Bearing Faithful Witness

Christian Public Theology in Crisis Times and All Other Times

Note: The talk below was presented on 8 February to Ethiopian theologians gathered under the banner of Prophetic: The Public Theology Fellowship, led by the gifted Andrew DeCort. You will see that my task in this workshop was to address the nature, purpose, and strategy of Christian public theology. I was also asked to reflect on the content of Christian public theology as well, focusing on themes in my 2013 book, The Sacredness of Human Life (Eerdmans). I was so deeply impressed with the Ethiopian Christian leaders with whom I dialogued this weekend. May God bless you so richly, my friends.

I begin with my take on the three questions you as asking all your speakers to address.

1) Q: What is public theology?

A: It is the public articulation of central Christian theological and moral convictions in order to bear faithful Christian witness and to make a constructive public contribution motivated by our love for our neighbors.

2) Q: Why does it matter?

A: It matters to both the church and the society. The primary audience for Christian public theology is the society, in an effort to bear consistent moral witness in ordinary times and urgent public witness in emergencies.

But the development and articulation of Christian public theology is undertaken in and by the church and its leaders and people, and the message of such theology is always also instructive for Church teaching and practice. So Christian public theology at its best can discipline and direct Christians as well.

3) Q: How can we practice it today?

A: Christian leaders and people, within denominations and across them, need to develop processes of dialogue and ultimately the production of joint documents carrying some teaching authority that can speak for the church and to the church and society. Studying high-quality existing texts would be helpful. One that I like is the Orthodox Social Ethos statement, “For the Life of the World.” For The Life Of The World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church: Hart, David Bentley, Chryssavgis, John: 9781935317807: Amazon.com: Books

Eventually, occasions need to be created to present such documents in public spaces and events, such as churches, universities, NGOs, etc.

More broadly, every time a Christian leader or group makes some kind of declaration in public as to how core Christian theological and moral convictions speak to current realities and problems they are doing public theology.

Now here is my take on the specific question you have asked me:

Q: What is the biblical justification for public theology?

A: The sacred worth of the human person as taught across the canon of scripture. This should be our consistent witness. There are times when it must become our urgent witness.

Sacredness of Life across the Biblical Canon

In my view, four primary elements of the witness of the Old Testament are most important in contributing to the religious-ethical traditions that came to view human life as having great dignity: its creation theology, its depiction of God’s compassionate care and liberating deliverance, its covenantal/legal materials, and its prophetic vision of a just wholeness (shalom) for Israel and all creation in the promised eschatological future.

In the New Testament, three primary elements also contribute to a sacredness of human life ethic: the nature of Christ’s ministry, the meaning of the career of Jesus, and the ethos and moral vision of the early church.

This lecture will briefly sketch the main contributions of each of these biblical elements to a sacredness-of-human-life ethic in Christianity.

Creation and Humanity

Probably the most primal claim of the biblical tradition related to this subject is that human life has dignity because it was created by God. Genesis 1-2 tells us that humans are the creative handiwork of God. What is true about humans as creatures of their Creator is also true about all other creatures on the planet, in their own way. Humans are a part of a community of God’s earth-creatures; other creatures have divinely ascribed status as well.

God is equally the Creator of all humans. The dignity, blessings, and tasks given to human beings are given to all. There is one God who makes one humanity. This is a pivotal element of biblical creation theology, and it contributes at least an implicit primal egalitarianism and unity.

Genesis 2 tells a story in which God begins to create humanity by creating one person first. The first woman is then formed out of the first man. From these first parents come absolutely everyone else. In this sense we are all kin, all part of one vast human family.

Genesis 1 and 2 teach a primal human unity and equality. In our origins, we are one race—the human race. These claims equalize human status and teach us to value human beings far beyond those most closely connected to us. All are God’s creation, all are children of Eve, and all are part of our one human family.

The creation narrative also teaches that human beings are made in the image (and likeness) of God (Gen. 1:28). The theme is echoed and deepened in the New Testament in the category of the image of Christ. Few concepts have been more important in elevating and equalizing the status of human beings, birthing a human rights tradition, and dignifying human life.

God’s Compassionate Care and Liberating Deliverance

The Old Testament reveals a God who cares for humans with deep compassion, for despite our ascribed grandeur we are physically vulnerable creatures, subject to great misery and suffering and deeply vulnerable to oppression. Examples of God’s care for his rebellious yet beloved human creatures abound, beginning in Genesis 2 and extending through the whole Bible.

The Bible records that God’s universal care for humanity took a more focused form in God’s compassionate response to the suffering of God’s people Israel when they were enslaved and threatened with the mass murder of their children in Egypt (Ex. 1-15).

God’s deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery and infanticide in Egypt profoundly shaped the Jewish people. This founding narrative of God’s compassionate deliverance has been fundamental to Jewish life and thought.

This memory instructs Israel as to the character of her God: one who keeps his covenant promises to the chosen people, one who looks with compassionate love on Israel, and one who delivers Israel when it appears that all is lost. God is a God of justice who fights for Israel’s liberation when she is victimized. God’s character also demands of Israel that her way of life as a people reflect a responsive covenant fidelity, compassionate love, and justice.

The concept of a God who demonstrates impartial love for all people is also important to biblical faith. It may seem to stand in contradiction with the idea of a God whose ear inclines especially to the oppressed. But in a sinful and unjust world, justice requires special divine (and human) help for those who cannot help themselves. Some must be lifted from the dust—even at the price of confrontation—to join the ranks of others who are already blessed with the privilege of standing up straight.

Biblical Law and Sacredness

Several warrants for a strong sacredness of human life ethic can be noted in biblical law.

The first is that God is the ultimate source of law in Israel, and God holds people accountable for obedience. There is a profound role given in the Old Testament to teaching a proper fear of God as lawgiver.

If God is the source of law, then God’s own dignity transfers to the law. The law therefore carries profound holiness and authority. God commands, humans must obey--beginning with Israel, God’s chosen people. And there are severe consequences for disobedience.

The very idea that there is a divinely given moral law that governs Israel—and perhaps governs more than Israel—is itself a major contribution to a sacredness-of-human-life ethic. Human moral obligation is ultimately rooted in God’s will. God’s revealed will establishes a transcendent reference point by which all human laws and actions can be evaluated – even in democratic societies.

This elevation of a transcendent legal/moral standard over human life reinforces momentum toward human equality before the law. In many cultures, the ruler defines the law and is above the law. No one in ancient Egypt could hold Pharaoh accountable. But the kings of Israel found that they were indeed accountable to the same divinely given moral law that governed everyone else.

The power of law to level the playing field in human life has the effect of weakening the strong and strengthening the weak. All stand equal before the law and before those human courts charged with enforcing it. If any member of a particular political community is understood to have moral and legal rights, all have such rights. In Israel, where law was seen as divinely given, a failure to administer justice to all was treated as a direct affront to the God who authored the law. This is one reason why so much attention is given in biblical law to the functioning of the justice system itself (cf. Ex. 23:6-8).

The grounding of moral obligation in God’s law had a deep impact on the understanding of human law in later cultures. A just society lives not by arbitrary power or violence but under the rule of law. A long tradition developed which came to argue that no human law carries authority if it stands in fundamental contradiction to divine law.

God’s law is an expression of grace and of God’s care, which also has implications for the writing and administration of human law. The motivational wellspring for Israel’s obedience to a legal code especially designed to protect the weak will be her constantly reinforced memory of her own hour of desperate weakness and God’s mercy on Israel’s behalf.

The Prophetic Demand and Yearning for Shalom

One of the Old Testament’s key resources for a sacredness-of-life ethic is found in the demand, and the yearning, for a transformed world of justice and peace. The concept of shalom names that state of affairs in which human beings flourish in community and the sacredness of each and every human life is finally honored. In the NT this is named as the kingdom of God. The prophets both demand shalom now and yearn for it then, when the time comes when God finally prevails.

The Old Testament yearning for shalom begins with the particular, especially Israel’s experiences of wrenching violence and injustice. Prophets speak about shalom for Israel, from within the cataclysm of war (cf. Jer. 33). From exile, they speak of the land and people of Israel coming back from the dead (Ezek. 36-37). They yearn for a New Jerusalem, from within the experience of Jerusalem’s destruction (cf. Isa. 65).

The narrowest translation for the Hebrew word shalom is “peace,” as in the opposite of war, and peace as commonly understood is certainly an ingredient of it. The prophets demand peace from the covenant people Israel when they decry Israel’s violence and murder (Micah 7:2-3), and her turn to military alliances and military might (cf. Isa. 31:1, Hos. 1:7; Micah 5:10). They envision a time when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” (Mic. 4:3; cf. Zech. 9:9-10).

Shalom means peace, as in straightforward security from physical threats to bodies, homes, and communities. God promises just such a “covenant of peace” in which threats even from animals no longer exist (Ezek. 34:25; Isa. 65:25; cf. Num. 25:12). Shalom happens when the 6^th commandment is obeyed, and people stop murdering each other; but it extends to a time when even “legitimate” killing is no longer undertaken in human life. Security is so complete that “your gates shall always be open; day and night they shall not be shut” (Isa. 60:11). Eventually, shalom in this sense is so complete that God “will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples…he will swallow up death forever” (Isa. 25:7).

Taking shalom seriously points us strongly toward what it really means for human beings to flourish. For example, the shalom vision includes the (re)building of community. The prophets speak most often in a particularistic voice but they leave a legacy relevant to all of us. The prophets of the exile, for example, speak of the liberation and return of the dispersed Jewish people (cf. Isa. 60-61; Jer. 16:14-15; Ezek. 34:11-13: Amos 9:14-15). The slaves, prisoners, and exiles shall be set free at last (cf. Isa. 61:1). The prophets dream of the rebuilding of a glorious Jerusalem and the return of a growing (Ezek. 36:10) and vibrant community to Israel’s most important city (Isa. 61:4; Jer. 30:18-22). The people will come back, they will rebuild their homes and public buildings, and they will live securely there, in a newfound unity.

Shalom means inclusive community. Shalom overcomes ethnic divisions as even the “foreigner” who lives in covenant faithfulness to God becomes a full and honored member of the Jewish community. The eunuch, previously considered inferior and unclean, is also welcomed as a full member of the community (Isa. 56:3-6). The temple will become “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:7) as all nations will come to worship God in Jerusalem. Shalom restores the original unity of humankind, at last.

Shalom means that everyone has enough to eat and drink. Shalom means abundant material well-being and prosperity (Isa. 60:5-7; 66:12, Jer. 31:12; Ezek. 34:14-15, 29; Joel 2:23-24; Amos 9:13-14; Zech. 9:17) fairly distributed to all, in a flourishing land of ecological health and well-being (Isa. 32:15-20, 45:8) that also symbolizes spiritual renewal in Israel.

Shalom means the healing of broken bodies and spirits. “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy” (Isa. 35:5-6a). The sick will be set free to move toward their full human flourishing and their full inclusion in community.

Shalom means both human and divine delight. Shalom means that after endless suffering, humans will receive “a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit” (Isa. 61:3). Shalom is like a party: “Out of [the city] shall come thanksgiving, and the sound of merrymakers” (Jer. 30:19); “their children shall see it and rejoice, their hearts shall exult in the Lord” (Zech. 10:7).

Finally, shalom means obedience to God. The nations will stream to Jerusalem (Mic. 4:1) to worship and serve the one Lord of all— “these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer” (Isa. 56:7; cf. Zeph. 3:9).

The Ministry of Jesus Christ

Jesus carries forward in profound ways all four themes noted above. He articulates a creation theology affirming God as Creator and God’s sustaining care for human beings, while employing his power over creation to manifest that care in healing, rescuing, and raising people from the dead. He teaches and exemplifies the compassionate deliverance for suffering people that God had exhibited to Israel. He offers a rendering of Jewish legal and ethical norms that affirms and heightens the protections offered there to human life. And he both articulates and embodies the prophetic vision of an eschatological shalom in God’s coming future.

An abundance of examples could be cited from the ministry of Jesus to demonstrate the numerous ways in which he teaches and embodies a transformed world in which each and every life is hallowed as God wills. Consider the following:

(1) Jesus’ consistent opposition to violence and teaching of the way of peace

A central commitment in the sacredness of human life ethic is to the protection of human life from wanton destruction. Jesus rejects cycles of human violence, despite the abundant provocation to violence that existed for all Jews under Roman occupation.

Jesus’ earliest disciples saw that violence had no part in the way he had lived and died and thus could not be a part of their own way of life as his followers. The early Church, originally an entirely Jewish movement, became convinced that violence did not fit a community seeking to imitate and obey Jesus.

But Jesus doesn’t just say no to violence. He teaches his followers how to find creative alternatives that can bring deliverance from violence. He teaches “transforming initiatives,” such as going the second mile with the Roman soldier’s pack, turning the other cheek as an unexpected response to being struck, and taking the first step to make peace by finding one’s adversary and beginning the conversation (Matt. 5:23-24, 39, 41).

He describes God the Father as showering love rather than violence on God’s enemies (Mt. 5:43-48), as one who seeks after those who walk away from him (cf. Lk. 15). Jesus’ harshest words of judgment are reserved for those who turn religion itself into an instrument of violence, judgmentalism, and exclusion (cf. Mt 23).

(2) Jesus’ inclusive ministry

A key element both of the kingdom of God and of sacredness of human life is its expansive inclusiveness, its hospitable universality. Every individual is called, claimed, and welcomed; no groups are diminished vis-à-vis other groups; no categories of people are the privileged recipients of God’s love. Jesus embodies that inclusiveness throughout his ministry. His example pushed Christians toward the development of love for “each and every” human being, without exception, as a fundamental element of a Christ-following way of life.

In a religious culture in which women were consistently shunted into second-class status, Jesus speaks with women, travels with women, touches and heals women, teaches and ministers to women (cf. Matt. 15:21-28; John 4, 20:15).

In a religious culture in which major religious leaders had developed a reading of Jewish Law which tended to elevate religious separatism in the interest of ritual purity (cf. Matt. 12:1-14, 15:1-20, Mk 7:1-23; Lk. 13:10-17), Jesus consistently acts to welcome and care for the “impure” and the “unclean,” thus demonstrating a reading of religious obligation that elevates the worth of all people.

In a religious culture in which obvious “sinners” were often treated as beyond the reach of God’s love, Jesus purposefully welcomes such people at his dinner table (cf. Matt. 9:10-13; Lk. 5:29-32). And he teaches many times about God’s welcoming and forgiving love toward those who have been on the wrong path, but repent (cf. Lk. 15:11-32, 19:2-9). His “open table” hospitality embodies God’s redemptive love of those who stray.

In a culture in which children were held of little account, Jesus welcomes and honors children, touches and holds and cares for them (cf. Matt. 18:1-9, 19:13-14; Mk. 9:33-40). He teaches his reluctant disciples to welcome rather than reject children.

In a religious context in which the sick and disabled were often cast out from community or blamed as sinfully responsible for their own maladies, Jesus speaks with, touches, and heals thousands of sick ones, attending not only to their physical well-being but also their spiritual needs and their restoration into community (Matt 4:23-24, 8:16-17, etc.).

In a political context in which the occupying Romans were hated, Jesus ministers to and speaks with Roman soldiers, and on one occasion honors a Roman centurion for his great faith (Matt. 8:5-13, Lk. 7:1-10). He is somehow able to see in the Roman soldier more than an enemy and is able to respond to soldiers as individuals loved by God rather than merely as national enemies hated by his people.

Against a historic backdrop of tensions between Jews and Samaritans, Jesus speaks with and ministers to a Samaritan woman and through her to her community (Jn. 4). He also elevates a compassionate Samaritan to a memorably praiseworthy role in perhaps his most widely quoted parable (Lk. 10:25-37).

Jesus’ response to the widow who gave her very last penny (Lk. 21:1-4) strikes the same chord. His anger at a religious system that would demand that last penny of her (Lk. 20:46-47) is also important—to value vulnerable ones means to confront those who exploit them.

In a political context in which social-economic divisions were acute, Jesus “preached good news to the poor” (Lk. 4:18), welcoming the desperate in his band of followers (cf. Mt 5:1-12). He teaches the rich to share with the poor and live in simplicity rather than to be greedy, to hoard, or to ignore the poor (cf. Matt. 6:19-24, 19:16-24; Lk. 12:13-21; 16:19-31). Jesus treats the poor with dignity, proposes a way of life in which everyone has enough, and no one has too much, calls the rich and especially the unjust rich to repentance, and creates an egalitarian community of economic sharing and justice.

(3) Jesus’ teaching about God’s love for human beings

In a variety of different ways, Jesus teaches the very “good news” that God loves human beings with an immeasurable love. The theme resonates through the pages of the Gospels in a way that has left a profound imprint on the Church.

Jesus declares the divine decision to love us when, for example, he announces the coming reign of God (Matt. 4:17, Mk. 1:14-15), which is nothing other than God’s loving decision to save humanity and the world rather than leave us to our own destructive devices.

Jesus says that God pays attention even to the life of a sparrow, and all the more attends to providing for our material needs—therefore freeing us to trust him and serve others (Matt. 6:26). He describes God as like a loving Father who can be counted on to “give good gifts to his children,” which authorizes and encourages us to ask for what we need and trust that it will be given to us (Matt. 7:7-11; Lk. 11:13, 18:1-8).

Jesus frequently offers reminders of God’s special care for those who especially need it—the children, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the hungry. These reminders are often accompanied by teachings requiring all who would be his followers to imitate this preferential love or face judgment for failing to do so (cf. Matt. 25:31-46).

The Incarnation of Jesus Christ

(1) Incarnation itself

“The Word became flesh and lived among us” (Jn. 1:14). The Word, which in the beginning was “with God,” and “was God” (Jn. 1:1), became human in Jesus the Christ. The New Testament writers consistently marvel at the divine condescension, in which God stooped low to take on our frail, humble flesh, carry our nature, suffer humiliation and death at our hands, and bear our sins as God’s suffering servant (cf. Phil. 2:1-11).

If God became human, no human can be seen as worthless. No human life can be treated cruelly or destroyed capriciously. The sacredness of human life can never again be rejected or confined to only a few groups or individuals of supposedly higher rank. The Incarnation elevates the status of every human being everywhere on the planet at any time in human history. It elevates the worth of every human being at every stage of their lives, because the arc of Jesus’ own life included every stage of existence, from conception to death and even resurrection, which is our own destiny in Christ.

The Incarnation forever elevates human bodiliness. What happens to human bodies matters to God and must matter to us. What happens to people’s bodies must matter to us because God came in a body in Jesus Christ. This reality is a powerfully important contributor to Christian sacredness of human life commitments as these relate to the protecting and flourishing of human life, which is always bodily life.

(2) The Cross

The body of Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross. On that cruel Roman cross Jesus suffered and died.

The implications of the Cross for the sacredness of human life are abundant. One place to begin is with Christian anguish over Christ’s anguish. It is right that Christians should anguish over Christ’s anguish—especially if that comes to extend to all who suffer bodily humiliation, suffering, and death. The Cross serves as a resource for honoring life’s dignity when it motivates compassionate concern and intervention on behalf of all those who suffer in their bodies.

Jesus’ death is always portrayed as an evil. This is a reminder that is not good that anyone is ever abused or killed. And yet, of course, the New Testament teaches that this death brought the salvation of the world. “By his stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5, KJV). And “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (Jn. 3:16).

Belief in the sacredness of human life is deepened considerably by reflection on the ultimate nature of the price God paid at the Cross.

(3) The Resurrection

And then Christ rose again.

It is significant that Christ rose in a body. It was a new, different kind of body. But it was still a body. This was a body that could be seen and touched. In this body Jesus ate and drank. Human life never ceases to be bodily, even at the resurrection. Christians never escape embodiment and its implications.

The resurrection of Christ also signifies the victory of God over evil, including the evil that took Jesus to the Cross. In the Resurrection, God signals that in the end he will triumph over Satan and all forces that bring suffering and death; even death itself is destroyed (1 Cor. 15:25).

The Resurrection marks the triumph of life. In the Resurrection, Jesus lives again; God wins; and therefore life wins. God is for life. This demands that God’s people participate in combating and with God’s help defeating all that wars against life until Christ comes again.

(4) The Ascension

The historic confession of the Church is not just that Jesus rose from the dead, but that he ascended to heaven, where he now sits at the right hand of the Father, and from which he shall come to judge the living and the dead.

God stoops low so that humanity can be exalted even to the right hand of God. Human beings must be viewed and treated as those whose divinely intended destiny is to dwell eternally along with Jesus the Son in the presence of God the Father. Humanity was made for an eternal destiny. Those who belong to Jesus Christ will follow him to the throne of God.

The Expansive Reach of the Body of Christ

The Book of Acts depicts a rapidly growing church led by the Holy Spirit toward an ever-more inclusive and hospitable community ethos. What had initially been a “Hebrew” Jewish community of Christ-followers rapidly expands to include large numbers of “Hellenists,” that is, Greek-speaking Jewish Christians (Acts 6:1). The Jew/non-Jew barrier is shattered as the Gospel is taken to Gentiles.

Paul offers the most expansive theological effort to defend this revolutionary transformation of relationships between Jews and Gentiles. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28). Christ “has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall…the hostility between us” (Eph. 2:14). If even Jews and Gentiles can now be “one new humanity” (Eph. 2:15), other distinctions can and must also fall—between male and female, slave or free, and so on. In Christ, God has begun to reclaim this divided world and to bring peace to its warring members through Jesus Christ.

The early church’s ecstatic experience of the Holy Spirit, poured out upon both sons and daughters, young and old, slave and free (Acts 2:17-18), combined with its Spirit-led decision to shatter the Jew-Gentile boundary line, combined also perhaps with the special appeal of its message to those most powerless and vulnerable, created powerful momentum toward radically inclusive and egalitarian community. This would be a community that would not accept the dehumanization and degradation of any category of people, as occurred all around it in the Greco-Roman world.

What ultimately emerged were congregations that believed that in their own experience of transformed human relations lay the beginnings of the redemption of the world. Their leaders addressed them with such seriousness on these points because so very much was at stake.

These communities would seek to live in love toward one another and to all. They would contribute only good to their neighbors—beginning with their near neighbors in Christian community but extending far beyond “the household of faith.” They would do so until Christ returned. This communal ethos formed a powerful foundation for an ethic of the sacredness of human life in Christianity that lived on in the post-New Testament period and continues to this day.

My claim is that this sacredness of life vision is the heart of our theology and ethics, and should shape our public theology. But it begins with our practices in Christian community.

When societies turn evil, or regimes turn tyrannical, or ideologies turn destructive, what is most needed from Christians is a Church well-grounded in its own best moral traditions, equipped with antibodies against destructive moral viruses, able to shape the behavior of its own people, able to say a clear public word, able to be faithful to Jesus Christ.