Understanding Ecclesiology in Christian Theology

Well hello it's Alistair McGrath again talking to you about my textbook Christian Theology and Introduction and as you can see I'm filming this set of videos in my home. I had hoped to make this video series at Oxford University, in effect, a lecture theatre or rather nice college library. But of course, it's in the midst of the COVID crisis of April 2020 and Oxford's in lockdown. So I'm simply recording these variants. informally in my home. I hope you won't mind this too much. So we come to the 15th chapter of this book which is all about ecclesiology. Again ecclesiology, the technical term for the doctrine of the church. Now early Christian writers don't seem to have thought that the systematic discussion of the nature of the church was really much of a theological priority. The main theological issues of the first four centuries were Christological and Trinitarian. rather than ecclesiological. In any case, they were so worried about surviving in an often hostile cultural environment that they hadn't time to think about everything. Most early Christian theologians seem to have been content to think of the church as the community of faith or the people of God and just leave it at that until, of course, controversy forced clarification of the issues. Now, in the previous chapter, we saw how the Pelagian controversy helped sort out some theological issues by bringing greater precision to the ideas of grace and sin. And the same thing happened in relation to the doctrine of the church. The Donatist controversy, again, the Donatist controversy. The Donatus controversy of the 4th century forced patristic writers to think more about what it meant to be a Christian church. In particular, is the church a community of saints, in other words a pure body, or is it a mixed body of saints and sinners? And this debate raised some fundamental questions about the nature of the church, the qualities of its ministers, and also the role of the sacraments. And we'll come back to that in the next chapter because it's a very... Interesting question. And the doctrine of the church of course emerged again as being really important during the period of the Reformation when Protestant and Catholic writers disagreed over the criteria that were to be used to define a Christian church. Catholic writers said there had to be an institutional connection between a body claiming to be a Christian church in the 16th century and the apostolic period. For example, through the laying on of hands. As Protestant writers argued, that this continuity, which was a good thing, was best achieved by teaching what the apostles taught, rather than by maintaining this institutional continuity. And of course, there were some, particularly in Anglicanism, who said we can bring these things together, institutional and theological continuity. In the 20th century fresh attention was paid to the doctrine of the church and this is particularly the case in Catholic circles. And so this chapter deals with some early 20th century reflections on ecclesiology before moving on to look at the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. And this is widely regarded as one of the most significant contributions to the doctrine of the church since the 16th century. Finally the chapter looks at what are very often called the Four Notes. or the four marks of the church. And these terms are used to refer to the idea of the church being one, holy, catholic or universal, and apostolic. So what do these four terms used by the creeds mean and how do they affect our understanding of the nature of the church and its mission and ministry? Obviously we look at these questions in some detail in this chapter. That's a very brief overview. let's look at the chapter in more detail. So the chapter opens with a brief engagement with biblical models of the church. And we look at a brief, very brief, I'm afraid, understanding of the shifting notions of the doctrine of the church in the Old Testament before we turn to an extended discussion of the nature of the church as we find it in the New Testament. The New Testament, of course, stresses the continuity between Israel and the Christian church. and offers some ways of understanding the theological identity of the church. This chapter looks at five of these models. The first of these models is that the church is the people of God. And this image emphasizes a continuity of the church of Israel. For example, sharing the covenant promises made by God to Abraham. And it's very important for the Apostle Paul that Christians are seen to share the same faith as Abraham. The church has been called to be the people of God, just as God called Israel in the past. Secondly, the church is a community of salvation. And this image emphasizes that the church is called into being in response to God's work of salvation as a way of proclaiming and extending that work to the whole world. Thirdly, the church is the body of Christ. That's an image used extensively in the Pauline letters. And so the faith of the individual believer and back. were understood to bring about incorporation into the body of Christ. Fourth, the church is a servant people. Again, this image emphasizes the continuity between the old and new covenants. God chose and called Israel in the same way God chose and called the church for service. And this theme is reflected in the terminology of the church for its leaders. The leading terms are that of doulos, a Greek word meaning servant, possibly even slave, and diakonos, meaning someone who waits at a table. These terms for church leaders are hardwired with the idea of service. And finally, the church is the community of the Spirit. And the importance of the activity of the Spirit within the church is very important in biblical witness. This is what enables the church to witness and to grow. But for Paul, the Spirit is not simply a theological resource that's useful in ministry. Its presence within the church is a sign of the coming of God's new age and the role the church must play in bringing about the kingdom of God on earth. Now, these are five individual threads which need to be woven together, and we find that happening during the period of the early church, but really it wasn't seen as a priority. In effect, it's in the later patristic period, once Constantine converted to Christianity, and it became safe to be a Christian in the Roman Empire, that these questions are engaged. Now, as you'll have noticed in our earlier discussion of the Pelagian controversy, it's always difficult to simplify complex controversies. And one of the questions about the Donatus controversy is this. Is the church a... a community of saints or a mixed body? It's a very big and difficult question. The Donatists took the view that the defining characteristic of the church was its purity, doctrinal and moral purity. And it was argued by Donatist writers that the efficacy of the church's ministry, including its sacraments, was dependent on the purity of those who administered them. In other words, the moral and doctrinal purity of church leaders was critical to the ministry and mission of the church. But not everyone agreed, and Augustine of Hippo is the leading example of someone who thought Donatism was wrong. For Augustine, the church had to recognize the lingering sinfulness of Christians. The church was not meant to be, and could not be, a pure body of saints because Christian believers themselves were both saints and sinners. Augustine therefore argued that a Christian anthropology, a Christian understanding of human nature, led into a mixed body ecclesiology. Augustine draws this point out by looking at two biblical parables. The parable of the net which catches many fishes of all kinds and the parable of the wheat and the weeds. And this second parable in Matthew chapter 13 verses 24 to 31 is especially important. So I want us to look at this in more detail. The parable tells of a farmer who sowed seed and then discovered weeds were growing within the crop. So what could be done about this? If the farmer tries to separate the wheat and the weeds while both are still growing, he would simply damage the wheat. Separation would have to wait until harvest time. So the separation of good and evil takes place at the end of time, but not in human history. For Augustine, the parable refers to the church in the world. The church must expect to find itself enfolding both saints and sinners, wheat and weeds. And to attempt a separation between them in this world is premature and risky. The separation will take place in God's own time at the end of history, but no human being can make that judgment or separation on God's behalf. We then move on to look at the debates about the nature of the church's development during the 16th century as a result of the Protestant Reformation. And although early Protestant writers such as Martin Luther developed some important ecclesiological themes, there were still hopes of a reconciliation with Catholicism at this time. So ecclesiology did not get detailed discussion. But by the early 1540s... It was becoming clear that this reconciliation was unlikely to happen, and Protestants realised they needed to develop their own distinct understandings of the nature of the church. So we look at John Calvin, who set out an approach that commanded wide assent in this period of crystallising Protestant identity. For Calvin, two elements were essential to a truly Christian church. 1. The word of God should be preached. And number two, the sacraments should be widely administered. Calvin saw the church as a community that gathers around preaching in the sacraments, both of which point to Christ as their ultimate foundation. And like Augustine, Calvin recognized that the empirical church included both saints and sinners, and its ministers could not judge the status. of their congregation members. That was God's privilege. So this sentence from Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, his major theological work, is often treated as a definitive summary of his view of the nature of the church. Let me read it to you very slowly. Wherever we see the word of God purely preached and listened to, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution. It is in no way to be doubted that a church of God exists. But not everyone agreed. And more radical elements of the Protestant Reformation within the Anabaptist movement took a more Donatist line. They regarded the church as a pure body of saints. Or rather, they thought the church ought to be a body of saints. Realising that it wasn't always like this in practice, and therefore something had been... to be done to reinforce the purity of the church. So those who failed to conform to moral and doctrinal norms could not remain within a congregation on account of their potential to contaminate its purity. So practically this was enforced in some Anabaptist communities through the practice of the ban. Again the ban, the exclusion of certain individuals from congregational meetings until they were judged to have resolved their moral or their theological errors. So that was the Reformation. We then leap ahead to the 20th century to look at some more recent discussions of the nature of the church. And we look at three broad themes. First, Christ is present within the church sacramentally. We look at a range of writers including the Dominican theologian Edward Schillerbeck and the Jesuit theologian Karl Rada. Secondly, Christ is present within the church through the word. We look at a range of writers including the Protestant theologians Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann. And thirdly, Christ is present within the Church through the Spirit. And we look at the Catholic Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff and the Orthodox theologian John Zizulias. Yet many would argue the most important theological statement on the nature of church to be set out in the 20th century is due to the Second Vatican Council. Now this met during the 1960s and the statement of the church is widely known by its Latin title Lumen Gentium, a light to the gentiles. So we look at the Second Vatican Council's statement of church in some details particularly focusing on three major themes. First, the church as communion or fellowship. Secondly, the church as the people of God. And thirdly, the church as a charismatic community. These are very important themes in contemporary Catholic ecclesiology, and they are fully discussed in this chapter. We then look to what are called the four notes or the four marks of the church. One, holy. Catholic or sometimes universal and apostolic. So what do each of these marks or notes help us to understand about the nature of the church? And we look at these in some detail in this chapter. For example, the Donatus controversy focused on what it meant to speak of the church as being holy. How can we speak of the church being holy when both past history and present experience of that institution? point to sinfulness on the part of both the church and its members? And one of several possible answers to this question is provided by Augustine, who sees the empirical church on earth as a mixed body contaminated by sin, but looks forward to its final purification and perfection on the day of judgment. So that's a very interesting section. I think you'll really enjoy reading that. Now we're aware that many people using this text book do so because they want to use theology for mission and ministry. And so this chapter concludes with some reflections on theological themes reflecting both priesthood and ministry. I hope that readers of this book who are studying theology in order to enter some form of Christian ministry will find this final section useful. As you explore questions of ministerial identity. in dialogue with some interesting conversation partners. So again, a really interesting chapter, and I hope you'll find this material interesting and helpful. In the next presentation, we're going to move on to look at some of these themes further as we look at the theology of the sacraments. Again, thank you so much for listening.

So I'm simply recording these variants. informally in my home. I hope you won't mind this too much. So we come to the 15th chapter of this book which is all about ecclesiology.

Again ecclesiology, the technical term for the doctrine of the church. Now early Christian writers don't seem to have thought that the systematic discussion of the nature of the church was really much of a theological priority. The main theological issues of the first four centuries were Christological and Trinitarian.

rather than ecclesiological. In any case, they were so worried about surviving in an often hostile cultural environment that they hadn't time to think about everything. Most early Christian theologians seem to have been content to think of the church as the community of faith or the people of God and just leave it at that until, of course, controversy forced clarification of the issues.

Now, in the previous chapter, we saw how the Pelagian controversy helped sort out some theological issues by bringing greater precision to the ideas of grace and sin. And the same thing happened in relation to the doctrine of the church. The Donatist controversy, again, the Donatist controversy. The Donatus controversy of the 4th century forced patristic writers to think more about what it meant to be a Christian church.

In particular, is the church a community of saints, in other words a pure body, or is it a mixed body of saints and sinners? And this debate raised some fundamental questions about the nature of the church, the qualities of its ministers, and also the role of the sacraments. And we'll come back to that in the next chapter because it's a very... Interesting question.

And the doctrine of the church of course emerged again as being really important during the period of the Reformation when Protestant and Catholic writers disagreed over the criteria that were to be used to define a Christian church. Catholic writers said there had to be an institutional connection between a body claiming to be a Christian church in the 16th century and the apostolic period. For example, through the laying on of hands.

As Protestant writers argued, that this continuity, which was a good thing, was best achieved by teaching what the apostles taught, rather than by maintaining this institutional continuity. And of course, there were some, particularly in Anglicanism, who said we can bring these things together, institutional and theological continuity. In the 20th century fresh attention was paid to the doctrine of the church and this is particularly the case in Catholic circles. And so this chapter deals with some early 20th century reflections on ecclesiology before moving on to look at the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council.

And this is widely regarded as one of the most significant contributions to the doctrine of the church since the 16th century. Finally the chapter looks at what are very often called the Four Notes. or the four marks of the church.

And these terms are used to refer to the idea of the church being one, holy, catholic or universal, and apostolic. So what do these four terms used by the creeds mean and how do they affect our understanding of the nature of the church and its mission and ministry? Obviously we look at these questions in some detail in this chapter. That's a very brief overview.

let's look at the chapter in more detail. So the chapter opens with a brief engagement with biblical models of the church. And we look at a brief, very brief, I'm afraid, understanding of the shifting notions of the doctrine of the church in the Old Testament before we turn to an extended discussion of the nature of the church as we find it in the New Testament.

The New Testament, of course, stresses the continuity between Israel and the Christian church. and offers some ways of understanding the theological identity of the church. This chapter looks at five of these models.

The first of these models is that the church is the people of God. And this image emphasizes a continuity of the church of Israel. For example, sharing the covenant promises made by God to Abraham.

And it's very important for the Apostle Paul that Christians are seen to share the same faith as Abraham. The church has been called to be the people of God, just as God called Israel in the past. Secondly, the church is a community of salvation. And this image emphasizes that the church is called into being in response to God's work of salvation as a way of proclaiming and extending that work to the whole world. Thirdly, the church is the body of Christ.

That's an image used extensively in the Pauline letters. And so the faith of the individual believer and back. were understood to bring about incorporation into the body of Christ.

Fourth, the church is a servant people. Again, this image emphasizes the continuity between the old and new covenants. God chose and called Israel in the same way God chose and called the church for service. And this theme is reflected in the terminology of the church for its leaders.

The leading terms are that of doulos, a Greek word meaning servant, possibly even slave, and diakonos, meaning someone who waits at a table. These terms for church leaders are hardwired with the idea of service. And finally, the church is the community of the Spirit. And the importance of the activity of the Spirit within the church is very important in biblical witness. This is what enables the church to witness and to grow.

But for Paul, the Spirit is not simply a theological resource that's useful in ministry. Its presence within the church is a sign of the coming of God's new age and the role the church must play in bringing about the kingdom of God on earth. Now, these are five individual threads which need to be woven together, and we find that happening during the period of the early church, but really it wasn't seen as a priority.

In effect, it's in the later patristic period, once Constantine converted to Christianity, and it became safe to be a Christian in the Roman Empire, that these questions are engaged. Now, as you'll have noticed in our earlier discussion of the Pelagian controversy, it's always difficult to simplify complex controversies. And one of the questions about the Donatus controversy is this. Is the church a... a community of saints or a mixed body?

It's a very big and difficult question. The Donatists took the view that the defining characteristic of the church was its purity, doctrinal and moral purity. And it was argued by Donatist writers that the efficacy of the church's ministry, including its sacraments, was dependent on the purity of those who administered them.

In other words, the moral and doctrinal purity of church leaders was critical to the ministry and mission of the church. But not everyone agreed, and Augustine of Hippo is the leading example of someone who thought Donatism was wrong. For Augustine, the church had to recognize the lingering sinfulness of Christians.

The church was not meant to be, and could not be, a pure body of saints because Christian believers themselves were both saints and sinners. Augustine therefore argued that a Christian anthropology, a Christian understanding of human nature, led into a mixed body ecclesiology. Augustine draws this point out by looking at two biblical parables. The parable of the net which catches many fishes of all kinds and the parable of the wheat and the weeds. And this second parable in Matthew chapter 13 verses 24 to 31 is especially important.

So I want us to look at this in more detail. The parable tells of a farmer who sowed seed and then discovered weeds were growing within the crop. So what could be done about this?

If the farmer tries to separate the wheat and the weeds while both are still growing, he would simply damage the wheat. Separation would have to wait until harvest time. So the separation of good and evil takes place at the end of time, but not in human history. For Augustine, the parable refers to the church in the world. The church must expect to find itself enfolding both saints and sinners, wheat and weeds.

And to attempt a separation between them in this world is premature and risky. The separation will take place in God's own time at the end of history, but no human being can make that judgment or separation on God's behalf. We then move on to look at the debates about the nature of the church's development during the 16th century as a result of the Protestant Reformation.

And although early Protestant writers such as Martin Luther developed some important ecclesiological themes, there were still hopes of a reconciliation with Catholicism at this time. So ecclesiology did not get detailed discussion. But by the early 1540s...

It was becoming clear that this reconciliation was unlikely to happen, and Protestants realised they needed to develop their own distinct understandings of the nature of the church. So we look at John Calvin, who set out an approach that commanded wide assent in this period of crystallising Protestant identity. For Calvin, two elements were essential to a truly Christian church. 1. The word of God should be preached. And number two, the sacraments should be widely administered.

Calvin saw the church as a community that gathers around preaching in the sacraments, both of which point to Christ as their ultimate foundation. And like Augustine, Calvin recognized that the empirical church included both saints and sinners, and its ministers could not judge the status. of their congregation members. That was God's privilege.

So this sentence from Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, his major theological work, is often treated as a definitive summary of his view of the nature of the church. Let me read it to you very slowly. Wherever we see the word of God purely preached and listened to, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution. It is in no way to be doubted that a church of God exists. But not everyone agreed.

And more radical elements of the Protestant Reformation within the Anabaptist movement took a more Donatist line. They regarded the church as a pure body of saints. Or rather, they thought the church ought to be a body of saints. Realising that it wasn't always like this in practice, and therefore something had been...

to be done to reinforce the purity of the church. So those who failed to conform to moral and doctrinal norms could not remain within a congregation on account of their potential to contaminate its purity. So practically this was enforced in some Anabaptist communities through the practice of the ban. Again the ban, the exclusion of certain individuals from congregational meetings until they were judged to have resolved their moral or their theological errors. So that was the Reformation.

We then leap ahead to the 20th century to look at some more recent discussions of the nature of the church. And we look at three broad themes. First, Christ is present within the church sacramentally. We look at a range of writers including the Dominican theologian Edward Schillerbeck and the Jesuit theologian Karl Rada. Secondly, Christ is present within the church through the word.

We look at a range of writers including the Protestant theologians Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann. And thirdly, Christ is present within the Church through the Spirit. And we look at the Catholic Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff and the Orthodox theologian John Zizulias.

Yet many would argue the most important theological statement on the nature of church to be set out in the 20th century is due to the Second Vatican Council. Now this met during the 1960s and the statement of the church is widely known by its Latin title Lumen Gentium, a light to the gentiles. So we look at the Second Vatican Council's statement of church in some details particularly focusing on three major themes. First, the church as communion or fellowship. Secondly, the church as the people of God.

And thirdly, the church as a charismatic community. These are very important themes in contemporary Catholic ecclesiology, and they are fully discussed in this chapter. We then look to what are called the four notes or the four marks of the church. One, holy. Catholic or sometimes universal and apostolic.

So what do each of these marks or notes help us to understand about the nature of the church? And we look at these in some detail in this chapter. For example, the Donatus controversy focused on what it meant to speak of the church as being holy.

How can we speak of the church being holy when both past history and present experience of that institution? point to sinfulness on the part of both the church and its members? And one of several possible answers to this question is provided by Augustine, who sees the empirical church on earth as a mixed body contaminated by sin, but looks forward to its final purification and perfection on the day of judgment. So that's a very interesting section. I think you'll really enjoy reading that.

Now we're aware that many people using this text book do so because they want to use theology for mission and ministry. And so this chapter concludes with some reflections on theological themes reflecting both priesthood and ministry. I hope that readers of this book who are studying theology in order to enter some form of Christian ministry will find this final section useful.

As you explore questions of ministerial identity. in dialogue with some interesting conversation partners. So again, a really interesting chapter, and I hope you'll find this material interesting and helpful.

In the next presentation, we're going to move on to look at some of these themes further as we look at the theology of the sacraments. Again, thank you so much for listening.

Transcript for:Understanding Ecclesiology in Christian Theology

Transcript for:
Understanding Ecclesiology in Christian Theology