There is a Controversy in the
Kingdom
by the Rev. Kent
Winters-Hazelton
[Published in Network News, Spring 2001, and
posted here on 5-17-01]
There is a controversy in the Christ's Kingdom.
It is not a particularly new controversy but it is one that is becoming
increasingly divisive within the church in our pluralistic age. At the
heart of the controversy lies the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Specifically, it is the question of salvation: Can a person who is not a
Christian be saved?
As our neighborhoods, workplaces and media
outlets reflect the genuine diversity of American society, we cannot
escape this question. Standing in the line at a grocery store behind a
Muslim woman in a traditional head wrap, one must wonder: Can other
religious faiths lead to "salvation?" Or, if we flip the
question over, if others can be "saved," does this make
Christianity less true? Does this necessarily make Jesus something less
than Lord and savior?
Most of the mainline denominations wrestle with
these questions, as do we in the Presbyterian Church (USA). This issue
will be before us at the 213th General Assembly this summer. The
Presbytery of San Joaquin has presented an overture calling the church
to reaffirm its "biblical, historical, and catholic
understanding" of the nature of Jesus Christ by stating (1) Jesus
Christ is "the eternal Son of God, of one substance with the
Father," and (2) that "there is salvation in no one else, for
there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must
be saved." [Overture
01-43]
The overture is a response to the comments
made by Dirk Ficca at last summer's Peacemaking Conference. Ficca, a
Presbyterian minister who works for the Parliament of World Religions,
was invited to address the issue of Christ in a pluralistic world. This
is a very timely and legitimate concern, one with which many
Presbyterians genuinely struggle. In that context, in his carefully
crafted remarks, he raised the possibility that "salvation"
could be found outside of Jesus Christ.1
In the succeeding months tempers within the
PCUSA have flared higher than usual. Several sessions wrote to the
General Assembly Council (GAC) seeking a response to and the discipline
of Dr. Ficca. In February, the GAC determined that it did not have the
power to discipline a minister member of the church, nor could it state
for the whole church the nature of its theology. Many conservative and
renewal groups responded swiftly and critically to the GAC's action. The
Presbyterian Lay Committee, for example, blasted the GAC, calling for
the General Assembly to require loyalty oaths for all program staff by
endorsing three essential confessions: the infallibility of Scripture,
Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation and heterosexual marriage as
the only permissible form of sexual expression.2
Claiming that denominational leaders have
ignored Biblical teaching, several churches, beginning with the Summit
Presbyterian Church in Beaver Butler Presbytery, began what they call a
"Confessing Church" movement. This movement has been endorsed
by one presbytery and, through the channels of the Lay Committee, other
churches are urged to conform. We seem to be all tied up in knots
because we are unable or unwilling to acknowledge that our understanding
of Jesus Christ and his gifts to humanity may be limited and inadequate.
There are a wide variety of perspectives within our shared Reformed
tradition precisely because we do not fully understand the mysteries of
salvation and the gift of grace.
In 1998 the General Assembly approved a new
Presbyterian Catechism. Questions 48 - 51 of the Catechism deal with
concerns about God's gift of salvation. The Catechism acknowledges the
limits to our understanding of the extent to which God grants salvation
to all God's children. We read, for example, in the answer to question
49, "The limits of salvation, whatever they may be, are known only
to God." In question 51, which asks
about the followers of other religions, we read, "God has made
salvation available to all human beings through Jesus Christ . . . How
God will deal with those who do not know or follow Christ, but who
follow another tradition, we cannot finally say. We can say, however,
that God is gracious and merciful, and that God will not deal with
people in any other way than we see in Jesus Christ, who came as the
Savior of the world."
Rather than showing humility in the face of
God's eternal intentions, we are instead confronted by voices within our
church who claim an absolute knowledge of God's mind. Douglas John Hall
has pointed out that we have found ourselves surrounded by
true-believing, biblicist and fundamentalist versions of our faith,
which seek to out-do us in confessing Christ. The result is, however, a
Christ that is so unbending, so dismissive of differences, that we
cannot recognize in him the One we have been taught by our tradition to
honor as Redeemer.3
Indeed, any attempt at a complete and final
definition of Christ limits the person, power and presence of Christ.
Daniel Migliore of Princeton Seminary notes that the living Christ is
greater than all our affirmations. No one position about Christ can
claim to have exhausted the breadth and depth of the mystery of Christ.
When one image or theory is absolutized there is a loss of the richness
of the New Testament proclamation.4
Therein lies the controversy: the absolutizing
of one view of Christ's work. Anything outside of that narrow
interpretation is considered unbiblical and unchristian. Almost every
other dispute or difference within the church can be traced to this
fundamental issue.
The tension rises in the church when we go about
the theological task of interpreting the Biblical text in our
contemporary setting. The Confession of 1967 reminds us that the Church
in every age "has expressed its witness in words and deeds as the
need of the time requires." [9:02] In other words, the issue for
one generation may be new or different from that of a previous
generation, and the Christian Church must grapple Biblically,
theologically, and confessionally with the questions these issues raise.
Carter Heyward writes:
Every generation, on the basis of its own
social and cultural history, tradition, education and experience,
reads the Bible in ways that our ancestors would not recognize. This
is because we always read the text of our own lives in relation to the
biblical text, and these resources of truth and inspiration mutually
inform one another. Because of the Bible, we people grow and change.
Because of us, the Bible also grows, through changing interpretation.5
Doing the theological task in this manner can
and does lead to a diversity of opinions. One thing that is very clear
in our 21st century Presbyterian church is that there is not a
common consensus on all theological issues. The fact of the matter is,
however, there has not been a theological consensus in our denomination
since the 1960s. With the advent of the new theologies of the 1960s and
'70s -- Black, feminist, Asian, and liberation -- a seminary student may
not be reading the same texts as his or her neighbor (as was my
experience in the early 1980s), and consequently may not have the same
foundational "theology." This does not have to be seen as a
negative proposition for the church. Rather, it can be an exciting
opportunity for discussion.
However, rather than welcoming our theological
diversity as an opportunity for growth, conservative and renewal groups
are proclaiming loudly that there is only one way that Presbyterians can
understand the work and role of Jesus Christ. The threat is evident; if
we do not conform to their theological persuasion, we will be declared
apostates.
But does this test of power truly reflect
Christ's way of being? The Christian scriptures are clear that Jesus
came as a servant, one who clearly and consistently rejected the uses of
power to achieve his purposes. His primary response to human situations
was compassion. He opened his heart to those rejected by the religious
systems of his day; he held out his hand to those who were shunned as
"unclean"; he embraced those whom society and the religious
establishment considered to be sinners.
Yet we have those within our Christian family
who insist on a triumphal victory of Christ over those who do not know
his name. In this view, only by power is Christ declared King and Lord,
and only those who know him are subjects of his kingdom. Is it possible
that in our rush to declare Jesus as King we have forgotten the Jesus
who came as a servant of all?
What kind of Savior is Jesus? And what is the
nature of his reign? In an increasingly secular world and pluralistic
society, how do we understand Christ as the Lord? Is Christ the
Sovereign One of the world, the Creation, the universe? Or is he Lord
only to those who acknowledge him?
Ultimately, we do not have the answers to these
questions. As Christians, we are committed to Jesus Christ as the
definitive expression of God's character and purpose and the central
core of our faith. But we are far from comprehending the full mystery of
God in Christ. For now "we see in a mirror dimly." With the
writers of the Gospels and the saints of every age, together --
conservative and liberal -- we proclaim the great works of Jesus Christ,
which enable human beings to be saved. But in the end, we must -- and
trusting, joyfully, we may -- leave it to God to work
out the particulars.
Notes
1. The full text of Dirk
Ficca's address can be found in the Fall 2000 issue of Network
News, and on this web site.
2. "Confessing Church
Movement in the Presbyterian Church (USA)," The Layman Online,
March 26, 2001. www.layman.org.
See also, "Battle over PC(USA) ordination standards is expected to
dominate General Assembly." Presbyterian News Service, No. 01134.
April 18, 2001
3. Douglas John Hall,
Confessing Christ in a Post-Christian Context. Address delivered at the
1999 Conference of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians. November 5,
1999. Available at www.covenantnetwork.org/hall1
4. Daniel Migliore, Faith
Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology. (Eerdmans,
1991), pp 144, 154
5. Carter Heyward, Saving
Jesus from those Who are Right: Rethinking What it Means to be Christian.
(Fortress Press, 1999) p. 3.
The author --
Kent Winters-Hazelton is the Pastor of the
Claremont Presbyterian Church and a member of the Executive Committee of
the Witherspoon Society. He apologizes for the use of the male,
hierarchical language of the title of this article, and justifies this
choice of language by saying it sounds better than "There is a
Controversy in the Reign of God."
