The views expressed in this article are of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
“I will not apologize for something I did not do.” As a facet of forgiveness, we often associate the need for apology with something for which we alone are at fault. I spoke a harsh word in my anger; I should apologize. I took what was not mine to take; I should return what I stole. But is there an obligation for the Christian to repent of sins which they did not commit? Beyond the shame of embarrassment and apology on behalf of someone else, is there room for a genuine and actionable repentance on behalf of another person?
Justice can be understood as the right payment of what is owed. It is just to pay a worker. It is just to pay a debt. When another is at fault, but unable to pay, shouldn’t we simply long for Christ to make it right in the end? This is, after all, in many senses, the core of Christianity: Christ has paid a debt we were unable to pay. There are surely things that will not be redressed apart from Christ making all things new. There are tears that only God can wipe away.
But the question at hand is not concerning what is done in the darkness, or what is forgiven at the cross, but that which is known by the light. When another is evidently at fault, but unable to pay—and we are united to that other—what does our unity require of us? More explicitly, when a church knows or discovers some great sin in its past, how must its current leadership and membership pay what is owed? This could be from known circumstances of racial injustice,[1] harm or abuse done by a previous pastor or church staff member,[2] or any such departure from that which holiness requires.
This is not to say that every sin committed by any individual ought to be paid in full by the members of their church—there is, after all, church discipline for cases of sin within the body. Nor is this to say that church discipline alone is prevention enough at the forfeit of robust policy, care, and wisdom. This is the question of sin committed by the body itself. To say it another way, corporate sins are those thoughts and actions of individual members, leaders, or groups within the body that have been met with the approval or apathy of the corporate person.
This corporate person may be better recognized by its objective spirit. Bonhoeffer explains that “where wills unite, a ‘structure’ is created—that is, a third entity, previously unknown, independent of being willed or not willed by the persons who are uniting.”[3] Like national sins resting on the shoulders of the king (2 Chron. 28:19), or ecclesial sins upon a single member (1 Cor. 5:1–2), denying the objective spirit does not evict it from reality. The objective spirit exists as the transcendent expression of the unified body—a conscience formed by those in community.
How then might we consider the reality of an objective spirit in the face of impassioned rejections of the concept which believe it to bend Scripture to culture’s political and social agendas? To this end, I think an analogous approach may serve us best. Might there be a connection between those who are suspicious of an objective spirit towards corporate culpability and the adherence to a strict memorial view of communion? Both positions reject a real spiritual presence and favor a heightened emphasis on the autonomies of the church and the believer. This is not to criticize those who hold to the memorial view, or its adjacent theological emphases, as much as it is to push back the rejection of responsibility for the corporate person.
Communion has been deeply considered in most traditions, and yet corporate culpability seems to be accepted or rejected by many without much thought. We would do well to consider what God might require of the beloved community’s corporate person.
In communion, the memorialist believes that Christ is oriented inwardly to the mind of each believer who holds the symbols of his death.[4] The communal memorialist similarly holds that conscience can only reside in the individual. The sins of those around us and before us are merely held by us in memory rather than responsibility.
This is not to say that there is a sole theological reason for rejecting an objective spirit. There may even be greater connections to the convictional adherence to those doctrines of autonomous church polity, the priesthood of the believer, or others altogether. Further, cultural expressions of Western individualism and post-enlightenment community likely have even greater impact than any theological taxonomy. The argument here is instead to say that there is a more demonstrable analogy in the roles of communion and community that has too long gone unmeasured.
Thus, we may consider a memorialist view of community. Like the memory of communion, this memory holds that community exists in our minds and hearts alone. The gathering is a perceived one, only as real as it is felt, and participation within it comes only by the willingness of the individual to partake.
That gathering may grieve over past sins committed by other individuals, without any external person or culpability. After all, this is the new covenant where “they will not say again, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But everyone will die for his own iniquity; each man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge.” (Jer. 31:29–30). Surely, says the memorialist, Christ has done away with the corporate to make way for the personal.
The objective spirit, by comparison, believes that no prooftext will erase the Biblical story’s emphasis on the corporate person in matters of life, godliness, and discipline. Instead, there is a real spiritual presence to the community. It exists because of the individuals which form and comprise it, but in that existence, it can also endure beyond them. These corporate persons exist in parts and wholes: tribes and nations, church local and universal. It is not the erasure of personal responsibility but the elevation of the people of God and to, when necessary, confess “their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.” (Neh. 9:2).
The church is commanded by God to bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2). These burdens will come through the natural joys and griefs of life together. They will also come, at times, in the real presence of a corporate person, whose objective spirit still dwells in a broken and longing state. She longs to be made new, and, in the present, it is our responsibility to tend her toward Christ.
Our liturgies’ corporate confessions offer us absolution as we repent of what we have done and left undone. But we must also pursue the actions of repentance in our sanctification. God’s saving work is the already and not yet of our hope. We are justified at the cross of Jesus. The Spirit continues to reform and sanctify our hearts. The Father will glorify his people. All are and must be true. There is beauty here. There is also hope for the corporate person if we will grasp its fullness.
A community which exists in memory alone falls short of the community established by Christ. Its expression is not theological nuance, but orthodox departure. When we become suspicious of any outward spiritual reality, we cheapen the hope in which Christ gave us communion and community.
Some may think it a hopeless thing to bear the sins of others in addition to our own. Am I not enough of a sinful wretch that I must bear my father’s sins also? But is this not the more Christlike? In the community’s objective spirit, the believer imitates Christ by lifting the corporate person heavenward. For here lies the greater hope, where there is corporate vice, there is also corporate virtue. By joining others in the corporate body of the church, our spirits unite to a greater spirit aided by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit redeems not only our individual selves, but also the objective spirit of his own people. The bride of Christ is able to put on the character of Christ. We are made holy—parts and wholes.
We may cling to a memorial community, but we will find that its hope dissolves, like pandemic wafers on the tongue of one longing for normalcy. Instead, let us take the bread and cup of life together. The presence of Christ is there. He has given us a hope that will not fade, a hope outside ourselves.
Notes:
[1] As one example, see, “A Case Study on the Question of Reparations” in Paul J. Morrison, Integration: Race, T.B. Maston, and Hope for the Desegregated Church, (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2022), 305–313.
[2] There is no shortage of examples or reflections on the current exposure of abuse in the church. See for example, Timothy Dalrymple, “Abuse in the Church and the Road to Jericho,” at Christianity Today, June 3, 2022, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/june-web-only/sexual-abuse-victims-good-samaritan.html.
[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2009), 98. Both the term corporate person and objective spirit have nuances which separate them. In general, the former term finds its primary function in the economic, while the latter finds its in sociological. The terms are by no means synonymous, nor are they innately theological. For our purposes here, I have chosen to speak of them distinctly as corporate persons possessing objective spirits. Hegelian to a degree, the perspective I wish to draw on is more by way of Bonhoeffer, who roots the spirit in theological categories rather than in Hegel’s expression of Reason. See, Adam Kotsko, “Objective Spirit and Continuity in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Philosophy and Theology 17.1–2 (2005): 22.
[4] This, according to Zwingli. See, James M. Arcadi, An Incarnational Model of the Eucharist. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 22.
Paul J. Morrison is Vice-President of Academic Affairs and Provost at Emmaus Theological Seminary in Cleveland, Ohio, where he teaches Christian Ethics and Biblical Theology. He also serves as Theologian in Residence at City Church in Cleveland Heights. Paul holds a PhD in Christian Ethics from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a member of the St. Peter Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians. You can follow him on Twitter @PaulMorrisonPhD)
