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Editor's Note: The following essay is the fifth in a series dealing with topics of interest and importance to Presbyterians. Author Johnson explains: "The report from the General Assembly Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church provides us both the occasion and the urgency for theological dialogue within the PC(USA). This and succeeding essays are offered as a constructive effort in that direction." Like the preceding essays, this one aims to break open a conversation between two adversaries locked onto one another. I am respectfully looking for fresh--and faithful--avenues through the current impasse of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) while giving voice to the center in the current theological discussion. The focus for this essay is the difference between two primary ways to articulate the Gospel, one using the phrase Christ in me/us and the other using the phrase me/us in Christ. Both phrases belong to the Bible, especially Paul and John, but Western Christianity over the last 350 years has stressed Christ in me/us almost to the exclusion of the other phrase. With this emphasis Christianity grew in huge numbers during the 18th-19th centuries.
Editor's Note: The following essay is the fifth in a series dealing with topics of interest and importance to Presbyterians. Author Johnson explains: "The report from the General Assembly Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church provides us both the occasion and the urgency for theological dialogue within the PC(USA). This and succeeding essays are offered as a constructive effort in that direction." Like the preceding essays, this one aims to break open a conversation between two adversaries locked onto one another. I am respectfully looking for fresh--and faithful--avenues through the current impasse of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) while giving voice to the center in the current theological discussion. The focus for this essay is the difference between two primary ways to articulate the Gospel, one using the phrase Christ in me/us and the other using the phrase me/us in Christ. Both phrases belong to the Bible, especially Paul and John, but Western Christianity over the last 350 years has stressed Christ in me/us almost to the exclusion of the other phrase. With this emphasis Christianity grew in huge numbers during the 18th-19th centuries. The over-balance, however, has probably run its course. We are now experiencing its down side, in my estimation. Recapturing the sense of me/us in Christ may be a way out of our current impasse, opening up fresh insights into the gospel and new energy for the PC(USA) today. After looking at the language differences, this essay considers how these two phrases understand the presence of God and authentic Christian community. The phrase Christ in us concentrates on the interior self of the Christian believer and looks for an embodiment of Christ in us. Traditional liberals draw from Luke 17:21 to say the kingdom of God is within you (KJV, NIV). The Greek words can also mean among you (RSV, NRSV), but classical liberals prefer the other reading. Once within the heart, they say, the kingdom will manifest itself in the ideals of love, peace, and justice, which in turn will flow out for the benefit of all. Traditional conservatives appeal to the experience of conversion. Being convicted of our sins and persuaded that Christ died for us, we are to pray, Come dwell in my heart, Lord Jesus. With Jesus living in our hearts, they say, we sinners experience an actual change in our lives, namely, a new-found love for God and other people, a commitment to moral living, and a joyful hope for eternal life. Some real differences separate these two sides, as we know from listening to the liberal-conservative debates over the last century. More striking, however, is what they share together--a concentration on the interior self, looking for the embodiment of Christ or the kingdom of God within the believer. With a few variations, such as the Spirit dwelling in us, or God in us working through us, the phrase Christ in me/us fits both sides. What do we actually talk about when we use these phrases? When we speak of Christ in us, we transpose Christ into language about ourselves: what's happened to us, what we like about it, what makes us happy or relieved, or what is the benefit to our tribe or to our cause. By contrast, when we speak of us in Christ, we transpose ourselves into language about Christ: the focus is upon Christ, who Christ is (Emmanuel, God with us, Savior, Lord), what Christ is doing here and now, and how the gospel in Christ's name goes forward. What appears to be only a slight difference in language hides some large theological consequences. Concerning the presence of God, Christ in us locates God within us, dwelling in our hearts by our faith, perhaps going where we go. When our faith is weak, however, is God less present with us, or more present when our faith is strong? Doubt is a real threat here, because it may signal the absence of God. In the face of devastating terrorist attacks, tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes, the question becomes even more urgent, Where was God? Was God perhaps absent from us at such moments, even if we and God-in-us were there? By contrast, the phrase us in Christ locates us wherever Christ--or God--is. God is everywhere is probably too broad a statement to be meaningful. It is better to say God is always somewhere, concretely, i.e., in Christ. If we are in God (in Christ, in the Spirit) and God is always somewhere, then we are always where God is. We will always be in God's presence, no matter how bad things get or even whether we believe in God. Being in Christ, we will seek to identify concretely the God in whose presence we always find ourselves---precisely the way the Bible talks about God. These two phrases project very different notions of community. Following an embodiment model, Christ in us says the Christian community is where the believer is, i.e., as an association of largely like-minded individuals. The Church is thus set apart from the World. God (Christ, the Spirit) dwells in believers one-by-one and among them collectively, but God does not dwell the same way in the world where no believers are. With high levels of faith, love, spiritual experience, devotional and moral purity to attract and hold believers, such communities can and do sustain themselves effectively apart from the world. By contrast, the phrase us in Christ says: Where Christ is, there is the Christian community.* The Church, that is, is not defined by the people who join it, but by Jesus Christ, who draws people together and sustains them as a community in the power of the Spirit. For this reason the majority of PC(USA) confessions talk about the marks of the true Church. A true Church exists, they say, wherever the Word is purely preached, the Sacraments are rightly administered, and church discipline or discipleship is exercised. These marks point to Jesus Christ, who, in the power of the Spirit, thus gathers people together around the Gospel and governs their lives: one-by-one, as a community (mutually), and at those places where Christians engage the world at large. Presbyterian church order arises from these very considerations (see the PC(USA) Book of Order (G-1.0100a-d). Both approaches to community produce challenges that have to be overcome--or endured. Christ in us invites us to ask how much is Christ really in us? How much more is the Spirit in some of us, and how much less in others? And for the devout the question is urgent: How much is enough? Quantifying Christ in us moves very quickly to comparisons and finger pointing among Christians, both individuals and denominations. No one can deny the authenticity of faith, hope, love, etc., whenever we find it in such communities. They are, after all, the evidences of God in us. Maintaining the evidences of God's presence, however, takes an enormous, sustained human effort and energy. Even a partial breakdown of the evidences becomes a crisis of faith, as if God is absent from the Church. The quantifying and the comparisons are also inherently divisive and destructive of authentic Christian community. I believe we are experiencing these several dynamics in the PC(USA) at the present time. By contrast, the phrase us in Christ joins us with Christ, binds us together with everyone else who is in Christ, and focuses our attention on what God is doing all around us (see Col. 1:15-17ff). If there is any faith or hope or love--no matter how much or how little--there is an authentic Christian community in Christ's name. In Christ's name means Christ actually mediates our relationships with one another more than we mediate Christ to one another (Bonhoeffer). And, with a diversity of gifts given to a diversity of people in Christ, we live not for ourselves or for our own claims of right and privilege, but for the sake of Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church, Jesus Christ creates this community and governs it himself, in the power of the Spirit. The body of Christ thus remains centered in Christ and not in its members. The challenges of us in Christ are (a) to keep alive the vision of Christ at the center of life and (b) to avoid becoming merely self-serving. Though we can strive vigorously for a vision of Christ through effective preaching and worship, teaching, mutual love, intercessory prayer, and active discipleship, we cannot guarantee the authenticity or power of the vision. Like the activities themselves, the authenticity and power still have to come as gifts from God, the Holy Spirit, who thus frees us from having to do these activities as a self-motivated, demand requirement. The other danger is that we will spend our energies on ourselves and not look for the face of Christ all around us. According to Scripture and the Reformed tradition, Christ is at the center of the world, which was both created and redeemed through God the Son, Jesus Christ (John 1:3, 3:16). The way we deal with other people, the world around us, and the issues of our common life is the way we deal with Christ (Matt. 25:40, 45). Wherever we see people beset by evil, burdened by need, torn by conflict or war, or broken in body and spirit, we are looking into the face of Christ. To participate in the ongoing, active life of Christ is a high calling and a tall order, which takes constant discernment, caring, courage, and risk-taking for the sake of Christ. The Church exists, that is, in following--not containing--Christ and in spending itself for the sake of Christ and the Gospel (Mark 8:34-38). This essay appears to set the two phrases, Christ in us and us in Christ, completely at odds with each other. The Bible actually sets them side-by-side (John 15:1-17, Romans 8 and Paul passim). For the Bible, the larger term is us in Christ. That is, Christ is not in us unless and until we are first in Christ. The branches engrafted into the vine precede the life-giving sap flowing through the branches (John 15:1-8). The abiding in Christ comes before Christ's abiding in us (John 15:9-10, 16). Similarly, the wisdom of the universe in Christ (Ephesians 1) precedes the love of God dwelling in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:16-19. Note the accent on the faith/love of Christ in 3:12 and 17b-19a, Gal. 2:16, 20, and elsewhere, KJV and NRSV footnote). Above all, us in Christ keeps us from reducing Christ in us to a container notion of either the individual believer or the Christian community. Has the time come, perhaps, to correct the imbalance that has dominated the epoch of Pietism from 1650 to the present? This move is at the heart of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological breakthrough in the mid-20th century, grounded in Barth at the front end and extended by Moltmann at the back end. Maybe correcting the imbalance of the two phrases can help the PC(USA) to a fresh perception of the Gospel and a theological breakthrough in our own current debate. Merwyn S. Johnson currently is professor of historical and systematic theology emeritus at Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West, S.C., and visiting professor of theology at Union-PSCE in Charlotte, N.C. *See Jurgen Moltmann's discussion in The Church in the Power of the Spirit (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977), 122ff.
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