Church and world: the loss of distinction in twentieth century theology

I. In twentieth century Protestant theology there has been a loss of ontological distinction between the Church and the world. By this is meant a distinction in being, in essence. That this is so is demonstrated by an analysis of four major theologians.Dietrich Bonhoeffer, holding that reality is restructured in Christ, the Incarnate One, raised the question about his concrete place in the world. By following out the implications of his Lutheran incarnationalism, he in the end answered that the whole world is the place of restructured reality. The result is a dissolution of the sacred-profane distinction. God has fully entered the reality of this world, and this world fully participates in the reality of God. Paul Tillich sought to protect the radical otherness of God. By defining God as 'being-itself,' however, he ironically was left with a thorough-going immanentalism. His ontology swept away the distinctions between God and humanity, faith and dis¬ belief, the Church and the world. Wolfhart Pannenberg's concern is for wholeness. In Christ, we learn that God is the power of the future. This means that the future is both the beginning and the end: all things flow out of the future, and toward it, in an unbroken circle of historical events. Thus, Pannenberg has little room for sin and its consequent brokenness. Jtfrgen Moltmann extrapolates know¬ ledge of the eschaton from the 'inner tendency' of the Christ event. The Cross teaches that God has taken all death into his being, and the resurrection reveals that God lives for all and will grant universal life. He contends for the eschatological determination of essence, and thus, since all reality will auto¬ matically share a common future, we are left with the implication that all present reality has the same being.II. Therefore, with Bonhoeffer and Tillich the problem to be encountered is that of immanentalism, and with Pannenberg and Moltmann, universalism. The idea of the Holy offers a way to understand the proper relation between God and the world in sin, and therefore also the relation between the Church and the world. The holiness of God refers to his absolute distinction from all else. Yet, inasmuch as the content of his being is revealed in Jesus Christ, his otherness is revealed as precisely the overcoming of the distance between himself and sinful humanity. His holiness is the uniqueness of his love in Jesus Christ. Therefore, God radically transcends the world through the grace of his love for the world.The Church is holy because God is holy. Constituted in Christ, it has its being through the free act of holiness. Since it has this in grace, it confesses the fact of sin, and will not count on an automatic, universal salvation, nor will it look to an abstractly idealized future, but only to Christ, trusting the freedom of his grace. And the Church is holy as God is holy. Participating in the being of Christ, it is holy in that it is ontologically distinct from the world in its love and self-giving for the world.Karl Berth's theology provides a model which adequately accounts for the notion of holiness. Structured around the fact of God's revelation in Christ, it is trinitarian throughout: God the Father speaks his Word in Christ the Son, and through the Holy Spirit empowers subjective human response. The Church for Barth is set apart from the world as the community of those who hear and gratefully respond to the reconciliation of God in Christ