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Nonetheless, theologians also acknowledge that only God is the final judge of who can rightly be considered a Christian. Austrian Jesuit Theologian Karl Rahner, for example, suggests that there is today "an invisible Christianity which does indeed possess the justification of sanctifying grace from God. A man belonging to this invisible Christianity may deny his Christianity or maintain that he does not know whether he is a Christian or not. Yet God may have chosen him in grace." Similarly, the late Protestant theologian Paul Tillich contrasted the "manifest church" of confessed believers with what he called the "latent church," whose membership included all men engaged with the ultimate realities of life.
The Decline of Dogma
Since faith is primarily a way of life rather than a creed to be so proclaimed, it is not something that can be reduced to an articulated set of principles. In an age of ecumenical breakthrough and doctrinal pluralism, sectarian particularities of belief seem largely irrelevant and even a little quaint. What is important is not the doctrine of predestination, for example, but the mystery of man's relationship to God that lies behind it. A Christian must accept the Incarnation—but there is room for differing interpretations of Jesus' unique relationship to God. The Resurrection is, as St. Paul insisted, the cornerstone of faith; but how one defines this unique defiance of death is of less moment.
Even in the Roman Catholic Church, which has traditionally upheld the immutability of dogma, there is widespread recognition by theologians that all formulas of faith are man's frail and imperfect vessels for carrying God's truth, and are forever in need of reformulation. In the light of Christianity's need to respond to the human needs of the earth, many of these ancient formulas hardly seem worth rethinking. "The central axis of religious concern," notes Langdon Gilkey of the University of Chicago Divinity School, "has shifted from matters of ultimate 'salvation,' and of heaven or hell, to questions of the meaning, necessity, or usefulness of religion for this life." In other words, the theological task is to justify Christianity in this world—and let God take care of the next.
The faith commitment of the Christian also implies the need for allegiance to a church—or at least to some kind of community of faith. Theoretically, it may be possible for a Christian to survive without any institutional identity—but the majority of modern theologians would agree that to be "a man for others" there must be others to be with, and that faith is sustained by communal structure. Churchmen would also argue that there is nothing obsolete about the basic necessity for worship and prayer. "Liturgy must be an expression of something that is happening in the community," says the Rev. David Kirk, a Melchite Catholic priest who is founder of a unique interfaith center in Manhattan called Emmaus House. "Without worship, the community is a piece of rubbish." On the other hand, there is little doubt that the churches are in desperate need of new, this-worldly liturgies that reflect present needs rather than past glories.
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