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Literature review on Topic 1: Theological Underpinnings

Modern writers on the theology of Christian ministry are unanimous that ministry finds its origin in the salvic ministry of Jesus himself. All authentic Christian ministry involves a participation in Christ's own ministerial mission and power. The risen Jesus remains actively present in and through the whole people of God which is a holy priesthood (ref 132) . That Jesus himself left the church a conception of ministry is asserted by Oden (ref 101) who observes that Jesus addressed and called individuals into discipleship taught and nurtured them toward apostolicity and then sent them out with the promise of his own continuing presence. While Booth (ref 088) sees a distinction between mission and ministry there is general consensus that participation in the ministry of Christ means an ongoing cooperation between Christ and the community in establishing the kingdom of God. Three principles emerge (ref 021) :
  1. All ministry exists for the benefit of the church and the world.
  2. All baptised have received their gift from the Spirit for the common good.
  3. The church is a communion of those who live in Christ fashioned by the Spirit after the life of the Trinity in which unity and multiplicity are bound together in a dynamic union of divine love.
That all Christian ministry takes its source from Christ our one High Priest has been articulated in offical documents both Anglican and ecumenical (ref 024) (ref 098) .

Schillebeeckx (ref 019) and Cooke (ref 025) are just two of the commentators who remind us that historically and according to the New Testament Christ and the Christian community alone were priestly; the whole of the believing community concelebrated. Those views are reflected in modern ordinals: in the New Zealand Ordinal (ref 023) great emphasis is placed upon the communal and societal nature of ministry. All who believe and are baptised receive from the Holy Spirit a ministry to proclaim Jesus as Saviour and Lord.

By contrast with this clear call to corporate ministry the theology of the ordination of individuals is considerably more ambiguous. Historians of the Church remind us that the New Testament mentions no distinction between 'laity' and 'clergy'. It was in medieval times that a sharp line was drawn between the leadership role of the clergy and the relative passivity of the laity but today there is recognition that the Church not only contains but needs many roles and functions in its administration witness and service as well as in its liturgy (ref 038). The particular character of the ordained is set against the background of many different non-ministerial services in the church. Much of what the ordained actually do do belongs properly to any Christian  --  though not all Christians claim the dedication or freedom to undertake it (ref 025) . The ordained do not monopolise all ministerial gifts authority and responsibility nor do they merely function to preserve the external order of the community (ref 019) (ref 021) .

In the face of so much negativity it is difficult to see how the concept of ordination came into existence or managed to suvive. Yet Clergy plainly do exist and function in three varieties according to Berkhoff (ref 097) :
  1. the Catholic or high-church type which regards ordination as a sacrament by which the bearer in virtue of a special promise of the Spirit is prominently placed not only opposite but also above the congregation
  2. the classical Reformed type which positions the minister not only opposite but also in the congregation and circumscribes their authority by the general office of all believers. Ordination is emphatically not seen as conferring any personal status or privilege (ref 022) (ref 025) (ref 063) (ref 088) and the Ministry of the Word is given particular emphasis (ref 037).
  3. the free-church or low-church type which sees in the office-bearer no more than a functional specialization of the office of all believers in principle no different from that of the custodian or administrator.
Berkhof finds it 'remarkable' that all three types can appeal to the New Testament for their authority and provides the references (ref 097).

New Zealand Anglicanism appears to see its clergy around 2. on the Berkhoff scale with leanings both toward 1. and 3. According to our ordinal clergy in our church do have a ministry of leadership: to build up Christ's congregation to strengthen the baptised and to lead them as witnesses to Christ in the world. They have a ministry of service: to share people's joys and sorrows encourage the faithful recall those who fall away heal and help the sick. They have a ministry to proclaim God's word and take their part in Christ's prophetic work. They have a sacral ministry: to declare forgiveness through Jesus Christ to baptise to preside at the Eucharist to administer Christ's holy sacraments (ref 023).

Behind the words of the ordination rite lies an understanding of the need to be subject to the discipline of the church. As well as individual call ministry is a publicly acknowledged office that carries corporate responsibilities and corporate acknowledgement (ref 094). Nevertheless this is only applied in connnection with the wider body the actual corporate body of believers -- the ordained cannot somehow be the Church in themselves. An ordained person presides over the sacraments because the sacraments are expressions of the corporate life of the Church and therefore the presidency rests in the person who oversees the corporate life and ministry of the Church (ref 088). Since the Church exists to be the Body of Christ the function of the ordained is to help the Church be just that. In Te Reo o te Komiti Tumuaki (quoted in ref 088) George Connor created the metaphor of the clergy as a skeleton providing the framework within which the body can function as a body.

While pre-Reformation clergy were ordained to an 'office' often unconnected with parochial duties and late medieval clergy were engaged in all kinds of 'clerical' activity Reformed concepts of the clergy emphasised the pastoral function of the minister to a particular community (ref 012). Presbyterianism is particularly strong on this point: Presbyterian practice in N.Z. is to ordain a person only when the Church is ready to induct them into a settled charge or defined sphere of work (ref 022).

Such is the church's view of its ministry and that of its ordained clergy. But there is another world out there the world we call secular and it has its own beliefs and ethics. The most aggressive form of secularism is that which actively denies any place to religion in public life (ref 134) . Such views are held by our present Prime Minister and supported by her government (ref 124) (ref 137) . A reaction to rampant technocratic materialism has been various forms of counter-culture spiritual though not necessarily Christian (ref 134) . A form whose character is uniquely New Zealand's has been a superficial acquescence to Maori spiritual elements (ref 124) (ref 135) in situations where Pakeha Christian sprituality is vigorously suppressed.

Behind aggressive secularism lies the Protestant Work ethic. That ethic does not deny God rather it builds a Christian framework into which work for money may comfortably fit. Furnham (ref 068) quoting Barclay (ref 071) has no doubt of the centrality of work in the Christian ethic and identifies four themes:
  1. our work is what we are and where we are
  2. there is no better test of a person than the way he or she works
  3. the test of a person is whether he or she deserves his or her pay
  4. work should be seen as a contribution to the community as a whole.
Barclay says that Christian ethics stress the right of a person to work a living wage and reasonable working conditions. Oates (ref 072) and Cherrington (ref 073) go further: a universal taboo is placed on idleness and industriousness is considered a religious ideal; waste is a vice and frugality a virtue; complacency and failure are outlawed and ambition and success are taken as sure signs of God's favour; the universal sign of sin is poverty and the crowning sign of God's favour is wealth. Yet the connection between work and wealth is recent a connection far younger than the connection between Christ and his people -- as any labour historian will attest (ref 139) .

Appeal is commonly made to biblical precedent as a way to make 'work' respectable (ref 048) (ref 067). That Saint Paul continued his tentmaking trade into his apostleship has been much quoted as a justification for bivocational ministries. Many supporters of the PSE concept also derive from Genesis 1 (ref 126) an affirmiation of the value of 'work' because God did it in creating the world. The World Council of Churches (quoted in ref 075) and Pope John Paul II (ref 076) have published opinions supporting the Protestant Work Ethic though in softer and more general terms. Part of their difficulty may lie in the fact that work can be defined as virtually anything. A rigorous definition of work of itself is not possible for the definition lies not the nature of the task but in its context. (ref 075)

But the Work Ethic has broken loose from its Protestant roots. Research evidence points to the conclusion that most people find their work important and derive satisfaction from it (ref 074). Work has emerged as the dominant idea in our life in modern society. Into such a world we place our theology and ask the question can there be an accommodation between the secular world's view of itself and the Church's view of its ministry ? The two classic answers are Yes (holistic theologies) and No (dualistic theologies).

In dualistic theologies the secular world is not where God is and it is not the Christian's business to have any truck with it (ref 102). As Jesus is stranger in the world (ref 001) so will the apostles be strangers. The apostolic mission is sent from God into the world and is therefore not finally explainable in term of the world's criteria (ref 101). Such theology clearly underlay the 1559 Ordinal in which the new priest vowed not only to 'lay aside the study of the world and the fleshe' but also to seek for Christ's children 'whiche bee in the myddest of thys naughtye worlde' (ref 047). Dualistic theologies underwrote the feudal culture and the authoritarian social structure of both of medieval times and post-feudal slavery. It provided a helpful world-view for people whose daily lives were pretty rotten and who longed to escape into a happier existence. Changes in the socioeconomic order have been accompanied by changes in the official church's statements about God whose self-revelation is now seen to be erroneous. Dualism also persists in modern times not only as a yearning for a spirituality that still works for some people but as Hind observes (ref 084) in inverted 'neo-dualistic' forms which see the destiny of the world as something inherent in the world itself. In any case we should note that the logic of dualistic theologies drives the monastic ideal and taken together with the injunction to commit to just one master (ref 004) is inimical to the concept of PSE.

Against the dualistic theologies stand the holistic theologies articulated by such as Kirkland (ref 043) Mackenzie (ref 040) and Rayner (ref 080). Rayner explains how it is holistic theology which drives ministry combined with secular employment. In order to acquire a new post-modern view of human beings and the earth culture and nature we are urged to integrate human culture into the nature of the earth the human spirit into the nature of the body and modern instrumental reason into wider cohesions of wisdom (ref 017) (ref 020). The notion of humanity's dominion over nature as expressed in Genesis 1 (ref 126) is seen as a mistake and in need of revision. Though some secular writers view such changes of viewpoint as philosophical opportunism aimed at clerical self-preservation through 'relevance' (ref 074) the official rhetoric of New Zealand Anglicanism promotes holism as twenty-first century orthodoxy. It is also the theology that Mantle (ref 039) and others claim PSEs have failed to articulate as a rationale for their own ministries.

Somehow grassroots Anglicanism tries to express a corporate theology that finds room for both the other-worldly and the this-worldly. Ducoq's critique of public and private spirituality (ref 133) suggests that the relationship between sacred and secular is complex and that discovering that relationship is our theological task. A former Archbishop of Canterbury has said (ref 062) that Christianity is uncompromisingly both sacred and secular while denying that this conclusion represents a facile compromise. The Church is not seen to be in a position where risk lies in one direction and safety in another (ref 078) but is called to engage in a costly dangerous interrelation. What the danger is and whose the cost are yet to be spelled out.

Finally and as a biblical postscript it is intriguing to speculate that not only was Saint Paul a worker-apostle but also Saint Peter. Careful reading of Peter's call to ministry (ref 002) (ref 003) reveals that while he and the other apostles 'left their nets' the texts themselves do not state that they never returned to fishing as a form of work. The incident of the miraculous draught of fishes which by John's account took place after the Resurrection -- Luke disagrees but may be unreliable (ref 005) (ref 051) -- can be read as evidence that Peter returned to his trade while continuing his apostolic ministry. With such a reading PSEs can claim not only Saint Paul the working tentmaker as patron but also Saint Peter the working fisherman.
Head reference for Biblical citations: 001 002 003 004 005 051 067
Head reference for 012 017 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 037 038 039 040 043 047 048 062 063 068 071 072 073 074 075 076 078 080 084 088 094 097 098 101 102 119 124 126 132 133 134 135 137 139