RESOURCING THE CHURCH FOR ECUMENICAL MINISTRy A ...

persons remains particularly relevant in our time
when global divides of strength, health, wealth, and
power are sharply drawn.
For Luther, “under the cross” is the place
where Christians are united in evident
faith and in their vulnerability to pain
and destruction.
For Luther, “under the cross” is the place where
Christians are united in evident faith and in their
vulnerability to pain and destruction. He accented
the paradoxical nature of Christianity in which
God’s glory is hidden in the cross and essentially
invisible on earth. Unfortunately, Luther tended to
trust inwardness and invisibility in themselves and
to denigrate visible and material expressions of faith
as such. 5
By contrast, John Calvin employed the distinction
between visible and invisible church to aid believers
in keeping communion with the church they could
see. According to Calvin, the church’s foundation
in divine election may be primarily invisible, but its
ministry and purpose are primarily visible.
Initiation into its membership is by baptism; its
unity in doctrine and love is attested to by the Lord’s
Supper; and its ministry is preserved in the
preaching of the Word. This visible church is far
from perfect: Its divinely instituted ministry exists
in history and is susceptible both to corruption and
to correction.
Calvin viewed the Christian life as a strenuous,
engaged life. In contrast to Luther’s paradoxical
stance, Calvin depicted a transformative faith
engaged in history. “The church’s holiness is not yet
complete,” Calvin taught. The church is holy in that
God is “daily at work” in it and “in the sense that it
is daily advancing.” 6 Christians dwell in the midst of
life’s complexities, vulnerabilities, and ambiguities,
not on the edge of the world. Christians should rely
on God’s mercy, give glory to God, name ignorance
and falsehood for what it is, acknowledge their own
vulnerability and ambiguity, and strive to transform
lives and institutions toward the glory of God.
The gap that Calvin saw between divine glory and
creaturely existence often called forth a practical
responsiveness. And more, it called forth venturesome
Christians who lived out their faith in the
midst of a world that was a theater of God’s glory,
albeit one distorted by corruption and idolatry.
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Many of these followers grew impatient with
falsehood and injustice and became uncompromising
agents of change. They understood their
worship of the God of grace and glory to entail the
possibilities of transformed ecclesial, cultural,
political, and economic life toward greater
goodness, truth, and justice. But other followers of
Calvin focused on the fear of God and their own
vulnerability, and negotiated the gap between
creaturely existence and God’s glory by creating and
submitting to authoritarian religious and political
regimes. At our best, Disciples exemplify the former
practical responsiveness; at our worst, Disciples’
focus on unity can function to suppress not only
divisions and diversity, but also responsibility for
transformation.
The gap between God’s glory and creaturely existence
is no less evident in our day. Globalization does not
alleviate the shared human plight about which Paul
and other theologians have been writing for
centuries: human creatures now assimilate idolatries
by megabytes and gigabytes; we consume tyrannies
with how we eat, work, and live; we transact them in
the global marketplace and suffer them in globalized
risks and damage. To somehow secure our own lives
from the ravages that others suffer—a sectarian
option—is not a real option: persons are already
intricately and globally interconnected. For example,
cell phones allow communication with persons
around the world; they also connect their users to the
Congo, from whence comes eighty percent of the
mineral that allows the phones to hold an electrical
charge, but where rural Congolese themselves cannot
afford the technology and where exploitation and
rape accompany international looting of mineral
resources. 7
The deadly effects of contemporary idolatries are
seen in places where the basic goods of life cannot
be taken for granted, where constant vigilance is
required to keep a child safe from violence and wellenough
fed, where decent housing can be neither
afforded nor found, where access to minimal health
care or education cannot be assumed, where the lack
of hope numbs minds and spirits. The effects of our
day’s idolatries also cut across relative privileges.
They are seen in interpersonal abuse and violence,
substance abuse, ragged relationships, lack of viable
common life, contaminated food and water and air,
and relative inability to access or affect political
processes.
However, it is not only shared harm and pain that
unite human creatures. The unity of humanity
Culp • Christian Unity, Prophetic Witness, and the Unity of Humanity