Can it be said that Christ is at the Center at the 2010 Barth Conference? In a way, yes.
This year’s conference is on the church and mission. And a fascinating conference it has been. Today is day two of the conference and we’ve heard several very stimulating lectures. The overall theme, I might deduce, is that mission needs to be understood in a Christ-centered way. And to be sure, Barth himself understood the mission of the church in such a way. As with all his theology, Christ must be at the center.
In fact, the lecture by John Flett made clear that the mission of the church needs to be understood in light of the mission of Christ as the eternal elected man and electing man who comes to us in humility but also in resurrection power. “Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!” is the announcement of the church that Christ himself has accomplished the mission of God and has witnessed to God himself. In fact, Christ is himself THE witness of God.
So, what are we to make of this? To be sure, Christ is himself the prophetic voice of the church. Furthermore, and as such, there can be no false dichotomy between the church as institution and the church as mission. With this we cannot but help to agree.
However, some problems remain. First, there is an abiding nominalism here in Barth’s ecclesiology. It is Christological and Christocentric to a fault. The mission of the church loses any real meaning as mission if Christ is himself – as the incarnation God-Man from all eternity – the missio dei. If God in Christ is the mission and this mission takes place – along with reconciliation – in eternity past, then what exactly does the church need to do today? Witness to the witness? Or imitate the witness by being an agency of reconciliation with its neighbors through acts of mercy? If so, how is this really different from the older liberal view of missions? It was suggested in the conference that the best way to shut down a mission field is to write a book saying how missionaries are raping the indigenous cultures of the mission field. True that. However, a better explanation as to why missions is in such a poor state in the PCUSA is because of a lack of motivation. What I mean is this: if mission and reconciliation is already established by the being of God in Christ from all eternity, why do missions today? There is one thing that is not different between Barthian view of mission and a liberal view: missionaries are only to declare what is already the case with the indigenous people to whom they preach and never actually seek to convert them. After all, as we saw in last year’s conference on Barth and the Religions, Christianity is to seek dialogue with other religions and not confront or challenge them in their unbelief.
Rather, according to Scripture, we are to preach Christ and him crucified. We are to show the world’s religions that they worship idols, that they need to repent, and become Christians. This is not colonization, it is biblical evangelism. And with out it, mission can never truly have Christ at its center.
If you are interested in learning more about Barth, I can recommend this book, this book, and this book. His theology is still worth knowing and reading, even if you do not agree.
Certainly the followers of Rahner could learn something from this post. “Dialogue” was the theme word of Vatican II. Using Rahner’s two-level epistemology, missions became an endeavor to find the unthematic Christianity present in every human’s transcendental experience – Christian or not.
Yeah, that’s right. In fact, the good question that came up at the end of the conference was regarding conversion. There was plenty of talk of conversion, and how the missionary needs to be converted again and again, but nothing very specific about what is true biblical conversion and how the pagan needs it.
Do you really mean the missionary or is that a typo? I struggle to find the importance of missions under a Rahnerian scheme. I suppose there would be some value to making “anonymous” Christians’ faith explicit, but those having answered an existential “yes” to God will be “saved” regardless of any repentance or profession of faith.
Hi Camden,
No, that was not a typo. It was an important theme in the conference that the missionary himself is the one who needs to be converted. The church needs to be converted, again and again. In Barthianism the theme of being self-critical is very important. In fact, that is the task of theology itself and is page 1 of Barth’s CD.
Lf93AQ With the bases loaded you struck us out with that answer!
Again, with Rahnerian evangelism and apologetics Christians are left without a solid foothold since they always must uncover and incorporate the bits of implicit faith found in non-Christian religions. The sufficiency of Scripture is nowhere to be found.
9nyWlD IJWTS wow! Why can’t I think of things like that?