Separately, I don’t think your example about the natures of Christ quite works here. Understanding the identity of Christ is the very stuff of the gospel in way that articulating our identity as the church is not. I think we risk losing any meaningful distinction between Christ and the church if this is unrecognized.

Can you recommend a book or an article where Webster expresses this wariness?

Thanks!

Yet I noticed in many of my friends’ interaction with local churches (friends who were in some way ‘outside the church’ or very critical of it), there was a desire to see something beyond the “personal” realm mentioned, and a desire to see a church that did not necessarily have hi-tech, or trendy pastoral care as its main signifier, they actually were desiring some distinctive elements, even a “tribal” character

The real fear is there, when language comes in, as in Lindbeck, that many of the doctrinal functions of the Church are passed along in communal, learned forms: a grammar. This strays into a possible world (though i dont think it has to go there) of sheer inculcation of right beliefs vs. active participation of God in history. Yet most of the rest of his work actually helps the opposite: that the Gospel really is peculiar. Hauerwas is also obviously similar in this.

Yet it is a good question, and I am with you, i think the dichotomy is false, much of pragmatic ecclesiology is based on how effective our witness is by how we are shaping our communal life, and this is contained within the Gospel itself. So it might not be that “new ecclesiology” is slighting God’s direct activity, but simply magnifying a portion of what that is, namely, through the Church’s life to itself and the beyond.

Haven’t read the article, but based on your synopsis, Halden, I think Healy’s missed some key points. Christology, soteriology, and ecclesiology simply can’t be separated like this, particularly in Cavanaugh’s work. As I read them – and I’m an “evangelical,” mind you – part of the current state of things is a preoccupation with individualized piety, the “personal relationship with Christ” in which the claims of the gospel have for so long been couched in our culture. They respond to that by saying that such is a captive gospel without a robust ecclesiological embodiment. And as I read Scripture, that’s precisely what’s called for in the narrative.

I certainly wouldn’t mind if more attention was paid to the Triune God’s direct activity, but if we understand that such is in great part mediated to the world through the church – we are a priesthood after all – then I think we run into a false dichotomy. This is probably why I like Lohfink so much, too.

This is not to say that there isn’t a legitimate point here, but I’m not so sure it would even be conceivable for the premoderns (or at least the Medieval ones) to run across these issues.