Leaven Leaven

Volume 8 Issue 3 Theology and Ministry Article 6

1-1-2000

Jesus: Savior of the Isolated Individual, or the Body? Jesus: Savior of the Isolated Individual, or the Body?

Allen J. McNichol

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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation McNichol, Allen J. (2000) "Jesus: Savior of the Isolated Individual, or the Body?," Leaven: Vol. 8 : Iss. 3 , Article 6. Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol8/iss3/6

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124 Leaven, Fall 2000

JesusSavior of the Isolated Individual,or the Body?

A Christological Issue Facing Churches ofChrist

It may seem strange to raise the question of Jesusin an article written for a conservative theologicalfellowship such as ours. After all, Churches of Christin America have existed for about two centurieswithout any great christological battles. In vain dowe search for an Arius or Apollonarius who hasgreatly troubled the church. And, as far as we cantell, there has been no Athanasius who has comeamong us bringing some brilliant new insight aboutJesus and his relationship to God.

Thus, indeed, sheltered by a culture in mid-America that has been hospitable to those who ac-cept traditional affirmations about the divinity ofJesus, we have focused upon such things as issuesof ecclesiology and, more recently, the chaos in cul-tural lifestyles. We may be oblivious, therefore, tothe growing body of evidence that the power andauthority of what traditionally has been understoodas God's revelation in Christ and the salvationbrought about through him has eroded. Here we donot refer to the acids of critical scholarship workingtheir way to undermine credibility in the New Tes-tament reports about Jesus. We have in mind, rather,certain inherent dangers in the widespread tendencyto replace the understanding of Jesus as the awe-some eternal Son of God who reigns in his heavenlykingdom, the church, with a Jesus who functions asa friend and companion and the One with whomindividuals have a personal relationship. To put thematter provocatively, Is the Jesus whose presence the

BYALLAN J. McNICOL

community encounters at the Supper the same Jesuswho is invoked in the highly individualistic lyricsof Christian rock or in the intimate soul talks at theyouth encampment? Is involvement with the lattercompatible with finding the Jesus of New Testamentfaith? The main themes of this essay will attempt toassay what is at stake theologically in these ques-tions.

Procedurally, I will first give a brief synopsis ofwhat has passed for christological reflection amongus. Second, under the rubric of discussing thechristology that understands Jesus as personalFriend, I will survey briefly present trends that en-danger the historical consensus and threaten to severus from a key point of New Testament theologicalunderstanding, namely, that the power of Jesus isprimarily mediated, not in an isolated individualis-tic setting, but in a communitarian one. Finally, I willtrace briefly the outlines of a biblical position onchristology that is in keeping with our heritage andmay serve as a springboard for further discussionon this particular topic.

Christology within Churches of ChristAs I have said, our trademark has not been

lengthy debate and discourse on christology. Asidefrom a few off-the-wall ideas on the preexistence ofChrist expounded by Barton Warren Stone, and aninsistence on using biblical language as opposed tometaphysical and nonbiblical terminology when re-

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ferring to the work of Jesus Christ in teaching orpraise, we have done our theological reflectionwithin the boundaries of the christological heritageof our Reformed forebears-especially Calvin. Thischristology is quite mainstream and self-consciouslyorthodox.

Central to the structure of such christology is thenotion of Christ as mediator. As a result of the fall,humans are estranged from God and are unable tobring reconciliation through personal effort. Theyneed a mediator who can reveal the mercy and loveof God and reconcile them to the Father. For Calvin,Christ accomplished this mediation under the aegisof the threefold office of prophet, priest, and king.'

As prophet, Jesus announced the new era of theMessiah (Luke 4:14-30). His words, which will neverpass away, supersede the work of the Old Testamentprophets. After the ascension (very important forCalvin), Christ completed his work as a prophet bysending into our hearts the Holy Spirit, who nowgives us the power to receive his claim through theteaching of the Word in the church.

Christ's priesthood is closely connected to hiswork as prophet. Calvin followed carefully the ar-gument of Hebrews. Through his once-and-for-allsacrifice, Christ was able to make the perfect sacri-fice to deal with sin. Adopting a juridical view ofthe atonement, Calvin understood that Christ, in hisdeath and descent into hell, was ascribed our sins,and his righteousness was ascribed to us. Upon hisascension, Christ continued his priestly work inheaven, where he now intercedes on behalf of thechurch before the heavenly Father.

Finally, for Calvin, Jesus, in his first coming,brought God's kingdom. Again as a result of the as-cension, he now serves as heavenly king, rulingthrough the medium of believers accepting andobeying his Word. Christ's rule transcends Satan'skingdom. Ultimately, he will deliver his kingdomup to the Father to share his victory.

This concept of the threefold office of Christ asthe construct for accomplishing his work as media-tor has been very influential in the few works of sys-tematic christological reflection that have emergedfrom the Restoration movement. There is not spacehere for a detailed discussion, but I will set forth asexamples of this understanding two crucial works

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in Restoration theology that serve as bookends forpast and present. First, in his magisterial work TheChristian System, Campbell picks up the same orga-nizing principle of the office of Christ that we haveseen in Calvin. He speaks about the role of Christ inredemption:

Three things are done for us; a sin offering is pre-sented, a lamp of life is put into our hands, and allthe active powers and energies in the wide universeare placed at the command of our King wheneverwe need them. All these things, it is true, might becomprehended in one gift-the gift of Jesus as ourmediator; our Prophet, Priest, and King.'

Campbell was one of the inaugurators of theNew Reformation.' One of its most articulate con-temporary advocates is Everett Ferguson. It is wor-thy of note that in his recent book on the Churchesof Christ, Ferguson anchors the major chapter divi-sions into a christological framework. This frame-work echoes the threefold office of Christ. What isalso significant about this book is that Ferguson con-tinues to emphasize a central focus of the Restora-tion heritage, namely, the strong insistence that thelocus of discipleship and obedience toward Jesus isin the church, which is the contemporary analogueto the work of Christ.

It was popular a few years ago to say, "Jesus, yes;the church, no!" or, in other words, "Give meChristianity not Churchianity." ... The person ofJesus is more attractive than those who claim tofollow him are. But ... on a more theological level,one cannot have Jesus without the church. Jesusdied for the church; his whole mission was directedtoward gathering a sacred community. To take Jesusmeans taking also his teaching and taking thepeople who are joined to him."

Thus, although christological reflection withinChurches of Christ has not been especially innova-tive, one major highlight has been its insistence incorrelating the historical ministry of Jesus with hisfunction as head of the church. Our Jesus has beenthe Jesus of Matt 16:16-18, the Jesus who foundedthe church and rules over it until it is delivered upto the Father. But it is precisely this kind of Jesuswho has become problematic to many in our con-temporary society.

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Jesus as Our Personal FriendFor several decades a mindset has developed in

some circles of Churches of Christ that diminishesthe significance of the church (Brand name isn'timportant") in favor of an emphasis on individual-istic religious expression. Much of this developmentgoes back to reactions against legalism that arose inthe 1960s. From that point onward, there emerged amajor debate among us over the issue of "faith in aperson as opposed to faith in a plan." The debatehas now been chronicled and evaluated." But it hasmany mutations in the contemporary scene. One ofthem boils down to a widespread perception thatthe personal faith pilgrimage is something that canbe viewed as conceptually different from the de-mands of the obedient life. The former takes placeoutside the institutional church and, indeed, in manycases is considered to have priority over the com-munal demands.

It is no accident that many of our contemporar-ies question the biblical view that the living realityof Christ is experienced primarily in communityrather than by isolated individuals. Such a notioncuts against the grain of popular conventional wis-dom because it assaults the modern sense of per-sonal autonomy. For it is a fundamental dogma ofthis era that a person is not truly human unless heor she is answerable only to the uncoerced self inmaking choices or moral decisions. That is why somuch importance is placed on asserting our right tomake a choice rather than focusing on the conse-quences of the choice. This strategic determinationto exalt personal autonomy and freedom from out-side constraints over everything else underwrites formany a very attractive view of the self. The perspec-tive is appealing because it affirms as a very com-mendable human activity doing what is necessaryand most valuable for the moment. In this view, theself is no more than the aggregation of a certain setof needs, emotions, and feelings operative at anygiven time.

Given the widespread currency of such a viewof the self, it is not accidental that its correlate, indi-vidualism, spreads abroad in both society and thechurch with almost reckless abandon. Thoughtfulobservers of the present cultural scene decry the de-cline of participation of Americans in civic activities

For several decades a mindsethas developed in somecircles of Churches of Christ

that diminishes the significance ofthe church.

of any kind. Since the 1970s there has been a steadyerosion of membership in groups ranging from la-bor unions to the Elks. In the meantime, new cul-tural entities such as talk radio, which absolutizepersonal opinions, have become more and morepopular," Just as it is almost impossible to guide a"herd" of cats, so it is very difficult to develop a senseof common welfare among a populace of chronicindividualists.

Likewise, as we turn our attention to the church,we can hardly find it surprising that the dominantquestion of many who attend the assembly is,"What's in it for me?" Indeed, many arrive with theirown cozy relationships to Jesus already in place. "Mypersonal beliefs and values are fine, thank you!"Therefore, there is a predisposition to praise and in-voke a Jesus who is understood as the one who cangive immediate validation to a particular set of per-sonal wants and needs-a Jesus who affirms andaccepts us unconditionally.

But we ought to be careful. Our wants and needs,although ostensibly emerging uncoerced from anautonomous self, more than likely issue from a selfshaped not so much by the biblical story as by shop-ping malls and advertising. In such a world, faithcomes in winning the lottery. Hope is found, not inthe resurrection, but in a new-car showroom.' And,of course, love is found in sexual gratification. Herewe are close to a self-help Jesus who functions as aSanta Claus to distorted personal desires shaped bythe culture.

In the end, if we are not very careful, we are indanger of reversing priorities so that we expect theChristian life to revolve around the gratification ofour personal needs. At one time, reflecting our Re-formed heritage, we understood that the chief pur-pose of life was to glorify God. Now the reverse maybe the case. Some act as though the role of Christ is

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to underwrite the needs of humanity." But this modelof discipleship can be claimed only at the expenseof a massive loss of Jesus' authority. This is the dan-ger to the church posed by the acute individualismabroad in our culture today.

Contemporary believers, for the most part, haveno conscious intention to throwaway the nuancedchristological formulations that the church, over thecenturies, has worked out with respect to Jesus; it isjust that such formulations have little utility in thecontext I have described. And, I have argued, such ashift in perceptions of Jesus, driven by this new viewof the self, is not benign. A key element of Christianfaith is threatened with elimination. The emphasison Jesus, the friend who supplies my personal needs,obscures the crucial communal relationship the Fa-ther shares with the Son-a relationship that is in-tended to have as its analogue the relationships be-tween believers in Christ who share fellowship withone another in the church. Setting the ship of stateon a steady course away from this chronic individu-alism will require the recovery of an understandingof the self in keeping with the biblical story. It mustbe conjoined with a christology that incorporates aview of God as One who draws us into the divinelife within the locus of the church.

A Biblical Framework for Christology TodayAs we have observed, much of contemporary

christology within the circles of the Churches ofChrist (and the evangelical community) is driven bya minimalist view of the self: an understanding ofthe human as one who has certain needs and feel-ings that constantly must be gratified. In these circlesa heavenly Jesus, often experienced in some quasi-charismatic individualistic sense ("Yes, Jesus. Thankyou!"), is seen as the ultimate answer to those needs.

The biblical tradition, of course, is concerned alsowith what constitutes our "specialness" as humanbeings. The author of Ps 8:4 asks plaintively,

What is the human that you (God) shouldremember him?

What is mortal human that you should care forhim?

And although the biblical tradition is not ver-

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bose in its response to the question, it makes it abun-dantly clear that we are more than an ephemeralcollection of needs. We learn in Gen 1:26-28 that,subject to God, the human has lordship over creation.But that is not the entire story. God has not only givenan imprint of his image in the form of our lordshipover creation, but in Christ he has started a new cre-ative process among humankind that will come tocompletion when his followers grow into his like-ness. Then, and only then, will the glorious unitythat exists between the Father and the Son be real-

so, when are we truly hu-man? Only when we growinto the likeness of Christ.

ized also in our lives as God's children (John 17:20-26).

So, when are we truly human? Only when wegrow into the likeness of Christ. Paradoxically, thislikeness is shown in the humble life of servitude-showing committed love that will not quit (Phil 2:5-11). It is through a community in pursuit of thismodel that God will ultimately bring the whole cre-ated order under his sovereignty. This is a far cryfrom a religion that underscores" doing your ownthing."

Interestingly enough, in Heb 2:6-8 the words ofPs 8:4 are echoed again in a startlingly new way. Thewriter to the Hebrews, reading the psalm in Greek,sees a temporal reference in the statement about thehuman's having been constituted a lesser being. Withthe Greek word bracuv 'a little while', the writer ap-plies the psalm to Christ, who, in the "little while"of his incarnation, was tested in all aspects of hu-man experience but, through exaltation upon hisdeath, experienced honor and glory as the fruits of acommitted life. As the New Testament witness con-cludes, Christ has initiated believers into a new modeof existence whereby they forfeit the old way ofAdam and imitate the divine likeness as modeledby Jesus, thus attaining the reality the creator in-tended for them (d. 2 Cor 3:18; Col 3:10-13; Rom8:29; 1 John 3:2). As Wesley well said:

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Come, Desire of nations, come,Fix in us thy humble home;Adam's likeness now efface,Stamp thine Image in its place;Second Adam from above,Reinstate us in thy Love.

This view of the human is not some vague Pla-tonic idea of an estranged immortal self that myste-riously discovers its home, but it is a concrete imagethat shows how one may grow morally into whole-ness by sharing in the life of God, mediated throughcommunal life in the church.

Christologically, this brings us back to the cen-trality of the office of Christ as a mediator. As onewho is both truly God and human, Christ is the onlyone who is in a position to act as our mediator. But itis a central New Testament idea that we benefit fromthis mediation only insofar as we as individuals areunited in one communal body to him who is its head.Such a union does not obliterate, but perfects, ourhuman identity." For that human identity can cometo full realization only as it is carried out by the un-dertaking of common tasks in fellowship togetherwithin the body.

Thus, without question, we understand againthat there is no such thing as a religion for the iso-lated individual- in the biblical tradition. The neweschatological reality that emerged out of Jesus' min-istry through its spirit and activity in the churchbrought salvation and the hope of blessedness in thelife beyond." Again, let me underscore that all thistook place within the context of a communal life inthe body of Christ. Or, to put it another way, it isthrough our routine activities in the life of the body,which pass almost unnoticed, tha t we are constantlyrenewed by the power of the heavenly Christ. Thispower does not draw us into solipsism or narcissism,where Jesus confirms our culturally influencedneeds, but into involvement with a wide range ofpeople within the faith community. In truerestorationist fashion, we are saying no more thanwhat we have always said: "There is no salvationoutside of the church." Any christology worth ac-cepting will have to take that reality into consider-ation.

ALLAN J. McNICOL teaches theology at the Insti-tute for Christian Studies, Austin, Texas.

Notes1 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I, ed. John

T. McNeill, The Library of Christian Classics, vol. 20 (Phila-delphia: Westminster, 1960),495-503. These pages are the mostsalient sections of Calvin's christology. This is the place whereCalvin sets forth his famous and very influential argument forthe threefold office of Christ.

2 Alexander Campbell, The Christian System: In Referenceto the Union of Christians and a Restoration of Primitive Chris-tianity As Plead in the Current Reformation (Bethany, Va.: A.CampbeII, 1839),53.

3 I am not the first to have noticed CampbeII's dependenceon Calvin's idea of the threefold office of Christ. This has alsobeen noted by William Baur, "Christology in Disciples Tradi-tion: An Assessment and a Proposal," in Classic Themes of Dis-ciples Theology, ed. Kenneth Lawrence (Forth Worth: TCUPress, 1986),9-27. He makes the additional interesting obser-vation that Campbell stood strong against predestinarian theol-ogy by insisting that Christ's redemptive work is unlimited in itsaim, but limited in effect to those who receive it by faith.

4 Everett Ferguson, The Church of Christ: A BiblicalEcclesiology for Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), xix-xx. In the opening chapter, Ferguson highlights the rule of theMessiah (King); in the fourth chapter, he highlights the role ofChrist as High Priest; and in the final chapter, he underscoresthe role of Christ as Teacher (Prophet). He supplements thisthreefold office with other images of Christ as Lord, Savior, andBishop.

5 John Mark Hicks, "K. C. Moser and Churches of Christ:A Historical Perspective," Restoration Quarterly 37, no. 3(1995): 139-57; "K. C. Moser and Churches of Christ: A Theo-logical Perspective," Restoration Quarterly 37, no. 4 (1995):193-21l.

6 As noted by Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Col-lapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon& Schuster, 2000); also note the timely comment by WolfhartPannenberg, "How to Think About Secularism," First Things64 (June/July 1996): 27-32. Pannenberg sees the end result ofthis emphasis on personal autonomy not only as a severance ofthe self from a common concern for the welfare of others butalso as a rejection of any heteronomous source of authority-including God. This must ultimately lead to a crisis in meaningand societal breakdown. Pannenberg opines succinctly aboutthe future of Western stability: "It depends in part on how longmost people wiII be willing to pay the price of meaninglessnessin exchange for the license to do what they want."

"Ellen Charry, "Raising Children in a Pagan Culture," Chris-tian Century III (16 Feb 1996): 166.

sPaul H. Jones, "How We Worship: Corporate Worship asa Matrix for Christian Identity Formation," Worship 69 (1995):346-60.

9 Roch A. Kereszty, Jesus Christ: Fundamentals ofChristology (New York: Alba, 1991), 168.

10 Anton Fridrichsen, Exegetical Writings, WUNT 76(Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Siebeck, 1994),276.

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