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The Servant Image In Reformed Theology
By Paul L. Lehmann

THEOLOGY in the tradition of the Reformation derives its direction, substance, and criterion from the Bible. It is, therefore, incumbent upon a discussion of any theme in the theology of the Reformation, to take due account of Biblical insights into the matter. The present inquiry into the meaning and significance of the "servant image" in the theological tradition identifiable as "Reformed," is no exception to this canon of sound interpretation. We begin with some consideration of the formative Biblical accents upon the image of the servant.

I. TWO BIBLICAL "STYLES OF LIFE"

There is in the Bible a certain tension between the "sacrifice" and the "servant" forms. The "sacrifice" form and the "servant" form are ways of giving honor to God through certain kinds of behavior. As such, they are forms of obedience. Certain actions or patterns of actions express one or the other of these motifs in the relations between man and God. However, this Biblical tension between the sacrifice" and the "servant" forms is evident not only in man's behavior toward God, but also in God's behavior toward man. In Jesus Christ, God takes the form of a servant and becomes obedient unto death, the death of the cross. ¹ Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins, ² the "lamb slain before the foundation of the world," ³ and according to the epistle to the Hebrews, at once the high priest and the sacrificial victim. ⁴

This presence and action of God in Jesus Christ is expressed in the Old Testament in the ark and the Temple with its corresponding sacrificial ritual, and in the story of God's dealings with his people through his making of his covenant with them which culminates in the role of the saving remnant as the servant of Yahweh. It may not

¹ Phil. 2: 7-8.
² Heb. 4: 10.
³ Heb. 9: 23-10: 18; Rev. 5.
⁴ Heb. 10.

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be too much to speak of two "styles of life" which express these two forms or ways of God's action among his people and of man's response in action to what God has done and is doing. The one is the "ark-Temple style of life"; the other, the "covenant-remnant style of life." From the side of God, the tension between these two styles is expressed in the tension between the self-giving of God and the self-surrender involved in this self-giving. God's giving of himself to man is the great act of condescension, the great act of servanthood, which is not spared and does not shrink from the agony of humiliating self-surrender in the face of resistance to life on God's terms. The tension between these two styles of life from the side of man is expressed in the tension between the awesome preparation to be worthy to stand in the divine presence, and the glad and grateful acceptance, of the divine pattern of life as the pattern of obedience.

The relation between these two is necessarily a relation of tension because the sacrifice and the servant motifs in the ways of God with men and of men with God express not easily reconcilable, yet authentic, aspects of the relations between God and men; and also because of the ever-present peril of ignoring or abandoning the one to the other. It is not easy to keep the sacrifice aspect of the "servant image" alive without ritualizing the servant form; conversely, it is not easy to keep the servant aspect of the "sacrifice image" alive without moralizing the sacrifice form. Thus it is not accidental that as Hebrew faith and piety became institutionalized, these two styles of life or motifs of divine and human behavior should have been presided over and shaped by the priests and the prophets. The prophetic criticism of the priesthood was, at bottom, the criticism which the prophets leveled against all idolatrous tendencies according to which some mediating substitute usurped the honor and freedom of obedience due to God alone. And in turn, the priestly criticism of the prophetic movement was, at bottom, inspired by a concern to safeguard the honor and honoring of God for himself alone from a too ready involvement in the turmoil and sin from which the doing of God's will in the world is never free.

II. THE DISPLACEMENT OF THE SACRIFICE BY THE SERVANT FORM

In the New Testament, the Biblical tension between the sacrifice and servant forms comes to a radical focus and undergoes a radical resolution. This can be denoted by saying that a displacement of

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the sacrifice by the servant form occurs. Of course, the "ark-Temple" style of life is not absent from the environment and the concern of Jesus. Although, according to the synoptic record, seems most to move in and out of the synagogue, Jesus, far from disavowing the Temple and the priesthood, undertakes indeed to cleanse the Temple from its idolatrous corruptions. But more important is the circumstance that the impact of the life and ministry of Jesus upon the "ark-Temple" style of life is of such a kind as to draw the thrust and esprit of this style of life steadily toward himself. He is reported to have said that in three days he would destroy the Temple and that it would rise again. And while repeatedly he bids those to whom he ministers to show themselves to priests, his real concern would seem to lie elsewhere. "These- you ought to have done, without neglecting the others," he remarked on one occasion, as a rebuke to those for whom the sacrifice form had tended to supersede the servant form as the style of life expressive of the advent of the Messiah. The tithing of mint and anise and cummin had made for the neglect of the weightier matters of the law, justice, and righteousness, and peace. ⁵

But perhaps the extent to which the sacrifice form was being displaced by the servant form in the mind and ministry of Jesus is best indicated by those portions of the passion narrative which report, in dependence upon the eucharistic practice of the Christian community, the last meal of Jesus with his disciples. Here it would seem that the glad and grateful response of man to and for the ways of God with men, expressed in the giving of thanks for bread and for the cup, had come to be so thoroughly drawn into the orbit of Jesus' own life, ministry, and imminent death as to point the way toward what the Book of Common Prayer so beautifully calls "that offering of himself as one oblation once offered once for all." Thus it may be urged that the "eucharistic" enactment of Jesus with his disciples on the night in which he was betrayed is at once the consummation and the displacement of the "ark-Temple" style of life by the "covenant-remnant" style of life in terms of which Jesus delineated his own messianic vocation. From henceforward, as it were, men were to have done with sacrifice and serve; and they were to serve with no illusion that this service could ever be a sacrifice, since the only sacrifice worthy of the name was that redemptive sacrifice

⁵ Matt. 23: 23.

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which had been enacted and fulfilled in the death of Jesus, the Messiah, a death from which he was raised up and made both Lord and Christ.

Alongside this "eucharistic" resolution and displacement of the sacrifice by the servant form, there must be noted Jesus' own interpretation of his messianic role and mission. It is not accidental, but surely in accord with the inner logic of Old Testament faith and expectation, that two images should most vividly have been adopted by, Jesus as clues to the reality and significance of his passion. The one is the image of the Son of Man; the other is the image of the Suffering Servant. Whatever may be the technical, historical, and literary problems surrounding these images in Old Testament life and literature, so much at least seems plain. The image of the Son of Man expresses the advent in Jesus of the one sent by the Ancient of Days (as Daniel suggests) ⁶ whose office it is, in identification with the sons of men, that is, with the humanity in every man and of every man, to bring salvation nigh. That such a deliverance in and through such an identification does not escape, but actually willingly takes up, the form and role of a servant is the true measure of the meaning of what God has disclosed about himself and about his way of bringing new life and light to men. God, in a word, is among man as a servant, and to be a servant is to be so deeply involved in the life, predicament, and longing for wholeness of men as to be in truth the' bearer of redemption. "The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord; it is enough for the disciple to be as his master, and the servant as his lord." ⁷ This applies to the believer and to the community of believers as well. This is what it means, to be and to belong to his body, which is the Church.

All this seems, then, to be singularly and forcefully confirmed by the author of the epistle to the Hebrews. It is hard to see how the argument of this letter can be read in any other way than as an address to the people who found the "ark-Temple" style of life difficult to surrender. What the author seems to be saying, in the context of the language and symbols of this style of life, is that it has really and radically been transcended by God's own resolution of the tension between the sacrifice and the servant forms in his own ways with men. Just as God in his self-giving has taken up into himself and

⁶ Dan, 7: 13.
⁷ Matt. 10: 24.

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has himself made the only sacrifice possible to men and acceptable to him, so men in their ways with God give honor to God and render him obedience by their glad and grateful acceptance of him who is both priest and victim. Henceforward, men are liberated from the awesome, hazardous, and unsteady enterprise of making peace with God, and turned, in the boldness and confidence which through Christ they have before God, toward being and doing in the world what God in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus himself has been and done. The epistle to the Hebrews is the definitive statement of the displacement of the sacrifice by the servant form, of the ark-Temple by the covenant-remnant style of life, according to which the Christian and the Church make known in the world the unsearchable riches of Christ.

III. THE REFORMATION RECOVERY OF THE SERVANT FORM

The radical revision of the conception of the priesthood, together with the rejection of the mass, were the ecclesiological consequences of the rediscovery by the sixteenth century Reformers of the New Testament core of the Gospel. Hoc est evangelium: promisio remissiones peccatorum propter Christum. So runs the classical Reformation statement of what Christianity is all about. The meaning is that the good news of the Gospel is that men have found favor with God in the forgiveness of their sins. Henceforward, expiatory, propitiatory, penitential efforts and exercises devoted to the breaking of the power of sin, the assuagernent of guilt, and the start upon a new life are superfluous. The Christian life, and with it the fact and power of a new humanity, start forensically, not cultically. The cultic form of worship as a sacrificial enactment gives way before the community of believers who in worship give God his true worth as the bestower of his worth upon men, and as the giver of all good. The bearing of this shift in the center of gravity of man's relation to God and, consequently, of a shift in the center of gravity of his ecclesiological life is so fundamental and far-reaching as to make the notion of priesthood all but expendable. It is hard to see what remains of a meaningful priesthood when the sacrifice form has been exploded, for the priesthood is so thoroughly involved in the cultic, expiatory ways of man before God as to lose all force. The herald of God's life in the midst and to the life of God's people is a radically different affair when intimately conjoined with the function of repre-

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senting and bearing the life of the people before God, than when deprived of this occasion. It has been pointed out that, for the Reformers, the priesthood of all believers meant, not that every man is his own priest, but rather that every man is his neighbor's priest, and by this priestly office of the believer, the Reformers meant not that the believer was the representative of his neighbor before God, but quite simply and succinctly that every believer was Christ to his neighbor. And to be Christ to one's neighbor is again, quite simply. and succinctly, to be so identified with him in his humanity and one's own, as to be for him a living sign and occasion of what God in Christ is for-believer and neighbor alike, that is, the bearer of new and fulfilling life. Thus the community of believers is rooted in and nourished by the forgiveness of sins, and bears witness in word and deed to the form of a servant which God in Christ assumed.

Another consequence of the recovery by Luther and Calvin of the New Testament displacement of the sacrifice by the servant form was the liberation of the Incarnation from its cultic monopoly and strangulation. For them it was clear that the point of the Incarnation was the Atonement, whatever else might also be involved. The point of the Incarnation was not the Church, so that all talk about the Church as the extension of the Incarnation, unless carefully subordinated to the "servant form," is beside the point. The Lutheran stress upon the agnus Dei and upon the character of all right theology as a theologia crucis is an authentic response to the line of New Testament thinking from the synoptic gospels to the epistle to the Hebrews. This meant not only the exaltation of the cross as the supreme penitential and renewing occasion of the life of the believer and as the supreme interpretation of the Gospel, but also a radical revision of the relations between the Church and the world. Just as the cultic infusion of the believer with the power of new life was set aside, so the temporal power of the Church was abandoned. The two orders of life in which the believer now lived were no longer hierarchically subsumed one under the other, the world under the Church. Instead, two orders of life were set up as distinctive, reciprocally related, domains for the service of God. The Church was deprived of its role as a worshipping and grace-dispensing community and became, instead, a worshipping and serving community in the world.

It must be admitted, of course, that this Lutheran revision, radical as it was, did not come unambiguously into its own, either in Luther's

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own thought and practice or in that of the Lutheran tradition. It was difficult enough to break with the sacrifice form in principle, more difficult still to shake it loose in fact. Luther's sacramental and liturgical theories are scarcely free of cultic vestiges; nor does his connection of office (Amt) with calling (Beruf) express in the happiest way the servant form of the office of Christ as Saviour and Lord. It is one thing to be called to serve God in the world in and through the exercise of one's calling (Beruf). It is quite another thing to single out some callings as involving an additional responsibility of office (Amt), since the dignity of office tends always to supersede the servant-function of office in the economy of God and the society of men. ⁸ Nevertheless the break was made, and the Church thereby radically called to account as regards its faithfulness in life and in interpretation to the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins.

In the thought of Calvin, the New Testament displacement of the sacrifice by the servant form appears to have been more explicitly perceived and pursued. This was due partly to Calvin's stress upon the honor of God and upon the divine election. These doctrines enabled Calvin to stress the instrumental character of the divine activity and of man's obedience as well. Thus the Church itself became a principal instrument for the knowledge of God and the service of God. And central to the instrumental character of the Church were its covenantal character and its governing structure. As the covenantal and governing community, the Church serves God in the world.

But there is a more particular sense in which Calvin's thought takes up the servant motif of New Testament thought. This has to do with Calvin's introduction into the theology of the Reformed tradition of the conception of the three-fold office of Christ. Mid-way through the Second Book of the Institutes, Calvin comes to the discussion of the person and work of Christ and argues that Christ's deity and real humanity are both indispensable to the proper understanding of his life and work as the mediator between God and man. Then Calvin devotes a chapter to "the consideration of Christ's three offices, prophetical, regal, and sacerdotal, necessary to our knowing the end of his mission from the Father, and the benefits which he

⁸ Luther's Address to the German Nobility (1520) is especially worth re-reading on this point. In this treatise, he goes as far as possible in the direction of the servant-function of the princely office. But it may be wondered whether the bases of Luther's later reliance upon princely power were not also laid down in this treatise which moves so strongly in the direction of the responsibility rather than of the power of office.

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confers on us." ⁹ A due caution must be observed against giving disproportionate emphasis to a doctrine which does not loom large in Calvin's mind. Yet, the point cannot be overlooked that the doctrine forges the crucial link between Christ and the believer.

The theological tradition has never been eminently successful in pointing out the precise connection between the death of Christ and the life of the believer. Calvin's attempt is certainly not to be regarded as the only possibility. Nevertheless, he does deal with the three-fold office of Christ precisely in order to indicate what Christ really means for us and how we are involved in his mission in the world. The bearing of all this upon the question of the servant image is that, as Calvin sets out the prophetical, regal, and sacerdotal offices or functions of Christ, he notes how in each instance a transformation of the previous and prevailing contexts of these offices takes place. Calvin remarks that although "the celebrated title of 'Messiah' was given to the promised Mediator … yet the prophetical and sacerdotal functions have their respective places, and must not be neglected by us." ¹⁰ Then he goes on concerning the prophetical office to quote the passage which Jesus himself, according to Luke 4: 2 ff., quotes from the prophet Isaiah 61: 1, 2 the passage which underlines the annointing "to preach good tidings unto the meek. .. to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." And while Calvin rightly notes that this annointing by the Spirit meant that Jesus was a preacher and witness most certainly "of the grace of the Father; and that not in a common manner," he strangely infers from this distinction that "the prophetic dignity in Christ is, to assure us that all the branches of perfect wisdom are included in the system of doctrine which he has given us." ¹¹ This doctrinal implication may have its own proper relation to the prophetic dignity in Christ, but it must, not be allowed to obscure the more important notice which Calvin gives to the connection between the prophetical office of Christ and his servant role in the redemption of humanity.

Similarly, as regards the sacerdotal office (which Calvin treats only briefly), he is at pains to stress that "the sum of the whole is this-that the sacerdotal dignity belongs exclusively to Christ, because, by the sacrifice of his death, he has abolished our guilt and made satisfaction

⁹ John Calvin, Institutes, II, 15.
¹⁰ Ibid., 11, 15, 2.
¹¹ Ibid.

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for our sins." ¹² But again the important point to note is that the significance of this exclusive priesthood of Christ is not cultic, but rather the "favor with God" from which "proceeds not only confidence in prayer, but also tranquillity to the consciences of the faithful; while they recline in safety on the paternal indulgence of God, and are certainly persuaded, that he is pleased with whatever is consecrated to him through the Mediator." Once again it is the redemptive service or, in Calvin's words, the redemptive "benefits which he confers on us" which is the focus of stress.

It is the kingship or "regal function," however, which most expressly underlines the transformation of the mediatorial office of Christ in the context of the servant-form or "covenant-remnant" style of life. "The faithful," Calvin declares, "stand invincible in the strength of their king"; yet this "king was not enriched on his own private count, but that he might communicate his abundance to them who are hungry and thirsty." The regal function of Christ "combines the offices of a king and a shepherd," and on this account, "it is the more reasonable that we should all with one consent be ready to obey him, and with the greatest alacrity conform all our services to his will." ¹³ Thus the doctrine of the three-fold office of Christ really comes out at the point of an explicit doctrinal underlining of the servant form.

Yet, in the case of Calvin as with Luther, it must be admitted that this recognition of the New Testament displacement of the sacrifice by the servant form is not free of ambiguity. It was not so much toward the cultic, but toward the legalistic overshadowing of the servant form that Calvin's thought was prone. In fact, it might be said that whereas Luther was more akin to Rome, Calvin was more akin to the sectarian preoccupation with the holy community in the It was not so much the Mass, but the discipline of the congreagation of believers which engaged Calvin's reforming attention. Thus in the case of the servant image, as in so many other instances, "the original insights of the Reformers into the faith and ethos of the New Testament did not fully come into their own.

IV. THE SERVANT IMAGE IN REFORMED THEOLOGY

The servant image in Reformed theology subsequent to the Reformation, however, is conspicuous by its absence. There is a

¹² Ibid., II, 15,6.
¹³ Ibid, II, 15,5.

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virtual blank between Calvin and Barth oil this point. This does not mean that there was no attention to the servant form on the part of Reformed theologians, What it means is that the servant image never broke out of its traditional mold and never assumed a very creative role in the shaping of Reformed theology. By and large, in Reformed Orthodoxy, Calvin's three-fold formula for the work of Christ is simply adopted. The theologians doubtless read Calvin's Commentaries as well as the Institutes, but their scholastic habit of mind appears to have combined with the massive format of the Institutes to have given the dogmatic structure of Calvin's mind preeminence over his exegetical imagination. Thus the Philippians passage (2: 5 ff.) which looms large in the Institutes also looms large, indeed, seems almost wholly to dominate the scene and to obscure the support which Calvin brought to his interest in the servant form from his reading and interpretation of Isaiah.

Even more, the "Suffering Servant" of Isaiah 40-55 is not only missing from the discussions of the covenant and its Mediator, but the covenant itself is lifted out of its Biblical setting as a style of life and set in a context of traditional Christological doctrine. Thus the "form of the servant" of Philippians, is that which "belongs to man's nature as a result of the fall," and the focus of interest shifts rather away from the servant implications of the three-fold office toward the connections between the three-fold office and the two states of Christ's mediatorial work. Thus we read, for example, "the Son of God could adopt the human nature and in it let his full majesty shine. But Christ rather humbled himself by assuming the servant form of man … and therefore on the one hand divested himself of his divine glory by concealing the divine nature of his person beneath the assumed slave form of the human nature. . . ." ¹⁴ Again, the priestly office is interpreted in terms of Aaron or of the Levitical priesthood, but never in terms of the suffering servant of Isaiah. Vicarious punishment and suffering seem to be set out in relation to the substitionary and legalistic theory of the Atonement rather than in terms of the servant "benefits" of Christ.

It may perhaps be inferred in general that whatever the "orthodox" may have thought of the servant image, it is of no significance for their theological work. Even where the classical texts are applied (.Isaiah 53 and Philippians 2), it is only in the most rigid and literal-

¹⁴ Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 488.

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istic way, without imaginative perception of the significance of the servant image. Calvin's three-fold formula is rigidly adhered to, but with altered contents, that is, the vitality of the servant image is changed for the sterility of the Christological doctrine of the two natures and three offices.

Among the later Reformed theologians, that is, among those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is really only Jonathan Edwards who shows some sensitivity to the servant motif. In A History of the Work of Redemption, Edwards speaks of Christ's entire life as an act of humiliation and obedience, with obvious allusion to Philippians 2; and he writes of this humiliation with great power and insight. "Let us consider," Edwards writes, "how great a degree of humiliation the glorious Son of God, the creator of heaven and earth, was subject to in this, that for about thirty years he should live a private, obscure life among laboring men, and all this while overlooked, and not taken notice of in the world, as more than other common laborers. Christ's humiliation in some respects was greater in private life than in the time of his public ministry." ¹⁵ Moreover, Edwards sees this humiliation in relation to the suffering servant of Isaiah, and indeed, in his essay Of Satisfaction for Sin, he interprets the priestly work of Christ through Isaiah 53 as well as through Leviticus. ¹⁶ In the sermon called Christ, the Example of Ministers, Edwards again speaks movingly of the servant image. Of Christ's washing the feet of his disciples, Edwards comments, "Washing the feet of guests was the office of servants and one of their meanest offices, and therefore was fitly chosen by our Saviour to represent that great abasement which he was to be the subject of in the form of a servant, in becoming obedient unto death…." ¹⁷

But by the nineteenth century, this imaginative reaching toward the servant form was already effectively restored to its seventeenth century doctrinal prison. R. L. Dabney goes all out once again for the covenantal form of Christ's mediatorial office and appears to read "both Isaiah and the New Testament through the eyes of Reformed orthodoxy as his discussion of the three-fold office suggests. ¹⁸ And even a man like Charles Hodge, who can write eloquently about the yet on the whole interprets the connection between Isaiah

¹⁵ Jonathan Edwards, Works, 1869, Vol. 1, p. 413.
¹⁶ ibid., p. 595
¹⁷ Ibid., Vol. III, p. 591.
¹⁸ R.L. Dabney, Theology, 1871.

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and Philippians in a limited prophetic way without making use of the servant image.19 Like Dabney, Hodge interprets Philippians 2 in terms of the exaltation of Christ. ²⁰

This conspicuous absence of the servant image from a formative influence upon Reformed theology is consonant, as might be expected, with the Reformed confessions. The Heidelberg Catechism (1560), the Scottish Confession (1560), the Belgic Confession (1561), the French Confession (1559), and the Westminster Confession (1647), all make extensive use of the formula of the three-fold office. Motifs such as obedience, suffering, voluntary sacrifice, mercy and justice, humiliation, and the like, fill these confessions. But in none of them is the servant image explicitly used.

What is perhaps less to be expected and a little more surprising is that the same silence about the servant image characterizes contemporary statements of the Reformed tradition. No interpretation of Jesus Christ and, in Calvin's phrase, of "the benefits which he confers on us," has been more influential upon twentieth century theology in the tradition of Calvin than has been James Denney's treatment of the death of Christ. Yet despite Denney's penetrating and effective restatement of traditional Christology, especially of the Atonement, he makes no significant use of the servant image. Indeed, he is almost conspicuously traditional on this matter. Isaiah 53 helps us to interpret the sufferings of Jesus; the servant is identified with Jesus. ²¹ But the vigorous and imaginative exploration of the servant image which was begun in Calvin and glimpsed for a little by Jonathan Edwards is notably missing.

Denney's work was widely influential in Scotland and in America in the early part of the twentieth century. And what Denney was to that period, Donald Baillie's attempt to restate the doctrine of the Atonement has been to the mid-twentieth century. ²² Baillie recognizes that Jesus may have identified himself with the servant but he does not go effectively beyond this acknowledgment. Indeed, it is the more remarkable that the attempt which Baillie makes to forge a meaningful link between the death of Christ and the life of the believer with the help of a Christian doctrine of man should have contented itself so exclusively with the paradox of grace and freedom

¹⁹ Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. II, p. 612.
²⁰ Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 455 ff.
²¹ James Denney, The Death of Christ, 1902, pp. 69, 57 ff.
²² Donald Baillie, God Was in Christ, 1948.

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and have overlooked so entirely the resources of the servant image for just such Christological purposes.

Thus it would appear to have remained for Karl Barth to check the conspiracy of silence about the servant image in Reformed theology and to carry forward what Calvin had begun to suggest when he linked the servant image to his Christology.

Although Barth doe not explicitly take up Calvin's doctrine of the three offices of Christ, he undertakes to make exactly the correction to which Calvin himself had called attention. It will be recalled that Calvin had urged that the prophetical and sacerdotal functions of the Messiah must not be neglected in favor of an undue stress upon the kingly office. Accordingly, Calvin attempted to set matters straight by underlining the importance of the prophetical office. So also Barth. Barth notes that Protestant Orthodoxy either ignored the prophetic function of Christ or merely took formal and traditional account of it. Orthodoxy no longer understood the relations of the three offices to one another. Consequently, it was easy for the Enlightenment and the theology of the nineteenth century to subvert the prophetical office of Christ by presenting Jesus as the supreme Teacher and Example of the perfect love of God and men. Such an interpretation of the prophetical office could scarcely have been further removed from the Biblical understanding of prophecy. ²³ It may be that the Biblical understanding of prophecy lay behind Calvin's connection of "perfect wisdom" with "the system of doctrine which he [Christ] has given us." If so, Barth corrects the formalism of this suggestion also. "The munus propheticum must be restored to its own context and importance." ²⁴

Barth's suggestion is that the restoration of the dignity of the prophetical office of Christ may be made by shifting the emphasis from 'Jesus at witness" to "Jesus as guarantor [Burge]-guarantor, in his mediatorial person and action, of the reconciliation of God with men. 25 But such a shift involves a radical alteration of the tradi-

²³ Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV, 1, 1953, p. 151.
²⁴ Ibid. This point appears to have received instructive, if negative, contemporary confirmation from the Qumran texts, which raise afresh the question of the significance of Jesus' messianic office. Although the Qumran texts exalt the anointed priest and suggest the possibility of fitting Jesus into this messianic form, the likelier possibility arises of giving fresh stress to the circumstance that Old Testament expectation anticipated an anointed Prophet, as well as an anointed priest and an anointed king. If the synoptic record indicates that tradition and ignored the priestly one, this would suggest Qumran expectations, but also adopts the prophetic function as the pattern of his messiahship.
²⁵ Ibid., pp. 150-151

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tional Christology, especially of the traditional way of relating the God-manhood of Christ to the exaltation and humiliation of Christ (the doctrines of the two natures and two states). Such a radical alteration is provided by the servant-form. "In so far as Jesus Christ is true God, that is, God in his self-abasement [der selbst erniedrigende Gott], he is true man, that is, this man exalted above all men in his total humanity [dieser in seiner ganzen Menschlichheit uber diese erohte Mensch]. . . In so far as God made himself captive in him, so in him man has again become free. In so far as the Lord became servant in him, so in him the servant has again become Lord." ²⁶

Thus, as Barth sees it-and this Calvin did not see, although he was on the track of it--"we really have not spoken of two successive states of Jesus Christ, but of two aspects, or directions, or forms of what has happened in Jesus Christ for the reconciliation of men with God." ²⁷ It is the servant-form which gives vitality and relevance alike to the traditional substance of Christology and to the connection between Jesus Christ, between his incarnation and atonement, and the life of the believer, the Christian life, as life in and of a new humanity. The servant-form, so understood, is at once the substance and the criterion of the integrity of the life and mission of the Church in the world.

V. THE SERVANT FORM AND ECUMENISM

The occasion for this all too cursory excursion into the tradition of Reformed theology is neither an idle nor an academic one. As is by now well known, the World Alliance of Churches Holding the Presbyterian Order is to hold its eighteenth assembly at the beginning of next August in Brazil. The question may therefore be raised whether the servant theme which has been adopted for consideration by that assembly is a public relations or a prophetical theme. Does it emanate from Madison Avenue and Buck Hill Falls, or from Geneva and Basel? To put it another way, is the servant theme merely a device for providing the Alliance with something to talk about when assembled, or does the theme express an intrinsic and neglected aspect of this present phase of the life and witness of the Church which it is incumbent upon the Reformed tradition to recover and to articulate?

²⁶ Ibid., p. 144.
²⁷ Ibid., p. 145.

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The thesis of the present discussion is that the servant image is perhaps more happily calculated than was realized when it was first put forward to underline in a fresh and forceful way the present ecumenical contribution and task of the Reformed tradition.

The ecumenical movement is currently engaged in the attempt to bring together the enterprise of Christian unity and the enterprise of the Christian mission. It may, therefore, be asked what might be some of the implications of the servant image for the ecumenical situation today. A general answer at least to this question is that the servant image, if taken seriously, introduces an explosive catalyst into a Church on its way toward unity and mission. The servant image cuts radically through, and may conceivably cut the ground out from under, the present state of the discussions both of the unity and of the mission of the Church.

As regards the unity of the Church, an uneasy truce exists, amounting to a stalemate. Whether one regards this stalemate as a sign of promise graciously bestowed by God in consequence of his being well pleased with the ecumenical aspirations and efforts to date, or as a sign of disobedience more painful to contemplate than to suppress, is, I suppose, a matter of how deeply and in what way one has become involved in ecumenical affairs. If one has become so deeply involved in the faith and life of the ecumenical movement as to regard it as important above all things, that, as Evanston put it, "we intend to stay together," the present stalemate will inevitably commend itself as an ideological and bureaucratic necessity upon which the fate of the ecumenical movement hangs. How precarious such a fate is, was once again strikingly manifest at the North American Conference on Faith and Order at Oberlin in September of 1957. This gathering would appear to have not only not advanced beyond Lund (1952), but to have been summoned to move even a little to the right of Lund. ²⁸ If, on the other hand, one has become so deeply involved in the faith and life of the ecumenical movement as to have seen that the Church of Jesus Christ cannot hope to save its life except by losing it, then one is perhaps readier to take the risks of a ruptured unity for the sake of a Church whose obedient service is above all things to him, whose obedience was that he took on the form of a servant and set aside every prerogative for the sake of his single-minded redemp mission in the world.

²⁸ This judgment depends, of course, upon one's estimate of the significance of the de-marche of Father Florovsky and the Orthodox attendants upon the Conference.

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It may be that the time has come for the Reformed tradition to speak more plainly out of its own recovery of the servant image about the servant form of the Church. The servant form of the Church is the form of the Church's life according to which God in action in Christ for the making human of human life is the only authentic form of the Church's life, and that all other forms are variable and, in the last analysis, even expendable. Such a recovery and affirmation would, of course, run the risk of renewing in our day an old issue, the issue which vexed and agonized those who once refused to accept an ecclesiological stalemate rather than run the risk of a rupture in the unity of the Church.

One way of putting this issue is to say that the problem is one of how to conserve and unite the "catholic" and the "evangelical" strains in the Christian tradition. But another and more accurate, as well as explosive, way of putting the matter is to say that the problem is, "Which way catholicity?" If catholicity has to do with the wholeness or integrity of the Church's life, then it is the task of the Reformed tradition, if it wishes to be obedient to the servant insight of the Reformation, to insist that the integrity of the Church is there where the Church is prepared to abandon every dogmatic, authoritarian claim and to set out like Abraham, not knowing whither lie went, but toward a city which hath foundation, whose builder and maker is God. The vision of the consummation, we are told, includes no temple. But this would scarcely seem to be a ground for urging that the "ark-temple" style of life must dominate the question of the unity of the Church until the end. Indeed it would rather seem to suggest that the obedience appropriate to those who are "saved by hope," including this hope, would have learned from the "covenant-remnant" style of life that God's redemptive and renewing possibilities have a way of breaking down stalemates by rupturing them in order to build up and to plant, to make room for the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ. Authentic catholicity is thus Reformed catholicity, that is, catholicity which is always prepared to be "reformed" rather than "catholic." Ecclesia reformata reformanda! Spurious catholicity is catholicity which is always prepared to exalt the forms of its past and continuing life as, if not the criteria, at least the channels of God's redemptive and renewing activity in the world. What such an articulation of the servant image would do to the present stalemate afflicting the unity of the Church is neither difficult nor happy to contemplate.

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Meanwhile, at least, one may wonder whether God has perhaps not become a little tired of our ecumenical praying which finds in our grudging acceptance of the stalemate the badge of our grieving penitence rather than as the badge of the scandal of our disobedience which ought, if not to drive us out from the presence of God, at least to shut our mouths before his face. It could be that Rome, Byzantium, Wittenberg, Geneva, Canterbury, Oxford, and Boston will have to find the way to each other along quite a different path, the outlines of which are not yet even on the horizon, but the outlines of which will scarcely become discernible so long as the horizon itself is obscured by the stalemate of faith and order.

What does this mean? That the recovery of the servant image would lead the World Alliance of Reformed Churches toward an ecumenical absenteeism? By no means! It would mean rather that the unity of the Church, at least so far as its present ecumenical structure is concerned, would be marked by a creative-not a monotonous insistence upon the servant form as the secret of ecumenical renewal and integrity, as the triumph of the "covenant-remnant" over the "ark-temple" style of life among the people of God.

But if the enterprise of the unity of the Church is at present afflicted by an obsequious stalemate as regards faith and order, the mission of the Church, its life and work in the world, is from the point of view of the servant image afflicted by a stalemate of its own. If the exploration and recovery of the servant image would seem to have given, as regards the unity of the Church, a certain advantage to the 'Reformed tradition as part of the "evangelical" as against the "catholic" side of the matter, the bearing of the servant image upon the mission of the Church would seem almost too quickly to have dissipated that advantage. Mission, as Kenneth S. Latourette has pointed out, has been the great achievement in the modern world, at any rate, of the evangelical or Reformation Churches. Yet without depreciating or ignoring the enormous labors of love and dedication and human weal attested by the missionary story, it must be acknowledged that from the perspective of the servant image, a certain steady trivialization has occurred. This has taken varied forms with shifting degrees of accent and intensity. The trivialization of the servant image appears in particular in the haunting tension which has beset the missionary movement today between what might be called "evangelism" and "social responsibility." The polarity is authentic, the polemics spurious. But the fact is that the "foreign missionary"

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is still the stereotype of the ideal missionary and to this stereotype belong certain valuable, though not unambiguous, artifacts. Among such are the stress upon verbal proclamation and emotional decision with statistics rather than a radical re-orientation of motivation and behavior providing the criterion. There is the stress upon the separation of the believer from the world and its sin rather than upon the identification of the believer with the world in its sin, and the result that the unbeliever is left alone in his dehumanization, and the believer undergoes a desiccation of his humanity. There is the eagerness to exercise God's prerogative of judgment in God's stead.

From the other side, of course, there has gone on so great an absorption with and identification with the human needs of the world's life as to forget the secret and power by which man's humanity is acquired and retained. And latterly, another kind of institutional self-preservation has emerged which encumbers the strategy of the Christian mission by a less than fruitful discussion over the relevance of the missionary society to the new conditions of the missionary frontier.

If, then, we ask about the bearing of the servant image which by exploration a Reformed theology might begin to recover, it would seem to point in the direction of widening the horizons and of a livelier flexibility in the mission of the Church. This would not mean the abandonment of the conception of a "foreign missionary." Actually that question would be reduced to size and relegated to a status of relative unimportance. The widening horizons of the mission would mean that the integrity of the Church's servant life is somehow exposed to all the frontiers along which the issue of man's humanity is up. The issue of man's humanity is up as much along the frontier of an expanding economy in a technological society, the frontier of a global community with its urgent hopes and haunting fears, along the frontier of apartheid and segregation, along the frontier of religious, ethical, and intellectual positivism, pluralism, and/or syncretism, as it is along the frontier of the witnessing and worshipping community of believers in Christ in the world. When the servant image begins to exercise a formative impact upon the mission of the Church, the mission of the Church will begin to be transformed by a livelier sensitivity and flexibility as regards the possibility and actual occurrence of an authentic encounter between God in Christ and the ongoing life of humanity in its private and public forms all along the line.

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In the last analysis, the servant image means that the mission and unity of the Church is the unity of an obedient witness in word and in behavior to what God has done and is doing in the world to make and to keep human life human. The recovery of the servant image points to and points up the possibility that the Church of Christ on may, by its own servanthood, take its inconspicuous but indispensable place in the providence of God and the confusion of men as the guardian and guarantee of authentic humanism. One of the most sensitive unbelievers of our time has seen, as it were from afar, the elemental and the ultimate bearing of the servant image upon the life of man, and his own way of putting it ²⁹ may conveniently serve not only to conclude the present discussion, but to act as a kind of recommended commentary upon the theme of the forthcoming meeting in Brazil.

"Remember the word?
The one from the manger?
It means only this
You can dance with a stranger."

²⁹ Abner Dean, Wake Me When It's Over, 1955, p. 59.