HOLINESS, TECHNOLOGY AND PERSONHOOD

HOLINESS, TECHNOLOGY AND PERSONHOOD

[Reproduced from the forthcoming volume, Grace, Faith and Holiness, by H. Ray Dunning. Used by permission of Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City.]

by
H. Ray Dunning

Ours has been appropriately characterized as the technological age. As Arthur F. Holmes says:

Culture arises as a fruit of human creativity, and the first cultural enterprise that inevitably commands attention nowadays is that of science and technology. While it was of course present in simplified fashion in earlier years and was given fuller rein by the scientific revolution of the Renaissance and by the industrial revolution, the past fifty years have witnessed a knowledge explosion and ushered in a technological age of unprecedented magnitude.1

It is fitting that the theme of this convention focuses on the issue of technology. It seems also fitting that in this seminar sponsored by the Wesleyan Theological Society we address some theological issues which are raised by this distinctive ethos. And furthermore, to be relevant, we should seek to identify the way the message of holiness ties in with these theological issues. I propose that we do this in a rather wide-ranging way which will provide a very broad background within which the issues of technology may be highlighted. The question of "the human" is the most crucial dimension of the problem and this immediately drives us to the Christian way of speaking to this issue. As we all would immediately recognize, the theological approach to the question entails a discussion of the imago dei, the image of God. It is in this that the Christian faith finds the distinctiveness of human being.

Traditionally, efforts have been made to define the imago by seeking to identify that in man which differentiates him from the rest of creation. That involves defining it from below. Under the influence of Greek thought, this differentia has been classically identified as reason, freedom and/or personality. G. C. Berkouwer, following Luther, makes the incisive observation that "if the image of God should lie in such ontic qualities. then Satan himself would exhibit the image of God."2 Aristotle's definition of man as "a rational animal" has been pervasively influential at this point. It was doubtless this approach which was the origin of the term natural image, common in Protestant theology. There are two difficulties with this way of addressing the question: (1) it defines the imago from below rather than from above which results in a false perspective. It is not a question of how man differs from other beings, but a question of how he stands in relation to his Creator. (2) It suggests that the imago is some quality or faculty or characteristic which man possesses in himself, an aspect of his substantial form. This aspect is then identified with the same quality in God.

G. C. Berkouwer comments on this way of interpreting what he refers to as the "wider" image:

It is regrettable that the valid emphasis in the dogma of the image of God in the wider sense has often taken on the form of an analysis of the ontic structure of man, e.g., as defined by person, reason and freedom. For it is undeniable that Scripture does not support such an interpretation. Scripture is concerned with man in his relation with God, in which he can never be seen as man-in-himself, and surely not with man's "essence" described as self or person.3

This statement points to a much more adequate way of interpreting the imago, that is, in terms of a relationship within which man stands, and one with which the preponderance of contemporary theologians agree. This approach may best be understood through the analogy of a mirror. When we stand in front of the mirror, in proper relation to it, our image is reflected therein. Analogically, when man is in proper relation to God, His image is reflected in human life. The chief strength of this interpretation is that it avoids the "naturalism" of the substantial view and provides a genuinely theological explanation. The mirror itself is not the image; the mirror images. God's image is in the mirror. The image of God consists in man's position before God, or rather the image of God is reflected in man because of his position before Him. Thus the proper way of putting it is not to speak of the image of God in man, but of man in the image of God.

Our point here is that the image, both in its wider sense and its narrower sense should be understood in this way. We now speak of the wider image, that relation within which man stands which constitutes him a human being. In his Dogmatics, while retaining the language of a "formal" and "material" image which he had used in his earlier debate with Karl Barth, Brunner declares that "in both instances the fact that man has been made in. the image of God is conceived not as a self existing substance but as a relation And this is the most important point to grasp. Responsibility (the essence of the 'formal' image) is a relation; it is not a substance."4

Karl Barth, too, in his Church Dogmatics came to the position that man's being, man's nature, is to stand in grace. Man is not essentially a "rational animal;" his essence is to be an object of God's grace. This essence is indeed covered and hidden by sin, but how can something which has its basis in God's grace be wholly destroyed? There is and remains a "continuum, an essence unchanged and unchangeable by sin."5

Luther, and some of his successors, have spoken here of a relic of the image which survives the Fall. But as Brunner points out, this says both too much and too little. Wesleyan theology proposes that this image in the wider sense is explained in terms of the doctrine of Prevenient Grace. It is this grace that goes before, which is effective in all men, that preserves man's humanity and person hood. It takes seriously the understanding of person hood as set forth by John MacMurray in his Gifford Lectures entitled Persons in Relation and argues that it is man's relation to God which constitutes him a human being.

Now let us look more specifically at the content involved when man stands in proper relation to his Creator. The theological implications of the Genesis account provide us with significant resource to understand what may be termed "original righteousness."

This original righteousness, we want to suggest, was constituted by a fourfold "freedom." (Not to be taken as an ontic quality entailing the power of contrary choice). Freedom, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer shows, is

not something man has for himself but something he has for others. No man is free "as such," that is, in a vacuum, in the way that he may be musical, intelligent or blind as such. Freedom is not a quality of man, nor is it an ability, a capacity, a kind of being that somehow flares up in him. Anyone investigating man to discover freedom finds nothing of it. Why? Because freedom is not a quality which can be revealed-it is not a possession, a presence, an object, nor is it a form for existence but a relationship and nothing else. In truth, freedom is a relationship between two persons. Being free means "being free for the other," because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.6

The original imago, we are suggesting as a result of theological exegesis of the Genesis accounts, includes (1) Freedom for God; (2) Freedom for the Other: (3) Freedom from the Earth or Worla and (4) Freedom from Self domination. The first three are explicitly spelled out theologically in Genesis 1-11 and the fourth is implied quite clearly in the other three.

Freedom for God. The same idea can be conveyed by the term "openness." It is symbolized by the time of communion with the Creator which Adam enjoyed in the "cool of the day." This highly anthropomorphic account is a profound theological presentation of an uninhibited tete-a-tete since there was nothing in the relation to hide. It was informed by Truth since no subterfuge was necessary. No turned away head, no averted eyes, no double-talk, the "yea was yea and the nay was nay."

This freedom of man for God was founded in the freedom of God for man. With God it was a se, but with man it was a gift. There is with God not only an "I" but an "I-Thou" relation within the Divine Nature. With man, it is the I who is himself in relation to the Thou who is God. Thus the analogy of relation is, as Barth says, the "correspondence of the unlike."

Freedom for the Other as Image. One of the intriguing features of the Genesis creation narratives is the use of the plural form for Deity. Genesis 1:1 declares: "In the beginning Elohim (plural for the singular El) created the heavens and the earth." The plural pronouns become both pronounced and prolific when the writer comes to speak of the origin of human being. Up to that point, the first narrative (1:1-2:4a) records "then God said" in connection with each day's creative activity with the originating fiat immediately following. But in 1:26 it is followed by an "in-house" consultation concerning this particular potentiality: "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness." The plural is then transferred to the proposed created being: "Let them have dominion . . ." In the 27th verse, the creation of mankind is stressed to be in the form of "male and female," a plural creature. Certainly all other "animals" also had male and female species but the structure clearly indicates that something special is implied by this characteristic of human being.

Karl Barth, in particular, has been influential in contemporary theology in calling attention to the crucial theological significance of the "male and female" factor in defining the imago dei. Barth insists that this is the most definitive element in the account. It seems clearly the case that he is at least correct concerning the decisive significance of the point and when joined with the other evidence in the passage makes it almost unequivocal that man's creation in God's image involves a social dimension.

St. Augustine was groping for a basic truth about man in his efforts to identify a trinitarian structure within human nature on the assumption that the imago would entail the same ontological structure in man as revelation disclosed obtained in the Divine Nature. His basic error, however, was in seeking to confine the " social" structure within the individual. The truth to which the Biblical affirmations point is an interpersonal ontological structure. Modern understandings of the self have brought this more clearly to light but it was a truth which the Biblical mind grasped all along.

As in the case of the basic Divine-human relation, the person-to-person relation can be described as "openness." That is the significance of the phrase "freedom for." It is an I-Thou relationship that was marked by the absence of shame. The references in the second creation account (2:25) to the fact that "they were both naked . . . and were not ashamed," symbolize this kind of openness. They were radically "free for" each other. The absence of lust which has self gratification (see discussion of freedom from self) as an element in its motivation made such unashamed openness possible in this picture of almost naive unselfconsciousness.

Freedom from the Earth as Image. Because of man's status in relation to God he is given "dominion" over the remainder of created reality. It is true, as many have argued that we cannot equate this dominion with the image of God without remainder but it seems clearly to be a subsidiary aspect of it. The earth does not dominate man when the Divine-human relation is in order, but serves man. Adam's task of naming the animals symbolizes his dominion over them and their subservience to his God appointed ends.

The commission to "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Gen. 1:28) is a cultural mandate. "Culture" implies a "tilling" and man's appointed role is to till God's creation, or cultivate it. The clue to the boundaries of this mandate is "the glory of God" to which unfallen man would be committed. It thus carries responsibility as well as privilege and implies ecological caretaking.

Freedom from Self as Image. Implicit in each of the other three relations is the submission of self to the authority of the Creator. The recognition of His Lordship acknowledges the status of man as creature. As long as this arrangement obtains man remains not only free for God but free to be himself in terms of his created destiny, free to be his true self.

This is not, however, a relationship that is impersonal, arbitrary or forced but free. The logical consequence is that the relation can be upset if the free partner (man) decides to dissolve the situation of the Lordship of the Creator and assume an equal partnership role or usurp the prerogatives of the Creator. This possibility was actualized in the Fall which basically takes the form of a "Revolt against Heaven."

If what we have described is Original Righteousness then Original Sin involves the loss of or the perversion of the relationship in which man stood in the "state of integrity." However, we must emphasize that it is more than a negation. The loss of the image of God created a vacuum into which positive evil rushed so that man in his "natural" state as it is now is corrupt in every aspect of his being. In classical theological language, he is "totally depraved."

In theologically analyzing Genesis 1-11 we see indications that all four relations which we are suggesting constituted original righteousness were disrupted. The openness for God was replaced by hiding. The interpersonal relation was marked by shame and the covering of clothes. But for our purposes here, we want to emphasize that the Fall also resulted in loss of freedom from the earth. This is symbolized by the cursing of the ground with resulting "thorns and thistles." It was not work that came into being through the curse, but the resistance of the earth to man's efforts to cultivate it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's description of this loss is pungent:

We . . . try to rule, but it is the same here as on Walpurgis night. We think we are pushing and we are being pushed. We do not rule, we are ruled. The thing, the world, rules man. Man is a prisoner, a slave of the world, and his rule is illusion. Technology is the power with which the earth grips man and subdues him. And because we rule no more, we lose ground, and then the earth is no longer our earth, and then we become strangers on earth. We do not rule because we do not know the world as God's creation, and because we do not receive our dominion as God-given but grasp it for ourselves. 7

We have observed the increasing sophistication of man in his conquest of the earth. He has wrested its secrets from it and created artifacts with seemingly limitless possibilities but he has been unable to keep them under his control. His inventions seem to take on a life of their own and assert themselves in mastery over the creator. And the larger and more complex the inventions the more destructive they seem to become to human well-being. It is not the monster of nuclear power, for example, which threatens human life. It is the man who discovered it who has no dominion over himself and so loses control of what many dreamed would be the solution to many human problems. Having revolted against his own Creator, man has lost the power to hold dominion over his own creation..

In its day, the sinking of the Titanic had tremendous theological impact. The "unsinkable" ship seemed the apex of human technological achievement. When it went down, it brought man face to face with the reality that he was still a creature and was not the master of his own fate no matter how sophisticated and educated he might be. It was one more nail in the coffin of liberalism. In our time, it seems to me that the tragedy of the space shuttle which still impacts our spirits testifies to the same reality. I am certainly not suggesting that it was a direct intervention of God, but that it serves as a symbol of man's loss of dominion and witnesses to the fact that he is really not "god."

When we introduce the perverted relation to self which results from the loss of the image of God, we see a further dimension of this truth. The intrusion of a perverted relation to self in relation to the other gave a specific character to human interaction. The "openness" symbolized by "nakedness" was now replaced by shame and resulted in hiding their bodies from each other. What now pollutes the relation is the motive of self gratification.

The elevation of self to the control tower of life likewise perverts man's relation to nature or the earth. His original mandate was to cultivate the created world (culture) for the glory of God. The Fall twisted this around so that the task of tilling the earth (developing culture) became motivated by self advantage. The practical results in terms of the "rape of the earth" are appalling. Exploitation, irresponsibility and greed all paint a gloomy picture for the future of the environment because men have sought to exploit the earth for their own pleasure in ways that far exceed their needs. And technology is the means by which man carries out his exploitation.

Stephen Winward, in his analysis of the message of Haggai the prophet in which he relates the poverty of the restoration community to their lack of obedience in building the temple observes that it is extremely difficult for contemporary man to believe that there is a direct connection between piety and prosperity, between the acknowledgment of God in worship and the conditions of the economy. We are not in the habit of interpreting natural calamities or adversities as judgments of God. Rather we account for such things in terms of "secondary causes." If there is a drought, modern man turns for explanation to the meteorological experts. If the land fails to yield good crops, he buys fertilizers or seeks to improve agricultural techniques. But, he asks, does this mean we can dismiss the message of Haggai as irrelevant in the contemporary, scientific age? By no means, he argues, for there is indeed a fundamental relationship between obedience to God and the fertility of the earth, between the acknowledgment of God in worship and the economic prosperity of mankind. His conclusion is that whenever man turns away from his chief end which is the worship and service of God, the consequences of his rebellion are manifested in three directions: the corruption of his own nature, the destruction of community, and the perversion of his relationship to the earth into one of exploitation and dominion. He then quotes the words of Paul Tillich, the preacher. "This technical civilization, the pride of mankind, has brought about a tremendous devastation of original nature, of the land, of animals, of plants . . . it has occupied everything for domination and ruthless exploitation." The point of his argument is that while the message of Haggai may be difficult to apply to individual life, the prophet is not really addressing that issue but speaking to communal life. Hence his message, with contemporary relevance, is that a prosperous economy has a moral basis, and the earth approximates to paradise as the inhabitants thereof acknowledge the supreme worth of God. Irreligion is the root cause of social decay and economic disaster. In this twentieth century nations and communities have all the scientific and technical knowledge necessary to bring untold benefits to all mankind. Yet, in fact, multitudes suffer from malnutrition and hunger. There is abundant evidence, he argues, to prove that when men give absolute priority to the satisfaction of their own material needs and desires, the result is not health, happiness and prosperity for all. For in an age obsessed as never before with the material, the economic, there is widespread poverty and desperate need.8

If person hood is constituted by the imago dei and it is understood as involving a right relation to God with other relationships being "good" in the Genesis sense when this relation is restored, and conversely the tragedy of these other broken relations hinges on man's destiny in God, they all point to a defective person hood. Hence, if man has a desire to achieve full personalness involving meaningful personal relations and fruitful, non-destructive use of his technological knowledge, the way to do so is to bring his spirit back into the proper relation to God.

This brings us now to the doctrine of holiness which is most broadly defined by Wesleyan theology as the renewal of man in the image of God. When repentance and faith have restored man to the favor of God, it is God's intention to bring man to his appointed destiny which has long been thwarted by sin. That destiny is embodied in the "image of God." This is not only what man was, but also what he is intended by God to become. To put these truths simply, God accepts me just as I am and then begins the process of making me into the kind of person He wants me to be. The latter is the working of grace that is described in a shorthand way by the term sanctification.

What are the possibilities of grace in this regard? To that crucial issue we want to give brief attention. It is important to distinguish the Wesleyan position from the classical Reformation one. The Protestant reformers interpreted the image of God in legal categories of righteousness. The restoration of man to the image of God is likewise interpreted in this framework. Thus for both major Protestant reformers (Luther and Calvin) the process of sanctification is seen in terms of doing good works and these good works are judged in terms of their conformity to the law.

When the works of redeemed man are measured by the law of God in its fullest expectation, there is always a deficiency. As John Calvin puts it: "We have not a single work going forth from the saints that if it be judged in itself deserves but shame as its just reward.... For since no perfection can come to us so long as we are clothed in this flesh, and the law moreover announced death and judgment to all who do not maintain perfect righteousness in works, it will always have grounds for accusing and condemning us unless, on the contrary, God's mercy counters it, and by continual forgiveness of sins, repeatedly acquits us" (Institutes, III, xiv, 10).

John Wesley concurs with this judgment when it is bound to this context. In the Plain Account he says in answer to the question, "But do we not 'in many things offend all,'?" that in one sense we do, "and shall do, more or less, as long as we remain in the body."

But Wesley discovered in the Scripture another way of interpreting man's relation to God other than by law. He began this process of discovery under the tutelage of Jeremy Taylor, St. Thomas a Kempis and William Law. From them he learned that the essence of piety was inward and intentional. "Purity of intention" was the phrase he used to speak of what he learned from Taylor. This paved the way for his recognition that while man can never be restored to the image of God in any legal sense or when it is interpreted in terms of law, he can be perfectly related to Him in terms of love. He found, in a word, the truth of Paul's assertion that "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Romans 13:10).

We want to suggest that sanctification involves the restoration of all four of the relations earlier mentioned as constituting the image of God, and this restoration is to be understood in terms of love. As Mr. Wesley so pertinently commented, addressing the first two relations, to be entirely sanctified is to "love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength" and "your neighbor as yourself."

Let us now look briefly at what it might mean in terms of restoring the third relation mentioned, the relation to the earth. In his original created condition man was given dominion over the remainder of created reality. This dominion seems to be directly related to man's own submission to the dominion of the Creator. But with the revolt against God, the earth "revolted" against man and the proper relationship was lost, man was no longer free from the earth. St. Augustine provides a penetrating analysis of the present condition of men in this dimension when he observed that we ought to love God and use things, but instead we tend to love things and use God.

Obviously, the New Testament says nothing about technology, but we can catch some glimpse of the application of the theological truth to this matter by noting the way the New Testament speaks about possessions. All of these like technology are products of the earth. It is astounding how pervasive this theme is in the Bible, especially in the N.T. Why does Scripture give so much attention to this question? Doubtless Luke T. Johnson's analysis provides us with the answer. He says, "The way we use, own, acquire, and disperse material things symbolizes and expresses our attitudes and responses to ourselves, the world around us, other people, and, most of all, God."9 In a word, it symbolizes all the relations about which we have been speaking, that is, they all come to focus in this issue since they are all interrelated as we noted earlier.

It is the loss of this dimension of the Imago which has resulted in the idolatrous attitude toward science and technology characterizing scientific humanism. This view holds that "Science alone affords reliable knowledge . . . and science alone can assure a future in which suffering and disaster are overcome."10

This is a mythology which must be repudiated. The Christian understanding is that while such discoveries or inventions are gifts of God, they must be seen as servants rather than masters. Developing the earth is part of the cultural mandate given man at the creation but it can only be done in a non-self-destructive way when it is carried out under the Lordship of Christ and this is the relation to the earth to which the full message of Wesleyan holiness calls us. Thus it speaks most relevantly to the issue so crucial today.

Notes

1Arthur F. Holmes, Contours of a World View (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman's Publishing Co., 1983), p. 207.

2G. C. Berkouwer, Man. The Image of God (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman's Publishing Co., 1962), p. 56.

3Ibid, pp. 59-60.

4H. Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine o f Creation and Redemption, trans. by Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1952), p. 59.

5Church Dogmatics, III/1, 195.

6Creation and Fall, p. 38.

7Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall (N.Y.: The Macmillan Co.,1967), p. 37.

8A Guide to the Prophets (Atlanta: John Knox Press,1983), pp.194-195.

9Luke T. Johnson, Sharing Possessions (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), p. 40.

10Holmes, Contours, p. 207.

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