Re-Visioning the Church: An Experiment in Systematic-Historical Ecclesiology

Index

Preface

In 1887 two physicists, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, conducted a famous failed experiment. The purpose of this experiment was to detect the speed of light through the luminiferous aether. This aether had been postulated as the medium required for the movement of light. Just as sound waves were conceived as vibrations in the medium of air, so too light waves were conceived as vibrations in the aether. The experiment sought to detect different speeds of light as the earth moved through the aether during its orbit. The experiment was a failure in that no variations in the speed of light were detected. Indirectly, this failed experiment paved the way for the development of Einstein’s theory of special relativity some eighteen years later.

Theology is perhaps less familiar with the idea of experiments, and certainly with the notion of failed experiments. Some have described Augustine’s De Trinitate as having an experimental quality.[1] One might also recall the English title of Edward Schillebeeckx’s Jesus: An Experiment in Christology.[2] This present work too is an experiment, this time in systematic-historical ecclesiology. This experiment is not without historical precedents in other attempts to undertake the same sort of project. Here I am thinking of another work by Edward Schillebeeckx, The Church with a Human Face,[3] and also the three-volume work on historical ecclesiology by Roger Haight, Christian Community in History.[4] Both of these were bold experiments in the integration of the social sciences into theology, or more specifically into ecclesiology. This is a very difficult problem, one with which, as I will argue in more detail in this work, both authors failed sufficiently to come to grips. Nonetheless, as with the Michelson-Morley experiment, one can still learn something from the outcomes.

This is my hope for the present work. Even in the terms I develop in the first part of this book, it is likely that it too is a failed experiment. In the end, the task is too big to be undertaken by a single theologian. Who can hope to master the whole history of the Church when experts exist on each and every era? Of necessity, then, the outcomes of this investigation are more piecemeal and impressionistic than I would like them to be. If the project is to be judged of value, it is more likely to be based on chapters 2–5, which develop the conceptual framework for the rest of the book. Yet without the succeeding chapters dealing with historical material, the conceptual framework would be pointless, an upper blade in search of suitable historical data. So chapters 6–10 are necessary even in their inadequacy. They are, I hope, suggestive of the usefulness of the conceptual framework. However, while I have attempted to be as responsible as I can with the range of historical sources I have used, I am sure I have not done justice to all the historical nuances of the eras under consideration. Each era deserves books to itself, not just a chapter. The best outcome would be for someone to take up such a challenge to further test the usefulness of the upper blade.

I should also mention two similar experiments in ecclesiology that have adopted the framework of the first part of this book. The first, Pentecostal Churches in Transition, was initially a doctoral thesis by one of my students and now my collaborator, Shane Clifton.[5] The second is a joint work between Clifton and myself, Globalization and the Mission of the Church.[6] Both these works use elements of the framework to investigate specific ecclesiological issues. A series of research papers has also developed and deployed elements of the framework.[7]

There are other features, or perhaps absences, that deserve comment. The first is the lack of any serious handling of the New Testament data on church and ministry. This topic has been treated by so many authors that I felt I had little to add by way of new insights. Thus my treatment is incidental to the text. However, this also reflects a methodological stance. If we view the Church in the New Testament as a prototype from which everything else develops rather than an archetype to be endlessly repeated, the significance of the New Testament is less pressing. To adopt a biological metaphor, one does not understand the growing tree by examining the seed. To understand the growing tree, one must examine the soil in which it is planted, the variations of the seasons in which it develops, the droughts and floods that threaten its survival, and so on. The seed can only tell us so much.

The second is any attention to the split between the eastern and western Churches. This split is perhaps the least intelligible of all the splits in Christian unity. Both sides recognize the validity of each other’s sacraments and orders, yet stumble on the question of full unity. Perhaps now it is more a matter of historically embedded institutional identities rather than theological or ecclesiological principles. In any case, it fell outside the scope of my study as much by oversight as deliberate decision.

The third is my retreat from dealing with the twentieth century, the century of Vatican II. The book was already too large. My own energy for this project was also starting to wane. After all, this work has been some fifteen years in the making, and this is the third attempt to bring it to conclusion. There remains the possibility of a separate volume dedicated to Vatican II, but that is another consideration. I have, however, included a reprint of an article that appeared in Theological Studies on the question of continuity and discontinuity at Vatican II. This not only gives some clues as to where I might integrate the issue of Vatican II within my larger project, but marks out some new methodological territory as well.

Finally, I should note my focus for the project has been on the Catholic Church, in particular that Church in its western manifestation. When I use the term Church, I mean the Roman Catholic Church. This focus is justified both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, I argue that the object of ecclesiology should be the concrete historical community of church. This means making choices in the data. This does not exclude the possibility of other studies being undertaken on other churches; indeed, I have noted an attempt to bring the same analytical tools to bear on a Pentecostal church in Australia. But that is an issue for others to explore. The second, more practical, reason has already been noted. To increase the scope of the study to other churches would already stretch it beyond reasonable bounds.

This work brings together hints and suggestions made by Bernard Lonergan, implemented in different directions by Joseph Komonchak and Robert Doran. Lonergan envisaged a form of historical ecclesiology that would use reoriented social sciences to provide an explanatory theological account of the Church’s history. Komonchak has done significant foundational work in spelling out the form such a project might take and urging it upon his fellow ecclesiologists.[8] In a different direction, Doran has made a major contribution to a theology of history, unpacking Lonergan’s scale of values with three interacting dialectics and the creating and healing vectors in history.[9] Part of Doran’s project is the reorientation of depth psychology, particularly in its Jungian variant. This current project seeks to bring these two developments into a creative synergy, building on Komonchak’s call to a new approach to ecclesiology with the conceptual tools provided by Doran in his theology of history to reorient the social sciences. While evoking these great theological thinkers as the source of this current project, I would not burden them with the responsibility for its outcomes, which is my own.

John Cavadini describes the work as undogmatic, open-ended and experimental. See John Cavadini, "The Quest for Truth in Augustine's De Trinitate," Theological Studies 58 (1997): 429–40, at 432.↵

Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Seabury, 1979).↵

Edward Schillebeeckx, The Church with a Human Face: A New and Expanded Theology of Ministry (New York: Crossroad, 1985).↵

Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, 3 vols. (New York: Continuum, 2004–8).↵

Shane Clifton, Pentecostal Churches in Transition: Analysing the Developing Ecclesiology of the Assemblies of God in Australia, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2009).↵

Neil Ormerod and Shane Clifton, Globalization and the Mission of the Church, ed. Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiological Investigations (London: T&T Clark, 2009).↵

Neil Ormerod, Towards a Systematic Theology of Ministry: A Catholic Perspective, Pacifica 8 (1995): 74–96; Quarrels with the Method of Correlation, Theological Studies 57 (1996): 707–19; Church, Anti-Types and Ordained Ministry, Pacifica 10 (1997): 331–49; System, History, and a Theology of Ministry, Theological Studies 61 (2000): 432–46; Seek First the Kingdom of God: Church Agencies and Job Search, Australasian Catholic Record 77, no. 4 (2000): 428–37; Mission and Ministry in the Wake of Vatican II, Australian EJournal of Theology, no. 1 (2003); Power and Authority—a Response to Bishop Cullinane, Australasian Catholic Record 82 (2005): 154–62; A Dialectic Engagement with the Social Sciences in an Ecclesiological Context, Theological Studies 66 (2005): 815–40; The Times They Are A’Changin’: A Response to O’Malley and Schloesser, Theological Studies 67 (2006): 834–55; On the Divine Institution of the Three-Fold Ministry, Ecclesiology 4 (2007): 38–51; Recent Ecclesiology: A Survey, Pacifica 21 (2008): 57–67; Ecclesiology and the Social Sciences, in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, ed. Gerard Mannion and Lewis Mudge (New York: Routledge, 2009), 639–54.↵

Notably, Joseph Komonchak, Foundations in Ecclesiology, ed. Fred Lawrence, vol. 11, Lonergan Workshop Journal Supplementary Issue (Boston: Boston College, 1995).↵

Robert M. Doran, Theology and the Dialectics of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).↵

1

The Structure of Systematic Ecclesiology

A brief survey of recent literature in ecclesiology would be enough to convince any reader that the topic comes in various shapes and sizes. Compared with other theological topics, it seems less clear what it is that ecclesiology, and especially a systematic ecclesiology, seeks to achieve. Ecclesiological works focus on a number of areas—biblical,[1] patristic,[2] or Vatican II[3]—all done with an eye to the current state of the Church. Some works seem to despair of the possibility of a systematic account of the Church, preferring to view the Church using various models or paradigms,[4] while others view the current state of the subject as a clash of various root metaphors, each one seeking dominance as the true form of ecclesiology.[5] Some take the notion of communio as their starting point,[6] while others begin with the Church’s mission.[7] While this rich diversity helps us fill out the complex reality of Church, one may be left wondering how these diverse approaches might fit together into a single coherent understanding.

The question that this current work seeks to address is, What should a systematic ecclesiology seek to achieve? How would it operate? The answer will take the form of two approximate specifications. The first is that systematic ecclesiology should be empirical/historical, critical, normative, dialectic and practical; the second will consider the image of the coming together of upper and lower blades—an upper theoretic blade and a lower blade of empirical data. The import of these specifications will be explored below. Before that, I need to address the question, Why bother? What does a systematic approach add?

It is clear that the Catholic Church is facing a variety of near insoluble problems in terms of its self-understandings and its relationships with other churches and ecclesial communities. Consider the following three examples. The Catholic Church holds to the divine institution of the threefold order of ministry: bishops, priests and deacons.[8] Churches that do not have this ministry are deemed not really to be churches at all, but merely ecclesial communities.[9] This claim is under enormous pressure in light of contemporary scholarship that indicates a process of historical development over the first two centuries of the Church. Is divine institution compatible with historical development? If so, then how can other developments be ruled out in the future? How can we deny the status of being church to other communities simply because they have a different structure of governance?

A second example, one with a particularly sharp edge, concerns the ordination of women to ministry. The restriction of priestly ordination to males in the Catholic Church is also divinely ordained, or at least traced back to the will of Jesus Christ.[10] Yet other ecclesial communities have decided that such a restriction is not congruent with their understanding of the gospel and have acted accordingly to ordain women to ministry. Does divine ordination mean no further development is possible?

Finally, there is the ongoing debate over and tension between the local and universal Church, their relative priority and relationship.[11] Is the universal Church a coming together of all the local churches or does it have temporal and ontological priority? It is difficult to see how this issue can be resolved without recourse to some type of systematic framework, since without this the meanings of the key terms are too slippery to draw concrete conclusions.

How then can we address such questions? Often theologians attack them with a variety of ad hoc methods, perhaps drawing on the Scriptures or Church documents, building on a range of unexamined assumptions about the sources of normativity in the life of the Church. While many of these contributions are of value, in the end they tend to be ephemeral, as those assumptions shift from author to author and so provide no lasting insight into the questions posed. In the end, substantial questions can only be addressed by an approach that is methodologically grounded and systematically oriented. There comes a time when answering any question properly requires a framework that in principle allows for the answering of all questions in a coherent, interrelated, and systematic manner.

This work is an essay in aid of such a project. As shall become clear, no single theologian could hope to develop a completely systematic ecclesiology, if only because the Church, as a historical community, is not a static body and so continues to offer us new insights through the process of its own ongoing self-constitution.[12] However, I hope that by the end of this work the goal will be more attainable. I shall consider a large-scale historical analysis and some current issues in the life of the Church as illustrations of the type of project envisaged in this work. But the larger project is inherently collaborative, and this work might serve as an invitation to others to make their own contribution.

A First Specification: Empirical/Historical, Critical, Normative, Dialectic and Practical

According to long-standing tradition, theology can be thought of as faith seeking understanding. Ecclesiology, as the theology of church, seeks to understand the theological reality we call church. Systematic ecclesiology will then seek a systematic understanding of the Church, one that integrates its diverse aspects within a single comprehensive framework. However, it is important to recognize the distinction Bernard Lonergan draws between understanding facts and understanding data.[13] Lonergan places the process of understanding the empirical data and making appropriate critical judgments on that understanding in the first, positive phase of his theological method, which moves from research, to interpretation, to history, to finally conclude with dialectics.[14] This phase is most familiar to us in the writings of critical history. While this phase is a necessary foundation for a systematic ecclesiology, if that is all ecclesiology consists in, then it is nothing more than church history, with perhaps a theological eye cast over it.

Systematic ecclesiology then will incorporate a narrative structure. That is, it will tell a story of the Church from its origins until the present, with perhaps intimations into the future. This narrative will not be a naïve apologetic history that takes sources at their face value, but rather an empirically grounded critical history that recognizes perspectives and interests, agendas and polemics in the sources it deals with. Ecclesiology must be not only thoroughly empirical, but thoroughly critical in its handling of the historical data. A systematic ecclesiology will thus subsume the results of the first, positive phase of Lonergan’s theological method—the specialties of research, interpretation, history and dialectics—into its very heart.[15]

Two clarifications are immediately required. First, if we are talking about the historical data of the Church, which church are we speaking of? Here I find myself in agreement with John Milbank. Ecclesiology must deal with the actual genesis of real historical churches.[16] However, to do so means making choices between existing historical churches. I choose to focus on the Catholic Church. Others may seek to pursue the same type of project for other churches.[17] It may be helpful to contrast this orientation to a Catholic ecclesiology with the suggestion of Roger Haight that the object of the discipline of ecclesiology is the whole or universal church,[18] not just some segment of it. While I agree with Haight that any particular church cannot automatically claim to be identified with the universal church, I do not agree with his contention that the proper object of ecclesiology is the whole or universal church. In fact, there is a real danger that such an object becomes an idealization. While the churches may be united eschatologically, in the here and now they are divided on many scores, and it would be methodologically unsound not to recognize this.[19]

The second clarification concerns the distinction between the history of the Church and the history of reflection on the Church. The history of the Church ultimately becomes intelligible only by including a history of theological reflection upon church. That reflection does not seek simply to understand church as it is historically constituted. It is not just empirical but also attempts to be normative, spelling out not just how church actually is but how it should be, at least in the mind of the theologian. In terms of Lonergan’s functions of meaning, ecclesiological discourse is never just cognitive; it also functions effectively to shape the ecclesial reality.[20] The implicit or explicit norms may draw on what is best in the actual praxis of church in a given era, and elements of the tradition. These ecclesiologies will then feed back into the actual praxis of church by presenting a theoretical model to be followed, imitated, and praised. A truly systematic ecclesiology must take into account not only the praxis of church but also the history of ecclesiology itself and the ways they have shaped that praxis. The story of the Church will include the story of the stories of the Church. The range of data must include both these aspects.[21] It must be an ecclesiology of ecclesiologies.

However, Lonergan identifies a second, normative theological phase, which builds on the achievements of the first phase and moves into the tasks of foundations, doctrines, systematics and communications. Significantly, systematics comes after doctrines, which consist of normative judgments, both ecclesial and theological, of truth and value, which in this case we affirm in faith about the Church. Our theological task is then to understand these judgments that we affirm. This is the traditional account of theology as faith (held as true) seeking understanding.[22] The question we face is, How do these ecclesially affirmed judgments relate to the critical work of the first phase of theology, which deals with the historical data? How do we bring the messiness of the historical narrative into alignment with our ecclesially formed judgments to achieve a systematic theology of the Church? I hope to give a clearer response to this question in the second specification below.

Perhaps the most common approach in works on ecclesiology is simply to ignore the historical data altogether. These works provide inspiring but idealized models of church life based on profound religious categories of communio, perichoresis, mysterium and diakonia. They describe a church that we would all want to belong to; but when we look at the Church as a concrete reality, we may wonder about the discrepancy between the idealized form and the historical facts. Have the authors merely given an account of a Platonic ideal? Should we perhaps distinguish between the Church as a spiritual reality, pure and spotless, and the pilgrim Church here on earth, semper purificanda? But then, have we really understood the Church or just some ideal representation? In this regard, we can perhaps agree with John Milbank that the object of our theological understanding in ecclesiology must be historical and concrete, not simply with the imagination of an ecclesial ideal.[23] These idealized approaches cease to be empirically and critically grounded.

I find such idealist approaches deeply unsatisfying and of little assistance in seeking to understand the Church of concrete existence. However, the task of presenting an alternative is not easy, and in various articles and a recent book,[24] Robert Doran has illustrated how complex it can become. He has raised the possibility that Lonergan’s conception of systematic theology includes the incorporation not only of an understanding of the articles of faith, but of the historical unfolding of those articles and the various attempts to understand them. On this view, systematic theology must become a theology of theologies in their genetic and dialectic unfolding. This is only possible by placing them within a larger framework of a theology of history. Doran has intensively explored such a framework in his massive Theology and the Dialectics of History.[25] Doran’s approach is the basis of the present work, and I give an exposition of it in subsequent chapters (especially chapter 3). A systematic ecclesiology must seek to bring the outcomes of an empirical and critical historical account of the Church into conjunction with the normative judgments, both ecclesial and theological, to produce a theological understanding of the Church as an ongoing historical process, beginning in the first century in Palestine and culminating in the present global Church of the twenty-first century. This is the range of data that ecclesiology must deal with—clearly an enormous task. One need only consider the present multi-volume History of Vatican II to recognize the size of the problem ecclesiology faces.[26] Ecclesiology is of necessity a collaborative exercise, drawing on multiple disciplines in theology: biblical studies, church history, and beyond. As Lonergan once noted, modern theology has become largely empirical. Now we may conclude that ecclesiology must become largely historical.[27]

For reasons that will become clearer as the logic of this work unfolds, I will specify the normative element of ecclesiology by speaking of the mission of the Church in relation to Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. The mission or purpose of the Church is to continue Jesus’ mission of building up the kingdom of God. One of the great discoveries of contemporary theology is the reappropriation of the biblical symbol of the kingdom.[28] Explicating the relationship between Church and kingdom has become increasingly significant for ecclesiology, and for Church documents. I shall pursue this relationship further in chapters 2 and 3, but for the time being I note that the notion of the kingdom of God provides a significant normative element for ecclesiology.

This element gives ecclesiology theological depth, ensuring that it is not reduced to simply being a critical history of the Church. It adds something new, for the introduction of an explicit teleology based on the kingdom provides us with norms for evaluating the life of the Church.[29] Thus a systematic ecclesiology must not only be empirical and critical; it must also be normative, and hence evaluative. It must allow us to judge whether this change—this new structure, teaching or program—contributes to the purpose of the Church. It does so by asking whether this change, structure, teaching or program is properly oriented to the goal of the Church: the incremental realization of the kingdom.[30] Certainly, this renewed appreciation of the kingdom of God is one of the major achievements of contemporary ecclesiology, though it is rarely used as the basic norm for evaluating the history of the Church. Its use remains more or less heuristic and foundational in understanding the mission of Jesus.

Again, if I may refer to Lonergan’s theological method, the import of the above is that a systematic ecclesiology must take into account the specialties of foundations and doctrines. Foundations will be needed to provide the basic categories to give an account of the kingdom (chapter 3), as well as controlling the meaning of those categories through the foundational reality of the converted subjectivity of the theologian. I shall expand on the question of categories further below. But the theologian must also take into account the outcomes of doctrines, both ecclesial and theological, that is, judgments pertaining to the reality of the Church, its divine origins, its sacramental forms, and most particularly its complex relationship to the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed (chapters 4 and 5).

Can we ask more of our ecclesiology, more than that it be empirical, critical, and normative? Certainly, these goals alone would be a major achievement. However, by raising the problem of normativity, ecclesiology must exploit another opportunity. Norms are not always achieved. The actual history of the Church will diverge from these norms in a variety of ways. This divergence might be like the random divergence from a statistical frequency (noteworthy in itself but requiring no further analysis), or it might be a more systematic divergence based on a failure to grasp the nature of the goal of the Church itself. For example, one might think the goal of the Church is the salvation of souls, conceived in a Platonic sense.[31] This would be a major distortion of the actual goal of the kingdom of God. A truly systematic ecclesiology will seek to understand the ways in which such systematic breakdowns can occur. In doing so, ecclesiology will become dialectical. It is perhaps clear now what a vital role the data of past ecclesiologies plays in this process, because these are fundamental articulations of the Church’s understanding of the nature of its goal. Distortions in this understanding will have ramifications in church practice and history.

This brings us to the final type of insight that will be proper to the task of ecclesiology. An analysis that is normative and dialectical will also be practical. It will propose possible courses of action and outline their likely outcomes. It will diagnose the sickness and supply the prescription for the needed medicine. Just as social analysis leads to social policy, so too ecclesiology will have its practical ramifications. It will merge into pastoral planning and practical theology, and so anticipate the concerns of the functional specialty of communications. Of all the theologies, ecclesiology must be the most practical.

In summary, a consideration of the range of data leads to the conclusion that ecclesiology must be empirical and critical: it must provide us with a critical history both of the Church and of prior reflections on the Church. Consideration of the type of understanding I am aiming at leads to the conclusion that a truly systematic ecclesiology must be normative, dialectical, and practical.

A Second Specification: Upper and Lower Blades

While the above specification may spell out the goals of a systematic ecclesiology, it might still leave us puzzling as to how it will be achieved. How do we bring together the data of critical historical studies with the conclusions of foundational and doctrinal specialties? To explore this question, I will consider a further specification in terms of a metaphor introduced by Lonergan of upper and lower blades. In Insight, Lonergan uses the metaphor to speak of the coming together of the lower blade of data with the upper blade of theory to arrive at explanation.[32] Here, the question arises in seeking to distinguish the task of systematic ecclesiology from critical church history. If the task of ecclesiology is an understanding of the Church, and the Church is to be understood as a historical developing community, how is ecclesiology to be distinguished from the discipline of church history? Church history provides us with a basic narrative of the Church. What more can an ecclesiology add to such a narrative?

A parallel question arises in the discipline of history itself. What do the social sciences add to the discipline of history? This question has become more pressing with the collapse of the major metanarrative of Marxism as a scientific reading of history. A postmodern suspicion of grand narratives can leave us with nothing but the particular narratives of concrete communities, lacking any overarching intelligibility to structure our accounts. To adopt such a position is to turn away from any contribution from the social sciences at all.[33]

What then can the social sciences provide over and above a historical narrative? Here the image of upper and lower blades might help. The lower blade is the collection of relevant empirical data. The upper blade provides a set of heuristic anticipations for the patterns into which the data will fit. In physics, such an anticipation is provided by a general form of differential equation, in chemistry by the periodic table, in biology by natural selection, and so on. The task of the social sciences is to provide a set of patterns that anticipate (all) possible patterns for human social and historical existence. The more systematic and coherent social science becomes, the more such patterns are systematically interrelated and comprehensive in relation to the data of human history, culture, and societies. The goal of a systematic discipline is to bring the upper blade into conjunction with the lower blade, to provide a fit between data and the anticipated patterns.[34]

Hence I suggest that ecclesiology stands to church history as the social sciences stand to history in general. As the goal of understanding history involves bringing together the lower blade of historical narrative with the upper blade of the social sciences, so the goal of ecclesiology is bringing together an upper blade that incorporates the social sciences with the lower blade of a narrative of the history of the Church. However, such an account of the role of the social sciences in relation to ecclesiology immediately gives rise to two major objections.

Firstly, such a substantial achievement is far from the present reality of the social sciences. The social sciences are methodologically and ideologically divided disciplines, with a variety of approaches claiming to be their proper form. This diversity of methodologies, with a corresponding diversity of ecclesiological implications, arises because the social sciences differ from the physical sciences in important ways. Because our human world is constituted by meaning and value, our systematic study of that world will be affected by our philosophical stances toward a variety of epistemological and moral questions. While the promise of the social sciences was that they would replace the endless bickering of the philosophers and theologians through an appeal to empirical data, in fact they have simply reproduced them in a different forum.

This leaves ecclesiologists in a difficult position. Does one opt for an existing approach in the social sciences, or does one wait until the social sciences have got their act together with a generally accepted methodology? If it is the latter, one might be waiting a very long time; the root problems are the same as those facing philosophy, and these show no sign of being resolved in the near future. At the very least, an ecclesiologist must be aware that the adoption of a particular social-scientific approach involves a commitment to philosophical positions that will directly impinge on the form one’s ecclesiology will take.

There is a second and more substantial objection to the problem of the relationship between social sciences and ecclesiology. If the task of the social sciences is to provide a systematic and coherent set of patterns into which the data of human communities will fit—a comprehensive upper blade—then what room is there for theology? Alternatively, what does theology add to the understanding of the Church if the social sciences already provide a comprehensive understanding? Surely this would amount to the ultimate reduction of ecclesiology to sociology?

This is a much more difficult question to deal with because it gets to the heart of the relationship between theology and the social sciences. It raises questions not only about how to relate these two disciplines, but also about the very autonomy of the social sciences themselves. Indeed, the question of the relationship between the social sciences and theology touches on one of the most difficult of all theological problems: the relationship between grace and nature. In fact, if theology is not to be totally excluded from any contribution, then there must be some sense in which the social sciences are already theological. The argument at its simplest is that the data of the social sciences, that is, the data of human communities and history, already includes data pertinent to the theological realities of grace and sin. If so, the social sciences can only be comprehensive if they relate in some fashion to these data. Or as Lonergan has argued, the only correct general form of [the] understanding [of the human sciences] is theological.[35] This conclusion means that ecclesiology cannot simply adopt existing sociological accounts without recognizing the need for a theological reorientation. Yet such a reorientation is not likely to occur, or even be recognized as needed, from within the social sciences themselves. Hence a significant part of this present project involves the beginnings of such a reorientation (chapters 2 and 3).

I shall now present an analysis of various approaches to be found in ecclesiological literature, broadly understood. Hopefully, this will help clarify the nature of the present project through a process of comparison and contrast.

A Biblical Approach: Hans Küng

Hans Küng’s book The Church first appeared in English translation in 1968 and has been regularly reprinted since. The book provides a thorough analysis of the New Testament data on the early Church, its life, structures, and spirit. Küng’s detailed presentation has a specific purpose, that the original Church may light the way once more for the Church of today.[36] It goes to the original sources to recapture the original spirit, as promoted by Vatican II.[37] After some initial methodological chapters, Küng grounds the Church in the preaching of Jesus about the reign of God. The Church is the eschatological community of salvation in service of God’s reign. Still, the Church is not to be identified directly with the kingdom of God, nor is there continuity between the two, for the kingdom of God arrives as a wholly new and unprepared perfecting action of God.[38] The Church is simply the herald of the kingdom, an anticipatory sign of God’s reign.[39]

Küng uses biblical categories to describe the Church. The Church is the new people of God, founded when Jesus’ disciples began not merely to preach the message of Jesus, but to preach Jesus himself as the fulfillment of this message.[40] The Church is a creation of the Spirit, through which the Church is empowered, transformed, "consoled and strengthened in joy and hope by their experience of God’s power in his Spirit.[41] The Church is the body of Christ, manifest both in the local community, which is itself fully church, and in the wider Church that grows out into the whole world. Within his analysis, Küng launches a variety of attacks upon the triumphalism, clericalism and juridicism of the Catholic Church in recent history. Küng also considers the Church under the traditional notes: the Church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic. In each of these, the emphasis is that the indicative is an imperative." Each note sets an agenda for the Church, a task to be accomplished, so there are no grounds for complacency or triumphalism.[42]

In his final section, Küng considers the nature of office in the Church. The starting point for this discussion is the unique priesthood of Christ and the priesthood of all believers. Given that all believers are priests, the urgent question is whether there is room for any kind of ecclesiastical office.[43] While Küng concludes there is such room for a ministry of service, there is a frightening gulf that separates the Church of today from the original constitution of the Church. We must return to the original history of that constitution so that we can rediscover the essential things in the Church and establish ourselves on a firm and secure footing.[44]

One conclusion Küng draws from his historical investigation is that the threefold system of offices, of bishop, presbyter/priest, and deacon, "is not simply the original way in which ministries were ordered and shared out, and that it is impossible to draw clear theological and dogmatic line of division" between the three offices. The creation of such a dividing line should be left to canon lawyers, not theologians.[45] For Küng, the distinction between bishops and priests is a matter of arbitrary historical fact. In that case, there would be no intelligibility in the distinction beyond whatever might be organizationally appropriate at a given time.

There is no doubt that Küng’s ecclesiology takes its initial stand on the historical data of the New Testament, and so creates a significant starting point for ecclesiological reflection. However, Küng’s attempt to use this starting point to light the way for the Church of the present leaves major questions unanswered. As Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza asks in another context, should we understand the early Church as an archetype upon which the Church should always be modeled, or is it a prototype from which all future models are genetically linked?[46] The leap Küng makes from early Church to present Church suggests the former rather than the latter. This concern has led some to suggest that Küng’s ecclesiology is a sort of theological positivism.[47]

Further, Küng’s intense focus on the biblical data leaves little room for the insights of the social sciences. The categories of the investigation are largely religious categories—the reign of God; the people of God, created by the Spirit; the Church as holy and apostolic; the priesthood of all believers. Indeed, Küng rejects the possibility of learning anything from a comparative study of religion because Christian faith is not just one religion among many others.[48] From what I have argued above, the Church cannot be understood simply in terms of such religious categories alone. The Church is born of a divine initiative touching human history, an initiative that completes and perfects the natural human community it graces and constitutes. To speak of the Church using religious categories alone is, I would argue, to promote some of the very distortions Küng is seeking to eliminate from theology.

This is not to suggest that Küng would write the same ecclesiology today as he did in the ’60s. He has moved on by strides since then. However, the book remains influential, perhaps more among Protestants than Catholics, and its shortcomings should be noted.

Models and Paradigms: Avery Dulles and David Bosch

Avery Dulles’s book Models of the Church has been described as the most influential English-language study of Catholic ecclesiological paradigms written since 1965.[49] In it, Dulles develops five models for the Church: Church as institution, Church as mystical communion, Church as sacrament, Church as herald, and Church as servant.[50] Dulles shows how these different models operate in the writings of various theologians and how each illuminates aspects of the reality of church without any particular model providing a complete account.

The Church as institution: this model emphasizes the notion of the Church as a perfect society. Its focus is on the Church as a hierarchical institution, with clerical offices whose powers and functions include teaching, sanctifying and governing. The Church is clearly divided between those who teach and those who learn, those who bless and those who are sanctified, those who govern and those governed. The basic virtue of the laity is obedience. The clearest proponent of this approach was Robert Bellarmine, who declared the Church a society as visible and palpable as the community of the Roman people, or the Kingdom of France, or the Republic of Venice.[51]

The Church as mystical communion: the focus of this model is not on the visible structures but the invisible union of believers brought about by the gift of the Holy Spirit. This gift united men and women into the body of Christ, or the people of God, depending on the biblical image preferred. The basic virtues within this model are the sense of communion, of fellowship with Jesus, the Spirit, and with other believers.[52]

The Church as sacrament: a sacrament is, according to Augustine, a visible sign of an invisible grace. In this model, the Church is understood as a visible sign, including its institutional elements, of an invisible grace, a grace that creates and constitutes the body of Christ. This model was particularly evident in the writings of two influential Catholic theologians, Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx.[53] Its strength is the bringing together of both outer and inner realities of the Church.

The Church as herald: more popular among Protestant theologians, this model is concerned with the preaching of the word, in contrast to the sacramental model. Within this model, the local church is a complete church, not just a section or branch of a larger institution. It is within the assembly of the local church that the word of God is preached.[54]

The Church as servant: this model takes as its paradigmatic image the suffering servant of Isaiah, which was applied by the early Church to Jesus. It recognizes the legitimacy of the autonomy of the secular world, and understands the Church as a servant in the human struggle to create a just and peaceful world. Its starting point is not institutional structures, but an outwardly focused mission. Dulles finds evidence of this emerging in the documents of Vatican II.[55]

Dulles’ approach had the key advantage that it broke the stranglehold that the hierarchical institutional model had on the Catholic imagination. It provided a number of other modes of discourse that could be developed in discussion about the Church. It incorporated insights from Vatican II and from the new biblical studies found in works such as those of Küng. Finally, its non-methodical approach was attractive to a theological community that had grown suspicious of rigid adherence to a single model, notably as found in neoscholasticism.

Still, it falls short of what could be hoped for from a more systematic ecclesiology, as he himself acknowledges.[56] It is clear even on a brief account that Dulles’s models are not so much explanatory systems as root metaphors or symbols. They contain the surplus of meaning and affect common to symbolic discourse rather than the precision and control of meaning needed in a truly explanatory account. Symbols such as these can give rise to a variety of insights, but more is needed than a mass of insights. They need to be organized and related to one another so that a coherent account of the Church as a whole can be given. Dulles’s use of such metaphors steps away from this task as almost too difficult. The end result can be an ecclesiology that delights in powerful symbols, which have their place in promoting piety and even mysticism, but takes flight from the task of understanding that is basic to theology. The Church may indeed be a mystery (sacramentum), but this means it will yield ever-richer understanding to those who seek it. A retreat from understanding into a plethora of symbols is not a proper theological response to study of the Church.[57]

Similarly, one would be hard pressed to find answers to either theoretical or practical questions using such an ecclesiology. For example, what is the distinction between episcopal and presbyteral ministry?[58] In his consideration of this, Dulles initially refers to the institutional model, which grounds the distinction juridically and in a sense arbitrarily. But when he moves to the other models, they make no significant contribution. One can only conclude that they are seriously deficient in giving us a useful model of the Church, for they fail to even begin to deal with the question posed. Their failure to provide any theoretical basis for the distinction means they can provide no real practical guidance in structuring, for example, the relationships between dioceses and their parishes. The models are as far removed from such practical questions as Love God and your neighbor is from questions on the legitimacy and limits of self-defense.

Further, Dulles makes no attempt to systematically relate the models. Joseph Komonchak has attempted to relate the various models to elements of Lonergan’s theological view of history.[59] This at least suggests that what appears as a coincidental manifold of symbols may be subject to a unifying insight, but it is not clear in Dulles’s own work. Rather, he almost presents a defense of the nonsystematic, eclectic nature of his approach.

Finally, Dulles’s work makes no serious engagement with the data of history. Can the models provide an explanatory account of the fact of change as evidenced in the history of the Church? Have various models dominated in various eras? If so, what were the forces that led to change from one model to another? If they fail even to provide a framework for answering such questions, their explanatory power is limited. Thus while Dulles’s work undoubtedly helped liberate our ecclesiological imaginations and so was groundbreaking in its own way, it fell well short of what can be demanded of a systematic ecclesiology.

Unlike Dulles’s work, David Bosch’s book Transforming Mission is not explicitly ecclesiological. The focus of this work is the mission of the Church and the ways in which that mission have been understood and actualized throughout history. Writing from a broad Protestant perspective, Bosch provides a rich tapestry of historical data and analysis covering the mission of the Church from the New Testament era to our contemporary setting. In this way, his approach overcomes some of the shortcomings in Dulles’s work.

In order to control the vast historical data, Bosch draws on the writings of Hans Küng to divide the history of Christianity into six eras characterized by distinct paradigms.[60] Whereas Küng suggests that each of these periods has its own distinctive understanding of Christian faith, Bosch adds that each also offers a distinctive understanding of the Church’s mission. The six paradigms are:[61]

The apocalyptic paradigm of primitive Christianity: the dominant feature of this paradigm is the sense of the imminent end of history and the dawning of the kingdom. There is a sense of urgency to the preaching of the Church, which witnessed to the power of the Spirit through ecstatic phenomena such as speaking in tongues. The overall outlook is still largely Jewish, while the entry of the Gentiles into the Church is a sign of the gathering of the nations prior to the last days.[62]

The Hellenistic paradigm of the patristic period: initiated by Paul, the shift to this paradigm is marked by the movement from the largely Jewish setting toward the Hellenistic culture of the Roman Empire. Gentiles begin to dominate the Church numerically, making Greek the language of the Church, and Rome the increasingly powerful center. There is a growing institutionalization of Church life and a move to inculturate Christianity into its new cultural setting.[63]

The medieval Roman Catholic paradigm: this shift is initiated by the conversion of Constantine and the Christianization of the Roman Empire. With the collapse of the empire, the Church becomes a powerful social and cultural force, especially through the office of the pope, which became increasingly monarchical. It is the era of Christendom, where the Church has a role in all aspects of people’s lives. The dominant theological figure is Augustine, in his speculative writings on the Trinity, his polemic writings on grace, and his political theology contained in TheCity of God.[64]

The Protestant (Reformation) paradigm: the Reformers reacted against the worldliness of the powerful Catholic institutions, and offered a return to the simplicity of the Scriptures and the primacy of faith as the ground of justification. The article of justification by faith alone is that by which the Church stands or falls. It is the measure of all church doctrines and practices. The emphasis on the priesthood of all believers also tended to relativize church offices, which were seen as of human rather than divine institution, basically for the sake of good order.[65]

The modern Enlightenment paradigm: the Enlightenment was marked by a renewed humanism and rationalism. This was the Age of Reason, whose creed was progress through scientific discovery and the elimination of prejudice and superstition. Religion tends to a nonhistorical deism—belief in an all-powerful God, but not a historical revelation—or an inward pietism, as the world becomes increasingly hostile to the appearance of religion in the public sphere. Catholicism and some Protestant groups never moved into this paradigm, while for some it initiated the secular gospel movement, which understood Christianity as a form of sublime humanism.[66]

The emerging ecumenical paradigm: as Bosch identifies it, this is an emerging paradigm, so its features are to some extent speculative and anticipatory. It is a paradigm for a postmodern era, one less concerned with dogma and more concerned with shared praxis. Its context is global, no longer Europe; its goal is inculturation of the gospel, not the exporting of Western culture. The lines between salvation and sociopolitical liberation are no longer clear, as the churches work together for social justice as the basis for their witness to Jesus Christ. It is, or must be, ecumenical, for without this the churches have no credibility.[67]

It is worth noting both the strengths and weaknesses of Bosch’s approach. The strength is that the use of these six paradigms allows Bosch to handle the historical data in a controlled and meaningful fashion. The paradigms provide intelligible patterns that greatly enrich the historical data. In this way, they illustrate the notion of an upper blade. Such a patterning needs to be explored and verified in the data in an empirical way, not seeking to force the data into false patterns for ideological reasons. The weakness lies in the genesis of the paradigms themselves. While each paradigm enriches the historical data under investigation, one must also ask how the paradigms relate to one another. Are they just a coincidental manifold, or is there a higher viewpoint that renders the sequence itself intelligible in some way?

To ask such a question is to go against the grain of the postmodern, generally relativistic, stance adopted by Bosch (and Küng). If there is such a higher viewpoint, it could well provide some norms that would do more than identify different paradigms but also provide criteria for evaluating them and the directions in which they take history. Doran’s recent contributions to a theology of history can assist us in identifying such norms. Still, the method of dividing history into eras is of great assistance in gaining an overview of the issues involved. Later in this work, I shall consider various periods of church history as I attempt to move the structural considerations of this book toward the more concrete data of history.

Ecclesiology and the Social Sciences

We now turn to three works that make explicit use of the social sciences to assist in understanding the Church.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A number of theologians have taken up the challenges offered by the question of the relationship between theology and the social sciences. One of the first was Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) whose doctoral thesis, Sanctorum Communio, was a groundbreaking attempt to place ecclesiology in dialogue with sociological theory.[68] It is a truly precocious work, which he began planning at the age of nineteen and completed at twenty-one. It appeared in print in 1930. While Bonhoeffer is better known for his later works, here we find him laying the foundations for much of his later thinking.

Bonhoeffer begins his study with a serious engagement with various authors within the German school of sociology, notably Max Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Ernst Troeltsch. He is also deeply engaged with the German Idealist stream of philosophy: Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and others. Drawing on these two streams, he introduces a significant distinction between social philosophy, which deals with fundamental social relationships that are presupposed by all knowledge of, and will for, empirical community[69] and sociology as the study of the structures of empirical communities.[70] He then argues that social philosophy, largely drawn from and in dialogue with the German Idealists, provides a normative component for the more empirically oriented approach of sociology. This is important because he recognizes the tension between the normative and empirical aspects of the study of any society. For Bonhoeffer, both social philosophy and sociology belong to the humanities rather than the natural sciences. He is also careful to avoid a sociological reduction of ecclesiology. He carefully distinguishes a sociology of religion, which might study the Church from an external perspective, and a genuine ecclesiology that takes sociological insights into its core and can only be understood from within . . . never by nonparticipants.[71]

Drawing on his own development of a philosophy of personhood and the writings of Tönnies, Bonhoeffer introduces four types, or models, in order to distinguish different sociological groupings. These types are distinguished on the basis of the directional determination of the wills of their members. The first of these is community [Gemeinschaft], where the will of the members is towards the community itself, as an end in itself. The second is society [Gesellschaft], where the members are directed towards a willed goal (society). These are the two major types, though he adds two others: cooperative association (like a school or army), and a mass that arises from some external provocation and produces a parallel direction of wills in its members.[72]

To which of these types does the Church belong? Bonhoeffer clearly favors the community type, where the life of the community is an end in itself, rather than society. However, he recognizes the tensions in this option:

The mutual love of the saints does indeed constitute community as an end in itself. But this brings us again to the problem derived from the thought that the community is, after all, not an end in itself insofar as it seeks only to realize God’s will. However, since God wills precisely this community of saints, the problem is solved . . . since this realization of God’s will consists in the community itself, it is an end in itself.[73] [emphasis in original]

Bonhoeffer then describes this as a completely novel sociological structure.[74] However, in the end he concludes that the Church transcends the activities characteristic of both community and society and combines both.[75] It combines both a will to unity and a will to embrace God’s purpose.

There is much more that I could draw attention to in this seminal work, particularly his notions of the role of Jesus as providing a vicarious representative action that founds the Church, and the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the objective spirit of the church community. Bonhoeffer has provided a groundbreaking contribution to the use of the social sciences to ecclesiology, albeit within a particular context of the development of the social sciences. As Richard Roberts notes, "It is Bonhoeffer who, despite the archaism of his