Genuine Christianity is evidenced in a personal faith grounded in the common faith of the NT and participation in the corporate faith of a believing community. These labels— “personal, corporate, and common” — do not designate three types of faith but rather one faith worked out in three arenas, each with a distinguishable perspective
Figure 1: Three Arenas of Faith—the New Testament Pattern
“Three Arenas of Faith” is THE New Testament pattern for the church: the Arena of Common Faith, The Arena of Corporate Faith, and the Arena of Private/Personal Faith.
In the personal arena, individuals work out their private circumstances in personal prayers to God. As the label “private” or “personal” suggests, the content of these prayers involves aspects of individual life unaddressed or inappropriate to the corporate life of the church: personal matters related to church involvement, family, friends, education, careers, callings, finances, marriage, children, etc. In routinely lifting up prayers to God on such matters, individuals work out personal convictions that enable them to walk by faith in areas where scripture is silent or indefinite.
Although this arena is designated “personal” or “private,” all three perspectives of faith are present within it. The personal-faith perspective, however, is the operative one, being intrinsic to the personal/private arena, hence this arena’s designation as “personal/private.” In a healthy community of faith, personal faith will naturally expand to include the corporate faith of an individual’s faith community as well as that community’s conception of the common faith. In other words, the extrinsic “faiths” of the corporate and common arenas become more and more intrinsic within the personal arena as believers become more and more mature.
Romans chapter 14 is the classic biblical reference for the private arena of the faith, especially v22. (Note that “personal” is in brackets as a modifier of “faith” because Paul would never tell believers to keep the common faith shared by all Christians “to themselves.”)
The [personal] faith you have, keep to yourself before God. Blessed is the one who does not judge himself by what he approves—Rom 14:22 (NET).
The goal of personal faith is in the second sentence of v22: a clear or good conscience devoid of any self-condemnation. The alternative is in v23: condemnation.
But the man who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not do so from faith, and whatever is not from faith is sin—Rom 14:23 (NET).
The word “faith” in v22 refers to the content of belief while “faith” in v23 refers to the act of believing. The content of personal faith in v22 has already been illustrated above and includes choices related to church involvement, family, friends, education, careers, callings, finances, marriage, children, etc. The act of believing in v23 is manifested in maintaining a clear/good conscience toward God in the preceding matters—the absence of which would be the sin of unbelief.
Figure 2: Three Arenas of Faith—a Seamless Experience
The corporate arena of faith follows the pattern of the private arena but from a corporate perspective rather than a personal one. In the corporate arena, faith communities work out their corporate circumstances in communal prayers informed by the personal faiths of community members and their corporate understanding of the common faith of all Christians. As the label “corporate” suggests, the content of such prayers involves corporate matters: statements of faith and doctrines, hermeneutics, worship, evangelism, benevolence, missions, preaching, teaching, programs, strategic direction, etc. Although this arena is designated as “corporate,” all three perspectives of faith are present in this arena. The corporate-faith perspective, however, is the operative/intrinsic one, hence this arena’s designation as “corporate.”
Proof-texting “corporate faith” in the NT would seem difficult, but the problem is the blindness of mistaken hermeneutics. Before the coming of Jesus, the corporate faith of God’s people came from the hand of God, embodied in the sacred scriptures of Israel.
Therefore what advantage does the Jew have, or what is the value of circumcision? 2 Actually, there are many advantages. First of all, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God [as the corporate faith of Israel]—Rom 3:1–2 (NET).
The major issue dominating at least half of the NT is the relationship between the corporate faith of Jews in relation to the corporate faiths of Gentiles. Paul’s mission among the Gentiles was to give them a corporate faith based on the wisdom of Torah apart from Torah’s ethnic aspects. The Gospel of Matthew is a gospel designed to shape the corporate faith of a Jewish community. The Letter to the Hebrews depreciates the Judaism of unbelieving Judaism, not the Judaism of believing Jews. The Apostle Paul never boasts of his Jewishness in the past tense.
Figure 4: The Scope of Corporate “Faiths” in the NT
Figure 4 illustrates the diversity of corporate faiths in the NT. Although corporate faith is the most neglected arena of faith among present-day Protestants, the scope of corporate “faiths” among ancient Christians was hard to ignore—as broad as the distance between Jews and Gentiles and as high as the distance between Jews and Samaritans. The scope today is not one bit smaller.
Figure 3: Relationship of Faith and Certainty
Before getting into the common faith, we digress in Figure 3 to show the three arenas of faith (common, corporate, and personal) alongside three arenas of certainty (absolute, systematic, and psychological).1 As shown, the corporate arena is the arena of both systematic faith and systematic certainty with “the system” in question being a hermeneutical system that interprets and applies scripture.
Note the top tiers of both faith and certainty are in the divine/abstract arena belonging only to God. In other words, (1) only God can be absolutely certain, and (2) only God knows the exact boundaries of the common faith. On the latter point, scripture notwithstanding, believers do not know the precise boundaries of the common faith with absolute certainty due to the inherent fallibility of the hermeneutical systems native to the corporate arena. This means the common faith exists in the world only in its imperfect articulations within the corporate and personal arenas. The fallibility of hermeneutics is the source of imperfection in both cases: (1) the systematic but fallible hermeneutics of the corporate arena and (2) the personal, unsystematic, “more metaphorical than literal,” hermeneutics of individuals in the private arena. The latter arena, however, is a problem only to the extent that the corporate arena fails to shape the personal “hermeneutics” of its members. This leaves the corporate arena of faith and its hermeneutics as the major source of division among Christian groups. Every faith community, for example, could theoretically have a corporate faith based on a hermeneutic that upholds a unique understanding of the common faith. Thankfully, division is not that bad. As it turns out though, the source of the problem—hermeneutics—can be the source of the solution. Although hermeneutics can never achieve absolute certainty, good hermeneutics can achieve a systematic certainty that can close the gap between differing views of the common faith.
Hermeneutics has a bad reputation among many believers because it aggravates their anxiety with answers that seem needlessly uncertain. This leads them to reject hermeneutics in preference for doubling down on an allegedly non-hermeneutical “plain reading” of scripture that ironically leaves them with an unacknowledged hermeneutic that will never be examined, much less corrected. One way to lessen this tendency is to understand there are two types of certainty: (1) systematic certainty in the corporate arena and (2) psychological certainty in the personal arena. Saving faith is grounded in the psychological certainty attainable in the latter, not the unattainable systematic certainty of the former.
For the present discussion, a major point is the value of hermeneutics is in its role in forming, shaping, and maturing the personal faith of community members. A superior hermeneutic within a particular faith community makes possible better, more compelling understandings of their corporate faith, which will, in turn, better correct and mature the private faiths of individuals in that community. A superior hermeneutic will also expand the quality and scope of a faith community’s fellowship with other faith communities.
For more insight on how the phrase “corporate faith” can be used, see the following excerpt of search results from Logos Bible Software through approximately 10,000 academic-level religious texts.
So, the private arena influences the corporate arena and vice versa, but the arena of common faith is transcendent, timeless, and universal, and thus not affected by either the corporate or private faiths of real-world believers and their communities. The common faith differs from the corporate and personal arenas in that the common faith exists in different forms and different realms: (1) a perfect and heavenly understanding of the common faith in the Mind of God, (2) an imperfect and earthly understanding of the common faith in the metaphorical “minds” of every Christian community, and (3) a similarly flawed understanding of the common faith in the mind of every Christian believer.
Although God has given humanity significant insight into His understanding of the common faith through the bible, that insight is clouded by fallible interpretations of scripture, hence the possibilities for incorrectly drawing the earthly boundaries of the common faith either more broadly or more narrowly than God draws His heavenly boundary are not insignificant. For example, the private and corporate faiths of Reformed believers make the Reformed doctrine of imputation a part of the common faith of all Christians in the minds of Reformed communities and their adherents but not necessarily in the Mind of God.
Simply refusing to draw boundaries for the common faith, however, is not an option for believers or their faith communities. Although the NT cautions believers not to judge one another, it also provides numerous examples of believers being excluded from fellowship for offenses ranging from simple sloth to outright apostasy—from matters of wisdom to matters of faith. So, we risk God’s displeasure when we rule out Christian identity for those whom He rules in and vice versa, yet we can’t escape that risk by simply opting out of any concern for setting boundaries on the size and shape of the common faith.
We necessarily have to work out the boundaries of the common faith within our corporate and private faiths, but we must do it with care lest we simply frock our corporate faith as the common faith for all and damn all those who disturb our sensitivities. In the meantime, the Three Arenas of Faith can help foster unity by distinguishing the corporate faith that binds Christians together into communities of faith from the common faith that binds Christians together across time and space.
Figure 5: Looking at the World through the Lens of the Three Arenas
A good test of any model is its explanatory power. Figure 5 illustrates how “breaking” the Three Arenas by deleting one or two of the arenas describes real-world phenomena. The first— “Sheilaism” — needs explanation: Columnist Don Kahle observes, “Sheila ‘has a code of ethics, but it's no longer connected to a sacred text or an observing deity. It's personal—and unpublished. Sheila abides by Sheilaism. Sheilaism is good for Sheila, but it doesn't build community. Nobody but Sheila knows what are the codes of Sheilaism. Often Sheila doesn't know herself until something 'doesn't feel right'.”2
Sheilaism is “C” in Figure 5—a personal faith shorn of any connection to the corporate faith of a believing community or a common faith that would unite multiple communities.
A “dead faith” is “A” in Figure 5— a faith that exists only in history books. It doesn’t exist in any group’s corporate faith or any individual’s private faith.
A “cult” is “B” in Figure 5—a corporate faith that has no common faith with other groups and has not interest in the personal faith of its members.
“Traditionalism” is “A and B” in Figure 5—a faith that exists as a matter of habit in various groups who share it among themselves but is not a living faith at a personal level for anyone.
“Seeker” is “B and C” in Figure 5—a faith that is nascent at a personal level and looking for a community were it can blossom.
“Tele-Evangelism” is “A and C” in Figure 5—a faith that is alive at a personal level and is shared among concrete communities but does not share any corporate faith due to indifference or hindrance.
We can validate a model by seeing if it works in the real world. The illustrations above validate the utility of the Three Arenas of Faith Model.
“The Three Arenas” is a thoroughly biblical model for upholding and respecting the hard-won convictions that bind believers to their respective faith communities while also providing a compelling rationale for being charitable toward the convictions of differing faith communities in the interest of Christian unity. The “Three Arenas” is where we discover our differences more often trace to our hermeneutic than to scripture. It’s also where we see how our anxiety over our relationship with God is often the source of our alienation from other Christians.
—Bill Brewer
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You will likely see some inconsistency in labeling the arenas of faith and other subjects. “Personal” and “community” are absolute labels, for example, and private and corporate are more relative. On the topic of certainty, the lower tier is called “psychological.” Depending on the subject, the top tier can be labeled “abstract, heavenly, common, mystical, etc.” There is no way to standardize terminology without creating technical definitions that would be more of a barrier to communication than a help. We change labels to make the most sense in the immediate context.
Kahle, Don (26 October 2007). "Will Downtown Progress Be Thwarted? Blame Sheila". The Register-Guard. Eugene, OR. p. A13. ISSN 0739-8557. Retrieved 11 September 2018.