Mutual Indwelling

Mutual indwelling is a biblical concept expressing the sharing of a person's life in the life of another. In the Gospel According to John the evangelist presents Jesus as affirming that God the Father dwells in him: demonstrated in Jesus speaking the words of the Father and doing the will of the Father. This indwelling is mutual, as Jesus affirms, "The Father is in me and I am in the Father" (John 10:38b). Moreover, Jesus promises that the 'Spirit of Truth' will dwell in the disciples. Through the Spirit's action the disciples will know that Jesus dwells in the Father and will further know that Jesus dwells in them and they in Jesus (see John 14:20). 

Mutual indwelling is a lens through which Christian thought and experience can be focussed; a lens that can correct the distortions of polarizing individualism. Below I offer, for discussion, 10 different facets of faith viewed through the lens of mutual indwelling. 

1. Faith is the placing of one's trust in another, not merely in oneself. 

2. The divine persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit constitute the one being of God by mutual indwelling. 

3. The identity of persons, human and divine, is constituted by their sharing in the lives of other persons without absorption or loss of self-identity. 

4. Matter and spirit are not opposed, since the Lord gives life by breathing his spirit into creatures, and in Christ the divine Word "became flesh and dwelled among us." (John 1:14)

5. Holiness is first of all openness to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 

6. Prayer is attentiveness to the pleading of the indwelling Spirit of God. (See Romans 8:26-7)

7. Conscience is human moral knowledge interpenetrated and indwelled by the will of God. Discerning and doing the will of God is the ever-demanding task of being attentive and obedient to God as he informs conscience.

8. The Eucharist or Holy Communion is an intensification of the truth of the mutual indwelling of Christ and the Christian: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I in him." (John 6:56), and also of the mutual indwelling of Christians as one in Christ "we, though many, are one body; for we all share in one loaf" (1 Corinthians 10:17).

9. The Church and Israel (that's the Jewish people of faith, not the post-1948 nation state) are not opposed but mutually interdependent, since the Church is grafted into root of Israel (see Romans 11:17-24). 

10. Empathy—essential for healthy human relationships—is the imaginative indwelling of the experience of another person. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer—pastor, theologian, ecumenist, conspirator—packed a huge amount into his 39 years. Born in 1906, he was a theological prodigy who was awarded his doctorate at the age of 21. Lecturer at the University of Berlin at 23, ordained a Lutheran pastor at 25. He was an ecumenical advocate and leader; one of the founders of the Confessing Church resistance movement to the Nazification of the Church in Germany;lived for short periods in Barcelona, New York and London; Director of a Confessing Church seminary; double-agent and co-conspiritor with his brother-in-law and others who sought the overthrow of the Nazi regime. Imprisoned for his known resistance sympathies, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed on the 9th April 1945 for his part in the 20th July 1944 attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler and failed coup. Bonhoeffer's written works include: 'Christology' (or 'Christ the Center' in the US); 'Discipleship'; 'Life Together'; 'Ethics'; and 'Letters and Papers from Prison'.

A few years ago I visited what was the Bonhoeffer family home at Marienburger Allee 43, Charlottenburg, Berlin, and is now an international visitor and study centre in memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I found it incredibly moving to sit in the front room where Dietrich met with fellow anti-Nazi conspiritors and to see his study-bedroom from which he was removed and arrested. More recently I met Renate Bethge, Dietrich's niece, at a conference in Oxford. There I had the bizarre experience of taking part in a reading of a play about Dietrich's life in which Renate played herself! Afterwards, Renate commented that the play was "not very realistic" and went on to share what Uncle Dietrich was really like.

These are some of the theological principles I have learned from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

1. Bonhoeffer's signal contribution to theological methodology is his argument in the introduction to 'Christology' where makes a distinction between 'How' and 'Who' questions. He argues that when inquiring into the identity of Jesus Christ we must resist the temptation to ask the question, "How can I understand Christ according to my existing categories of classification?" In this question the questioner retains 'control'; but in so doing effectively closes the self to a genuine encounter with the other. By contrast, Bonhoeffer argues that in order truly to inquire into Christ's identity we must be brought to repentance and to recognise that we cannot formulate the appropriate question to ask of Christ. Instead we must be counter-questioned by Christ the Counter-Logos who asks us, "Who are you that you ask me this question?" It is only when reason's presumption of being all-competent is dethroned that one is in a position to ask the true question of faith: "Who are you Jesus Christ? Speak for yourself." Only in this latter question is the self opened to a genuine encounter with Christ.

2. Bonhoeffer argues that the goal of Christian ethics is not to do 'good', nor is it to have a 'clear conscience'; it is rather to be obedient to the will of God by being conformed to Jesus Christ. Jesus is the responsible person par excellence: the innnocent one who accepted guilt on behalf of others. Bonhoeffer believes that Christ is the revealed reality of God. In the light of this, what is of utmost importance "...is not that I become good, or that the condition of the world be improved by my efforts, but that the reality of God show itself everywhere to be the ultimate reality." (from 'Ethics') That which frees for ethical action is not the deceptive safety of cultural norms nor pre-determined principles, neither is it the pursuing of what we think is good; rather it is to do those actions that are in accordance with Christ: this is the 'realisation of the real'. Controversially, Bonhoeffer argues that to be conformed in ever closer obedience to Christ may sometimes mean that one risks incurring guilt before God for the sake of others. In the extreme situation he found himself—when passivity was tantamount to collusion with evil—to participate in conspiracy, attempted tyrannicide and coup d'etat was most likely considered by Bonhoeffer to constitute a lesser sin than the attempt to be free from guilt by keeping his head down. This was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's particular 'Nachfolge'—his 'following after' Christ—and serves as a continual challenge to all who would be disciples.

Thomas F Torrance

Thomas Torrance, who died in 2007, was a theologian of international distinction. His academic achievements are numerous: co-edited with Geoffrey Bromiley the first English translation of Karl Barth's monumental thirteen-volumed Church Dogmatics; co-edited, with his brother David, Calvin's New Testament Commentaries in English; co-founder with JKS Reid of the Scottish Journal of Theology; co-founder of the UK Society for the Society for the Study of Theology; winner of Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1978; author of numerous collections of essays and monographs including Theology in Reconstruction (1965), God and Rationality (1971), Theology in Reconciliation (1975), Space, Time and Resurrection (1976), Divine and Contingent Order (1981),The Mediation of Christ (1983), The Trinitarian Faith (1988), The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (1996). Born of missionary parents in China, studied in Edinburgh, Oxford, and in Basel with Karl Barth. Church of Scotland Minister, Army Chaplain, Professor of Christian Dogmatics at New College, Edinburgh.

I visited Professor Torrance at his home in Edinburgh some years ago and he was gracious and generous in his responses to my questions. I remember particularly the pictures he had above his desk: in pride of place was an icon of Saint Athanasius; below, a photograph of Karl Barth. Torrance told me he thought that Barth would have been an even better theologian had he read more of Athanasius! He also told me that my frequent response of "right" was an Americanism! And he was pleased to hear that I was brought up on a farm. He thought that a rural childhood, roaming over all that open ground, often produced clear thinking. I am still hoping that this generalisation is true in my particular case!

The following are some of the theological principles I have learned from TF Torrance.

1. Torrance understands God's Trinitarian economy to constitute the Church as an outward and returning movement. The outward movement comes ‘evangelically’ from the Father through the Son in the Spirit, and finds its ‘doxological’ response by participation in the returning movement in the Spirit through the Son to the Father. Indeed, this outward and returning Trinitarian movement could be argued to incorporate the origin and goal of the whole Creation, of which the Church is representative.

2. Torrance understands the central signficance of Jesus Christ for us as being his vicarious humanity. As vicarious human, Christ's faithfulness vicariously undergirds the response of faith called from us: even in our repenting and believing we cannot rely upon our own response but only upon the response Christ has offered to the Father in our place and on our behalf in which we share by the Spirit.

3. Torrance seeks to make connections between scientific and theological method in his insistence that knowledge in any field is governed by the nature of the object as it is progressively disclosed to us. This means that in theology the nature of the object—God as he reveals himself to us as Father and Son and Holy Spirit—prescribes the mode of knowing: worship, humility, openness, repentance, prayer and obedience. It follows, therefore, that in theological inquiry we do not attempt gain knowledge of God by prescribing in advance how God might be known; rather, we allow God to reveal who he is in accordance with his nature. Bonhoeffer makes a very similar point in his distinguishing of 'How' and 'Who' questions (see Bonhoeffer post).