Karl Barth's Black Jesus

Karl Barth is famous (and in some places infamous) for conceiving of God as "wholly other" to human beings. Barth's God is radically transcendent, radically other, and quite hidden. Barth is often criticized on this point for failing to do justice to God's immanence, for making God so inaccessible that speech of God becomes substance-less. How can we make affirmations about God if God is always wholly other and hidden?

Setting aside the fact that this is a rather one-sided picture of Barth's theology, I want to emphasize one of the ways Barth addressed this problem. That is, Barth conceived of God not merely as completely veiled to human beings in general, but particularly veiled in lowly communities. It can be said that, for Barth, there is potential for seeing God in people who suffer and are oppressed, because God makes God's self wholly other to human greatness, and not just to humanity in general.

In order to understand this, we have to understand the origin of Barth's radically transcendent conception of God. The identification of God with the German war effort by many of Barth's contemporaries was the occasion for Barth's decisive NO to liberal theology. Liberal theology, Barth came to see, was a theology of glory; it identified divinity with the glory of humanity, with strength, with success, and we could add, with whiteness. Barth saw this as idolatry.

As black theologian James Cone describes, Barth's criticism of liberal theology was a criticism of "nineteenth century liberalism with its emphasis on the goodness and worth of humanity (which always meant white European humanity)."[1] He adds that, "Every black intellectual is aware that when liberals spoke of 'inevitable progress' and the 'upward movement of Western culture,' it was realized at the expense of blacks who were enslaved and colonized to secure 'progress.'"[2]

Barth was similarly aware that it always meant a divine sanction of human corruption. Nations continually claim God for their side, touting themselves as the innocent and the others as the enemy. "It is sheer blasphemy to relate God to our human strivings in this way," Barth preached.[3] Selfishness, arrogance, hatred, anxiety, and violence are all "completely alien to the innermost being of God," so that if they become the rule of the day, it can only mean "God's innermost being is also completely alien to humankind."[4]

Barth's No to liberal theology, then, was not merely a No to humanity on principle because humanness is evil. His No was fundamentally a No to a human attempt to raise the human up by identifying divinity with human ideas of greatness. Included in Barth's protest against this was an affirmation of God's lowliness. "Against all those who want to be great in this world," Barth said in first commentary on Romans, "I must espouse the standpoint of those little people with whom God makes his beginning." God, he says, "is one-sidedly a God of the lowly."[5]

Because God is a God of the lowly, God can never be identified with human greatness, with human vanity. To identify God with human greatness is to put human glory (which is really arrogance and domination) on a high place, on a pedestal, to be worshiped as an idol.

The hiddenness and otherness of God for Barth is not simply a divine attribute of anti-humanity. We must never forget that God did not come in the form of some kind of extraterrestrial alien being, but as a human. The decisive point is that God came in the form of a lowly human, he came in the form of a servant.

Martin Luther similarly stated that "God destroys the wisdom of the wise" by hiding God's self "in suffering," in "the humility and shame of the cross."[6] It is in this spirit that Barth understands the hiddenness of God in lowly communities. Barth says in his second Romans commentary, the otherness of the other "reminds us of the WHOLLY OTHER."[7]

Consequently, "all Titanism, all mounting of high places, is excluded. ... In order to correspond with their veritable situation men must therefore--bow."[8] That is to say, recognizing that the otherness of the other points to the otherness of God, recognizing that God is the crucified Christ, who veils God's self in a servant-form, who unconditionally identifies God's self with the lowly--all of this means not an exaltation or glorification of human greatness, not a divinization of the human, or a sanctioning of human glory, but, rather, a humbling of one's self, a prostration.

If God is identified with the lowly, then we must makes ourselves lowly to glorify God. If God is identified with the lowly, then we should not look to high places, to human greatness, to domination and success, in order to find God's glory, but should rather look to those who are exploited, oppressed, who suffer at the hands of human glory.

Barth stayed true to this understanding in his Church Dogmatics as well. He says, "God stands at every time unconditionally and passionately on this and only on this side: always against the exalted and for the lowly, always against those who already have rights and for those from whom they are robbed and taken away."[9]

It is in God's revelation in Jesus Christ that we have this knowledge, not in some natural knowledge of God, as the liberal theologians would have it. "Far from being founded upon any sort of general anthropology," Barth says, "our proof is absolutely related to Christology."[10] Precisely in the servant-form lies "a veiling of the divine majesty." This is how "the Word enters hiddenness."[11] Jesus' lowliness is not inconsequential, but is precisely how God reveals God's self as both hidden and revealed. “In [Jesus Christ] God reveals Himself inexorably as the hidden God."[12]

Barth's problem with liberal theology was not merely that they identified God with something human, but that they identified God with human greatness, with human glory, and so exalted themselves even more. They were the exalted ones exalting themselves through theology. They were the ones with rights claiming a divine sanction for furthering their own rights over against the rights of others. Barth declared this to be idolatry.

This critique of idolatry was James Cone's starting point as well. Cone's black theology of liberation was aimed at white idolatry, at the identification of divinity with whiteness, and so at the supposed divine sanction of white supremacy. Cone's protest against this idolatry was to boldly proclaim that God is not a God of whiteness, but is wholly other to the white God, and so identifies with oppressed blacks and fights for them.

Similarly, Barth's theology can be described as a black theology. It at least lends itself to black theology. This is so because, for Barth, God reveals God's self in the servant-form of Jesus Christ. The human constructs idols of human glory that are at odds with lowly servant-forms, and so God elects the servant-form to veil and unveil God's self. Jesus is black because Jesus reveals God's self in human lowliness and suffering.

To fail to understand this about Barth's theology is to make Barth's God an abstract concept of otherness, reducible to the idea of the "unconditioned" or the "undeconstructable" in philosophy. Barth again and again insists that the hiddenness of God is not this, that God's hiddenness is not merely a general mysteriousness, or a general concept of that which is beyond human conception. God veils God's self, and God does this not just in defying human thinking, but in veiling God's self in what humans deem undesirable, unworthy, and unwelcome.

To fail to witness to God's hiddenness in those who are lowly is to fail to witness to the Word of God. To fail to see Christ in the otherness of those who are suffering is to fail to see Christ altogether. To fail to see God suffering with the black community is to fail to see the cross.

And even further, to fail to understand one's self as responsible for acting on behalf of the poor and oppressed is to fail to understand our God-given responsibility. As Barth says, we cannot hear and believe God's identification with the lowly "without feeling a sense of responsibility in the direction indicated." Specifically, he says,

There follows from this character of faith a political attitude, decisively determined by the fact that man is made responsible to all those who are poor and wretched in his eyes, that he is summoned on his part to espouse the cause of those who suffer wrong. ... He cannot avoid the question of human rights. He can only will and affirm a state which is based on justice. By any other political attitude he rejects the divine justification.[13]

According to Barth, God is particularly concerned for the poor and oppressed, particularly concerned for their liberation. To hear and believe God's Word then behooves one to be responsible for the poor and oppressed, and to work for their liberation.

So then, to hear and believe God's Word today means to be moved by the suffering of the black community, and to act accordingly. To fail to do so is, as Barth said, to reject divine justification.


Notes:
[1] James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 40th anniversary ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2010), 19-20)
[2] Cone, 20.
[3] Karl Barth, A Unique Time of God: Karl Barth's WWI Sermons, ed. and trans. William Klempa (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 109.
[4] Barth, A Unique Time of God, 111.
[5] Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief, 1st ed., quoted in George Hunsinger, "Toward a Radical Barth," in Karl Barth and Radical Politics (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), 225.
[6] Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation, in The Annotated Luther, Vol. 1: The Roots of Reform, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 99.
[7] Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th ed., trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (New York: Oxford University Press, 1933), 444.
[8] Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 444.
[9] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. II: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, eds. G. W. Bromily and T. F. Torrance, trans. T. H. L. Parker, W. B. Johnston, Harold Knight, and J. L. M. Haire (New York: T&T Clark, 1957 [repr. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2010]), 386.
[10] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. I: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 2, eds. G. W. Bromily and T. F. Torrance, trans G. T. Thomson and Harold Knight (New York: T&T Clark, 1956 [repr. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2010]), 44.
[11] Barth, CD I.2, 37.
[12] Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 369.
[13] Barth, CD II.1, 386-387.

Because I'm Not Afraid

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. (1 Cor. 13:11)

Before I went to college, I believed many things.
I considered myself a Republican.
I thought gay marriage should be illegal.
I agreed with the statement, "the Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it."
I thought Job was an actual historical figure.
I didn't think there were any contradictions in the Bible.
I thought everything in Genesis 1-11 was literal history, and that evolution is just secular science that opposes God.
I thought that hell was forever, and that all homosexuals are going to hell.
I thought that it was bad for people not to speak in tongues.
I thought that it was bad to be Catholic.
I agreed with the Just War theory, and with capital punishment.
I thought that God knows everything that is ever going to happen in the future.

I could go on, but you get it.

Now, I am a Christianarchist, and would never consider myself conservative or Republican.
I think gay marriage should be legal.
I have a very different perspective on Scripture.
I no longer think Job was a real person, nor do I think much of Genesis 1-11 is literal history.
I recognize the contradictions in Scripture, and they don't bother me because I no longer operate under an inerrantist mindset.
I believe in universal reconciliation.
I think a lot of conservative Christians are going to be surprised at how many homosexuals end up in heaven.
I don't speak in tongues, and I don't have a problem with that.
I love a lot of Catholic theologians and respect devout Catholics.
I am a pacifist.
and I am an open theist.

It's not that I was brain-washed into being liberal. I'm graduating this December from Pat Robertson's school!
It's not that I hung out with the wrong people and they inspired me to compromise all my beliefs.
It's not that I live in sin and compromise my beliefs because of that.
It's not that I hate my parents and rejected everything they ever taught me. I couldn't love my parents more. Besides, they didn't teach me all of the things listed at the top.
It's not that I got involved with a bunch of liberals and they changed me. Most of my friends are much more conservative in these areas than I am.
It's not that I jumped to the other extreme. You might call me a liberal, but I don't like being on one side of the fence.

It's because I search for truth.
It's because I'm not afraid to change what I believe based on what I find.
It's because I learned how to use doubt productively, instead of calling it fear or sin and ignoring it.
It's because I asked questions, and, instead of embracing "mystery," I went deeper to find answers.
It's because I'm not okay with pat answers, and believing things that don't make any sense, or believing things because that's what the people around me believe, or believing things because it's "orthodox," or believing things because that's the way the people around me interpret the Bible.
It's because I'm not okay with rejecting critique of my beliefs simply because it might result in me changing what I believe.
It's because I don't want to be naive. I don't want to live in an ignorant bliss.

Am I going to be an open theist forever? Am I going to be a universalist forever? I don't know. Possibly not. The future is open ;)
I think open theism is true. I think universal reconciliation is true. But does that mean I'm not open to changing that in the future? No.
If what I find in my search for truth points away from one of my beliefs, I will re-evaluate.

I know I'm not always this way. We all have our caves.
I know I am stubborn in ways, and unwavering in many of my beliefs.
But for the most part, I try to be genuinely always reforming.
My problem with the statement, "Reformed and always reforming," is that it is mostly used by people who don't actually do any reforming.

My main point with this blog is this:
Don't be stubborn with your beliefs.
Don't reject a radically different view simply because it's radically different.
Don't get too comfortable with your ideology that you reject all others simply because they don't fit.
Question your views.
Question your interpretations of Scripture.
Consider other viewpoints.
Consider your critics.
Consider views that you find daunting.
If you don't, there's a good chance you'll end up in an ignorant bliss--one that you call 'biblical truth' but is really naivete.

What we can learn from A. N. Whitehead about the nature of God

This is the third post that I've written about what we can learn from a liberal theologian (except Karl Barth wasn't actually liberal). I believe it is important for us to read these theologians and learn from them what we can. They will challenge us on a lot of our assumptions and can transform our thinking on several issues as well.

Alfred North Whitehead was a scientist, mathematician, philosopher, and theologian, and followed a natural religion dictated by his own philosophy.(1) Here, I will use Whitehead to challenge Christian thinking on God's impassibility, immutability, and all-controlling sovereignty over human wills.

Rather than believing in an omnipotent, timeless God, Whitehead believed that the world contained God: "the world creates God and God creates the world."(2) He did believe that God was superior to the world, but also that God evolves with the world and becomes more and more superior over time.(3)

Furthermore, Whitehead believed that there are two aspects of God: the primordial and the consequent. The primordial aspect of God represents everything in his character that remains constant, the part of God that does not change. The consequent aspect of God is God's actual experience, which constantly changes and adapts to the world, because Whitehead believed that the world affects God. He also believed that God affects the world, that he is constantly trying to influence and persuade the world with his ideals so that he may accomplish them and "enhance harmony, beauty, and enjoyment."(4)

In this God-world relationship, Whitehead believed that God does not accomplish his ideals through coercion, meaning he does not force his plans into action. He did not believe that God possesses a dominating control over everyone and everything. He believed that everyone has "free will and self-determination and may comply with God's ideal or resist it."(5) Whitehead did believe in evil as well; he held that evil is what happens when humanity resists and rejects God's ideals, and he believed this causes God to suffer, because "God is enriched and impoverished by the world's responses to his persuasive influence."(6)

In order to assess what we can learn from A.N. Whitehead, I will examine his theology of God in regards to popular Christian understandings of God as impassible, immutable, and completely sovereign over all human action.

On these subjects, Gregory Boyd has observed that, "In Western philosophical tradition, emotional vulnerability is a weakness, so we have projected onto God the attribute of 'impassibility' (above suffering). All variability is thought to be an imperfection, so God must be 'immutable' (above any sort of change). Lack of control is also an imperfection, so God meticulously controls everything."(7) These flawed philosophical assumptions are the focus of this blog.

Does God Suffer?

Jürgen Moltmann has stated that, "The one who is capable of love is also capable of suffering, for he also opens himself up to the suffering which is involved in love, and yet remains superior to it by virtue of his love."(8)
 
Anyone who reads the prophets can see that God does indeed suffer. Terence Fretheim has noted that, in the prophets, the "grief of God is as current as the people's sin."(9) Indeed, "God is revealed not as one who remains coolly unaffected by the rejection of the people, but as one who is deeply wounded by the broken relationship."(10) Harold Knight goes as far as to say that God is "the greatest sufferer of all, because He alone . . . experiences the ultimate significance of every turn and phase of [the drama of human history] in the most intimate personal way."(11) This is due to the fact that "God relates at every level with the whole person of each individual."(12) Abraham Joshua Heschel observed in the prophets that God "is personally involved in, even stirred by, the conduct and fate of man. . . . man is a perpetual concern of God . . . a factor in the life of God."(13) 

However, God's grief does not mean that he is in any way pathetic or powerless. Fretheim has added that, "while indicating that God is indeed a vulnerable God, touched and affected in the deepest possible way by what the people have done to the relationship, God's grief does not entail being emotionally overwhelmed or embittered by the barrage of rejection."(14)
 
God's suffering is in his passion. Walter Brueggeman has described this divine passion as "a propensity to suffer with and suffer for, to be in solidarity with Israel in its suffering, and by such solidarity to sustain a relationship that rightfully could be terminated."(15) God's passion is passion to the fullest extent possible: "Is Ephraim My dear son? . . . My heart (mē’eh) yearns (hāmâ) for him" (Jer. 31:20). The Hebrew words here indicate that the deepest part of God has been disturbed by a tremendous, tempestuous heartache brought about by his incomprehensible love, strong compassion, unending care and concern, and boundless empathy. This is the passion and, consequently, the suffering of God. In Jeremiah, God's sorrow over his people's rejection "is beyond healing" (8:18); he is broken for the brokenness of his people (v.21); "dismay has taken hold of [him]" (v.21), to the point where his eyes are a fountain of tears, weeping day and night (9:1).

Thus, Whitehead's understanding of God as one who is affected by the world and suffers when it rejects him is very biblical.

Does God Change?

"I, the LORD, do not change," says Malachi 3:6. And there is also James 1:17, which tells us that "there is no variation or shifting shadow" in the Father of Lights. But there are a multitude of instances in which God changed his mind (Gen. 6:6-7; Ex. 32:14; 1 Sam. 15:11, 35; 2 Sam. 24:16; 1 Kings 21:21-22, 28-29; 1 Chron. 21:15; 2 Chron. 12:5-8; Ps. 106:45; Jer. 7:5-7; 15:6; 18:8-10; 26:3,13,19; 42:10; Ezek. 20:5-22; Hos. 11:5-9; Amos 7:3,6; Jonah 3:9-10; 4:2; Joel 2:13). So his mind can change; But does anything else about him change?

What about the incarnation? The Word became flesh (John 1:14). Jesus Christ, whose nature was that of God, emptied himself and became a servant whose nature was that of humanity (Phil 2:6-8). Christ became sin (2 Cor. 5:21); he became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). If that doesn't tell someone God can change, I don't know what will.(16) 

So what do Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17 mean when they say that God does not change? I contend that Whitehead's understanding of the two aspects of God answers that very question. There is the aspect of God that is immutable (or, in Whitehead's terms, the primordial aspect of God). For example, God is love (1 Jn. 4:8). He is and always has been and always will be love. As Boyd says, "The cross reveals the immutability of God’s love."(16) There are many other parts of his nature as well that have never changed and will never change.

However, there is also the aspect of God that adapts to the world (the consequent aspect). We can see throughout the Old and New Testaments that God adapts to the cultures of his people. Though it is safe to say that God does not approve of slavery, he put up with it in order to communicate himself to the cultures that engaged in it. Though it is safe to say that God's ideal for marriage is monogamy, he put up with men who had several wives and concubines. H. Wheeler Robinson observes that in the divine purpose, "we see the unchanging will of God, and in that sense He is the unchanging One." However, he adds that changes "are involved in the working-out of that purpose."(18) It is not that his ideals change or that his nature changes, but he does adapt to humanity in order to communicate himself to us.(19) Is this not what he did in Christ?

Thus, Whitehead's understanding of the primordial and the consequent aspects of God is also quite biblical.

Does God Control Everything?

In 2 Samuel 24, it is written that God's anger drove him to incite David to take a census of Israel and Judah (v.1). In verse 10, David is grief-stricken and convicted because taking the census was apparently a sin, so he begged the Lord to take away his guilt for being so foolish. In 1 Chronicles 21, the same story is recorded. Except, in verse 1, it says that Satan incited David to take the census! And in verse 8 David begs God to take away his guilt for listening to Satan.

I think what we see here is a change of theology. According to Heschel, "Evil was accepted because it came from God. Then people began to wonder whether it was right to hold God responsible for all misfortunes that happen to man."(20) They realized that the evil in the world could not be contributed to God, but that there was a free agent of chaos trying to kill, steal and destroy God's creation. They realized that God does not control everything, because there is evil in this world, of which God in all his goodness is not the source.

We can see throughout Scripture that God clearly does not control everything. One proof of this can be seen in the fact that God experiences opposition with his people. He suffers and is angered by their rejection of him. He often asks his people 'Why?'.

"All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people" (Isa. 65:2; Rom. 10:21)

"Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?" (Ez. 33:11)

"Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel?" (Ez. 18:31)

"Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return." (Jer. 8:5)

"Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their worthless foreign idols?" (Jer. 8:19)

If God is controlling everything and everyone, why does he face opposition? Why does he cause people to reject him, only to experience suffering and anger? Why would he ask 'Why?'? If he was in control of everyone's actions, he could make them do whatever he wanted them to do. He would never face opposition or rejection. Furthermore, if God controlled everyone and everything, why would he ask, "Why?"? It simply would not make sense, for he would be asking himself the question. He would not need to ask why if he was the one behind people's actions.

In the New Testament as well, we see people rejecting God and resisting the Holy Spirit.

"Pharisees and experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves" (Lk. 7:30)

"You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!" (Acts 7:51)

And then there are the words of Jesus himself, who said:

Jerusalem . . . how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. (Matt. 23:37)

If God controlled everyone and everything, there would not be anyone rejecting his purpose for them or resisting his Holy Spirit. If God controlled everything, why on earth would Jesus say "you were not willing," as if the person was not controlled by his Father? If God controlled everything, to say such things would be absolutely absurd!

Thus, it is entirely biblical to believe like Whitehead that God does not coerce anyone because everyone has free will and self-determination; he can only be as persuasive as he possibly can.
Whitehead is also accurate in his depiction of God always trying to influence the world with his ideals. This is basically the mission of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are forever trying to draw all of humanity to their wonderful embrace. They seek to reconcile the world to themselves so that they can restore all people to the images of God that they were intended to be. They are fighting to restore peace and "enhance harmony, beauty, and enjoyment."

So you can see that there is plenty we can learn from Whitehead's theology of God. Though he did offer some ideas that are not compatible with Scripture (for such was not his concern), he emphasized a lot of ideas that, though are unusual in many Christian circles, are entirely biblical. We have seen yet again that an unorthodox theologian can challenge ideas we have that may not be biblical (and in this case, are not) and can even cause our theology to evolve into a more Scriptural, more reasonable philosophy.

Notes:
(1) See Roger E. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 600-601.
(2) Ibid., 600.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid., 601.
(7) Gregory A. Boyd, Is God to Blame? Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering (Grand Rapids: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 36. For a further study on this, see Jürgen Moltmann, "The apatheia of God and the freedom of man," in The Crucified God, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 267-270.

(8) Moltmann, 230. Also, see H. Wheeler Robinson, Suffering, Human and Divine (London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1940), 176: "Let us wheel and attack the doctrine of divine impassibility by asking what meaning there can be in a love which is not costly to the lover?"

(9) Terence Fretheim, The Suffering of God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 111. This is a fabulous work on the subject of God's suffering and passion.
(10) Ibid., 123. 
(11) Harold Knight, The Hebrew Prophetic Consciousness (London: Lutterworth Press, 1947), 138.
(12) Fretheim, 123.
(13) Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Perennial Classics, 2001), 289, 292. This is another absolutely essential work on God's passion and suffering. Heschel refers to it as God's pathos.
(14) Fretheim, 111. 
(15) Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1997), 299. 
(16) I owe these insights to Greg Boyd. See Is God to Blame?, 36.
(17) Gregory A. Boyd, Repenting of Religion: Turning from Judgment to the Love of God (Baker Books, 2004), 168.
(18) Robinson, 173. For a fantastic challenge of the Christian understanding of God's immutability and impassibility, see his chapter "The Suffering of God," 158-182.
(19) I would also add that God's omniscience is also adapting with the world. As Nelson Pike states, "God is immutable with respect to His omniscience, but the specific content of God's knowledge might change. It might change as the objects and circumstances that are the objects of His knowledge change." Quoted in Linwood Urban, A Short History of Christian Thought. Rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 188-189.
(20) Heschel, 376.

Book Review: If the Church were Christian

Throughout this book, it becomes obvious that Philip Gulley lives in the love and grace in which Christ lived and of which he taught. Though the whole book is a critique of the church, none of it is done in a harsh, in-your-face way. The entire approach is incredibly graceful. In almost every chapter, he includes an extremely vulnerable account of his own shortfalls in the subject the chapter discusses. He sincerely confesses his own experience with what he talks about. Because of his experiences, he understands the mindsets he is critiquing and is able to provide good solutions in a very Christ-like way.

The whole book is made up of stories he uses to convey his points--examples of Christians or churches who have failed to live the Gospel (including himself), and examples of Christians who live the Gospel in an undeniably Christ-like manner.
That all being said, you should know that Gulley is a liberal theologian. In fact, Gulley is as liberal as one can be within Christianity (can he be considered an actual Christian?). This Quaker Pastor does not believe in the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, or in Christ's sinlessness. He doesn't believe in the inspiration of Scripture. His belief about the Bible (or at least the Gospels--he doesn't talk about his views on the other books) is a combination of the theories of Schleiermacher and Bultmann. Actually, he's like Schleiermacher in a lot of ways. There's reason to believe that he doesn't believe in miracles. He doesn't believe in anything that doesn't make sense to modern beliefs. He is also a universalist and doesn't believe in hell or Satan. He doesn't think homosexuality is a sin, I'm sure he's a theistic evolutionist, and he doesn't believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.

However, on average, he only says something once a chapter that would rattle the orthodox Christian cage. So don't think the entire book is one giant liberal theology rant. But at times, his beliefs are somewhat confusing. For instance, he says that "ancient people, moved by their encounters with Jesus, sought to convey their appreciation for him in the only language they knew--miracle stories, parables, and wisdom sayings." Does this mean he believes Jesus didn't actually say what the Gospels said he did? Yet, a couple pages later, he quotes Jesus--and continues to quote him throughout the book. He sometimes says things that contradict other things that he claims. For example, he believes God is going to save every person, yet he says a couple of times that Heaven is a place no one knows even exists, suggesting that maybe he doesn't believe in Heaven--so what does he mean when he says God saves them? It seems to me that he should have either not voiced his liberal theology in order to make his opinion valid to more Christians, or he should have provided an introduction to his belief system that would make reading his book less confusing.

All of that being said, I don't want to put him in a bad light or suggest that you shouldn't read the book. We can all learn a lot from Gulley. In fact, I would say anyone in ministry--especially in church ministry--should read this book. He has a lot of great things to say from which we can learn a lot. We just have to read the book with a grain of salt. I definitely recommend it. It is very thought-provoking, challenging, convicting, and inspiring.

Below are the book's chapter titles which finish the statement "If the Church were Christian..."
I agree with all of them, except I would say, "Jesus would be a model for living, not JUST an object of worship" (but he doesn't believe in the divinity of Christ so it makes sense that he would word it the way he did).

“If the church were Christian, Jesus would be a model for living, not an object of worship.

If the church were Christian, affirming our potential would be more important than condemning our brokenness.

If the church were Christian, reconciliation would be valued over judgment.

If the church were Christian, gracious behavior would be more important than right belief.

If the church were Christian, inviting questions would be more important than supplying answers.

If the church were Christian, encouraging personal exploration would be more important than communal uniformity.

If the church were Christian, meeting needs would be more important than maintaining institutions.

If the church were Christian, peace would be more important than power.

If the church were Christian, it would care more about love and less about sex.

If the church were Christian, this life would be more important than the afterlife.”

What we can learn from Schleiermacher about Christianity and missions

Romanticism was flourishing in the 18th-19th century when Friedrich Schleiermacher began his ministry. According to Roger Olson, Romanticism was 

  "an emotional reaction to an overemphasis on objective reason in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The Romantics reveled in "feelings," by which they meant not irrational emotions but deep, human longings and appreciation for beauty in nature."(1)

This movement created a cynicism towards traditional Christianity. Schleiermacher wanted to find a way to transcend the Romanticism-Christianity divide by showing that there is a point at which the two meet without difficulty.

Schleiermacher "explained that the essence of religion lies not in rational proofs of the existence of God, supernaturally revealed dogmas or churchly rituals and formalities, but in a . . . feeling (Gefühl) of being utterly dependent on something infinite that manifests itself in and through finite things."(2) Gefühl is a German word without an English equivalent, but could be described as a "deep, inner awareness." The word denotes "the distinctly human awareness of something infinite beyond the self on which the self is dependent for everything."(3) It was through this idea that Schleiermacher appealed both to the Romantics and to the Enlightenment thinkers. He explained that the religious "path was to discover and foster that universal human religiousness within themselves . . . and discover their link with the infinite that was already there within themselves."(4) He came to refer to this deep, inner awareness as "God-consciousness" and believed that the essence of Christianity is this "deep awareness of being dependent upon God (God-consciousness) and upon Jesus Christ as one's link to God."(5)

However, we must separate the wheat from the chaff with Schleiermacher, for he was a liberal theologian who attempted to adapt Christianity to modern beliefs. He believed that the Bible is not infallible or inspired but rather "a record of the religious experiences of the earliest Christian communities," because, to him, "talk about God is always talk about human experience of God."(6)
He degraded the importance of the Old Testament because he, like many others, believed it to be inconsistent with the New Testament.
 
Though he did not reject the doctrine of the Trinity, it didn't fit with his doctrine of God-consciousness and so he had doubts about it and deemed it meaningless to theology.
Furthermore, Schleiermacher seemed "to discourage or forbid belief in special divine interventions."(7)
 
He also believed that Jesus Christ was completely human in nature, but "because of [his] potency of God-consciousness, [he] was the Savior of humanity because . . . Through his life and death . . . Christ draws believers into the power of his own God-consciousness and imparts it to them in some measure."(8) Thus, Christ to him was not actually the incarnate God.
It seems like he tried to adapt Christianity to fit everything he thought it should be. 

What can we learn from Schleiermacher about Christianity?
 
Though I wouldn't say that the heart and soul of Christianity is a deep, inner awareness of God (for there is so much more), there is a lot of truth in his teaching on God-consciousness. Every single person was created with a longing for the divine, or, as a friend of mine likes to call it, the unseen. In this, we are dependent upon God. We need God. Human frailty gives evidence to this.

Why are we never satisfied? Why do we always want more? Because there is something beyond everything that we all need and for which we all have a burning desire. It lies in all humans but, of course, many--if not most--are not aware of it. That is why God-consciousness is important. We become aware of our need for God.
Blaise Pascal says it brilliantly;

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?
This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.(9)

What can we learn from Schleiermacher about missions?

He spoke the language of his age. He found a way where Christianity could appeal to his generation.
There is a danger in this. The danger is that we would compromise Christianity in order to adapt it to modern thinking. We cannot do this. But we can and should find a way where Christianity as the Bible teaches it meets the need of the human longing we see around us.

What is significant to America today? Love!

How many movies are about love? It seems like every single movie has to have a love relationship in it or it is incomplete.
How many songs on the radio are about love?
 Jefferson Airplane sang,

Don't you want somebody to love?
Don't you need somebody to love?
Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love

The Beatles sang,

All you need is love!
Love is all you need!

I could go on because it's everywhere.
Love seems to be the one thing that everybody wants.
Allen Ginsberg wrote, "All we do is for this frightened thing we call Love!"(10)
This should be good news to Christians! Why? Because what does the Bible say that God is? LOVE!
And we have a nation obsessed with the pursuit of love!

People everywhere have fires in their hearts longing for love. Like Paul wrote in Roman, "all creation groans" (Rom. 5:22) because the nature of all things has been upset for all of human history.
Unfortunately, the love our generation finds is not the water they think will put out their fires, but is actually oil labeled "Water." They pour this oil on themselves, completely unaware of the Ocean right behind them.

Our job as disciples of Christ is to become aware and make people aware of that Ocean, to dive in and invite them to dive in with us.
Our job is to introduce them to the salvific love of Christ.

Notes:
(1) Roger E. Olson, "The Father of Modern Liberal Theology: Friedrich Schleiermacher," The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 543.
(2) Ibid. I do not say it here but I would like to add that I agree that the essence of Christianity does not lie "in rational proofs of the existence of God, supernaturally revealed dogmas or churchly rituals and formalities."
(3) Ibid., 544.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid., 545.
(7) Ibid., 546.
(8) Ibid.
(9) I couldn't find the exact reference for this. Apparently it's in his Pensees, page 425.
(10) From his "Wichita Vortex Sutra."