Taking a running jump at the future

Over the past year, this series has looked at the history of Christianity and the Church during the last 2,000 years. No religious tradition that gives a special place to historical documents and tests its rituals and practices against the experiences, teachings and customs of the past can ignore the lessons of history. But any exercise in history can be compared to a child taking a few steps back so she can have a good run and leap out into the future.

Over the centuries, the same debates have surfaced time and again in the Church: the nature of the relationship between God and Jesus Christ; the conflict between charism and institution; the competing or complementary claims of defining salvation through faith expressed in assent or through faith expressed in practice; the rift between the Greek East and the Latin West; the boundaries between political power and the community of faith; an understanding of mission as conversion or proselytism or as witness and presence; the efforts to refine and purify the church and the competing demand to maintain church unity. On the other hand, many of the divisions of the past now seem to have been laid to rest.

The divisions between East and West may prove to be more difficult, however, and even the Orthodox, according to Sergei Hackel, accept that their own fissile divisions "make us poor potential neighbours should we persist in trying to be neighbours at all".

But last year's agreement between Lutherans and Roman Catholics on "justification by faith alone" laid to rest 450 years of division, and there is an argument that all continuing divisions between the churches are based more on pride and tribal loyalty than on any continuing major doctrinal differences.

At the same time, the Church needs to be reminded of the lessons from past debates and the value of the doctrinal formulations they produced. Dr Maurice Wiles, former Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, recently recalled showing another leading liberal theologian the slogan: "Not back to the creeds but forward from the creeds". His colleague commented: "That's rather a good statement of what's needed". Only then did he disclose that the slogan was used by the pro-Nazi German Christians as they were seizing control of the German churches. In the mid-20th century, Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoffer provided a stark warning of the dangers of theology drifting too close to the cultural and political fashions of the day.

We might ask what is the future for theology? The past generation has seen the growth of more specific and more actively committed forms of theology, such as liberation theology, feminist theology, political theology, black theology and indigenous theologies. And a significant development in recent years is what Dr Wiles describes as "confessional approaches to theology" that stand in the general tradition of Barth.

These place a new emphasis on Scripture, the traditional Christian beliefs, particularly the doctrine of the Trinity, and often with concern for wider implications for society and issues such as the environment. But none of these schools necessarily holds the only option for theology in the coming century; as Dr Wiles warns, "every attempt to speak sensibly and appropriately about God and God's relation to the world is bound to be partial and provisional, in need of correction".

We may no longer see the days when theological books are best sellers and stir public controversy as did John Robinson's Honest to God in the 1960s, Hans Kung's On Being a Christian, or the Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick, in the 1970s. But Christianity will continue to influence and shape culture, as it did in the past with Michelangelo's frescoes and sculptures, Mozart's Requiems and Masses, and in paintings, poetry, drama and architecture. Even today's language of management and business has adapted the language of faith and theology in "mission statements" or terms such as "urban regeneration".

The Church itself is aware of its own need for a fresh commitment to mission and regeneration. But who can predict the future shape of the Church? In the 1970s, Charismatics claimed they held the future of the Church in their hands. At the beginning of the 21st century, many evangelicals are prepared to make this claim. But there are swings and pendulums, and theology and approaches to spirituality are also victims of fashion.

Today, differences and agreements in theology cut across denominational boundaries. Although we may be in an ecumenical winter and documents such as Dominus Iesus have dealt a severe blow to ecumenism, it is certain that the future of theology and the future of the Church is ecumenical.

Kathleen Norris, in her highly acclaimed recent book, The Cloister Walk, has pointed out yet again how women are written out when it comes to writing the history of the church. And it is beyond doubt that women will gain their rightful place in the Church in the near future.

Perhaps one of the major unresolved questions at the beginning of this new century is the depth of any future relationship with the other two principal monotheistic faiths, Judaism and Islam. There is no doubt that there must be dialogue and that centuries of unresolved, unnecessary and sinful conflict must end. But the degree of mutual coexistence in some societies has to be debated before even talking about shared social action or even the theological bases for exploring shared worship.

In a book due out later this month, The Death of Christian Britain, Dr Callum Brown of Stratchlyde University, argues that within a generation Christianity will be a minority cult in Britain, and he predicts the same fate for the whole of Western Christianity.

But whether one predicts an exciting future for Christianity or its decline and demise depends not just on skills in longterm weather forecasting, but on basic theological and faith assumptions. Even if a Christian accepted the forecasts of the decline of Christianity, faith assumes a continuing Christian presence in the world. Mission is not about business models of meeting growth targets or increasing donors and donations, but on making the Christian message present and effective in the world, and, as the Anglican Consultative Council defined mission, also includes responding "to human need by service", seeking "to transform unjust structures of society", and striving to "safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the earth".

Prof Wiles, in the current issue of the journal Theology, recalls a BBC producer expressing amazement on learning that he would be preaching in a village church on Christmas morning. "It was a matter of surprise to him that a theologian of my ilk should be preaching at all, let alone on Christmas Day of all days." But the first place for theologians is in the pulpit and with the community of faith on Christmas Day, Easter Day, and Sunday by Sunday. After that, all theology and all church history is merely explication and explanation.

Rev Patrick Comerford is a writer on theology and church history and an Irish Times journalist. Contact: theology@ireland.com

Christianity 2000 series concluded