Comments on 18 Ways to Use Media in Worship

Has anyone ever considered that this use of media is a total distraction from the gospel, the great news of Christ crucufied and risen, and what it means for us all?
The "techniques" are so caught up in their own cleverness they better merit description as audience manipulation techniques par excellence rather than activities that should garce the congregation of the faithful. Televison itself as a medium in the 21st century is the kwy tool of this constructionof reality - and we are captive to it rather than its master. Such methods rely on contrived visual and auditory sensory experiences for the amusement of the audience and the construction of an artifice of spirituality that is closer to trickery and self-deception than the living God. Are the scriptures read? Is the gospel truly preached? Is God truly worshipped? What is church for anyway? Answers to such foundational questions will expose one's commitment to the values of the gospel - or to the values of the world.

Stay Tuned, as 2 Churches Struggle With Gay Clergy

From the New York Times

The only certain result of the Episcopal and Presbyterian church
conventions that ended this week is that the participants will return to fight
another day — and at future church conventions — over homosexuality.

For the Episcopal
Church U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), as with other mainline
Protestant churches, the summertime convention season has become a painful
ritual. In each church, the conservatives and the liberals are bound together
like brawling conjoined twins.

The liberals dominate the power centers of the denominations — the national offices and the legislative arms. The conservatives have threatened to walk away, but most have not because they say the church is rightfully, theologically, theirs.

Sounds like another denomination we know- the Aus UCA.

Sad Irony

Repost from http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au.

Just wondering if the UCA is Aus will take the same line on the vexed issue of Resolution 84 at the forthcoming 11th Assembly...

Sad Irony

27 June 2006 AD

This past Tuesday, delegates to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) cast votes on two important issues. By an overwhelming majoring (81% to 19%), the delegates voted to keep in the PCUSA constitution amendment G-6.0106b:

“Those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church. Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament.”

Liberals proposed an overture to remove this section so as to allow homosexuals and lesbians in committed relationships to be legally ordained in the PCUSA. Their attempt failed. So, this is good news, right?

Seemingly so … until you read about the vote taken right before this one. In a historic vote, the delegation voted by a margin of 57% to 43% to accept what is known as local option. This means that a local church and presbytery (geographical association of Presbyterian churches) has the right to deem which ordination standards are essentials and which ones are not. The end result is that a presbytery can deem the above amendment as a “non-essential” ordination standard and thus allow homosexuals and lesbians (or anyone refusing to repent of a certain sin) to be an official Minister of Word and Sacrament.

It takes little commentary to see the hypocrisy in all of this.

Introduction

The following posts formed the parts of an essay written for the Introducing Theology subject at the Brisbane College of Theology.

"To experience the fellowship of the Spirit inevitably carries Christianity beyond itself into the greater fellowship of all God’s creatures" (Moltmann). Discuss and critique.

The fellowship of the Spirit derives from and rests in a Trinitarian understanding of the relationship between God, humanity and creation. The fellowship of the Spirit is the experience of koinonia of relationship within the Trinitarian nature of God, in which believers are drawn into the perichoretic life of God, and participate in the mutual indwelling of the divine persons. It is the experience of the koinonia of relationship among the redeemed members of the true church, enabled and empowered by the working of the same Spirit. But is there a koinonia of the Spirit with all non-human living creatures such as animals and plants, and by extension, the whole of creation?

From Eternity

In the beginning, God. These words from Genesis 1:1 instruct us on the eternal transcendent nature of God. From all eternity, the three persons of the Trinity enjoy relating to one another in the manner of perichoresis – a mutual indwelling or interpenetration, forming an eternal “community of being” [1] in loving relationship. In this relationship “all three persons of the Trinity mutually share in the life of the others, so that none is isolated or detached from the actions of the others”[2]. Zizioulas teaches about communion from the Trinity, saying, “God is not first One and the Three, but simultaneously One and Three”. Therefore, God is an “unbreakable koinonia (community) that exists between the three Persons.”[3]

The social Trinity is a perichoretic community of love, eternally sufficient, existing prior to the creation. The act of creation is not necessary in order to fulfil a need for, or a lack of, fellowship within God’s essential relational nature. The idea of love overflow from within the Trinity necessitating creation as an object of love is to be discounted. This may lead to an “emanation” model of creation which fails to identify the essential discontinuity between the creation and the creator. God creates out of love for, but not from absence of, fellowship. As Tracey notes, the nature of God can be essentially relational without being necessarily related to creatures – “God’s life is complete apart from his relation to his creatures, since the relatedness that is an essential property of God might not be his relatedness to creatures.”[4] This empowers the understanding of the freedom of the fellowship of the Spirit, and how the Christian experience is absolutely dependent on, and subsequent to, the eternal relationality of God.

[1] Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (Victoria: Blackwell, 2001), 325-6.
[2] McGrath, Christian Theology, 586.
[3] John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/liturgics/john_zizioulas_communion_otherness.htm. Accessed 13 June 2006.

[4] David Tracey, God Action and Embodiment. (Grand Rapids: Eardmans: 1984), 178.

Creation

Creation itself is a Trinitarian activity: by the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Regarding creation, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed tightly summarises the Christian belief in “one God, the Father, the almighty, the maker of all things seen and unseen…one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God…through whom all things in heaven and on earth came into being…the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.” [1]

McGrath identifies four implications for the doctrine of creation[2] which will serve as useful guidelines to explore the fellowship of the Spirit in God, humanity and creation.
Firstly, a distinction must be drawn between God and the creation. Rahner’s discussion of the “economic trinity” and the “essential trinity” provide a useful way of distinguishing between the transcendence and the immanence of God[3]. God is both distinct from the world, and is simultaneously related to the world, “as its creator, sustainer, and ultimately its redeemer”[4]. God alone is the absolute source of all that is, but God is separate from it - creation is not regarded as divine, nor possessed of any divine qualities. God’s Spirit acts upon the world without becoming merged with it. However, the immanence of the Spirit of God in creation is a key entry point into understanding the idea of the fellowship of the Spirit experienced within creation. Moltmann argues that:

…without a pneumatological doctrine of creation there cannot be a Christian doctrine of creation at all…without a perception of the creator Spirit in the world there cannot be a peaceful community of creation in which human beings and nature share.[5]

A relational indwelling of divine perichoresis provides the model for properly understanding the relation between God and creation[6]. God is present in creation – but in what sense? We must distinguish between the Spirit’s cosmic, reconciling and redeeming indwelling. Otherwise there will be no necessary discontinuity between the creator and the creation, or clearly identifiable interface where continuity does occur, that is, supremely in the person of Christ. Creation must always be understood in light of God’s self-revelation in Christ, and the Holy Spirit understood concretely in terms of Christ as the unique bearer and embodiment of the Spirit. Hence, the immanence of God in creation is the presence of the Spirit as mediated by Christ.

Secondly, Creation implies God’s authority over the world (Rev 4:11). While the Genesis account has God ascribing “dominion” to humanity over the earth, it is possible to construe the original intent of humanity’s rule under God’s authority more as stewards rather than despots of creation (Ps8). In this role, humanity exists in right relationship with God and creation, actualising God’s authority as vice-regents. Dominion becomes exploitation when it is used at the expense of the good creation, alienating us from the earth and our fellow creatures, and exposing “the folly and wickedness of ignoring our creator and instructor”[7].

Thirdly, the doctrine of God as creator implies the goodness of creation. Although presently in a fallen state, all of creation, including the creatures brought forth by the earth and the seas, was held to be “very good” (Gen 1:31). In response, all creatures are able in some way to give glory to God their creator (Ps19:1), and God takes delight in them (Job 39 – 41). As the Spirit is the agent of the Father’s intention to bring all things in relation to himself through Christ, “we must say that whenever the created order, in any of its levels and aspects, is able to praise its maker, there is the agency of the Spirit”[8]. Moltmann argues for relationships of mutuality to describe a cosmic community of living between God the Spirit and all his created beings, “…an ecological doctrine of creation must today perceive and teach God’s immanence in the world….through his cosmic Spirit, God the creator of heaven and earth is present in each of his creatures and in the fellowship of creation which they share”[9].

Nevertheless, while nonhuman creatures and creation are presented as the inseparable companions of humanity in creation, reconciliation and redemption”[10], it is only God and humanity who are able to enter into a fellowship of persons. The creation of humanity as male and female in the image of God (Gen 1:27) establishes the foundation of this particular relationship from within the created order to the Godhead.

McGrath’s final implication for the doctrine of creation stems from human beings created in the image of God, and what this means for the relationship between God, humanity and creation. To be in the image of God is to exist in a vertical directedness to God our creator and redeemer, “to be oriented, in the time and space he has given, to a perfection of being for and in him”[11]. It is also to live in a horizontal network of relationships with other human beings and the rest of the non-personal created order. Thus, “[t]o be in the image of God is therefore to be called to represent God to the creation and the creation to God”[12].

We find our true identity in coexistence with each other and with all other creatures. Christ, as the full realisation of the image of God, re-orders and re-orients what this truly means. Gunton argues “that Jesus represents God to the creation in the way that the first human beings were called, but failed to do...and…that he enables other human beings to achieve the directedness to God of which their fallenness has deprived them”[13]. This imaging is achieved as a triune act through the power of the Spirit in a personal relationship of giving and receiving. Here, Moltmann’s description of the Trinity as “communal, social and family-like”[14] may be re-introduced to affirm the nature of God as person, “for only persons can be at one with one another”[15]. Humanity’s essentially relationality, attuned to the self-existent relationality at the heart of the triune God, leads to an interpretation of “the imago Dei as an imago Christi and an imago trinitatis.”[16]

[1] McGrath, Christian Theology, 21.
[2] McGrath, Christian Theology, 440-443.
[3] Karl Rahner, The Trinity (London: Burns and Oates, 1970).
[4] Steven Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology: The Ecological Models of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler, and Jürgen Moltmann (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 163.
[5] Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM Press, 1985), 99.
[6] Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology, 125.
[7] O. R. Barclay, ‘Creation’, in Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright (eds.), New Dictionary of Theology, (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1988), 178.
[8] Colin E. Gunton, Theology Through the Theologians: Selected Essays 1972-1995 (Edinburgh: T &T Clark, 1996), 120.
[9] Moltmann, God in Creation, 14.
[10] Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 97.
[11] Colin E. Gunton, Christ and Creation (Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 1982), 102.
[12] Gunton, Christ and Creation, 102.
[13] Gunton, Christ and Creation, 100.
[14] Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology, 256.
[15] Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, trans. Margaret Kohl. (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 150.
[16] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 141.

Fall

This state of fellowship did not endure. Humanity rebelled, wishing to turn things their own way, bringing death (Rom 6:12). As a consequence of this disobedience, the fellowship of the Spirit is broken. Humanity has fallen from their “original righteousness and communion with God and so became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body”[1]. Seen relationally, “sin is fundamentally opposition to grace. It is saying No to the invitation to receive God’s gift of life with our praise and thanksgiving, No to a life of glad service to God, No to a life of friendship with our fellow creatures.”[2]

This denial of the Spirit’s fellowship spreads insidiously to all aspects of the relationship of God, humanity and creation. As God’s image bearers, appointed as God’s vice-regents over creation, when humanity falls, so does the rest of God’s handiwork. The image is marred. The good creation itself is cursed because of human sin (Gen 3:17), and is a shadow of its former glory – there has been “a break in the harmony of creation”[3]. The fall is cosmic in scope – humanity and creation are in solidarity in their separation and alienation from God, but also alienated from each other.
In Romans 1 Paul links alienation from God to a misrepresentation of nature as divine and an object of worship. Humanity “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator” (Rom 1:25). In its bondage to sin, creation groans (Rom 8:19ff). Creation is enslaved, alienated and yearns for liberty. Humanity and creation both are in need of a saviour.

[1] Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The Confession of Faith and Catechisms with Proof Texts: The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms as adopted by The Orthodox Presbyterian Church. (Pennsylvania: The Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2005). http://opc.org/documents/LCLayout1.pdf. Accessed 11 June 2006

[2] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 151
[3] Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology, 240.

Redemption

The pursuit of redemption is at the heart of all great dramas, and although fallen through sin, the world remains God’s good creation and capable of being redeemed. Here, Christ is the unifying person and controlling principle at the centre of this redemptive activity. God, entering into the creation in the person of Christ, takes on creatureliness to live as the full immanent revelation of God. The vertical dimension of relationality to the creator is restored as God acts in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The horizontal dimension of fellowship with other people and non-human creation is worked out as the true man, Jesus, acts as the archetype of the Christian experience of life in the Spirit.

An inspection of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life reveals more of the fellowship of the Spirit within humanity and creation. Beginning with revelation, Moltmann[1] examines the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church that comes down to us. In the power of the Spirit, the believer is born again (John 3:5) and made a new creature in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). Importantly in the present context, in the community of the Spirit, believers are made one (Gal 3:28), holding everything in common (Acts 4:31-35). The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is the gift of the common participation[2] in the life of God (2 Cor 13:14). In addition, while the gifts of the same Spirit given to individuals for the common good are many and diverse (1 Cor 12:4-11) all come from the same source. All believers have been baptised by the one Spirit into the one body of Christ and given the one Spirit to drink (1 Cor 12:13). Redemption promises the hope of eternal life, a renewed relationship with God, and personal and communal transformation[3].

This new community, the Church, is the world’s witness to the unifying activity of the Spirit. Mutuality and a life of reconciliation and forgiveness, motivated by love is to mark all human relationships (1 Cor 13). This relationship of love “is the new way to be human with and for others supremely embodied in Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit” [4]. Love, as self-identification with the other in the fellowship of the Spirit, is the sign of the true humanity in the new community. This is the way in which we were created to live. The Christian community is thus constituted by the Spirit as “the communion of saints”. This mystical communion – koinonia – is the participation, and sharing in the divine life of the triune God that holds the church together[5].

The church is also an eikon of the Trinity, where relationships within God are the model of how we relate to each other, mirroring the divine life itself. The mutual relationships among three co-equal persons within the Godhead provide a model for human relationships within communities[6]. To speak of the triune God is to speak of a human life that “is fulfilled only in relationship with God and others”[7]. As Torrence remarks, the fellowship of the Spirit brings us up into communion with God:

The triune God of grace who has his own true being-in-communion has created us in his image in order that we might find our true being-in-communion with him and one another. The ministry of Christ and the Spirit is to lift us up into this life of communion as members of the body of Christ, participating together in the very triune life of God.[8]

Given the restoration of humanity’s proper place through the focal point of Christ in relation to God and within creation, is the redemption of all things also promised, not just the human race? The understanding of “Christ as cosmic, Lord of nature as well as of history, agent of creation as well as of redemption”[9] offers a way of seeing the person and work of Christ as including not merely human history but the entire natural world. Romans 8:19-23 is often cited in this context. However, “it must be remembered that it is not creation that was made in the image of God, but man and woman”[10]. While the whole creation may grown with restlessness, and wait in eager expectation for its freedom from being subjected to frustration, the fact that it is Israel and Jesus who are at the centre of God’s action in and towards the world means that the personal is central, the non-personal peripheral[11]. This is not to deny a fellowship with creation and creatures in the Spirit, but to affirm that the focus of redemption is on humanity.

Further, one of the hallmarks of the experience of the fellowship of the Spirit in this present age is its partiality and provisionality. Although we have been saved (e.g. Rom 8:24), we are being saved (1 Cor 1:18), and we will be saved (e.g. Rom 13:11). New life in Christ by the power of the Spirit is only a foretaste of eternal life. We hope for the life of the world to come. As Moltmann writes:

Human beings already experience the indwelling of God in the Spirit here in history, even if yet only partially and provisionally. That is why they hope that in the kingdom of glory God will dwell entirely and wholly and for ever in his creation, and will allow all the beings he has created to participate in the fullness of his eternal life[12].
In solidarity with the whole groaning creation, we await the consummation of God’s redemptive activity.[13] As Pinnock comments, “We are trustees of the earth and fellow creatures with its inhabitants…. It is … the Spirit’s project, to be redeemed along with us. Nature is our home, blessed by God who took flesh, and it is destined for renewal”[14].

[1] Moltmann, God in Creation, 100.
[2] Geoffrey Wainwright ‘The Holy Spirit’ in Colin Gunton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 275.
[3] Alister McGrath, The Re-enchantment of Nature: Science, Religion and the Human Sense of Wonder (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002), 51.
[4] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 161
[5] McGrath, Christian Theology, 493.
[6] McGrath, Christian Theology, 326.
[7] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 149.
[8] James B. Torrence, ‘Contemplating the Trinitarian Mystery of Christ’ in Kenneth J. Collins (ed.), Exploring Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Reader (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 297.
[9] Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology, 296.
[10] Gunton, Christ and Creation, 32.
[11] Gunton, Christ and Creation, 34.
[12] Moltmann, God in Creation, 5.
[13] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 159
[14] Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996) cited in McGrath, The Re-enchantment of Nature, 31.

...to eternity

Ultimately, the experience of alienation between God, humans and the creation will be resolved at the eschaton, the time of the Sabbath rest where the original relationship of God, humanity and creation is restored. The future of the Spirit is experienced in the new creation, in “the rebirth of the cosmos to glory, the blessed community of creation which joins all separated creatures, and the direct fellowship with God of the creation united in Christ and renewed in the Spirit”[1]. There are numerous visions of this future of renewal and transformation in the Old and New Testaments, where “what has been distorted and ruined will finally be restored to its original integrity”[2]. No less so than in the creation of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev 21:1), when “in a final act of consummation the existing order will be renewed and refashioned” [3].

God will once again make his dwelling place with humanity and live with them (Rev 21:3). God has returned his fellowship with the lives of the redeemed – this time, not in a garden called Eden but in the City of God. Humans are offered a transformed a resurrected body, like Christ glorious body (1 Cor 15), and a continuation and fulfilment of the life in the Spirit that was initially offered as a “deposit” or “guarantee” of the inheritance of the world to come. At this time, the Spirit, as the perfecting cause[4] will “unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10) .

Harmonious relations between humans and their fellow creatures are re-established (Isa 11:6-8), as they are among creatures (Isa 65:25). Creation itself, set free from its bondage to decay, will be enabled to “achieve the glorious freedom for which it was created”[5]. This is the time of “universal shalom when all creatures will live together in harmonious and joyful community”[6]. Here we find the vision of the renewed fellowship of the Spirit indwelling humanity and all creation, liberated from its bondage to the law of sin and death. The inevitable has become the eternal. The fellowship of the Spirit is fully unveiled to the community of the redeemed, and the presence of the LORD will dwell with them forever.

---

[1] Moltmann, God in Creation, 100.
[2] McGrath, The Re-enchantment of Nature, 50.
[3] McGrath, The Re-enchantment of Nature, 49.
[4] Gunton, Theology Through the Theologians, 120.
[5] McGrath, The Re-enchantment of Nature, 50.
[6] Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 99.

Bibliography

Barclay, O. R. “Creation”. In New Dictionary of Theology. Edited by Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright. Illinois: IVP, 1988.

Bouma-Prediger, Steven. The Greening of Theology: The Ecological Models of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler, and Jürgen Moltmann. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995.

Gunton, Colin E. Christ and Creation. Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 1982.

Gunton, Colin E. Theology Through the Theologians: Selected Essays 1972-1995. Edinburgh: T &T Clark, 1996.

McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology: An Introduction. Victoria: Blackwell, 2001.

McGrath, Alister. The Re-enchantment of Nature: Science, Religion and the Human Sense of Wonder. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002.

Migliore, Daniel. Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.

Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation. London: SCM Press, 1985.

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Trinity and the Kingdom. Translated by Margaret Kohl. New York: Harper and Row, 1981.

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The Confession of Faith and Catechisms with Proof Texts: The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms as adopted by The Orthodox Presbyterian Church. (Pennsylvania: The Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2005). Retrieved on 11th June 2006 from http://opc.org/documents/LCLayout1.pdf.

Pinnock, Clark H. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1996.

Torrence, James B. “Contemplating the Trinitarian Mystery of Christ”. In Exploring Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Reader. Edited by Kenneth J. Collins. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000.

Tracey, David. God Action and Embodiment. Grand Rapids: Eardmans, 1984.

Rahner, Karl. The Trinity. London: Burns and Oates, 1970.

Wainwright, Geoffrey. “The Holy Spirit”. In The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine. Edited by Colin Gunton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Zizioulas, John. Communion and Otherness. Retrieved on 14th June 2006 from http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/liturgics/john_zizioulas_communion_otherness.htm