Category Archives: Theses

Kingdom-World-Church: Some Provisional Theses

Posted by on June 8, 2010 252 comments

by Nathan R. Kerr, Ry O. Siggelkow, and Halden Doerge

In a recent conversation on this blog regarding an important review, by Ry Siggelkow, I (Nate Kerr) suggested in the comments that to think rightly what it means to say that “mission makes the church,” that mission as lived proclamation of and witness to Christ’s Lordship is indeed constitutive of the church’s existence in the world, we will need to engage in a thoroughgoing reconsideration of the church’s relation to the world in light of the apocalyptic inbreaking of the Kingdom of God that happens in the historicity of Jesus Christ. In the course of those comments I offered to write a “guest post” in which I gave some indication of what I think those reconsiderations might entail. This is that post—which has come together with more than just a little help from my friends, Halden and Ry. Together we offer these reflections in hope that they may contribute to the task of theology in the service of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We should like to begin these brief reflections with an oft-quoted passage from the conclusion of John Howard Yoder’s Body Politics:

The believing body is the image that the new world—which in light of the ascension and Pentecost is on the way—casts ahead of itself. The believing body of Christ is the world on the way to its renewal; the church is the part of the world that confesses the renewal to which all the world is called. (Yoder, Body Politics, 78)

This passage and others like it from Yoder’s oeuvre have been the impetus for a number of contemporary modes of “ecclesiocentric” construals of the Kingdom of God in relation to the world. The church’s missionary thinking, so the argument goes, is ecclesiocentric just to the extent that the church ontologically precedes the world and, ultimately, supercedes the world with respect to the Kingdom’s eschatological fulfillment. As the late twentieth-century theologian and missiologist J.C. Hoekendijk has argued, however, such “church-centric missionary thinking” is itself a false start. For from within such ecclesiocentric thinking, Hoekendijk claims, the call to mission, or evangelism—that is, the call to proclaim and to embody “the gospel”—often turns out to be “little else than a call to restore ‘Christendom,’ the ‘Corpus Christianum,’ as a solid, well-integrated cultural complex, directed and dominated by the Church” (Hoekendijk, Church Inside Out, 15). That is to say, the church aligns itself with the Kingdom and against the world by way of the production of its own alternative, habitable culture. As John Flett has convincingly argued, mission thereby becomes tied inextricably to the extension of this “culture”; this culture, this particular way of life, just is the gospel that is proclaimed, and the church’s missionary relation to the world cannot but be a function of its own culture—gospel proclamation turns out to be a matter of the church’s propagation of its own way of life, and evangelism a mode of integrating the world into this particular habitable culture.[1] Thus, on such an ecclesiocentric reading of the church-world relationship, the church is most missionary precisely at that point at which the church is most intentionally “self-regarding” (Hauerwas). And herein lies the reason why we must insist upon resisting such an understanding of the church as ontologically “prior” to the world as such, in relation to the Kingdom: viz., it presents us with not only an ecclesiologically but missiologically idealist logic—such an intentionally self-regarding conception of mission requires the construction of another (“the world”) as productive and reflective of its own identity.

The problem with such an ecclesio-concentric understanding of the church’s relation to the Kingdom and the world, says Hoekendijk, is that it misconstrues the basic scriptural sense in which the kingdom of God is first and foremost the Kingdom for the world. The Kingdom is oriented from beginning to end towards the oikoumene—the whole world.

For this oikoumene the Kingdom is destined; world (kosmos/oikoumene) and Kingdom are correlated to each other; the world is conceived as a unity, the scene of God’s great acts: it is the world which has been reconciled (II Cor. 5:19), the world which God loves (John 3:16) and which he has overcome in his love (John (16:33); the world is the field in which the seeds of the Kingdom are sown (Matt. 13:38)—the world is consequently the scene for the proclamation of the Kingdom. (Hoekendijk, Church Inside Out, 41)

In short: “Kingdom and world belong together.” The order of God’s economy is thus “God-World-Church, not God-Church-World” (71). This is the order of God’s own missionary existence in Christ. And by participation in this missionary existence of God, we must give new expression to the church’s own missionary existence: the order of this existence must be that of Kingdom-World-Church, not Kingdom-Church-World.

What we should like to propose, then, is that the quote from Yoder with which we began these reflections should be read through the perspective of this alternative Kingdom-World-Church order. Precisely as such, we might better come to understand the implications of Yoder’s insight that mission has to do with coming to “see the church in relationship to the world rather than defining ecclesial existence ‘by definition’ or ‘as such’” (Yoder, Royal Priesthood, 78). The church only exists as “living from and toward the promise of the whole world’s salvation.” (Yoder, Priestly Kingdom, 12).

As such, the church thereby exists as one dimension of a thoroughgoing apocalyptic realism. That is to say, the church exists insofar as it is constituted by the manner in which, in the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, “the reality of God has entered into the reality of this world,” proving victorious over the fallen powers of this world for the sake of this world’s salvation (Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 54). What really matters, then, for the church, is its mode of participation “in the reality of God and the world in Jesus Christ today” (55).[2] And that reality is without reserve that of the apocalyptic rectification of all things to God in Christ. That event of apocalyptic rectification is constitutive of reality itself; and the event of the church takes place firmly within that reality of the reconciled world “that is real only through the reality of God” disclosed in Jesus Christ (54).[3] The church thus exists as an ergon Kyriou (a work of the Lord), which means to say that the church exists for the sake of the unique and special share that it is given in the cosmic meaning of the sovereignty of this world’s living Lord. But precisely as such the church does exist, and its existence is precisely that of a special function and task. As to the nature of that special existence, function, and task, we should like to conclude these reflections. We shall do so by putting forward some provisional theses on the existence, nature, and task of the church. There could be more, of course, and these could be articulated with more depth and precision. But these are, after all, mere theses—and provisional at that.

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Canonical Theism: 30 Theses

Posted by on February 26, 2009 35 comments

This list of theses is authored by William Abraham, the main fellow behind recent publications that are proffering the label “Canonical Theism” as a sort of ecumenical and ecclesial movement that endeavors to appropriate the theological heritage of the church in a particular way. Specifically this movement centers on re-envisioning the very idea of “canon”, attempting to purge it of any connection with a theological epistemology and broadening to include vast segments of the church’s traditions, practices, saints, liturgies, images, hymns, etc. I’ll have some thoughts on this later, especially after I get around to reading the book which bears name of the movement. For now here’s Abraham’s thirty theses on the movement. I’m curious as to what folks might think about this construction. I have quite a few questions and apprehensions.

Thesis I: Canonical theism is a term invented to capture the robust form of theism manifested, lived, and expressed in the canonical heritage of the Church. It is proposed as both a living form of theism and a substantial theological experiment for today. We can explicate it further by distinguishing it from other forms of theism and by indicating more clearly how it is related to the canonical heritage of the Church.

Thesis II: Canonical theism is to be distinguished from Mere theism, Philosophical theism, Process theism, Open theism, Classical theism, and Consensual theism.

Thesis III: It differs from Mere theism in being much more robust; thus it is unapologetically Trinitarian in form and content.

Thesis IV: It differs from Philosophical theism, say, Anselmic or Perfect Being Theism, in that it is derived from the canonical heritage of the Church rather than developed from philosophical sources.

Thesis V: Canonical theism differs from Process theism in that it has no stake in the theism advanced by Process philosophers and theologians are free to examine the claims of Process theism on merit.

Thesis VI: The same principle applies mutatis mutandis to present attempts to develop the form of Open theism that is currently being articulated by some American Evangelicals. Canonical theists are free to examine the claims of this form of theism on its merits and to either reject it or to accept it as additional midrashic extension of their theism.

Thesis VII: Canonical theism differs from Classical theism in that the latter is a historical notion drawn from the history of ideas and used to designate a strong monotheism with impassibilist connotations. Canonical theism is first and foremost Trinitarian; and, while it readily absorbs the classical attributes of monotheism, the commitment on passability is modest and complex.

Thesis VIII: Canonical theism differs from the Consensual theism of, say, Thomas Oden, in two ways. First, it is skeptical of the claim that there exists a consensus across the patristic era, Roman Catholicism, Magisterial Protestantism, Evangelical orthodoxy, and the like. While there are clear elements of overlap between these groups, there are very serious differences that challenge the claim of consensus. Second, Canonical theism focuses on the public, canonical decisions of the Church existing in space and time across the first millennium.

Thesis IX: Canonical theism is intimately tied to the notion of the canonical heritage of the Church. The Church possesses not just a canon of books in its bible, but also a canon of doctrine, a canon of saints, a canon of Fathers, a canon of theologians, a canon of liturgy, a canon of bishops, a canon of councils, a canon of ecclesial regulations, a canon of icons, and the like. In short, the Church possesses a canonical heritage of persons, practices, and materials. Canonical theism is the theism expressed in and through the canonical heritage of the Church.

Thesis X: The canonical heritage of the Church came into existence through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was active in motivating, energizing, guiding, directing, and overseeing their original production in the Church.

Thesis XI: The canonical heritage of the Church functions first and foremost soteriologically. It operates as a complex means of grace that restores the image of God in human beings and brings them into communion with God and with each other in the Church. Each component is primarily a tool to be used in spiritual direction and formation.

Thesis XII: The canonical heritage through which Canonical theism is mediated is not in and of itself an epistemology, nor is it meant to serve as an epistemology. It is not a handbook on how to resolve disputes about rationality, justification, warrant, knowledge, and truth.

Thesis XIII: The ongoing success of the canonical heritage of the Church depends on the continuing active presence of the Holy Spirit working through the relevant persons, practices, and materials.

Thesis XIV: The canonical heritage of the Church is to be received in genuine repentance and lively faith. The effective operation of the various components depends on an open and contrite heart and a readiness to practice the light of God that one encounters.

Thesis XV: Generally speaking, the various components of the canonical heritage have their own distinctive role in the economy of faith. Thus, the scriptures do not do the job of the creed, and the creed does not do the job of the episcopate, and the episcopate does not do the work of baptism, and so on. Each has its own function in the healing and restoration of the human soul.

Thesis XVI: While the various elements in the canonical heritage work ideally together, there is a fair degree of overdetermination, for there is overlapping in their particular purposes. When one is missing or improperly used, others can take up the spiritual slack. Thus the icons can marvelously convey the content of the gospel and the teaching of scripture.

Thesis XVII: Canonical theism’s vision of canon differs from the standard western vision of canon in two ways. First, it extends canon beyond the canon of scripture or the bible. Here it draws on the original meaning of canon as a “list”. Second, it eschews conceiving canon as an epistemic criterion, relocating canon within the Church rather than within the field of epistemology and philosophy. In Canonical theism canon is construed fundamentally as a means of grace, a way through which the Holy Spirit reaches and restores the image of God in human agents.

Thesis XVIII: On the surface commitment to Canonical theism appears to involve a turn to Roman Catholicism and a move a way from Protestantism. This is false. Both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism work with a radically epistemic conception of canon; and they restrict canon to scripture. Magisterial Protestantism tries to work with the canon of scripture alone. Roman Catholicism adds tradition, the magisterium, and papal infallibility understood in epistemic terms as the means whereby the meaning of the canon is to be rightly understood. Hence epistemology rather than soteriology is primary in the conception and reception of canon in both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

Thesis XIX: Although canonical theism is clearly compatible with Eastern Orthodoxy, it is unclear how far the Eastern Church articulates any substantial vision of the canonical heritage of the undivided Church.

Thesis XX: Canonical theism emerges as an option within Protestantism and is proposed as a healing theological option within Protestantism. It can readily be seen as a fresh reappropriation of the patristic tradition for today. It invites Protestantism to a radical revision of its internal commitments. It is unclear how far this is possible given the constitutive elements of Protestantism. Perhaps Canonical theism is essentially post-protestant at its core and cannot be absorbed within Protestantism. At its conception Canonical theism arose out of a deep, even searing, dissatisfaction with current forms of liberal and conservative Protestantism. However, there is no reason in principle why Canonical theism cannot preserve and even enhance the best insights and fruits of the Protestant traditions across the centuries.

Thesis XXI: Canonical theism gives intellectual primacy to ontology over epistemology. We find ourselves meeting God, discovering our sinfulness, encountering redemption, struggling with evil, immersed in suffering, and the like. We are initiated into the faith of the gospel, baptized, enter the Church, experience the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and are converted to a life of holiness. We encounter these phenomena without having to hand an epistemology, without necessarily figuring out how to deal with the questions about truth, rationality, justification, and knowledge that conventionally arise. Nor do these phenomena require us to have an epistemology before we engage in them. Hence ontology is logically prior to epistemology. Without the ontology the epistemology is likely to be thin, wooden, and inappropriate.

Thesis XXII: The canonical heritage generates rigorous epistemological reflection and theorizing. Such work needs to be pursued at the highest intellectual level. There is no drawing back from the epistemology of theology into some kind of naive credulity or a shutting down of the question of meaning and justification rightly raised by philosophers in the twentieth century. Canonical theists are interested in pursuing the implications of epistemologies compatible with Canonical theism for the understanding of the history of the Church and the study of scripture. Canonical theism may lead to the development of epistemological insights that have overtones for all of human thought and existence that are as yet unidentified and unexplored.

Thesis XXIII: Canonical theists have no stake per se in foundationalism as an epistemological position. Canonical theism is open to a whole variety of epistemological options, whether foundationalist or coherentist, internalist or externalist, evidentialist or non-evidentialist. These matters are to be pursued with rigor and appropriate sophistication as needed.

Thesis XXIV: In the epistemology of theology, special attention should be given to epistemic suggestions already present in the canonical heritage of the Church. These have often been obscured from vision when canon has been construed as a criterion and when epistemology has been conceived along internalist lines.

Thesis XXV: No single epistemological vision should be offered or sanctioned as canonical in the Church. This can be spelled out in two ways. First, various and internally competing epistemological visions and theories are compatible with the content of the canonical heritage. Second, the various epistemological assertions, comments, and suggestions found in the canonical heritage do not constitute a full-dress, comprehensive epistemological vision.

Thesis XXVI: Epistemological insights and theories have a place as teaching tools in the Church and as part of the work of evangelism and apologetics. People naturally ask epistemological questions within and without theology and their questions deserve to be taken seriously. Knowing when and how to introduce epistemological issues and materials is a matter of delicate pedagogical judgment.

Thesis XXVII: The history of the canonical heritage throws light on the history of epistemology. Some of the most interesting epistemology in the West has been evoked by theological disagreement, even though in the secularization of the academy this has been lost from view in the histories of epistemology. Canonical theists are interested in fresh ways of understanding the history of epistemology, not least in identifying and exploring epistemic insights that have been forgotten or ignored. They are especially interested in the place of theism in the history of epistemology, exploring the role posited for God in debates about rationality, justification, and knowledge.

Thesis XXVIII: The continuity between the canonical faith of the Church beyond the first millennium is an open question. Clearly, different configurations of Christianity have preserved and effectively deployed much of the canonical heritage in their own way and manner. Witness, for example, the varied way in which the doctrine of the Trinity has been preserved in hymnody in non-creedal traditions.

Thesis XXIX: The canonical heritage of the Church should constitute a bedrock commitment for Christians as a whole. We need to approach the various Christian churches and denominations not in terms of one element of the canonical heritage as constitutive of Christian identity but in terms of how far they have owned the various components of the canonical heritage. This prohibits an all or nothing judgment, with one group automatically in and another group automatically out. We will have to work with judgments of proportion and degree.

Thesis XXX: All epistemological proposals, like papal infallibility, scriptural infallibility, and the Methodist Quadrilateral, should be treated as midrash, secondary to the primary constitutive commitments of the Church as a whole. Hence we need not give up our epistemological theories, but they do have to be decanonized in the ecumenical arena. This is where the rub is going to come hard for many. Perhaps the epistemological positions could be canonical for sub-groups within the Church as a whole, while not being at all canonical for the whole Church. Radical decanonization of epistemologies of theology is the preferred option.

Jesus, Divine Discourse, and Trinitarian Personhood: Some Jottings

Posted by on January 27, 2009 31 comments

1. All theological statements about God’s Trinitarian being must be ruled (regula) by the very particular history of Jesus Christ’s incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and promised parousia.

2.Thus, the historical realities of Jesus’s particular existence are, without remainder or qualification, definitive of the nature of God’s own eternal way of being God.

3. The historical relationship between Jesus and the one he called “Father” in and through the power and presence he called “Spirit” as recorded in the Gospels is definitive for all statements we make regarding relations between the identities of the Trinity.

4. Jesus exists in history as an individuated human person. As such his individuated personhood belongs to and characterizes the eternal reality of the Trinitarian God.

5. The relationship between Jesus and the Father in the Gospels is eminently one of prayer, of discourse and address. As such mutual address, discourse, conversation belong to the eternal reality of the Trinity.

5. Thus, if Jesus’s singular relationship to the Father in the Spirit, as revealed in history and attested in Scripture, is definitive of our doctrine of the Trinity, it is incumbent upon us to describe the reality of God’s being as a communal event of inter-personal communion.

6. This need not commit us to the theological and political implications often drawn by social Trinitarians about the Triune relations being models for human social interaction and political organization.

7. However, if we take the historical relationship of Jesus to the Father seriously as the rule of our Trinitiarian speech, we must not shy away from describing the Trinity in terms of mutuality, address, response, affection, consciousness, and personhood. To fail to do so relativizes the primacy of Jesus’s own historicity in favor of another source of knowledge about God’s eternal being.

Five Theses on the Christian Year

Posted by on April 21, 2008 15 comments

I have argued previously that liturgical time is political and that it froms the church in a particular sort of community.  The way in which calendars are formulated are inevitably political.  Calendars encode particular sorts of politics and generate particular sorts of persons and communities, what sort of polity and person is presupposed and evoked by the Christian liturgical calendar? Toward that question, I offer five theses about the theopolitical formation of ecclesial identity that the practice of the Christian year seeks to foster.

1. The Christian calendar forms the church to understand herself as a community who is a participant in the story of the triune God disclosed in Scripture and to understand that biblical story as the context in which the world is interpreted and engaged.

The Christian calendar begins its year in Advent, in anticipation of Christ’s coming. It moves from anticipation to joy in the incarnation of Christ at Christmastide. In light of the incarnation, the church celebrates the life of Christ, rejoicing in the manifestation of his glory as the Son of God throughout the season of Epiphany. The church then journeys with Christ toward his sufferings in Jerusalem during the time of Lent and Holy Week. The church then rejoices as she is raised with Christ in his glorious resurrection during Easter and finally rehearses the coming of the Spirit to constitute the church in the celebration of Pentecost. All of these seasons, and the holidays inserted into each one of them serve as a means of participation on the part of the church in the story of God in Christ. The church, through her liturgies and celebrations offers a form of deep language, of thick description, through which she is invited to understand herself as a part of the story of Scripture. In celebrating the Christian year, one’s fellow citizens cease to be one’s fellow Americans (or British or Chinese, or what have you), and instead become the holy martyrs, prophets, patriarchs, and apostles of the Christian faith. In and through the rhythms of the Christian year, the church ceases to view the biblical story as some remote part of ancient history which they then apply to their lives, but rather discovers their lives recast into the biblical story itself, locating themselves within the triune drama of salvation.

2. The Christian calendar recasts the Christian understanding of personal identity within a narratival and ecclesial frame of reference.

In contrast to the secular American calendar which orients personal identity within the framework of American nationalism, familial sentimentality, and rugged individualism, the Christian calendar recasts our understanding and practice of personal identity within the framework of the narrative of Scripture and the communal life of the church. Within the rhythms of the Christian calendar we are invited to see ourselves, not as discrete individuals who are complete in and of ourselves, but rather as characters within the scriptural narrative whose identities are constituted in and through our participation in one another in the body of Christ.

3. The Christian calendar invites the church to order its daily life, seasonal celebrations, and familial and communal events in a Christocentric manner, relating all aspects of the ordinary to Christ’s lordship and offering them to him as worship.

One of the most profound aspects of the formative power of the Christian calendar is its ability to seize one of the parts of life that has been so thoroughly claimed in by our late-capitalist culture: the ordinary. One of the supreme characteristics of our atomized capitalist culture is the way in which the practices of everyday life, personal relationships, and local economics are regulated by the secular calendar. We express our romantic love and attention on Valentines Day. We spend more money on gifts and traveling during the Christmas holidays than the rest of the year combined. The connection between economics and the calendar cannot be overestimated. One of the key functions of the secular calendar is to regulate how money is spent and on how commodities are exchanged. The Christian calendar invites us however, in the face of calendar of capitalist discipline, to refigure our way of spending our money, giving our time, and participating in our personal relationships. By making Holy Week, rather than Christmas the center of the year, the Christian calendar calls into question the ways in which the secular calendar forms people into consuming individuals who only view their participation in Church as the voluntary association of religious individuals whose true identity and allegiance lie elsewhere.

4. The Christian calendar nurtures a distinctively eschatological imagination, inviting the church to understand her own being and actions as bearing witness to, participating in, and anticipating the fullness of the triune God’s eschatological kingdom.

Through immersing herself in the rhythms and seasons of the Christian year, the Christian community seeks to instill into her members an eschatological consciousness which generates a particular understanding of the nature and purpose of the church in the world. By viewing herself as a participant in the drama of the triune God, the church comes to understand herself thoroughly with reference to the kingdom of God rather than through the various reigning political orders in which she finds herself. As Scott Bader-Saye notes, in discussing the French Revolutionaries’ introduction, not merely of a new regime, but a new calendar, “Despite the rise of modern conceptions of time as uniform, the revolutionaries understood that calendar functioned to name a politics and define a people.” By naming time in the way that Christians do in their practice of the Christian year, they invoke a specifically eschatological imagination which encodes a particular politics, the politics of the kingdom of God. The Christian calendar, like the secular calendar should not be underestimated in its politically formative power. Through measuring each and every year in and through the life of Christ rather than through the veneration of the heroes and myths of America, the church has the ability to profoundly shape an eschatological imagination which calls into question the idolatries and sins of our world.

5. The Christian calendar orients the church to see her primary vocation as the worship of the Triune God, finding the summit and center of her life in the proclamation of the Word of God and the communion of the Eucharist.

Finally, the Christian calendar offers a distinctively ecclesiological contribution to the self-understanding of the church. Evangelicalism has been long critiqued for its lack of a substantive ecclesiology. Much of this, I would suggest derives from the evangelical propensity to view the church in instrumentalist terms. The church is often viewed by evangelicals as existing for the purpose of service, evangelism, or the edification of the individual Christian. However, the Christian calendar invites us to view the church, not as instrumental to any end other than the worship of God in gathering, interpersonal communion, and common life. The center of the Christian year lies in proclaiming the Word of God disclosed in Scripture and entering into its mysteries through the communal celebration of the Eucharist. It invites us to view the center of the church not as moral effort, personal uplifting or evangelistic activity, but rather unites all such elements of the church’s life within an overarching vision of the faithful worship of the triune God by his people.

The Trinity and Jesus: Some Reductive Expostulations

Posted by on March 3, 2008 8 comments

1.  In human man Jesus we encounter the full revelation of the Trinitarian God.  Therefore humanity as such is only authentically at home in the Trinitarian life of God.  The Triune God is God in and for humanness.

2.  In that the man Jesus is the presence of the Trinitarian God to the world we must say that the Triune life of God always and eternally is identical to what we see translated into the history of the world in Jesus.

3.  When human persons encounter Jesus what occurs is fundamentally an experience of hospitality.  Therefore a fundamental characterization we are able to make about the quality of God’s internal life is that it is a life of hospitality.

4.  When human persons encounter Jesus we kill him.  Therefore the Trinitarian God’s hospitality has the character of complete and total self-expenditure for others.

5.  When human persons encounter Jesus they do so predominately in the context of table-fellowship.  Therefore the life of the Trinitiarian God is best understood as the realm of feasting.

6.  When human persons encounter Jesus they are directed to the Father.  Therefore the Trinitarian God is God in the deferral of the divine persons to one another.  The Trinitarian God is the God whose life eschews competitiveness and self-assertion.

7.  When human persons encounter Jesus they do so through the Holy Spirit.  Therefore the fellowship of persons with Triune God is never a given object which we can possess, but always a free and apocalyptic gift which comes to us from outside ourselves in unpredictable and dynamic ways.

Some Theses for Ecumenically-Minded Protestants

Posted by on November 9, 2007 22 comments

1.  The breakdown of denominational identity is a terrible ecumenical occurrence and further inhibits the visible unity of the church.  For all their flaws, denominations offer structural and institutional forms which can facilitate ecumenical dialogues.  As to date there is no other protestant proposal that could fulfill this function better.  The multiplication of non-denominational evangelical churches only furthers the fracture of the protestant churches and is parasitic on the church’s call to unity and mission.

2.  Protestants came from the Roman Catholic church.  As such their primary ecumenical responsibility is to the Roman church.  Aside from very specific issues of theological conviction and conscience, protestant Christians have no business converting to Eastern Orthodoxy in order to be rejoined to the historical apostolic churches.  We are part of a very specific division in the body of Christ and we must be faithful to address that division.  Bypassing the necessary struggle with Rome by fleeing to Constantinople does not further the cause of Christian unity.  The same could be said of the recent evangelical trend toward Anglicanism.

3.  Protestant churches and Christians who remain separated from Rome must have a clear theological articulation why they must persist in their separation for the sake of the gospel.  For all protestants we must have specific theological conditions in mind which, if met would mean that we must return to the Roman Catholic church.  Given the diversity of protestantism, there is no reason to assume that these reasons would be uniform, but regardless, it is incumbent on all protestants to be able to give an honest articulation about why faithfulness to the gospel requires their ongoing separation from Rome.

4.  Protestants who believe that there are no conditions under which they could be reunited with the Roman Catholic church have become schismatics and should be treated as such.  Schism is sin and protestants must be ever-vigilant against it.

5.  That Catholicism continues to deny that protestant churches are truly churches denies the manifest work of the Spirit of Christ and falsely locates the criterion of the church’s ecclesiality in its institutional structure rather than in the grace of God in Christ.  It is prima facie false and ecumenically tragic to admit that the Holy Spirit is present in protestant communities which are vehicles of “sanctification and truth” (Lumen Gentium, 8) and yet deny that such communities are churches.  As Irenaeus said “where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace”. (Adversus Haereses, 3.24).  Protestants must work with all rigor and effort to manifest in the lives of their congregations the presence of the Spirit in his ecclesially-constitutive activity even as Rome continues to deny their proper ecclesial status.  We must live in hope that the tree will be known by its fruits.

6.  Protestants must continue to immerse themselves in the Great Tradition of the church and the fullness of its history.  For the Reformers, the Reformation was an exercise in ressourcement, a return to the patristic and biblical roots of the Christian faith for the sake of faithfulness to the gospel.  The ahistoricism of protestants today is unfaithful to the essentially patristic and indeed, catholic intentions of the Reformers.  To that end, the protestant church must continually read afresh the patristic witnesses to the faith, not only to help illumine and enrich current church practices and theology, but to aid in discerning ecumenical and ecclesiological reasons for persisting in separation from Rome and what criteria should be held for a full reunion.

7.  Similarly, protestants must re-engage the writings of the Reformers themselves in a new and fresh way.  Most protestants today are woefully ignorant of Luther’s works, Calvin’s Institutes, and the writings of other key figures in the Reformation.  The biblical and patristic vision of these vital theological treatises and texts are essential for protestants today to retain their reformational identity and the essential sense of historical and ecclesial continuity with the church catholic. 

Some Random Thoughs on Inerrancy

Posted by on July 2, 2007 28 comments
  1. The evangelical doctrine of inerrancy allegedly proclaims that only the autographs of Scripture were inerrant. Therefore, ironically, the doctrine of inerrancy does not offer any sort of theology that takes into account the entire phenomenon of Scripture, its canonization, transmission, etc.
  2. It is difficult if not impossible to see how the term “inerrancy” could apply to all of the many different genres in Scripture. What might it mean for a parable of an aphorism to be “without error”?
  3. Inerrancy ironically discourages the in-depth study of the Bible. When we know at the outset that the Bible is a systematically consistent whole which is completely seamless and has no internal tension, we have no need to enquire about possible contradictions, tensions, or questions of the historical formation of the Bible. Or, even if we make such inquiries, we are asked to quickly accept “harmonizations” which fail to really delve into the depths of the texts in tension.
  4. That inerrancy appears in nearly all evangelical doctrinal statements prior to the doctrine of God as Trinity is (inadvertently or not), idolatrous and theologically disastrous.
  5. Inerrancy encourages uncreative, uninteresting, and ultimately, unfaithful theology. It assumes that the questions of theology are simply givens, which the Bible must then be mined for answers to. This is why most evangelical systematic theologies sound exactly the same, even when they have different perspectives on a given issue. There is no sense in theologies written by inerrantists that perhaps the questions theology should ask are not static givens to which the Bible is a handy propositional handbook. Thus, inerrancy discourages the theologian from addressing questions that arise from the needs of the church in a given cultural setting because the questions theology must answer are always-already predetermined. This is theological unfaithfulness. The task of the theologian is to faithfully proclaim the gospel in a multitude of cultural settings, which means to always be doing theology differently than before.
  6. Whether proponents acknowledge this or not, inerrancy tends towards a view of hermeneutics that does not acknowledge the provisionality and mediated-ness of all acts of interpretation. Inerrancy encourages the assumption that an inerrant text correlates to an immediately accessible meaning contained in texts.
  7. There is an odd correlation between the Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception and the inerrancy of Scripture. The idea that the Scriptures are inerrant sounds a lot like the doctrine that Christ did not bear a fallen human nature due to Mary’s immaculate conception.
  8. Inerrancy sees the Scriptures as constituting the foundation for a Christian epistemic framework, rather than as an element of such a framework which is constituted by the Triune God. This is highly problematic.

Radical Trinitarianism §2: Supplemental Theses

Posted by on June 20, 2007 Comments Off

The following theses are meant to supplement and complete my introductory theses on radical trinitarianism that I posted a few days ago.  Together, these two sets of theses will form the skeleton from which I shall attempt to unpack a brief trinitarian dogmatics.

  1. A truly Trinitarian theology is thoroughly pneumatological.  It is in and through the Spirit of Pentecost that the life of the Trinity as revealed in the cross of Christ is communicated to humankind throughout all nations.  The mission of the Spirit in the economy of salvation is the pentecostalization of the world, that is the bringing together of all persons into one Christic body of communion.  The Spirit is the communal “language” of God (the Logos) transposed into human tongues.  It is from within the outpouring of the Spirit of Triune love that all created persons find their true personhood and destiny.  The Logos of the Triune life does not compete with, but fulfills the logoi of creation, suffusing them with grace and transforming them into occasions of Christic and pneumatic communion.  This is fundamentally what the church is as the community of the Spirit.

  2. What the Spirit brings about in the world through the creation of the church is the fulfillment of God’s covenant with humankind.  The telos of God’s work in the world is the being-together of himself with his created people (see Rev. 21:3-4).  The shape of this being-together of God and humanity is life in covenant.  Covenant is God’s determination to be God for us and God with us.  It is his determination for us to be for one another and with one another.  And this self-determination of God as the God of covenant is coterminous with God’s Triune being, and specifically with the history of Jesus Christ in Israel, the Church, and all creation.

  3. The history of Jesus Christ narrates the Triune God’s establishment of a new covenant economy.   What this entails is the disruption, and indeed the dissolution of all other humanly crafted modes of social life which determine the identities of human persons in terms of the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic.  The de novo social order that is brought about in the ekklesia of Christ is one in which reconciliation first appears as a reality in the world.  The inauguration of the new covenant economy dismantles the logic of cultural ethnocentrisms, racial hegemonies,  and political nationalisms.  This is the message of Pentecost.  Namely, that in the work of Christ and the Spirit a new covenant has been established which brings about the flourishing of human relationship with God and one another.  To live in God’s new covenant economy is to have our identities radically reshaped by the resurrection and Pentecost.  It is to live within the realm of Christ’s healing compassion and the Spirit’s flame of infinite love which brings about the being-together of all humanity in Christ.

  4. In the passion and resurrection of Christ, and the giving of the Spirit, the Triune God deconstructs humankind’s faulty performance of community and thus, of personal identity as ruled by the powers.  What happens in Christ is recapitulation.  Christ submits himself to the machinations of history as ruled by the logic of the powers, and in so doing, unmasks and destroys it.  Thus, Christ re-performs history through the Triune movement of his life, death, and resurrection, and thus draws creation into the new, recapitulated world of the Spirit.  Pentecost, then is the climax of the recapitulating work of Christ to remake the very fabric of human history within his own person, and thus to establish humanity as his own body, in communion with the Father through himself in the Spirit.  To live within the fabric of the new history which Christ recapitulates in his life and breathes out in the Spirit is to live within the realm of God’s own Triune life.

  5. The history that is rewoven in Christ’s person through the Spirit is the history of God’s love outstripping, absorbing, and transfiguring the logic of human violence and exclusion.  In Christ and the Spirit, the violence and the will towards death that marks the life of sin is transposed into the life of the Trinity, overcome and extinguished in the enflamed, eternal love of the Triune persons.  This is what death and resurrection means.  In Christ, the infinite peace and serenity of the Trinity is found to be unfathomably deeper than the furthest depths of human godlessness and hell.  Thus, when the depths of Satan are invaded by the luminescence of the Trinity, all darkness is cast away and in this new light, humankind is freed from the fear of death to dwell in the world of Triune shalom.  Triune redemption, both proleptically and consummately is a life of shalom.  The end which we are promised and called to in the Triune economy is a life of infinite peace, where melodrama is transfigured into drama, where discord is transposed into symphonic glory.  In the realm of Triune shalom fasting breaks forth into feasting, thirst is forever quenched by streams of living water and wine.  In short, the realm of Triune shalom is the realm of infinite joy.

  6. And this speaks also to the “point” of Trinitarian theology, if there is such a thing.  No theology is Trinitarian if it does anything less than leading the theological community into joy.  For in the end, joy is the perhaps the best description of the life in God which all theologizing about the Trinity seeks to shed light on.  To be a radical Trinitarian theologian is to live in joy.  

Radical Trinitarianism §1: Introductory Theses

Posted by on June 15, 2007 7 comments

In the last few years everyone has been talking about the “renaissance of Trinitarian theology”, either to affirm it as a blessing from on high, or an aberration from the pits of hell.  Or was it Hegel?  Whatever, they’re basically the same thing, right?  Regardless, the point is that everyone is in some way interested in being the most authentic Trinitarian possible.  For some that means figuring out how the Trinity models social relationships for us.  For others it is about figuring out how God is so different from us that trying to model our social relationships on the Trinity would be rather like an octopus trying to model its number of arms on an opossum.

I hope my theology may fall somewhere in the middle and still be quite recognizable as radically Trinitarian in all its dimensions.  And to that end, here are a few theses about the Trinity that I would offer towards the construction of a truly “radical Trinitariansim.”  What I mean by this is a theology that is Trinitarian through and through, not slavishly or simplistically, but radically (radix=from the root).

  1. The reality of the cross and resurrection of Christ is the epistemological ground of the theology of the Trinity.  The event of Christ’s cross and resurrection is the event of God in the world, and that event is the outpouring of absolute love.  It is only on the basis of a Trinitarian understanding of the cross of Christ that the statement “God is love” can be true.
  2. The Trinity is not merely the culmination of Christian theological reflection on the mystery of God, but its presupposition, ground, and structuring principle.  The Trinity is not a question which theology seeks to solve, but rather the framework from within which all of theology’s questions are to be posed and solved.
  3. The relations between the persons of the Trinity are not, as such a model for human relations, to be slavishly imitated.  Rather, the richness of the Triune being is the ground of all creaturely being which shapes creaturely existence into its own distinctive shape.  The shape of creaturely existence grounded by the Trinity is one of persons is covenantal communion.  This is grounded centrally in the incarnation of Christ, the second person of the Trinity.  The shape of authentic human existence is revealed in Christ as communion between human and Triune persons through the covenantal self-giving of God in Christ and the Spirit.
  4. The life of the Trinity is not closed off from the world.  Rather the life of the Trinity is love, the very same love which creates, sustains, and redeems the world.  All creation, then has its own contingent, creaturely existence within the relations of love that constitute the Trinity.  Apart from participation in the life of God, creatures descend into non-being.  This attempt to reject the communion of divine love which sustains the world is the essence of sin.  Sin the the active seeking of non-being; that is, it is seeking to extricate ourselves from the circle of Triune love.
  5. Salvation is the exercise of God’s Triune love in Christ which overcomes all boundaries and subsumes within its ardor every distance which we would seek to impose between ourselves and God.  It is the embracing love of the Triune God which holds the world in all its contingency and rebellion from the non-being and death it seeks in striving for authomoy from God.  The fire of the Triune love, precisely by subjecting itself to the very experience of non-being, godforsakenness and death thus triumphs over sin, death, and godlessness through the Spirit of resurrection. 
  6. The church is the location in the world where the outpouring of Triune love is visibly and palpably located.  Through the church’s practice of the form of Christ, in word, sacrament, and deed, the Triune love continues to take human shape in the world of sin and death in the form of covenant communion.  The outpouring of the Triune communio that is the church is the shape of redemption in our world and manifests theeschatological telos of world its in the communal-covenantal fellowship of the sacramental church.
  7. The future of the world is the Trinitarian life.  And that future is present now, through the Spirit of Christ in and through the sacramental-spousal body of Christ, the church.  The future of the world is shalom and New Jerusalem, glimpsed now in the koinonial fellowship of the ekkelsia.  This future is not consummated now, but it is present in the sacramental-spousal life of the body of Christ.  It is to this place, this people, where the presence of the Triune God is embodied for the world that we must look to discern and experience the shape of redemption, sanctification, new life, and hope.

Theses on Sexual Identity and Christian Ethics

Posted by on January 31, 2007 33 comments

This series of theses should not really be taken as a response to Kim Fabricus’ list of propositions on same sex relationships. While that brought the issue to the surface in recent discussions, these are thoughts that I’ve had floating around for a long time and hopefully will lead to a more substantial and lengthy piece of theological reflection on this contentious question.

I don’t have any theses about the importance of civil dialogue between different sides, hating the sin but loving the sinner, or any other such statements that often come close to being throwaway lines. What I hope these theses offer are some constructive theological points from which more authentic theological discussion might be derived. That all should be dealt with graciously and that dialogue is essential, I simply take for granted, as I think all should.

  1. Any discussion about the ethical viability of homosexual unions must be placed within a distinctly theological framework, specifically on the basis of the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, and the Sacraments. To allow such a discussion to take place on the basis of an previously determined ontology of freedom and liberation is to circumscribe the discussion within a politics foreign to that of the church. Put differently, to frame the discussion of homosexuality in terms of the liberation of homosexuals for sexual fulfillment, is to eliminate the possibility of a truly theological discussion. If ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ are predetermined at the outset (as is often the case in gay liberation theology), there is no possibility of conversation in any real sense.
  2. In the Christian tradition, the church has univocally affirmed two paths for Christians to take in regard to sexual activity, celibacy and the sacrament of marriage. The theological question that is at the core of the issue of same sex unions is, given a properly theological (i.e. trinitarian, christological, and sacramental) definition of marriage: Can a union between two persons of the same sex be theologically understood as falling within that definition?
  3. A theological position which maintains that the restriction of sexual activities by the church is oppressive and deprives persons of their “full humanity” assumes that our sexual identity and attractions are the center of personal identity. Christian theology must explicitly reject such a sexually-centered definiton of human identity. For Christians, our identity does not primarily lie in our sexuality, let alone our affectional orientation, but in Christ and his body. Our “full humanity” is established, not by sex or marriage, but by baptism! Eucharistic communion, not sexual intercourse is the ultimate form of “erotic” communion. It is within the sacramental practices of the church, not sexual intercourse that we come to fulfillment as persons in Christ and no one is impoverised or diminshed by lacking a sexual partner. To say otherwise is essentially to call those who embrace the Christian vocation of celibacy less than fully human.
  4. Given this frame of reference, the burden of proof is on those who would argue for a revised understanding of the sacrament of marriage. For proponents of the full inclusion of same sex unions within the church to make their case, they must show theologically how the Christian understanding of marriage has “theological room” for non heterosexual unions. It is precisely this constructive theological project that has scarcely been taken on by homosexual Christians. The core of this issue does not revolve around New Testament hermeneutics, though that question is not unimportant. The essence of this question is ecclesial and theological. Any resolution that will come can only come from constrictive theological reflection.
  5. Sexual identity is far more complex than the polarities of homosexual and heterosexual and the common language of biological determinacy allow for. If we take seriously a Christian theological anthropology in which the self is formed in and through relations with the other we must acknowledge that sexual identity, like all other facets of our being is not a static given, but a dynamic reality which is “always-already” imbedded in and shaped by a network of social and political relations. This understanding of the construction of sexuality is widely shared and is championed by many gay scholars.
  6. One of the greatest social influences that has contributed to the construction of contemporary sexual culture in the west is consumer capitalism. In a culture shaped by the market, sexuality is commodifed and objectified in accordance with the reigning ideology of consumer preference. Above all, in a market economy, sex is conceived as something to which one has a right. Thus, the suspension or regulation of sexual practices by a narrative which claims to supersede that of the market is regarded as oppressive, dogmatic, and archaic.
  7. A Christian understanding of sexuality and sexual practices must, by definition reject the capitalist construction of sexuality. Sexual satisfaction is not something to which any of us have a right by virtue of our affectional orientation, sexual drive, or perceived relational needs. Christianity affirms that the call of Christian discipleship requires all who would follow Christ to die to themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus. Jesus does not promise us fulfillment on our own terms, he promises the way of the cross and resurrection. Jesus’ lordship and his call for us to submit ourselves to his body supersedes any and all of our felt needs for sexual fulfillment.
  8. Christians whose practices, sexual or otherwise which bring about a sundering of communion within the body of Christ for the sake of another agenda cannot be considered to be operating by the Spirit of God. The movement of the Holy Spirit in the church is towards and for unity. To be sure, movements of dissent within the church have their role (i.e. the Reformation), but such movements, if they are indeed the work of God’s Spirit must take place within a broader vision of catholicity and the ultimate aim of unity-in-difference within the body of Christ. The question is, do Christian proponents of homosexual inclusion manifest this vision of catholicity and unity, or is there another agenda that carries the day for them?

Six Theses on Ecclesial Social Engagement

Posted by on September 6, 2006 6 comments

I spent a good portion of last year exploring issues of the church, civil society, and public theology. Since then some of my thoughts about the relationship between the church, civil society and the state have crystalized in certain ways. It is in the interests of sharing and dialoging about those thouthgs that I offer the following theses.

1) The primary social-political task of the church is to embody the pluriform, multifaceted message of the gospel in concrete ecclesial publics, manifesting a unified, visible and missionally oriented common life in the midst of the world.

Inherent to an ecclesiocentric approach is the task of the embodiment of the gospel in Christian community. It was first and foremost the reality of the common life of the Christian community, not a program of political or social reform (at least as commonly understood) that engendered the revolution sparked by Christianity. The unity, visibility and misionality of the church is central to the public witness of the church. While some may see this as apolititical, such a criticism depends and an impoverished notion of politics. As John Howard Yoder has observed, “To say that any position is “apolitical” is to deny the powerful (sometimes conservative, sometimes revolutionary) impact on society of the creation of an alternative social group.” To the extent that the church faithfully embodies a dynamic community that lives in light of the eschatological work of Christ, it will itself stand as an engagement of culture, a light to the nations.

2) The church’s most significant contribution to other publics lies in its ability to unmask ideology and idolatry and embody a public-political alternative grounded wholly in God’s trinitarian self-giving in Christ and the Spirit.

The supreme power of the church’s public witness lies first and foremost in its ability, grounded in the missions of Christ and the Spirit to be a community that unmasks ideology and idolatry. Whether the ideology of the day is consumerism, capitalism, socialism or caesarism, the church’s first form of engagement lies in being an embodied witness to the fact that these idolatries and ideologies have been defeated by the cross of Christ. As Lesslie Newbigin states eloquently,

If the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society, if Christians are to occupy the “high ground” which they vacated in the noonday of “modernity,” it will not be by forming a Christian political party or by aggressive propaganda campaigns…It will only be by movements that begin with the local congregation in which the reality of the new creation is present, known and experienced, and from which men and women will go into every sector of public life to claim it for Christ, to unmask the illusions which have remained hidden and expose all areas of life to the illumination of the gospel.

3) Central to the church’s social-political vocation in the world is its commitment to faithful worship of the Triune God apart from which there can be no justice in the fullest sense of the word.

Worship, on this account is the most political act of the church. Embodied in the church’s worship is a living witness to the redemption brought about by Christ and the Spirit. Far from being apolitical, or otherworldly, in its liturgy the church does not flee from the world, but rather engages in a particular way of “doing world.” The worship of the church rehearses the trinitarian drama of salvation and draws the church into that same drama. Encapsulated in worship are Sacraments and the Word through which the Spirit continually forms the church to be the community that is created to be in Christ. In and through orthodoxia, right worship, the form of Christ, his justice and his peace are continually received by the gift of the Spirit. As Aidan Kavanagh says beautifully, “if the incarnation of the Logos was God enhumaned, the church is God in Christ enworlded.” In the worship of the church the redeemed world appears embodied in microcosm bearing witness to the as yet unredeemed world regarding the destiny of creation and the possibilities for social and political life made possible through the self-giving of God through Christ and the Spirit.


4) The insights of Christian theology cannot be applied to other publics in any manner which bypasses the reality of the church as a distinct public in its own right wherein the commitments of Christian theology are concretely embodied.

The church is the public that participates in the soteriological telos of the trinitarian missions. This is what distinguishes it from all other publics. In light of this there can be no immediate application of the insights of Christian theology to other publics. The social implications of God’s self-giving in the cross of Christ and the nature of the trinitarian God as communion are not simply a social theory that can be extrapolated to the world for application. Christ is certainly present outside the church, and the Spirit works throughout the world to convict of sin, righteousness and judgment (Jn. 16:8-11). Intimations of the kingdom are indeed possible outside the church. Nevertheless, it is through the church that the wisdom of God is displayed to the powers (Eph. 3:10) it is for the church that all things have been put under Christ’s feet (Eph. 1:22), indeed the church is the very fullness of God’s presence in the world (Eph. 1:23). This reality cautions against any approach that would seek to offer a theological social theory that bypasses the centrality of the church.

5) The proper form of ecclesial social engagement with other publics will take the form of allowing “theological fragments” to be brought to bear on contemporary society in a fundamentally dialogical and non-coercive manner.

If there is to be no unmediated social theory extrapolated from Christian theology, how then may theological insights be applied to the wider society? Duncan Forrester perceptively argues that rather than a totalizing social theory or overarching theory of justice, Christianity’s most potent contribution to the wider world lies in offering “theological fragments.” The church should not “be ashamed of offering in public debate ‘fragments’ of insight.” In a fragmented culture, it may often be through fragments of theological truth-telling and truth-doing that we are able to encroach on the wider society and boldly, humbly and non-coercively seek to bring the particularities of the Christian faith to bear on public policy and effect social change. What is crucial is that we come with theological insights and practices, not as concepts to be thrown around in marketplace of ideas, but rather a socially-embodied witness that is ever ready to offer insights the flow from the visible life and practices of the church. Such a non-totalizing and contextual approach “might make us cautious about regarding theology as some grand, coherent theory rather than a series of illuminating fragments which sustain the life of the community of faith which nurtures them, and claim also to be in some sense ‘public truth’.” Such an approach does not seek to be disjointed or cacophonous as the language of fragments might suggest. Rather, it emphasizes the eschatological reserve that must characterize Christian political action in the world. Such an app
roach offers a non-final hope for peace and justice in this world while recognizing that true peace and justice are possible only where the Triune God is truly worshipped and ultimately only possible in the final descent of the City of God.


6) An approach, grounded explicitly and unapologetically in the ecclesial public as a distinct social-political reality has more potential for positive impact on the world than conventional forms of public theology.

Finally, against those who fault an ecclesiocentric approach for being sectarian and fostering an ethic of withdrawal, there is a strong case to be made that the substantial strides for justice and peace that have been witnessed in history owe more to just such an ecclesial frame of reference than to a program of public theology. The witness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, fueled as it was by the theology and leadership of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the prophetic politics of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the peaceful fall of the Soviet bloc largely through the work of Pope John Paul II in Poland all bear witness to the power of theology self consciously forged in the church to be a force of radical social change. That these events were complex and multifaceted is beyond question. Nevertheless, a strong case can be made for understanding these and other events of social change as being grounded in the reality of the church, its worship and proclamation.


Further Reading (page #’s are for the above quotes):

John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 106.

Walter Brueggemann, Israel’s Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988).

Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), 52ff.

Frank Senn, New Creation: A Liturgical Worldview (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000).

See Reinhard Hütter, Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 158-159.

Duncan B. Forrester, Christian Justice and Public Policy (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 202.

John de Gruchy, Reconciliation: Restoring Justice (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).

Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999).

Stanley Hauerwas, “Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr., Remembering,” Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth Century Theology and Philosophy, (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1997).


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.

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