Tuesday, September 18, 2007
NH: An Invitation to Critique and Revise these Theses
After reviewing the twenty-one theses of Conflict Ecclesiology listed to the right, how would you revise them so that they are more theologically adequate to the tasks of ecclesiology? (Corollary to this is the question: What are the tasks of ecclesiology?)
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3 comments:
Dear Marshall,
Since I am not yet a member, then I assume my comment is safe inside this box.
I am intrigued, to say the least. The whole project is unbelievably ambitious and heady; I am not sure I can make much of a contribution. But I like what I've read, assuming, of course, that I have properly understood it.
Obviously, I am going to have to spend some time with the twenty-one theses you've presented. What you've presented so far is extremely impressive; I applaud you not only for doing it but for doing it so well.
Peace to you, and don't forget to hound me (I can forget these things rather easily),
Bill Gnade
I am impressed with your theses Marshall; well done!
I agree that #3 may be questionable. I think of the call to "covenant": what could this mean if not to reach agreement, and not just with "ourselves"-- i.e. right-thinking people like "us"--but with the whole people of God. Undue emphasis on "particular communities" and "particular places" is thus something to carefully guard against. Of course, this is just a throat-clearing comment as a warm-up to a robust discussion of the local and the universal and how they relate. I do think in our inter-Anglican moment, however--and in our conflicts!--that more attentiveness to "communion as the limit of autonomy" (as the Windsor Report put it) is meet and right; and I have recently reread the useful warnings on this score from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's influential "Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion" (1992) at n. 8:
"The universal Church is therefore the Body of the Churches (Lumen Gentium 23). Hence it is possible to apply the concept of communion in analogous fashion to the union existing among particular Churches, and to see the universal Church as a Communion of Churches. Sometimes, however, the idea of a "communion of particular Churches" is presented in such a way as to weaken the concept of the unity of the Church at the visible and institutional level. Thus it is asserted that every particular Church is a subject complete in itself, and that the
universal Church is the result of a reciprocal recognition on the part of the particular Churches. This ecclesiological unilateralism, which impoverishes not only the concept of the universal Church but also that of the particular Church, betrays an insufficient understanding of the concept of communion. As history
shows, when a particular Church has sought to become self-sufficient, and has weakened its real communion with the universal Church and with its living and
visible centre, its internal unity suffers too, and it finds itself in danger of losing its own freedom in the face of the various forces of slavery and exploitation [citing at the end here Paul VI's apostolic exhortation Evangelii
nuntiandi, 1975].
I also am not sure about #14: the first clause is right on; and I could agree with the second if you mean "temptation" in the phenomenological sense of
literally being tempted *when one is doing the right thing.* Is this what you mean? Because I do not personally think we can do without orthodoxy and holiness, albeit talking about them non-triumphalistically, honestly, and
historically (thesis #8) is a distinctly spiritual and intellectual discipline
to be cultivated.
Likewise #21, as you noted: this is indeed tricky! One thinks immediately of the RC church's constant hammering on the importance of not compromising "truth" in
ecumenical dialogue. I'd love to discuss this one with you in a leisurely way over dinner or several rounds of beers sometimes if we find the opportunity. I
do agree with the mainstream ecumenical movement that "truth" and "unity" are not separable, and so insofar as the latter is now obscured, the former must be
as well. To have said this however is not to have donwgraded truth, and in fact often serves rather to remind people of the importance and non-negotiable nature of unity.
A few initial thoughts.
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