Gribben
3.The Future of the Church
After
this interesting and entertaining tour of the changes of one congregation of
Christ in its search for a Christian culture, it may be wise to steady
ourselves with a general view of the
church . So, this last time, we examine ‘ the church and its Re-construction, The Future of the Church’
In
reading Gribben’s book, we have seen congregations of the Reformed sort,
advocating different contexts of culture as they look into the future. This is
how Gribben puts it in the closing pages
of his book, when he ruminates on the prospects of Christian Reconstructionism.
He notes the remnants of this, now in the prospect of a general eschewing of
physical violence in their politics. Rushdoony, who died in 2001, rejected
violence, and Wilson has continued to grow his church in Moscow, Idaho, and to stimulate
various kinds of publications, but with no sign of rejecting the elections and
political policies of Washington, even when they at far as can be in the
boundaries of the USA. What were taken to be signs of the Second
Coming have largely disappeared. There are no doctrines of new–minted
ideologies expounded from the pulpit as there is (one hopes) exposition of the
central doctrines of the Westminster Confession, and those who expound its
sister Confessions.
Christ the Foundation
According
the NT, the future of the church is set out in the gospel of Matthew in ch.16 15-20. In Mark’s gospel
there are three similar occasions, in 8.27, 9.30, and 10.22. in 8.27 Christ
asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am’. Some thought he was John the
Baptist, and others Elijah, and one of the prophets When he asked, But who do
you sat that you I., Peter answered ‘You
are the Christ’, and he strictly charged them to tell no one about him’ On the
second occasion, 9.30, takes up his
concern to keep this secret to the disciples, because he was teaching his
disciples privately, ‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of
men. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise’. And the text adds
‘But they did not understand the saying
and were afraid to ask him’. The third
occasion was recorded in 10.32. ‘And they were amazed , and those who followed
him were afraid. And taking the twelve
again, he began to tell them , saying, ‘See, we are going up to
Jerusalem, and the Son will be delivered over to the chief priests and the
scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the
Gentiles. And they will mock him, and flog him and kill him. And after three
days he will rise.’(10.34) The three were more detailed than the earlier. Not
silence as at first, but privacy, his arrest and killed and his rising again,
and finally in his destiny the Gentiles were involved, being handed over to
them, to Pilate, followed by a resurrection after ‘three days’.
There
are those in the Christian church that identify Peter with the Papal authority,
thus undermining Protestantism. But
surprisingly, Calvin says on the phrase ‘And on this rock’ (11.18), ‘whence it
is evident how the name Peter comes to
be applied both to Simon individually,
and to other believers. It is because
they are founded on the faith of Christ, and joined together, by a holy
consent, into a spiritual building, that
God may dwell in the midst of the people
of Israel for ever. (Ezek, 43.7). So Peter designates any believer, and
especially the apostles, building ‘a new church, which would prove victorious
against all the machinations of hell’. (Harmony
of Matthew, Mark, Luke, volume I, 291, part of Calvin’s treatment to
p.307). Not Peter an individual but a representative of all those who were
enlightened, as a fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work released through Christ’s’ crucifixion and
resurrection. The focus is on the person of Christ and the faith in him.
This is
focused narrowly, but expansively, on the Saviour and his early church. Of this
Paul refers to the ‘household of the
apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in
whom the whole structure, being joined together grows unto a holy temple in the
Lord’. (Eph. 2.20-2)
Culture in the Church
This brief
survey has been necessary in order to see that there is little if any
importance given to the ‘culture’ of the church’ setting, or the ‘context’ in
which the church exists. The churches
can err, becoming tarnished by its context.
We see this this through the verdicts the
Apostle John passes on the seven churches of Asia, all located closely together
in what is today Turkey. This is set out in ch.1 of John’s Revelation, and then to the seven churches of Asia, and the
comments of each in italics.
1. Ephesus, abandoned your first love,
2. Smyrna, rich,
slanders,
3. Pergamum,
where Satan dwells, the teaching of the
Nicolaitans
4. Thyatira,
tolerate Jezebel. Practicing sexual immorality,
eating, to eat food sacrificed to idols
5. Sardis,
reputedly dead, asleep, weak
6. Philadelphia,
lacking in power
and
7. Laodicea,
tepid, confidence in being rich,
prosperous, self-sufficient, but pitiable, poor, blind and naked.
These
judgments, if that is the correct word to use, insofar as they are exact, have
to do with faithlessness or its opposite, but there is no reference to the
political or social cultures through which the church was travelling , or how
besides the Reformed churches, and of their relations to, say, the countless
numbers of Christian Pentecostalists, fare in cultural matters. And by what political manoeuvres that ‘the kingdom of the world has become the
kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever’.
(Rev. 11.15) This seems to announce the end of politics.
Every
one who has post-millenial opinions has a view of the years of Gospel plenty to
come and the culmination in the visible
coming again of Jesus. This description has a number of variants, as to speed
and timing, and place and of the nature of Christ’s personal presence, giving
plenty of scope for discussion and the presence of a good deal of uncertainty.
The End.
Gribben’s interesting book ends by certain congregations of Reformed churches waiting patiently for more favourable
cultural conditions coming to pass in the United States for the project of Christian
reconstruction to be visited again, as it was in its early days. For example,
Crawford Gribben says that of Moscow Idaho, ‘The Moscow community has survived, and has
successfully resisted American and it greatest success may be found in its
members creative work.'(143) Authoring books is certainly a cultural endeavour,
but though necessary is it sufficient for Christian Reconstruction? Gribben’s
comment is ‘But, as the New Saint Andrew’s students know only too well, a plot
can only be identified as comedy when it provides a happy ending. Will there be
a happy ending ? Will the ‘wildly postmillennial’ expectations of the New Saint
Andrews students be realized? And would that be a happy ending for anybody
else?’ (143).
