Here is an exerpt from a Theilicke sermon I have been reading.
...For God's faithfulness already spans the world like a rainbow: [Jesus] does not need to build it; he needs only to walk beneath it...The propaganda of men, even when it masquerades as a kind of evangelism and becomes an enterprise of the church, is always based on the accursed notion that success and failure, fruit and harvest are dependent upon our human activity, upon our imagination, energy and intelligence. Therefore the church too must guard against becoming merely a busy enterprise and pastors must beware of becoming religious administrators devoid of power and dried up as far as spiritual substance is concerned. p. 89 The Waiting FatherHe goes on. Jesus, when faced with the crowds who seem so ready to follow him will disappear to the hills to pray. He will tell the healed to tell no one.
It is so interesting to read these words after reading through Calvin's humanist doctrine. Calvin says, like Thielicke, that there is little work we can do to succede. Salvation is in God's will and not our own. The growth of the church, its success, is not in our hands but is already designed by God. It is intrinsic in the nature of the world. This is not predestination, but residing in the will of God the Creator of all things. Both men are on to the same idea...that there is a way to be Christian, a performative aspect that is to be valued and espoused, modeled and preached. One cannot be more humanist. One cannot be more in the will of God than to walk beneath the canopy of heaven, living into the Kingdom that already exists. Both men are reaching toward the idea that our work only brings us into union with what already is.
I am thinking about all this as I muse on our words before Webber's class. How do we speak of Reconciler and models of ministry and liturgy being an evangelical tool without falling prey to what Thielicke warns us against? I am uncertain. Certainly it is a trap...and we need to be cautious.
Posted by tripp at May 10, 2005 06:32 AM