Daily Archives: August 30, 2006

Twelve Theses on Ecclesial Practices

Posted by on August 30, 2006 6 comments

I offer these for discussion. Anyone who’s talked with much about theological topics knows how important I think ecclesial practices are for the shaping of the church’s life and for growth in the Christian faith. These are not meant to be exhaustive in any way, but as discussion starters that will help fill out a further and more complete discussion of ecclesial practices and their importance.

  1. The church is constituted as the body of Christ through Holy Spirit as a visible, tangible social reality which is called to bear witness to the Kingdom of God to the world through proclaiming the gospel and embodying the life of the Kingdom, made present in the church through the power of the Spirit of Christ.
  2. As a visible social reality, the church is marked by concrete core practices that emerge from and shape its life as the people of God. Most centrally these practices consist of the observance of the Eucharist, the practice of Baptism and the proclamation of the Word of God. Flowing from these practices are other central marks of the church that have been variously identified by different traditions. Minimally, they consist of prayer, forgiveness, reconciliation, confession, singing, study of the Scriptures, church discipline, hospitality to the stranger, generosity and care for the poor.
  3. All of the church’s practices, insofar as they are practiced in faithful conformity with the message of Scripture and the way of Christ are entirely the work of the Holy Spirit who transforms the church into the image of Christ enabling and effecting all of the church’s practices and witness.
  4. Church practices are to be ruled and measured by the canon of Scripture, the ecumenical creeds of the church and the discernment of the local congregation, exercised under the guidance of the Spirit.
  5. The church is a fallible human community that is constituted as the body of Christ solely through the power of the Holy Spirit who brings persons into communion with God and one another through Christ. Only insofar as the Spirit constitutes, sustains and enlivens the church’s practices are they binding and transformative.
  6. Church practices, constituted by the work of the Spirit are the central vehicle through which Christians are formed and transformed in their pursuit of discipleship and through which they are conformed to the image of Christ.
  7. The church’s practices are central to the church’s task of rightly remembering the story of Israel and Jesus as the drama of God’s ongoing action in which our lives are shaped and formed. The church’s worst enemy is forgetfulness. Church practices are exercises of embodied memory in which Christians are trained to rightly remember the work of the Triune God in the world through Christ and the Spirit.
  8. The church’s practices are embodied anticipations of the life of the Kingdom of God made present by the power of the Spirit. In and through ecclesial practices, the church tastes of the abundance of God’s gifts as the eschatological Kingdom of God is made present proleptically in the here and now through the work of the Spirit of Christ.
  9. In an age of individualized, interiorized spiritualities and the prevalence of a Gnostic, otherworldly form of Christianity, it is crucial for the church to recover the importance of ecclesial practices for the shaping of Christian life. In contrast to the ethereal spiritualities of contemporary society and the Gnostic tendencies of much of modern fundamentalism, the church must reassert the bodiliness and corporeality of its life which takes shape through the Spirit’s work of causing the church to “suffer” the practices that mark the life of discipleship.
  10. The embodied practices of the church are the central means through which Christians are empowered by the Holy Spirit to locate the totality of their identity in Christ. The practices of the church re-member the body of Christ and continually re-form it through the work of the Spirit to truly be the church in the world, bearing faithful witness to the lordship of Christ.
  11. The practices of the church of the are the central locus of the church’s resistence to the idolatorous principalities and powers of this age. Through the work of the Spirit in the practices of the church, the church is formed into a body capable of resisting the modern idolatries of consumerism, capitalism, globalization, sex, the family and the nation state.
  12. This emphasis on church practices as central for contemporary ecclesiology does not deemphasize the doctrine of justification by grace, nor does it make human action an autonomous mediator of divine action. Rather it locates all authentic ecclesial action within the sphere of God’s gracious Trinitarian self-giving in which, through his kenotic outpouring of love, God graciously makes himself present through Christ and the Spirit, constituting the church and establishing it and its practices through his sustaining word of grace. All church practices are but the bodying forth of God’s gracious gift of himself through Christ and the Spirit. The Triune God alone is the agent of redemption and transformation in the church and the world.

Bonhoeffer on the Ultimate and the Penultimate

Posted by on August 30, 2006 6 comments

I’ll be returning to my comments on the chapters of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics in the next couple days. But, to get things rolling I thought I’d share an excellent quote from Bonhoeffer’s chapter, “Ultimate and Penultimate Things”.


Compromise always arises from hatred of the ultimate. The Christian spirit of compromise comes from this animosity against the justification of the sinner by grace alone. The world, and life in it, must be protected from this invasion into its domain. One must manage the world only by worldly means. The ultimate is to have no say in the formation of life in the world. Even to ask about the ultimate, is regarded as radicalism, as a lack of love toward the given orders of the world and toward those who are dependent on them. Freedom from the world, which is Christ’s gift to Christians, and renunciation of the world (1 John 2:17) are accused of being unnatural and opposed to creation, and estrangement from, or even hostility toward, the world and humanity. Instead, accommodation to the point of resignation, or to a trite worldly wisdom, is passed off as genuine Christian openness to the world and love.


Radicalism hates time. Compromise hates eternity.
Radicalism hates patience. Compromise hates decision.
Radicalism hates wisdom. Compromise hates simplicity.
Radicalism hates measure. Compromise hates the immeasurable.
Radicalism hates the real. Compromise hates the word.

To contrast radicalism and compromise like this makes clear enough that both attitudes are equally opposed to Christ; for the concepts that are here set up against each other are one in Jesus Christ. The question about the Christian life, therefore, will be answered neither by radicalism nor by compromise; Jesus Christ himself decides and answers it. The relationship between the ultimate and the penultimate is resolved only in Christ.

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