Dan Kelly asks:

  We need to hire someone to bring practical leadership to those of us who want to serve but don’t have the capacity to envision, organize, and create.  We’ll think of a suitable title for such a person later, but let’s get on with the hiring process.

What would we call such a person? And then it hit me! Deacons! This is exactly the problem that the early church had in the book of Acts. The Elders felt called to teach and preach, because therein lies the power of the Gospel. But what about caring for widows and orphans? Thus we have Stephen and six other deacons being elected. These were not men who were forced into the position or men so busy that it was a stretch for them, but seven men who had been called and set apart by the Holy Spirit to do this task. And they could not do it themselves…it would be silly to assume that seven men alone took care of all the orphans and widows in the early church. Instead, they organized….wait for it…programs!

The problem in the church today is that too many pastors are trying to do the deacons job instead of focusing on leadership, vision casting, shepherding and preaching. Too many deacons are content to simply focus on mercy ministry within their own congregations (at least in my community in Wisconsin our deacons attempted to network with other deacons from other churches to care for the poor but were told by most churches that deacons only care for the needs of those respective churches!). What we need is not churches sold out to a program, that produces social gospel, or churches that only preach, that produces theological egg-heads. What we need to solve the issue is a pastor who proclaims the power of the gospel from the pulpit, preaches gospel application in human life, and shepherds the deacons of the church to look outside the church walls and come up programs to help the poor. In this way, elders and deacons work together, elders through teaching and shepherding, deacons through action in performing mercy ministry.

Thus, as Dan says, we should be expecting our deacons to deacon! And to take Dan’s argument to the next level, if an elder/pastor is ‘worth of his hire’ as Paul says and can be paid, we should be willing to pay our deacons as well if it will help them in their calling to action! Imagine if a church thought to hire a full-time deacon and a full-time pastor!

In a recent post below (the power of programs?) I suggested that the church needs to return to its faith in preaching. Dan Kelly’s post seems to suggest that I’m anti-programs, which I’m certainly not. In fact, much of my job is running programs in my church! My concern is that the church and the church leadership (i.e. pastors), spend a lot of time looking for new programs when their role is one of teaching and preaching. That teaching and preaching though must result in action, to Dan’s point. The church, to define my terms, includes all the members of a given body (visible), or even all believers (invisible), but it certainly includes more than the church leadership. When I say that pastors should not create programs, I’m not suggesting that those in the pew should not either. In fact, I’m counting on them to act in response to the pastor’s preaching. The pastor preaches the Word of God and the Spirit applies that Word to the heart of the person in the pew, and such person goes out and starts a program to help the poor. What we need is the leadership in the pulpit that Dan Kelly calls for. That’s exactly what I would expect of good preaching. Here’s the gospel, here’s the gospel applied. Now, through the power of the gospel, strive to live that out

In a post from last week (and subsequent comments), Greg challenged me to provide an “intellectual architecture to guide our thinking about how to resolve disputes between the consciences of individuals and the institutions that form those consciences.” Vital and such, and also hard.

Greg proposes that we connect the capax dei — a naturally-instilled capacity for God — not only in conscience but also in institutions. His reasoning is that “God is a God of action and not just of knowledge and contemplation”, and to place the capax dei solely in the conscience would imply that we act on our religious beliefs only in contemplation. Thus, we must locate the capax dei also in institutions.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, though, the conscience relies, in part, and both knowingly and not, on institutions for its formation…To deny religion its role would be grossly unfair, favoring secular institutions’ influence in forming the conscience. In other words, institutions do form the conscience, so to discriminate against religious institutions’ attempts to form the conscience — which generally includes some sort of institutional authority claims over its adherents, even if only in the educative sense — would actually be to favor secular institutions (education, media, etc.).

Greg is summing up my above position as “conscience requires institutions to form it,” which isn’t entirely what I mean but I take the point. (I would say that institutions necessarily do form consciences — goodness, take education as an institution and we’re already there, but there are plenty of media, cultural, social and religious institutions to point to that influence the conscience, both obviously and subtly.) He sees this position as inadequate for providing the intellectual architecture mentioned above, and suggests instead that if we “articulate how institutions are connected to the capax dei without having to run that connection through the conscience,” we will be better off for it.

Thus far, Greg’s actual words. Now, a reading into those words:

I think that Greg is resisting my situating the capax dei in the conscience alone because he think that if we can connect institutions — educational, artistic, professional, et al, — directly to God (n.b.: not to the capacity for God), we will be better off. In other words, if we can have at our disposal a defense of the work for its own sake, because it is part of the creative work that God entrusts to human beings, we will have a much richer defense against centralized edicts (actual or by funding restrictions) declaring what education, art, science, et al. ought to look like. If, on the other hand, we can only defend work and institutions against government encroachment by finding a way in which that encroachment violates consciences, we have very few resources to draw upon.

On this, we agree – that is, if this “Greg thinks thusly” characterization is correct. In other words, we have freedom, we ought to have freedom, to carry out all kinds of institutional work simply because it is part of God’s creation, and decidedly not the state’s creation. And that freedom should be the default position, not only ‘granted’ when conscience demands it. So in an important way, God resides in those institutions themselves. (I probably need correcting from a theologian on how to articulate that point, though.)

But I still don’t think that the capacity for God, as intended in the old doctrine of capax dei, resides in those institutions. I want to keep this as just a capacity for God, not God Himself. And that capacity is, I have to maintain, not itself active. The manifestation of it is certainly active; it is work, art, education, everything. That is, the capax dei does manifest itself in institutions. But the capacity itself is something that compels the conscience, rather than an institution, toward God or at least the search for religious truth.

Why this  matters is that I want to argue that the capax dei is an important tool in the preservation of the freedom of religion and not just the freedom of conscience. The conscience can tell a person all kinds of things; it can be wholly individualized. This leaves us without any mechanism for arbitrating between individuals’ conscience-based claims. But the capax dei links the conscience to religions, and imbues those religions with not only the value of conscience claims but with an institutional authority as that institution that mediates the individual’s capax dei with deo. Again, as I wrote, a natural capacity and desire for God means that we as humans must be free to pursue not only our consciences’ demands, but God Himself. This is a subtle but very important distinction, for if we need only obey our own consciences, we can probably stop with philosophy, which helps us understand the nature of the good. But if we have natural desires and capacities to know God, we must also have religion — and, consequently, freedom of religion.

The American church seems to have become a spiritual version of the smartphone. Need directions? We have an app for that. Need a recipe? We have an app for that. Need to know how long you’ll have to wait for a table at your favorite restaurant? We have an app for that, too. Only in the church we do not have apps, we have programs. Rocky marriage? We have a program for that. Rebellious Teens? Yep, program for that. Poor people in society? We have a program for that. Is there a problem we don’t have a program for, we’ll start one (and maybe hire a pastor to run it!).

Yet for nearly two thousand years the chief activity of the church has not been programs but preaching. Somehow, in the last few decades, we have lost sight of the power of preaching and put our faith in programs, as though preaching is insufficient to bring about change. Instead of Piper’s Supremacy of Christ in Preaching, we act as though it is the Supremacy of Christ in Programs. How did Calvin aid the Holy Spirit in the transformation of Geneva? Programs? No, Preaching! Consider the big names in evangelicalism today (Chandler, Driscoll, Piper, Keller, MacAurthur, Carson, Duncan, Ryken) known for programs? No! Preaching! And yet, we still assume Chappell wrote a book entitled Christ-Centered Programs rather than Christ-Centered Preaching!

Which brings us back to the role of the church in dealing with the poor. The solution which everyone is striving for is that perfect program, that ace-in-the-hole which the church can use to help the poor. In the face of such a search, solutions of presence, prayer, personalization, and so on seem insufficient and trite. But the saddest part is that the answer to the poor has been staring us in the face all along, not in the form of a program, but the power of Preaching!

For two millennia, preaching has the been the answer to the church’s challenges and the world’s problems. Today, though we search for programs. The irony in all of this is that programs have started over the church’s history, but as a result of preaching! The church preaches compassion on the poor and the people respond to that preaching in action, in programs! Thus, if the church really wants to help the poor, really wants to address the economic problems of the inner cities, the church needs to stop looking for programs and preach the Word of God, trusting the power of the Holy Spirit to transform hearts and motivate the people in the pews to action.

Only through the power of preaching can the church address ALL the issues facing the poor, from the poor’s personal issues to societies injustice, to inaction by Christians. Let us hope that church rises to the challenge and returns in faith to powerful preaching.

Karen, I hear you. Here is where I would press you for further clarity. You’re talking about the capax dei exclusivley with reference to the conscience, then saying that the conscience requires institutions for its formation. I think that’s insufficient, because you make the conscience an intermediary between the capax dei and institutions. Without relating the capax dei to institutions directly, you’re unable to provide an answer for how to resolve conflicts between individuals and institutions when they arise.

For every Thomas More, there’s a Martin Luther. “Conscience requires institutions for its formation” has become quite a slogan in some quarters. Whenever I hear it, I ask people what they would have told Luther to do. Suppose he submits to institutions at Worms instead of taking a stand for conscience. When he stands before the eternal judgment seat, what’s he supposed to say? “Well, you see, Lord, the human self is situated in a dense web of relationships and institutions that constitute its personhood…”

I think we can’t establish the need for freedom of religion alongside freedom of conscience without confronting this problem. Although Luther and the 16th century Reformation did not represent a revolt against institutions, they did put the problem of relating institutions to conscience front and center. Romantic individualism rose to prominence by exploiting this opportunity. As long as every individual has an unlimited-use trump card, we’re not going to solve this problem.

We need to press the point even further – get even more radical – and locate the capax dei in action rather than just in contemplation. Aristotle was right that the contemplative life is insufficient by itself; action and contemplation must be integrated. God is the God of truth and beauty and goodwill and rest and the beatific vision, but he is also the God of justice and abundance and marriage and battles and skyscrapers and little screaming babies that poop their diapers. The biblical narrative begins in a garden and ends in a city; God did not create the universe in its final state but in an initial state. It was always supposed to grow and develop. That was the original plan.

The late church fathers absorbed from their Neoplatonist rivals the pagan idea that the good is eternal and unchanging, so motion and change are bad. (It’s actually a pretty common problem in theology – theologians battling unbelievers on some major point will absorb their thinking on some of the more minor points in order to meet them on their own ground, then those compromises fester and stink within the theological tradition until later theologians root them out.) On this basis they instilled in Christian theology a view of creation and history and ethics that privileges contemplation over action. We are still struggling today to get over this problem. This discussion is only one example.

If we locate the capax dei in action as well as contemplation, institutions themselves become direct expressions of the capax dei alongside individual belief and behavior. Now you’re prepared to wrestle with the question of how individuals and institutions relate. How the conversation goes from there will depend on other factors we don’t have time to get into, but without acknowledging the capax dei in institutions you’re never going to get on the right track.

By the way, what I’m advocating here does not imply a compromise of the Reformation understanding of the sovreignty of the conscience. Far from it – in my view, what I’m saying here is implied in Luther’s claims and actions. If the capax dei is located in institutions, then institutions are accountable to God. This by itself does not get you the whole Reformation doctrine, but it is at least a necessary part of it. On this view, the individual and the institution are equally subordinate to God, so neither one is subordinate to the other. Individuals and institutions must learn to coexist symbiotically rather than one demanding that the other submit. Luther treated Rome as though he thought it ought to be an expression of the capax dei, and was failing in that capacity, and could legitimately be held to account. Whereas it seems to me that the attempt to solve this problem without relating the capax dei directly to institutions (“the conscience requires institutions for its formation”) really arises out of Catholic attempts to answer the challenge of Protestantism by subordinating the individual conscience to institutions.