Biblical Paradigms
If the ministry of reconciliation truly belongs to the core of authentic Christian praxis, then it must be established first and foremost that the theological rationale for reconciliation is deeply rooted in scripture. When one approaches the bible for this purpose, one is struck by the fact that the motif of reconciliation is a strand that is interwoven throughout the entire biblical narrative. One example of this can be seen in the words of the prophet Isaiah, who says that God “has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release the prisoners…to comfort all who mourn” (Is 61:1-2). Indeed, this verse offers a beautiful depiction of God’s “good news” of reconciliation for a broken world that is overtaken by the bad news of war, oppression, death, suffering, and captivity. In this passage, Isaiah connects this reconciling vision to “the year of the Lord’s favor” (v. 2), which is a reference to the jubilee year spoken of in Leviticus 25:10-55. The premise behind these laws in Leviticus was to ensure that the bonds of debt, captivity, servitude and poverty could not endure from one generation to the next, because God had commanded that every fiftieth year, “you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (Lev. 25:10). Thus, Isaiah’s vision points backward toward the original statutes and the principle of reconciliation that was supposed to undergird the Israelites successful dwelling in the Promised Land. Additionally, however, this passage points forward to the New Testament, as well, because Jesus quotes precisely this passage in Luke’s Gospel when he speaks for the very first time about the nature and purpose of his mission (Lk. 4:16-21).
This example is the first, but certainly not the last time Jesus would speak about God’s plan of reconciliation as the nature of his mission. Perhaps the most prominent example of this theme in Jesus’ ministry occurs in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 (with parallels in Luke 6). Since these chapters comprise the most important ethical teaching for Christian discipleship, it is revealing that the theme of reconciliation should gain such prominence. Like his inaugural statement in Luke 4, Jesus begins his sermon by acknowledging that reconciliation begins with a word of blessing and hope to the broken and downtrodden. The Beatitudes offer a vision of comfort for those who mourn (Mt 5:4), a world inherited by the meek and the persecuted (v 5, 10), in which God’s children are peacemakers (v 9). Later on, Jesus says, “When you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you…go; first be reconciled…then come and offer your gift” (v 23-24). There is no room for putting religious rituals and worship practices above human relationships—another prophetic motif which connects Jesus’ teaching to the OT tradition (e.g. Amos 5:10-27). If any question remains about how far we are to take this radical vision of reconciliation, Jesus removes all doubt when he rejects in kind any form of violent retaliation (v 39-42), and advocates instead that disciples respond to violence with selfless generosity (v 42), and, perhaps most puzzling of all, by loving our enemies and interceding on behalf of those who persecute us (v 44). This, we are told, is what makes us children of God (v 45), and thus it is the radical call put upon those who dare to be “peacemakers” in a violent world.
Theological Mode
Though I am influenced by more than one theological mode, my theological journey began with the convictions and passions I share with the existentialist philosophy and theology of Nikolai Berdyaev. He opens the book Slavery and Freedom with a chapter entitled, “In Place of an Introduction: Concerning Inconsistencies in My Thought.” For him, as for me, the desire for internal consistency present in systematic theology is trumped by the existential need to always address the world’s suffering and brokenness in a relevant way. Thus, like Berdyaev, I affirm the basis of philosophy in gaining knowledge of the world, but, “in my case the desire to know the world has always been accompanied by the desire to alter it…I have always denied that the things which the world presents to us are stable and final reality.”
Even as my mode has leaned toward socio-political or relational theology at times, I have never been able to embrace a transcendent theology. It seems to me that pure transcendence is the negation of this existential impetus and, if carried to its logical extreme, results in passively waiting for God as deus-ex-machina to act and fix the world. Such a theology cannot offer enough room for agency and incarnation which are vital components of a ministry of reconciliation which accords equal weight to bodily and spiritual needs.
Sources of Authority
Any theology which claims to be Christian theology must take the word of God revealed in scripture as a primary source of authority. Despite our many differences and schisms, all sects of Christians are bound to the authority of the bible. Thus, the bible itself could be a profound vehicle for inter-denominational reconciliation if we could all but learn to see that reconciliation is vital to the biblical message; but therein lies the problem—we remain deeply divided by our varying interpretations of scripture that led to our divisions and schisms in the first place. Thus, the bible must be foundational as a source of authority, but will not suffice by itself. Even if we could all agree on the original meaning of the bible (which would be a nearly impossible feat in itself), in order to agree on how to apply and live out the teachings of the bible in our own very different contexts, we must also appeal to the authority of reason and experience. In all things, however, we must leave space for the word of the living God lest we make idols of reason (as in the Enlightenment), experience (postmodernism), or even the bible itself (fundamentalism).
The Church and the World
The problem with articulating a stance on the proper relationship between the church and the world lies in the tremendous ambiguity of both words; both have meant various and quite contradictory things to different people in different circumstances, so much clarification is needed. Thus, depending on the working definition of the terms, I suspect that there is a sense in which all five of Niebuhr’s types are justifiable. For example, “church against the world,” if understood prophetically where “church” means those who do God’s will and “world” means the status quo of oppression, war, and exploitation, becomes a very acceptable model. The church should be against the status quo of the world until the status quo is the Kingdom of God. If, however, we are talking about the “church” as a historical human institution and the “world” as all humans outside that institution, then we need only reference the Inquisition and the Crusades (among other examples) to realize that the “church against the world” model can be extremely dangerous and inadequate. Here, as always, the semantic meaning and context determine the legitimacy of the theological statement.
Theory of Atonement
I have difficulty with the dominant American Christian teaching on the doctrine of atonement. As Miguel De La Torre sums up, many Christians seem to forget that, “Jesus…was put to death, like so many today, by the civil and religious leaders who saw him as a threat to their power. There is nothing redemptive in the suffering of the just.”
With De La Torre, I find in the crucifixion a picture of “God’s solidarity with the countless multitudes who continue to be crucified today,” but Jesus’ brutal death on the cross “should never be reduced to a sacrifice called for to pacify a God offended by human sin.”
Viewing atonement through a reconciliation hermeneutic is at odds with the traditional doctrines of satisfaction/substitution and of divine impassibility because it rests on the assumption that God is a God of love who is willing to suffer in order to repair a broken relationship with humanity. This opposes the doctrine of an impassible God who lacks nothing (thus cannot long for a restored relationship with us) and is thus marked by retributive rather than restorative justice (God can only be sated by the substitutionary death of the innocent Jesus).
Theological Cosmology
Biblical cosmology is fundamentally relational—it concerns the relationships between us and God, each other, and with the rest of creation. It is represented by the Greek metaphor of oikos, the household of God. The originally harmonious order of the household has been violated so that we know live in a broken home with severed relationships and a broken-down home that has fallen into disrepair. The hope of Christian reconciliation is the hope for a new creation—a new house. It thus speaks both to the repair of familial relationships as well as repair to the physical structure of our dwelling. Thus Christian reconciliation addresses economic (oikos + nomia, the proper order and administration), ecological, and ecumenical (concerning all members of the household) relationships. In this sense, everything that happens on this earth, from politics and economics at the systemic level to human relationships on an individual level, pertains to Architect’s mission of reconciling and rebuilding what we have torn down.
Eschatology
In 21st-Century America, eschatology and apocalypse are hot topics, but the eschatological vision that most Americans are preoccupied with seems to be at odds with the biblical message of reconciliation. The renewed obsession with the second coming of Jesus, the cosmic spiritual warfare depicted in Revelation, and the (biblically indefensible?) doctrine of the rapture has resulted in, as Crossan puts it, people “waiting for God to act violently while God is waiting for us to act nonviolently.”
In contrast to this popular silver-screen eschatology, the ministry of reconciliation calls us to live by faith in the new hope for a new and reconciled creation and to give our lives to working within this new reality even though God’s realm is all but invisible in this broken and fallen world. We take our affirmation from St. Paul, who encourages us not to become preoccupied with this “momentary affliction…because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17-18).
Bibliography
Berdyaev, Nikolai. Slavery and Freedom. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944).
Brummer, Vincent. Atonement, Christology and the Trinity: Making Sense of Christian Doctrine. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005).
Crossan, John Dominic. God and Empire. (New York: HarperOne, 2007).
De La Torre, Miguel. Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004)
Heretical Rhetoric 