The Person, the Trinity, the Church

191 Pages·2011·0.74 MB·English

by  T. Dave Matsuo

The Person, the Trinity, the Church

The Call to Be Whole and the Lure of Reductionism

T. Dave Matsuo

©2006 TDM All rights reserved
No part of this manuscript may be reprinted without permission from the author
Contact:
www.4X12.org
Contents

Introduction______________________________________________________1
A Window to the Whole 1
The Nonnegotiable Call and the Unavoidable Lure 3
Anticipating the Whole 4

1 The Person in Created Function________________________________5
The Created Person 5
The Person’s Relationship with God 8
Eve’s Purpose 13
Eve’s Relationship with Adam 16
Shifting Function 17

2 Knowing the Whole of God___________________________________19
The Face of This Triune God 19
The Experience of Knowing 20
Convergence with the Trinity 24
The Relationship of God 26
To Embrace and Experience 28

3 Trinitarian Uniqueness in the Whole___________________________29
Function, Uniqueness, Subordination 29
In Two Relational Contexts 30
Subordination in Context 31
Development of Trinitarian Views 32
A Diferent Aproach 34
The Relational Significance of Jesus’ Revelation 35
Reductionist Intrusion in the Process to Family 39
The Relational Outcome of the Whole 42

4 Placing Modernism and Postmodernism
in the Larger Context of Reductionism________________________45
Searching for the Whole 45
The Shift to Substitutes 46
Counter-Relational Work 48
The Relational Implications 51

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5 The Church in Likeness of the Trinity_________________________53
Incompatibility of Church Practice 53
Engaging the Trinity 56
The Relational Paradigm 57
The Whole of the Relationship of God 60
How the Church Is to Come Together 62
The Spirit: Overloked and Misused 64
The Compatibility of Our Response 67
In Function with the Divine Image of God 68
The Relational Imperative of the Whole 71
The Purpose of the Church as Family 74
The Church Belonging to the Trinity 76
The Alternative of Reductionism 78

6 The Challenge of the Whole__________________________________79
The Need for Redemptive Change 79
Thre Vital Aspects of Practice 81
The Practice of Disciples: To Follow or to Serve 82
The Practice of Church: Family or Orphanage 84
Paul and the Whole 86
Transitioning to the Whole 90

7 Ecclesiology of the Whole____________________________________93
Its Emergence 93
The Apostolic Church and the Definitive Key 94
Its Formulation 96
Grace as the Functional Basis 98
Its Operation 102
Submission as the Functional Response 105
Submission to Wholeness 107
Equalizing to Be Whole 109
The Church Becomes Equalizer 12

8 Called to Be Whole________________________________________113
The Work of Equalization 13
Its Multicultural Nature 16
Adresing Change from Without from Within 18
Four Major Aspects to Multicultural Change 123
Called Beyond the Common and Ordinary 130
Sanctified Whole 132

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9 Gender in the Big Picture or a Reduced Context
(An Unavoidable Blessing for the Church as Equalized)____________135
Distinguishing the Context 136
What Maters Most to God 138
How We Define Gender and How We Do
Gender Relations 139
Jesus’ Response to “to be apart” 141
The Ned for Deper Change 143
Costs to Change and Reconciliation 144
Where Our Expectations Are Rooted 146

10 Sent to Be Whole_________________________________________149
The Context to Send Out 149
Clarifying Some Terms 150
God’s Paradigm 152
The Mindset of Repentance 153
Incarnating the Incarnation 156
Understanding Our Working Asumptions 160
Jesus’ Working Asumptions 161
The Change of Redemptive Reconciliation 164
The Church in Conjoint Function 167

11 Nothing Less and No Substitutes____________________________171
Acountable for Wholenes 172
Churches Today 175
A Sugested Relational Conclusion 176

Scripture Index________________________________________________183
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Introduction

In recent times we can observe various sociocultural, political, economic and religious
movements which, I suggest, can be perceived with a commonality of direction. Developments
such as pluralism, multiculturalism, the peace movement, environmentalism, globalization and
universalism all have a concern—or at least an interest—for the interrelatedness of humanity.
These efforts essentially of inclusiveness have an underlying search for wholeness.
While we may not agree with the philosophy, ideology, theology or methodology used as
the basis for such movements, we need to affirm seeking the whole of humankind implicit in the
common direction of their concern or interest. Christians need to affirm this search because God
created this whole and desires its restoration—first among ourselves, then for the rest of the
world, including physical creation.
Modernity has compromised this effort toward wholeness, making it difficult to pursue,
or even be aware of, much less experience wholeness. While postmodernity challenges
modernism’s assumptions and practices in order to renew the effort to be whole, its various
sentiments lack understanding of the whole and even confuse its development. What ultimately,
however, has been the most detrimental to the whole—of the person, humankind and creation—
and the experiential practice of wholeness is reductionism. The general process of reductionism
essentially reduces the whole to its smaller parts (or secondary aspects) and, in turn, uses the
behavior of those parts to determine what the whole will be, thus diminishing or minimalizing
the integrity of the whole.
We can observe the influence of reductionism on social life in the following historical
process: how the concerns of a village or region fragmented a tribe, nation or country, as
witnessed in Balkanization; how the priorities of an extended family or kinship group
fragmented a village or region; how the self-interests of the nuclear family fragmented the
extended family, for example, since the Industrial Revolution; and how the prominence of the
individual today fragments the nuclear family. In each of these developments reductionism
focuses on a smaller aspect of social life (or part) to be the primary determinant for what it
means to be whole. In what condition does this leave the human person?
This same process of diminishing or minimalizing the integrity of the whole can be
observed in the Western church, which this study will address.

A Window to the Whole

In a remarkable scene occupying a small place in the narrative of Jesus (Mt 12:46-50), we
have a window to the narrative whole of God’s desires—desires formulated even before creation
(Eph 1:4, 5; Rom 8:29), enacted at the first creation (Gen 2:18) and fulfilled in Christ for an
eschatological completion by the Spirit (Col 1:19, 20; Eph 1:9-14; 2 Cor 5:5). When Jesus said in
response to his biological mother and brothers that his family is constituted by those persons who
respond to the desires of his Father, we can begin to grasp what is involved to be whole: the
whole of God and God’s desires narrated throughout the Bible as the integrating theme of God’s
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response to humankind to be whole; the function of human persons in the definitive whole
constituted by the whole of God as the Trinity; and the convergence of the trinitarian persons and
the human persons in the relational context and process of the whole of God’s family signified by
the church. Whether this little scene serves as a significant window to the whole of God depends
on how well the pieces of God’s self-revelation are put together to define the whole big picture
of eschatological dimension.
If this epistemic process for grasping the whole is to be complete, it needs to be
relational. Understanding the definitive whole of the human person, the church and the triune
God, and how the whole of the person and of the church must necessarily interact together with
the Trinity in order to be whole, is the functional purpose of this study. Yet, reductionism
presents a formidable challenge to a relational epistemic process.
God’s most vulnerable self-disclosure was made in the incarnation of the Son. Jesus does
not just provide us with a window but opens the door to the whole of God and God’s desires for
us to be whole. This study examines: how Christ is the hermeneutical key that opens the
ontological door to the whole of God, and how he is also the functional key that opens the
relational door to the ontology of the whole of God’s family constituted in the Trinity, the Trinity
qua family. Thus, how complete our Christology is will be critical for our understanding of the
significance of the whole—be it of God, the person or the church. More specifically, examining
how Jesus related to persons (foremost his Father) is important for understanding the relational
significance of the whole.
For example, Jesus extended the above window in the relational progression to the whole
of God’s desires in an intimate relational moment on the cross when he bonded Mary and John to
each other in family love to operationalize God’s new family (Jn 19:26, 27). Moreover, Jesus’
healing ministry was a clear demonstration of how he saw the person, involved himself with the
whole person and acted to restore wholeness by taking them into his family. This was also a
threat to reductionists (such as scribes and Pharisees) who used substitutes for wholeness and
thus would have had to forego the benefits of a reductionist system that stratified others to their
separation or exclusion. Therefore, in the whole of God’s revelation, wholeness involves not
fragmenting the person into parts—for example in classic dualism of body and soul, or by a
reductionist quantitative focus without the qualitative significance of the heart—as well as not
reducing the primacy of the relationships necessary to be whole. In the integrity of this
revelation, God’s design and purpose for the ontology of personhood are by nature both
functionally whole and wholly relational.
Throughout God’s self-disclosure, we need to grasp how the person is seen and related to
in the relationships of the whole. This will help piece together the who and what of the whole of
God, which will then engage by what and how the whole of God does relationships. To reduce,
diminish, or minimalize any of this has relational consequences which leave persons in the
condition “to be apart” from the whole of their self, of God and the relationships necessary to be
whole in the church as the whole of God’s family.
This theological conversation needs to be engaged with the perspective that theology
should not be the task of systematically informing us about God but about establishing the
coherence of God’s self-revelation vulnerably extended to us for relationship, so that we can
intimately know the triune God and experience life together as the whole of God’s family in
likeness of the Trinity. Basing the whole in God’s self-disclosure within the Bible, particularly in
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the narratives of Christ, is both a necessary and sufficient process to formulate a definitive
wholistic theology functional for our practice—not simply to inform our practice but to
transform it. While Scripture is the primary source and priority used for this theological process,
church tradition is helpful and necessary to appropriate also insofar as it reinforces or clarifies
biblical revelation; where tradition deviates or conflicts with it, then tradition must defer to the
priority of the Word.
In this relational epistemic process used for this study, I suggest the following working
definition for a functional theology to give coherence to all the theological aspects of our
discussion:

Christian theology is the biblically informed study of God providing the context
and process for practice to intimately know the whole of God constituted in the
Trinity, thus reflecting the vulnerable revelation of Jesus as the Way, the Truth
and the Life—the relational Way for the epistemological Truth to experience the
ontological Life of the whole of the triune God.

This is the door Jesus opens to the whole of God through which the person and the
church must both enter together with the Spirit in order to be whole.

The Nonnegotiable Call and the Unavoidable Lure

Our discussion necessarily includes Paul’s life and teachings. He formulated his theology
from Christ’s revelations (both directly to him and indirectly from the Jesus tradition) and clearly
established the truth of the gospel in the midst of reductionist substitutes and practices, even by
Peter. In doing so, Paul was the most instrumental in operationalizing faith and church practice
in the ecclesiology of the whole. When understood in this relational context and process, his
teachings have deeper significance and coherence for our function and practice to be whole
today. Indeed, we will come to understand, somewhat tensely no doubt, that Paul leaves us no
option.
Since the Trinity constitutes and created the whole, wholeness was never designed to be a
static attribute possessed by the individual. Wholeness is the dynamic function of persons
intimately involved together in the interdependent relationships which constitute them to be
whole in the likeness of the Trinity (and the mutual indwelling function of perichoresis) qua
family. Moreover, as Jesus disclosed and Paul made operational, the call to be whole cannot
involve merely an individual faith nor can it practice a private faith. To be whole is the practice
of whole persons together as family in a public faith, which Jesus makes imperative in his
formative familial prayer (Jn 17:15-26), qualifying his commission for his followers (Mt 28:18-
20).
Yet, from the beginning the human person, the journey of God’s people and the church in
its history have had to struggle to be whole. Whatever situations and circumstances, personal and
collective accountability, structural and systemic factors are involved in this struggle, the
common underlying issue to all of them is reductionism. The influence of reductionism was, has
been, and is today the most critical issue in diminishing and minimalizing the whole of God both
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in the first creation and the new creation in Christ. We need to understand the unavoidable lure
of reductionism on Christian practice (individual and corporate) while grasping the call and need
to be whole—not only for the experiential reality of the church as the whole of God’s family but
also for the world to see the significance of the definitive whole of God. We will discuss the
issues involved in the call to be whole for our conceptions of the human person, our perceptions
of the Trinity and our formulations of the church as well as the lure of reductionism for each.

Anticipating the Whole

Despite the reductionist tendencies seen throughout the human narrative, what emerges
clearly in the big picture is the divine narrative of God’s thematic activity to relationally respond
to our human condition “to be apart” from the whole. It is the relational progression of the triune
God’s ongoing relational involvement that provides the integrating theme for the whole of God
and the study of it.
As you engage this study of the whole, the whole of God, it may not always be clear
whether “the whole of God” is referring to the whole which the triune God is ontologically, or to
the whole of which God created for us to be part. Hopefully, the context will adequately indicate
whether it is the former or the latter, or both. Any ambiguity, however, is intentional because
they both should be seen together, inseparable from the other. This is apparent for the latter since
there is no created whole apart from the ontology of God’s whole—though not to be confused
with pantheism. Moreover, the ontology of God is revealed not to inform us about God but for
the relational context and process to respond to us in order to be relationally whole with God and
for us to be relationally-ontologically whole with each other together in likeness to the Trinity.
Anticipating the whole for the church today, particularly in the West, may locate us in
circumstances interestingly similar to the first human person and God’s response to be whole.
When the call to be whole is neither diminished nor minimalized by the lure of reductionism, this
call in our contemporary context suggests a unique response to develop the trinitarian relational
context of family and trinitarian relational process of family love. This response would be similar
to God’s response at the first creation to complete the relational context. Defining this unique
response for church practice today will be the relational conclusion to this current study.

Furthermore, the definitive whole which the world needs and seeks in the various
contemporary movements can be found in the relational significance of the whole of God, which
experientially is reflected in the relational life and practice of the church as the whole of God’s
family. Just as Paul at the Areopagus affirmed the commonality of “the unknown God” whom
Paul wanted to make known to them (Acts 17: 22, 23), “the church as equalizer” today is called
to be the experiential whole of God which then can be relationally made known for the world to
embrace—anticipating the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21-23, along with his complete
formative family prayer for whom and for which this study is submitted.
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