A July, 2002 ruling by the Ontario Divisional Court set in motion a process that appears to overturned a centuries-old understanding of marriage and reconstructed it on new and untried foundations. The court declared that Canada’s marriage laws, by defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, violate the Charter of Rights by excluding gays and lesbians. However, the decision did not come out of nowhere as it might seem at first sight. The court’s ruling mirrors a profound shift in sexual mores that has been going on in Canadian society for years. The decision and the subsequent passage of parliamentary legislation permitting same-sex marriage formalizes in law Canada’s emergence as perhaps the world’s first truly postmodern nation. Furthermore, efforts of organizations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the Roman Catholic Church and a vocal minority of politicians have failed to stop the trend. Same sex marriage has been defined as a matter of Charter rights, which, in the present climate, is effectively a conversation stopper. In the minds of the media, political, social and intellectual elites, the justice of same-sex marriage is simply self-evident and beyond rational dissent.

This calls for great wisdom on the part of those who worry about the long-term consequences of what is happening. The legislative battle has been lost because it is not a matter of one act of parliament, but of a massive social readjustment. Canada, along with Belgium and Spain, has legalized same sex marriages. The question now is: How can those who regard traditional marriage as the will of God and the foundation of a humane society best use their energies?

I want to argue that a fruitful and faithful long-term strategy will involve a strong rearticulation of the foundations, benefits and promises of marriage as it is understood in Scripture and Christian tradition. Postmodernity may in fact be a blessing in disguise because if it is really true that there is no absolutely privileged discourse but that all ideas can at least claim a hearing, then the traditional Christian approach has every bit as much right to be heard as any other. I suggest we take advantage of this rather than simply railing against it. There is an opportunity for Christians to proclaim anew that the sexual, emotional, social and procreative union of one man and one woman in a lifelong covenant of faithfulness constitutes a unique and God-ordained ordering of human relationships with many benefits for both individuals and society. Such a strategy recognizes the empirical fact of pluralism but does not acquiesce in it. It allows marriage to stand on its own merits and presents our narcissistic and hedonistic culture with a truly counter-cultural alternative.

As painful as it might be, churches simply must accept their growing marginalization in Canadian society. But as minority status envigorated the early church, so it may inject new energy into a Canadian Church that has lost its way. For it seems to me that the much lamented irrelevance of the churches stems not from the irrelevance of their message as from their desire to beg for a few crumbs of legitimacy from the cultured despisers of religion. Churches have fallen into the trap of thinking that if they can just mimic the surrounding culture well enough, that culture will regard the church with a sympathetic eye. Just the reverse has happened. The more the church has become indistinguishable from the culture, the less motivation people have to get out of bed on Sunday morning. Christians need to reconcile themselves to living in a secularized and radically pluralistic context, but then to recommit themselves to declaring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to that context.

A Doctrinal Foundation for Marriage

Such a renewed proclamation will include a new vision of marriage built on the foundation of classical Christian theology and anthropology. Our understanding of marriage needs to be worked out within a framework of Christian doctrine. By doctrine I do not mean just fixed credal formulas but more the ongoing process of critical and prayerful reflection on the ways of the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ. The insights of modern psychology and theories of human development will be incorporated into our understanding. But these insights will be interpreted in the light of the more foundational reality of the Gospel.

Stanley Grenz is one theologian who has thought about human sexuality in general and marriage in particular through the lens of one Christian doctrine, namely, the Trinity. Grenz constructs his theology around the unifying concept of community. Human community imitates the dynamic communion of love between the three persons of the Godhead. Trinitarian communion is the foundation of all godly relationships, according to Grenz, but especially of malefemale relationships. Crucial in this regard is the concept of the imago Dei which, according to the Book of Genesis, is bound up with the creation of humankind as sexually differentiated, male and female. Christian marriage, Grenz argues, is the key form of cal doctrine. It refers specifically to Jesus Christ but not to human beings in general. The doctrine of the Incarnation describes in formal terms the "union of human nature with the divine in one person" . That union occurred uniquely in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. Properly incarnational theology is a corrective to the modern anthropocentric tendency to see Jesus as merely an extraordinary example of that which is true of all of us, the perfection of the God-conscious human being, one who succeeded in discovering "the God within" and who inspires us to do the same. Jesus is not the epitome of homo religiosus but the Word of God made flesh. As the theologian P. T. Forsyth has reminded us, the reason Christ has the power to save is not because he is like us but because he is unlike us.We do not participate in incarnation directly and immediately but only indirectly and through the mediation of Christ.

If marriage is incarnational, then, it must be so in a derivative, analogical or metaphorical sense – and yet for all that, I would argue it is so in a very real sense. Two aspects of the doctrine of the incarnation are relevant in making this case.

First, through the Incarnation, God confirms the goodness of the created world. The doctrine was formulated initially in response to Gnosticism and later Docetism which denigrated the material order in general and the human body in particular as irredeemably corrupt.

Theologians like Colin Gunton have done a great service by rediscovering the insights of the Church Fathers who battled against those heresies, most notably in the creation- centred incarnational theology of Irenaeus of Lyons. The famous saying of Irenaeus that "Jesus became like us that we might become like him" reflects the Eastern view that Christ took on human flesh in order to restore the divine image in humankind and to heal the breach between the creation and its Creator. This is in marked contrast to Western Christology which had a more much legal-juridical emphasis, interpreting Christ’s earthly life and death almost entirely in terms of a sacrifice for sin. A more positive Christology affirms that Christ became human in order to restore something good rather than simply to excise something bad.

This is a key theological building block for a fully-orbed understanding of Christian marriage because marriage takes very seriously our embodiment as male and female. Our sexuality is bound to the inescapable fact that human beings come in two types, male and female. This needs to be boldly asserted in the face of a gender- bending postmodernity in which sexual identity is not something given but something constructed according to the free choice of the individual. The Lutheran ethicist and theologian Gilbert Meilaender has pointed out how strangely disembodied the postmodern attitude towards sex has become. In a review of James Nelson’s famous book Embodiment, (the Bible of liberal Christian sexual revisionism in the 1980s), Meilaender notes the curious tension in our culture between an obsession with bodies on the one hand but sexuality seen in terms of inward disposition and feeling on the other. 5Contemporary sexual ideology, Meilaender argues, in spite of its rhetoric of embodiment, rejects the foundational duality of male and female and opts for a dualism in which body and soul are effectively alienated from one another. Meilaender notes that "only a dualistic age could … imagine that sexual encounters between persons not committed to a permanent union are ‘casual’ since a bodily commitment need not involve the persons." Popular culture confirms this insight. In movies and soap operas, what does the adulterous husband always say to the devastated wife when his affair is discovered? "It didn’t mean anything to me. It was just physical. It doesn’t affect how I feel about you" That personal commitment can be separated from physical union in a nonpathological or health-promoting way is a profoundly dualistic idea which fails to honor our embodiment.

Much more realistic is the attitude of St. Paul that a union of the body necessarily involves an entanglement of souls (1 Cor 6: 15-16); that promiscuity is a wrong not because it violates a moral code but because it is destructive of God-given personality. "Everything is permissible," Paul says, "but not everything is beneficial" (1 Cor 6;12.)

In his classic study Love in the Western World, Denis de Rougement credits the Incarnation with permitting us to avoid "the double peril of humanism and idealism." The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation maintains in careful balance the imminent and transcendent aspects of life, relating them but not confusing them. Incarnational marriage is neither the pursuit of a quasi-sacred (and ultimately unattainable) romantic ideal; nor the mere coupling of bodies for convenience or pleasure. It neither pretends that through sexuality we may attain the divine nor contents itself with the merely human; but celebrates the God who took on human flesh.

Such an analysis suggests very strongly that normative sexuality means the physical union of male and female within the context of a covenant commitment. Scripture, I think it can be argued, presents marriage as that God-given form of human relationship in which the creative potential of the male-female sexual differentiation is realized and in which human sexual desire is ordered in a constructive rather than destructive direction. This raises the question whether expressions of genital sexuality that depart from the norm ought to be considered immoral or wrong. There will be a wide spectrum of responses to this question among Christians. But it seems to me that, given the very real social, spiritual, physical and psychological benefits that accrue to individuals and the community from heterosexual marriage, Christians can make a very good case for the traditional understanding of marriage as God’s primary intention for the human race.

The issue of embodiment also relates to the biblical concept of the image of God. Scripture is quite uninformative as to the precise meaning of this term which has played such an important role in Christian anthropology. However, the Book of Genesis makes it clear that our maleness and femaleness cannot be separated from our creation in God’s image and likeness. God’s intention is that man and woman live in harmonious mutuality (Gen 2: 20- 25.) The shattering of male-female relationships, the imbalance of power that issues in patriarchy, misogyny, and the alienation of the sexes is a consequence of the fall (Gen 3:16), not an intention of creation.

Whatever else the image of God passages in the Bible might mean, it seems that the image of God is to be realized in communion with one who is different. Again, Gilbert Meilaender: "The mutuality for which we are destined is a loving union of those who are other." Now, it’s a truism of modern individualism that each person is created unique and there is nobody else quite like me. However, the foundational differentiation between human beings is sexual. Distinctions of class, culture, creed and even race and ethnicity can be transcended by an act of will; but try as we might, we cannot cross the great divide and live as a member of the opposite sex. (We’ll bracket the case of transgendered sexuality and other exotica for the moment.) In other words, as a man, there are dimensions of human experience that are by definition hidden from me. I cannot, even by an act of imagination, really know what it is like to be a woman, even though I share with women a bond of common humanity. I cannot know what it is to menstruate, to bear a child, to experience sexual pleasure as a woman does. Feminists have taught us that these embodied experiences shape women’s whole emotional, psychological and social being. Nature and nurture, biology and socialization are intertwined. There are aspects of femaleness, then, that I can never ever bring within the horizon of my experience, to say that I know what they are like. And, because I am taught that the image of God encompasses both maleness and femaleness, that means I can never lay claim to a complete understanding of God’s image, apart from communion with members of the opposite sex. I need women to complete a full appreciation of humanity.

Stanley Grenz has argued eloquently that God’s encounter with humankind is for the purpose of creating community – community that mirrors in an imperfect way the perfect communion of love within the Trinity. True community brings together those who are unalike, who are separated from one another by barriers of nature. For this reason, community must involve struggle, the hard labor of recognizing the work of God in the one who is not and cannot be like me. True community, by definition, breaks down barriers. Community that includes only those who are like one another fails to plumb the depths of the divine image. And so the community of male and female, of those are so alike and yet so profoundly different from one another, becomes the basic paradigm of all community.

We must avoid suggesting, however, that those who are unmarried are somehow less than fully human, or that marriage is the only legitimate form malefemale relationships can take. Such a claim would be absurd. Karl Barth says that "marriage should be understood in terms of the male/female distinction" but that "the latter [is] the more fundamental reality." However, it does suggest that marriage is a gift of God through which the majority of persons can explore and express the mystery of the imago Dei and, as such, marriage ought to have a unique place of honor in the constellation of human relationships.

This also does not deny the possibility of committed, loving, other-centred same sex relationships. Christians need to acknowledge the empirical reality that there are gays and lesbians who express a very real kind of fidelity in their commitments to one another. However, the broad theological vision of the Bible, suggests very strongly that, no matter how these relationships might be ritualized or formalized and whatever their virtues, they are not marriages. Civil society may define marriage primarily in terms of human rights or individual commitment. Courts and legislatures may mandate an equal status in the eyes of the law. But the Christian vision of marriage is not grounded primarily in the aspirations and emotional commitments of individuals but in that pattern of interrelatedness appropriate to our creation as male and female.

Incarnation and Agape

The third aspect of the Incarnation that informs our understanding of marriage, an aspect that is often obscured in polemics surrounding the role of religious belief in power relations, is its self-giving, self-emptying nature. According to the Christological hymn in Philippians 2: 5-11, Jesus became human by setting aside the glory that was rightly his as God’s equal, in an act of marvellous condescension motivated purely out of obedience to the Father and love for the Father’s world.

Furthermore, the preamble to that hymn says that our attitude should be that of Christ Jesus; implying that we should labor to mirror the same kind of self-giving that Jesus modeled when he took human form.

Once again, this is hardly true only of marriages. But a fully-orbed Christian understanding of marriage will stress that we are called in all of our relationships, including our marriages, to embody the self-giving love of Christ. If husbands and wives could learn true Christ-likeness, would we be talking about the crisis in which marriage finds itself? Would opponents of traditionally ordered sexual relationships be able to discredit marriage as soul-destroying and life-denying? As we attempt to give a full account of the glory of Christian marriage, and as the church seeks to guide and support couples in their marriages, we need to hold up marriage as a vocation to self-giving.

Marriage as Sacramental.

The second big word for marriage is sacramental. Again, we must begin with a qualification and clarification. Roman Catholic and Orthodox tradition defines marriage as a sacrament, meaning that it is indissoluble and that it is regulated by the Church. I’m too much of a Protestant to think of marriage in these terms. However, there are elements of the sacramental vision of marriage that can enrich our understanding. So far as I know, Augustine was the first to refer to marriage as sacramentum, by which he meant a permanent and indissoluble union. Along with procreativity and sexual fidelity, Augustine counted permanence as one of the intrinsic goods of marriage. Augustine’s schema was refined and codified by Aquinas and subsequent canon law. It was a vision of marriage rooted in a Christian natural law, indebted to both Aristotle and the Stoics. Marriage is a sacrament in the sense that it is an action carried out by the church which effects the grace that it signifies. In other words, the sacramental act ex opere operato (according to the thing as it is performed) has the power to actually bring the believer into a saving relationship with God because Christ is present and active in it.

The Protestant understanding of sacraments is somewhat different. It tends to emphasize more their instrumental quality as means of grace rather than the inherent efficacy of the act itself. This suggests that marriage is not so much an end in itself as a means to an end. And in fact Protestant doctrines of marriage have stressed the covenant promise between the spouses committing themselves to imitate the covenant faithfulness of God.

Furthermore, sacramentality is closely related to the Incarnation. It testifies to the willingness of God to use created things as channels of grace. In a sense, all creation is "sacramental" because God works through everyday things. As Romans 1.20 says, the invisible qualities of God are clearly seen in the things that God has made. This echoes the Jewish idea of the hallowing of the ordinary. The Jewish physician and ethicist Leon Kass writes that "our ordinary experience of life in the world may be the privileged road to the deepest truth." This comes close to expressing the Protestant understanding of the sacraments. The formal, liturgical sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are special instances of a divine reality at the heart of creation: God uses created things as channels of grace.

Marriage as a Sign

With the foregoing in mind, I want to suggest two aspects of sacramentality that are particularly relevant to marriage. First, sacraments possess a "sign" quality; that is, their value is not inherent but derives from that greater reality to which they point. The fidelity between husband and wife can be a sign, a testimony to, a proclamation of the covenant fidelity of God. Again, Gilbert Meilaender, with characteristic perceptiveness, points out that faithfulness to a life-long commitment is something that is profoundly unnatural. Human beings do not naturally enter into or keep commitments "for better or for worse," particularly when that commitment is tied to sexual exclusivity. To actualize such a commitment requires that human beings, especially the male of the species, not embrace but, to an extent, overcome that which comes naturally. Insofar as such fidelity is a human possibility, it will transcend natural inclinations and desires, seeking fulfillment in a reality at once higher and deeper than our own good intentions. It is possible to honor a commitment to a life-long marriage only if that marriage is "touched by the eternal." Marriage, in a sense, is truly supernatural.When a man and a woman are, by grace, enabled to live up to such a commitment, they become a sign of its possibility in a world where everything is presumed to be transient, ephemeral, subject to shifting emotions and circumstances. Marriage stands as a sign not only to other marriages but to humanity at large of the possibility that we can live in agapic love. We cannot, nor do we want to, resurrect the patristic-scholastic notion of marriage as indissoluble and therefore sacramental. However, its quality as a sign of God-like covenant fidelity gives to marriage a sacramental quality.

The second sacramental aspect of marriage could be described as its fruitfulness. Again, we can benefit from the thaw in Protestant-Catholic relations and the willingness to enrich our own understanding through the insights of another tradition. Fruitfulness as a social and ethical category has been developed in Catholic moral teaching which emphasizes the cultivation of habits leading to virtues. This ethical orientation is rooted in Aristotle’s dictum that the just man is the one who acts justly. Virtues are acquired through practice. One of the primary virtues of marriage is fruitfulness.

Many see fruitfulness only in terms of child-bearing but its significance goes far beyond that. Fruitfulness is "a capacity to generate life and nurture it." It includes, but is not restricted to, biological procreativity. Marriage has the potential to issue in "new life." Marriage is the paradigm of human relating which results in something bigger than itself. Fruitfulness is closely related to another virtue, generativity, which is "a willingness to use my power responsibly to serve life that goes beyond myself." We might say that through this or that particular marriage, good things may come into being which were not there before and would otherwise not exist. This is reflective of God’s power to make something out of nothing, to bring light from darkness, community from alienation, life from death.

Generativity and fruitfulness entail an orientation to the future, which is always a "movement of self-transcendence." One’s care and concern is devoted to that which is not yet, which goes beyond one’s immediate desires. This understanding of marriage, it seems to me, is a powerful challenge to the prevailing idea of both marriage and parenthood as a means for achieving personal happiness and individual fulfillment.

The third big word for marriage is eschatological. This is counterintuitive. Eschatology is the doctrine of the ultimate future and the last things and what could be more this-worldly and present-oriented than marriage? Christian eschatology properly understood, however, does not isolate the future from the present but integrates them seamlessly. Eschatology concerns the divine telos of all creation -- that creation will be renewed and God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Eschatologies that are obsessed only with the future resurrection of believers and the destruction of sinners have more in common with Gnostic and Manichean dualism than with biblical faith. Unfortunately, Protestant theology beginning at least with Schleiermacher tended to relegate eschatology to an afterthought in the mistaken belief that it was only concerned with the future, and therefore of no immediate relevance to Christian experience. One of the most promising features of contemporary theology is the recovery of a genuine eschatological orientation. Theologians like Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Robert Jenson and Ted Peters have performed an invaluable service to the church by restoring eschatology to its rightful place.

At its root, Christian eschatology declares that what God has started, God will complete.We hear often that Christianity is an historical religion. Among the many meanings of that statement is that God’s work will have an end as well as a beginning. And yet, in a very real sense, what is happening in the present is permeated by what has been guaranteed of the future. The Kingdom promised by the prophets, announced and inaugurated by Jesus and lived by the church will be consummated in the last days. Pauline and Deutero-Pauline theology is thoroughly infused with the idea that God will bring all things to completion in Jesus Christ (Phil 1:6; Eph 1:10; Rom 8) ; that the love incarnated in Christ at a moment in history and shed abroad in the hearts of believers by the Holy Spirit will be the sole ruling principle of all creation. Eschatology could be considered, then, the formal articulation of Christian hope.

And yet we know that hope in the future colors the present at every turn. There is an ambiguity in the Bible between what has been accomplished and what shall be accomplished. It is often not clear in the Hebrew prophets, for example, whether they are talking about the present or the future.When the Second Isaiah says, for example "’Comfort, comfort my people’ says your God, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and say to her that her hard service has been completed" (Is 40) – is the prophet talking about something realized in the present or anticipated in the future? In one sense, he is referring to an event in time, the end of the Exile; but it is by no means clear that the exile was actually over when these words were uttered. Furthermore, the meaning of this passage as Scripture is not exhausted by its historical referent. Indeed, the very reason it was preserved as Scripture by communities of faith was their conviction that it had to do with an ongoing hope, not simply a completed event in the past.

Jesus told many parables about the coming Kingdom that were couched in the metaphor of present alertness. Because the people of God expect the Kingdom which is to come, they are to be vigilant and always prepared in the present moment (e.g., Mt 22: 1-14//Lk 14: 16-24; Mt 24: 36-51// Mk 13: 32-37.) . Both Luke and Paul speak of the Holy Spirit as a harbinger or guarantee of what is yet to come. In Acts, Luke describes the outpouring of the Spirit as the concrete evidence that the future messianic age is a present reality. Signs and wonders (Acts 2:1-21), unity (Acts 2: 42-27; 4:32- 35; 10: 34-36) and perseverance (Acts 16: 16-34) in the church, confirm that the hope of Jesus’ people is not in vain. Paul describes the Spirit as a downpayment or guarantee of our full inheritance which is yet to come (2 Cor 5:5; Eph 1: 13-14.) New Testament eschatology teaches us that we do not experience the Kingdom in its complete reality; but we are sure that it will come because of the signs of its coming are already present.

So Christian eschatology speaks of the "future-present" of God’s redemption and the "already-but-not-yet" quality of Christian faith. And it is vital to maintain a balance between both poles. The Kingdom, though not fully present, is still really present through the power of the Holy Spirit. But the reverse is equally true. The Kingdom, though really present, is not fully present. Christ has come, but the church still prays, "Come, Lord Jesus." This last point is especially important because it safeguards against the scourges of Christian idealism and perfectionism.We are able to envision the promised Kingdom of justice and peace and to see true signs of its reality in the here and now. But we are not driven to discouragement or despair because our lives do not fully reflect that rule.

Christian perfectionists condemn or abandon the present because of its failure to live up to an ideal. For that reason, Christian perfectionism can take a heavy toll on human relationships because no matter how hard we try or how good our intentions, in real life people will always fall short of the glory of God. Because they fixate on the promised ideal, Christian perfectionists cannot be reconciled to the actuality of life in the present. Leo Tolstoy, for example, became more and more rigidly committed to the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, believing that anything less than a perfect observance of Jesus’ commands was a failure of faith. But in his zeal to actualize the ideals of Christlike love Tolstoy became something of a misanthrope. He neglected his children and abused his wife. He became utterly intolerant of human weakness. Tolstoy’s perfectionism made him a very difficult person to live with, admired by the masses, but a tyrant to those closest to him. Interestingly, Tolstoy became fiercely contemptuous of sexuality and marriage as fatal concessions to carnality and contrary to the spiritual ideals of Jesus. His short story "The Kreutzer Sonata" is about a man who despises the very idea of his marriage so passionately he kills his wife. The story is a thinly veiled description of Tolstoy’s own deeply conflicted feelings and he demonstrated the depths of his cruelty by insisting that his wife Sonia correct and edit the manuscript for publication.

Because marriage is incarnational and sacramental, husbands and wives cannot separate their devotion to Christ from their day to day treatment of one another. They are enjoined to "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Eph 5:21) and to show forth Christ-like virtues. In this way they can stand as a sign to the world of the possibility of agapic love.

However, because Christian marriage is a sign of eschatological hope, pointing beyond itself to a not-yet-realized consummation, it cannot be discredited by the empirical shortcomings of individual marriages. By the grace of God, we are enabled to show forth the Kingdom realities of forbearance, reconciliation and unity; but to accept that they will not be perfect and complete in themselves because they are eschatological. The presence of these gracious realities is not negated by their absence at other moments. There are times in each marriage that we can identify as moments of kairos, luminous with the promised reconciliation of all things in Christ. The essential thing to realize is that the value of these times is not annulled because there are other times when we do not behave as we should. Our goal is not to actualize some human ideal of perfection but to be heralds of God. If couples can learn to discern the patterns of grace in their own marriages, those moments will illuminate the long stretches of humdrum routine or painful conflict that every marriage must endure, redeeming them with the promise that even though we fall short of perfection here and now, the love of God cannot in the end be defeated. At any moment, it may break in in all its glory and will fill the whole universe at the end. Marriage should have the teleological orientation of a pilgrimage in which both spouses participate in a growing Christ-likeness and a journey towards communion with God.

Regardless of how Christian communities respond to the redefining of malefemale relationships and the nature of the family, it seems to me that we are compelled by Scripture and tradition to affirm the goodness and uniqueness of marriage. This reaffirmation should be grounded in a deep reflection of what we know of Jesus Christ as the full revelation of God.We should not rest content with a few pious platitudes about inclusivity or tolerance that have more to do with modern individualism than with the Gospel. A renewed understanding of marriage using the full resources of Christian tradition will be the Church’s best gift to a society which is profoundly confused and disordered in its understanding of human sexuality. Couples caught up in the rampant consumerism of the wedding industry can be taught to treat their marriages with the awe and reverence they deserve.We will see that marriage takes seriously our God-ordained embodiment as male and female; that marriage stands as a sign of fidelity in a world contemptuous of commitments; and that marriage anticipates in the present the future communion we will enjoy with God when Christ the bridegroom comes to claim his bride.

This essay is based on research conducted in Chile in February 2005 in preparation for a course on ‘Great Christian Thinkers’ to be taught at the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto in the Fall of 2005. Thanks are expressed to the Santiago Community Church and Mr. David Libby of AUR resources for making the visit possible.

He was an unassuming looking man dressed in a plain golf shirt and well worn slippers. Upon greeting me with a warm handshake he directed me into a small room furnished only with a couple of chairs and a picture of Pope John Paul II hanging on the wall. My host’s command of the English language was superb, "I am Jose Aldunate and I am pleased to meet you. I have only visited Canada once and that was to present a paper in Edmonton and my only lasting impression, apart from the cold, was a very big shopping mall with a lake in it!" he said with a glint of humour in his eyes. "Hardly the height of culture" I thought, but at least he was somewhat familiar with our nation. As I came to discover over the next two hours, this gentlemen who lived in a residence on the Alonso de Ovalle Boulevard in Santiago, Chile was one of the most influential figures in the Church’s struggle for justice and peace. He had recently authored Cronicos de una iglesia liberadora and is considered by many to be one of the leading Jesuit theologians in South America. He told me that he had been an adviser on the writing of the morals and ethics portion of the Second Vatican Council. There was no doubt from our conversation that I was in the presence of a great mind and a courageous soul.

The purpose of my interview was to meet with influential Chilean Christians to discover how they were reacting to the changes taking place in their country and to discern what lessons the Canadian church can learn from their experience. Furthermore, next year will be the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Vicaria de la Solidaridad and I was intrigued to know what lasting affects this profound mission had on the church’s witness. Aldunate was frank and open with me. He recounted the days when under the rule of the Pinochet regime many Roman Catholics and Protestants had resisted the government’s policies. They did so in a practical and positive manner by creating the Vicariate. The purpose of this organization was to assist labourers who had lost their jobs for political reasons and to support political prisoners who were victims of government oppression. At the height of the conflict, it employed 400 administrators, lawyers, doctors and social workers and its influence spread from the Catholic Diocese of Santiago to 15 other diocese in the country. As an integral part of the organization, Aldunate expressed particular gratitude for the financial support of ecumenical agencies from overseas such as the German Bishop’s Fund, the World Council of Churches and the United Church of Canada who helped them through the difficult years. The development of the Vicariate was so expansive that they eventually created the Vicaria de Pastoral Obrera (the workers ministry) that employed lawyers to make inquiries, file petitions, visit detainees and comfort friends and families of those who were imprisoned for their political opposition to the government. No other organization in the country was able to speak so cogently on the issue of human rights and by the mid 1980’s the Vicariate had assisted 30,000 people, and via their department of communications eventually reached 700,000 people who became involved in parish based communities of support. They achieved some of their goals by enabling the poor to work together in faith communities by producing goods which they eventually sold in the marketplace. This provided a means for the unemployed to support themselves financially while at the same time maintaining their dignity.

I heard the same account from another leader in the movement, Monsignor Sergio Valech who was arrested by the Pinochet regime for his work with the Vicariate. He allowed me to tour the archives of the organization which houses clearly catalogued correspondence, records, arrest warrants and financial records of the Vicariate’s ministry. However, the most touching part of the archival materials are the photographs of the tortured, imprisoned or "missing" members of the Vicariate, some of whom were eventually buried in a dilapidated mine shaft. I left the premises emotionally and spiritually exhausted and found it hard to imagine that all this took place as recently as 15 years ago. As a former member of the confessing church movement in South Africa, I found considerable similarities with the church’s struggle under Apartheid, particularly the work of the Black Sash movement and various committees of the South African Council of Churches. During the most oppressive period in South Africa’s history these church and para-church organizations were the only sources of peaceful resistance. It is not surprising, therefore, that Aldunate was overjoyed when Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1989 for both had been voices for Christ and the dispossessed in the midst of political oppression.

What lessons can we learn from their experience and why is it necessary to revisit an antiquated institution? The answer lies in the nature of Christian ministry. It is interesting to note that during the military rule of Pinochet, attendance at church services increased, particularly in Roman Catholic parishes. The facts speak for themselves. During the last year of the Allende regime (which preceded the Pinochet coup) only one hundred and twelve priests were ordained. This is in stark contrast with 1982, the zenith of Pinochet’s rule, when 895 men were brought into the priesthood. Similarly, attendance at Mass increased mainly as a result of poor parishioners turning to the church in their time of need. This does not mean, however, that all Catholic Chileans opposed the regime for many benefited from its policies and found Pinochet’s opposition to the growing threat of communism to be a source of stability. Many, therefore, found the Vicariate and its supporters to be politically subversive and they actively sought to undermine its mission to the poor through cuts in funding to the organization. Even today the remnants of the feud between the pro Junta and anti government activists are still in evidence. There is still a latent tension between sincere Christians on both sides and this is seen most clearly in debates regarding the current charges against Pinochet who is now in his dotage. Nevertheless, I was impressed with the way that Chile, like South Africa, has dealt with former atrocities and there seems to be a general spirit of reconciliation at work in the country.

At the time of the cuts to the funding, however, the opponents of the government were not deterred from their mission. This was evident in the tacit support the Vicariate received from Cardinal Silva, who was the primate of Chile at that time. He tried to protect the church from Pinochet’s wrath and even had frequent meetings with the president. He realized that the mission rested on a knife’s edge. However, as Aldunate said, "The Cardinal had tea with Pinochet in order that he could get in as many kicks as possible under the table!"

The new, post Pinochet era has created a very different context for the Church. In contrast to the Pinochet era, Chile is now a progressive and affluent nation with a democratically elected government, a thriving mining industry, a burgeoning salmon producing industry and the production of some of the world’s finest wines. While the poor exist, particularly in the rural areas, average Chileans are turning their backs on the Catholic Church. As an alternate expression of their faith, they are turning to Pentecostal and evangelical Protestant churches. This movement is so great that according to Paul Hoff, the head of the Instituto Biblica Nacional de Chile (the bible college that trains Pentecostal pastors), the need to educate ministers has reached a crisis point. This situation was foreseen by Bishop Francisco Anabalon the charismatic leader of the National Evangelical Pastor’s Council who created the Institute in 1978 and today there are over 5,000 churches seeking trained pastors. The prodigious growth of these churches is the product of a spiritual revival which began in 1909 and has developed through the creation of small cell groups (locales) which meet in homes. The revival originated in Valparaiso during a Methodist service. The worshippers were overcome with an emotional experience of the Holy Spirit that led to the conversion of 6,000 people. Today this movement flourishes in the thriving economy of the new Chile. According to Philip Jenkins, Chile is the home of the Jotabeche Methodist Pentecostal Church which has over 80,000 members whose cathedral can seat 18,000. Many such denominations place a great emphasis on personal responsibility and religious freedom which intersect with the zeitgeist and political philosophy of the country.

What makes this movement so powerful and why such a mass appeal? Is it just a matter of good technique with its emphasis on small-group development or is it more a sense of its theological impact on people’s lives? The answer is both. The revival appeals to people who have lived under the influence of neo-pagan beliefs which were wedded to Roman Catholic eschatology. The syncretistic blend of native rituals and Catholic views of the afterlife tended to oppress people with its emphasis on fatalism and divine punishment. The poor often believed that they lived in that condition by virtue of something that they, or their ancestors, had done wrong and they felt the constraint of guilt. The revival offers people an alternative which promises them an unmediated experience of the Holy Spirit and an assurance of divine salvation through the grace of Christ alone. This bypasses the intermediary cosmology of the Animistas and gives them a source of freedom from fear and obligations to the dead. It also empowers the poor who have no earthly power or wealth. By becoming leaders in the church and actively participating in the religious life of the community, they experience the joy and freedom of service. Furthermore, becoming a pastor grants a person recognition within the faith community even with little or no academic training. Therefore, the theology of the revival and the ecclesiology which it creates enhances the lives of the people and gives them a sense of worth and belonging. Many Pentecostal leaders, however, are deeply concerned that this movement must develop along sound trinitarian theological lines and not stray into a highly subjective path where personal experience is elevated above biblical revelation. The dangers of this can be clearly seen in North America with the rapid growth of the Lakewood Church which downplays doctrine and denigrates the need for sound biblical theology.

What lessons can the Church in Canada learn from the experience of the Chilean Christians? Clearly there are similarities and differences between the two movements that I have outlined and while neither adheres to the Protestant tradition, some of the underlying principles speak to us with clarity and are an inspiration. The Vicariate was a politically left of centre movement driven by a theology of liberation which borrowed from neo-Marxist political theory. The Pentecostal revival is more economically conservative in its views and is deliberately apolitical. The former arose within the context of a hierarchical ecclesiology that became more egalitarian while the latter arose in base communities and has become more authoritative.

However, despite these differences both the Vicariate and the revival have developed in small communities of faith where shared experiences and bonds of fellowship have created strong spiritual ties between their members. They are also both very biblical and Christ-centred. While they might not see it in each other, they both subscribe to a vision of the kingdom of God that is rooted in the cross. They simply stress different aspects of the same Gospel.

The Vicariate found its courage through the power of the Spirit and prayer which enabled it to share in Christ’s preferential option for the poor. Its proponents left me humbled by their willingness to suffer imprisonment or death for sake of standing with the oppressed. They clearly believed the words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and, driven by a commitment to the cross, created the Communialis de Base as expressions of Christ’s presence among the poor.

The revival, on the other hand, stresses the power of Christ’s resurrection and the salvation which He brings through the power of the Holy Spirit among His people. The home churches are a refuge for the poor, lost, and lonely people, providing them with a sense of worth in the midst of an increasingly materialistic and commercialized world.

Both of these groups, therefore, turned to Christ in their need. During politically dangerous days when Chile was a pawn in the game of the Cold War, the church was a source of justice for the oppressed and in these days of increased affluence it is a haven to lost souls who are seeking meaning in their lives. I found the exponents of both movements to be remarkably orthodox and humble in their assessment of their respective roles in society.

In North America we are beginning to drift away from such an attitude towards the faith. With the rift that exists between the "left" and the "right" we overlook the Spirit's presence and His call for faithfulness and reconciliation. In our affluent society we have the luxury of dealing with penultimate rather than ultimate realities and this is reflected in our obsession with styles of worship, numerical growth and lax moral teachings. We have become captivated with a market-driven faith that seeks to appeal to a culture that is, as one of the leading Anglican leaders I interviewed in Santiago suggested "returning to its pagan roots by endorsing sexual immorality, turning its back on Jesus Christ and worshipping at the altar of materialism and hedonism". Rather than growing in the likeness of Christ and having the courage to stand against the tide of culture, he believes that we are regressing and acting as if Christ had never come in the flesh. A damning indictment by any standards!

We can learn much from our brothers and sisters in Chile, and while they are not the paragons of all virtue, they are certainly a sign that faith is a powerful reality. I left Chile with a number of concrete lessons for our own context.

For the church to be relevant it must be faithful. In Canada we feel the need to make Christianity relevant in order that it might be accepted by our culture. In Chile, the opposite is true. Chileans believe that the Gospel is relevant and is the incarnation of the truth. Therefore, for society to rest on a foundation of love, forgiveness, hope and justice, it must be called to adopt the relevance of the truth through conversion to the Gospel. They see human identity as distorted through sin and corruption unless it is transformed through the power of Christ's spirit. Only then can humanity live in a state of grace. That was central to the teachings of members of the Vicariate and is at the core of the revival experience. To deny the reality of Christ's cross and resurrection is to take a backward step and return to the myths of a pagan world which stressed earthly power, superstition and fear. This should be something that is taken into consideration by any group or church who wants to create a new statement of faith.

For the church to be prophetic it must practice what it preaches. Faith and deeds must go together. While sin negates all human attempts to attain divinity, the Chileans realize that an authentic proclamation must be embodied in a church that practices justice, peace and reconciliation. In that regard it has played an active role in bringing a deeply divided culture together. We must do likewise. The world in which we live might lack a moral centre and lapse into ethical relativism, but it still recognizes hypocrisy when it sees it. The church in Canada has a less than stellar history in many ways and therefore, believers need to be vigilant in looking to Christ Jesus alone as its guide and example. As Martin Luther said crux probat omnia (the cross is the test of everything.)

Dr. Paul Miller is minister of First Grantham United Church, St. Catharines, Ontario and Editor of Theological Digest and Outlook.

Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling is Senior Minister of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto, Ontario.