Overturning the idols of the religious imagination
I propose with Barth, Kraemer, and others a Christocentric view of religions which acclaims Jesus Christ as both their fulfillment and negation. This is neither religious imperialism nor churchly triumphalism but a humble acknowledgment that salvific truth is not the property, as such, of any particular religion and that the redemption of humanity’s religious impulse entails looking beyond all outward forms and credos to the living God himself, who directs peoples of all religions to his once for all intervention in the person of Jesus Christ.

This revelation overturns the idols of the religious imagination of all peoples, including Christians; the pathway to the regeneration of the religions lies in the personal transformation of religious and not so religious people by the power of the gospel of the cross.

Church's mission to herald the coming kingdom of God
Finally, it is incumbent on biblical Christians to affirm once again that the mission of the Church is the evangelizing of the world and the equipping of the saints for the arduous life of discipleship under the cross. To reconceive the church’s mission as the self-development of oppressed peoples or the civilizing of backward peoples is to move away from New Testament Christianity to a vague humanitarianism.

The mission of the Church is to herald the coming kingdom of God. We as Christians can prepare the way for the kingdom, we can manifest and demonstrate its power, but God in his own time and way brings in the kingdom. The task of the Church is a modest one: to wait, pray and hope for the coming of the kingdom, to witness to and acclaim God’s redeeming and sanctifying work. The Church can create parables and signs of the kingdom, but it cannot extend or fortify the kingdom through its own power and strategy. We should not say with the philosopher Hegel: “The Kingdom of God is coming, and our hands are busy at its delivery.”6 God builds his kingdom through his own power and initiative, but he enlists us as co-workers in making the promise of the kingdom known to the world.

An emerging confessional situation
Theologians of various persuasions are beginning to speak of a new confessional situation as the Church finds itself engulfed in a crisis concerning the integrity of its message and the validity of its language. The many attempts today to resymbolize God and to reconceive Christ are signs that people of faith may be called again to battle for the truth, to engage in a new Kirchenkampf (church struggle).

The problem of theological authority has become especially acute, since it would seem that cultural experience is supplanting the biblical witness as the ruling criterion for faith and practice. A neo-Gnosticism is emerging that locates truth in the alteration of consciousness rather than in an event in sacred history. The philosopher Schopenhauer (d. 1860), the favorite of many New Agers, has declared that we are justified neither by faith nor by works but by knowledge. Tillich’s contention that self-discovery is God-discovery betrays a sort of Gnostic mentality we see increasingly gaining acceptance.

In feminist circles there is a call for a new canon and a Third Testament that would drastically alter the foundations of the faith. Rosemary Ruether pleads for augmenting the canon with writings that manifest a sensitivity to the concerns of women and other oppressed peoples. She recommends including tracts drawn from goddess religions, Gnosticism, and marginal Christian traditions often deemed heretical.7

[This article was originally published in Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, Summer 1991. Touchstone is a monthly ecumenical journal which endeavors to promote doctrinal, moral, and devotional orthodoxy among Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox. Copyright © 2004 the Fellowship of St. James. Used with permission.].
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