I’ve been looking at Fresh Expressions – the Church of England/Methodist project into finding, strangely enough, fresh ways for people to express or explore their faith. In many respects it’s the background to much of what is happening within the Church of Scotland. What’s been interesting is that Emerging Church in its guises as ‘alternative worship’ or ‘seeker-sensitive’ or whatever other label one might care to apply is actually a subset of the overall strategy. By broadening out what ‘church’ is, in the sense of how to be a worshipping community, then the unity of the church is maintained. However, this opening out and creating space within the structure of ‘organised religion’ is not universally accepted as ‘a good thing’. How can one be a radical voice or a ‘fresh expression’ when one is still part of the ‘established’ church? The very fact that a group is still within the structures of the ‘parent’ denomination means that it can only ever be emerging and never really emerge.

In the book Evaluating Fresh Expressions, an article by Dr Peter Rollins, co-ordinator of the emerging church movement Ikon in Belfast, is pretty hard-hitting when it comes to this subject. He questions whether maintaining the close connection with the structures of ‘traditional’ church allows an emergent expression of church to find its real voice. He goes so far as to suggest that maintaining such a connection is a “restriction, misrepresentation and even perversion of the very message that they offer to both those outside and those within the church” (p84).

The challenge of such a view (and this is the point of the essay) is that we then have to look beyond our own denomination and tradition and consider what it means to be part of the ‘church catholic’. Barth offers a similar challenge. Church, he suggests, is, at its most basic, a statement of faith, derived from the creedal statement – “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.” As such, it is not a matter of ‘knowing’ it is right, wrong or whatever, but believing that the church, the body of Christ, simply ‘is’. For Barth, that ‘being’ is marked by the work of the Spirit within and through the church. That calls into question our ideas of the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways of ‘doing’ church. But it also continues to call into question what it means to be church and what the purpose of church is. Barth is still, in a sense, tied to the institution of church. This, in large part, is to avoid the dangers of 0f individualistic experientialism; a danger I think some expressions of Emerging Church are at risk of slipping into. That, of course raises the question of whether it is indeed a danger. Barth’s big argument here is that we are called as a saved people, not as individuals as such. It was the nation of Israel God established, not a disparate group of individuals. But maybe that’s a subject for another essay.

In the meantime, when we consider/believe we are ‘one church’, how far are we prepared to go to count other expressions of church as still part of the body of Christ and therefore part of our Christian fellowship?

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Solidarity with the world means that those who are genuinely pious approach the children of the world as such, that those who are genuinely righteous are not ashamed to sit down with the unrighteous as friends, that those who are genuinely wise do not hesitate to seem to be fools among fools, and that those who are genuinely holy are not too good or irreproachable to go down “into hell” in a very secular fashion.

Barth CD IV/3, p774

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I liked that because it stood in contrast to some earlier reading on Augustine who was convinced of humanity’s utter depravity.

Both allow for God’s grace. In fact, for Augustine, it’s an absolute necessity otherwise there is no hope whatsoever for humanity. We are, without God’s aid, utterly incapable of choosing Him. Barth doesn’t diminish the need for God’s grace but there’s an overall more hopeful image from him. Perhaps that reflects his universalist leanings. I confess I don’t know enough about the rest of his theology. But I liked the idea that creation is allowed to be messy and untidy and imperfect, just as we are as individuals. And yet, despite this, there’s room for God to work. In fact, one might argue that without it, there’s no need for God.

But the other interesting thing about Barth is that God’s work of grace in this messiness is to turn us to Him and, in His creation, reflect something of His glory. I don’t get that sense of ‘improvement’ with Augustine. Ultimately all we end up doing in his scheme of things is avoid slipping back into the mire. With Barth there’s the sense of liberation not oppression. And there’s the true sense of Christian hope – that creation is being saved as part of God’s covenant promise as we see its outworkings in God’s providence.

The world isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. Just as well really.

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Actually, I got off to a bad start – I had a cold for most of last week and couldn’t get my head round any of the readings but thought I’d better go anyway. Even if I couldn’t contribute to the tutorial at least I’d learn from the discussions.

Anyway, we only scratched the surface of Barth’s writings (and there are rather a lot of them), concentrating on his Christology. To be fair, this is the very core of Barth’s theology. In Christ we have the full revelation of God, not a subset, not the ‘human’ bit, but God in entirety. We just don’t get it, because we can’t, we’re simply not able to grasp the enormity of God and what His revelation in Jesus Christ actually means. Barth is, first and foremost, a dialectical theologian. Everything is held in tension, there is no yes or no answers – everything has a yes and no answer. The prime example of this is Jesus Christ – a name that implies both fully man (Jesus) and fully God (Christ). This whole dialectic approach shapes the way we can speak about God in the sense that we can speak about God, all the while recognising that what we say is inadequate and, hence, we become unable to speak about God.

That’s all very fascinating but the one thing that caught my attention was his doctrine of election. It’s another area of reformed theology that I’ve always struggled with – the idea of some people being predestined to be saved, others not. The usual answer of, “Well, we just can’t understand God’s ways” always seems to me to be a simplistic cop-out. It just doesn’t square with a loving God. Especially with a loving God who sent His Son, knowing that He would die, in order to bring salvation to all humankind.

Well, I do like Barth’s approach. All humankind is ‘elected’ to be saved. Christ’s death on the cross did bring salvation to all of humanity, indeed all of creation and in all times. But, this is not universalism. It may be God’s desire for everyone to be saved and the cross was an event that made salvation available to all, but we still have the option to reject God. In Matthew 12:31-32, Jesus speaks of the ‘unforgivable sin’ of ‘blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which, when read in context, appears to indicate the denial of God’s acts through the Spirit. It is an act of ours to reject God and thereby deny our true self – one of God’s creatures, made in His image, made to be in relationship with Him. It is never an act of God to reject us. God has already rejected Jesus – in the bearing of our sins on the cross. And at the same time, welcomed Him in (there’s that yes and no). And in that denial of all that is God, we find hell – the complete absence of the good, of God (and I suspect we’re straying beyond Barth now). Hmmm… there’s those neo-Orthodox tendencies starting to poke through.

Anyway, interesting stuff and plenty to get to grips with. It’s even got me thinking about doing the Barth course next year (despite knowing that there’ll be a mountain of reading to do). I’ll do a blog on pastoral care next – honest.

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