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.
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