Globalization needs communion, theologians say
-12/05/05
The response of the churches to globalization should be practices of communion that reflect the nature of a God who dwells with us as Life, Word and Spirit, a senior Orthodox theologian has told the thirteenth Conference on World Mission and Evangelism meeting in Greece this week.
Dr Athanasios P. Papathanasiou, Professor in the Higher Ecclesiastical School in Athens, was speaking to an audience of more than 600 church delegates from 105 countries. They represent the major Protestant, Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical and Pentecostal traditions of global Christianity.
Encouraging Christians to go beyond simplistic characterizations of globalization as nothing more than a post-modern melting pot, an economic free-for-all or a clash of civilizations, Dr Papathanasiou talked about how it was possible to move towards “conversion to the Trinitarian mode of existence”.
The traditional Christian doctrine of God is of divine oneness-in-diversity and a communion of loving relation without confusion or separation. Orthodox theology stresses the reception of this divine life in the Church – through the work of the Spirit, the action of God in Christ, and the promise of a healed creation.
Basing his argument on the interpretation of scripture through the Eastern tradition of the early Church Fathers, Dr Papathanasiou said that the church was called to be more than an aggregation of individuals, an undifferentiated global village, an organization run along secular management principles or a collection of unlinked human contexts.
Its alternative vision, he suggested, was that of communion ñmutual indwelling. “Authentic existence”, the Orthodox theologian declared, is when “otherness is not something parallel or opposite to [one’s own] identity”, but an element of it.
Dr Papathanasiou went on to say that because the church believes history is illuminated by the light of Godís final loving purposes (purposes which are not simply a natural consequence of history), it must witness to the hope of resurrection and of the transfiguration of the whole world.
The theme of the world mission gathering, the most widely representative of its kind, is ìCome, Holy Spirit, Heal and Reconcile!î A key challenge is for the churches to be communities of reconciliation in line with the message they proclaim and the action they seek to sponsor in the world.
Participants listening to Dr Papathanasiou noted an unexpected convergence between thought emerging from the ancient Orthodox churches and elements of the burgeoning Pentecostal movement ñ which has been described as the ëfourth waveí of Christianity, following on from Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant expressions.
Earlier this week Dr Kirsteen Kim from the University of Birmingham, an expert in Pentecostal-related studies, addressed the conference on the question of how to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit in a plural world. She too emphasized the traditional roots of the Christian experience of God as Creator, Word and Spirit.
Dr Kim commended openness to new spiritual stirrings, but she said that the grounding of an authentic Christian response was to be discovered in looking at how the Early Christians had sought to bridge the spiritualities of the Jewish and Greek worlds by focusing on Godís transforming presence in and as Jesus Christ.
The criteria for discerning authentic spirituality, she suggested, involved the four-fold acknowledgement of Jesus as our centre, a new ethic of Christ-likeness, the spiritual empowerment of the whole Body of Christ, and the movement towards integral liberation.
On the last point Dr Kim declared: ìThe effect of the Spiritís anointing on Jesus Christ was that he announced good news to the poor (Luke 4:18), and this must be a touchstone for all spiritual claims. When discerning the Spirit in any activity, we need to ask whose interests are being served; who is benefiting from this?î