[Dialogue] NOTES TO THE 20TH CENTURY

[Walter Epley]

Jim and All (from Walt Epley - I just looked this up)(Wow - it looks like it has some great quotes in it!!)

It's on the Golden Pathways CD
Under the Gold CD Documents Index

Go to "Style of Being Christian" (under "S")
Is this the paper? (I've just copied it directly)

NOTES TO THE 20TH CENTURY: 
ON THE STYLE OF BEING CHRISTIAN

Introduction

Once upon a time, a Man and his Brothers took a long Journey to
a great city, from the lands of the forests and mountains, where
mystery dwells. As they lived in the city, they learned of the
wave of power. They learned about power to build and power to
destroy. Power to harm and power to heal were theirs, as wag the
power to put light into darkness. one day, while he was resting,
the Man spoke with his brothers and said, "Brothers, I perceive
that there is no longer any mystery in life. Our powers have pushed
back the edges of Time and Space until nothing is hidden from
our eyes. Is this not how it is, Brothers?" Being practical
men of power, they all agreed with their Brother that it was so. 

But one Brother, being somewhat wiser than the rest, saw that
that was not how it was. "Brothers," he said, "I
perceive that we can no longer see the Mystery because we now
belong to the heart of mystery. Mystery dwells within us, and
we move and breathe as the very expression of it. Even all our
powers spring from the mystery. Its name is life."

At once all of the brothers understood that they had never left
the land of mystery. For Man is the knower of Mystery, and Mystery
dwells where ever man dwells. Mystery is the heart and substance
of Life.

This is a story of Man in the 2Oth Century. He has made a long
journey through history. He has gained power over the earth and
everything in it. And he has begun to lose his sense of awe, and
wonder at the universe in which he lives. But these who stand
as the church understand that man only stands just on the verge
of the discovery of a whole new dimension of existence. For it
is not the world, but Man himself who changes. And the journey
is the Journey toward universal life.

It is the purpose of the article which follows, first to describe
something of the transformation that has occurred in 20th Century
humanity. We will then seek to understand what relation this has
to the "Mysterious power" at the center of life, which
we call God, or Christ, or the Holy Spirit. And lastly, we shall
come to a description of the "mode" or "style"
of man's response to this reality, first individually, then corporately. 

It is not the intention here to convey new information, or even
to present new theories. That has never been the purpose of writings
from the Church. Rather it is the purpose of theology to call
into full consciousness the things that we already know about
life in such a way that we are compelled to stand openly before
them. Only then is it even possible to say a "yes" or
a "no" before the Spirit Lord of all life. And just
because the Christian message is a calling to consciousness and
not a communication of facts, the assumption follows that there
is no distinction, in the first instance, between authentic human
life and authentic Christian life. Piousness, in the sense of
pure living apart from the world, is dead. There remains only
the distinction between the aware, the self-conscious man and
the one who refuses to face both the dread and the wonder of life
as it is. It is perhaps safe to say that the claim to exclusiveness
which has characterized the Church throughout history cannot he
understood today as a subscription to a right formula, but would
now be understood primarily in terms of something like right-sensitivity,
or right posture, or right-consciousness, or a right wisedness.
To the degree that it is true that every culture in every age
has had groups of people who understand their life task as that
of calling others to consciousness, the Church would now recognize
that it has had allies who could properly be called the people of God.

Nor are we to be concerned in any way with "rules for Christian
living," for this has never been the burden of the authentic
message of the church. There are imperatives, of course, but they
arise from the structure of human life itself, not from authoritarian
dictum from prophet, priest or church. Not that the Church in
past centuries has not made its pronouncements--in quantity. Rut
at their best, they have stemmed from the imperatives of the
historical, human situation. That many rules and regulations come
to us now as arbitrary, senseless restrictions is only testimony
to the universal quality of man's fearfulness in the face of present
ambiguities and future uncertainties. Whatever else needs to be
said, the Christian Word about life has to do with freedom and
not protective bondage, no matter how or why it is engendered. 

Throughout the pages that follow, we will use many kinds of language,
from culture, sociology, science, philosophy, psychology and even
art. Each of these types of language has its own power, and it
is a mark of understanding in the 20th Century that there is great
wealth of knowledge to enable us to perceive many facets of life
that were previously closed to us. We shall use "religious"
language as well, but when we do, we need to treat it as suspect,
for far too often, clergy and laymen, social clubs as well as
churches use religious language freely, in ways which are neither
interesting nor disturbing to anyone. Casual treatment will make
any language lose its power. The time may be approaching when
we will again recover the power of the great linguistic symbols
of the Church Fathers-words like "sin," and "grace,"
even God, Christ and Holy Spirit. When that happens, they may
once again bind men together in a common unity of understanding.
Until that day comes, every churchman, thoughtful for the renewal
of the Church, must exercise care in their use.

At its best, religious language must always have the quality of
the poetic. Theology is always, in part, the business of weaving
the poetic design of life understanding. Theology can elucidate
and elaborate the linguistic symbols it uses, but it can never
finally define them. Where philosophy would use definition, theological
language shifts rapidly from metaphor to simile to paradox, weaving
all together with a variety of mythical images. In our day, theology
often attempts to sneak through the hollow voices of poetic ghosts.
The words change nothing. So, of course, the best way to spot
a ghost is to see whether men can walk right through it-or whether
they are forced to deal with the image presented.

So our task here is the theological description of life, that
is, the task of drawing together the total of human experience
in relation to the Mystery which lies at its heart. Let us then,
take a journey of consciousness.

PART I

THE MEANING OF CHANGE: 
TRANSITION FROM THE WORLD OF SPACE TO THE WORLD OF TIME

"Revolution"--once it was a word that brought to mind
only images of war and destruction. One can still speak in this
way, of course. But modern hearers are likely to respond indifferently.
Three centuries of revolution have brought revolution in the use
of the word revolution itself: now there are commercial revolutions,
industrial revolutions, American and French Revolutions, intellectual
revolutions, technological revolutions, to say nothing of the
incredible scope of the Russian and Chinese Communist revolutions,
Historians have come to describe these centuries simply as "the
age of revolution." And whether revolution is a good thing
or a bad thing simply depends upon whose revolution it is, yours
or mine.

Scholars have developed many sophisticated schemes for demonstrating
the inter-relatedness of the varying components of culture. In
the end we know that whatever scheme we follow is a matter of
the decisional stance w}1iCh -we assume will best enable us to
grasp the meaning of the present moment. For finally, we are always
re-writing historv9 searching out new bits of factual information
to meet our own changing requirements for self understanding.
With this in mind, we might characterize the development of Western
civilization over the last three centuries in terms of three revolutions.
The 18th Century was the time of the great political revolution.
Here was the development of the nation-state which we take so
much for granted tod2y out of the comparatively chaotic distribution
of power among the feudal baronies. With it came the beginnings
of a large middle class, built upon a foundation of new possibilities
for commercial ventures, whose deepest desire was for political
order and stability in which trade could flourish. The concept
of the stabilization of the balance of power through a system
of shifting political alliances, the development of large armies
financed through the new merchant wealth, worked together to assure
continuance of fixed geopraphica1 boundaries.

Once the fundamental political re-ordering of society has been
achieved the development of the merchant middle class could move
on to enlarge its sphere of influence through the development
of the full-scale economic revolution, the characteristic mark
of the 14th century. The incredibly rapid advance in technology
improved the production of goods to such an extent that it was
now possible for the first time for whole populations to share
in the wealth and resources of the world. In the midst of all
this, Capitalism and Communism emerged, almost as matched opposing
edges on a single thrusting sword piercing into civilization.
Capitalism furnished the momentum behind the further development
or resources and technology, and Communism lent strength to the
need and desire for improved means of distribution of the new
goods and services.

Adjustments in troth the political orders and the economic systems
are still going on, of course, Just as the seeds for political
and economic revolution were planted far back in the Middle Ages.
But the basic patterns in both of these areas of human concern
are relatively fixed in the modern world. Further changes in their
structures will occur, hut when they come they will dc so in response
to cultural demands external to the political and economic structures
themselves, not as the result of the internal pressures of the
system.

That is to say, the 2Oth Century is the century of the great Cultural
Revolution It is the century of the revolution within man himself.
For culture is the expression of man's consciousness of himself
as man. It is the expression of the corporate dimension of the
human spirit without which the individual could not exists without
which human community could not be conceived of. Culture is the
underlying consciousness of the consciousness of reality itself.
We understand culture is transformer, no value remains untouched,
because culture embodies the very meaning of value itself. \7e
understand culture in the sense of being the underlying conception
or image of reality which is the foundation for all the endless
lists of social customs and mores assembled and detailed for us
by the scholars. We must never confuse culture with man's relationship
to the mysterious, unsynonymous power of Being, but in the same
vein, we must never assume that it is anything but its expression. 

Because cultural transformation points to the transformation within
Man himself, it is more difficult to see it for what it is than
it was to perceive and analyze the political and economic activities
of previous centuries. Like the traveler in the tale at the opening
of this essay, mystery is most difficult to perceive when one
lives in its heart. We see great restlessness among nations, among
racial groups, and restlessness in youth which cuts across national
and racial boundaries of every sort. We are somehow dimly aware
that the overt causes of this generalized disturbance are only
partially responsible for its existence, even where they are very
specific as in the racial conflict. Yet we find ourselves constantly
at a loss to put a name to the other sources, though we know the
roots are very deer. All this is simply part of the difficulty
in accurate perception of what is closest to us.

What are the forms of the cultural revolution, and what are its
qualities? We should make clear at the beginning that the cultural
transformation can finally he perceived only as a flow, a dynamic,
directional stream. That is to say, one senses that the revolution
has direction to it, that mankind is not merely in process of
moving from one arbitrary state of being to another, there to
rest until some equally arbitrary power forces another move. That
this is so is a "faith statement." Perhaps most of us
would have presumed it anyway, but it is well to make it Present
to our consciousness. For without such an assumption, life itself
is no more than a blind arbitrary force. In one sense, cultural
transformation is best observed as the flow of a dance, where
what is significant is known only when awareness of individual
components movements gives way to the apparition of form created
by movement. This is a theme to which we shall return later, for
it has many implications for the practical expression of understanding,
as well as for theory.

There are two overlapping paradigms or models we can use in our
effort to describe the 'ongoingness' of the cultural revolution.
One way of dealing with it is to sneak of three 'subordinate'
revolutions, as it were; the urban, the scientific and the secular
revolutions. These in turn correspond to three "modes"
of cultural existence; common style, common sense and the common
mood, or symbolic manifestation of culture. In each case, there
are three corresponding or coalescing manifestations of the same
reality. They are, simultaneously, both cause and effect of each
ether and the whole cultural transformation. We will take care
in describing each of these movements, for they are the foundation
upon which the work of the practical modern churchman must be
built.

When someone sneaks of the "scientific revolution,"
the images which spring to mind are usually those of technological
accomplishment. One thinks of Sputniks, Cape Canaveral, atomic
accelerators and satellite communications. But in the context
of the on-going cultural transformation, it means far, far more.
The scientific revolution has wrought a change in man's most fundamental
perceptions of himself in relation to his universe. In short,
it has brought about a change in "common sense." Technological
improvements are among the most apparent evidences of the new
kind of common sense, but they are not necessarily the most far
reaching. But they do provide a logical starting point for the
discussion.

The significance of technology is that it has enormously extended
the strength, reach, speed and endurance of man's physical powers
and senses. This has been demonstrated most dramatically in the
fields of communication and transportation. Up until a century
ago, human words and thoughts could travel no faster than a man
could travel himself. Now, whether he wills it or not, every individual
is connected with every other individual in the world by a complex
network of electronic passages. Were the necessity clear enough,
any two persons anywhere in the world could be out in contact
with each other in a matter of hours at most. And man's wings
are far swifter, if less efficient than those of any beast of
the air. But what is most amazing to the senior generations is
that neither of these phenomena have power to amaze the young.
They are as much a part of the "natural" world as were
wind and rain for earlier generations. It is almost a cliché
to say that technology has outstripped man's capacity to absorb
it. No one can be aware, for instance, of the fact that two or
three nations in the world could easily feed untold thousands
actually on the brink of starvation if only they would, without
feeling that something is incredibly amiss. Technology has many
other implications, particularly for the urban revolution to which
we must turn shortly.

Once upon a time, everyone 'knew' that the universe was composed
of air and fire, earth and water. If you lived in China about
the same time, you 'knew' that there were five elements, and the
fifth was wood. Now, every school boy 'knows' how "silly"
such a notion really is. There are many "substances"
or "elements" in chemistry of which matter is composed--or
so a "modern" man might have said. But science has pushed
even beyond this, so that the "post-modern" man thinks
of matter in terms of the relationships between units of energy,
and even of the interchangeability of matter and energy. The insight
was that even the most basic Polarity upon which our understanding
of the universe was founded had collapsed when pressed to its
logical extreme. Now, matter is energy, energy is matter, and
new power lies in our understanding of the structure of the relationship
between the two. This insight, at first a technical curiosity,
has been transferred into the cultural wisdom, so that men of
the new age have come to understand the whole of reality in terms
of structured relationships, and no longer in terms of fixed categories.
Man has come to perceive even himself as a bundle of structured
but ever-changing and developing relationships. And that, after
all, is only "common sense."

When Albert Einstein wrote the historic equation e=mc2 it seemed
anything but 'common' sense, even if an astounded world was willing
to grant that it made any kind of sense at all. Yet this too was
founded on the understanding that reality is relationship. This
time, it was the relation between time and space which was being
held up for examination, and e=mc2 was the symbol for its structure.
The theory which gave meaning to the formula was, of course, the
theory of relativity. Few of us could even present to comprehend
the thoughts which it involves. Yet "relativity" and
its semantic variants have passed into our common vocabulary,
and everyone understands that we live in the midst of relativities,
make decisions on the basis of relative goods and bads and act
on the basis of a relative conception of right and wrong. We may
not understand the implications of e = mc2, but everyone understands
perfectly that he lives in a world where there are no more absolutes--because
it is common sense. Even the most rigid moralist struggling desperately
to hold on to outdated religious absolutes knows, perhaps only
at the second level of consciousness, that his everyday affairs
are conducted on the basis of relative values and relative Judgments. 

"Relatively" and "probably" are words that
go together in the common vernacular. This is one more thing we
have learned from the scientific revolution. In the Middle Ages,
when Western Civilization was just beginning to become conscious
of its identity, all the universe was directed by a thing called
"Divine Providence," or "the Will of God."
God's Will was the final answer to every question about why reality
was what it was. When God created everything that had existence,
he created in it also its own telos, its own final end. Every
seed was created with the essence of "freeness" or "flowerness"
built into it from the beginning, and likewise, every man was
created to fulfill his own station, or purpose in life. It was
not until men began to build machines in earnest that the notion
of effective causality came into being. It was only when man became
the machine maker that he came to understand, as matter of common
sense, that everything; in the universe had a cause, that it was
caused by something else' and finally that it became the cause
of something else in turn. Then the universe itself came to be
understood as a vast machine, each part playing its role in causing
the other parts to move. Translated into the realm of history,
effective causality provided the necessary theoretical dynamic
for troth capitalism and communism. The capitalist stood convinced
that if every individual human being worked to achieve his own
personal satisfactions, he would certainly cause the well-being
of the entire social organism. The Communist was certain that
the capitalist exploitation would lead to the revolution of the
masses, which would in turn bring about the dictatorship of the
proletariat. Both had in common the belief, the common sense assumption,
that history was a matter of cause and effect, and that particular
causes necessarily produced particular, predictable effects.

But the scientific revolution of our time has put an end to the
notion of effective causality. Now the man of science makes his
mathematical calculations in terms of probabilities, in terms
of statistical causality. And so does the man on the street, even
though he knows nothing of the sources of his thoughts. Common
sense understands that just as there are no longer absolutes,
there are no longer certainties, but only probabilities.

In this is perhaps the greatest contribution which the scientific
revolution has made in the cultural wisdom. For now Man is free
to shape his own destiny, personally, socially and historically.
He is no longer the victim of divine intention or mechanical necessity.
Man is now a free agent, determining at least to some degree,
his own fate, cut of his own free decision. To the degree that
man was unable to perceive this before, the scientific revolution
has set him free. Not that there are not perceptible historical
and social trends. But historical trends are only ways of talking
about historical probability. Man has now the freedom to shape,
bend and influence the historical trends. The understanding of
that new freedom is perhaps the greatest of the gifts of the scientific
revolution to 20th Century common sense.

Finally, the scientific revolution has taught 20th Century Man
his very method of thought. It has taught us to observe in precise
detail, both the relevant and seemingly irrelevant facts of each
situation. It has taught us to make relative Judgments as to which
data is ne~.es6~ry9 and what is not. It has taught us to weigh
the evidence in each case at the same time being self-consciously
present to the prior sets of values we ,ring to the situation.
And it has taught us to make decisions, and to act upon them,
always aware that what is usually required . red is a relative
decision, not some final, inherently correct, eternally valid
pronouncement. Twentieth Century Man is model-building man planning,
deciding and testing the results of his decisions. What has been
called loosely the "Scientific method" is now almost
as much the methodology of the man on the street as it is that
of the man in the laboratory. Everyman has had his thought conditioned,
that is to say, by relative, relational scientific methodology,
building upon a reality described in terms of statistical probabilities.
Such complexity is the "common sense" of our time.

The new common mood of the era is manifested in the particular
phenomenon we have called the secular revolution." We shall
not be using the word mood in this case, to designate an emotional
state like gaiety or sadness, although there is a relationship
of a sort. Instead it will be pointing to all of these exasperatingly
vague qualities which give a culture its particular 'tone' or
atmosphere. It has to do with the most generalized values of a
culture, its particular 'tone' or atmosphere. Perhaps it can be
illustrated9 although on a very superficial level, by the kinds
of things that an artist designing travel posters will seek to
capture about some nation or some part of the world. Yet this
is hardly an adequate image for we are seeking to describe the
cultural mood of the world in this particular historical period. 

We speak of the secular mood of our time because for the first
time in the memory of man's Journey into civilization, he does
not seek to Justify his actions, his thoughts and even his basic
existence by the Intentionality of some higher being. That the
secular revolution has occurred is the message of the "God
is dead" theologians. And if one is inclined to treat this
development favorably, he says with Dietrich Bonhoeffer that "man
has come of age." At last Man knows that he must act on the
basis of his own authority. At last Man knows that the responsibility
for the condition of the world is his, and that it can really
belong to no one, or to nothing else. The consciousness of the
truth of this is what is meant by the secular mood in which the
Spirit of 20th Century Man has its being.

Relative to the shift of the center of authority, it is the secular
mood which gives 20th Century lien permission to operate within
the common sense of science. Man is now free of what was previously
the literal necessity of searching for eternal systems and patterns,
and consequently he is free to live and act out of the immediate,
temporal plans and models of his own creation. No longer, for
example, is there an ordained prototype of what it means to be
a person, with fixed concerns, patterns of behavior and manners.
Now man determines this for himself, according to the needs of
the life situation. The secular mood of the age has given him
permission to be what he must be according to his own image, or
the socially determined image.

Within the secular mood, there is a new freedom to experience
what was hitherto known through scientific abstraction, that man
is no longer bound to the personalized natural powers of the universe,
to the demons as they were pictured. Powers there are which have
p- influence on human destiny--but they are historical powers.
There are the social powers to whom one has given authority by
one's own free decision, whether it be intellectualism, sexual
urge, nationalism, or any of a thousand other "isms."
Those who have engaged in the absurdity of the "religion
vs. science" controversy are well aware that it was not science
of its own that set man free from the natural demons, although
it was a large part of it. It was the new secular mood which gave
us permission to "know what we know."

The common sense of science and the secular mood linked once again
to give modern man a new awareness, as it were, of the locus of
the meaning of life. In common language we express this by saying
that man no longer looks up to find God or heaven, nor down to
seek demons or hell. Instead we speak of "the heart of the
matter" the "depth experience', the ''core of meaning."
If Cod at the "edge" of the universe has died, then
God at the center of the universe, in the midst of daily life,
in the midst of life routine, is being born anew. The religious
mood reached out to find meaning. The secular mood penetrates.
Understanding comes as one is about the business of earning a
wage tending a garden, building a home. To reach beyond9 in the
secular mood, is to guarantee a miss.

The secular revolution has announced that this is the time when
men can and must deal with life experience itself, on the most
practical functional plane. The day of the religious mood, the
days of dealing with ideas about life have gone.

The "urban revolution" of the 20th Century is far more
than the mere massing of great numbers of people within relatively
smal1 and confined areas of the surface of planet earth. Men have
lived in cities for thousands of years. They were always functional
and important, serving as centers of trade or as seats of power,
complete with military garrison. They were much smaller
then, of course, but cities still. By "urban revolution"
we mean the fundamental transformation which has occurred in human
life style. It is through the new urban life style that the common
sense of science and the secular mood of our age have come together.
Cities9 and the metropolitan and megalopolitan centers we know,
would be impossible but for technological advancement, simply
for mechanical reasons. Nor could the great numbers of people
survive such close proximity, had there not been a change in mood
and value structure. It is in the new urban life style that the
dimensions of the whole cultural revolution become evident.

Cities require the extension of human perceptions and powers given
by technology in order to exist. Villages and towns are adjusted
to the human biological scale; that is, all human needs can be
met within easy reach of a man's arms and legs. Re could walk
or ride an animal to obtain food, shelter, clothing, employment
and the satisfaction of his social needs. But large numbers of
people require specialization and higher levels of efficiency
in production and distribution. Specialized functions tend to
concentrate in special localities, and the number of functions
available tend to multiply and spread over a very wide area. Were
it not for the technology of high-speed transportation and communication,
excessive time would be consumed merely in traveling to and from
the different areas of specialization, and servicing the larger
population, bringing goods and services to them, would be impossible.
Obviously, with rail, road and electrical cable as the extension
of man's reach and senses, the size limits a city can expand are
enormously increased. Nor could our cities of today be possible
if it were not for the extension of man's vertical reach through
the technology of architectural engineering. It seems almost absurd
when he realizes that the cores of the metropolitan centers of
the world could hardly exist at all were it not for something
so mundane as a high-speed elevator. The new urban life style
both permits and requires scientific technology.

The frantic, frenetic pace which characterizes the urban life
style is more than a reflection of the synchronization of human
rhythm and mechanical rhythm. That automobiles, assembly lines
and railroad schedules often seem to control man nearly to the
extent that man controls his machines is a kind of partial insight
that has tended to obscure the major issue which lies just behind
it. The transition from rural life to urban life has, in fact,
wrought a change in man's very perception of time and space. The
quality of perception has altered, as well as the relative valuation
most readily perceived.

Rural man was linked to the natural rhythms of the seasons and
climate, and these pervaded his being. Whether he was aware of
it self-consciously or not, he tended to perceive time in cycles.
The world repeated itself, dying each Winter and being renewed
each Spring. Time was a given thing, over which a man had little
or no control. But space was different. Space was the source of
power and wealth. Given opportunity and strength, a man could
change the amount of space he controlled, and his status among
other men depended more on this one factor than upon any other.
Just as it was with individuals, whole peoples were judged strong
or weak, depending upon the amount of space they could control. 

For the new urban man, the case is reversed. Tine is what is most
important as the source of power and wealth It was not that anyone
could extend the length of his life, but time, measured in man-hours
of labor, productivity per day or week, and tine measured in miles
per hour, could be controlled. In an urban setting, it is the
administrator, whether in government or private business or industry
who has the greatest status9 for he is the one who knows how to
make the best use of time. For the urban man, space is usually
the limited given factor, least subject to manipulation. In fact,
land, space, not held in direct productive use, tends to be a
liability and not an asset.

The internal, or psychological, space within which a man lives
is also strikingly different depending upon whether he is oriented
to rural life or the urban setting. Rural man has to be defensive
about the space he controlled' or it would be taken from him.
He was continually bound to his space. Hence his view of the world
tended to be somewhat narrow, confined primarily to his kinship
group in association, and the lands of his own people in geography.
But the modern urban man, physically cramped and restricted9 is
tied in many, many ways to the whole civilized world. It is in
terms of time, which he is most able to control that he feels
pinched. But agricultural time rolled on and on and on.

The changed value in the perception of time-space has left a deep
mark on the quality of inter-personal relationships, as well.
We have already said that the kinship and family groups provided
the effective limit to the interpersonal associations of the rural
man, and that for urban man, these are determined by professional
association. Everyone knows that in a city, physical proximity
gives no claim to the title 'neighbor.' When professional associations
are linked around the world, geography loses its power, even as
a psychological barrier. And geographical mobility, characteristic
of urban man, nearly always has its analogue in social mobility.
In sum, the time-space value shift has meant an increasing number
of secondary, or functional social relationships for urban man,
fewer and fewer intimate relationships. Cramped physical space
and the need to defend privacy against onslaughts from every corner
have given urban man the 'coolness' so often taken for a hard
shell.

There are many other dimensions to the question of the inter-relationship
of time and space which we have left unexplored. But simply from
what has been said it should be clear that it would be no easy
matter to determine whether it was the new 'common sense' of science
which created the urban revolution through Albert Einstein's theory
of relativity, or whether it was the 20th Century urban style
which made the theory of relativity a possibility for human thought.
Such questions are only speculation, but it does underscore the
interdependence of the various facets of the general Cultural
Revolution of which we have been speaking. The theological implications
of this transformation we shall return to shortly.

"Secular" and "city" are two words which have
gone together long, long before they were made the title of a
book. In fact, the distrust which rural people have always held
for the city dweller, the "city - slicker," has often
been built upon a kind of tacit assumption that they were synonymous.
All of which is to say that the urban revolution and the secular
revolution took root and matured together. But what is most significant
is that it is the move from the religious to the secular "mood"
of the United States that has made it possible for the first time
in human history to regard urban life and style as a normative
form of human life. Just as the secular revolution had the effect
of giving permission for the development of the common sense of
science, so also it has given "permission" to the existence
and growth of cities and the urban style of life.

To illustrate, let us look briefly at the mythology which has
dealt with the city. For the mood of a culture is often best expressed
through its mythology and symbolism. Almost since the beginning,
of written history, folk story and ballad have depicted the city
as the very abode of evil. The Biblical account of the adventures
of the Prodigal Son is only one example of how it was that young
men who made their way to the city to seek their fortune ended
in corruption and debauchery. Even when the Patriarch Joseph was
successful in winning wealth and fame in the cities of Egypt,
it finn11y ended in the enslavement of the people of Israel. Only
Kings and nobles could tolerate the life of the city out of necessity,
and this they did by extending their simulated gardens as far
out around the walls of the palace as possible. Even in the great
age of the Greek city-states, the polls itself was composed of
a relatively small elite group of nobles who had as little
to do with the 'masses' who inhabited the city as possible. Strength
came from the countryside. Saul and David, the great Hebrew Kings
who brought Israel to the height of its power were country lads.
It was the city-bred son of David named Solomon who began the
downward trend through his excessive spending, and his pre-occupation
with the material evidences of power. Despite the contempt of
the citified scribes and Pharisees, it was not an accident that
the outlying" province of Galilee was claimed as Jesus' birthplace.
It was to the city, Jerusalem, that he went to die. Illustrations
could be multiplied by the thousands. Rural, reliPiou6 man's suspicion
and even hatred of the city is seated deeply in the collective
memory. He might travel to the city to use it or exploit it, but
the story was never completed until he had returned "home"
to his rural town nestled in field, forest or mountain side.

Only in recent years have we begun to see serious evidences of
a new mythology depicting the new urban-secular mood. Film producers
in 11ollywood and London, Tokyo and Bombay have finally allowed
heroes and heroines to come into being whose qualities are unmistakably
those of the urbanized 20th Century. In this if nothing more,
James Bond, agent 007 of the Ian Flemming novels is unique in
that he is typical of a comparatively new kind of folk mythology.
But there is a long way to go before such a mythology has reached
the kind of maturity necessary to capture the secular urban reality. 

Scientific-secular-urban Man is thus a new historical phenomenon.
He lives his complex life like a character in a speeded-up cinema
story, making relative and ambiguous decisions every moment of
his life. The world of the Cultural Revolution is his world. What
shall be his - our- stance toward this new world, this new life? 
PART II 
A WORD IN THE WORLD

"It is in changing the world that we can come to know it,"
said Sartre. Stating the same thing in religious poetry, "It
is in loving Cod that we come to know God." And yet again,
"It is in the full living of life that one comes to know
about life." In what follows, we intend to explore the relationship
of 20th Century man to the ongoing activity which we have discussed
under the category of the Cultural Revolution. Or, perhaps we
should say that we intend to explore man's relation to the mysterious
'Thereness' which lies at the center of his new world whatever
may be the words we use, it is in the midst of that relationship
that we again discover the meaning of Mystery, and in which we
again begin to have a sense for the meaning of Power, as The Power.
It is not our concern to raise up abstract theological issues.
We are concerned only with the stance of 20th Century Man as he
struggles to come to terms with what is actually happening to
him. If it is understood that this is the only place where Man
is confronted with God, then finally, theology simply cannot be
abstract. With this as our context, humanity in this age stands
on the verge of religious recovery more significant than any event
since the First Century of the common era.

It is clear that this human event of the 2Oth Century, has been
a painful thing. There is significance in the insight that when
Man meets God face to face, the consequence is death. For "old
mood" man with his feet still planted in the rural soil,
his mind still searching for eternal truth in a world where good
inevitably must prevail over evil, the multiple revolution brought
the experience of the void, the abyss. He sought explanation for
what was happening to himself and his world, and he found only
the utter emptiness of being. He saw the First and then the Second
World War, and he knew that the values of good and evil, right
and wrong, were simply gone. He saw the explosion of the atomic
bomb, and he saw the transciency of the world itself. He saw and
heard of the deaths of millions, and he knew that it was his own
death as well. He saw the swollen slums of the city, and he saw
nature violated and destroyed. He looked at life, and he saw that
the only certainty was the six foot hole into which he would be
lowered at the end of it. For the man of the old mood, the 20th
Century was the century when all things passed into nothing. There
was nothing left, nothing left...

The only escape was flight, the only hope was to hide. This was
done in the early part of the century with marvelous ingenuity.
The best way, of course, was just to go on with business as usual.
Keep the family together. At all costs, keep the family together.
Go into business. Gain power. Make money. Business as usual. Nothing
has happened. Business as usual. But always the question was just
below the surface: Who am I? How did I get here? Why am I here?" 

But the questions would not stay hidden beneath the surface. Perhaps
it was the students of the world who finally brought them out
into the open. In the United States, they found expression in
a great fascination with psychology. Every lecturer or writer
who had something to say on the question of the meaning of personal
identity had almost automatically made both his fame and fortune.
But even in this, especially in this, there were no answers. The
fascination of psychology turned into just one more faddish obsession.
It became only one more way of hiding, from reality by dealing
with peripheral questions to avoid the critical fact that human
life in the new would could never again be secure or certain in
any way.

The new mood, the secular mood, of which we have already spoken
really came fully into being only in the 50s. It may have been
the event of the the Russian Sputnick which signaled it. The vision
of that "thing" out there hurtling around the earth
at man's behest under man's control was enough to spark the realization
that opportunity and possibility were everywhere From the void
of futility and non being we passed into the overwhelming experience
of life and world and self as the very fullness of Being. It was
the North Carolina author Thomas Wolfe wrote that his life's desire
was to ride every train fly in every plane, speak with every man,
sleep in every bed, but he spoke the new fresh desire of every
20th century man.

But if the experience of the passing of all the old values was
a jolt in the corporate life of humanity the transition into the
world of fullness and infinite possibility was no less so. The
new possibilities of the urban scientific secular world were crushing
in the insistence of their demand to grasp every moment and wring
it dry of every instant. Decide, decide at every turn a new decision
was required. No longer could one trust others to make the decisions
on his behalf. Every man had his own life on his hands. With his
new awareness of time, he felt it slipping away from him with
each tick of the clock, as though it were so many grains from
a handful of sand, passing through sticky fingers. The crucial
question of life was no longer Who am I? There was no time to
ask that. The only question we could ask was What do I? What shall
I do? Life was as it were going down the "drain of history"
squeezed down into it by the sheer weight of the future, No longer
was there any escape through hiding save only for the very naive.
2Oth Century man was lucid self conscious man as the world had
never known before. But he could still escape through floating
high above the level of practical reality, like a child's runaway
balloon. He could still allow himself to postpone decisions endlessly
until I am older, until I am out of school, until I have married,
until I have achieved status in my profession, until my children
are grown until, until, until… But always he knew on the
periphery of his consciousness that the responsibility for the
state of the world was his alone just as it belonged to every
other man alone. And he knew that every refusal to decide about
his life was in fact a decision against life itself. For every
refusal to decide is of course itself a decision not to decide.
The absolutes of heaven and hell have gone and the 20th Century man finds himself with nothing less than the world on
his hands. But still he can refuse to grasp it. Perhaps, he says,
I will deal with that little matter tomorrow.

It is here that everyone of us finds himself for the journey from
the old mood into the new mood is the journey of every one of
us. We are all aware of the world and the time in which we live.
But we are all weary of the burden of constant decision. And we
are weary of the shiny new technological wonders which surround
us and we are weary of exercising the new powers they have given
us. We hunger once again to perceive Mystery but we are weary
so very weary. With D. H. Lawrence we can say 

I was so weary of the world, 
I was so sick of it, 
everything was tainted with myself, 
skies, trees, flowers, birds, water, 
people, houses, streets, vehicles, machines, 
nations, armies, war, peace-talking, 
work, recreation, governing. anarchy. . ." 
From Selected Poems, D. H. Lawrence. 
New York: 1967 the Viking Press.

Such is the life of 20th Century man in the words of the poet. 

This condition of weariness, this state of being which springs
from our own refusal or inability to deal with any reality but
that of our own creation' has a name. One hesitates to use it,
because it is a word which has been grossly misused, since we
have forgotten that religious language is poetic language, but
it has no adequate substitutes. The name is sin. The theologian
Paul Tillich speaks of sin as the separation of man from himself,
from his neighbor and from the Ground of Being, from Cod. Because
man is in this condition of separation, he shows it in particular
actions, just as a man who is in the comparatively simple emotional
state of happiness will show that he is happy by the way he acts.
But we must never make the mistake that many have made of assuming
that sin is identical with the actions of one sort or another,
which man in the state of sin, will perform. To be in the condition
of sin is to be in the condition of one who is an outcast in the
universe. The things he may do are only signs pointing to that
fact

20th Century Man is in the condition of sin, because he experiences
himself, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, as one who does
not belong to the new age. And the awareness of being an outcast
comes at the very moment when man has come to realize that he
alone is responsible for creating the world in which he is an
alien. We are not suggesting that sin is unique to the 20th Century,
but certainly each new age of history has manifested its own characteristic
quality of sin. The Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard spoke
for those who followed many, many years after him when he described
the condition of man as that of despair. And perhaps we are even
closer to the truth when we borrow from the wisdom of the Eastern
world describing Sin in the 20th Century as the condition of life
lived in illusion. For perhaps the mark of sin in our own time
is our infinite inventiveness in fabricating worlds which have
no reality, in order to escape the real world. In the area of
foreign policy, certainly it is clear to all that the United States
of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics share a
common ability to disguise exploitation in the garb of foreign
aid, and aggressive interference as protective policing. Nor have
other nations of the world been slow in developing the
tactic. Within nations, there is no end to the fabrications used
to justify the suppression of minority or underprivileged groups.
And on the individual level, there has been no end of commentary
on the capacity of the commercial advertisers to exploit private
dreams nod illusions for economic advantage. These are only a
few very superficial examples of course, but they make the point
that in the 20th Century, in its own peculiarly ingenious way,
"Sin abounds."

"Moreover the law entered, that the offense might abound.
But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound," said
the Apostle Paul.*(Romans 5:20).

In the context of the new age, this statement increases in its
power. The Christ event is that which occurs at the moment an
i1lusion is shattered. It is that which brings to light the half-conscious
sense of despair so that we can see it for the refusal of life
that it is. It is the moment when the pap separating man from
neighbor is seen for the chasm it really is. It can be experienced
as an explosion in the unconscious depths of the human Spirit,
or it strikes as a flash of light. Always it is that which brings
utter clarity where vagueness and confusion once reigned. It is
the event which brings consciousness beyond consciousness of utter
reality. The Christ event is never finally describable or definable,
yet it is always recognizable for what it is. It can come as the
address from a friend, an enemy or be simply the consequence of
a routine daily event which strikes us in an unusual way.

Always the Christ event comes as an intrusion. Always it brings
pain because it shatters illusions. And illusions are precisely
those false realities which we contrive in order to protect us
from pain. No man admits to his particular blindnesses or provincialisms
lightly, any more than a nation readily admits to error in matters
of national policy. The intrusive, offensive quality is a mark
of the Christ event as smoke is a mark of fire. And the inevitable
first response to it is a defense. The Christ event is that which
throws a man or a community or a nation against the limits of
life, and it demands a decision in response. He is compelled either
to change the direction of his life, or find a method of doing
away with the intruder. The Christ event is the illusion-shattering
intrusion which demands of every man that he receive and come
to terms with his very humanness. This is the universal experience
of the meeting between Man and God. And always the address is
the same. It goes only one way, and God says, "This is the
universe you live in. Either you decide to live in it, or you
don't. But there is no more hiding." That is always the universal
Christ word.

Always and everywhere, the Christ Word is the same Word. It speaks
of the utter, unconditional, total acceptance of all that has
existed, past, present, and future. Paul Tillich gave an entire
sermon entitled "You Are Accepted." But he could have
read only the title from the pulpit before sitting, down, and
in principle, it would have been sufficient. The Christ Word "You
are Accepted," is the Word addressed to nothing less than
the sum total of existence in universal time and universal space. 

How could a Word of universal acceptance carry an offense? How
would we in our day talk about the "Offense of the Gospel?"
Perhaps we must talk of four dimensions of the Christ word. To
say that all is accepted of God is to say that all of the past
is received. To one who thinks in psychological categories, this
comes rather easily, even glibly. Cheap, home-grown psychology
is always telling us that our past is forgiven. Martin Luther's
confessor told the frantic, fanatically self-depreciating young
theological student, perhaps in a moment of exasperation, that
he ought to go and murder his father. Then he would know what
it meant to have one's past forgiven by God' For many today, the
shock is no less severe when we awaken at 20, 30, 50 years of
age, possessed by the question, 'Now just what was it that I have
done to justify my existence over these many years?" Then
an inner voice from the depths of Being comes to us and says "You
have done NQTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING --- but here you are, sustained
in life by the same Power which sustains the stones of the Earth
itself." Then we know that the past has truly been received. 

The offense of the Word is even more brutal when we look at the
historical world of Man, and hear its acceptance pronounced. Then
we are compelled to think of 6,000,000 murdered Jews during World
War II, 1000 children who died of starvation 'yesterday,' 6000
courageous young soldiers who died fighting for national independence
six months ago. The word which pronounces that past as received
is an offense! But there it is in history, undeniable, irreversible
- eternally received into history.

Is the Word easier to bear if we say that all the present is approved?
Is it easier to say that all pain and suffering, all physical
and psychological warpedness, all ugliness and rotting filth,
as well as n11 those things we personally appreciate, is precisely
what is approved by the Word of God?

When we say that all that is, is good, then we are saying that
the reality of the universe that we know is, at once, God's Will
and God's Judgment. All of history is God's Intention and God's
unqualified Demand upon us for the future. It is in the demand
of Life, where the past and the future are one, that we finally
Perceive God's Judgment. It is when the temporal and the eternal
are united in the very present moment that we are able to perceive
that the judgment of history and the Eternal Judgment of God are
paradoxically utterly different, yet more profoundly, utterly
the same. To say that all that is, is good, is no one's personal
valuation of the life situation as we find it. It is the stance
which we daringly assume in making God's will our own will.

From that stance we are then able to pronounce the Word of universal
acceptance in its forth dimension, saying that all the future
is open. In a peculiar way, it is this aspect of the Word which
is most obvious, yet most offensive. It is most obvious because
we are aware that we are constantly moving toward the future.
Yet it is the future which threatens us at the depth of our being,,
and only the unself-conscious man of illusion faces it without
awe and dread. To be able to receive the Word of God that not
only all that I will do in the future, but even my own personal
death is finally approved by God, is finally to be an utterly
free man. It is the freedom which God gives. In the past, we have
spoken of this poetically as eterna1 life. For to experience the
future, utterly unafraid, as being utterly open, is to experience
eternity focused upon the present moment, perhaps as the rays
of the Sun are focused by the power of a magnifying glass, It
was only When 20th Century Man, becoming too scientifically literal
about his religious poetry, came to think of eternal life as some
kind of "life after death," that this whole aspect of
the Word of God was lost to his understanding. And when the image
of the eternal as focused upon the Present moment is lost, so
also has the whole power of the Word of God been lost.

Thus we can say that the Word of God is the word of universal
acceptance. All the past has been received. The present is utterly
what it is intended it should be. Absolutely all that is, is good.
And the future is open. All that we have said so far has presumed
the Word of God. All that follows must be built upon it. The Christ
Word is always the contentless Word, which means that it does
not prescribe, in any way, who is to do what and when. It is the
Word which exposes reality for what it is, and compels the hearer
of the Word to make a decision about his own life. For one who
has heard the Word, there is never any question about its truth.
It is his own life that is called into question by the Word, and
never the other way around.

The Church, in the early years of Her life, found a much shorter,
a much more powerful way of announcing the Christ Word than all
of this. She said, simply, Jesus Christ is Lord." That wasn't
a statement of fact in the sense that "the sky is blue"
is a statement of fact. It was a confession of faith, and probably
the earliest confession the Church made. "Jesus Christ is
Lord" is a kind of code statement, something like the Einsteinian
mathematical formula E = mc2. Everyone who was part of the church
knew exactly what that special poetic formula meant, because they
shared the common code.

But if someone from outside the Church came in and asked what
in the world anyone meant with "Jesus Christ is Lord,"
they had an answer. It wasn't the kind of answer we would give,
of course, in which we would define all the words, give a description
and then an analysis of what was going on, and then tie it all
together in a conclusion. Instead, the members of the early Church
just told a story, which was THE story of their lives. It is as
though a citizen of India was asked how it came about that India
was an independent nation. He might respond by telling a story
about a man eared Gandhi, around whose life such and such a series
of events took place. And then he would conclude, ". . .and
before that, we were no nation, and after that, we were a nation."
And because he was a citizen of India, that story would also be
his own life story. So it was with the Church. Before "Jesus
Christ is Lord," there was no Church, and afterwards, there
was. The story about Jesus of Nazareth was the story the Church
told in order to 8ay who She really was. It was something like
"before I was blind, now I can see," or "once I
was lame, now I can walk,' or "once I was dumb, now I can
speak.; Except that it was a little more like, "Once we were
no people, but now we are a people."

The story they told used two symbols, primarily. One was a cross,
and the other was the empty tomb. Then they put these together
with the activity of a man named Jesus, it meant simply "to
die is to live." It meant that whenever one is willing to
surrender all his illusions about life supposedly being pleasant,
or easy, or absolute or certain, and when he finds that when he
can do thathe can go on living, even in the midst of that,
then he says "Jesus Christ 1s Lord." The cross up an
which the man named Jesus died, and the empty tomb, the symbol
of his creative life after having given up all illusions, are
pointing to the twin reality of death and renewed life. It is
important, not just because it is the story of a man named Jesus,
but because it is the story every man knows to be true, if only
he be conscious of reality as it is. It is not simply the story
of a Nazarene carpenter. but the story of every kind and
condition of men. This is why the Christ Word in the Christ Story
is the universal Word. It is important not because it was written
in the Bible, but because it describes the experience of life. 

The affirmation "Jesus Christ is Lord," is the formula
which pushes us to make decisions about life, just where we are
and how we are. It is never a word which tells us how to avoid
doubts, uncertainties or problems, but the Word which tells us
to embrace all of them. For life itself is found in the midst
of making decisions about life, and the only certainties are the
certainties one has decided upon. Finally, all decisions resolve
themselves into one decision, which is the decision to die. All
that one has is the chance for one glorious, victorious death,
and it is that which we must embrace before life comes into its
own. It is in the way in which each of us chooses to embrace
death that the code phrase "Jesus Christ is Lord" becomes
the code for our own life story - and becomes something like "Jesus
Christ is Lord, John," or "Jesus Christ is Lord, George."
or "Jesus Christ is Lord, Sam." In the process of embracing
our deaths, of laying down our lives with purpose, for the sake
of humanity, each man picks up the role of the Christian. It is
the role of the utterly free man, and in what follows, we intend
to explore how this might look. 
PART III 
FREEDOM AS THE STYLE OF THE CHRISTIAN

The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke about the
quality of the freedom of the resurrected man, the man who has
decided to give his death purposefully, in a few brief sentences
which have already become part of the classical literature of
the Church. He used just three critical concepts: freedom, obedience
andresponsibility.

"Responsibility and freedom are corresponding concepts. Factually,
though not chronologically, responsibility presupposes freedom
and freedom can consist only in responsibility. Responsibility
is the freedom of men which is given only in the obligation to
God and to our neighbor."*

*Ethics, ed., The Macmillan Company; New York 1961. p. 216f

The free man, the Christ-man of the 20th Century is thus the man
who is able to live in the perpetual tension between obedience
and freedom. He is 100,'. obedient, for he lives, with every other
man in the "no exit" situation which is history. He
is perpetually bound up in the network of interpersonal relationships
and the maze of routine daily living which are the substance of
the human condition. Yet he is 100% free in that he knows that
every decision he makes, every act which he performs in his life,
is utterly his own, for which he is ultimately accountable to
no individual human agent. The free Christ-man never permits his
thoughts or his actions to collapse either whollyon the
side of obedience, nor wholly on the side of irresponsible freedom. 

A second tension within which the free Christ-man of the 20th
Century lives is that between the universal dimension of human
existence, on the one hand and the dimension of particularity,
on the other. For a man's obligation to God is actualized as man's
responsibility to the entire existing universe9 understood as
though it were the stage for the unfolding of the vast drama which
is human history. For it is here that the Creator God shows himself
as who he is. And always the responsible man is making his decision
about the drama of humanity in the way in which he makes his decisions
about his neighbor, his fellow men, in every immediate situation.
Like the tension between obec1ience and freedom, the tension between
the universal and the particular is never a matter of a 50-50
relationship. The free Christ-man's decisions and actions are
always made 100% within the confines of the particular life situation
which ishis own, and 100% responsive to the universal
historical demand.

It has been said that "The greater the tension a man can
tolerate, the greater the man." The free Christ-man of the
2Oth Century is the man who knows this to be true to the nature
of human life. For life is struggle, end to be a free, living
man, at "peace" with life is to be a man who is at one
with the rhythm of that struggle. Tobe out of harmony
with the struggle is to be dead beyond hope of resurrection.

It is out of his lucid awareness that the world is a world of
struggle that the free man of the Christ life is released from
illusions about himself, about other people, and about the world
he lives in. He is no longer concerned with the multiple levels
of his psychic processes, his psychic and moral ailments which
many of us find so fascinating in ourselves. For it is only the
well-being of the human race itself which can give us a perspective
upon ourselves and our personal concerns in a way which no amountof individually directed psychological therapy could hope
to accomplish. Nor is he particularly shocked by the strange,
variant perversions of others. Because he is aware of the nature
of his own being, he is aware that every human being is fundamentally
out to escape the reality which is life. He knows that every illusion,
no matter how subtle or how bazaar has only this one object of
flight from the one God of historical reality. The free man is
fully conscious of the problems of the world, from population
explosion to the excessive exploitation of natural resources,
and since this is precisely the world that God loves, he neither
flinches nor hides.

The free Christ-man is never under compulsion to reduce the dimensions
of the world he lives in, in order to cope with it, Knowing that
the world is finally God's world, he does not find it necessary
to expend his mental and emotional reserves in continuous calculations
of what is good and what is bad, of what is threatening to his
own life and what is not. He moves from situation to situation
with his nerves exposed, seeing what he sees, knowing what he
knows, deciding and acting as the particular situation demands,
He is the man capable of action where the unfree man dares not
tread, for he has not reduced the world of his consciousness to
the safe dimensions of his life, his children, and the pet dog. Because he was sensitive in an immediate way where other men
had closed their eyes, Mahatma Gandhi changed history when he
decided to fast until the members of his government brought him
an "untouchable" - by the hand. Each and every moment
of the free man is valued for the unique, unrepeatable event that
it is, and he savors it to the depths. And in the midst of this
depth involvement, the free Christman is the one who is utterly
detached, able to assume any role required of him in order to
move his brother and his neighbor toward the universal humanity
in which he finds his meaning and his roots. He isthe
lover of every moment, the actor of every role required by history,
and the conqueror in the midst of every situation - because
his life is always on the line, and he needs to conserve nothing.
And finally, the free Christman is willing to live with the consequences
of every act, because he renders his every deed to the Judgment
of Cod. He is the responsible man living on behalf of all that
was, all that is, and all that ever shall be, knowing that the
God of history is the only arbiter who can grant him vindication. 

Freedom is the gift and the consequence of the address of the
Word in history. Whenever it is spoken to an individual person
and received by him, he is transformed. Whenever it is spoken
to history in the midst of an historical setting, history is changed.
It is no magical transformation but the kind of thing which is
meant in the paradoxical statement, "Everything is changed,
but nothing is different." The Word is that which inspires
awe and dread simply through granting the insight into human consciousness-of-consciousness
that every man has permission to be precisely what he already
is--a free man, responsible in his own particular situation for
universal existence.

PART IV 
THE CORPORATE STRUCTURE OF THE CHRIST LIFE

We are now ready to return to the starting point of our discussion,
the world in the midst of multiple revolutions. But if we are
among those who have heard the Word of Life, perhaps we return
to our starting point with a new kind of sensitivity to the Mystery
which abounds in its midst, to which we have been blind by its
sheer proximity. It may be that here we shall see that we are
once again on the great journey which we never left. In this section,
we shall be talking about the church, its manifestations and the
'methodology" of the practical churchman.

D. H. Lawrence spoke to the heart of every man receptive to the
gift of divine Grace when he wrote the following lines so expressive
of Man's hunger after the Divine Not-Man:

"Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me! 
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time. 
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me! 
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift! 
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed 
By the fine, fine wind 
that takes its course through the chaos of the world 
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted; 
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge 
Driven by invisible blows, 
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall 
find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul, 
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head, 
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression."

How is it that a man, a group of men, can become like "an
exquisite chisel", "driven by invisible blows"
in the task of shaping history? Of course, everything that has
been said up until now presupposes the existence of the corporate
social entity which is the Church. It has been the Church that
has recognized the presence of the Word in History as the judgment,
and it was the Church who perceived that the prospects and possibilities
for the future rested solely on the appropriation of the judgment.
The history of the Church has been a series of fiery eruptions,
each one culminating in a major change in the social landscape.
After each such eruption it let loose a seething burst of creative
energy in every field of human endeavor, and each time it cooled
into rigid crystalline structures. In the 10th Century,
we are witnessing another eruption, corresponding to the social
cultural revolution that has been described. It is only the obvious
consequence of the Christological Word that "to die is to
life" that this renewal should come at a time when all but
a few rigid "die-hards" and a few faithful students
of the Word had ceased to look to the Church for anything more
than pious mouthings of tarnished poetic images. Nevertheless,
we are in such an age of renewal. Perhaps we can date it from
1917, the year Karl Barth published his commentary on Paul's Epistle
to the Romans. From that time on, it was possible once again to
understand that the Church was about the business of transmitting
life through Word and Deed. Now, in the years since 1950, it is
reasonably clear that the theological task has been completed,
and we have moved into the phase of practical implementation of
those theological insights in tangible, visible social forms.
We, are in the 50th year of the renewal of the Church and we are
on1y beginning the practical task of creative building. How young
we are, measured against the perspective on time held by our Christ-men
forefathers.

Interpreted from the vantage point of practice, the initial 'retooling'
phase of the renewal of the Church in every age has been concerned
to find that new set of basic images, or mental pictures, which
would allow the great numbers of people to see themselves ascreative agents in the process of social restructuring. Each
image was correlated to the task the Church had to perform in
that era. In the early centuries of Her life, the task was that
of gaining clarity on the meaning and implications of The Word
about life. It was evident to all, both inside the Church and
out, that that Word would bring an end to the power of Roman civilization,
so the basic image was of the community living before the temporal
limits, before the end of time itself. The early church was the
eschatological community. When, so to speak, the end of time did
come for Western Civilization at the collapse of the Roman Empire,
the Church turned up as the only social agency with any power
and organization whatever. It became clear that if culture was
to be maintained, if there was to be any renewal of civilized
order, it was the Church who would have to do it. So the image
became that of the Church as super-agency, welding all the varied
elements of human life together into one firm structure. In their
turn, the reformers, at first Protestant and later, Catholic as
well, cut through the medieval perversions with the image of the
priestly-prophetic community. The wreckage of the historic Church
we often see around us is but the consequence of the perversions
of the reformers great insights. Where once we defended doctrine
as a way of defending the very humanity of mankind, we are now
often caught in the role of defending doctrine for the sake of
preserving our own sense of certainty in the face of evident social
upheaval. I'm are often caught in institutionalism, socalled
not because the Church does not need structures in order to operate,
but because we defend structures for the sake of defending church
structures upon which personal security depends. An we find ourselves
enmeshed in 'communityism', where the fellowship of the work-gang
has degenerated into the fellowship of the anxious and soul-weary.
When group therapy becomes the most 'popular' activity in which
the Church is engaged it is a certain sign that the role of the
Prophetic community, from which our current understanding of Christian
fellowship sprang, has reached the end of the road.

The new image of the Church in our time is that she is mission.
This does not merely mean that she embodies mission as one part
of her being, but that She is Herself the very embodiment of mission.
It is a living theological statement of the cultural fact that
it is no longer possible to separate corporate or private identity
from vocation. To state once again what has already been said
in many ways, in a slightly different way the mission of the Church
in the 20th Century is to serve as a kind of corporate social
entrepreneur, perpetually searching out new possibi1lties for
the Investment of its living capitol. Like the entrepreneur, she
changes the social structures she touches, not simply by building
new ones, although she may do that too, not merely by tearing
down old structures and replacing them, but by transforming them,
revivifying them from the inside out. Like the entrepreneur, she
builds her plans never feeling certain as to what the outcome
of the venture will be. Like the Fathers of the Church, she shares
the vision of something which might be described as "full
humanity" forall men, but, again like the Fathers
of the Church, she trusts in the Lord of Life to make clear precisely
what that will be as she builds her role in the vast human evolutionary
drama. She participates fully in the cultural revolution with
human evolution as her context.

The time is passing when the dominant cultural image of the Church
member is that of the grumpy little old lady--of either sex. Perhaps
the vision of the solitary man of faith surrendering his individuality
for the sake of mankind has best been described by Nikos Kazantzakis,
the poet-theologian: 
"Love danger. What is most difficult? That is what I want'
Which road should you take? The most craggy ascent! It is the
one I (God) also will take: follow me' 
Learn to obey. Only he who obeys a rhythm superior to his 
own is free. 
Learn to command. Only he who can give commands may represent 
me here on earth. 
Love responsibility. Say: It is my duty, and nine alone, to 
save the earth. If it is not saved, then I alone am to 
blame. 
Love each man according to his contribution in the struggle. 
Do not seek friends; seek comrades-in-arms." 
(The Saviors of God Spiritua1 Exercises, trans. Kimon Friar. Simon
and Schuster: New York. 1960).

The solitary churchman is bound to others of his community in
the shared knowledge of his utter aloneness. He knows that no
man can help another to die. He knows that every man's decision
about his life is his own. He knows that to stand as the one who
is willing to assume responsibility for the future of mankind
in the course of history is a dangerous thing. Nor is the danger
exclusively from small men ready to fight when the walls around
their tiny self-made worlds are threatened. For the God of Life
who makes his presence felt in the Old and New Testament documents
of the Church seemed often to be even harsher in His Judgments
upon those who loved him than upon those who hardly knew His Name.
Those belonging to the community of the solitaries are never even
permitted the securities or the certainties of home and community
granted to his neighbors. For his business is that of calling
into question all of the old righteousnesses, complacencies. His
anxiety is perpetual, His task is perpetual, for there are always
those falling out of even the relative structures of right and
wrong that he and his comrades are able to build. Of men such
as this, the Church of the future must be built.

Just as the decisions of individual men must retain the polarity
between the universal-comprehensive and the local-particular,
so must the disciplined body of the Church hold the tension in
its missional service between 'witnessing-love' and 'justing-love.'
The Word and the Deed can never be collapsed into each other,
nor can they ever be separated. What is especially clear in our
time is that neither expression of the Divine Love can be understood
in the Romantic terms of by-gone centuries of history in the Western
World. The one who takes the responsibility for shattering the
illusions of his neighbor never appears "loving" in
the conventional sense of the word. Nor does the intentional man
of faith appear loving when he makes the decision that his personal
energies and resources will be devoted to the elimination of Poverty
through the building of new urban structures rather than the random
distribution of charity to hapless individuals. Yet these are
the kinds of decisions called for in our time, and someone must
make them.

The Church, therefore, is that concrete social reality made up
of solitary individuals engaged in a combined thrust, who are
willing to take responsibility for the welfare of all mankind
for the sake of the emerging humanness. If one says that he is
looking at that which he thinks is the Church, and does not find
this sort of activity going on, one can only say he is looking
in the wrong place. What he is seeing, no matter what name it
has chosen to live under, is not the Church, that body which has
chosen to live its death to the hilt, and has been passed on to
us by the historical Fathers. It must be added that wherever one
sees a group of people dispensing the word that men are free to
live their lives in the midst of reality as it is, and wherever
one sees a group of people executing the deed that will bring
humanity to men, there he is seeing the Church, no matter what
name it may choose to live under. The Lord of Life is never without
His own, and if ever we find ourselves tempted to defend the church,
we can be sure that it is not the Church we are termed to defend. 

The task of the Church is not to defy the ongoing cultural revolution,
but to bring it to its fulfillment.

Before the development of the model for the structure and operation
of Church mission in the 20th Century, there are some things which
need to be said to provide a context. One is that there is no
theological or even Biblical stipulation prescribing the organization
of the Church. The only requirement is pragmatic effectiveness.
If perhaps this seems too obvious to commend comment, we need
not search far in Protestant denominational history to remember
the time when receptivity to such a warning Word would have been
most valuable. The Church's responsibility for all of mankind
requires that the mission be accomplished. The rest is a matter
of the goals, strategy and tactics.

A second point which cannot be reiterated too often is that, in
the first instance, nothing in the life of the Church has value
or meaning apart from the task. With our current perspective on
history, it is clear that all of the perversions of the Church
occurred when her members began to perform the acts of worship,
meditation, preaching and ecclesiastical organization primarily
for their own sakes. Within the context of mission, there are,
of course, infinite possibilities for innovation, experimentation
and artistic creativity in each of these areas, and many more
besides. But they must never lose touch with their concrete missional
grounding.

In our time, the Ecumenical Movement is a powerful, strengthening
influence pressing toward the image of the Church as mission.
For it is evident that what is required here is not a simple blending
or smoothing of differences. The much praised 'discussions' between
Protestant denominations, between Protestants and Catholics and
even between Protestants, Catholics and Jews have usually remained
just that--discussions. By contrast, where the representatives
of various faiths have been able to perceive ~ common need and
unite forces to deal with that need in concrete terms, the results
have frequently been quitestriking. Perhaps this may in
time prove to be true of "dialogue" between the great
religions of the world. Clarity on the significance of theological
differences and similarities emerges most readily within the common
missional thrust.

Finally, at least a brief word must be said about the dynamic
of social change. The great "secret of history" which
has been revealed in the 20th Century, of which men were primarily
unaware in past ages, is that history does not merely happen--it
is decided. To contemporary ears, this sounds like an obvious
thing, but in practice, it has not proven so. Intellectually aware
that authority rests solely in the hands of men, and usually very
ordinary men, one is still prone to react as the victim of historical
trends Consequently, it is imperative that Churchmen of the 20th
Century work constantly and self-consciously to hold before their
eyes their own possibilities for altering the trends of history.
For it is not only a possibility; it is a necessity if man is
to continue towards the goal of full humanity for all men.

Another thing that we know in the 20th Century which we did not
know ever before in quite the same way is that the dynamic of
social change is an objective phenomenon. That is to say, there
are known effective methodologies employable to achieve social-cultural
transformation. It is not merely the case that some people have
'better' causes than others, or even that some people have 'better
luck' than others in their efforts ~o achieve their ends. Through
the lucidity which has come with the present age of human revolution,
every man is thoroughly aware that every other man has his own
point to make, his own set of goals to accomplish, his own set
of values to implement. The difference lies in chat some men are
intentional about the goals they seek and about the methodology
which they employ, and some men are not. The vagueness of the
Liberal Movement in the United States yields an example of what
happens when great ideals are not backed up with a hard-headed
comprehension of social practics. The power of Nazi Germany, at
1east in the first phases of her private war against the world,
is a superb example of what can happen when even the most debased,
reduced form of provincialism is supported by an intentional concern
with precise strategy and tactics. The Lord of History 'guarantees',
as it were, only that men will experience His judgment. He does
not guarantee the outcome of any particular battle. The dictum
that 'might makes right' gives an inadequate image of reality
in some ways, but the truth that is in it has rewritten many pages
of history.

The position of the Church as an historical force is no different
than that of any other group which presumes to deal with history.
She also must consider carefully her strategy and her tactics.
In the end, the Church 'ill be judged by the Lord of History upon
her effectiveness, and the judgment will not be altered because
she learned her methodology from Karl Marx or from the Apostle
Paul. When the Church takes her stand on behalf of the possibilities
for humanity for all men, against the forces which defend every
sort of parochialism, narrowness and bias, let there be no mistake.
She is out to achieve an objective social change. She is engaged
in revolution, and she had best inform herself of the best of
revolutionary methodology.

For objective strategic reasons, therefore, the 1ocal congregation
continues to be the spine of the Church. This is because there
is literally no mace in the world where there is not a congregation
of Christians, awaiting only clarity of vision to enable them
to act. They have shared in the perversions of the past, but they
are also open to receive the Word of the future as well. The local
congregation is finally where the models and constructs of the
Church must be developed and put into action. It is the local
congregation which must be the basic unit of the human revo1ution. 

It is not a mere value judgment, but an observable reality that
within every group of human beings, there are those who are more
sensitive and more self-consciously intentional than others. This
is no less true in the units which comprise the Church than elsewhere.
It is therefore necessary that these smaller groups discipline
themselves in a common covenant on behalf of the whole. In many
parts of the world, this is already happening. We shall call these
groups the "Congregational Cadres" of the Church, and
it is through their existence in the 2Oth Century that another
resultant phenomenon has come into being. This is called the "Spirit
Movement." It is made up of all of those men and womenwho are aware or the depth dimension of the cultural transformation
now occurring, and who intend self-consciously to support it.
These local cadres are the front line troops in the "Revolution
in Humanness."

There are four aspects critical to the life of every local congregation
in the Church, and it is therefore of the first order of responsibility
of the local cadre to see that these aspects receive their due
attention. They are worship, study and reflection, discipline,
and action. Taken together, they comprise the mission-oriented
common life of the Church. Space allows only a brief consideration
of each one.

The people of God, not one whit less than other men, labor under
constant pressures of life to reduce that Final Mysterious Power
before which they have determined to stand to more 'manageable'
proportions. That is to say, in the old language of the Church,
they are prone to worship idols, to live before a reduced view
of reality. In order to accomplish this, the act of worship is
a necessity of mission, for it is here that the Christmen rehearse
the role that they have assumed as the ones who are laying down
their lives for all men. At each worship event, they come in humility,
confessing, the temptations with which they are burdened, they
render praise to the Lord of Life, gratitude for the givenness
of life, and they rededicate their lives at each opportunity to
renew in themselves the decision for compassion upon the human
creation. It is only through the act of worship that the missional
people are able to retainthe creative tension of their
lives.

To be intentional is to plan, strategize, and develop tactics.
Therefore, study and reflection is the utter imperative of every
local congregation. It never indulges its curiosity nor participates
in academics for their own sakes, yet its planning and research
must be thorough. Study and planning is the "model building"
phase of the Church's work. In every situation, there must be
a thorough, detailed analysis of the problems which exist, and
the problem chart must be accompanied by other charts depicting
the forces, or the personnel resources which are available, the
instruments or the logistical tools at the disposal of the cadre,
and an outline of the enduring structures which it is seeking
to create or to rebuild. None of these can be left out of a thorough,
comprehensive man of approach. Every presupposition must be spelled
out clearly. For instance, a local congregation needs to operate
geographically, and it needs to define that geographic area. It
must deal with all the human problems at once, or it runs the
risk of reducing its mission to the absurdity of a side issue..
It must deal with every social level and every age level within
the geographical community, for it is aware that social entities
are profoundly inter-related. And finally it must deal with the
depth human problem, or problems, which characterize that particular
situation. It must understand the hearts and the spirits of its
people. These it will deal with through the intentional use of
symbols which present the tangible, possible realities for the
missional and creative life style. Such careful plans never are
completed quickly or easily, without months and months of hard,
corporate, intellectual thrashing. Yet without them, the mission
of the Church has no possibility of succeeding in accomplishing"
its revolutionary aims in the face of the already organized,
already thoroughly intentional structures of the world around
it. 

Worship and study are held together in the discipline of the common
life of the Church. It is always a voluntarily assumed discipline,
of course, for no one can compel a man to give up his life willingly.
But it must be a rigorous discipline, spelled out in a common
covenant, and it must give every necessary ordering structure
to the corporate body. The members of the local cadre must understand
that discipline is an absolute imperative if anything significant
is to be accomplished. Again it must be stressed that it is never
discipline for the sake of discipline. hut discipline for the
sake of mission that counts.

Along with the structure of discipline goes the structure of accountability.
No man can finally discipline another free man. But at the same
time, every man is subject to the desire to allow discipline to
collapse. To prevent this, he needs to allow himself to live and
work under the close scrutiny of his neighbor. Criticism, encouragement,
and even, from time to time, a good swift kick, are all part of
accountability before one's neighbor. It is corporate accountability
that makes personal discipline in freedom a real possibility. 

And lastly, there must be real, tangible, physical action involved
in the accomplishment of the mission of the Church. The Churchman
needs to pound into his head over and over again the general rule
of thumb that if he cannot point to what he has done, he has probably
done nothing. If he has not built a visible social structure embodied
in real people in real time and real space for the sake of enabling
humanness, then any missional achievement he may claim is only
one more illusion. If he has not changed the existing structures
of justice to deal more adequately with real human problems, then
he is laboring under another illusion. And if the labor required
of him for the accomplishment of the task does not produce real
physical threat and a constant reminder of his biological contingency,
he is only fabricating more false dreams to unravel for someone
who is willing to be the Church.

There are many other dimensions to the strategy and tactics of
the local congregation, but this at least depicts a bare skeleton
of what is needed. But most critically, the 2Oth Century Christmen
of the Church can never lose the vision which holds them in being.
Father Teilhard de Chardin caught something, of that vision
in the following words 
"In spite of the wave of skepticism which seems to have sweet
away the hopes (over-simplified and over-materialistic) upon which
the nineteenth century lived, faith in the future is not dead
in our hearts. Better still, it is this hone, deepened and purified,
which seems bound to save us. It is not only that the idea of
our consciousness of a possible awakening to a super-consciousness
easily becomes better based scientifically on experience and more
necessary psychologically to keep alive in man the zest for action
in addition, this very idea pushed to its logical conclusion,
seems the only one capable of making mankind ready for the great
event which we are awaiting, the discovery of a synthetic act
of adoration in which are allied and mutually exalted the passionate
desire to conquer the world, and the passionate desire to unite
ourselves with God; the vital act, specifically new, corresponding
to a new age of the earth. (Chardin, Building the Earth. Dimension
Books, Wiles-Barre, Pa., U.S.A., 1965, pp, 122-125.)















NOTES TO THE 20th CENTURY

ON THE STYLE 0F BEING CHRISTIAN




















By The Corporate Office 
The Ecumenica1 Institute: Chicago

 
Walter F. Epley
1030 Jasmine Street
Denver, CO 80220
Email: wfepley at yahoo.com
Cell Ph: 303-842-0265


________________________________
 From: James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com>
To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>; Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>; Springboard Dialogue <springboard at wedgeblade.net> 
Cc: Gene Joyce Marshall <jgmarshall at cableone.net>; George Holcombe <geowanda1 at me.com>; John Epps <jlepps39 at gmail.com>; George Walters <george.walters at gmail.com>; steve har <stevehar11201 at gmail.com>; Gordon Harper <Top-nw at igc.org> 
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 9:46 AM
Subject: [Dialogue] NOTES TO THE 20TH CENTURY
 

I was digging around in my hard drive yesterday and found a file:

NOTES TO THE 20th CENTURY
ON THE STYLE 0F BEING CHRISTIAN


By The Corporate Office
The Ecumenical Institute: Chicago
 
I have no idea how it got there -- from the Golden Pathways?  Someone sent it to me?  It is a quite coherent article.  Has anyone else heard of it?  There is no date and no author
Jim Wiegel

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