These are some selections on the subject from CONVERSATIONAL THEOLOGY
'We
should be wary whenever we try to box in too tightly the way the Spirit might
be working. But we also have license from that same spirit to hold fast to what
we believe to be the truth, and to proclaim it as the unique and special
revelation it is. A good way to look at other religions may be to see them
similar to the religious eclectic that we cast a somewhat skeptical eye upon,
but who we reject at the peril of losing a possible avenue to a deeper
comprehension of God's Will for us. Finally, we can see how the atheist can be
a part of God's redemption without relegating belief in Christ to
pointlessness. The atheist may respond to Christ when he or she helps the
suffering person. Christ's self-identification with the lowest and the weakest
opens up a door to the non-believer. By responding to that person, at that
time, they are responding to Christ. To respond to Christ is to be moved by the
Holy Spirit, God is Christ over us, Christ is God with us, and the Spirit is
Christ and God within us. When we respond to Christ, we are moving as an
extension of God. A person can do this without understanding the full
implications of what they do. What is always denied them is the knowledge of
the fellowship they are being involved in and thus the joy and confidence that
comes with such knowledge. God moves through them but they never gain the
knowledge of His relationship to them. I imagine a father separated from his
child, arranging that Childs life from afar. Such a father may love and help
the child, without that child ever even realizing it, the child never knowing
how much of his life is really an extension of his missing father, but the
child still may responding to that love, that help, by living a good life. "Bless them Father, for they do it
without even knowing what it is they do".'
'The
Hidden Church is the Holy Spirit alive within
the world, various people and realities becoming Christ for others because God
is moving within them... the institutional church should operate in the hope
and even the belief that the hidden church is behind the veil there, within
that institution, but it can never know it. If it did, it would violate its
call to be a community of penitents and thus cease to be the church in any
form. It must work for the betterment of the world, never knowing if its deeds
are right, but simply making the best moral insights it can with its own
sin-stained processes, and throwing itself on the mercy of God, confident only
that in Christ God saves us from our sins. If it can do this it can preserve
its job, and perhaps do more. There
will be, ideally, moments, places, adventures where the church seen will become
a visible sign of invisible grace, an outward veil of the hidden church, within
which God's Kingdom really is advancing. Individuals may dimly perceive these
moments, but the church can rarely lay claim to them, and then only in
hindsight. Here I come in and create a bridge between the Pauline and Gospel
commentaries on the church community. The church must always work for God's
Kingdom, but it can never create it by its own power. Only God can transform
any act into an act of grace, only God can make the profane Holy. God's call
may lead even to proximate defeat and suffering, the church must accept this
defeat confident that in God's hands it is always a doorway to victory. God
often must temporarily be defeated in the world in order to bring about
ultimate victory.
In the same way that Jesus' remnant was more like a supernatural door through which God by
His power would step, rather than some vehicle whose actions would build God's
kingdom itself, the institutional church must do its duties only in the
trembling hope that God will use those duties to make of this old world, a new
world (Martin Luther King, Jr.). Any simplistic progressive formula, or any
deification of the church’s activities, must be roundly rejected. Paul's
emphasis on the individual activity of the Holy Spirit, and his rejection of
the institutional church, gives us an enlightening glimpse into the ways of the
hidden church. The institutional church must be aware of the possibility that
the hidden church, that is, God's continuing salvific activity, may manifest
itself anywhere, at any time, depending on God's abilities and desires.
"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound but you cannot
tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of
the Spirit." (John 3:8) The true church may be in the home of a person
watching a televangelist, or in the cup of the homeless man on the street, or
within other religious communities, or in the heart of the atheist. Mindful of
the fact that it can have no confidence of its own holiness, it must continue
to do its duties, and if it does so, in contrition and without the left hand
knowing what the right hand is doing, more
often than not that hidden church will appear within its walls, and many
Sundays will be Pentecost Sundays.'
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