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In recent times we can
observe various sociocultural, political, economic and religious
movements which, I suggest, can be perceived with a commonality of
direction. Developments such as pluralism, multiculturalism, the peace
movement, environmentalism, globalization and universalism all have a
concern--or at least an interest--for the interrelatedness of humanity.
These efforts essentially of inclusiveness have an underlying search for
wholeness.
While we may not agree
with the philosophy, ideology, theology or methodology used as the basis
for such movements, we need to affirm seeking the whole of
humankind implicit in the common direction of their concern or interest.
Christians need to affirm this search because God created this whole and
desires its restoration--first among ourselves, then for the rest of the
world, including physical creation.
Modernity has compromised
this effort toward wholeness, making it difficult to pursue, or even be
aware of, much less experience wholeness. While postmodernity challenges
modernism's assumptions and practices in order to renew the effort to be
whole, its various sentiments lack understanding of the whole and even
confuse its development. What ultimately, however, has been the most
detrimental to the whole--of the person, humankind and creation--and the
experiential practice of wholeness is reductionism. The general
process of reductionism essentially reduces the whole to its smaller
parts (or secondary aspects) and, in turn, uses the behavior of those
parts to determine what the whole will be, thus diminishing or
minimalizing the integrity of the whole.
We can observe the
influence of reductionism on social life in the following historical
process: how the concerns of a village or region fragmented a tribe,
nation or country, as witnessed in Balkanization; how the priorities of
an extended family or kinship group fragmented a village or region; how
the self-interests of the nuclear family fragmented the extended family,
for example, since the Industrial Revolution; and how the prominence of
the individual today fragments the nuclear family. In each of these
developments reductionism focuses on a smaller aspect of social life (or
part) to be the primary determinant for what it means to be whole. In
what condition does this leave the human person?
This same process of
diminishing or minimalizing the integrity of the whole can be observed
in the Western church, which this study will address.
A Window
to the Whole
In a remarkable scene
occupying a small place in the narrative of Jesus (Mt 12:46-50), we
have a window to the
narrative whole of God's desires--desires formulated even before
creation (Eph 1:4, 5; Rom 8:29), enacted at the first creation (Gen
2:18) and fulfilled in Christ for an eschatological completion by the
Spirit (Col 1:19, 20; Eph 1:9-14; 2 Cor 5:5). When Jesus said in
response to his biological mother and brothers that his family is
constituted by those persons who respond to the desires of his Father,
we can begin to grasp what is involved to be whole: the whole of
God and God's desires narrated throughout the Bible as the integrating
theme of God's response to humankind to be whole; the function of human
persons in the definitive whole constituted by the whole of God
as the Trinity; and the convergence of the trinitarian persons and the
human persons in the relational context
and process of the whole of God's family
signified by the church. Whether this little scene serves as a
significant window to the whole of God depends on how well the pieces of
God's self-revelation are put together to define the whole big picture
of eschatological dimension.
If this epistemic process
for grasping the whole is to be complete, it needs to be relational.
Understanding the definitive whole of the human person, the church and
the triune God, and how the whole of the person and of the church must
necessarily interact together with the Trinity in order to be whole, is
the functional purpose of this study. Yet, reductionism presents a
formidable challenge to a relational epistemic process.
God's most vulnerable
self-disclosure was made in the incarnation of the Son. Jesus does not
just provide us with a window but opens the door to the whole of God and
God's desires for us to be whole. This study examines: how Christ is the
hermeneutical key that opens the ontological door to the whole of God,
and how he is also the functional key that opens the relational door to
the ontology of the whole of God's family constituted in the Trinity,
the Trinity qua family. Thus, how complete our Christology is will be
critical for our understanding of the significance of the whole--be it
of God, the person or the church. More specifically, examining how Jesus
related to persons (foremost his Father) is important for understanding
the relational significance of the whole.
For example, Jesus
extended the above window in the relational progression to the whole of
God's desires in an intimate relational moment on the cross when he
bonded Mary and John to each other in family love to operationalize
God's new family (Jn 19:26, 27). Moreover, Jesus' healing ministry was a
clear demonstration of how he saw the person, involved himself with the
whole person and acted to restore wholeness by taking them into his
family. This was also a threat to reductionists (such as scribes and
Pharisees) who used substitutes for wholeness and thus would have had to
forego the benefits of a reductionist system that stratified others to
their separation or exclusion. Therefore, in the whole of God'
revelation, wholeness involves not fragmenting the person into
parts--for example in classic dualism of body and soul, or by a
reductionist quantitative focus without the qualitative significance of
the heart--as well as not reducing the primacy of the relationships
necessary to be whole. In the integrity of this revelation, God's design
and purpose for the ontology of personhood are by nature both
functionally whole and wholly relational.
Throughout God's
self-disclosure, we need to grasp how the person is seen and related to
in the relationships of the whole. This will help piece together the
who and what of the whole of God, which will then engage by
what and how the whole of God does relationships. To reduce,
diminish, or minimalize any of this has relational consequences which
leave persons in the condition "to be apart" from the whole of their
self, of God and the relationships necessary to be whole in the
church as the whole of God's family.
This theological
conversation needs to be engaged with the perspective that theology
should not be the task of systematically informing us about God but
about establishing the coherence of God's self-revelation vulnerably
extended to us for relationship, so that we can intimately know the
triune God and experience life together as the whole of God's family in
likeness of the Trinity. Basing the whole in God's self-disclosure
within the Bible, particularly in the narratives of Christ, is both a
necessary and sufficient process to formulate a definitive wholistic
theology functional for our practice-- not simply to inform our practice
but to transform it. While Scripture is the primary source and priority
used for this theological process, church tradition is helpful and
necessary to appropriate also insofar as it reinforces or clarifies
biblical revelation; where tradition deviates or conflicts with it, then
tradition must defer to the priority of the Word.
In this relational
epistemic process used for this study, I suggest the following working
definition for a functional theology to give coherence to all the
theological aspects of our discussion:
Christian theology is the biblically
informed study of God providing the context and process for practice to
intimately know the whole of God constituted in the Trinity, thus
reflecting the vulnerable revelation of Jesus as the Way, the Truth and
the Life--the relational Way for the epistemological Truth to experience
the ontological Life of the whole of the triune God.
This is the door Jesus
opens to the whole of God through which the person and the church must
both enter together with the Spirit in order to be whole.
The
Nonnegotiable Call and the Unavoidable Lure
Our discussion necessarily
includes Paul's life and teachings. He formulated his theology from
Christ's revelations (both directly to him and indirectly from the Jesus
tradition) and clearly established the truth of the gospel in
the midst of reductionist substitutes and practices, even by Peter. In
doing so, Paul was the most instrumental in operationalizing faith and
church practice in the ecclesiology of the whole. When understood in
this relational context and process, his teachings have deeper
significance and coherence for our function and practice to be whole
today. Indeed, we will come to understand, somewhat tensely no doubt,
that Paul leaves us no option.
Since the Trinity
constitutes and created the whole, wholeness was never designed to be a
static attribute possessed by the individual. Wholeness is the dynamic
function of persons intimately involved together in the interdependent
relationships which constitute them to be whole in the likeness of the
Trinity (and the mutual indwelling function of perichoresis) qua
family. Moreover, as Jesus disclosed and Paul made operational, the call
to be whole cannot involve merely an individual faith nor can it
practice a private faith. To be whole is the practice of whole persons
together as family in a public faith, which Jesus makes imperative in
his formative familial prayer (Jn 17:15-26), qualifying his commission
for his followers (Mt 28:18-20).
Yet, from the beginning
the human person, the journey of God's people and the church in its
history have had to struggle to be whole. Whatever situations and
circumstances, personal and collective accountability, structural and
systemic factors are involved in this struggle, the common underlying
issue to all of them is reductionism. The influence of reductionism was,
has been, and is today the most critical issue in diminishing and
minimalizing the whole of God both in the first creation and the new
creation in Christ. We need to understand the unavoidable lure of
reductionism on Christian practice (individual and corporate) while
grasping the call and need to be whole--not only for the experiential
reality of the church as the whole of God's family but also for the
world to see the significance of the definitive whole of God. We will
discuss the issues involved in the call to be whole for our conceptions
of the human person, our perceptions of the Trinity and our formulations
of the church as well as the lure of reductionism for each.
Anticipating the Whole
Despite the reductionist
tendencies seen throughout the human narrative, what emerges clearly in
the big picture is the divine narrative of God's thematic activity to
relationally respond to our human condition "to be apart" from the
whole. It is the relational progression of the triune God's ongoing
relational involvement that provides the integrating theme for the whole
of God and the study of it.
As you engage this study
of the whole, the whole of God, it may not always be clear whether "the
whole of God" is referring to the whole which the triune God is
ontologically, or to the whole of which God created for us to be part.
Hopefully, the context will adequately indicate whether it is the former
or the latter, or both. Any ambiguity, however, is intentional because
they both should be seen together, inseparable from the other. This is
apparent for the latter since there is no created whole apart from the
ontology of God's whole--though not to be confused with pantheism.
Moreover, the ontology of God is revealed not to inform us about
God but for the relational context and process to respond to us in order
to be relationally whole with God and for us to be
relationally-ontologically whole with each other together in likeness to
the Trinity.
Anticipating the whole for
the church today, particularly in the West, may locate us in
circumstances interestingly similar to the first human person and God's
response to be whole. When the call to be whole is neither diminished
nor minimalized by the lure of reductionism, this call in our
contemporary context suggests a unique response to develop the
trinitarian relational context of family and trinitarian relational
process of family love. This response would be similar to God's response
at the first creation to complete the relational context. Defining this
unique response for church practice today will be the relational
conclusion to this current study.
Furthermore, the
definitive whole which the world needs and seeks in the various
contemporary movements can be found in the relational significance of
the whole of God, which experientially is reflected in the relational
life and practice of the church as the whole of God's family. Just as
Paul at the Areopagus affirmed the commonality of "the unknown God" whom
Paul wanted to make known to them (Acts 17: 22, 23), "the church as
equalizer" today is called to be the experiential whole of God which
then can be relationally made known for the world to
embrace--anticipating the fulfillment of Jesus' prayer in John 17:21-23,
along with his complete formative family prayer for whom and for which
this study is submitted.
©2006 T. Dave Matsuo
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