be rightly called an incarnational apology. The church is the

Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 223. Lawrence O. Richards and Clyde Hoeldtke, A Theology of Church Leadership, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1980, 62. See also John M. Perkins, Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1993), 39, You see, the church is the body of Christ. It is to literally be the replacement of Jesus in a given community, doing what he would do, going where he would go, teaching what he would teach.
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continuation of the incarnation.43 Such language seems reminiscent of monastic theology that sought that mystical spiritual union between the church and God. Bernard of Clairvaux, writing from the 13th century, is exemplary. As a drop of water seems to disappear completely in a quantity of wine, taking the wines flavor and color; as red-hot iron becomes indistinguishable from the glow of fire and its own original form disappears; as air suffused with the light of the sun seems transformed into the brightness of the light, as if it were itself light rather than merely lit up; so, in those who are holy, it is necessary for human affection to dissolve in some ineffable way, and be poured into the will of God.44 This union, however, was never substantive or suggestive of annihilation of the self: Be careful, however, not to conclude that I see something corporeal or perceptible to the senses in this union between the Word and the soul.45 Bernard was careful to instruct that this union was a spiritual union, a unity that is caused not so much by the identity of essences as by the concurrence of wills.46 And above all, it was never a union of equals. In Sermon 83 on the Song of Songs he writes, For even if the creature loves less because it is lesser, yet if she loves with all her heart, nothing is lacking where all is givenFor it is nothing other than holy and chaste love, love sweet and tender, love as tranquil as it is true, mutual, close, deep love, which is not in one flesh, but which joins two in one spirit.47 [italics mine] Here, in discussing the marriage of the church and Christ, he allows for the individual, as part of that church, to also aspire to such a lofty union, but only being fully consummated in the eschaton. To credit Webber48, he consistently corrects himself, however, by stating that there is only one actual incarnation of God, but the church, being his body, sustains an incarnational
43

Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 95; See also pg. 112, The image of the church as the body of Christ has resulted in a new awareness that the church is the continuation of the presence of Jesus in and to the world. 44 G.R Evans, Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 196. 45 Dennis E. Tamburello, Union With Christ: John Calvin and the Mysticism of St. Bernard (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John/Knox Press, 1994), 68. 46 Ibid., 68. 47 Evans, Bernard of Clairvaux, 274.

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dimension. The church is witness to the presence of Jesus in the world as it embodies and lives out the faith.49 Using the word embody, a favorite postfoundational term, has its merits and describes more accurately the reality of the church as Christs body and our desire for the Edenic union that once was. Grenz uses it to describe in a more faithful manner this mystery of Christ in you (Col. 1:27), by noting that: The completed work of Christ and the present work of the Spirit mean that the eschatological community that arrives in its fullness only at the consummation of human history is already present in a partial yet genuine manner. Although this present reality takes several forms, its focal point is the community of the followers of ChristAs we embody the biblical vision of Gods new community we reflect the character of God; thereby we are the imago dei.50 In this act of reflecting, the community takes on a profoundly different role than that suggested by the misuse of incarnational language and returns it to being a witness to the presence of God in history.51 This can be described as an act of attestation--making known the wisdom of God (Eph. 3:10)--a people of God, a holy nation, a royal priesthood living in such a way as to bring glory to God (1 Pet. 2:9-12). Quite basically, the church simply points.52 Recognizing this, we need also to recognize that by our act of pointing, we acknowledge that the church, as well as Christian community, is not of our making. We are not united to each other by an act of our will, as if the tie that binds is that we all happen to be people who have decided to follow Jesus. We cannot simply determine to be one in Christ.53 The church is Christs (Matt. 16:18) and he is its foundation (1Cor. 3:11). Christian brotherhood is not an ideal

I must note that very seldom do evangelical writers actually remain with the church as the incarnation of Christ. See, for example: Johnson, The Creed, 256; Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 216; Colin E. Gunton, The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1997), 210; in which all correct their initially imannentistic language. 49 Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 95. 50 Grenz, Beyond Foundationalism, 238. 51 Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 95. 52 Webster, The Church and the Perfection of God, in The Community of the Word, 106. Michael Horton, We Believe: Rediscovering the Essentials of the Apostles Creed (Nashville: Word publishing, 1998), 197.
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which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.54 This is a significant acknowledgement. By so saying, we decry any attempts at church-building (and by extension, Christian community building) and see these as a return to sicut deus acting. Such attempts, well intentioned as they may be, become self-representing self-glorifying. Most recognize such trajectories within the Constantinian model but fail to see the same dangers inherent in the political aspirations of christian nations or the wishes of christian political movements. In other words, the Fall is the advent of social atomism and individualism, and the modern State [even ostensibly Christian ones], working with a pseudo-soteriology, attempts to effect peace but ends up with only a parody of the ecclesia insofar as it attempts to construct a community without calling into question the supposed naturalness of individualistic opposition and without the redemption effected in Christ.55 Since western European and American churches have often espoused an independent individualism that is reflective of culture not a mirror image of God56their ecclesial parodys have not pointed to God. Therefore, since our task is not to create unity in Christ, but to give full and faithful expression to the unity that is his present gift,57 we need to ask how the church can do thishow it can faithfully point. As we noted earlier, the incarnation of Christ demands a visibility. As this incarnation is theologically prior even before creation (although the incarnation comes after the creation chronologically), this visibility was attested to by Israel as God dwelt among them in the tabernacle (Ex. 25:8), in the burning bush (Dt. 33:16), in the Rock that accompanied them in the dessert (1 Cor. 10:4), and in the pillar of cloud and flame. Now that its attestation is through the

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (SanFrancisco: Harper Collins, 1954), 30. James K. A. Smith, The Church as Social Theory: A Reformed Engagement with Radical Orthodoxy, in The Community of the Word, 222. 56 Gorman, Community that is Christian, 28. 57 Evangelicals and Catholics Together, The Communion of the Saints, First Things 131 (Mar 2003): 28.
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church, this requires a faithful visibility. However, is the church the visible presence of the new creation--the reconciling work of Christ--or merely its sign? The Westminster Confession, chapter 25, speaks of the the catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consist[ing] of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one.58 This concept of the invisible church has classically referred to the fact that only God ultimately knows who the elect are, as opposed to the visible church, for: while she is a pilgrim in this world, the City of God has with her, bound to her by the communion of the sacraments, some who will not be with her to share eternally in the bliss of the saintsIn this world, the two cities are indeed entangled and mingled with one another; and they will remain so until the last judgement shall separate them.59 In reading though the New Testament, it becomes clear that for Paul, ekklesia cannot refer to a group of people scattered throughout a locality unless they all do in fact actually gather together,60 a literal assembly. They did not view themselves as a communion of souls whose only concern was each others spiritual welfare.61 Having separated salvation from the visceral act of baptism, modern evangelicalism has focused almost solely on the notion that the Communion of the Saints is an almost automatic effect of the supernatural life which penetrates the living members of the Christian Body.62 This appeal to the idea of the church as an invisible fellowship of all believers, in contrast to the visible church, stems from an individualistic, contractual view of salvation. Such individualism reduces the local congregation to a voluntary society, [and] demotes participation in the visible community from an essential to an optional

Horton, We Believe, 185. Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, trans. and ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 48. 60 Robert Banks, The Early Church as a Caring Community, Evangelical Review of Theology 7 (10 1983): 40. 61 Banks, The Early Church as a Caring Community, 313. 62 Henry Barclay Swete, The Holy Catholic Church: The Communion of the Saints A Study in the Apostles Creed (London: MacMillan and Co., 1915), 195
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dimension of discipleship.63 It is at this point that we need to address how the church differs from Christian community. Clearly, for the church to bear witnessto pointit needs to be visible. This visible church is the phenomenal church the church which has form, shape and endurance as a human undertaking, and which is present in the history of the world as a social project.64 This doesnt denigrate the concept of a universal (invisible) church as a reality but only restores the focus to the churches primary function as a faithful imago dei. The church that Jesus intended is a community that lives its message publicly, transparently, vulnerably that is why it is called ecclesia, an assembly set apart to do public business in view of the watching world.65 Quite simply, then, Christian community describes how we live together as members of a church.66 This calls for a return to sacramental ecclesiology which holds that Gods work in Israel and Christ, not an individuals decision for the churchs faith, makes the church.67 In sacramental teaching a sign is both pointing and also signifying; so here the church points to Christ and so and only so is Christ.68 The church, as a signthe imago deialso signifies in as much as it allows for Christian community. What makes a Christian community is a life of mutual confession and mutual forgiveness in the name of JesusIndeed, Christian community is nothing less than Jesus Christ revealed among us sinful men and women.69 Keeping in mind that the act

Grenz, Beyond Foundationalism, 224. Webster, The Visible Attests the Invisible, in The Community of the Word, 101. 65 Darrell L. Guder, The Church as Missional Community, in The Community of the Word, 126. 66 Vander Broek, Breaking Barriers, 24. 67 Ellen T. Charry, Sacramental Ecclesiology, in The Community of the Word, 202. 68 Robert w. Jenson, The Church and the Sacraments, in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin E. Gunton, (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1997), 212. 69 Henri Nouwen, Peacework: Prayer, Resistance, Community (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2005), 102.
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of God reconciling himself to his people through Jesus has an eschatological telos, the ekklesia is the site of renewed creational community.70 Very clearly, then, we must divest our theology of any vestiges of believing that a faithful visibilitya faithful pointing tocan occur separate from Christian community, for only as a people, as a visible assembly of God, can humans adequately express and represent the true nature of God as it has been revealed through Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.71 According to John 17:11-23, Christ desired that his church would be the earthly community of oneness modeled after the eternal community of oneness.72 In the words of Francis Schaeffer: our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful Christian community is the final apologetic73 (John 13:34-35), hence the importance of continuing to meet with one another (Heb. 10:25). And where two or three are gathered, there the Spirit creates through scripture a communal world, a community of reconciled people. To embrace the gospel, then, is to enter into community. One cannot have the one with out the other74 (Rom. 15:7). Entrance into this new community is marked by baptism which dynamically embodies and effects this translation from one way of life to anothera transferal from one community to another, from that in Adam to that in Christ.75 Again, we can see how evangelicalisms memorialization of baptism has weakened its potency, reducing it to a mere external sign of an inward, individual act. A sacramental realism offers the re-introduction of the understanding that baptism is the formation of a new people whose newness and togetherness explicitly
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Smith, The Church as Social Theory, in The Community of the Word, 221. Johnson, The Creed, 256. 72 Bilezikian, Community 101, 36. 73 Frazee, The Connecting Church, 85. 74 Robert Banks, Pauls Idea of Community: The Early House Church in their Historical Setting (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1980), 33. 75 Banks, Pauls Idea of Community, 82.

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relativize prior stratifications and classification.76 We cannot overestimate the radicalness of such an act for it places the ecclesia and the community that identifies with it in a confessional stance against the world. The church, then, is not an organization that can fit within the civil society of the nation state or regnant polis precisely because it is an alternative polis that calls into question the aims of the state whether ancient or modernAs such, it stands in contrast to every other polis insofar as no other shares its narrative (the Scriptures) nor is any other the site for the Spirits regenerative, sacramental and sanctifying presence.77 This in the world but not of it can only be accomplished through the working of the Spirit as he empowers the various members of the body for the edification of this new polis to be able to point faithfully. The true community of faith is thus a pilgrim people, seeing its forms and structures as provisional within a world being transformed from brokenness to wholeness, and trusting that ultimately its own transformation is being guided by a God whose promises are trustworthy and whose purposes are dedicated to the redemption of all creation.78 How we then participate in the practices of this new polis affects the quality of our witnessour pointing. Since Paul presumes that the church is Christs body, so immorality is not like the body becoming ill or polluted; rather, it is to make the body ill and polluted.79 What we do in the physical body affects our relationship with God and therefore with all of the other community members (1 Cor. 6:12-20), and by extension affects the faithfulness of our attestation. Whatever is wrong spoils, or at least stains, communitywhatever is wrong with us makes spiritual community impossible.80 Part of what is wrong with us is our sicut deus tendencies to view ourselves as autonomous individuals and translate that supposed independence into freedom

John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (Waterloo, Ontario: Herald Press, 1992), 33. 77 Smith, The Church as Social Theory, in The Community of the Word, 222. 78 Hanson, The People Called, 493. 79 Stanley Hauerwas, The Sanctified Body: Why Perfection Does Not Require a Self, in Embodied Holiness: Toward a Corporate Theology of Spiritual Growth, eds. Samuel M. Powell and Michael E. Lodahl (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 1999), 27. 80 Larry Crabb, The Safest Place on Earth (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1999), 74.

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from responsibility and influence. In the church this expresses itself in the huge numbers who claim to be Christian but never join a worshipping community.81 But the individualwith sicut deus tendencies always dangerously closecan never be the primary arbiter of how she or he will follow Jesus but that each must be willing to test the adequacy of his or her readings of Scripture and discernment of Gods will with others in the congregation.82 Here again, a sacramental realism may offer renewed potency to being in community. In some ineffable way and as attested to by scripture, sacraments (and Im thinking primarily of baptism and communionalthough there may be others) do something and what they do is the very thing they meanif sacraments pointed us elsewhere than to where they are themselves happening, it would be up to us to get there, and faith would again be replaced by works.83 Moving away from a strictly memorialist observance of the sacraments reembodies the Christian community: baptism initiates into the new society and communion actualizes oneness by removing class distinctions, economic inequalities and other segregating aspects of sicut deus thinking. In its participation, rather then a Cartesian sort of disembodied observation,84 the faith community embodies the reality of a reconciled people through a life of worship (Rom. 12:1-3). In so doing, Christian community points and exclaims, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! as it anticipates its final re-union--and dwelling--with God (Rev. 21:3).

Vander Broek, Breaking Barriers, 105. Michael G. Cartwright, The Once and Future Church Revisited, in Embodied Holiness: Toward a Corporate Theology of Spiritual Growth, eds. Samuel M. Powell and Michael E. Lodahl (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 1999), 141. 83 Gunton, The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, 213. 84 Rodney Clapp, Tacit Holiness: The Importance of Bodies and Habits in Doing Church, in Embodied Holiness: Toward a Corporate Theology of Spiritual Growth, eds. Samuel M. Powell and Michael E. Lodahl (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 1999), 77.
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