Human Unity Otherwise Described...

As the NT talks about the people of God, it describes them as united in the basic quality of their existence: there is one Lord, one Faith, one baptism, one God and father of all (so Eph 4:2-5). There is not a need for the dissolving of cultural and personal differences – because there is a unity founded on something far deeper. Galatians 3:26 should not be over-read in this connection. As Bernd Wannenwetsch puts it:

The contrasting pairs Jew-Greek, man-woman, freeman-slave, listed in Galatians 3:26ff represented – and represent still – fundamental differences, ethnic and religious, sexual and economic…the intention was not to abolish these antinomies in general. They are to be set aside in a quite precise sense: the political one.[1]

However, the experience of transformed relationships and unity in the church’s life could not leave untouched what being Jew or Greek, man or woman, freeman or slave meant for life outside the church. Wannenwetsch continues:

God’s Spirit, which rules the ekklesia, relativises the ties with all the different political, economic, and ethnic systems which are determined by another spirit, the spirit of self-preservation.[2]

The point of Paul’s body metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12 is that human difference and distinction are not obliterated in Christ but brought together by the Spirit and found complementary. Conformity is to be found in imitation of Christ (1 Cor 11:1). The futility of Gentile living is to be abandoned (1 Cor 6:12ff): together the body finds a unity of purpose in living in a way which pleases God, keeping unity and peace with the other members of the body.

[1] Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens p.136-7.
[2] Ibid. p. 142

More Globalisation

Globalisation may be interpreted as a secular western liberal adaptation of a Christian vision. The linchpin of globalisation is a liberal view of market economies, so that trade barriers are minimized if not removed (as they were between Australia and the USA in 2004-5). Free trade can have the positive effect in small economies of breaking down the wealth and power of oligarchies in favour of the majority; which has the apparent effect of advancing western liberal values.

This of course worked in Eastern Europe, where religious life had been by and large suppressed; but has had limited success in the Islamic world. It was relatively easy to dazzle the citizens of the gray cities of the communist bloc with consumer goods and so to turn them against their governments. As President George W. Bush’s 2005 inauguration address revealed, the emancipatory master narrative of freedom is also being applied globally (and, ironically, by force if necessary). Globalisation means, in reality, the universal application of liberal values. Human fraternity – a secular catholicity – will be achieved in the end because Western culture is assumed to be the universal – or, at least, the universally desired – civilization. This is a soteriology without an eschatology: in other words, the ‘end of history’ is to be proclaimed from within history. In other words, what we may readily observe with secular western liberalism is a secular form of post-millennialism.

Globalisation - is God in it? How?

Described as the ‘emerging and homogenizing culture that tends to impact individuals and societies in all parts of the world,’[1] there is little dispute over that fact that globalisation is occurring – just as to whether it is desirable or not. ‘Globalisation’ describes, for example, the product of the felt ‘shrinking’ of the world as a result of developments in technology, the increased ability of multi-national corporations to reach every corner of the earth with their products, and the mass migration and intermingling of people groups in megacities. In the opinion of Max L. Stackhouse ‘the larger reality is that the whole world is becoming one place, an inclusive field of spaces, peoples and activities.’[2] Positive accounts of globalisation view it as producing a feeling that the world is becoming unified – it is available to be explored and experienced quickly and without much effort. The freeing of markets allows for consumers and sellers to transcend national boundaries. ‘God is in globalisation’, writes Stackhouse;[3] in fact, he suggests that it is a side effect of the missionary genius of Christianity. Could it be that the epoch of globalisation represents a gathering of the nations in unity on a scale about which the Bible only prophesies? Is this finally a genuine achievement of human fraternity and catholicity - a salvation of humanity, perhaps?


[1] Kurien, “Globalization: An Economist's Perspective,” p. 197.
[2] Max L. Stackhouse, “Public Theology and Political Economy in the Globalising Era,” in Public Theology for the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Duncan B. Forrester, ed. Duncan B. Forrester, William Storrar, and Andrew Morton (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), p. 179.
[3] Ibid. I mean of course he is if you believe in providence: but, is it a blessing or a curse? A Babel or a Pentecost?