tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post4567611863825361917..comments2023-12-08T04:43:40.135-06:00Comments on The Fire and the Rose: Christological Unity and Pneumatological Plurality: A Theological Reflection on the ChurchUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-52974904502057992312011-06-29T23:09:51.397-05:002011-06-29T23:09:51.397-05:00Hi, David.
You are probably done reflecting on th...Hi, David.<br /><br />You are probably done reflecting on this post, but I have a couple minor contributions to make to the discussion.<br /><br />Though perhaps not as complex or deep a concept as "unity," Winthrop Hudson discusses "functional catholicity" and cites it as a major contributing factor for the success of explosions like the Awakenings in North America. He contrasts F.C. with sectarianism. Others have recognized its common and significant appearance in the various manifestations of Pietism (or similar movements).<br /><br />The other contribution concerns your comments on the danger of equating Christological unity with confessional unity. For overwhelming evidence of that assumption's danger, see the entire history of the Lutheran church. It has been a constant story of attempts to rally around a single flag followed by resultant (often heated) schism.<br /><br />Yours,<br />Mark DixonMark Dixon:https://www.blogger.com/profile/04452384356752398877noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-69509153114741506412011-05-31T09:34:25.763-05:002011-05-31T09:34:25.763-05:00Thank you for this essay. I tend to see things alo...Thank you for this essay. I tend to see things along a similar line. I do take Mr. Harris point on the difference between a presumed early unified church as opposed to the various explicit schisms. But I differ from him in seeing those schisms effectively right from the Apostolic era, and recorded in Scripture. It seems to me the Johannine community explicitly anathematized those who chose, in their view, darkness rather than light. And Paul definitely had choice words for those Christians who still pressed for circumcision. So division in the koinonia set in fairly early. It is too easy to say, "Oh, well, that's just how the church treats heresy." Obviously the "heretics" considered themselves good Christians, in fact, the "right" Christians, but their "party" was in course of time ruled on the outs.<br />I bemoan the breaches of sacramental koinonia between the various church bodies; but I resist, for example, the Roman Catholic model that claims sacramental communion can only exist where there is institutional communion. This seems to me to be backwards. But it may also be inevitable.Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-67766256588254554232011-05-17T12:54:08.083-05:002011-05-17T12:54:08.083-05:00In questions of church unity I always like to go b...In questions of church unity I always like to go back to Kaesemann's essay, "Does the New Testament Canon constitute the Unity of the Church?" (or something like this title). Answer: If you're looking for a narrow concept of unity, no, on the contrary. Same holds true of the Old Testament canon.Alexanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15804141497145836977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-7370221949367556992011-05-17T12:01:21.967-05:002011-05-17T12:01:21.967-05:00I'll be providing a multi-part discussion that...I'll be providing a multi-part discussion that undergirds a number of David's claims. Just FYI. The <a href="http://derevth.blogspot.com/2011/05/introduction-baptism-and-church-in.html" rel="nofollow">introduction</a> is already posted.W. Travis McMakenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12347103855436761304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-24077768615058368262011-05-17T06:51:53.836-05:002011-05-17T06:51:53.836-05:00David,
Thanks for your lengthy response. I have t...David,<br /><br />Thanks for your lengthy response. I have to say that (unsurprisingly) I read church history somewhat differently. Certainly there are always conflicts within the Church, whether between Jerusalem and Antioch, Rome and Constantinople or the Dominicans and Jesuits. These, however, I take to be qualitatively different than fractures in communion (e.g., Rome and Constantinople post-1054, Rome and the Lutherans), or dangers to the gospel (e.g., Arianism), which reveal why orthodoxy is in fact important--even while the latter is in service of the former. (You can't go after orthodoxy without knocking out the legs of your Christology.)<br /><br />Do I have a different ecclesiology? Certainly. A different gospel? I would be surprised. I could, I think, follow you quite far on your Christological-pneumatological construal of ecclesial unity; I just hold a quite different view of the <i>telos</i> of this divine action. In other words, I read John 17:20ff. quite differently.<br /><br />I'm actually unsure that one's view of the sacraments, or Church qua sacrament, is the issue here. One could easily hold a memorialist view and still believe that God desires a visible unity for the Church.<br /><br />But yes! you and I are, I trust, united in Christ by the Spirit. We could, I hope, pray, sing, preach and read Scripture together. But whereas I would see this event as in protest of our continuing denominational divisions, and in virtue of our true union in Christ by the Spirit, you, I fear, could only say the latter, and would see the visible ecclesial disunity between Presbyterians (I'm only guessing) and Pentecostals (such as I) as a permanent feature of the divine action in the world. In all events, grace and peace,<br /><br />SteveAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-930853468362082542011-05-16T13:42:29.779-05:002011-05-16T13:42:29.779-05:00Steve,
Thanks for the comment. I don't mind i...Steve,<br /><br />Thanks for the comment. I don't mind if people disagree. I wrote it knowing that most people would.<br /><br />I think the perception of a schism is a Catholic fiction from the start. The notion that there was ever some kind of pure visible unity is a fairy tale; it never existed. There were divisions from the very beginning, attested in the conflict between Antioch and Jerusalem in the NT. There are literally thousands of marginalized groups throughout the history of the church, most condemned as "heretical" in one way or another. Such condemnations included the Reformers, and then the Reformers themselves condemned others like the Anabaptists as "heretics," and on and on it goes. The very notion of an orthodoxy, besides being theologically problematic, is an abstraction; it only exists on paper.<br /><br />(Take, for example, the fact that 97% of Catholic women use birth control. Technically, they are all apostate, according to strict Catholic law. If we included individual views about various doctrines, I am convinced 99.999999% of all Catholics would be apostate, according to such laws. The problem is not with the %99; it is with the very notion of a law of orthodoxy.)<br /><br />When I hear people refer to some golden age of unity, I have to remind them that they are confusing ecclesial unity with imperial unity. The church has never had a unanimous consensus. What it had, under the Constantinian revolution, was a unified political-imperial power to enforce the distinction between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. When people pine after a past unity, they are actually pining after Christendom. Those who are honest will admit this, such as Peter Leithart, John Milbank, and others.<br /><br />However, the more important issue is what you think the church "is." If you think the church is an institution that mediates the grace of God to the world, then your position would be understandable. But I completely reject such an ecclesiology -- not because I have conformed to a schismatic world, but because I think the gospel message of Jesus Christ mandates it. The church is not a mediator of anything, but rather a creaturely witness to the one sacrament and mediator of God's grace: Christ himself. He alone is the event of salvation, the union of God and humanity for the world. The church bears witness to him, and that is its only given task. More accurately, the church simply <i>is</i> that task of missionary witness. It has no other being prior to or outside of that divinely-granted vocation.<br /><br />So I hear your disagreement, and I understand why you feel that way. But we are operating with radically different views about the church -- even about the gospel itself, perhaps. And yet, I think the real thrust of my post is that I can and will say that Christ is with us both in the Spirit, even in our disagreement.David W. Congdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03009330707703611224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-71793366811027272142011-05-16T12:54:35.377-05:002011-05-16T12:54:35.377-05:00I have to utterly disagree. Only when the Church w...I have to utterly disagree. Only when the Church was already shattered in a thousand pieces could one think or say this, that is, in the last two hundred years. That Christological-pneumatic unity is never phenomenologically visible can only appear self-evident to someone living on the far side of schism.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com