Showing papers on "Ecclesiology published in 1981"

Natural Law, the Corpus Mysticum, and Consent in Conciliar Thought from John of Paris to Matthias Ugonius

Abstract: One, holy, catholic, apostolic.* Beginning with the four marks of the Church designated in the Nicene Creed, going on to pick out two of them, holiness and unity, and indulging in the type of simplification that teachers instinctively reach for but scholars often regret, let me advance the following proposition: that if it was the mark of holiness that gave rise to some of the earliest ecclesiological controversies of the Christian era, it was, rather, the mark of unity that lay at the heart of the most thoroughgoing of later medieval debates concerning the nature of the Church.' The thirteenth century has been characterized with some justice as belonging still to the "pre-history of ecclesiology."2 The same can hardly be said of the two centuries following, which were to witness a series of great challenges to the Church's traditional order that together generated a body of writings on matters ecclesiological at once more extensive, more varied, more developed, and more systematic than anything emerging from the centuries preceding. Of those challenges the one that will concern me here is that occasioned by the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome, the disputed papal election of 1378, the onset, therefore, of what has gone down in history as the Great Schism of the West, and the agonizing failure of repeated attempts to end it.3 Of that body of writings I will be concerned

The Growth of the True Church: An Analysis of the Ecclesiology of Church Growth Theory

Abstract: During the past three decades the Church Growth Movement—an old endeavor given modern form by Donald McGavran, a former missionary to India—has gained a following in various parts of the world and also has raised up critics. Not until this study has the ecclesiology of Church Growth theory been so fully examined. The author, currently active in Mexico, studied at the Institute of Church Growth in Pasadena and at Amsterdam's Free University, where Johannes Verkuyl, a leading proponent of evangelical missiology, was his mentor. Van Engen is not uncritical of McGavran, and he keeps his eye on the continuing debate between the Church Growth Movement and the World Council of Churches. He seeks to answer the basic question: Is the Church Growth Movement producing the "real thing"? Is the "church" which grows the True Church? After eight quotation-laden chapters—citing Bonhoeffer, Kung, and many others—the answer must remain qualified. I suspect that many readers will feel uncomfortable with the term "true church." Yet Van Engen examines the true church in relation to ecclesiology, the scriptures, history, mission, the theory and idea of church growth, and the "theology of harvest"—a culminating concept in McGavran's thought. In any case, this is a valuable inquiry.

The Concept of Church: A Methodological Inquiry into the Use of Metaphors in Ecclesiology

Abstract: This is a work of remarkable originality and penetration, on at least four counts. In the first place, Dr Rikhof has made a notable contribution to ecclesiology. He shows that Vatican II's Lumen Gentium is constructed around two metaphorical central terms, 'mystical body of Christ' and 'people of God', and that the (to date) relatively disappointing achievements of postconciliar ecclesiology can in large part be attribute to misunderstandings about the logic of metaphor and its role in theology. His own elucidation of the concept and function of metaphor should do much to remove this obstacle.

A Church for the Poor and the World: At Issue with Moltmann's Ecclesiology:

Abstract: No matter what Jürgen Moltmann publishes, he will always be remembered foremost for his Theology of Hope. With the publication of that work in 1964, he attracted the attention of the world of theology by insisting that the Christian revelation must be understood from beginning to end as eschatological. From then on, M/s project has been to reformulate all theology systematically in terms of that eschatological perspective derived from the promise of the future contained in the resurrected Christ. The focus of his work shifted from the resurrection of Christ to \"the cross of the risen Christ\" in The Crucified God in 1972. What had largely remained undeveloped, however, was a systematic treatment of the effect of eschatology upon the life of the Church. That need was finally fulfilled in 1975 with the publication of a fully-developed eschatological ecclesiology, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology. The major contribution of Moltmann's ecclesiology may well He in its fundamental repositioning of the Church within God's Trinitarian salvific relationship toward mankind and the world. In this bulletin, however, I want to discuss four areas of his ecclesiology which touch upon more pressing and somewhat controversial ecclesiological questions for today: (1) the nature of the Church (here I shall be in partial agreement with M.); (2) in what sense the Church may and may not validly be said to be \"on the side of the poor\" (I suggest a corrective to M/s position here); (3) how Church-state separation may and may not validly be understood (I agree with M.); (4) whether the Church exists for the world (as M. proposes) or the world is oriented toward the Church (as I dare to suggest).

German Historicism and the Changing Image of the Church, 1780–1820:

Abstract: ADICHOTOMY seems to exist between the ecclesiology of the Enlightenment, based on rational, natural law, which perceived the Church or any institution as a juridical societas having rights and obligations, and the ecclesiology of Sailer and the Tubingen School, which under the influence of the Sturm und Drang as well as romantic idealism concentrated on the religious and ethical aspects of the Church. In this latter view, the Church became a dynamic mediatrix of a living spirituality. Generally, this genesis of German romantic idealism and its implications for Catholic theology have been interpreted as a revolt against a weak and imitative Aufklarung, supposedly merely a reflection of the FrancoBritish Enlightenment experience. The Aufklarung, however, was not merely a poor imitation of the Western model. There is a strong continuity between the Aufklarung and succeeding movements. A modern sense of historical consciousness emerged in the Aufklarung tradition and has connected the German Enlightenment with Hegel and romantic idealism. It is within this emergence of historicism that the ecclesiology of the Church experienced a transformation with implications even into the post-Vatican II era. To analyze a religious issue from the perspective of individuals is reasonable, since theology is concerned with speculation. But a sense for the whole movement may be lost. To interpret on the basis of a specific program may also lose a sense for the relationship of the issue to the historical epoch. Hence the levels of interpretation represented by individuals, schools, programs, or movements must be completed by an appeal to such notions as theological strategy or mood. Denoting mood expresses lines of affinity that are as important as adherence to a specific movement. Within a given epoch the term "strategy" helps specify a level above that of program or of method in the technical sense. In studying the response of such reformist Catholics as Johann Michael Sailer and Johann Sebastian von Drey, the focus should be on their efforts to respond to the German Aufklarung rather than merely to the FrancoBritish Enlightenment and romantic idealism. Viable answers to theolog-