I'm glad to see many new Christian thinkers are engaging with some Mennonite thinkers. Now I'm hoping they'll start looking at Tillich and realizing how important he is for what the faith is going through today. This quote is from the introduction of Paul Tillich's The Protestant Era. It starts off slow, but is worth reading through to the end. I can't help but think that Tillich was pointing to the shift in the church that is becoming more apparent today than when he wrote this in 1948.
"The Protestant principle is not the Protestant reality; and the question had to be asked as to how they are related to one another, how the life of the Protestant churches is possible unter the criterion of the Protestant principle, and how a culture can be influenced and transformed by Protestantism... In every answer suggested [in Tillich's book], the need for a profound transformation of religious and cultural Protestantism is indicated. It is not impossible that at some future time people will call the sum total of these transformations the end of the Protestant era. But the end of the Protestant era is, according to the basic distinction between the Protestant principle and Protestant reality, not the end of Protestantism. On the contrary, it may be the way in which the Protestant principle must affirm itself in the present situation. The end of the Protestant era is not the return to the Catholic era and not even, although much more so, the return to early Christianity; nor is it the step to a new form of secularism. It is something beyond all these forms, a new form of Christianity to be expected and prepared for, but not yet to be named. Elements of it can be described but not the new structure that must and will grow; for Christianity is final only in so far as it has the power of criticizing and transforming each of its historical manifestations; and just this power is the Protestant principle."
Better than any of this, Tillich asks and answers some questions that would be good for today's emerging church to hear and think about: "How can a spiritual Gestalt [structure] live if its principle is the protest against itself? How can critical and formative power be united in the reality of Protestantism? The answer is: In the power of the New Being that is manifest in Jesus as the Christ. Here the Protestant principle comes to an end."
The role of Protestantism is to criticize and transform, to be critical and formative. For some, like myself, the challenge then is to not just gripe, but to dream of new ways of being the church, God's people. As new creations, citizens of God's kingdom transformed by the redeeming work of our trinitarian God, we have moved into a "New Being" and through the power of Jesus Christ can begin to work those dreams out. This is the most evangelical I've ever heard Tillich sound, but he's got a point. Change must continue to happen, and it must come only through the power of our Lord. Like Michel Foucault, who promised to challenge the existing authority structures even if the one he was pushing for came into power, we have to continue to challenge what is there, dreaming of and building something better. If we continue to follow the status quo, we will never be anything but status quo.
Your thoughts?
Peace,
Matt
Recently read The Alchemist Paul Coelho, and am currently reading The Protestant Era by Paul Tillich (obviously), and Deadline by Randy Alcorn, which is pretty good when he isn't getting too distracted by his massive evangelical biases.
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4 comments:
While gladly being a Protestant, I know that Protestantism's beginnings were somewhat lamentable. I agree with the Reformers' criticisms of Rome, but it is difficult for movements that begin as against something to eventually turn into something constructive. Protestantism did so to a certain extent -- Luther's Solas seem to be a helpful example -- but its DNA will always contain the element of protest. As you pointed out, it is good to critique ("The Church is reformed and always reforming," as the Reformers said). It is our duty to do so in ways that edify the Body of Christ rather than to "gripe" or simply complain.
Evangelicalism has currently run into similar problems as Protestantism did several centuries ago. Namely, Evangelicalis defined themselves by what they stood against, not what they stood for. Many of us see the limitations of that and have tried to transform into something more constructive. The emerging church is just starting to face similar problems.
I think a negative trend happened after the first few decades of the Reformation. People looked at the Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, and even Catholics to some extent and asked, How are y'all any different from each other? Since then, denominations decided to focus on their distinctive attributes rather than on the commonality they have with the worldwide Church.
it is interesting to me how much the historical church resembles an extremely disfunctional family. I think that there are two powerful things that the christian church has as a part of her heritage. The beauty of tradition, and the power of the Holy Spirit. It seems to me that reformers protested tradition and so lost its beauty, not that all of it was good and beautiful but we lost much good with the bad. And we have a church where the power of the spirit is not always evident. Especially in the business management model that so many churches have adopted, or purpose driven or any other means that allows them to function as an institution instead of an organism whose life depends on the breath of the Holy Spirit.
Once again we find ourselve so stuck on the hows and unable to live on the whys, which are clearly more ambiguous. The emergent church got its head above that mirky water, but it seems to be sinking into a way of doing rather that a philosophy or a way of understanding why we do things.
"The church is a whore, but she's my mother" - Luther
indy, Did Luther really say that?
I agree that Tillich is a good source for deeper reflection in today's Church.
I recently wrote a post on Tillich's view of holiness.
Tillich on Art and Architecture..
"Even today, many congregations and ministers still assume that the choice...is merely a matter of taste and preference. They fail to see that ONLY by the creation of new forms can Protestant churches achieve an honest expression of their faith." (220)
"Today (1962!!!!!), genuine Protestant church architecture is possible, perhaps for the first time in our history. For the early experiments were too swiftly engulfed by eclecticism to act as evolutionary factors in developing a recognizable Protestant architectural language." (220)
"Sacred emptiness should remain the prediominant attitide for the next forseeable time.. God has ' withdrawn' in order to show us that our religious forms in all dimensions were largely lacking in both honesty and consecration" (278)
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