J. Childs Jr. and Anthropological Ethics of the Future

James M. Childs. Jr. Christian Anthropology and Ethics. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978.

Synopsis of the Book

This book is a Christian anthropological and ethical study in the context of eschatological theology, particularly in the works of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jurgen Motlmann, and Carl Braaten. A contemporary understanding of an authentic human is explicated through this theology of the future or theology of hope.

I. The Heritage of the Tradition

The Search for Man: An Introduction. Childs reiterated the problems of the past search for humanity. Christian history produced variety of outlooks regarding the gospel’s contribution to the fulfillment of the nature and destiny of man and how the church ought to function to that end. All of these differing “humanizing” positions are deeply expressed in H.R. Neibuhrs’ Christ and Culture where Christ is against/of/and culture (and/in paradox). However, due to advancement of science and technology, the present pressure is enormous. The attack to man’s freedom of the will, moral sensibility, and religious inclinations and subjectivity has been deliberately debated. The main issue has something to do with man created in the image of God on which the need to reevaluate the concept is a must. Here, the proleptic emphasis of eschatological theology has called for an important contribution in redefining the meaning of man created in the image of God. The centrality of Jesus, as the prolepsis of the kingdom of God, in his resurrection expresses the true man—the fulfillment of man’s humanity.

Dichotomized Man. The church’s doctrine of man was found inconsistent and complex. What past scholars left to the present can be designated as a dichotomized man. The dualistic notion of humanum was expressed in two concepts. First, it can be defined as structural dichotomies. This means that man’s nature in the image of God is in two parts—an abiding natural image (reason, freedom of will, moral sensitivity, etc.) and the supernatural image that was lost in the fall. This is expresses in the teachings of Irenaeus and Aquinas. Basically man is created by an ahistorical eschatology for historical existence is discontinues with suprahistroical existence. The Reformation theologians tried to solve this case with their theological monism referring to the image as man’s original righteousness (Luther) which was originally lost in the fall. Thus, in the final analysis, Luther’s monism, with that of Irenaeus and Aquinas is evidently dichotomous.

Secularized Man. The secularizing trend in theology is basically identified with Harvey Cox (Secular City) and Paul M. van Buren (The Secular Meaning of the Gospel). It was the works of Schleiermacher that gave impetus to the emphasis of man in the center. The imago Dei refers to the God-consciousness or feeling of absolute dependence characteristic in man. This was a rejection to the original perfection of man in that he is capable by his own inherent structure. This anthropocentric theology was also amplified in the works of A. Ritschl’s history-centered theology in relation to the kingdom of God. Here, the secular outlook of man is identified with history, not with dichotomous man of the past. “Man’s religious nature tends to find its authentic expression in striving at the ethical task rather than in seeking an other-worldly salvation and fulfillment.”(49)

Theonomous Man. This theonomous image of God as concept of man is rooted from Augustine and it is expressed in the modern works of Paul Tillich. The emphasis here is the constitution of the man’s whole being in an ontological communion with the divine (ontological monism). The image of God, according to Augustine and Tillich, is perceived as a single, comprehensive phenomenon. Dualism is intentionally avoided by not restricting the scope of the image for the destiny and being of man to the spirit or soul as in contrast to man’s physical and historical. For them, the fulfillment of humanity would be understood as coming in a state of existence other than or discontinuous with historical, natural existence. The stress on the immediate and integral relationship between the being of God and the being of man makes this designation theonomous.

II. The Eschatological Perspective

The Recovery of Eschatology. While many theologians stressed the eschatological element in theology, most of them are not genuinely historical eschatology. Because of the recent historical eschatology, there was a rediscovery of apocalyptic as an authentic and biblical tradition. The present view of biblical studies on apocalyptic start from the Old Testament and culminates in Jesus and the early church. The proponents of the systematic development of historical eschatology are Carl Braaten, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Jurgen Moltmann. They provided eschatological theology that paved the way towards a new theonomy, a reconstruction under the rubric of God’s image.

The Image of God and Eschatology. In Childs analysis of the imago Dei in Genesis, he concludes that the OT understanding of God is not in anthropomorphic terms. They also look at man as theomorphic in special relationship of immediacy with God but with infinite difference. With support from G. von Rad’s exposition of creation history in the OT as well as exegesis from Pauline and Johannine concept of “image”, he valued greatly the significance of historical and eschatological realization of the new creation in Christ. It is not a recovery of the original, but a fulfillment of it. “The future is prior to the past as the whole transcends the parts.”(102) As creation theology is understood in the light of salvation history, so is the concept of God’s image is understood in the light of Christ; the fulfillment of man’s humanity in his resurrection.

Eschatological Man. Childs proposed four theses concerning the image of God in the light of eschatology.

Thesis 1: The image of God refers to the distinctive way in which man’s whole being as personal and historical being reflects God’s being as personal and historical being. This means the ground of human freedom and subjectivity (in Pannenberg’s term) is derivative and dependent upon God’s personal being and historicity. The ontological concept is similar to that of Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of the future, the ontology of process and becoming against the mechanistic concept of reality. In Moltmann and Pannenberg’s theology of future, this is ontological communion with God.

Thesis 2: The image of God is an eschatological concept which refers to man’s “destiny” for the fulfillment of perfect communion and union with God. The becoming of man in the promise of this destiny is constitutive of his being. This means that man is perceived as “not yet” as seen in God’s futurity. Man is the image of God in every present in human history. In the end, man will see that he has been the image of God as seen in Christ, the proleptic revelation and fulfillment of human existence from the very beginning.

Thesis 3: From the perspective of the law, the relationship of man’s falleness to his creation in the image of God should be understood as man’s rebellion against his own destiny. From the perspective of gospel, man’s hope for fulfillment in the image should be understood in terms of God’s gracious determination, proleptically revealed in Christ, to fulfill the promise of man’s creation in the divine image. This means that the image of God is an eschatological perspective. It stands over against humanity as the law (written in heart) and the gospel. Man’s resistance to God’s future is a rebellion against the image; it a direct refusal to the change promised by God. “The Christ event, therefore, represents the power of the future in contradiction to the destructive forces to the end that human destiny might be fulfilled in perfect communion and union with God.”(117) the prolepsis of the future Kingdom in Christ is God’s act of creation consistent with Pauline emphasis on the centrality of Christ in the promises of God for the fulfillment of humanity through his resurrection.

Thesis 4: An eschatological doctrine of the image of God provides us with significant locus for the theological foundations of the Christian ethic. Based upon the concept of NT eikon en Theou, in reference to Jesus, he is man’s prototype of true imago as the prolepsis of humanity in eschatological fulfillment. The lifestyle of the person who is newly created in the image of God must embody that self-giving love expressed in the kenosis. It stands in contrast to the old humanity typified by Adam. The old nature is put off and the new nature is put on in that the believer’s life is characterized by the qualities of the love of God which Christ reveals as the divine image. The Christina life’s edifice is mediated by baptism and empowered by the Holy Spirit’s indwelling and is built upon the grace of God in Christ; because of such foundation of grace, the basis of the imperative forms of conduct is indicative—a new created being in the image of God.

There are basic thoughts amplified in this eschatological thrust of the future. The new creation in Christ is in continuity with God’s creating action at the origin of man. The image is given as a creation “ex nihilo”—a pure gift of race which came from the “power of the future” as the advent of the radical new. In Christ, the future and fulfillment of man’s humanity, a believer is freed from his own drive to take his own future; “he is freed from the fundamental sin of rejecting his creaturehood and dependency as imago Dei.”(119) The overarching value of the kingdom, therefore, is: Become what you will be.

Here, the agape love—revealed in Christ, the image of God—is the dynamic and criterion of this imperative of becoming. What is in sight here is not just the communion with God but also the mutual relationship with neighbor as well since all, female and female, were created in God’s image. This horizontal dimension is strongly amplified in Barthian tradition. “In the service of this unity, love seeks the values of life, freedom, equality, peace, harmony, and joy for the fulfillment of the individual and the whole community of mankind.”(120) The believer who is in Christ, proleptically participates in the ultimate destiny that these values depict. These values have the force of the absolute and are concrete expressions of the fulfillment of mankind in the image of God. “In that this fulfillment is the completion and the determining future of our historical existence as created in and for the imago Dei, we see in the eschatological promise of the image and the values associated with it continuity between man’s nature and destiny.”(121) Built upon the gospel, in view as an extension of God’s creative action, it is this ultimate continuity that mankind is seeking all along.

III. Eschatological and Ethics

Grounding the Good. This section deals with the answer to the question on what is good and right in the light of eschatological reconstruction of the doctrine of man. Childs stresses the relationship of eschatology in ethics is through their intimate connection on the concept of the kingdom of God. He used the support on the biblical theoretical structures of Richard Hiers’ study of the theology of hope and Norman Metzler’s dissertation on the ethics of the kingdom of God. In general, the ground of good is based upon “the revelation of God’s telos for all mankind and for the universe”(130) and in particular, the imago Dei. The good as the fulfillment of humanity is proleptically present to believers in Christ—the eikon tou Theou. In the futurist outlook, Christian ethics is an ethics of change in terms of repentance and renewal. The eschatological nature of Childs’ anthropological ethics, in the final analysis, “means that the full realization of the humanum participates in the sociopolitical, as well as personal, dimesions of the kingdom of God.”(141) This is what he calls “the way into social ethics as a clear path for Christian theology.” (Ibid.)

Deciding the Right. Childs want to clarify the question of rules. Basically, Christian ethics’ rules are people-oriented and should inculcate the law-gospel interplay implicit in the proleptic nature of the kingdom of God and the human good. Thus, the theonomous ethic that Childs proposed will neither be heteronomous (negate history within history by applying transcendent norms from outside history) nor autonomous (man is the source of his own law guided by his own conviction within history) ethic. Each response to the standard of the kingdom “will be a fragmentary prolepsis of the fulfillment of humanity, of the promised future union of men with God and men with men in union with God, a promised future which is constitutive of our being as men in the present.”(156)

Response

Ethics in the light of the power of the future is scholarly presented here. This is an ethical exposition of the significance of the theology of hope on relation to ethics.

Questions

1. What is the role of church in this theonomous ethics?

2. What is the relationship of theological foundations and normative theory?