Daily Archives: September 26, 2007

Unity and the Papal Office: What alternative is there?

Posted by on September 26, 2007 13 comments

The Catholic Church, both in her praxis and in her solemn documents, holds that the communion of the particular Churches with the Church of Rome, and of their Bishops with the Bishop of Rome, is—in God’s plan—an essential requisite of full and visible communion. Indeed full communion, of which the Eucharist is the highest sacramental manifestation, needs to be visibly expressed in a ministry in which all the Bishops recognize that they are united in Christ and all the faithful find confirmation for their faith. The first part of the Acts of the Apostles presents Peter as the one who speaks in the name of the apostolic group and who serves the unity of the community—all the while respecting the authority of James, the head of the Church in Jerusalem. This function of Peter must continue in the Church so that under her sole Head, who is Jesus Christ, she may be visibly present in the world as the communion of all his disciples.

Do not many of those involved in ecumenism today feel a need for such a ministry? A ministry which presides in truth and love so that the ship—that beautiful symbol which the World Council of Churches has chosen as its emblem— will not be buffeted by the storms and will one day reach its haven.  –Et Unum Sint, 91.

I find this quote from one the late John Paul II’s most important encyclicals to be quite interesting.  I’m sure at first glance, any protestant reader will immediately dispute the claims that are made in the first paragraph regarding the role of Peter and his continuing office in the church.  However, I am more interested in the second paragraph.  Is not John Paul II correct in his statement that many or perhaps most Christian who are ecumenically minded long for there to be a ministry, or a minister that can serve as a focal point for the unity of the church throughout the world?  Do we not need some sort of ministerial focal point to orient the whole church if the church is ever to be one in any meaningful sense?  I am here, of course excluding any simple talk of “spiritual unity”, which I take to be a cop out and a rejection of the corporeality and visibility of the church.

So, if it is the case that we do need some sort of centralized ministry for unity, what should that be if not the papacy?  To be sure, I think there are legitimate criticisms to be made of the papacy, but I think the question to protestants who desire unity is what alternative to the papacy they might envision that would fulfil the role that the papacy seeks to fill.  So, is there any alternative that a protestant might legitimately point to in place of the ministry of unity that the bishop of Rome provides?

Jesus and the Victory of God (2): Heavy Traffic on the Wredebahn

Posted by on September 26, 2007 Comments Off

In his second chapter, Write begins to lay the foundation of his argument through an exhaustive examination of the history of Jesus scholarship. At the outset he notes two very broad and basic threads in such scholarship. The first takes its impetus from William Wrede’s “thoroughgoing skepticism” which believes we can know very little about Jesus, or at least that the sources we have that purport to tell us about him are more or less pure fiction. The second thread derives from Schweitzer’s “thoroughgoing eschatology” which attempted to place Jesus in his first century setting (which for Schweitzer meant a very specific interpretation of “apocalyptic eschatology”). Thus, Wright sees two basic threads, one of them based in methodological skepticism and the other in a desire to locate Jesus within the context of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology which consequently places more value on the biblical records (p. 28-29).

Wright then proceeds to examine the major players whom he judges to fall within the train of Wrede’s skepticism (the “New Quest”). The first of these is the contemporary “Jesus Seminar”. Wright explores their agenda and methodology at length, and engages is an eviscerating critique of their methodology, particularly the way in which they engage in “voting” on the “authentic” statements of Jesus and the way in which such results are calculated (p. 33-35). He also explores the latent positivism that undergirds their quite confident account of “what Jesus really said”.

Wright then moves on to critique Burton Mack, and particularly his idiosyncratic dismissal of the gospel of Mark as a source of historical knowledge about Jesus (p. 41). In this context Wright also discusses the matter of “Q” and the ways in which statements about such a document, and the more strangely imagined “Q community” are thrown around by Jesus scholars that fall within the “Wredebahn“. Wright then moves into a lengthy and well-written critique of John Dominic Crossan who Wright sees (rightly in my judgment) as the most comprehensive and thoroughgoing contributor to Jesus studies in this school of thought. Wright proceeds to systematically examine and deconstruct Crossan’s presentation of Jesus and the epistemological and theological assumptions that sustain his wildly speculative account of Jesus and the early church (in fact it is Crossan’s reconstruction of the early church that is the most obscenely groundless of all – see p. 62-63). Wright concludes his critique of the Wredebahn scholars with an examination of the various people who posit Jesus as a cynic sage. Wright gives particular attention to Marcus Borg, who he regards as the most nuanced and variegated of all the members of this stream of Jesus studies. Wright concludes that all the members of the Wredebahn have ended up with a de-Judaized Jesus and an image of the early church that is historically incredible. He proposes that another mode of “questing” for the historical Jesus is necessary.

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