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Theological Foundation for Coaching

I’m preparing a briefing paper for people training as coaches in the Uniting Church in Australia, Queensland Synod, focusing on the distinctive theological setting in which we work rather than attempting a generic approach that fits all. However there will and should be some resonance with other traditions. I’ve included quotes from the Uniting Church in Australia Basis of Union (1977).

1. Relational Framework.

We enter into one another’s lives aware that God is relational in nature. As Christians we perceive the being of God expressed in the relationship of Father, Son and Spirit, or, in a non-gendered framework, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. We see in that relationship the relational characteristics described by Paul in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self control. In our coaching, we are called to take part in God’s reconciling engagement with the world in which we live, doing so with respect for boundaries, seeking to empower rather than control, aware of our own strengths and limitations, always recognising that we are witnesses and supporters of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.

“Jesus of Nazareth announced the sovereign grace of God whereby the poor in spirit could receive God’s love. Jesus himself, in his life and death, made the response of humility, obedience and trust which God had long sought in vain. In raising him to live and reign, God confirmed and completed the witness which Jesus bore to God on earth, reasserted claim over the whole of creation, pardoned sinners, and made in Jesus a representative beginning of a new order of righteousness and love. To God in Christ all people are called to respond in faith. To this end God has sent forth the Spirit that people may trust God as their Father, and acknowledge Jesus as Lord. The whole work of salvation is effected by the sovereign grace of God alone.”

2. Incarnational Framework

Our participation in the people of God is founded in the life of Christ. Just as Jesus entered the every day challenges of life, filled with the Spirit, we are called to participate in the mission of God in every part of our lives. This is explored in processes that engage body, mind, spirit and soul.

“The Church as the fellowship of the Holy Spirit confesses Jesus as Lord over its own life; it also confesses that Jesus is Head over all things, the beginning of a new creation, of a new humanity. God in Christ has given to all people in the Church the Holy Spirit as a pledge and foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation. The Church’s call is to serve that end: to be a fellowship of reconciliation, a body within which the diverse gifts of its members are used for the building up of the whole, an instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself.”

3. The Whole People of God

We believe that participation in the ministry and mission of Christ is open to people of all ages, whether employed or not, whether in a recognised position or not. Coaching is a process that can be used to support people in their unique way witnessing, worshiping and serving.

“The Uniting Church affirms that every member of the Church is engaged to confess the faith of Christ crucified and to be his faithful servant. It acknowledges with thanksgiving that the one Spirit has endowed the members of Christ’s Church with a diversity of gifts, and that there is no gift without its corresponding service: all ministries have a part in the ministry of Christ.”

4. Faith as a Journey

We are a pilgrim people. Together we are discerning what it means to follow Christ, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. Faithfulness, perseverance, courage and humility are required as we constantly reassess our response to the dynamic leading of the Spirit. Coaching pilgrims involves listening, recognition of movement and progress, the capacity to encourage steps of faith in times of ambiguity and uncertainty.

“The Uniting Church’s Basis of Union draws on the motif of our being a people on the way: “The Church lives between the time of Christ’s death and resurrection and the final consummation of all things which Christ will bring; the Church is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal; here the Church does not have a continuing city but seeks one to come.”

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Walter Lowe on Christ and Salvation

Walter Lowe, emeritus professor of systematic theology at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, has written an essay on Christ and Salvation in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology.

Lowe sets out to develop a fresh approach to Christology and soteriology that addresses what he perceives to be limitations imposed by classic and modernist approaches to sequence, economy and negativity. He points out that modernist studies of Christ and salvation begin with human need, developing a schema of salvation, before outlining a Christology to suit. Classic approaches, on the other hand, hold unexamined assumptions around the human condition before rolling out a schema of salvation.

Lowe draws on his familiarity with Freudian analysis and psychotherapy to critique contemporary models of evangelism that begin with the subjective human experience.

Sequence - analyses of the human condition and need
1 acceptable description of common human experience with emphasis on problems or discontents
2 specific diagnosis of phenomena in terms of underlying condition
3 general recommendation
4 specific remedy

Lowe points out that this sequence, when applied to the general recommendation of salvation and specific remedy of Christ, is problematic. What happens when Christ doesn’t fit the problem? Furthermore, this approach to salvation is inevitably grounded in negativity, searching for need, offense or deficit. The radical good of the gospel may become overshadowed by the negativity.

While classic systematic theologies do not begin with such sequences and economies, it is common for Christology and soteriology to be preceded by consideration of sin and its effects on humanity. These approaches, Lowe suggests, are flawed by the quasi-hydraulic nature of their economy. God’s offering of Jesus as ransom is in response to humanity being captured by Satan. God’s infinite justice is offended in a way that can only be assuaged by a divine gesture of justice.

Lowe points out that if the distorting nature of sin is to be taken seriously, we as theologians need to treat their systems with humility, recognising that our predetermined understanding of the human condition is by its very nature limited.

In a section relating to alternatives to modernism Lowe juxtaposes the Jewish apocalypticism described by M.C. de Boer and the Christus Victor doctrine espoused by Gustaf Aulen. De Boer had contrasted the forensic apocalyptic pattern (in which wilful rejection of the Creator God had led to punishment by death) and the cosmic apocalyptic pattern (in which the people of the earth had become idolatrous and would ultimately be defeated by God’s historical intervention). God’s intervention in each case called for human response. The giving of the law called for faithful obedience. The impending intervention of God called for perserverance. Aulen’s central theme of Divine conflict and victory picked up motifs from New Testament thinking that would have been influenced by the apocalyptic paradigms.

Lowe admits that the apocalyptic approach has been seen as mythological and dualistic, largely by those who had taken monistic and evolutionary perspective in tune with modernism. Lowe points however to the Karl Barth’s 1919 commentary on Romans as a Christian form of postmodernism, a critique of the un-intrusive God of theism who left alone the sovereign self-possessed human subject. With such forms of postmodernist theology available Lowe suggests that it was time to explore again alternatives to both the unexamined economies of classic doctrines of atonement and the fickle particular sequences of atonement formed in tune with modernist thought.

Lowe suggests that the logic of cosmic victory is to overthrow the very notion that God’s act of salvation can be contained within any economy. This speculation is linked to J. Louis Martyn’s framing of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in a specifically apocalyptic context of the present evil age being invaded by the new creation brought about by Christ. This is not another example of what Lowe has previously described as ‘quasi-hydraulic’ effects. The Christ event itself becomes the reality in which all else is interpreted. Paul is described as opposing dualisms and economies which may attempt to contain the radical impact of the Christ event.

Lowe concludes by drawing on and expanding upon Derrida’s concept of presence to develop a model of Christological revelation. The very presence of God in the finite life of Jesus is perhaps the heart of the apocalyptic event. Lowe is aware of the temptations to draw conclusions about individual appropriation of that Presence, focusing on whether or not an individual is saved or how one is saved. The focus, rather, is to be on the glory of God.

Lowe’s final comments relate to the danger of any over arching vision becoming tyrannical. His purposes in writing are not to eliminate metaphors of atonement, exchange and substitution, but to place them in a context in which their claims for dominance are moderated by the cry of the people.

Walter Lowe here is recovering a number of understandings that have been muted by modernist reductions of salvation and Christology. By going back to the narratives of the Jewish people, with their apparently dualist apocalyptisms, Lowe has attempted to re-engage with the metaphor of intervention. Doctrines of atonement, once thought to be outdated or irrelevant to the human condition, can be revisited in the light of a new creation that resists attempts to form tyrannical metanarratives.

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Colin Gunton on Actuality of Atonement

Colin Gunton, Professor of Christian Doctrine at King’s College London until his death in 2003, published “The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition” in 1988.

Gunton sets out to challenge the rationalist approaches to doctrines of atonement provided by Kant, Schleirmacher and Hegel. He describes Kant’s approach as rationalism of the moral agent, an approach which totally reverses traditional atonement doctrine to focus on the redemption achieved through the re-activation of the innate powers of the moral will. Schleirmacher’s rationalism of experience has emasculated traditional doctrines of atonement, destroying their base in the historic redemptive action of God and producing a reductionist account of their language. Hegel, Gunton writes, approached the doctrine of atonement from a perspective of conceptual rationalism, undervaluing fuzzy concepts and metaphors.

Gunton moves on to explore the re-emergence of metaphor as an accepted component of philosophical and theological dialogue. He looks at the way in which metaphor has been linked with rhetoric and ornament as opposed to argument, truth and literal description. Philosophy of science in recent years has moved away from this dichotomy, providing for metaphor as the vehicle of discovery. Metaphor, despite the concerns of the Enlightenment, is a pervasive part of language that can be used to speak about the real world. Metaphor, as an engagement with the world, must be used with imagination and modesty.

The Battlefield and the Demons
Gunton considers the claims of Swedish theologian Gustav Aulen in his 1931 book, “Christus Victor”, that the early church’s focus on the victory of Christ on the cross had been lost in favour of the notion of satisfaction. The metaphor of ‘victory over demonic power’ has been rejected by many theologians largely because of difficulty in engaging with the literal or associated meanings. As Gunton looks through the Old and New Testaments he comes to the conclusion that the texts “present us not with superhuman hypostases trotting about the world, but with the metaphorical characterisation of moral and cosmic realities which would otherwise defy expression.” He draws on contemporary writers to draw out the theme of subjection of individuals and societies to forces beyond their control. Jesus, by refusing any other means of success than the genuinely human, reveals deceptive idolatry in all its forms to be ‘demonic’. Understanding the history of Jesus as a victory clears the way for a new vision of the world in which God is involved in all aspects of creation.

The Justice of God: A Conversation
Gunton uses the atonement metaphor of satisfaction as developed by Anselm of Canterbury to explore the range of interpretations of metaphor in different contexts of time and place. He begins by pointing out that the legal metaphor was linked to the Christus Victor motif and was hinted at by early theologians such as Cyprian. The concept of justice, held by Anselm and his peers was different to that of the Hebrew scriptures. God becomes the cosmic overlord responsible for universal justice. The Hebrew Scriptures however place the law as a gift provided for the sustenance of God’s people and the maintenance of covenantal relationship. Anselm himself points out that atonement as satisfaction is not a legal transaction, but an act of unmerited grace.

Having briefly looked at Anselm’s approach to doctrine, Gunton moves on to the conversation made possible as successive generations have engaged in the justice metaphor with evolving understandings of law, including the extremes of inward-looking individualist piety and merciless domination in the name of a punishing God. These distortions are dealt with by Gunton in the context of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Gunton concludes this section with a consideration of twentieth century treatments of the justice metaphor by Forsyth and Barth. It is clear to Gunton that the justice metaphor is a pliable and living stimulus for conversation, rooted in real-life history and society.

It would have been interesting to see how Gunton would have approached the way this metaphor has been played out in the context of liberation theology, feminist theology and other such conversations.

Christ the Sacrifice: A Dead Metaphor?
Gunton begins by acknowledging the sentiment that the sacrifice metaphor has run its course due to the repugnance with which it is viewed today. He reminds the reader that even in the Greek and Hebrew contexts sacrifice means different things to different people in different contexts. The description of the life and death of Jesus as a sacrifice is treated by Gunton as an example of transfer of meaning. The Old Testament concept of slaughter and prayer together is moralised in the time of Jesus to focus on a gift of life outside the bounds of the usual temple context. The call to join in the sacrificial life of Jesus leads to a re-thinking of the metaphor beyond dying to an intentional offering of prayerful life to God.

Objections to the transactional nature of the sacrifice metaphor are explored in the consideration of Edward Irving’s nineteenth century christology. Irving rejects a stock exchange approach to divinity along with mathematical quantitative theology of sin. Irving taught that the sacrifice offered by Jesus was to live in the context of humanity affected by a relational sinfulness and randomness, prone to suffering and limitation like us. The Holy Spirit living in Jesus brought about the atonement in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus alike. Irving develops Calvin’s theology of the priesthood of Christ in both a human and cosmic context.

Gunton concludes that even though the metaphor of sacrifice has been trivialised and misused, tainted with punitive overtones for example, theologians such as Irving show us that the supposedly dead metaphor can open life-giving approaches to the doctrine of atonement.

Atonement, the Triune God, and the Community of Reconciliation
Gunton goes on to explore the relational dimension of atonement found in the triune God’s interaction with creation and lived out in the community of the people of Christ.

For further resources on Colin Gunton’s theology, see the Colin Gunton Research Discussion Blog.

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