A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Donald G. Bloesch is a Professor at Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, OH. This article first appeared in Presbyterian Communique, a publication of Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns, a renewal-oriented group within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and appears here by permission.
In language that is both eloquent and unequivocal the apostle Paul writes to the church in Ephesus: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4-6).
We have in this passage the Trinitarian confession of the early church – one Spirit, one Lord, one God. There is firm biblical ground for contending that Father-Son-Spirit is the proper name for God in the apostolic church, equivalent to Yahweh in the Old Testament. The source of our faith lies in God the Father. The object of our faith is the son – Jesus Christ. The giver of faith is the Holy Spirit. The goal of faith is union with God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.
This confession represented a potent challenge to the pervasive polytheism of that time. In the Graeco-Roman world there were many initiatory rites, but Paul declares that there is only one baptism. There were many lords, but the church confessed that there is only one Lord. There were many gods, but Christian faith recognized only “one God and Father of us all.” There were many religious associations and cults, but our text speaks of only one body and one Spirit.
The religious conflict that the church precipitated in the ancient world was that between monotheism and polytheism. This was, moreover, an exclusive monotheism as opposed to henotheism. Paul stoutly reaffirmed the ancient Hebrew confession: “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4). The church upheld a Trinitarian monotheism, a Creative Oneness, versus a mystical monotheism in which all distinctions disappear in a higher unity.
No Other Lord
The Christian faith proclaims Jesus Christ as Lord of the church, the state, and indeed of all creation. As the apostle Peter confessed, “he is Lord of all” (Acts 10:36). In the perspective of New Testament faith, the world belongs no longer to the devil but now exclusively to Jesus Christ. We need to ponder seriously Jesus’ words to his disciples, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Lk. 10:18), a prescient depiction of his cross and resurrection victory over the powers of darkness.
Yet the powers of death and destruction continue to rule, but through deception. Their ontological power has been taken from them but they still exert the power to deceive. It is no wonder that Satan has been called “the father of lies” (Jn. 8:44).
In our time, as in biblical times, there are other faiths, other gods that seek to turn us away from the worship of the one true God. One of these new salvations is nationalism in which sovereignty is assigned to the voice of the people or nation. The court of final appeal is not Holy Scripture but the “general will” or the “common good.” National security is prized more highly than eternal security. Religion is valued for its social utility, for its contribution to national unity. The church is important because it provides a moral consensus that makes our country strong. The individual is ultimately sacrificed to the collective, and we then have the sinister phenomenon of statism.
I see theological confusion and mounting discord in most of the mainline denominations today . . . What the church needs to pray for and earnestly seek today is a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Another secular salvation is racism in which race becomes the criterion for assessing the intelligence, motives, and aspirations of people. It invariably involves elevating some particular racial or ethnic group over others. The Spirit of God becomes virtually identical with the soul of the race. Racism is alive and well in this country, but in prewar Germany it became the driving force in national politics. The German Christians, that group within the German churches in the 1930’s that sought to accommodate the faith to the ideology of National Socialism, spoke of “one body,” but they meant not the church but the German people or the Aryan race. In South Africa, Iran, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, India, and many other nations what is celebrated is either a racial or an ethnocentric unity rather than a spiritual unity.
The Pseudo-religion, Militarism
Still another pseudo-religion of our time is militarism in which military might rather than the living God becomes the anchor of our hope. I see in America today many people, including evangelicals, placing their faith in the power of nuclear deterrence rather than in the infinitely greater power of God. A nation is justified in defending itself by force, but it often does so at a price – the price of idolatry. Militarism is indeed becoming a way of life for a growing number of Americans. A 1986 Gallup poll revealed that for the first time the military establishment rather than the church was ranked as our most trusted institution. We need again to pay heed to the words of the Psalmist: “A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save” (33:17,17).
One of the alluring salvations of our time, Baalism, is a repristination of the paganism of ancient times. It signifies a rebirth of the gods of nature and fertility. Sexual gratification is celebrated as the pathway to divinity. Baalism is a manifestation of that broader stream of devotion, Dionysian mysticism, which enthrones the instinctual drives or the will to power. This new kind of mysticism, in which we immerse ourselves in the world rather than detach ourselves from it, is glaringly evident in the writing of Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, D.H. Lawrence, Alan Watts, Nikos Kazantzakis, Matthew Fox, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Finally it is important to give attention to what I have chosen to call technological liberalism in which technique is divinized. When Richard Nixon hailed the landing of man on the moon during his presidency as the most significant event in world history, he was giving graphic utterance to the modern faith in human technology. Technological liberalism has regrettably penetrated the circles of conservative religion where worship and prayer are often reduced to techniques for bending the will of God or gaining spiritual consolation.
In process theology, which is probably stronger in American theological schools than in any other place, the gospel is the availability of the power of creative transformation, which is present around us and within us. This power was manifest above all in the Jesus of history, but it is also evident in other charismatic figures in history such as Plato and Buddha. The gospel is the good news that we can become one with the surge of creative power that carries the world to a higher level of consciousness.
Process theology speaks much of love but what it has in mind is Eros – the love of the good, the beautiful and the true. This is the love that seeks its own perfection in union with the highest. How utterly different is the Agape love of the New Testament, which drives us out of compassion to the sacrificial service of the lowliest. It is the difference between eudaemonism (self-realization ethics) and diakonia (service ethics).
Neo-gnosticism is another tantalizing movement in religion today that teaches another gospel and indeed another Christ. The gospel becomes the secret knowledge {gnosis) of the kingdom of God within us accessible only to those who undergo the disciplines of inner purification and consciousness raising. Faith means an awakening to our essential divinity rather than a confession of the unique divinity of Jesus Christ in history. Tillich reflected this new mood when he made self-discovery tantamount to God discovery.
The evangelical movement has for the most part resisted these new gospels, and yet in some of its popular manifestations it too gravitates toward another gospel. The gospel in this hybrid evangelicalism becomes the promise of personal renewal through the power of faith. Our hope is placed in faith as a daring act or a positive attitude rather than in Christ who alone can satisfy our spiritual need. Faith is tapping into the pool of unlimited power or unbounded possibility, which, it is said, is directly available to us.
The gospel in biblical perspective is the good news of reconciliation and redemption through the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross and his glorious resurrection from the grave. It is the story of what God had done for us in Jesus Christ and will do in us through the power of his Spirit. Faith directs us away from ourselves to Jesus Christ. It is not a virtue by which we win God’s favour but an empty vessel which receives God’s undeserved mercy.
Theologically, what is involved here is a move from Trinitarianism to Unitarianism, from particularism to universalism. God is no longer “Father, Son, and Spirit” but now “the God beyond God,” the suprapersonal God beyond all anthropomorphisms, the higher unity beyond all multiplicity. The church may well be engaged in the not too distant future in a battle for the Trinity.
At a Methodist conference on hymnal revision in Chicago a year or so ago, one of the pastors whom I met colourfully and, in my opinion, accurately described the differences between the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian-Universalist Church. The Unitarian preacher says: “We do not believe in the Trinity, but we may believe if we wish.” The UCC preacher says: “We believe in the Trinity, but we do not have to.” When the Trinity is made optional, we become in fact Unitarians or mystics of one kind or other. What bothers me is our contemporaries who blithely impose their ideological conviction on Holy Scripture and on the church universal.
I see theological confusion and mounting discord in most of the mainline denominations today. The Presbyterian Church (USA) might well be described as two churches under one umbrella. The United Church of Christ could accurately be depicted as various religions that can barely be contained under one umbrella. The Episcopal church impresses me as one church seeking for an umbrella. In the Roman Catholic church there is admittedly one church under one umbrella, but the focus is on trying to see the holes in this umbrella.
What the church needs to pray for and earnestly seek today is a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And if this happens we shall see repentance for both personal and national sin and renewed faith in the living Lord.