I ask the question because it is impossible in our time to take the language of conversion seriously without asking it. But by asking it I have pointed out backhandedly that when the classic Protestant understanding of conversion developed in the first place, whether we think in the most precise sense of the most highly developed conversion theories of the revivalists of North America from Edwards to Finney, or whether we go back to the description of the faith that justifies (in Luther) or the vision of God (in the late medieval mystics), none of the people we would be trying to understand would have been saying then that conversion is an event in the field of psychodynamics or neurology. So whether we affirm some kind of positive correlation between the several levels or deny that there is any connection at all and thereby refuse to converse with the modern human sciences, in either case it raises questions of correlation that were not there before. The gospel promise of transformation talks about the human person as he or she really is; so do these other kinds of analysis. If they are all talking about the same person, then it would seem that we should expect that as they cover the same ground their measurements and descriptions would somehow connect. Do we want our phrasing of the claims and promises of the gospel to be tested by these other disciplines? Or do we rather mean to take the other approach, that of compartmentalization, saying that though we all deal with the same human being, the ways we deal with him or her are not at all on the same level? There are several classical ways to try to resolve this problem, and all of them seem to have serious logical and practical shortcomings.
If a Christian really believes that there has been physical healing, such as the lengthening of a leg or the removal by miracle of a cancer, it will be a part of the authenticity of that witness to claim that X-rays or other medical verification could be appealed to. In a similar way, it probably should be assumed that if there is concrete reality to conversion as a change of what the person really is, it could be measured by the scientists. The fact that one does not see many conversionist Christians doing that scientific work does not necessarily prove they would not believe in it, nor that it could not be done. The fact that traditional conversionist preaching and pastoring does go on without driving people into the interdisciplinary encounter does, however, leave the door open for an alternative interpretation, both of Paul and the operational validity of the conversion message.
Individual or Social?
A second broad area of difficulty is the relation between this conception of the transformed individual and the social dimensions of the gospel. One of the most clear and sweeping convictions of the mainstream of evangelical preaching is the promise that when an individual is transformed he or she will live differently in such a way as to transform society in its turn. It is fruitless, it is argued (or some even argue that it is evil) to attempt to change society in any other way, such as by education or by legislation; social change will come when the hearts of individual people are transformed.
Nevertheless, the same evangelical proclamation that promises a transformed society is often able to give very little help in defining how society must be transformed when people are changed. Will being born again make people become Democrats or Republicans or socialists, or will they withdraw from politics? Will they want a society that has more free enterprise or less? Will they work for racial integration or for segregation? As a matter of logic, the claim that the transformed person will automatically work socially in the right way does not lead us to expect much guidance as to how he should work. No less than the “inward change,” this thesis calls for empirical verification.
As a matter of record, this kind of evangelical theology has produced both very progressive and very reactionary social strategies. On the basis of both the record and the logic, we can affirm that the transformed person has a different motivation, but certainly it is not proven that the transformation carries with it univocal instructions about how society must change, when that transformation had been defined in terms of the individual’s constitution, self, or “heart.” The purpose of this observation is not to try to resolve the question of the basis or direction of social concern, but simply to record that to locate the saving work of God in the constitution of the person does not tend to throw a very precise light on these questions, even though it promises to.
A third drawback of the emphasis upon the novelty of the “new creature” is that it may undermine the capacity of the Church to speak in Christian education and pastoral care to those who have this event well behind them. The temptation is real to limit later religious experience to a reiteration of the meaning of the born-again experience, and to center Christian service and activity on trying to bring other persons to that same threshold. The promise of a miraculously given new nature in Christ may lead a sensitive believer to despair when he or she discovers how much of the “old man” is still within. At the same time the insensitive and self-satisfied person may insulate himself or herself against pastoral admonition and the call to growth in grace by the assurance that the most important event, that which happens back at the beginning of the Christian life, has all been taken care of and now needs only to be maintained.
I do not mean to suggest that these distortions are inevitable results of a strong emphasis on the transformation of a person. They are not even quite as logically necessary as are the other two limitations spoken of above; but that such distortions can happen is easily documented from anyone’s pastoral or counseling experience.
A fourth shortcoming, at least in contemporary American society, is the temptation to correlate the praise of the novelty of the new creature with the modern Western cult of youth, health, and beauty. This modern temptation in aggressive evangelicalism might be spoken of as the “Campus Crusade syndrome”—the expectation that the gospel has a special attraction for, or a special tendency to produce, beauty queens and sports heroes. The correlation of this temptation with this text was dramatized by a denominational church bulletin used in a church I once attended. The cover bore the words, “In Christ . . . a new creature.” In one corner of the page there was a skidrow face; wrinkled, bleary-eyed, unkempt and unshaven, staring pointlessly into empty blackness; contrasting with him was a healthy young Anglo-Saxon figure, well combed and shaven and dressed, with both feet confidently planted in an athletic pose, his chest swelled out and his eyes gazing at some distant star. Certainly the artist did not mean to promise that an ancient wino can become a young athlete. But the fact that this juxtaposition of images seemed to the editor of the bulletins to be appropriate to represent “newness of life” is sufficient documentation that “newness” is likely to be confounded with physiological or psychological image definitions that have little to do with the gospel.
It was, after all, in the same passage that the Apostle Paul had just spoken of having to bear in his body the suffering of Jesus. In the same Corinthian correspondence he spoke of living with a thorn in his flesh, and of the imminent passing away of the “tent” in which he was now living. Whereas much modern evangelicalism calls the individual from brokenness to wholeness, there is another deeper tradition (Keswick, Luther, going back to Paul, and to Ezekiel and Jeremiah), which calls the believer from the search for wholeness to the acceptance of brokenness. From this perspective, the American glorification of the healthy self appears unevangelical, even demonic.
The other side of this temptation is the concentration of gospel witness upon the down-and-outer. A middle-class Protestant would feel almost embarrassed about speaking to his middle-class neighbor about Christian faith, but can feel it somehow fitting to drive fifty miles to a rescue mission where there are people who, he can convince himself, are in need of the gospel. This is simply the flip side of the Norman Vincent Peale record with its promise of health and prosperity. It is what Bonhoeffer called methodism: conceiving of the gospel call as only able to be formulated in terms of a person’s being down; so that you must somehow get people down, or find people who are down, in order to have them listen.
New Creature or New World
This extended parenthesis may serve as background to show that the “new creature” language of 2 Cor 5:17 has been charged with a freight of argumentative meaning by which the apostle would have been very surprised.