a community of concentric circles

In this age, the community of the messiah exists in concentric circles. The outer circle (circulus ad extra) is porous and visible to the world. The inner circle (circulus ad intra) is nonporous and impenetrable. The outer circle is the visible people of the messiah "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets," the Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church. The inner circle is the elect "chosen in him before the foundations of the world." And, as in Jesus's parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13.24-30), "both of them grow together until the harvest."

It is easy to enter the outer circle. No one can forbid it. One is born into it or one bids for membership out of personal desire or in response to an invitation. And there is a liturgical sign of entry. In Deuteronomy 28:9, directly after God says "The Lord will establish you as his holy people," he commands circumcision as a visible token of membership. Male babies were to be circumcised shortly after birth, and through them, the nation is circumcised. Circumcision was replaced by baptism in the Messianic, New Testament community. Members of the circle have public access to the benefits of the community.

It is impossible, by human effort, to enter into the inner circle (see Opening a Closed Circle, 83). Its members are elect by God. The language and benefits of the community are reserved for and active in the elect alone. They are the invisible community of the inner circle "born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." The inner circle is the church militant (Ecclesia militans). It is the burning bush in which God dwells by the Spirit and every man, woman, and child is on fire.

It is impossible and evil to fix another's place on the inner or outer circle, aside from their making an overt declaration. And it can be challenging, in the day to day, to know where to place oneself.

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[1] The history of the dogma of an invisible and invisible church begins with Martin Luther. Luther's protest against Roman Catholicism demanded a new answer to the question "Who makes up the church?"

Luther called the Roman Catholic Church a “false church” (his sermon Von der heiligen christlichen Kirche in 1531). He set a true or hidden church over against it. His hidden church was separate from the visible church, the workaday church or the communio sanctorum of human beings harassed by sin and suffering, existing on and by God’s grace. This visible church was a mixture of good and bad. It was streaked with sin and harbored sinners even though it was diligent to combat sin and the perversion of doctrine. Inside it was the hidden church. "The church must appear in the world. But it can only appear in a covering (larva), a veil, a shell, or some other kind of clothes which a man can grasp, otherwise it can never be found," (WA Briefwechsel 9, 608). For Luther, then, the church is like a sacrament: the visible and hidden can be distinguished but not separated in this age. The visible may be handled and, underneath it, the hidden made available.

The false church does not value the scriptures. And, therefore, it cannot properly offer the sacraments or preach the gospel. The false church has no life in it--no inner grace, no hidden church.

Luther also perceived an analogy to his visible-and-hidden ecclesiology in the incarnation of Jesus, where God and man are one. The hidden church suffers in its flesh, even as its head, Jesus, suffered. And through that suffering the gospel life is made available to human beings.

Calvin, as is to be expected, sums up the work of the first Reformers:

"The Church," he says, "is used in the sacred Scriptures in two senses. Sometimes when they mention the church, they intend that which is really such in the sight of God (quae revera est coram Deo) into which none are received but those who by adoption and grace are the children of God and by the sanctification of the Spirit are the true members of Christ. And then it comprehends not only the saints at any one time resident on earth but all the elect who have lived from the beginning of the world.

"But the word church is frequently used in the Scriptures to designate the whole multitude dispersed all over the world who profess to worship one God and Jesus Christ, who are initiated into his faith by baptism, who testify their unity in true doctrine and charity by a participation of the sacred supper, who consent to the word of the Lord and preserve the ministry which Christ has instituted for the purpose of preaching it. In this church are included many hypocrites, who have nothing of Christ but the name and appearance; many persons, ambitious, avaricious, envious, slanderous, and dissolute in their lives, who are tolerated for a time, either because they cannot be convicted by a legitimate process, or because discipline is not always maintained with sufficient vigor.

"As it is necessary therefore to believe that Church which is invisible to us, and known to God alone, so this Church, which is visible to men, we are commanded to honor, and to maintain communion with it." (Institutes Bk. IV.1 § 7)

This post is a work in progress.
Its existence is to be a short, model ecclesiology,
 combining my model of "Saint Augustine's church",
 something on the two sacraments, and election.

Note: your grammar is not quite right.
Barth has some good tweaks.
see https://postbarthian.com/2016/04/29/
karl-barths-rejection-visible-invisible-church/ 

As if to say that the circle one should care
about is not the circle of exclusion between
people, but the circle of election.

Previous post links an available hermeneutic
to a welcoming ecclesiology.

The mission-stance of the church mirrors
the mission-stance of the Triune God.

You were not wrong to bring in the
Trinity ad extra / ad intra. Put that
back in.

The private ascesis of the Sermon on the
Mount can be appended to this as well.

The circle of the Spirit is wider than the
circle of the church.

All people are made in the imago Dei,
albeit now marred by sin. Only saints are
made into a kingdom of priests

Some Changes Affected by Sacramental Theology

A couple of threads have come together for me recently, and I want to sketch them out. Each one began independent of the others. But all have found a common nexus in sacramental theology.

Sacramental theology is that branch of theology which asks about the sacraments. And it is a very connected node. Every branch of theology connects to it, that is, has something to say about it, and it has something to say about them. One of the best surprises in my theological life was discovering that sacramental theology existed in the edifice of theology, and that it had always done so ("The sacrament is a manifestation of the Word." ~ Schmemman). But, due to the theological choices made by earlier Christian communities in which I worshiped, it had always been avoided. It was kind of the odd basement or the run-down wing of the castle. Not so any more. Its doors were flung open in 2008, and I was allowed to wander. And, in so doing, it has slowly proved influential and necessary. So, then, getting back to those threads--

The first one has to do with the way that the New Testament casts this age as a second Exodus. Jesus, for example, is often called the prophet, and is obviously the new Moses in the Sermon on the Mount relaying a new Torah. Beyond that, though, Paul warns the Corinthians not to make the same mistakes that Israel did in the Wilderness, and equates old and new testament ritual acts. Clearly there are parallels: the crossing of the red sea becomes baptism and God's supply of water and manna in the wilderness becomes the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

The second has to do with the subtle way that Reformation theology requires sacramental theology. Without it, Calvinism becomes a baptized determinism, with its cold inevitability. With it, Calvin's (if not Paul's) debit and credit of election is balanced with the warm generosity of the open table.

The third has to do with a question I have been asking myself for a while: Why do revivalist churches hammer on sin so much? Why does the either/or in/out saved/damned of sin's dialectic logic figure so prominently in the way these traditions work? Don't get me wrong: Jesus talked about sin a lot. I'm not asking why revivalist churches talk about sin, but why it is their opening gambit? Why isn't it the third behind, say, hospitality to strangers (the other) and evangelism? Anyway, perhaps an answer may be found in the soft-pedaling revivalist traditions make of sacrament. Without the common loaf, these traditions require something else to make a common center. And that thing is dogma. Theology becomes an exercise in border patrol. Exegesis as inoculation. Sacrament resists such reduction. Sacramental theology casts a wider net than a border or than pure reason.

This is not to say that confessions which include sacramental theology must not include a well-considered harmartiology, they must or be innovators. However, the reason and function of that harmartiology is going to be different and differently expressed. How exactly, I haven't yet worked out.

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Postscript: A recent Facebook discussion on the merits of subsidized (free) undergraduate education produced the following comment from a local commissioner that I know. Her response reflects exactly the kind of save/damned, in/out boundary speech discussed in the third point above, albeit in a political context. She wrote:

"With the amount of free college being already provided to a large extent in TN and an extremely high drop out rate.....there are no incentives and no proverbial skin in the game. Not everyone deserves a trophy. In the real world there are winners and losers and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we grow up and [move] on to more productive lives instead of constantly waiting for the next hand out. Life does not hand out participation trophies."

This is the spirit in which she begins to do politics or in which she does politics. And she is representative of the American norm. Why do we begin from this attitude? I don't find it a thoughtful attitude or a compassionate one, and it is definitely not a theological one.

Pattern Language: Opening a Closed Circle

Pattern: Opening a Closed Circle: 83

We are confronted by a closed circle, with the hidden city, with the high garden wall, and with coldness of heart. What is on the other side? And how can we ask? As Socrates says in the Meno, "A man cannot inquire either about that which he knows or about that which he does not know. For if he knows, he has no need to enquire, and if not, he cannot, for he does not know the very subject about which he is to inquire." Plato's puzzle is about knowledge, but the circle is wider still. For example,

"Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes," said Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Nachfolge).

"A Christian is an utterly free man, lord of all, subject to none; A Christian is an utterly dutiful man, servant of all, subject to all," said Martin Luther (De Libertate Christiana).

"Which comes first," asked the young Augustine, "to call upon you or to praise you? To know you or to call upon you? Must we know you before we can call upon you? Anyone who invokes what is still unknown may be making a mistake" (Confessiones 1.1).

Category

Related Cards

Working Notes

I'm still working hard on completing even the first draft of this card. The circle problem is a problem of discipleship, of how one becomes another thing. It is a kind of miracle. It is ontological. It is election. What is the difference between it and creation? Is this card soteriology? Note the quote from Emerson's "Circles": "Everything looks permanent until its secret is known." And Dave Eggers has an essay called "The Circle" about corporate totalitarianism. Note also C. S. Lewis's lecture "The Inner Ring" and its implications for judgment. cf. my response.

I was reading an excerpt from Francis Schaeffer's He is There and He Is Not Silent:

"Let us return again to the personal-infinite. On the side of God’s infinity, there is a complete chasm between God on one side and man, the animal, the flower, and the machine on the other. On the side of God’s infinity, He stands alone. He is the absolute other. He is, in His infinity, contrary to all else. He is differentiated from all else because only He is infinite. He is the Creator; all else was created. He is infinite; all else is finite. All else is brought forth by creation; so all else is dependent and only He is independent. This is absolute on the side of His infinity. Therefore, concerning God’s infinity, man is as separated from God as is the atom or any other machine-portion of the universe.

"But on the side of God being personal, the chasm is between man and the animal, the plant, and the machine. Why? Because man was made in the image of God. This is not just 'doctrine.' It is not dogma that needs just to be repeated as a proper doctrinal statement. This is really down in the warp and woof of the whole problem. Man is made in the image of God; therefore, on the side of the fact that God is a personal God the chasm stands not between God and man, but between man and all else. But on the side of God’s infinity, man is as separated from God as the atom or any other finite of the universe. So we have the answer to man’s being finite and yet personal."

Reading this, I saw that creation also falls under the question raised by this card. This card does represent a fundamental theological problem: the problem of how something comes from nothing. It is the crossing of the infinite qualitative distinction between not being and being, between Godself and the world of matter, between being a man born blind and receiving one's sight, between being dead and alive.

Exploring pattern relationships: Community and Election

To move forward, my pattern language needs relationships. Where patterns are indexed to other patterns, meaning can be made. Apart from connection, what can be done? Below are my first two examples. One is built from *Community and the other from *Election.

Couple of comments: (a) Making relationships reveals holes. The *Election diagram is missing *Grace, for example. (b) Laying cards out like this begs some kind of method that identifies which idea is the spoke, which are antonyms or synonyms, which are higher-level or lower-level relationships, etc. (c) I don't think I understand what a pattern really is.

What is a pattern? Is it a recurring move or strategy or theme? For example, is *God the Father a pattern? What about *Water? What about *Christology?

And how many patterns is too many? Does a language need to be small enough to hold it all in one's mind, or, because patterns are indexed, can it be much larger? Does a large number of patterns suggest sloppy repetitiveness? Is too few not useful?

Finally, I have two ideas about an overall schema or index. I keep thinking about the divine economy and the Trinity and such. I keep thinking about the threefold liturgical confession: "Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again!"

I keep thinking about theological moves and movements. And so I have been toying with the following dramatic scheme:

• creation/introduction/recognition
• identification/empathy
• kenotic service
• gracious restoration
• glorious presentation.

But, then again, maybe the classic divisions such as Christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, etc. are just as good.

Church Dogmatics 1.1.2

You say what you are. That’s what Barth is getting at in this section. Perhaps “are” is the wrong term, as it presupposes a metaphysic of being (and the personal jury is still out as to whether Barth’s is a metaphysics of ontology). Nevertheless, Barth’s doctrine of revelation--what you say--is dictated by what you are. Say, then, that you are God, then Truth is what you are. So what you say of yourself, what you reveal of yourself, is Truth. Say, then, that you are a human being. Limited. A created thing. A creature. Your “saying” is also limited and created, encompassing at best only a world of created things.

But when the Church becomes--when it is elected in God’s providence for faith in the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth, then it confesses what it knows to be there, but with created lips. And so Truth erupts eschatologically into the world through its confession--a confession it is given, not one it has appropriated, a confession born of seeking not of obtaining. “It does not have to begin by finding or inventing the standard by which it measures [what is true]. It sees and recognizes that this is given within the Church. It is given in its own peculiar way, as Jesus Christ is given, as God in His revelation gives Himself to faith. But it is given” (12).

There are two levels of knowledge, even as they are two levels of what can be expressed. Because it is Jesus who speaks, and because Jesus is the incarnate Son, and because the Son enjoys the pure agape of trinitarian fellowship with the Father, then his word can be trusted. His word, he himself, is an analogia fidei (τὴν ἀναλογίαν τῆς πίστεως) which is a true canon. “He is the truth, not merely in Himself, but also for us as we know Him solely by faith in Jesus Christ” (12).

The one level is a level of perfect comprehension and speech--a “charismatic theology from within” whose characteristic theologian in Paul. The other is steps out after, asking and fumbling according to the ontology of those who ask. “As the Church accepts from Scripture, and with divine authority from Scripture alone, the attestation of its own being as the measure of its utterance . . . (16 emphasis mine). This is a “theology from without” whose characteristic theologians are the second-century apologists. “It alone creates fellowship and can be ecclesiastical and scientific” (22). Nevertheless, it is “always undertaken as an act of penitent obedience” and its chief method is prayer born of faith that the Spirit “will guide you into all truth” (Jn. 16.13 ESV). It believes that “in, with and under the human question [note the inference to Luther’s doctrine of the Eucharistic presence] dogmatics speaks of the divine answer” (12).

I should note, as well, that this two-layered matrix of speech, the Truth and the questions that point to the truth, is very reminiscent of the scholastic argument that the efficacy of the sacrament was not bound to the piety of the officiant, or lack of it.

I like that Barth is not content to set out on beaten paths. He goes to foundations and comes back with a doctrine of revelation that I’ve heard lampooned and spoken against my whole life. Barth’s theology can make a dead dog into divine revelation. He denigrates the scriptures, they say, and dissolves revelation into subjectivity.

Most of these criticisms and the critics that wield them have not read Barth, or, if they have read him, have not attempted to understand him--at least that is my governing hypothesis. I do not think he denigrates church history, the creeds, or the scriptures. They are, in fact, the matrix upon which his Dogmatics is built. So the truth of the matter is more subtle.

I have the feeling Barth is not out to change the accident but the substance of theological activity in the world. And I have a feeling he is wresting the podium from the hands of confident rhetoricians and reminding everyone, “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great” (Prv. 25.6 ESV). The self-revealing of the Triune God is a power beyond the epistemological dictates of scientific reductionism, and He is coming into the world.

And I wonder if Barth is reading Calvin better than Calvin has been read in a very long time. I wonder if Barth is breathing the spirit/Spirit of the Reformers and grasping the true sense of ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda, the church reformed and always reforming, and therefore calling subsequent comfortable Protestant-scholasticism what it is.

Karl Barth; revelation; analogy of faith; election