Does matter matter?

The significance of that which is financial, material, bodily and earthly in theological perspective

1. Introduction: Issues that call for theological reflection

The purpose of this document is to provide (reformed) churches in South Africa with a broad theological framework to engage with a variety of social issues. All of these issues require from Christians to relate their faith in some or other way to that which is financial, material, bodily and earthly.

The document is prompted by a range of issues that reformed churches in South Africa have been addressing. The following examples may simply be listed here in order to indicate the scope and complexity of the concerns that require theological reflection:

  • How should Christians engage with the world of money? Here a number of financial issues may be mentioned, ranging from the personal to the global: personal finances, tithing, consumerist temptations, indebtedness, possessions, investments, the world of work and unemployment, the many faces of poverty, goals for “development”, international debt and debt relief, financial governance in the corporate world and the prevailing inequalities and injustices that characterise the global economy.
  • How should Christians respond to contemporary debates on land reform and restitution? How is this informed by a “theology of land”? Here issues such as the ownership of land, the selling and buying of real estate, the inheritance of land, the responsible/irresponsible use of land, commercial farming, the plight, rights and responsibilities of farm workers, the rights to housing and basic living commodities and the owing and accumulation of possessions need to be addressed. Moreover, since churches are themselves major land owners, how should the stewardship of church land be exercised?
  • How should Christians relate to culture and cultural identity? A prophetic critique of cultural patterns may well be required, especially when culture is distorted by reigning ideologies such as fascism, patriarchy, racism, nationalism, liberalism or consumerism. However, an affirmation of cultural identity may also be required. In contemporary African theology categories such as inculturation and indigenisation are often employed to stress the need for “Christianity with an African face”. How should African Christians address traditional customs such as initiation rites, ancestor veneration and the role of sangomas? How, then, should the relationship between “Christ and culture”, the gospel and our culture, be understood? Can one speak of a “Christian culture” or a Christianised culture? What about cultural, ethnic and racial diversity? How should that be judged after the disastrous emphasis on such diversity in apartheid theology? Would it do to only emphasise the unity of the church as a response to such diversity? What about the catholicity of the church?
  • How should Christians respond to contemporary debates around the production and consumption of food? Here one may consider issues around the use of biotechnology in food production, organic farming, the environmental costs of food production, the plight of animals in meat factories, global agricultural monopolies, the transport of food products, hunger and malnutrition together with obesity and health problems associated with that, meat and vegetarianism, the availability of nutritious food amidst rising food prices, and habits of cooking in a world of fast foods.
  • How should Christians engage with human sexuality? Here an equally wide range of issues prompt theological reflection: the need for and the nature of intimacy, the availability of pornography, patriarchy in church and society, the diversity of sexual orientations, various issues around homosexuality, the exploitation of human sexuality in the corporate world, and the plight of HIV and AIDS.
  • How should Christians engage with issues of health and illness? Here one would need to address concerns such as various disabilities, the impact of living with HIV and AIDS, coping with illness, degeneration, aging and the decay of potential, providing and financing health care, fitness and vitality, death and dying, funeral arrangements and numerous ethical concerns regarding decision making around abortion, euthanasia and medical research. Is death completely natural? Or only the result of sin? If the latter, did the leaves not fall from the trees in the Garden of Eden? If the former, how does that alter pastoral counselling in the context of dying and death? How does the hope for eternal life relate to this biological life? Indeed, theological reflection on death and dying may well present a test case for thinking on that which is material, bodily and earthly – one with far-reaching pastoral significance.
  • How should Christians respond to a range of contemporary environmental concerns – including various forms of pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, over-fishing, the rapid loss of biodiversity and, above all, the threats associated with climate change?
  • How should Christians respond to the far-reaching impact of information technology on contemporary society? What about biotechnology and the options available around medical technology? And nuclear technologies? Is technology by itself natural and ethically neutral? How do such technologies alter our understanding of being human? Should the elaborate use audiovisual technology in the liturgical space be affirmed or resisted?
  • How should Christians come to terms with the insights emerging from various scientific disciplines such as astrophysics (the big), quantum mechanics (the very small), evolutionary biology (the living), and the cognitive sciences (the complex)? How should the relationship between faith and reason, or theology and science be properly understood? Is faith a form of knowledge and, if so, what kind of knowledge is it? Is faith rational or does it require a sacrifice of one’s intellect? Is faith based on knowledge or does it surpass knowledge (e.g. in the form of wisdom or a comprehensive interpretative framework)? Can the plausibility of Christian faith also be tested on the basis of criteria that are not necessarily inherent to the Christian faith?
  • What role do worldviews and cosmologies play in theological reflection? How should one steer between the views of the world assumed in biblical times, the worldviews of modernity and postmodernity and a traditional African cosmology? While such questions are hardly directly related to that which is material, bodily and earthly, they cannot be avoided in interpreting that which is material, bodily and earthly.
  • How should churches interact with various other role players in contemporary society? Should it see itself in sociological and legal terms as a voluntary association, a social club of people with common interests, or what? And in theological terms? How, on this basis should it relate to the state, to business and industry, to non-governmental organisations and community organisations in civil society, to faith-based organisations and to other religious traditions? How does theological reflection relate to these “publics”? What is therefore “public” about public theology?

The purpose of this document is not to address any of these issues individually. The purpose is also not merely to assist churches in the ongoing need for moral discernment, judgements and decision making. Instead, a general rubric namely “that which is financial, material, bodily and earthly”, is employed to capture what is at stake in this regard. What theological assumptions come into play in Christian reflection on such issues? This requires moral discernment but also (systematic) theological reflection.

Such a general rubric necessarily harbours the danger of becoming rather abstract and vague. However, it would hopefully also be helpful to provide a bird’s eye view of theological debates that become increasingly complex and entangled when any one issue is investigated in detail.

This document is not primarily aimed at lay Christians, pastors, theologians or the general public. It is aimed at regional and national commissions of reformed churches that have to provide guidance to churches in dealing with any of the issues listed above. It seeks to provide a fairly comprehensive theological framework that can inform such debates.

The document emerged from a small ecumenical working group based in the Western Cape. This document was discussed intensively in this working group from May 2009 until October 2010. It was then distributed more widely in order to allow for an ecumenical process of consultation and reflection. The working group eventually made this document available to the Parliamentary Desk of the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church as a resource to be use in ecumenical discussions on issues such as those listed above.

2. Theological distortions in Christian engagement with such issues

Theological reflection on that which is financial, material, bodily and earthly has been plagued, at least where Western Christianity has been influential, by an inability to come to terms with a number of dual concepts listed below. This theological impasse is experienced in preaching, pastoral counselling and various other ministries. It surfaces at funerals, counselling around life-threatening illnesses, education on gender and sexuality, meetings of finance committees and interactions between the church and other groups in civil society alike.

It may be helpful at first to merely list as many of these dual concepts as possible in order to invite further theological reflection. Although each of these dualities is distinct and although these dualities cannot be correlated perfectly, they often interact with each other. Some of these dualities may be entirely legitimate, while others can easily lead to a number of dualisms reinforcing each other. Here is a provisional list, loosely grouped together:

  • Spirit and matter
  • The visible and the invisible / seeing and insight
  • The spiritual and the material / financial
  • Soul and body
  • Theory and practice
  • Heaven and earth
  • Eternal life and biological life
  • The life of the world to come and the here and now
  • Grace and nature
  • God and the world
  • Creator and creature
  • The “supernatural” and the natural
  • Otherworldliness and worldliness
  • The Infinite and the finite
  • Christ and Jesus
  • Universality and particularity
  • The collective and the individual
  • Inclusiveness and exclusiveness
  • Church and society
  • Church and state
  • Church and nation / volk
  • The spiritual agenda of the church and its social agenda
  • Gospel and culture
  • Text and context
  • Faith and reason
  • Religion and science
  • The humanities and the natural sciences
  • History and nature
  • Humankind and otherkind
  • Salvation and creation
  • God as Saviour and God as Creator
  • Justification and sanctification
  • The up-building of the church (ministry) and building the church outwards (mission)
  • Doctrine and life
  • Truth and reconciliation
  • Ecclesiology and ethics

An important observation on this list of dualities is that it would be facetious to reject such dualities in the name of a critique of dualisms. While the impact of dualistic thinking is unmistakable, some of these dualities cannot be absolved without bringing the Christian faith in jeopardy. One example is the relationship between Creator and creature. To reduce the Creator to a creature (of the human imagination) or to divinise the creature would undermine the Christian faith. Likewise, one cannot easily abandon discourse on the relationship between the divine and the human natures of Jesus Christ. One can regard the church merely as one organisation in civil society, but that would fail to do justice to the distinctiveness of the church.

One may wish to avoid such dualities by introducing threefold typologies, There are many such typologies available – including the three offices of prophet, king and priest; faith, hope and love; kerygma, diakonia and koinonia; the so-called “publics” of theology, namely church, society and university; the true, the good and the beautiful; what we can know, what we should do and what we may hope for (Kant); and of course Father, Son and Spirit. Others would want a more pluralist approach where many themes are allowed to remain in tension with one another. Such strategies may be appropriate, but the argument here is that some of these dualities cannot be avoided and that the impact of others has to be recognised for the distortions that they cause.

How, then, should one deal with other dualities such as the relationship between the spiritual and the material, soul and body, heaven and earth? How does the “spiritual agenda” of the church relate to its “social agenda”? How is this influenced by one of the most vexing theological problems, namely on the relationship between nature and grace?

It may be easier to identify a number of distortions that have characterised Christian engagement with such dualities than to suggest an adequate understanding of these relationships. It is the recognition of the impact of such distortions that has prompted the need for a document of this nature. In the discussion below five such distortions will be identified.

In brief, this implies that in a) the one pole is emphasised at the cost of neglecting the other, b) the one pole is reduced to the other, c) both poles are emphasised but are disconnected from each other, d) the tension between the poles is acknowledged but remains unresolved (dualism), and e) both poles and some form of relationship between them are acknowledged, but the one is allowed to dominate the other.

Note that dualism is only one form of distortion that may be identified in the way these dualities are addressed. An important distinction between duality and dualism is therefore made here.

a) Escapism and alienation

The critique of escapism is usually associated with the Christian hope to “go to heaven when you die”, the proverbial “pie in the sky when you die”. Such a preoccupation with eternal life can easily lead to a disdain for this life. The hope is to escape from this “earthly vale of tears”. Moreover, this hope can easily be abused by those in positions of power to console the human victims of history with the promise of a future reward, thus legitimising the present dispensation of domination and oppression.

Such a form of escapism can also be associated with several of the other dualities. One example would be those who focus almost exclusively on the building up of the church so that they end up in self-isolation from the affairs of the world. Such self-withdrawal in a virtual monastery may be appropriate precisely in order to re-engage the world, but can easily become a purpose in itself. Another example would be a form of theology that focus exclusively on the content and significance of the Christian faith in isolation from the insights emerging from the world of science. A third example may be a form of asceticism that promotes self-denial and thus denies our bodily passions for eating, intimacy and security. In each the focus is almost exclusively on the one side of the dualities listed above, while the significance of the other aspect is downplayed or even denied altogether.

Such escapism can only lead to alienation from that which is material, bodily and earthly. Such alienation is widely discussed and criticised in secular and ecumenical Christian literature. One example is the alienation between human beings and nature. We have indeed for too long thought of ourselves as somehow separate from nature due to an overemphasis on the distinctiveness of human beings within the ecosystems that they form part of (prompting various forms of anthropocentrism). One may refer here to the “apartheid habit” (Larry Rasmussen) of distinguishing between humanity and non-human nature, leaving the impression that we are an ecologically segregated species, that we are somehow separate, hence “apart” from the ecosystems in which we live. In response, many have suggested that the earth is our one and only God-given home, that we belong to the earth, that we are “at home on earth”, that we are not tourists here but residents (Sallie McFague). We are not living on earth but in God’s creation as members of the whole household of God. The distinctions between history and nature and between the humanities and the natural sciences have been questioned on a similar basis.

Christianity, in particular, has been guilty of instigating, reinforcing and legitimising this alienation of human beings from the rest of the earth community. Christianity has all too often been preoccupied with an otherworldliness which did not encourage a sense of belonging here on earth. This otherworldliness, this alienation from the rest of the earth community, is manifested especially in the following theological themes: 1) a theological emphasis on the absolute transcendence of God, 2) an anthropological emphasis on humans as sojourners here on earth, 3) a soteriology which focuses on human salvation from the earth instead of the salvation of the whole earth and 4) an escapist eschatological fascination with a heavenly hereafter where disembodied souls will live in the presence of God.

Another example is the isolation of the church from the rest of society due to an over-emphasis on the uniqueness of the church. This is crucial in order to protect the church from becoming a carbon copy of the reigning culture. However, the church remains part of God’s beloved creation. The continuity between the work of the Father and the body of Christ therefore has to be recognised if justice is to be done to both the first and the second article of the Christian creed.