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Chapter 5
The Church in Likeness of the Trinity
For trinitarian theology to be
consistent with the whole of God it must involve the trinitarian
relational context of family. Such theology does not merely inform
us about God but provides the framework to truly know God, be ongoingly
involved with the trinitarian persons as family and to build God's
family together. This is the function of Jesus' familial prayer for all
his followers (Jn 17).
For us to be consistent with this
trinitarian theology is to engage the trinitarian relational context of
the whole of God, which is the family of God. Such engagement is
necessarily both as an individual and as the collective of Christ= s
followers called the church. The individual alone is never sufficient to
define the trinitarian relational context nor to represent the whole of
God (just as each trinitarian person alone cannot)--a human condition at
creation directly involving our tendency today "to be apart" (Gen
2:18).
Likewise, for us to be compatible in
practice with this trinitarian theology and thus in function with the
trinitarian relational context of family also necessitates direct
involvement in the trinitarian relational process of family love.
The intimate relational involvement of family love is how the Trinity
functions with each other (roles notwithstanding) and how the
trinitarian persons do relationship with us in vulnerably extending
themselves to us. The whole of God is the family of trinitarian persons
in triunity. The Trinity qua family only functions in the intimate
interdependent relationships of family love just as the Son incarnated
and the Spirit continues.
To be compatible with this deep
relational process requires by its nature reciprocal relational
involvement from us in order to be in likeness to the whole of God
constituted in the Trinity. Without this compatible response there is no
functional relationship with the whole of God as signified together with
the trinitarian persons; without this compatible involvement in the
relational process of family love, there is no corporate function of our
relationships as God's family in the likeness of the Trinity. This
family and the relationships necessary to be family are constituted in
the Trinity and by the Trinity in relationship together with us.
Since such theology is not merely to
inform us but to relationally engage our practice, we cannot talk about
the Trinity without addressing ecclesiology--that is, our doctrine and
practice of church. Thus, our discussion specifically extends to how the
church functions as the Trinity in being the family of God.
Incompatibility of Church Practice
The relational condition "to be apart"
among God's people (even unintentionally or inadvertently with
relational distance) is contrary to God's design and purpose for creation--which are both functionally whole and wholistically
relational--as well as a contradiction to the likeness of the Trinity.
Historically, how work and even service or ministries have been engaged,
for example, are practices which effectively often maintain relational
distance and inadvertently even promote it--even in the practice of
church. God is neither pleased nor passive with this relational
condition. The Trinity's ongoing relational response to God's people
being apart from the whole has been outlined historically in the
narrative of God's self-revelation, of which the incarnation of the Son
is the ultimate relational outworking of God's family love.
The N.T. counterpart to God's
declaration "not good to be apart" is Jesus' declaration that "I will
not leave you as orphans" (Jn 14:18). We need to understand these
declarations together as the whole of God in response to our relational
condition. Jesus' declaration represents God's ultimate response to
fulfill his purpose and promise to be his family, which the Spirit
relationally continues to bring to functional completion (cf. Rom 8).
Being relational and emotional "orphans" among God's people (even as
unintentional or inadvertent relational distance) is contrary to the
life of God's family and in conflict with the life of the Trinity.
What truly represents God and being in
his image is to function as the Trinity does, and what genuinely
reflects the life of the Trinity is the practice of their intimate
interdependent relationships as family. In contrast to the church
operating as an organization or as a voluntary association, the function
of the Trinity is the primary issue facing the church for how it will
function both within itself and in the world.
The church in Sardis (Rev 3:1, 2) had "a reputation of being alive" in the prevailing perception, and that
church lived behind their "reputation" (onoma, used as the
substitute of what a person actually is). But Jesus said, in actuality "you are dead" (nekros, the condition of being separated from the
source of life, thus being unaccompanied by something) because "I have
not found your deeds complete." Their "deeds" (ergon, works
denoting what defined them) were not "complete" (pleroo, to fill
up, make full or complete). What was missing in their practice?
It started back at creation and
the purpose to "fill the earth" (Gen 1:28). As noted earlier, the
Hebrew term for "fill" (mālē) generally denotes completion of something
that was unfinished. What God started with Adam and Eve was the
relational context and process of the function to be God's family,
which is now fulfilled in Christ and brought to completion by the Spirit--"I will not leave you as orphans." This relational context and
process were not the primacy of the Sardis church's involvement and
ministry.
In spite of how well the Sardis church
presented itself (its appearance) and how well it was perceived (its
image), substance was lacking. This lack of deeper qualitative substance
exposed the credibility of their reputation as essentially worthless,
while the validity of their work (service and ministry) was
insignificant because they were separated ("to be apart") from the
substance primary to life. These are severe judgments Jesus made on a
church which at least was doing something to earn that reputation of
being alive. Yet, the credibility gap between what appears so and what
actually exists is not readily apparent to a church and observers when a
church relies on what it does to define itself. Reputation becomes one
of those valued indicators of success which many churches depend on for
feedback to evaluate their work.
When Jesus confronted them to "wake
up," the sense of this two-word combination (gregoreuo and
ginomai) is to emerge as a new, whole person. They needed to be
transformed as persons because they defined themselves from the outside
in and thus did not give full importance to the qualitative significance
of the whole person (especially signified by the heart). Their
quantitative-over-qualitative way of defining themselves determined how
they did relationships and influenced how they practiced church--which
were not complete. This certainly affected their relationships with God
and with each other, though not obvious to them because of the influence
of reductionism.
Jesus called them back to what they "received" (lambano, 3:3) as defined in John 1:12, which means to
embrace and follow as a teacher (that is, be a disciple) not as students
in the rabbinic tradition but as adherents in the relational reality of
God's family as his very own daughters and sons. This is the
qualitative significance of the incarnation and the relational
significance of the gospel, nothing less and no substitutes. In other
words, Jesus called them back to the basic necessity of relational work
inherent in who, what and how the Trinity is, and thus who his people
are and what his church is: the family of God. For this they needed to
become transformed persons who directly engaged in relational work in
order to build transformed relationships together so as to be a
transformed church.
The lack of primacy for this
fundamental relational work is demonstrated even more definitively by
the church in Ephesus (Rev 2:1-4). Jesus acknowledged their "deeds" (ergon,
what defined them), their "hard work" (kopos, denotes not so
much the actual effort but the weariness experienced from that effort)
and their "perseverance" (hypomone, endurance as to things and
circumstances, in contrast to patience toward persons; character that
does not allow losing to circumstances). Along with maintaining the
doctrinal purity of the church in trying circumstances and even
suffering repercussions for Christ's name, they held up and remained
constant in their faith. This composite picture describes how they were,
what they did and were involved in--very, very active in church work,
which can certainly describe a number of successful churches today.
Jesus was not impressed but even felt
to the contrary about what they were doing: "you have forsaken your
first love" (2:4). If it was not Jesus making this critique, we would
probably dismiss such a charge. This is serious church business and
important to account for in how we practice church ourselves.
The term "forsaken" (aphiemi)
means to forsake, abandon persons, to leave, let go from oneself or let
alone. This is the same word Jesus used in his promise to "not leave
[us] as orphans" (Jn 14:18). In the context at Ephesus this strongly
describes not paying attention to the whole person and giving primacy to
relationships. They worked hard doing things for God but the
relational process was deemphasized or misplaced in the effort. As the
word for "perseverance" denotes, they were so focused on circumstances
and situations such that persons (especially God) were relationally
ignored, left at a distance or emotionally forgotten. Despite what would
usually be defined as positive church work, there was distance in their
relationships leaving them in the condition "to be apart." They did not
have the relational involvement of agape love (as family love),
which is the only involvement having relational significance to God.
Since they focused on what they did--suggesting how they defined
themselves--their interests were on less important areas (secondary in
God's priorities) than relationship. This determined how they did
relationships, which resulted in the relational consequence of forsaking
their first love reflecting the lack of relational involvement in their
practice of church.
The basic complaint God had against
them that we need to examine in our practice of church was: in all they
were doing (which was a lot) as a church and as Christians, they were
not directly involved in the relational context and process of the whole
of God constituted in the Trinity. This church lacked the relational
work of family love because the relationships signified by the Trinity
were not their primary priority. There is demonstrated here a direct
correlation between the priority we give relationships and the extent to
which we are loving (as defined by relational involvement, not as doing
something). Whether Jesus' complaint against the church in Ephesus
includes both their relationship with God and with others is not clearly
indicated in the text. Yet we can strongly infer that it includes all
their relationships because what they emphasized in their work reflected
how they defined themselves, which further determined how they did
relationships and thus practiced church.
The practices of the churches in Sardis
and Ephesus were contradictions which reflect the influence of
reductionism. What they focused on and engaged in were reductionist
substitutes for the trinitarian relational context of family and the
trinitarian relational process of family love. The relational
consequence was to fall into ontological simulation and epistemological
illusion. Whenever such "church" work is given priority over relational
work, we have to examine what we are "filling up" our churches with and
how this fulfills what God started in the relational work of the
Trinity.
Engaging the Trinity
The church functioning as the Trinity
is not merely a paradigm (though the trinitarian example does serve as
that) but more significantly it is the relational outcome of directly
experiencing the Trinity in relationship. This ongoing process is
fundamental to the practice of church, particularly as revealed
vulnerably by Jesus in the relational progression of following him to
the Father.
We cannot adequately "observe" the
Trinity without being relationally addressed by the Trinity at the same
time. Keep in focus that God's self-revelation is how God does
relationship. How the Trinity is revealed, therefore, is how the Trinity
relates to us, which is how the trinitarian persons do relationship with
each other (though in horizontal relational process discussed earlier).
We cannot ontologically understand and
epistemologically know the Trinity without engaging the Trinity in how
the trinitarian persons do relationship in general and are doing
relationship with us specifically at the time. It is within this
relational context and process that God's self-disclosure vulnerably is
given and needs to be received, thus directly experienced as an outcome
of this relational connection. This consistency with the trinitarian
relational context and compatibility with the trinitarian relational
process cannot be engaged from the detached observation of a scientific
paradigm or with the relational distance of a quantitative-analytic
framework but can only be engaged from the qualitative function of
relationship. Similarly, J. I. Packer defined the process of knowing God
as a relationship with emotional involvement, and he challenged as
invalid the assumption that the theological task can be engaged
meaningfully with relational detachment.1
This is the relational significance of
the deeper epistemology that Jesus made a necessity for Philip and
Thomas in order to truly know him and thus also know the Father (Jn
14:1-9, as discussed earlier). This is the relationally-specific process
that does not merely see (or observe) but rather deeply contemplates (as
in theaomai, Jn 1:14), that does not reduce the person merely to
attributes and categories but rather puts the parts of revelation
together to comprehend the whole of God (as in syniemi, Mk 8:17,
and synesis, Col 2:2).
This relational epistemic process is
the outworking of the Trinity's relational involvement with us.
Therefore, to come to know the triune God is not possible by individual
effort nor is the individual's relationship with God alone sufficient.
This process involves the practice of relationship as signified by the
Trinity which, when experienced, results in the corporate life of
relationship constituted in the Trinity as the family of God. Thus this
process involves the integration of both spirituality (engaging intimate
relationship with the Trinity) and community (practicing the family
relationships of the Trinity). Understanding the Trinity as revealed--present and involved with us--is never merely for us to be informed
about God but always directly impacts our person and relationships, thus
consequential for how we define our person, how we do relationships and
practice church.
Consequently the function of the
Trinity cannot be grasped in propositions of trinitarian theology nor
experienced in church doctrine. Along with reducing the whole of God to
attributes and the trinitarian persons to categories (or roles), these
reflect how our understanding ("a reputation of being alive," Rev 3:1)
and our practice ("have forsaken your first love," Rev 2:4) become
decontextualized. That is, they are removed (or deemphasized) from
the relational context and process of the Trinity and need to be
recontextualized in the relational nature of the Trinity.
The church is the ultimate practice
that must (dei by its nature, not from obligation or compulsion)
be contextualized in the Trinity's relational presence and involvement.
Even overemphasis of the metaphor "the body of Christ" for the church
(for example, focused on organizational structure, not relational
function) can decontextualize the church as the family of God
constituted in and by the Trinity. Moreover, in another sense, with an
incomplete Christology and truncated soteriology a church can
inadvertently become too Christocentric, and subsequently not practice
the relational progression to the Father vulnerably enacted by the Son
and continued by the Spirit in the function of the Trinity constituting
the whole of God as family.
The life of the Trinity becomes the
church's life and function. It is this life as the family of God which
defines the church's purpose and constitutes its practice.2
The Relational Paradigm
As previously discussed, the different
roles and functions expressed in the Trinity do not define their
persons, though these reflect the unique (but secondary) distinctions
each person exercises to extend family love to us. Each of the
trinitarian persons is defined by the same qualitative substance (homoousiou)
which not only defines the equality of their persons (hypostases)
but is also fundamental to their relationships (perichoresis).
Thus these unique distinctions also do not determine the primacy of
their relationships and how they are involved with each other. They are
not involved with each other primarily on the basis of role differences
but rather with the essential qualitative significance of their persons
expressed in love (both agape, Jn 14:31, and phileo, Jn
5:20).
This qualitative substance and these
intimate relationships of love are what the churches in Sardis and
Ephesus got away from. This issue is not merely a matter of priorities
but about the primacy of relationship without which all other effort
(even with good intentions) is insignificant to God and qualitatively
meaningless. Given the high activity level of these churches, they
likely had well-organized roles to operate so efficiently. This suggests
how they substituted for what is primary and matters most to God.
The corporate life of a church can be
undertaken in either of two contrasting approaches. One approach is from
an institutional framework or organizational paradigm. Institutions and
most organizations are a function of structure and systemic processes.
While the church has organizational properties of structure (namely
interdependence) and systems (specifically covariation), the authentic
church cannot be a function of organizational aspects. Such a framework
and mindset tend to predispose or bias us to see and practice church in
a limited way--with the substitutes of reductionism. This is
particularly critical in the information age and the broad influences of
information technology, which Quentin Schultze contends shift our
perceptions of the world increasingly through the lenses of measurable
norms, means, causes, and effects--that is, a systemic concept (closed
systems) of human culture, our image of ourselves and society that
persons can objectively observe, measure, manipulate, and eventually
control.3 This leaves us susceptible to practice what Schultze calls "informational promiscuity:
impersonal relationships based on feigned intimacies and lacking moral
integrity."4
The apostolic church was not based on
an organizational paradigm even though it reflected organization. At the
core of the church is relationship: a covenant relationship (from
the O.T.) and a transformed relationship (in the N.T.) constituted in
and by the Trinity as the family of God. The church is a function only
of these relationships, and any structure, system or roles serve only as
support functions of the primacy of these relationships. This
contrasting approach to the corporate life of the church is from the
relational paradigm emerging from the relational outcome of direct
experience with the Trinity.
This relational paradigm is inherent in
the relational progression to the Father incarnated by Jesus and
continued by the Spirit. The deep understanding of the relational
process involved in the relationship of God is gained from Jesus'
vulnerable self-disclosure of his interactions with the Father, which
serves as the functional key for church practice. Two particular
interactions in different but related situations regarding the same
purpose provide this understanding.
The Father had already revealed his A
delight@ with his Son (Mt 3:17; 17:5; cf. Is 42:1; Mt 12:18). The term "delight" (eudokeo) is also rendered
"to be well-pleased." The
latter suggests to be pleased with what a person has done whereas the
former seems to focus on the person. I suggest "delight" better
expresses the qualitative substance of the Father in relationship with
the Son about his qualitative substance, not the expression of a parent
about a child's performance. Yet, whatever emphasis is given to the
Father's feeling for his Son, consider what the Father felt when the
Son told him that he no longer wanted to die on the cross (Mt 26:39).
This interaction in the garden of
Gethsemane demonstrated the relational process involved in the Trinity's relationship with each other. What had been planned together even
before creation and was now being fulfilled by the incarnation, the Son
astonishingly did not want to continue. We can speculate that in that
moment the Father was displeased with the Son or dismayed, not
delighted. Yet, what we need to understand about the Trinity and grasp
for our relationships is why this interaction even happened at all.
Jesus did not want to die, but human
weakness is not the significance of the interaction. Why this
interaction even happened at all is because such an interaction could
happen, was "designed" to happen and thus was expected to happen. That
is, what this interaction signifies is the complete openness (honesty as
it were) and vulnerableness of their whole person (not reduced to roles
) with each other in the intimate relational involvement of love as
family together. And since this was not a monologue by the Son, for the
implied response from the Father I would suggest deep sadness by the
Father in having to say "no" to the Son's request. Whatever is implied
in this interaction, Jesus demonstrated how they do relationship
together. In other words the trinitarian persons can be their "genuine"
person before each other and intimately share with each other anything,
so to speak--without the caution, restrictions or limits practiced in
human relationships since the primordial garden (cf. they "were both
naked and they felt no shame," Gen 2:25). Anything less than their whole
person and these relationships necessary to be the whole of God no
longer would constitute the Trinity of revelation and therefore becomes
a reduction of God.
Such reductionism even occurs with good
intentions, as witnessed by the churches in Ephesus and Sardis. This is
further illustrated in Mel Gibson's historic film "The Passion of the
Christ" during the reenactment of the Gethsemane scene. Whether by
creative license or revisionist history, Gibson had Jesus returning to
Peter, James and John after his intense ordeal with the Father only to
remark: "I don't want the others [disciples] to see me this way."
Gibson suggests by adding this statement to the historic narrative that
Jesus wanted to appear to the other disciples as if everything was fine.
Jesus, however, never reduced his person and presented himself wearing a mask--that
is, reinforcing relational barriers "to be apart."
More significantly, the Son did not
reduce his person with the Father. Not only did he express his desire to
avoid the cross but he expressed his deeper desire "yet not as I will
but as you will" (Mt 26:39). The Son's prayer was not about himself,
though he openly expressed his person. This was not a matter of the
priority of the individual, thus also not merely including the
individual desires of only the Father. This was about the whole of God.
There is no aspect or function of individualism in the nature of the
Trinity, though each is distinct in their person and unique in their
function. As a trinitarian person, the Son demonstrated the
interdependent (in contrast to independent) relational nature of the
Trinity as the whole of God's family. Furthermore, the Son also defined
how the Spirit does not function independently but interdependently in
the whole of God in another interaction (Jn 16:13-15).
The intimate interdependent
relationships of the Trinity are constitutive both of the whole of God
and the whole of each trinitarian person. Therefore, not only can the
trinitarian persons not be reduced but neither can they be separated
from each other nor considered independently. The identity of each as a
whole person is reduced and thus incomplete if not also constituted in
relation to each other in the whole of God as family. This is how our
practice can become too Christocentric, consequently individualized.
The significance of the Son's intimate
interaction with the Father distinctly defines for us what is a whole
person and how relationships need to be practiced in order to be whole.
This is directly connected to our previous discussion of Adam and Eve "both naked and they felt no shame" (Gen 2:25) in God's original design
and purpose, which is restored and expanded in the new creation by
Christ to be completed by the Spirit as God's ongoing faithfulness in
response to our reductionist substitutes "to be apart."
God's ongoing response to our
relational condition and our activity to maintain this condition "to be
apart" point us to a second related interaction helping us further to
understand the relational process involved in the relationship of God.
The Whole of the Relationship of God
From the direct honesty at Gethsemane
we are led to the pain on the cross. Beyond the physical pain, however,
we are exposed to the relational pain, which was initially experienced
in the garden (Mt 26:37) in anticipation of this: "my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46). The Son's painful cry not only
further expressed his honesty and openness with his Father but now even
more significantly demonstrated the relational wholeness by which their
life together is constituted (Jn 10:38; 14:10, 11, 20; 17:21).
Therefore, we are exposed intimately to what is most fundamental to the
life of God: the whole of the relationship of God.
Since God is the Trinity, the whole of
the triune God is constitutive of the Trinity's relationships while the
Trinity's relationships together constitute the whole of God--apart
from which the life of God does not function.
As a result of taking our sin, in that
moment of mystery the Son was no longer in the Father nor the Father in
him. We can have only some sense of understanding this by focusing on
the relational reality in distress, not the ontological. With this
qualitative relational focus we become vulnerable participants both in
the painful relational consequence involving any degree of the condition
"to be apart" from the whole and in the fullness of God's ultimate
response to redeem us from this condition as well as to reconcile us to
the whole of God in the relationship of God. Together with the
relational work of the Spirit we not only can understand but also
directly experience the relational process essential to the life of the
Trinity as family constituting the whole of God (2 Cor 3:16-18; Eph
2:22).
For this wholeness to be experienced,
however, the relational barriers "to be apart" have to be removed (cf.
Eph 2:14-16). When the Son cried out in relational pain, all those
barriers converged on him to evoke the Father's rejection. For me, it
was also the moment the Father cried. In a figurative sense, the whole
of God was broken; yet the relational significance of this paradoxical
moment was specific to wholeness in order that we (both individually and
corporately) would be made whole in our person and would live
relationally specific to God and others in the relationships necessary
to be whole (cf. Eph 2:17-22).
We cannot talk about the Trinity
without the whole of God. We cannot discuss the ontology of the triune
God without the function of their relational oneness. Wholeness is a
function of relational oneness, which is a function of the relational
process of intimate involvement in the interdependent relationships as
family with family love. To be whole is not merely an individual quality
but must include the qualitative state of one's corporate
relationships. Wholeness is not constituted in the individual alone but
only in persons together functioning in these requisite relationships.
If we grasp the relational significance
of the Son's pain from being forsaken by the Father, this goes beyond
relational rejection to the deeper condition of being apart from the
whole of God. In this sense, what is taken away from the wholeness of
the Trinity affects the wholeness of each trinitarian person. Not only
are they no longer in each other but they are not one--whole. To
be forsaken or to forsake is to be separated from this fundamental
whole. Certainly the mystery of this moment has no ontological
understanding. And there is also the paradoxical aspect of the Son
declaring he will not forsake us as orphans apart from the whole of God's family (Jn 14:18) who is now himself separated from this whole. Yet
the relational significance in this both signifies the fundamental whole
of God as well as establishes the means for relationship necessary to be
whole in the likeness of the Trinity. This is the whole of the
relationship of God that Jesus not only prayed for his followers to
have (Jn 17:20-23) but also paid the cost for the redemptive change
necessary to truly have it, and further provided his Spirit to help us
authentically experience it and ongoingly function in it together.
The church functioning as Trinity is
the outworking of the family relationships demonstrated between the Son
and the Father and mediated by the Spirit. The function of these
relationships only becomes relationally significant to God and to each
other when it involves the qualitative substance of the whole person
(signified by the heart) opened to one another and coming together in
the primacy of relationships (constituted by intimacy). The relational
significance to the Trinity happens when our whole persons function
together in the intimate interdependent relationships as God's family
in the process of God's family love. In practice this is the
integration of spirituality and community (communion), both of which are
defined by God on the terms self-disclosed in the Trinity.
This is the whole of the relationship
of God in which all of God's actions since creation can be understood
as the response of God's desires for us to experience instead of any
function "to be apart." Anything less than the relationship of God
breaks the whole and becomes a substitute of reductionism, which then
creates barriers (unintentionally or inadvertent) to reconcile the
relational distance "to be apart." Just as the Son's painful
relational experience accomplished on the cross, these barriers need to
be redeemed ongoingly in the process of redemptive change (the old dying
and the new rising) for the church to be reconciled to its function in
likeness of the Trinity in the whole of the relationship of God.
Redemption and reconciliation involve
the relational process of restoring God's creation to this wholeness.
Thus redemptive change is a necessary function of the church in the
relational process involved in the relationship of God, without which
the church and each of its members could not be whole. This function of
the church involves the relational work directly with the trinitarian
persons (and their relational work) as vulnerably revealed by Jesus
during the incarnation, particularly as noted in Gethsemane and on the
cross. As the church functions in this reciprocal relational work
necessary for redemptive change, it can expect to be made whole in its
practice and in its relationships as the whole of God's family
constituted in and by the Trinity.
The primacy of this requisite
relational work must be engaged within the trinitarian relational
context of family and must be ongoingly compatible with the trinitarian
relational process of family love. This is the relational paradigm
subsequent to the relational outcome of directly experiencing the
Trinity in relationship and thus the relational imperative for ongoing
involvement with the Trinity. Anything less or other than this
relational context and process becomes a reductionism of the whole of
the Trinity, the trinitarian persons, our person and the whole of the
church as family. And the main functional indicators of the presence of
reductionism involve how we define the person and do relationships, even
in the inadvertent practice of relational distance.
How the Church Is to Come Together
Reductionism has been the critical
issue for the relational condition "to be apart" ever since Adam and
Eve in the primordial garden. Reductionism of and in the church is not a
phenomenon unique to modernity, as demonstrated by the early churches in
Ephesus and Sardis. Moreover, reductionism in the epistemic process of
understanding and truly knowing God has been most problematic--even a
crisis today--that Thomas and Philip experienced (Jn 14:1-10), as
discussed earlier. Yet directly in contention with the ongoing issue of
reductionism, Jesus committed himself not to leave his followers as
relational or emotional orphans, ontological or epistemological orphans
apart experientially from the whole of the Trinity as complete-intimate
members of God's family. We need to hold him accountable for this today
in the life of the church, and we need to account for this ongoingly in
our practice of church.
As Christ's followers gather (ekklesia),
it is the gathering of those who have been called out and together (ekkletoi).
How the church is to come together cannot be in the likeness of
individualism, inequality, nor even in the likeness of a voluntary
association. It must (by its nature, not obligation or compulsion) be in
the relational context and process with and in likeness of the Trinity.
This relational dynamic is the critical basis by which we need to
construct a functional ecclesiology--which is contrary to the
substitutes of reductionism and thus in conflict with their practice, as
Christ declared in Revelations 2 and 3.
The trinitarian relational context and
process never allow the relationships in the church to remain distant,
shallow, independent, or selectively involved. The Trinity never does
relationships on these terms, nor does God accept such relationships
from us. Indeed, the whole of the relationship of God is both
relationship specific and relationally significant to the Trinity's
interdependent relationships intimately involved in family love, of
which the gathering of Christ's followers is the likeness. The church's practice must have this relational clarity.
Paul's emphasis for the church expands
on this relational paradigm, the focus of which should not be confused
with his responses to various reductionist contexts throughout his
epistles. In the Pauline corpus, he brings together various metaphors
for the church (God's people, God's household or family, a building)
which serve toward the metaphor of the temple (Eph 2:19-22; cf. 1 Pet
2:5). The temple in the O.T. was God's dwelling place but in the N.T.
God's presence has more direct and intimate relational significance--vulnerably in the incarnation and then in the person of his Spirit. This
church is thus to come together (not just gather) in order to be
transformed "to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit"
(Eph 2:22). Yet this is not merely God's place of residence from which
he observes his people doing ministry, nor a structure over which God
presides monitoring their beliefs and traditions. God intimately lives
by his Spirit within his people, as Paul further defined about
the nature of the temple (1 Cor 3:16), not in a place, structure or
system. And how God lives within the church is solely on the basis of
the trinitarian relational process, not on organizational terms.
The temple metaphor does not define
this relational process for us. For this purpose Paul uses other
metaphors to complete our understanding of what indeed constitutes
coming together as the church. The metaphor of household or family
provides us with this relational significance (Eph 2:19; Gal 6:10; 1 Tim
3:15; cf. 1 Pet 2:5); the Greek terms (oikeios and its root
oikos) used here, along with their significant cognates (oikodomeo,
Mt 16:18; oikodome, Eph 2:21; oikonomos, 1 Cor 4:1), all
point to the new kinship family of God and building the whole of God's
family together. This provides us with the vital relational context and
process signified by the Trinity for how to function as the church. Yet
we cannot adequately perceive this new kinship family with a
reductionist framework which would substitute, for example, the
household from the Industrial Revolution or the nuclear family of today.
Contrary to those reductionist substitutes, God does not preside over
this new family in the role of figurehead nor does he merely dwell in
the household. Unlike the norm of how we tend to do family with
relational distance, God's household and family involve the intimate
relational process between the Son and the Father discussed earlier.
The church functions as God's family
because of the relational outcome of directly experiencing the Trinity
in relationship. The relational work of the whole of the Trinity in each trinitarian person's function to extend family love to us brings us
together in the church as the family of God. The Father is able to build
transformed relationships with his adopted children as family together
because of the Son's vulnerable relational work of redemptive
reconciliation. While his Spirit lives within each individual daughter
or son, the Spirit does not work for the individual's self-autonomy or
self-determination but for the whole of God functioning as family in the
likeness of the Trinity (cf. 1 Cor 12:7). This is the relational outcome
covenanted by the Father and incarnated by the Son in the relational
progression of God's family love, which the Spirit brings to complete
wholeness in God's eschatological plan for all creation (Rev 21:1-5).
The sum of the Trinity's relational
work in family love constitutes the church and its function as God's
family. Christ's church comes together with him only for these relationships--to be the whole of God's family. The authentic church
cannot be a function of anything less than relationships, family
relationships, living by his family love in likeness of the Trinity.
Though the Son and Father define and demonstrate what it means to be
God's family, the Spirit's relational work is the critical relational
means to experiencing this relational reality. Often overlooked in the
Trinity, it is necessary briefly to highlight the Spirit's relational
work.5
The Spirit: Overlooked and Misused
Directly from the Son's commitment not
to leave us as relational and emotional orphans, the intimate relational
presence of the Spirit is given to his followers (Jn 14:16, 17). "The
Spirit of truth" in function needs to be understood as the Son's
relational replacement whom the Father gave as "another" in lieu of the
Son. The term "another" (allos) means another of equal quality,
not another of different quality (heteros). The Spirit then is
defined by the Son as equal to himself; in a relational sense they are
interchangeable (cf. 2 Cor 3:17, 18; Gal 4:6).
The Spirit functions in the trinitarian
relational context and process as the Son's relational replacement (Jn
14:26; 15:26; 16:13-16) and as the relational extension of the Father
(Eph 2:18, 22; Rom 8:15, 16). The perception of the Spirit as helper,
counselor ("Paraclete") merely to do something and help the individual
is inadequate and tends to become a reductionist function. The Spirit's
presence, however, is only relational and relational work is the
fundamental function of the Spirit's purpose.
Without defining all this relational
work, the Spirit functions in the primacy of the relational context of
family (Rom 8:16; 2 Cor 5:5) and the relational process of family love
(Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6,7). And the person of the Spirit is deeply affected
by any practice "to be apart" in God's family relationships (Eph
4:30), which we will discuss shortly. "The Spirit of adoption" serves
only the relational purpose of bringing to completion the relational
progression to God's family which the Son incarnated and the Father
ordained (Rom 8:29; Eph 1:5). It is this whole of the relationship of
God from which the Spirit works as the third person ontologically and
relationally constituted in the Trinity. We cannot reduce, distort or
obscure the complete relational function involved between the Son's
promise not to leave his followers as orphans, the Father's fulfillment
and the Spirit's purpose--which clearly involves our relationship to
the whole of God and being God's family as his very own daughter and
sons, and the experiential reality and responsibility which the Spirit
serves to help us complete.
The Spirit is the only one who can and
will bring these relationships of God's family to completion,
transforming us to be in qualitative conformity to the relational
likeness of the Son, just as the Father desires (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18).
As suggested in these verses, "the Spirit of transformation" does the
relational work necessary to transform us (metamorphoo, to change
from inside out) to the new of what the Son saved us to,
thus the redemptive change to genuinely live in relational significance
to the Father and relationship-specific to the Father's desires. The
presence and function of the Spirit's person guarantees this relational
outcome when not constrained nor grieved.
Without the Spirit's active presence
and function, church practice becomes in effect the unilateral effort of
relational orphans. Besides being the overlooked or forgotten person,
however, the Spirit is often the misused person. Even when not
overlooked, the Spirit still can be misused--in two major ways in
particular.
The first misuse of the Spirit
involves what is represented in spiritual gifts and what we do. A
reductionist view of these spiritual gifts perceives them with a mindset
which defines our person by what we have and thus can do. In some
Christian subcultures, having a spiritual gift has become the main
ingredient to Christian identity. Invariably in church practice, when
this gift essentially defines what a person can do, thus what role they
should have, this engages a comparative process of what we have and do
which leads to subtle stratification in the church (based on the gift
you have) and to implicit differentiation of status (based on what you
do)--relational consequences even unintentional or inadvertent. Such a
process reduces the significance of what a person is while confusing the
identity of who a person is, not to mention the distance in church
relationships.
Contrary to such a view is the mindset
of the Spirit who gives out all the spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12:11). Every
spiritual gift (charisma) by definition means a gift of God's
grace (1 Cor 1:4-7). Everyone in Christ has that grace and is not
without charisma, therefore is never lacking of a spiritual gift.
There are specific spiritual gifts further distributed by the Spirit
(Heb 2:4). The term for "distribute' (merimos) comes from the
word merizo which means to divide into parts. This implies a
whole from which the parts come and which they make up together.
From this whole, only the Spirit determines who gets what part and
"gives them to each one" (1 Cor 12:11). "Gives" (diaireo) means
to take one part from another (that is, a whole), again defining the
mindset of how the Spirit works contrary to a reductionist mindset.
Whether we focus on the whole or the parts is consequential for church
practice.
The distribution of the parts is
certainly not uniform (1 Cor 12:8-10; Rom 12:6-8; Eph 4:11). Different
gifts are given to different persons (1 Cor 12:4), yet every person is
given a spiritual gift the unique function of which is manifested by the
Spirit (phonerosis, make visible or observable, 12:7). The
pivotal emphasis essential for us to grasp, however, is not on
differences but on their commonality to the whole: different
gifts but the same Spirit (12:4), different ministries, service (diakonia)
but the same Lord (12:5), different effects of exercising these ("working," energema) but the same result because of the same God's underlying work (energo) in all the different gifts in all the
different persons (12:6). And the Spirit's relational work unifies all
these differences to the whole of God because the Spirit functions only
from this whole (12:11). Therefore, the Spirit is the necessary person
in the Trinity functionally constituting us as the family of God. It is
problematic to perceive the Spirit apart from this whole, as we will see
further shortly.
Reductionism defines our person by what
we have and do, thus focusing us on the doing (accomplishing,
achieving, performing) aspect of spiritual gifts and other related
church work. This pivotal shift of emphasis takes us away in function
from the primary relational involvement of being God's family,
as the church in Ephesus experienced. This shift inevitably focuses on
differences and secondary matters, which become manifested in our
relationships (often unknowingly), as the church in Sardis experienced.
Moreover, this pivotal shift in emphasis involves the issue of whether
the Spirit (and spiritual gifts) is given to us to do something
(individually or corporately for God) or to relationally be family
in the whole of God. These should not be mutually exclusive in function,
but in practice reductionism makes the former primary over the latter
(for example, parts over the whole), inverting the order of God's
design and purpose (cf. Sardis) or neglecting the primacy of God's
desires (cf. Ephesus), which means relational distance.
As the Spirit of truth, the Spirit
always functions in conformity to the Trinity's purpose, which is
completely relational and all about the whole of God as family--the
whole from which the Spirit of adoption works and distributes gifts. In
other words, spiritual gifts are designed and given only to serve toward
fulfilling our reciprocal relational responsibility as the Father's
adopted daughters and sons in order to function together as God's
family and build this whole in likeness to the Trinity (1 Cor 12:7; Eph
4:11-13). When these gifts of God's grace become reduced in function
(if not also in perception) to merely do something, however
sincere in practice or with good intentions for God, then we effectively
misuse the Spirit. Additionally, such reductionism distorts the body
metaphor of the church by viewing the whole as merely the sum of its
parts. This view is consequential to the synergism of the church body in
which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Church synergy is
not only the organic function of its relationships (as Paul described, 1
Cor 12:12-26) but also the outcome in cooperation with the Spirit's
relational work.
This overlaps into the second misuse of
the Spirit. When the relational purpose of the Spirit is misperceived,
the Spirit's function is not only reduced but individualized. With the
need, responsibility or pressure to measure up, to produce, to perform,
even to justify (for example, God's love, grace, promises),
reductionism and individualism resist the relational purpose of the
Spirit and try to change the Spirit's function. In this mindset and
process, the Spirit is reduced to serve the individual and to work, for
example, to secure the individual's self-autonomy, to assist in
self-determination or to fulfill the individual's agenda even "for the
sake of Christ."
This creates an ongoing tension and
conflict with the Spirit--creating a contradiction of purpose and
function. Since the Spirit is here for the whole of God and the
relationships necessary to be whole as God's family, contrary to many
perceptions the Spirit is not here for the individual. The Spirit works
the relational progression to God's family to complete wholeness in
God's eschatological plan, so that we will not stop short in the big
picture or get stuck in a reductionist framework.
As in all valid relational work by its
nature--contrary to power relations--the Spirit's relational work is
not unilateral. The Spirit does not impose his work on us as a general
rule but works in cooperation with our relational work such that the
Spirit does not do all the work, nor do we. This signifies the
cooperative and reflexive nature of this relational process that goes
back and forth between us. And since the Spirit is not a force or an
essence but a person, the person of the Spirit is grieved when the whole
of God's family is reduced and the relationships necessary to be whole
are deemphasized, distorted or ignored (Eph 4:30; cf. Is 63:10), which
then reduces the Spirit's presence and function relationally.
The term for "grieve" (lypeo)
involves a relational context in which emotional pain is experienced. We
need to connect the Spirit's pain Paul describes with the emotional
pain Jesus experienced in the garden of Gethsemane (lypeo,
perilypos, Mt 26:37, 38). The Son's pain went well beyond the
situational (pending death) to the relational (anticipating being apart
from the whole of God), as discussed earlier. The Spirit's emotional
pain is about the same relational issue. These emotional pains are not
metaphors but the actual relational experiences of the trinitarian
persons. And this disclosure provides us with the clearest distinction
of the Spirit's full personhood, whose presence and function we must
(by its nature, not from obligation or compulsion) embrace relationally.
Together with the relational context
and process of the church, Paul directly interrelates the function of
the Spirit throughout this epistle (Eph 1:13, 14, 17; 2:18, 22; 3:4, 5,
16, 17; 4:3,30; 5:18; 6:17, 18). While addressing the relational process
of deeper relational involvement within the church and the relational
issues "to be apart," Paul warns them not to inflict emotional pain on
the Spirit "with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption"
(4:30. The term "sealed" (sphragize) signified a mark of
ownership (cf. 2 Cor 1:22). As those redeemed (ransomed by the Son) from
enslavement and adopted by the Father as his very own (Eph 1:5, 7, 14),
the Spirit of adoption relationally works together with us to make the
relational context of family and the relational process of family love
an experiential reality in likeness of the Trinity. Anything less in
function--even with orthodox theology and doctrinal purity--is
relationally apart from the whole of the triune God and causes emotional
pain for the Spirit, as it did earlier for the Son, and also for the
Father (Gen 6:6).
As the Son promised his followers and
the Father fulfilled to his very own, the Spirit is present and
functions so that the church would not be filled with relational and
emotional orphans. Now that the whole of God's response to our
relational condition "to be apart" is complete, we need to address the
relational responsibility of our response to the Trinity.
The Compatibility of Our Response
God's self-disclosure and response to
us have engaged ongoingly the trinitarian relational context of family
and relational process of family love. If our response (necessarily both
as individuals and corporately as church) is to be compatible to the
whole of the triune God disclosed and to the vulnerable response of the
trinitarian persons, then this compatibility necessitates the disclosure
of our whole person (signified by the qualitative substance of our
heart) vulnerably open and involved with the Trinity and thus together
with each other in the relationships necessary for the whole of God's
family. In other words, how we respond back to God must be compatible
with how the whole of God is extended to us in the trinitarian persons;
and the church must engage the trinitarian relational context of family
and process of family love in its practice in order to function
compatibly with the Trinity and be in the Trinity's likeness as God's
family. We need to grasp this more deeply.
The compatibility of these vulnerable
responses--from the whole of God and the trinitarian persons to the
whole of our persons and the church--come together (not just gather) in
the loving involvement of intimate relationships as family. These
intimate relationships together in family love distinguish the
fundamental qualitative difference of how the Trinity functions from the
reductionist substitutes of how we often do relationships and practice
church. This is what God started at creation and wanted Adam and Eve to
complete, that is, to "fill the earth" (Gen 1:28). This is what the Son
restores with the new creation and the Spirit cooperatively completes.
This is the eschatological plan of the Trinity vulnerably revealed in
the incarnation as the relational progression to God's family--the
family constituted in the Trinity and constituted for us by the Trinity.
It is these family relationships and
family process in which our response both as individuals and together as
church needs to be rooted and functionally involved. Yet, any
association of the church to the function of the Trinity likely will
challenge most ecclesiologies formulated today.
Moreover, this perception of the church
raises various related issues involving theological anthropology and
eschatology, in addition to the pneumatology discussed above, while
addressing an incomplete Christology (without the complete
self-disclosure of God in the face of Christ) and truncated soteriology
(without the full gospel of what Christ also saved us to). For
these to cohere in the church as Trinity, we must consider that this
conversation is engaged further within a context in which the influences
of modernity are challenged and the challenges of postmodernity provide
opportunity for Christ's followers, as Jesus prayed, to live together
just as the Trinity does "so that the world may believe" (Jn 17:21) and
"to let the world know" (Jn 17:23). Specifically then for our immediate
concern, the compatibility of our response involves two issues of church
practice (among others) needing resolve: the place of the individual and
the voluntary association of church membership.
Is the individual a secondary part of
the church and does the church function in priority over its
individuals? Or is the church a voluntary association of individuals and
is the collective of individuals the church? Generally, an Eastern
interpretive framework would answer the first set of questions
affirmatively while a Western interpretive framework would be in the
affirmative to the second set. The Western framework assumes that what
underlies the individual are the common notions of freedom and
independence. Assuming self-autonomy and self-determination is not an
option in an Eastern framework, but is the only viable one in most
Western perceptions. These positions coincide with the differences in
human thought between the ancient Chinese philosophers and ancient Greek
philosophers.6
Yet when either perceptual framework of
the individual is applied to the biological family (extended or
nuclear), there are consequences for the individual and the family whole
in both Eastern and Western families. Since the individual is commonly
sacrificed in the East, the person tends to be lost in the family
without a sense of the deeper identity of who one is as a person
within the whole. With the aggrandized individual in the West, the
person also tends to become lost, that is, lost in oneself without a
sense of the deeper identity of what one is as a person in the
primacy of the whole. As a result of the ambiguity or shallowness of who
and what the person is, both families experience a less significant
family and less complete persons.
In Function with the Divine Image of
God
Returning to the church as family, we
can expect the same results from church practice unless the whole person
becomes defined and engages the relationships to be whole, both of which
are signified in the Trinity. This requires a new person who is not
sacrificed for the economy of the whole (as in Eastern families) nor who
is aggrandized at the expense of the whole (seen in Western families).
The whole person is distinguished in a theological anthropology which
includes a deeper understanding of the image and likeness of God (imago
dei) that coheres with Christ as the image of God (2 Cor 4:4; Col
1:15).
This is directly consequential for
determining the compatibility of our response to God and thus the nature
of our involvement as we practice church.
How the human person is perceived and
how that person functions, particularly in relationships, are directly
associated with the imago dei. There have been three basic
theological formulations or approaches to what constitutes the image of
God for all humans. One, it is substantial or structural, that is,
consisting of certain attributes or capabilities (like reason) built
into the person. Two, it is relational indicating a fundamental
relationship between human creature and Creator. Three, it is a goal or
destiny for humanity which lies in the eschatological conclusion toward
which humans are directed. Each approach by itself lacks the
significance of the whole of God. I suggest the imago dei
necessarily involves all three aspects within the function of what it
means to be whole, which is only constituted by whole persons intimately
involved together in the interdependent relationships of the whole of
God as family signified in the Trinity and is to be completed at the
eschaton.
The whole person is signified by the
functional importance of the heart, which is the dynamic qualitative
significance God planted into the human person in likeness to the
qualitative significance of the whole of God. It is this qualitative
significance of heart which God consistently makes most important for
the person and pursues in the person throughout the Scriptures. God does
not pursue a rationality, intelligence or some attribute or capability
ascribed to the imago dei. While this substance certainly
correlates to part of the character of God, it is insufficient to be
compatible with God for relationship. God wants heart--the qualitative
significance of God's own likeness which is necessary in order to have
intimate relationship with God and involvement together in love. Yet
this is not merely an individual relationship God desires but also a
corporate relationship in the likeness of the Trinity.
In the creation narrative, the imago
dei is not just ascribed to an individual but to both human persons,
that is, to them together (Gen 1:26, 27). This is an important
functional distinction because what God said is "not good" is "to be
apart" from the whole of God and the likeness of God's whole created in
human persons as their design and purpose together. This defines the
imago dei as directly involving the whole person in the
relationships necessary to be whole, which is life together as God's
new kinship family. This is the whole in which God created human persons
in the Trinity's image, and which God has ultimately responded to in
Christ for a new creation so we can be whole--God's desires even before
creation that the Spirit is bringing to completion. Therefore, the whole
of the imago dei is God's family as the new creation (humanity)
which will be completed in the eschatological conclusion of God's
desires. Yet God's desires are not goal oriented but ultimately seek
only intimate life together as the whole of family constituted in the
Trinity, both now and in eternity.
These three aspects of the imago dei
converge to formulate this image for the human person in coherence with
the whole of God understood in the Trinity. This understanding is gained
from God's self-disclosure in Christ as the image of God, who
constitutes the imago dei and the person in the whole.
As we consider "Christ as the image of
God" to help us functionally distinguish the whole person, two issues
about his person (both human and divine) are important to keep in
perspective to ensure a complete Christology. The first issue involves
the predominant perception of Jesus as one who only died on the cross as
the sacrifice for sin. We cannot reduce his person to what he did merely
as a sacrifice for the economy of God's plan of salvation. This would
make the same mistake about the person which individuals experience in
families from an Eastern framework.
Similarly, the second issue exalts the
image of Christ to a Christocentric position that the Son never claimed
(Jn 14:13, 31; 17:4). The issue here is an incomplete Christology, which
does not center on the Father, and a truncated soteriology, which does
not continue in the relational progression to the Father as his very own
family. To stop short in this relational process (however unintentional
or inadvertent) is to focus on one trinitarian person at the expense of
the whole of the Trinity as well as to focus on one relationship at the
expense of the whole of the relationship of God as family. This
reduction of the Trinity is also then a reduction of the Son which
focuses in effect on a substitute Christ--who may be doctrinally correct
but without relational significance to the whole of God, and which may
exalt Christ the individual but in actuality reduces the whole of his
divine person. This substitute creates a false center revolved around
the individual and makes the same mistake about the person which
individuals and families experience in a Western framework (or an
ancient Greek worldview reflected historically throughout church
tradition). To be truly Christocentric, therefore, is to perceive Christ
as the image of God, the whole of God constituted in the Trinity--not
merely in likeness as the human imago dei signifies but nothing
less and no substitutes than the very whole of God. This is the only
hermeneutical key Jesus provides.
These two issues about Christ's person
both reduce God's self-disclosure. As the image of the immanent and
invisible God, Paul definitively declares Christ as the only valid
source of knowledge of God within contexts of competing claims of
knowledge (see context of 2 Cor 4:4 and Col 1:15). He can be definitive
because "Christ as the image of God" is about the revelation of God--the full revelation of the fullness of God since Christ is God
(Col 1:19; 2:9). Yet, Jesus is not only our hermeneutical key but also
our functional key to what is primary in his revelation. What we
need to grasp about the person is not primarily the doctrine of Christ
as the image of God but more importantly the function of his person as
the disclosure of God.
God's self-disclosure in the
incarnation of the Son involved a principle of function by which his
person acted and our persons need to act in response. This is the only
action which validates the person of Jesus as God's full
self-disclosure. Simply stated the incarnation is a function of the
principle: no substitutes and nothing less. The person Jesus
presented to us is no substitute of God and nothing less than God. As
the Word made flesh this person vulnerably disclosed the whole of God
(Jn 1:14, 18).
The principle of "no substitutes and
nothing less" also defines by what God does relationship and
how God does relationships. Since the incarnation is the fulfillment
of God's response to our condition "to be apart," the "no substitutes
and nothing less" relational response of the life of Jesus communicates
two vital relational messages directly to us. First, the whole of God
vulnerably extends himself to us and is wholly involved with us
relationally (the meaning of agape love) because of the
importance to him of our whole person created in the image of the whole
of God. Secondly, the whole of God responds to us intimately with family
love not only so we would no longer function relationally "to be apart"
and remain as relational orphans, but so that we can understand and
experience the relationships necessary to be whole together in the
family of God as signified by the whole of the Trinity (not solely
Christ). For these family relationships and family process of family
love, we were created and are re-created in the image and likeness of
the Trinity.
Some theologians are now formulating
theological anthropology by narrowly focusing on the image of God for
humans only as the fulfillment of the new humanity/creation at the
eschaton.7 While this may extend the practice of the church, it lacks
functional clarity to be of relational significance to the whole of God,
thus is susceptible to reductionism. From the textual convergence of
God's self-disclosure, I suggest that "Christ as the image of God" is
what we need to wholly conform to (cf. Rom 8:29) to be the image of God.
And Christ clearly defined and vulnerably demonstrated to us: (1) how to
define the person, and on this basis (2) how to be involved in
relationships, and thus (3) how to function in relationships together as
the church, the new creation, the family of God. The image of God
involves all three to be whole with the whole of God--whole persons in
the relationships necessary to be whole as constituted in the Trinity.
The function of the revelation of the image of God in the face of Christ
is only for relationship, the reality of which we are accountable now to
practice and experience.
In God's "no substitutes and nothing
less" relational response, God demonstrates directly with us both by
what God does relationships and how God does relationships. Furthermore,
as Jesus consistently demonstrated in his interactions with others, this
is the only way God does relationships, which cannot be negotiated. Our
response, therefore, needs to be compatible with God's way of doing
relationships. This necessitates also functioning in the principle of "no substitutes and nothing less." Anything other or anything less would
not engage the image and likeness of God, the whole of whom Christ
reveals fully to us when his image is not reduced by a substitute.8
The Relational Imperative of the Whole
We need to examine more deeply by what
and how God does relationships. Essentially, God does relationship only
by the whole, whether it is the whole of God or the whole of a
trinitarian person, which cannot be separated from the whole of the
Trinity. The whole is by what God does relationship--nothing less and no
substitutes. This whole is what the Son presented of his person and what
he communicated in his words (actions, interactions and teachings) which
authenticated being the image of the triune God. What the Son presents
of his person God seeks from our person. The whole of our person is what
we need to present in response back to God--no substitutes and nothing
less in order to be compatible with the way God does relationship.
Moreover, the whole person is what God created, and what is necessary
for relationships to be whole in the Creator's design and purpose.
The whole of the human person is
inseparable from the imago dei but not necessarily
synonymous with it--depending on the definition of this image, as
discussed earlier as a structural nature possessing certain
characteristics and capabilities, as something more relational, or as an
eschatological outcome. Even with the composite definition I suggest,
what is important is its function as it involves the whole person. In
likeness to God in the incarnation, God demands our complete relational
involvement (defining agape love, Mt 22:37). This involvement--by
the relational nature of the way God does relationship--makes imperative
presenting the vulnerable integrity (open honesty) of our whole person
(from inner out which the Father seeks, Jn 4:23, 24) that is signified
by the authentic involvement of our heart (which the Son pursues, Mt
15:8). This is not a metaphor merely to reflect on nor a virtual reality
of relationship exercised by outward appearances and well-intentioned
simulations. This is a relational reality the authentic experience of
which is the outcome only of our person functioning with no substitutes
and nothing less than the person God created in the divine image.
In order to be compatible with the
relationship of God and thus practice relationships in God's design and
purpose, our response must (again by its nature) be the presentation of
our whole person and the communication from our whole person--no
substitutes and nothing less. This whole is what Christ as the image of
God presented and communicated, thus defining for us by what
relationships are done in his likeness.
Jesus Christ constitutes the new
creation of the image of God. Christ functioned in the flesh as the
image of God to fulfill what Adam and Eve as the image of God did not
complete in the first creation. God initially responded to the
relational condition "to be apart" in the first creation (Gen 2:18) in
order for them to experience relationally together the reality of the
image of God functionally signified and constituted in the whole of the
Trinity. God initiated further in Christ as the image of God to fulfill
his response to our relational condition for a new creation. Therefore,
the first creation and the new creation are inextricably linked by
Christ in God's desires for creation and what matters most to God: the
whole of the relationship of God as family.
God wants what he created. If
the what that God said "is not good" is rendered "to be alone,"
(Gen 2:18), then this suggests what matters most to God is the "work"
(service for God) and thus defines the person by what one does and the
outward aspects of a person. This is not the what God defines as
"not good" nor the by what God functions and created in his
image. When rendered "to be apart" instead of "to be alone," we can
better grasp the whole of the person God created and the relationships
necessary to be whole which God desires for both the first and new
creation in the eschatological big picture.
God desires, wants, demands the whole
of what he created--the whole of my person, our whole persons in
relationship and the whole of those relationships together. In other
words, God wants the whole in us which is the image of the whole of God
constituted and experienced in the Trinity. This is by what God
functions and does all relationships as vulnerably disclosed by Christ
and the what he created us for.
If human destiny is defined and
constituted by the whole of God--not the substitutes of reductionism--then human conduct and church practice needs to be whole in the required
relationships of the whole--nothing less and no substitutes.
Reductionism today competes with the whole of God by using a
perceptual-interpretive framework which reprioritizes practice away from
the primacy of the whole: the whole person signified by the importance
of the heart and the intimate relationships necessary to be whole. Yet
the functional truth of the incarnate Word as the
no-substitutes-and-nothing-less self-disclosure of the whole of God
defines and constitutes the gospel, which Paul said must not be "distorted" (reduced, 2 Cor 4:2) or
"peddled" (for popular consumption,
2 Cor 2:17).
As followers of Christ, we
(individually and corporately) need to desire, want, require, even
demand the whole for ourselves and our relationships as the church. Yet
our conventional notions of the individual tend to predispose our
perceptions of the person in reduced terms and thus our relationships
with reductionist substitutes. The place of the individual in church
practice cannot be defined or determined by philosophical and
sociocultural frameworks without the person getting reduced or lost.
When we fail to grasp this whole, a person (of whatever distinction)
cannot truly know the importance of who one is and is a part of
nor understand the primacy of what one is apart from, thus not
realizing the significance of how the relational condition "to
be apart" reduces that person(s) to something qualitatively less (not
whole) than by what and for what God created us.
Furthermore, Jesus vulnerably disclosed
both by what God does all relationships and how God does
all relationships. In his "no substitutes and nothing less" response of
the incarnation, God extends himself beyond making himself accessible to
us such as a king gives audience to his subjects. Much more
significantly, Jesus demonstrated how God pursues us for deeper
relationship, but not any kind of so-called deeper relationship. "No
substitutes and nothing less" implies that God put his whole being on
the line in the incarnation opening himself to us only for intimate
relationship. Combined with by what God only does all
relationships (the whole of God presented and communicated), this is the
only level of relational involvement in how God does
relationships. Intimacy is the relational outcome of whole persons
(signified by the heart) opening to each other and coming together. In
our relationship with God this intimacy is also associated with
spirituality and spiritual formation, which further defines for
spiritual disciplines what is necessary for their practice to have
relational significance to God.
Intimate relationships are what
functionally constitute the Trinity. This only is how God does
relationship. In his interactions (particularly with women), Jesus
demonstrated the heart of God vulnerably open and lovingly involved with
persons for intimate relationships.9 Just as experienced in the Trinity,
this is the experience of our relationships for which Jesus prayed to
the Father (Jn 17:20-26); and we need to submit our whole person in
response to the level of relational involvement necessary for these
relationships. Moreover, these intimate relationships of love are not
merely individual relationships but relationship-specific to the context
of the whole of the Trinity as family and thereby constituted in
relational significance by family love. When this level of relational
involvement is properly engaged, these intimate family relationships are
both for our benefit as God's family and for the world to witness as
the alternative to reductionism of persons and relationships--just as
Jesus revealed, demonstrated and prayed.
When our Christology is complete, the
whole of Christ as the image of the whole of God emerges. When our
soteriology is not truncated, Christ as the image of God functions to
create the new persons for intimate relationship together as God's
family in the likeness of the Trinity--as God planned even before
creation (Rom 8:29) and brings to completion at the eschatological
conclusion (1 Cor 15:49) through the process of transformation by the
Spirit (2 Cor 3:18). This new person is made whole by being transformed
(metamorphoo) qualitatively from the inside out which is a
substantive change ontologically distinct from mere outer changes (metaschematizo)
having perceptually similar form (for example, "apostles of Christ," "angel of light" and
"servants of righteousness" in 2 Cor 11:13-15). And
the place of the individual in the process of completing this new
creation is a person neither sacrificed nor aggrandized, neither reduced
nor lost.
Given then by what and how
God does all relationships, the compatible response of our whole person
functions for the primacy of the intimate relationships of the whole of
God as family--for the purpose not "to be alone," not "to be apart,"
not to be relational orphans, and even more significantly to function in
the new creation image and likeness of God. Furthermore, the response of
these whole persons as the image of God in the new creation determines
the relational involvement of authentic church practice beyond the
limits of church as a voluntary association. We need to understand this
more deeply.
The Purpose of the Church as Family
Since God's plan and purpose for us as
the new creation involves being "conformed (symmorphos, together
with in substance) to the likeness (eikon, image) of his Son"
(Rom 8:29), is there any difference in Christ as the image of God and
the church's practice as the image of God? I suggest that there is no
relational difference except for one important distinction of function.
Consequent to our ontological limits to conform to the image of Christ,
we cannot function just as the Son does to be the revelation of God.
Obviously, only God can disclose the ontology of God (cf. Jn 1:18).
Yet, as God's response to our
condition "to be apart," the Son intimately involved his whole person
with us and, along with his Spirit, constitutes us in the whole of God
(cf. Eph 1:23; 3:19). While as the image of God we cannot be a
revelation of God in the way only Christ was, we can nevertheless
distinctly reflect the whole of God. Reflecting the whole of God
is a function only of our relationships as the whole of God's family
signified in the Trinity. This function exercised in family love emerges
only from the ontology of the church as family constituted by the
Trinity (Eph 2:19-22). So constituted and expressed the church reflects
the whole of God just as Christ revealed the Trinity, thus Christ and
his church intimately come together to have a common share
(communion) in the image of God.
Moreover, the church's function to
reflect the whole of God is also conjoined with the function to
represent God. The function to reflect God and to represent God
integrate together inseparably to define the purpose of the church as
family (to be discussed also in chapters 8 and 10). Whereas reflecting
God necessitates the ontic development of the whole persons together in
the church as family engaged in the relational process of family love,
representing God involves the relational context and process directly
created by the Trinity's relational work of adoption (Jn 14:18; Gal
4:4-7; Eph 1:5).
In response to our condition A to be
apart@ and to restore us to the wholeness of creation (first and
second), God in his family love adopted us. Adoption has vital
relational significance which includes both heir rights and privileges
as well as responsibilities. We need to understand this for the practice
of the church as family.
In the Roman sociocultural context of
N.T. times, adoption was an important means by which to maintain a
family and continue the family name and property. A father in those days
had authority (potestas) over sons, and through adoption that
potestas changed from a natural father to the adopting father. By
Roman law, all debts of a new son --or daughter, though female adoption
was rare--were cancelled and all ties to the old life were broken. It
was now a new life for the adoptee to whom the new father laid claim.
All privileges and heir rights which came with this new family included
responsibilities. The adopted son had responsibility to bear the new
father's name (as his very own signifying ownership, possession) as
well as to represent the father, neither of which was optional. This
responsibility to represent the father and to extend his family was
effective also from the time of adoption according to Roman law.10
It is with this sense of adoption (and
the process in 2 Sam 7:14) that Paul proclaimed the truth of the gospel
in the incarnation and Christ's redeeming work to take us to the Father
as his very own and the transforming work of his Spirit to constitute us
in his family with relational intimacy (Gal 4:4-7). The adoptees are the
new persons of the new creation and together in the relationships
necessary to be whole become the new kinship family of God. The church
as this family has the purpose and responsibility to represent the
Father and extend his family, which is intentional but not voluntary.
While each adoptee has the relational
responsibility to represent the Father, the individual alone cannot
reflect the whole of God as family. Likewise, the church as family
functions to reflect and to represent the whole of the relationship of
God but a church cannot fulfill its function while operating as a
voluntary association of individuals. A voluntary character essentially
allows individuals to determine the church; such a determination becomes
a substitute of reductionism in which the parts (and their sum) define
the whole--bottom-up causation. Yet the nature of the whole (God or the
church) goes beyond its parts (persons or individuals) because the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts. A voluntary association is
compatible with reductionism but contrary to the whole of God and the
church as the whole of God's family.
In terms of the voluntary aspect of
church membership and participation today, too many Western assumptions
are made for the meaning of voluntary, for example, such as optional,
selective, relative and conditional involvement essentially determined
by the individual. While the early church emerged in the social context
of the Mediterranean world as another voluntary association, we would be
in error to base our perception of the apostolic church on the sociology
of a voluntary association. Nothing that Jesus did and said, or that his
disciples went on to enact, suggests the connotation of voluntary we
give the church today. Even though the voluntary associations of their
day did not have the loose associations most voluntary organizations
have today, Jesus and the early disciples transformed this association
to be different from any other in its time. As so constituted, many
could no longer continue their association with Jesus (Jn 6:66), while
others gained a deeper respect of what it meant to be so aligned (Acts
5:11).
When Paul used the term ekklesia
for the local church (for example, Gal 1:13), he may have at times
focused on a voluntary association. When he used the body metaphor to
describe the church, he is no longer focused on a voluntary association
because everyone in Christ belongs to it, whether we volunteer or not.
As a result of Christ's redemptive work, God's people were not
redeemed to be merely free; that would in effect only involve what
Christ saved us from in a truncated soteriology. The whole
purpose of redemption is to be adopted as the Father's very own in his
family together (Gal 4:7; cf. 1 Cor 6:19. 20).
Though the Western family norm today
revolves around the individual--the consequence of which is fragmenting
the family--few would subscribe to the notion of voluntary family
membership. A meaningful family does not and cannot function together on
this basis. Yet, this is how we tend to do church because we approach it
more with an organizational framework than a family relational process.
How well a church functions in qualitative significance to the image of
Christ as the whole of God is not a by-product of organization but the
relational outcome of intimate interdependent family relationships
involving family love.
The ongoing reality of the Trinity's
relational work of adoption both precludes the voluntary association of
the church as well as holds the church accountable for its relational
responsibility to represent the Father and extend his family. The church
fulfills this relational responsibility as it reflects the whole of the
relationship of God constituted in and by the Trinity. Yet the church
cannot reflect in its life what it does not first relationally
experience with the Trinity and then directly experience with each other
together. A church only reflects, and thus represents, what it
experiences in its relationships--no matter how many individuals there
are and how much those individuals are doing.
Jesus prayed for these intimate
interdependent relationships necessary to be whole as family both for
his followers together to experience in family love and, then, for the
world to be the objects of this family love in order to believe and know
what it means to belong to the whole of God's family (Jn
17:20-26). By his familial prayer for his followers, Jesus constitutes
the essential experiential reality of the trinitarian relational context
of family and its relational process of family love.
The Church Belonging to the
Trinity
The church, of course, cannot reflect
to the world what it does not first relationally experience in its own
life. In other words, the church can only function to reflect the whole
of God--just as Jesus revealed the whole of the Trinity--when the
church's life together is the relational outcome of intimately engaging
the Trinity in the relational context of family and the relational
process of family love. The church constituted by the Trinity belongs
to the whole of God's family and thus can authentically extend God's
family to the world. It is this relational experience of belonging to
God's family in family love that is primary in Jesus' prayer for the
world to believe and know, not the mere information of God in doctrinal
truth nor knowledge about God merely in what God does.
Yet what does it mean to belong?
We need to be able to distinguish it from belonging to a voluntary
association, which in N.T. times was a more significant attachment than
can be said for conventional church membership today. The issue of
belonging takes us beyond membership or even mere ownership and
possession, though it involves them.
The sense of belonging for us to grasp
here is critical to understand both as God's design and purpose in the
first creation and in the relational importance of the new creation.
Belonging needs a whole entity to belong to and implies a whole of which
one is a part. God first created this whole for humankind in the image
and likeness of the whole of the Trinity. It was this relational whole
that God declared in the beginning was not good to be apart from, not a
matter of being alone nor needing a helper for the work (Gen 2:18). And
God's response ever since is essentially summarized as fulfilling,
restoring and completing this whole--ultimately in the incarnation of
the Son for a new creation culminated by the Spirit.
In the N.T. there are two terms
usually rendered A belong@ which combined provide us with the full
significance of what it means to belong. The first Greek term is
ginomai (see Rom 7:4) which means to begin to be, to become,
implying a change of state or condition. This involves the redemptive
change necessary for adoption in order to belong to God (cf. Lev 25:55).
What ginomai also suggests is the ontology of the new creation:
to belong is to become and thus to be
whole, which is necessarily both as a person and together in the church
as the whole of God's family. The
person cannot become and be and the church cannot
become and be apart from the whole of God, not merely in a
belief system but also in ongoing function. This is the significance of
being "in Christ" and belonging to God. This ontological aspect of
belonging is being what God created us (originally and new in
Christ), which therefore can authentically reflect the image of God
constituted in the Trinity.
The second term rendered "belong" is
meno (see Jn 8:35). This sense of belonging overlaps with the
ontological aspect as well as also includes the dynamic relational
aspect. The term meno means to remain, abide, dwell (cf. Jn
15:4-10), which in John 8 involves the relational process of functioning
as full family member (son or daughter). Unlike a slave who is not freed
(redeemed) to be adopted to function as a full family member, those who
belong to God function in the reciprocal relational involvement of
family love as his very own--both intimately with God and with each
other.
Yet the relational aspect of belonging
is dynamic and thus variable. While the ontological aspect of belonging
to God and being a part of the whole of God's family remains permanent,
how we function relationally can vary even to the extent of acting like
a slave, as Peter learned (cf. 2 Pet 2:19b). We cannot have a
controlling influence in our life (a form of enslavement) and still
function as full children in God's family. They cannot function
together nor both determine relationship with God at the same time, as
Jesus clearly defined in the interaction above (Jn 8:31-36). If our
understanding of belonging is to go beyond mere church membership, then
we must get past individualism and voluntary associations. This brings
us back to how we define the person, how we engage in relationships and
thus practice church.
In this process, we will need to
counter the influence of reductionism which has plagued the whole person
and the relationships necessary to be whole since that faithless
encounter in the primordial garden. Along with redefining the importance
of the whole person, reductionism takes away the relational primacy and
significance of belonging to the whole (even while advocating
membership) by focusing on parts (individuals) the sum of which cannot
establish--the sum of which reductionism falsely assumes can determine--the whole necessary for persons to be part of. Reductionism may indeed
establish a group of individuals in which to claim membership. But the
whole of God and of creation constitutes a process of interdependent
relationships the dynamics of which intimately involve the whole parts
in covariation wherein the whole is greater than the sum of its parts--the process of synergism created in the likeness of the Trinity.
Nothing less than the whole parts and
the whole together and no substitutes for their wholeness can reflect
and represent the whole of God as family constituted in the Trinity--just as the
"nothing less and no substitutes" divine person vulnerably
revealed the whole of God to us. When not reduced in function, whole
persons together in the church as family (intimately involved in the
interdependent relationships of family love) ongoingly conform in
qualitative significance to the image of Christ in relational communion
together with the Trinity as God's family according to God's desires,
design and purpose (Rom 8:29; Gal 4:4-7). This is what it means to
belong to the Trinity as the whole of God.
The Alternative of Reductionism
Some may perceive "the church as
Trinity" as a metaphor by which to envision the church. For others, "the church as Trinity" may serve as an organizational paradigm to
structure the church and its operation. Either would be an error of
reductionism which would result in a reductionist substitute of twofold
consequence. The first part of the consequence diminishes the reality of
relational involvement by the Trinity who experientially constitutes the
church in the trinitarian persons' ongoing relational work. The second
part of the relational consequence from a reductionist substitute also
separates (or distances) the church from functioning in its reciprocal
relational work cooperatively with the Trinity to fulfill its purpose as
the relational extension of the whole of God's family.
Just as the whole of God vulnerably
responded to our relational condition "to be apart" from the whole and
the relationships necessary to be whole, our compatible response back to
God can only be the whole of our persons in relationship together in the
church as family both signified and ongoingly constituted by the
Trinity. In the trinitarian relational context of family and the
trinitarian relational process of family love, the persons together as
the church become whole in the image and likeness of the whole of God.
Without this relational context and process, there are only individuals
in voluntary association--individually and collectively incomplete.
Theological anthropology and ecclesiology without the Trinity are
incomplete; both apart from the eschatological whole of the new creation
lack coherence with God's desires, design and purpose. All these
theological aspects converge in the whole of God's response to our
condition in order for us to be whole.
Wholeness (for human persons and the
church) has qualitative meaning and substance only in relational
significance to the whole of God, and thus to be whole is an
experiential reality only in relationship-specific involvement with the
Trinity. The substitutes of reductionism are the only alternative for
both the person and the church--the alternative from which the "successful" churches at Ephesus and Sardis still needed to be redeemed.
We need to address the substitutes for wholeness to which we have turned
and from which we likewise need to be redeemed in order to have
significance "outside the box" of modernity and beyond postmodernity so
as to reflect and represent the definitive whole of God as Trinity.
_____________________________________________
1. As noted by Alister E. McGrath,
"Evangelical Theological Method" in Evangelical Futures, ed. John
G. Stackhouse (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 23.
2. Miroslav Volf also contends
that "the church must speak of the Trinity as its determining reality,"
and recognizes the limits of this analogy in "Community Formation as an
Image of the Triune God: A Congregational Model of Church Order and
Life," in Richard N. Longenecker, ed. Community Formation in the
Early Church and in the Church Today (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson
Publishers, 2002) 223-225.
3. Quentin J. Schultze, Habits
of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age
(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 37-42.
4. Ibid., 35.
5. The Spirit's relational work
is outlined further in my related study, The Relational Progression:
A Relational Theology of Discipleship, chap. 7.
6. For an expanded discussion on
the origins of cultural differences in human thought see Richard E.
Nisbet, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think
Differently...and Why (New York: Free Press, 2003).
7. For a discussion of this
project see Stanley J. Grenz, The Social God and the Relational Self:
A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2001), 141-264.
8. Consider Peter's image of
Christ when he in effect would not let Jesus go to the cross (Mt
16:21,22) and when he refused to let Jesus wash his feet (Jn 13:6-8).
His reductionist images of Christ both prevented him from embracing the
whole of God's response and also allowed his whole person to remain in a
comfort zone of relational distance.
9. These interactions are
discussed in depth in my study, Following Jesus, Knowing Christ:
Engaging the Intimate Relational Process.
10. For a more complete background on
adoption, see David J. Williams, Paul's Metaphors: Their Context and
Character (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999), 64-66.
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