Critical Issues in Ecclesiology: Essays in Honor of Carl E. Braaten - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802866719 ISBN 13: 9780802866714

Verlag: William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Engages important issues faced by the Christian church in witness and ministry

Renowned for his unique slant on ecclesial affiliation — by his own confession "evangelical without being Protestant, catholic without being Roman, and orthodox without being Eastern" — Lutheran theologian Carl E. Braaten has long been a respected voice in ecclesiological discourse.

In Critical Issues in Ecclesiology eleven authors from a variety of church traditions come together to honor Braaten. The contributors share a common theological vision: the renewal of the church so that it may bear a clearer catholic evangelical witness to the apostolic faith. By stimulating fresh thinking on several critical issues, this volume will advance ecumenical dialogue concerning the restoration of unity and the renewal of a "passion for mission" within the Great Tradition.

Contributors:
James M. Childs, Gabriel Fackre, Alberto L. García, Timothy George, Robert W. Jenson, Joseph L. Mangina, Cheryl M. Peterson, Michael Root, Leopoldo A. Sánchez M., Frank C. Senn, Susan K. Wood

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Critical Issues in Ecclesiology

Essays in Honor of Carl E. Braaten

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2011 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6671-4

Contents

Abbreviations..................................................................................................................................viiPreface........................................................................................................................................ixCarl Robert W. Jenson.........................................................................................................................xiiiThe Bride of Christ Robert W. Jenson..........................................................................................................1Ecumenism and Atonement: A Critical Issue in Ecclesiology Gabriel Fackre......................................................................6"Rome, Reformation, and Reunion" Revisited Frank C. Senn, STS.................................................................................23Evangelicals and the Present Ecumenical Moment Timothy George.................................................................................44The Cross-Shaped Church: A Pauline Amendment to the Ecclesiology of KoinZnia Joseph L. Mangina................................................68Freedom, Authority, and the Priesthood of All Believers Michael Root..........................................................................88The Ecclesial Meaning of the Eucharist Susan K. Wood..........................................................................................105The Local Church: A Critical Point of Departure for a World Ecclesiology Alberto L. García...............................................120Lutheran Principles for Ecclesiology Cheryl M. Peterson.......................................................................................148The Imperative for Unity and the Question of Division James M. Childs.........................................................................172More Promise Than Ambiguity: Pneumatological Christology as a Model for Ecumenical Engagement Leopoldo A. Sánchez M......................189Bibliography of the Publications of Carl E. Braaten 1962-2010..................................................................................215Contributors...................................................................................................................................233Index..........................................................................................................................................237

Chapter One

The Bride of Christ

Robert W. Jenson

I have a text, Ephesians 5:31-32. Paul — or some brilliant Paulinist whom I will in this essay be content to call Paul — quotes Genesis 2:24: "Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." Then he interprets: "This passage tells a deep mystery; now I read it of Christ and the church" (my translation). Is Paul interpreting the mystery of sexual union by the relation of Christ and the church, or the mystery of Christ and the church by sexual union? He seems to be doing both at once. The foregoing passage has been about the proper relation of husband and wife, founded in the mystery of bodily union and modelled on Christ's relation to the church; but here he interprets the mystery more directly of Christ and the church. My text is thus appropriate for an essay in this volume, since on the one hand Carl and Lavonne are a notable instance of husband and wife as indeed one flesh — so that perhaps I should say "... Carl-and-Lavonne is a notable ..." — and on the other hand the theme of our volume is ecclesiology.

I have also a personal reason for writing on this matter. At a 2008 session of the Karl Barth Society, Joseph Mangina, in the course of a splendid paper, gently complained that the ecclesiology of my Systematic Theology so concentrates on the church as the body of Christ as to ignore the biblical and traditional talk of the church as the bride of Christ. Thereby, he said, I so emphasize the unity of Christ and the church as to obscure their distinction. I accepted the first part of his criticism, and indeed will shortly confess further sins of omission, but maintained that the second did not follow. Accordingly I claimed that I could appropriate the bridal language, and exploit the way it posits the distinction, without redoing anything I had said about the identity of Christ and church as one body. This brief essay will be an attempt to make good on that claim.

I must first review what is in the systematics. It is on account of Paul that we speak of the church as the body of Christ; therefore it is Paul whose lead we should follow when using this language — or at least that is what I have thought I should do. A first and vital step in appropriating Paul is to note that his fundamental use of "body," whether with respect to the church or the Eucharist — or in the verses preceding our text — is not metaphorical — though when some conceptual predications are once in place he can exploit them metaphorically. In Paul's general conceptual discourse, a person's body is that person's own self as he is available to others: it is his visibility and audibility and tangibility. To understand Paul we must always remember that in his use, "body" does not necessarily or even most properly refer to a biological organism. In Paul's language, to say that the church is the body of the risen Christ is straightforwardly to affirm that the church is his availability in and for the world. Would you now see Christ? View this gathering called the church — and blessed is he who is not offended by what he sees. Would you now come to him? Join them.

The identity of the church as the risen body of Christ is not, however, undialectical. A necessary second step is to note the peculiar logic of Paul's arguments in 1 Cor. 10 and 11. In discussing the limits of meal fellowship in 1 Cor. 10, Paul adduces the way in which the church is a particular single body because our assembling to share the bread and cup makes us sharers in the one body of Christ. Later, in ch. 11, he turns to the disunity of the Corinthian church precisely in that assembly. He charges that by their selfish behavior toward one another at the meal some Corinthians profane the body of Christ. And he enforces this, upsetting what we expect, by citing the narrative of institution, to the effect that the bread and cup are the body of Christ. According to Paul, by the Corinthians' violation of their unity as a church-body the Corinthians violate the bread and cup-body. It would surely have been simpler simply to accuse the Corinthians of lovelessness, but Paul has heavier metal to hurl.

Paul's use of the institution-narrative to convict the Corinthians of sin works if and only if the church and the sacrament are both the body of Christ and indeed the same body of Christ, so that a sin against either is a sin against the other. Yet there is also some priority, even causality between the two. The church is a body at all because it assembles around the bread and cup. And it is profanation of the bread and cup-body that defines the Corinthians' sin, even though the object of their profanation is the body they themselves are. This structure laid out, it surely does seem that Paul's appropriation and interpretation of Genesis 2:24 ought to fit into it somehow....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: William B Eerdmans Publishing Co
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0802866719
• ISBN 13: 9780802866714
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 239
• Herausgeber: Garcia Alberto L., Wood Susan K.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GS1 Slovakia; https://www.gs1sk.org; ; Nantersk� 23; Žilina; 010 08; Slowakei