When Is a Person Truly in the People of God?

People of God

When Is a Person Truly "In" the People of God?

When Is A Person Truly "In" The People Of God?

"Inclusivism" is a term that encompasses a fairly wide range of positions, as J.A. DiNoia notes in his book, The Diversity of Religions. DiNoia's definition is broad enough to encompass both a minimal and a maximal form of inclusivism. The maximal form is asserted by those who believe that "all religious communities implicitly aim at the salvation that the Christian community most adequately commends." Non-Christian religious bodies may think and act as if their ultimate goals are distinctively different from the church's. However, their goals in fact orient them to some degree towards Jesus Christ, and to the extent that they do, their concrete identities may be truthful and their way of life leads to salvation. A minimal version of inclusivism says little or nothing about the salvific significance of non-Christian religions as such, but asserts "at least that salvation is a present possibility for the members of other religious communities" (Congar, 1964). It is evident that the Christological and philosophical presuppositions of both forms of the inclusivist position enable its adherents to maintain the traditional claims for the church far more easily than within pluralism. All inclusivists, as we noted earlier, believe that Jesus Christ alone is the savior of the world, that it is his grace which penetrates all religions and cultures, whether or not they are aware of him. Inclusivists would deny, furthermore, that this is simply a relative perspective. Rather, their claims reflect the actual state of affairs, namely, that all truth and all goodness come through Christ and his Spirit.

Of the two forms of inclusivism, it is the maximal kind that is of interest here, for it generates a distinctive horizon within which to reflect upon the church. Maximal inclusivism asserts that all that has been touched by the truth and goodness of Christ is in some way embraced within the church's reality. There is therefore a connection at the ontological level between the church and all that lies outside its visible boundaries, both religious and non-religious. Henri de Lubac displays a Roman Catholic version of this belief when he writes:

Nothing authentically human, whatever its origin, can be alien to her [i.e., the church catholic] & #8230;. To see in Catholicism one religion among others, one system among others, even if it be added that it is the only true religion, the only system that works, is to mistake its very nature, or at least to stop at the threshold. Catholicism is religion itself. It is the form that humanity must put on in order finally to be itself.

This maximal version of inclusivism thus becomes an epic framework for understanding all aspects of the relations between God, world and church. In identifying Christianity or, more narrowly, Roman Catholicism, with authentic humanity, the horizon pushes theological reflection in the direction of a Christian humanism. We can call this set of beliefs, "ecclesiological inclusivism." It is distinct from minimal inclusivism, which need have little bearing upon ecclesiology. Those who maintain the latter -- as I think Karl Barth did in his Church Dogmatics period

-- may be optimistic about the universality of salvation and may acknowledge the relation between Jesus Christ and all truth and goodness outside the church in much the same way as within a theodramatic horizon. But they do not attempt systematically to draw out the implications of these beliefs as they discuss the church, which may be treated as more or less a separate issue. Thus a theologian may be rather more inclusivist than exclusivist or pluralist about salvation and truth, but if her inclusivism is of a sufficiently minimal kind, it may be part of a theodramatic horizon and ecclesiology, since her inclusivism has no determinative bearing upon her understanding of the nature and function of the church.

The People of God is, only a partial expression of the human acceptance of God's salvific offer. It presses forward, so to speak, to its full realization in the visible church. And so, because saving faith is so closely linked with the visible church, one must say that all of the People of God, whether they know it or not, and whether they are religious or not, are necessarily orientated towards the visible church. Even when people are members of non- or anti-Christian bodies, those who live well have an implicit desire to become members of the final expression of God's salvific offer (votum Ecclesiae). If, however, they genuinely (i.e., existentially rather than simply verbally or merely by their membership in other bodies) reject the visible church, they deny their membership in the People of God. And to deny one's membership in the People of God is in effect to reject one's salvation, since it is the same as rejecting the transcendental offer of Godself. In this way, then, Rahner can say that the membership in church is, in the intentionality of the believer at least, necessary for salvation (TI II, 83 -- 88). But at the same time, those who do not reject their membership in the People of God are in a real sense members, though in a different degree, of the visible church through grace.

The Whole People of God

When we talk about the church as the whole people of God we must avoid the twin dangers of inclusiveness and exclusivity.

(1) The exclusive error equates the institutional church with the whole people of God on the grounds that only those who belong to the body of Christ, i.e., the visible church, can be reckoned among the people of God. Yet how do we want to define church membership? Is it simply sufficient to belong to a denomination or should one at least minimally participate in the ongoing life of the church?

The membership in the German Volkskirche, for instance, is determined by not having officially renounced church membership and this means still paying church tax. In this way one could be a member 'in good standing' without ever setting foot into a church sanctuary, except for one's own baptism (Rahner, 1961). In contrast, many American denominations deter- mine active church membership by communing at least once a year or by financially supporting the church at least once in the same period. After a certain time of inactive membership one is usually removed from the congregational roster unless the degree of participation improves. Such criteria hardly fit the description of the nascent church in Acts 2:39-41 where it states that day by day they attended the temple together and that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship (D'Costa, 1986).

Regular attendance at worship and generous giving are not foolproof criteria by which we can determine who belongs to the whole people of God. Often these 'positive' attitudes can be the result either of tradition followed without much reflection or of moralistic self-righteousness. Already Augustine equated the visible church with the institutional church, while he conceived of the invisible church as being in some con- texts larger and in others narrower than the institutional church. Similarly, in one of the favorite motifs sculptured above church portals of medieval European churches, the scene of the last judgment, there are always some people on the side of the condemned that bear distinctive ecclesiastical attributes, such as the bishop's mitre. Again this indicates that medieval Christendom did not imply that church membership necessarily meant that one belonged to the whole people of God.

(2) Since the perimeters of the invisible can at times be more inclusive than the visible church, the suggestion has been made to include among the invisible church everyone, regardless of one's religious affiliation, or at least the most loyal members of all religions or pseudo-religious affiliations. Thus the transition between Christians and non-Christians, or between Christians and Christendom itself, is no longer expressed in terms of an absolute either/or, but in a gradual more or less. Though it would be a confusion of terms and a potential act of Christian imperialism to call followers of non-Christian religions anonymous Christians, we must he aware that the whole people of God are not concomitant with the active or inactive membership of a denomination or of all the churches taken together.

Thus the term people of God does not refer to a church or denomination or to all of them, but it refers first of all to the one who gathers, sanctifies, and enlightens people of all nations and of all ethnic and religious origins. This means that at the beginning of any reflection about the whole people of God we must first reflect about the nature of the church as it expresses itself in the will of its founder, God in Christ through the power of the Spirit. This does not make irrelevant the institutional church. It is still the primary institution that treasures the Christian tradition and facilitates a Christian consciousness through its instructional media. Yet it must constantly be measured, criticized, and realigned by the will of its founder.

The church is indeed Christ's representative, mediating his message, issuing the offer of salvation, and providing the content for Christian nurture. Yet in this context it is presumptuous to confine the notion of church to one or the sum of the established churches or to a certain denomination. The church is where community is assembled to direct its life according to the word of its founder and to spread the good news of Christ. Without such a church, wherever it may manifest itself, we have at most a religious relationship to God, adhering to some general moral and religious principles, but we miss God's living word, because we miss Christ.

Jesus the Redeemer, Salvation and Being 'in the People of God'

In the Authorized Version the word 'redeemer' is used to translate the Hebrew go'el. According to Hebrew law and custom the go'el was the nearest male relative, who was to be the avenger of blood, if necessary, and more generally a defender and protector of the person in question. The translation 'redeemer' is said to go back to Saint Jerome, who had used it because it had been used of the messiah by Jewish rabbis (New Jerusalem Bible, note on Job 19.25). In a speech to the people he was leading Moses said that the Lord 'has brought you out with a mighty hand and has redeemed you out of the house of bondage, even & #8230; Egypt' (Deuteronomy 7:1-11). The basic meaning of the verb used here is 'to free', but this does not help in understanding the achievement of Jesus (D'Costa, 1986).

There are numerous references in the New Testament to Jesus as 'savior' (soter) and to his work of 'saving' or 'salvation'; but these do not help much in understanding what precisely he achieved. Thus in Luke's gospel (19.10) it is said that 'the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost'. In Paul's first letter to Timothy (1.15) he says that 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.' The various New Testament writers seem to assume that their readers know what is meant by 'being saved' or 'being in the people of God'. At one place Paul goes a little further and says: 'God commends his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us; much more then, being now justified by his beloved, we shall be saved from wrath through him' (10:1-13). From the Holy Spirit Christians received power to overcome sin, but this did not mean that they became perfect and wholly without sin. Perhaps we could link this up with the discussion of redemption and say that 'being saved' meant passing from the condition of being under the law to that of being adopted children of God (Rahner, 1968).

The belief that human beings have, as it were, a divine shepherd comes from the Old Testament. The best known passage is Psalm 23, which begins: 'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want; he makes me to lie down in green pastures.' Another is in Psalm 95 (verse 7): 'for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand'. Jesus may have had this conception in mind when he claimed to be the good shepherd who knows his sheep and lays down his life for them (John 10.14f.). On one occasion (Matthew 15.24) Jesus said that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; but, as has already been seen, this does not mean that the religious changes he was hoping to bring about were to be restricted to the Jews. It was a statement about his own personal mission, and implied that the first priority was to bring into existence a body of Jewish people who had experienced his redemption and salvation, and who would be the core and foundation for a future church. He made this plain when he said: 'other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also must I bring and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd' (John 10.16). His assertion that 'many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven' (Matthew 8.11) followed on his healing of the servant of a Roman centurion; and this man's faith was so great that Jesus said, 'I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel' (8.19; cf. Luke 7.2-10; Acts 2:37-41).

A rather different description of the achievement of Jesus was given by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians (5.18f.): 'all things are of God, who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation, to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and has committed unto us the word of reconciliation'. Somewhat similar ideas are expressed in the letter to the Colossians (1.19-22). The basic thought here seems to be that in the relations between God and human beings there was a kind of barrier, and that this was removed by the death of Jesus on the cross. Perhaps people felt that, although God had forgiven them, he still remembered that they had once sinned (Congar, 1964).

Lastly, there is the conception of Jesus as the mediator of a new covenant. This is something which was foreseen by the prophet Jeremiah (31.31-4): 'Behold the days come, says the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband to them (Rahner, 1968). But this shall be the covenant that I shall make with the house of Israel. After those days, says the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts; and will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and will remember their sin no more.'

Jesus must have been aware of this passage in Jeremiah, and in his institution of the Eucharist is said to have spoken of the wine as 'the blood of the new covenant' (Matthew 26.28; Mark 14.24; Luke 23:32-43; 1 Corinthians 11.25; 'new' is omitted in some texts). At one point Paul speaks of himself and his colleagues as 'ministers of the new covenant' (2 Corinthians 2.6). Jesus, however, is not reported to have used the word 'covenant' on other occasions, although he saw the basic task of his mission as the establishment of a new relationship between human beings and God. He could thus regard the Eucharistic wine as a symbol of the bloodshed as a sacrifice for the formal inauguration of the new covenant (D'Costa, 1986).

This idea of a new covenant was taken up and worked out further by the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews (8.6): 'But now has (Jesus) obtained a more excellent ministry [i.e. than that of previous high priests] by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.' He then goes on to quote Jeremiah. There are further references to the new covenant later in the epistle (10.16f.; 12.24; 13.20). In particular Jesus is spoken of as the high priest who has ratified the covenant by the shedding of his own blood (9.11-28). When the original covenant had to be completed under Moses, the blood of calves and goats had to be sacrificed, and so for the new covenant there had also to be a sacrifice of blood (Rahner, 1968). At the same time there was in the new covenant what was spoken of as the adoption of sons.

Most English-speaking Christians are probably unaware of all that is said about the new covenant, since the Authorized Version mostly uses the translation 'testament'. In the epistle to the Hebrews 'covenant' is retained, and even there it becomes 'testament' in one passage (9.15-20). The Latin translation of the Greek diatheke was testamentum, and this may have been adequate; but the English 'testament' completely conceals the meaning. What we call the Old and New Testaments of the Bible should really be the Old and New Covenants.

It is easy to see how much these arguments would have infuriated Paul's Jewish opponents, who prided themselves on being the true children of Abraham, and some of these arguments probably seem rather strange to us (Congar, 1964). But it is not difficult to see how Paul could have understood the Old Testament story as an intriguing picture of what was going on in Galatia, with the conflict between the do-it-yourself law-keeping approach of the Judaizers and his own trust-in-the- promises-and-mercy-of-God approach. Paul sees the Christians as the true spiritual family of Abraham, as the true Israel (6.16).