From
Living Theology in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church In America
Volume 2, Number 2
Easter 1997
Spirituality
Frank Senn’s Warning–A
Response
Since Frank Senn's response, in Let's Talk, Volume
2, Issue 1, to my previously published piece goes right to the heart of some
crucial issues in our thinking about the ELCA, it is well worth a response and
even further discussion. He raises two
major issues: the theme of baptism and
the question of the church accommodating to its surrounding culture.
Concerning
baptism, Senn's comments are a welcome elaboration of the theme of possibility
and transformation. My article was a
small piece of a larger work in progress, and I will certainly want to
incorporate his suggestions.
There is
little quarrel between Senn and me on the dangers of the church betraying its
mission by identifying with the cultures of this world. He puts the matter eloquently in his
emphasis that the church must "reach out to cultures and engage in
dialogue, either to transform them or to confront them with an alternative way
of life and world view." The
church lives to be a servant of God's redemption of the creation.
The
issue between Senn and me concerns our interpretation of the church in its
present situation. While we agree that
the church too often sells out to the world, we differ in our understandings of
the redemptive mission today. Our
Christian doctrines of creation, Incarnation, and Real Presence in the
Eucharist tell us that our created nature is what God redeems, and nothing else
about us. Our cultures are part of this
creation. Our Christian theology of
redemption tells us that there is no redemption apart from Incarnation and Real
Presence, and as the church is called to be an agent of the Gospel of
redemption, its call is also to be incarnated within the cultures of the world. I believe that the ELCA's own mission goals
show that it understands this calling to be an incarnate community in
contemporary culture, but we have scarcely begun to actualize our
understanding. I also believe that the
ELCA, far from being too American, has only begun to take contemporary American
cultures seriously; we are still much more a northern European colony in North
America than we want to admit. We have
far to go if we are to realize our calling as ELCA.
My
concept of the "people's church," calls attention to the need for
such incarnation and its risks. Frank
Senn rightly underscores that one of these risks is the church's demonic
identification with culture. We need
that warning. But it should not be
allowed to distract us from the truth that God's mission requires that the
church share its Lord's incarnation in the particular cultures that God has
created. Granting Senn’s point that culture is not always what we wish, we
might ask, “Do we have to be incarnated in American culture in this
era?” We might extend that to say that incarnations in principle may not be
what we would hope for. So, too, fantasizing that when the Christ-Logos
referred to in the Prologue to John learned that being logos involved
incarnation in a human body, he might have asked, “Does coming to earth to
reveal God have to be in a human body?” And an ordinary human body at
that (not Michael Jordan’s or Marilyn Monroe’s body).
Philip Hefner
Professor of Systematic
Theology
Director of the Chicago
Center for
Religion and Science
Lutheran School of Theology
at Chicago