Research Assembly

Summer 1974

July 13, 1974

I. THE HISTORICAL-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT FOR TRANSPARENTIZATION

1. The Primal Happening. Although the various religions in the history of mankind are not universal, the phenomena underlying religious institutions is universal. In living everyday life, every man has experienced the terror and the wonder of the mystery of life. This aweful encounter calls into question his world, his self-understanding and his selfhood, demanding that he either appropriate and symbolize this new consciousness or find a way to escape it. When this encounter is a sociological happening, it leads to the creation of a human organism, a people. As this new people anchors its new and unique understanding of itself in a system of rites, myths and icons, its religion is formed. Life is such that, again and again, man encounters mystery and is exposed to new depths of life, but sometimes a cataclysmic happening occurs which requires not only the death of individual self images but the death of the rites, myths and icons of an entire human community, opening the possibility of a metamorphosis of the old people into the new.

2. The Exodus Event. The formation of the people of Israel and their religion was an example of such a primal happening. Moses brought to a collection of enslaved tribes the good news of liberation and the promise of a new land. In response to the event of the Exodus in Egypt, they formed a covenant of loving faithfulness to each other and to the mysterious Other whom they had encountered: the ten commandments. The new people discovered their dependence on God's care and understood themselves to be the people of their God and therefore separated from all other peoples.

3. The Jesus Christ Event. The event of Jesus Christ began with the situation of a people whose faith in their essential freedom to live had become mere enslaving legality. Through his life style and his death he fulfilled the Hebraic law and witnessed that humanness is not only for the Hebrew nation but for all mankind. Jesus was a man who lived out the truth of life that dying produces new life. He stood before the same Mystery which all men face, he found the same awe and fascination and anguish, but by his acceptance of this reality and by his very being, he revealed the life hidden in the Mystery. He lived a life of total trust in the Mystery and his life of love for every man was the stamp of authenticity of humanness. The community of Jews which was created out of this event became the Christian Church.

4. The Four Christophers. The happening of the Christ event gave rise to a new understanding which had been expressed in various life styles and religions for the past 2,000 years. In the historical immediacy of the event, those who had lived with and known Jesus, lived out his teachings as a Jewish sect. However, Paul's understanding that the news of life was for all men, led to a painful struggle to free the new "teaching" from the law of Israel. With the completion of this struggle Christianity was born. Christianity crystalized when the new people expressed in ritual, symbol and story the new understanding. In the course of the historical growth of the church, the church in Rome became a symbol of the unity of the whole church. Groups of churches in the East, however, realized that the local church shared the responsibility for authentic living of the "new" life. This essential truth they expressed in the structure of their heirarchy, becoming a second Christian vehicle ("Christopher"). Centuries later, the western church experienced a purification of its universal expression of the Christ event which had become imprisoned in dogma and procedures. A movement which eventually formed the Protestant religion protested against the fact that the good news that man had been given as a freeing force for living life for others, had been reduced to a formulated saving of self. They understood that the mystery was always and forever in free communication with all men and that man had to be free to respond to this communication. These understandings of the Christ may be described as the four Christophers - four religional vehicles of Christianity.

II. THE TRANSPARENT CHRIST-EVENT OF THE 20th CENTURY

5. The Cultural Revolution. Every man in the 20th century has experienced a cultural revolution which has affected life at every level, causing man to view himself and his world from a totally new perspective. Many events precipitated this revolution, and the three key events are: the creation of the theory of relativity; the advance of technology as symbolized in the moon shots; and the birth of situational ethics with the advent of Einstein's theory o relativity (E=MC squared). All absolutes were shattered and man discovered that he lives in an universe where everything is part of a complex network of dynamic relationships instead of disconnected elements in static forms. Because of the technological revolution, man, if not a city dweller, has certainly been urbanized with the entire world accessible both externally and internally. (This is symbolized in the earthrise.) Man's mindset has expanded from the parochial to the global and he is faced with the overwhelming complexity of decision making, structual relationships and future orientation. Man's depth encounters are experienced in the midst of the mundanity of life not the remote signs. Whereas previously he was a passive respondent to great natural forces, acting in accordance with external authorities or laws, now he grasps the shocking fact that he decides concerning the course of history itself. In a relative universe of complex relationships, man must decide knowing that his decisions have power, but having no certitude except the confidence in his own authenticity.

Conscious of the fast moving and fundamental changes happening around him and aware of his total responsibility and freedom, the 20th century man experiences life as perpetual external and internal crises. He is continually faced with infinite possibility and unavoidable death. He often responds by either hiding in the past or waiting for a future answer. (Most civilizational questions are existential.) Thrust before a universe of complex relationships, man asks "Who am I?". Faced by the fact that history is created by man and his limitless possibility for action, man asks "What do I do with my life?" Man struggles in chaos, ambiguity and the collapse of the old. He senses that his struggles to answer these questions is the framework out of which a new age and a new human will be created.

6. The Ecclesial Revolution.

When this cultural revolution of the 20th century revealed that all men live in a relative universe, the foundational two-story image of life was smashed and the church's role as final authority in men's lives was lost, revealing the Christian religion as but one ideology among many in a global society. In response, the church was driven into the marketplace of symbols and ideologies, began to defend its religious forms, turned inward, lost sight of its task and finally found itself devoid of meaning, relevance and authenticity. In short, the Christian church, like every other entity in the 20th century, experienced the deep collapse in the center of life itself and found itself thrown before the chaos of an emerging age with the despairing awareness of its inadequcy.

7. The Christian Bigotry. When reflected in the 20th century cultural revolution, the church's image of itself as holder of truth, savior of mankind, and comforter of the suffering came back to it as the horrifying image of a bigot. The church has understood that the Christian symbols alone express the final meaning of life and that every other symbol system in the cultures of the world is an incomplete or aborted expression of life's meaning. It grasped its task to save men from these "false" understandings. But in calling men from their everyday world to the church's world, to its liturgy, its theology, doctrines and moral precepts, the church began to say not the Word but an "if...then" word. It said to man not that life as it is, is good but that if one holds some belief, follows some rule, or participates in some liturgy, then his life will be "good". Here the church is revealed as the violator of its own most fundamental life understanding: That life as it is, is good. And by proclaiming this "if...then" word, the church not only participated in but acually created innocent suffering by binding man to some distortion of a truth about life, rather than revealing the life-giving message.

8. The Story of the 20th Century Church. The church has always understood itself to be obedient to God and responsive to his will as manifest in the call to serve mankind's needs in every age. Taking up this call has always involved a painful death to old understandings of its obedience and shouldering of a new burden. The sociological dissolution of the church in this century has intensified the call to the point of making it a call for the church to die to its former sociological understandings of itself and to actualize its freedom to create its forms afresh out of its new transparentized clarity concerning the trinity. The church's agony over this decision is the pain of having to preside over the death of those sociological forms which gave life to the contemporary generation of the church. It is with pain that the church prepares to bury its "mother" and reforge out of "nothing" its new sociological form. However the church can go forward with the assurance that life responds to those who seek to create in obedience to it.

III. THE TRANSPARENCY OF UNIVERSAL HUMANNESS

9. The Experience of Mystery - Awe - Other World. The transformation which is happening to the 20th century church corresponds to the human journey of man from the beginning of time. Every human being today has experienced trappedness on the freeway at rush hour, awe at the sight of a lighted city at night, wonder in the presence of another human being, fear during a rough plane ride. Man is continually assaulted by the mystery in the most mundane events and relationships. In fact, he experiences a sense of himself only in relation to the mystery which confronts him in the everydayness of life. When he becomes aware of the mystery, he is utterly repulsed and utterly drawn to it at the same time; for instance, meeting a person in distress occasions both attraction and fear. True humanness demands the courage to stand in the midst of this dread and fascination. The encounter with mystery and experience of awe elicit a deep passion for life which lies within every man. This passion may come to him as utter freedom, intense care, or incredible peace. Reading the newspaper today draws forth so much care that it often turns to despair of a rebellious refusal to read it. "The Other World in this World" might be a contemporary poetic image for man's experience today.

10. The Healing Happening. Man often experiences the endless mundanities in his life as simply painful. Life seems to be a confusing circus of frustration, anxiety, anger, fear, discouragement, failure, inadequcy and boredom. The daily routine seems full of unbearable demands which he seeks to hide from. However, in the midst of this everyday situation, it often occurs to him that, after all, he is alive, he is sustained in being. He knows in the center of his being that this life is the only one he has, that it is given to him unconditionally. This comes to him as an offense. He has hoped for a better job, a new house, a different marriage - some other life. When one realizes that his life iw exactly as it is, and no other way, and that the meaning of his life is in that fact, he sees endless possibility in that same life. It is only when he accepts life as it comes to him, with his inadequate self, his unrewarding job and his imperfect marriage, that he can see the real unlimited possibility that lies within it. In this process he decides to die to his illusions about his life and embrace the reality that surrounds him. This life-changing event has happened to man in one form or another since time immemorial - it describes the miracle of human growth and transformation. In fact, it is the most profound human experience, common to all men in any time or place. The church has called this contentless happening, the "Christ event".

11. The Sustaining Style. Throughout history man experiences the endless possibility of his life and decides whether or not to embrace the reality of life as a constant process of death and transformation, acting out his decision by means of a particular life style. In the midst of endless contingency, inadequacy and humiliation, man takes a stance toward life that meaning is found in his life here and now. This understanding determines his freedom to live his life. Man hopes that life is, always has been, and always will be the way it is. Out of the givenness and inescapable interrelatedness of all of life, man realizes his care and enacts it in his life, or he blocks it off and refuses it. This decision also determines his style. These decision, endlessly given to every man, are experienced as humiliation, weakness, resentment, and suffering. This experience of the essentiality and inescapability of human freedom has been intensified in this age. The church has long ago name it the Dark Night of Sanctification by the Holy Spirit.

12. The Transparent Sociality. In the 20th century, man has become aware, as never before, that he exists only in relationship to other human beings. He has seen his world from the moon and realized its unity, he has experienced painful dependence upon far distant parts of the globe in the energy crisis, the African famine, the Russian wheat shortages. Not only has sociality become an acknowledged universal dimension of humanness, but the form this sociality takes has basic universal dimensions. In any social group, sustenance, order, and self-understanding appear. The economic dynamic deals with resources, production, and distribution. Welafre, order and justice are upheld by the political dynamic; and the community's symbols, wisdom and religion are aspects of the cultural dynamic. Man is continuously encountering the other world in this world, experiencing the healing happening as he realizes that his life is the only life he has. He lives in the dark night full of solitary decision between right and right which affect other people's lives. He experiences himself as responsible for the whole globe. "All the earth belongs to all the people" expresses the sociological ideology which man sees as the sociality of the globe for which he is responsible.

IV. THE TRANSPARENTIZED PEOPLE OF GOD

12. The New Paradigm. It is becoming clear that Abraham's original revelation is, as a result of globalization, relativity and space exploration, practically transparentized as an obvious ontologial indicative for the whole human race. Thus, the transparentization of the Christ event reveals that Chardin's noosphere is a Christlike network of consciousness where Paul's phrase "For me to live is Christ: is now possible for the collective consciousness of the whole planet. This renders necessary the endless march of transparentization as successive exterior-interior universes are revealed and the possibility for the world religions to be used as new vehicles of Transpodane Christianity.

14. The Task of Transparentization. The task of the pioneering Christian Church is the commitment to spinning the everyday into awe-filled transparency at every opportunity and the broadcast of the self-conscious appropriation of the "Other World". The secular transparentizing of the Gospel is the occasion and the impetus for a contentless mass evangelism on a scale never before known. The demythologized trinity and church dynamics are occasioning the birth of an universal ontological social method for evangelism, pedagogy and social reconstruction as illustrated by the art form methodology and the indicative battleplanning. Broadcasting this method will be as crucial as preaching the transparent Word. The secular transparency of the church is the harbinger of a new form of the People of God called the Global Guild, primary catalytic agency of social transformation.

15. The Characteristics of the Transparentized Church. The transparentization of Christianity makes it able to produce new servanthood forms on behalf of the other world religions, enabling them to articulate in their own imagery the contentless sociological Christ-Event in which each religion finds itself as a result of the same cultural revolution which has so transparentized Christianity. The resulting transparentization of the formal and informal religions will permit men across the globe to grasp a new universal understanding of the structure of primal humanness and its rational-irrational deeps of wonder, consciousness, care and trsnquility.

16. The Indicative Questions. The coming of the as yet faceless church raises depth questions for all loyal historical churchmen: What are the new cosmic symbols of basic life realities? What is the Christ story for Century 21? What are the dynamics and form of the new transparentizing missionary? What now does "going to church" mean? The demand of the future is the absolution of the demise of the Christian Church.