" 84CD6F076EBF75325F380D8209373AE1 A N I N T RO D U CT I O N TO ECCLESIOLOGY

Ticker

6/recent/ticker-posts

A N I N T RO D U CT I O N TO ECCLESIOLOGY

 


By Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

                                                     Introduction

ECCLESIOLOGICAL RENAISSANCE AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES

Ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, has risen to the center of theological interest in recent decades. Alongside the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) and the Trinity, the nature and function of the church occupy theologians of various per[1]suasions. That said, as the senior Catholic ecclesiologist Hans Küng observes in the opening of his classic The Church, “Though there is much talk nowadays about the Church in the secular world, there is not a corresponding awareness of what the Church is.”

 As important a role as ecclesiology is playing in contemporary theology, we should recall that the doctrine of the church did not emerge as a fully developed separate locus until the time of the Reformation. This is of course not to ignore the many church-related themes discussed already in the patristic and later doctrinal manuals, particularly sacramentology. It is rather to remind us of the polemical setting of the Reformation theology out of which a full-orbed ecclesiology, an understanding of the “true” church, emerged.2 Not surprisingly, the first full-scale ecclesiologies at the time advanced slowly and had a somewhat haphazard tone due to circumstances.3 That situation has happily changed. The theologian writing in the first decades of the third millennium is fortunate to be able to tap into unprecedented resources due to the resurgence of and enthusiasm over the doctrine of the church over many decades.4 Indeed, the flow of new publications is overwhelming. A theologian must be selective in order to say something worthwhile.

While there may be a number of reasons for the resurgence of the doctrine of the church, a main catalyst seems to have been the birth and growth of the modern ecumenical movement. No other movement in the whole history of the Christian church, perhaps with the exception of the Reformation, has shaped the thinking and practice of Christianity as much as the movement for Christian unity. Now it is true that the history of formal ecumenism in terms of the formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948 is quite brief, but its roots go back at least to the end of the nineteenth century.

Any talk about the unity of the church presupposes some tentative understanding of what the church is. You cannot unite entities without knowing what kind of organisms you are trying to unite. The ecumenical movement has also helped open up a fruitful dialogue about the nature and mission of the Christian community. The older controversial approach in which differences and disputes often took center stage has moved aside to make room for an approach in which churches seek to learn from and appreciate each other. The Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church (1962–1965), without doubt the most significant council of the Christian church, completely changed the horizons of the largest church in the world with regard to efforts for unity. At the same time, the Eastern Orthodox churches, including the influential Russian churches, joined the WCC and significantly broadened the membership.

Two other developments in the global church, partly interrelated but also in[1]dependent to some extent, have inspired and challenged theological reflection on the church: the rapid growth of Christianity outside the Global North (Europe, North America)—so much so that currently the majority of Christians are in the Global South (Asia, Africa, Latin America)—and the rise of nontraditional forms of the church both in the West and elsewhere. The latter development is in general connected to what are nowadays known as Free Churches. The expression Free Churches involves two primary meanings. It refers to communities with congregationalist polity or church constitution, and it emphasizes a stated separation between church and state.5 New congregational models are emerging, especially in the Majority World but also in the West, and many specialists are of the opinion that the Free Church congregational model will be the major paradigm in the third millennium. Even Pope Benedict XVI, during the time he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, expressed severe criticism of congregational ecclesiologies but admitted that this is the direction that Christian ecumenism is heading.

 If one is not ready simply to discount the ecclesiality (the “churchliness”) of Free Churches and other nontraditional church forms, one must determine conditions for being a church that are broad enough to include these. The approach of traditional theology has too often been to impose its own often quite limited definition of churchhood on its younger counterparts. Naturally, those churches that define what ecclesiality means usually fulfill the requirements of their own definitions! But this does not further the discussion ecumenically. For older churches simply to discard the enormous potential and force of nontraditional churches by classifying them as something less than a church is both dangerous and useless. Younger churches have shown their vitality, and now it is left to theology to catch up with these developments. This has always been the main task of theology, to reflect on and make sense of what is happening in Christian life and churches.

The expansive growth of Christian churches outside the traditionally Christian West has posed another challenging question to theology: How do we account culturally for the existence of churches in various contexts? What does it require to be a church amid an “animistic” culture in Africa or a highly spiritualist Asian culture?7 What from the mainly Western heritage is transferable to the rest of the world, and what has to be revised and corrected? And there are other contextual challenges: What would the church look like if it were to make women and other minorities feel at home and find their potential? Or, what does it mean for a church to be a church for those who struggle for freedom and equality? Furthermore, today the Christian church also faces the challenge and opportunity of interfaith relations. The Muslim ummah, the Jewish synagogue, the Buddhist sangha, and various Hindu communities—to name the traditions engaged in part four—have their own visions and practices for religious communities. How are we to conceive of the mutual relations between these di[1]verse communities anchored on a particular spiritual-religious tradition?

 

DO WE REALLY NEED A RELIGIOUS

COMMUNITY FOR THE FAITH?

The rise to prominence of the theology of the Christian community is not self-evident in light of the rampant individualism of the post-Enlightenment world, particularly in the Global North. There are voices contesting the necessity of a community, the church: Why not have one’s own religion in the solitude of the heart? Friedrich Schleiermacher, “the father of modern theology,” famously stated that what distinguishes Protestantism from Roman Catholicism is that the former makes the relation of individuals to the church dependent on their relation to Christ whereas the latter makes the relation of individuals to Christ dependent on their relation to the church.8 Paradoxical as this statement is, it is also both an overstatement and inaccurate historically. Both Protestant and Catholic theologies traditionally have discussed the means of salvation, including the sacraments, prior to the topic of the church, the implication being that salvation is received individually, after which faith is nurtured by the church community. Even the Catholic dogmatic manuals up until our day followed the same route. This is, of course, the rule even in contemporary systematic theologies with few exceptions.

Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology, in contrast, discusses the foundational theological issues concerning the church first and then launches into the topic of faith and salvation.9 Doing so challenges the established canons of systematic theologies. Pannenberg rightly contends that “the fellowship of individuals with Jesus is always mediated by the church, by its proclamation and its administration of the sacraments.”10 However, at the same time he acknowledges that even though faith is ecclesially mediated, it is still ad[1]dressed to individuals for personal appropriation. Jesus addressed individuals directly with his announcement of the coming kingdom, “and did not, like other Jewish movements of the time, attempt to achieve a gathered eschatological remnant community or any other form or historical manifestation of the true people of God.”

 

THE NATURE AND PLAN OF THIS PRIMER

The present book attempts what is now called “comparative ecclesiology,” which has become popular especially in ecumenical circles. According to the widely used textbook Models of the Church, by one of the leading Catholic ecclesiologists, Avery Dulles, SJ, the term comparative ecclesiology “signifies a systematic re[1]flection on the points of similarity and difference in the ecclesiologies of different denominations.”12 Comparative ecclesiology usually draws from two kinds of sources: more or less official denominational confessional writings and texts of representative theologians. In principle, this is also the approach in this primer. That said, the present book goes beyond the traditional comparative ecclesiology in that the last part of the book also focuses on what may conveniently be called “contextual” (sometimes also “global”) ecclesiologies.

The book consists of four parts. Part one seeks to survey major ecclesiological traditions from the oldest (Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic) to Protestantism to Free Churches and Pentecostals/charismatics. Alongside the description of each community’s distinctive theology and practices, a leading theologian of the doctrine of the church from each particular tradition will be engaged (except for Pentecostals/charismatics, to be explained below).

The focus of part two is contextual and global ecclesiologies, in other words, doctrines of the church stemming from a particular agenda such as feminism or sociopolitical liberation or from a particular area of the world, especially the Global South. Even nowadays, unfortunately, these ecclesiologies are either neglected in theological discussions or only paid lip service. In light of the radical transformation of the global church, with the great majority of Christians now residing in the Global South, as well as the springing forth of new types of ecclesial existence, such an omission can no longer be tolerated.

Part three seeks to analyze and reflect on the life and mission of the church by focusing on such key ecclesiological issues as ministry and ministers, sacraments/ ordinances, and liturgy and worship. This discussion, like the rest of the book, attempts to maintain an ecumenical approach, thus not intentionally privileging any particular Christian tradition.

 In the spirit of the groundbreaking work of the British Anglican Keith Ward’s Religion and Community, which compares the church with other religious com[1]munities, part four represents comparative theology, that is, comparing and contrasting Christian community with Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist communities. At the moment, no other major ecclesiological text is doing that work.

To read full article or download book click here.

Post a Comment

0 Comments