Ecclesiology and Communion

Ecclesiology and Communion
Nicholas M. Healy
St. John's University, Jamaica NY 11439
Communion ecclesiology has become increasingly popular among theologians

and church leaders in the last fifty years or so, particularly, though by no means
only, among Orthodox and Roman Catholics. Its proponents understand com-
munion (and its NT Greek equivalent, tänonia) to be the basic and
indispensable concept for properly describing the theological nature of the
church. For the more exhaustive versions of this kind of ecclesiology, which are
the focus here, the concept of communion is applied to inner-Trinitarian koino-
nia, to the church's relation to God, the relations among the church's members,
the relations between the churches and, not infrequently, to the relations be-
tween the church and other religious and non-religious bodies. Communion thus
describes the church's essential nature, its functions, institutions, and practical
life. The ecclesiologies of John Zizioulas and Jean-Marie Tillard, O. P., are
among the most outstanding examples of exhaustive forms of communion
ecclesiology.1
The popularity of communion ecclesiology is now such that for a Ro-
man Catholic theologian to challenge its adequacy is to do more than simply
question one theological proposal among others.2 Instead, it is to challenge a
very broad theological consensus and perhaps even to take on the church hierar-
chy. Cardinal Ratzinger has insisted that, despite the possibility of some
legitimate variation, "ultimately there is only one basic ecclesiology" (i.e.,
communion), and this must be accepted, he insists, by anyone formulating a
Roman Catholic ecclesiology.3 Ratzinger's decree may not be as restrictive as it
1
Jean-Marie Tillard, O. P., Church of Churches: The Ecclesiology of Communion
(Collegeville: Glazier/Liturgical Press, 1992); John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Stud-
ies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985). A
significant Free Church communion ecclesiology can be found in Miroslav Volf, After Our
Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). An ex-
ample of the ecumenical use of the concept can be seen in Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry,
1982-1990: Report on the Process and Responses (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990). These
and all the other major types of communion ecclesiology are discussed in Dennis M. Doyle's
excellent account of the development and variety of communion ecclesiology, Communion
Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000).
2
An earlier version of this essay was presented to a session of the annual meeting of
the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, which took place with the College
Theology Society meeting at Milwaukee, May 2003. My allotted task in that paper, as I un-
derstood it, was to present to the group a Roman Catholic view of communion ecclesiology,
and I have kept that perspective in this revision. I am very grateful to the group for their invi-
tation to speak and for their helpful comments.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, L'Osservatore Romano [English Edition], 17 June
1992, 1 (Ratzinger's emphasis). I owe the reference and the quotation to Doyle, Communion
Ecclesiology, 1. Both Doyle and Volf, After Our Likeness, offer good overviews and (espe-
cially the latter) critical discussion of Ratzinger's own communion ecclesiology.
274 PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES
appears, however, for there is a tendency among those who advocate commun-
ion ecclesiology to see it as virtually ubiquitous in the tradition. The
ecclesiologies of the Greek Fathers, of Augustine and Aquinas, as well as such
moderns as Schleiermacher and Rahner, have all been cited as examples of
communion ecclesiology.4 Since at least some of these are clearly not exhaus-
tive in their application of the concept, it may be that Ratzinger means only to
insist that communion be an integral element of any good ecclesiology.
Relatively few have raised critical questions about communion eccle-
siology.5 I made a small effort to do so a few years ago, expressing my concern
that communion ecclesiologies, whether conservative, liberal, or liberationist,
exhaustive or not, avoid any substantive consideration of the sinfulness of the
church. This lacuna, common enough in many other kinds of ecclesiology, to be
sure, is coupled in much communion ecclesiology with a realized eschatology in
which communion with the triune God is understood to be the ever-present real-
ity at the heart of the church's being, albeit sometimes obscured by our failure
to be fully in communion with one another. The result is a more or less ideal-
ized account of the church that is too readily open to ideological and theological
distortion.6 If the church is described primarily in terms of an attained or al-
ways-already grace-given perfection—communion—its need for continual
reform and repentance can too easily be forgotten. And since the word "com-
munion" has been applied to virtually any and all kinds of loving relationships,
and is said to be embodied in a wide variety of polities and practices, it is diffi-
cult to see how the concept can do any critical work at all, aside from valorizing
community.7
4
See Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology, which clearly indicates the benefits of
multi-perspective explorations of communion, and Tillard, Flesh of Christ: At the Source of
the Ecclesiology of Communion (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001). One could add others
to the list of communion ecclesiologists. Karl Barth, for example, has a pneumatology that
suggests a form of communion ecclesiology, according to George Hunsinger, "The Mediator
of Communion: Karl Barth's Doctrine of the Holy Spirit," in The Cambridge Companion to
Karl Barth (ed. John Webster; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 177-94.
5
There have been criticisms of the relational ontology and notion of personhood
that inform the concept of communion. References to some of these can be found in an excel-
lent article by Edward Russell, "Reconsidering Relational Anthropology: A Critical
Assessment of John Zizioulas's Theological Anthropology," Internationaljournal of Sys-
tematic Theology 5 (2003): 168-86. There have been few criticisms of communion
ecclesiology as such. Doyle notes three in his Communion Ecclesiology, 5, and Miroslav Volf
has some substantive criticism of Zizioulas's ecclesiology in his After Our Likeness.
^his is the substance of my article, "Communion Ecclesiology: A Cautionary
Note'" ProEccl 4 (1995): 442-53. There I also proposed a "narrative ecclesiology" as an
alternative. I realize now that importing the concept of narrative does little or nothing of itself
to resolve the problem without more substantial doctrinal analysis.
7
Compare Zizioulas and Tillard with, e.g., Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Disciple-
ship of Equals (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 269-74; Peter C. Hodgson, Revisioning the
Church: Ecclesial Freedom in the New Paradigm (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 24; Leo-
nardo Boff, Trinity and Society (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988). I make this last argument in my
Church, World and the Christian Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 44-
46.
JOURNAL OF THE NABPR 275
In the years since making these criticisms, I have become more con-
vinced than ever that we should exercise caution in using the concept of
communion in ecclesiology, and one of the purposes of this essay is to add fur-
ther reasons why. Yet it is evident that communion is indeed a vital aspect of
theological reflection on the church, and Ratzinger is, in my view, clearly cor-
rect if he is saying that it should be an integral element of every ecclesiology.
The question, then, is how to use the concept successfully. Some theologians
who advocate communion ecclesiology, including Zizioulas and Tillard, point
to premodern theology as indicating therightapproach to ecclesiology. I agree
in part with this notion, though for mostly different reasons than theirs. So I will
attempt an admittedly very limited comparison of modern ecclesiology of com-
munion, as exemplified in Zizioulas and Tillard, and premodern ecclesiology,
with Thomas Aquinas as the primary illustration. The idea is to note some dis-
tinctive and perhaps disturbing traits of contemporary ecclesiology, and to
discern some aspects of the earlier ecclesiologies that might be appropriated or
at least borne in mind by those who seek to follow Ratzinger's recommendation
(in its less restrictive sense).
A subplot of the main argument broadens the discussion beyond com-
munion ecclesiology to make some parallel observations about a third kind of
ecclesiology. I will refer to this as the "new ecclesiology," in part because it is
often self-consciously postmodern,8 in part just to give it a convenient label.
The work of Stanley Hauerwas and his associates, together with that of George
Lindbeck and the postliberal theologians, is oriented towards the concrete
communal life of the churches, towards their socially-sanctioned practices, be-
liefs, and valuations as these inform the lives of their individual members.9 Thus
the new ecclesiology, like communion ecclesiology, places an emphasis upon
8
At least in that it rejects Cartesianism and Kantianism. It also rejects certain forms
of postmodernism, especially those which have difficulty with the concept of truth.
9
Those who advocate the "new ecclesiology" do not call it that. Some use Lind-
beck's term, "postliberalism," but not all would be happy with it. Some key works in the new
ecclesiology are: George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a
Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984) and the selection of Lindbeck's work
edited by James J. Buckley, The Church in a Postliberal Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2002); the works of Stanley Hauerwas, among which perhaps especially, A Community of
Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1981); Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World and Living In Be-
tween (Durham: Labyrinth Press, 1988); Sanctify Them In the Truth: Holiness Exemplified
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998); Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1989); With the Grain of the Universe: The Church 's Witness and Natural Theol-
ogy (The Gifford lectures; Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2001). See also Bruce D. Marshall,
Trinity and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); William T. Cavanaugh,
Torture and Eucharist (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); Reinhold Hütter, Suffering Divine Things:
Theology As Church Practice (trans. Doug Stott; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). Some
important collections of essays include Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in
the Practices of the Church (eds. James J. Buckley and David S. Yeago; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2001); Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life (eds. Miroslav
Volf and Dorothy C. Bass; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); Practicing Our Faith: A Way of
Life for a Searching People (ed. Dorothy C. Bass; San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997). My
Church, World and the Christian Life is also an exercise in the genre.
the communal nature of the church. While there are substantial differences be-
tween (and among) these kinds of ecclesiology, they share some distinctively
modern similarities. So it seems not unreasonable to bring them together a little
later in the discussion.
Modern Ecclesiology: Blueprints

Christian theology, of course, has always had something to say about the
church. But theologians have undertaken ecclesiology in different ways, in part
because of their varied historical and intellectual contexts. In the last two
hundred years or so, theologians have increasingly developed what might be
called theological "blueprints" of the church.10 Blueprint ecclesiologies are the
product of taking a single image or concept, such as sacrament, body of Christ,
koinonia or communion, and people of God, and making this the systematic
principle governing a normative and detailed description of what the church
ought to be—or already is, albeit invisibly or at its deepest depths—together
with the actions it should perform and the visible form it should take.11
Exhaustive forms of communion ecclesiology are blueprints, in this sense. A
blueprint ecclesiology may be an exhortation or imperative, intended to promote
reform or restoration or some other kind of change of ecclesial heart, and it may
be a consolation or encouragement, intended to demonstrate that, in spite of
external criticisms or internal worries, to be a member of the church is indeed to
belong to a very special community.
The blueprint approach to ecclesiology was unknown prior to the mod-
ern period. The Fathers and the medieval schoolmen spoke of the church as they
discussed what they clearly considered to be more central doctrines, especially
the doctrines of the Trinity and Christology—those doctrines that describe the
reality within which the church comes into being and which makes possible its
activities.12 Although the church is obviously conditio sine qua non for their
,0
Two hundred years, because the first blueprint ecclesiology is probably Johann
Adam Möhler's Einheit (1825), translated by Peter C. Erb as Unity in the Church (Washing-
ton, D. C: Catholic University Press, 1996). Not coincidentally, Möhler's work, both early
and late, is seen as initiating and largely setting the terms of later Roman Catholic versions of
communion ecclesiology. See Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology, 37. For a critical discussion
of the blueprint approach, see my Church, World and the Christian Life, 25-51. The notion of
a "blueprint method" is, of course, an extreme to which concrete examples may conform to a
lesser extent. Tillard and Zizioulas exemplify the full-bodied blueprint communion ecclesiol-
ogy I have particularly in mind. As with the term "exhaustive," I do not intend "blueprint"
pejoratively, but it is hard to think of a fitting label for the form that does not seem to indicate
disapproval. I should therefore note explicitly that I think blueprint ecclesiologies are often
very useful, for even if they do not resolve all the issues and may well result in new prob-
lems, the intensive analysis of one concept may bring out both its good and its less useful
aspects which might otherwise have remained hidden. I mean here only to raise some con-
cerns about communion blueprints. I do not mean to suggest that they should be entirely
abandoned, but that their limitations be acknowledged.
n
See Avery Dulles's discussion of modern ecclesiologies in his Models of the
Church (enl. ed.; New York: Doubleday, 1974/1987), many of which would qualify as "blue-
print" ecclesiologies in their more or less exhaustive use of the primary "model."
12
Bruce Marshall, Trinity and Truth, points out that traditionally the doctrine of the
Trinity has functioned as the "primary Christian doctrine" (4), the "central' belief (44)
faith and hope, and although these theologians say substantive things about the
church, it is evident that what they say is methodologically, logically, and for
the most part materially dependent upon what they say about the center of
Christian doctrine, about the creative and redemptive work of the triune God.
As a consequence, their remarks about the church are often relatively fragmen-
tary and unsystematic, leading sometimes to the mistaken impression of modern
people that these theologians did not "do" ecclesiology. They did, of course, but
differently, and not in the modern way.
The earlier theologians were indeed well aware of the concept of com-
munion/koinonia, which they knew primarily from Paul and John, and which
they reworked and developed with the help of the philosophies of the day, and
with concepts such as deification and participation. However significant they
may have been for these theologians, "communion" or "participation" was
never used as the primary concept by which to organize their treatment of the
church. This was for the simple reason that they did not organize their treatment
of the church in any such systematic fashion. Theology more generally was less
a matter of coherence among key concepts than coherence between doctrine and
Scripture and Christian lives. So rather than working with a single systematic
principle, or set of such, the "system" of Christian theology remained largely
that of Scripture, with the result that the church was approached from a variety
of angles, including, most certainly, the concept of communion.
It is not unlikely that the rise of blueprint ecclesiologies is related to the
modern preference for exhaustive and rigorous explorations of a given topic,
tighter and more controlled use of concepts, and correlatively an increased dis-
trust of the seemingly looser metaphorical and analogous language of Scripture
and premodern theology more generally.13 Whatever occasioned the form,
though, it is generally the case that, even when modern ecclesiology is done
rather less exhaustively, it is usually comparatively more systematic, conceived
in greater independence from central doctrines, and usually less directly an-
chored to Scripture than in the premodern period.14
The difference in approach between the earlier theologies and the
modern is particularly evident in exhaustive versions of communion
ecclesiology. The concept of communion is the systematic principle of John
Zizioulas's Being As Communion, determining the argumentation and substance
of each of the seven chapters of the book. Zizioulas draws upon Scripture, to be
sure, but he does so in order to support his understanding of communion. Thus
which is accorded "epistemic primacy," i.e., "the church will decide about the truth of other
beliefs by seeing how well they fit, or cohere, with the beliefs which constitute its identifica-
tion of the triune God; beliefs which conflict with the church's identification of God will
have to be dropped or modified" (47). A simplified way of putting my concern here is that
some ecclesiologies give the impression that ecclesiology is the central doctrine which is
given epistemic primacy over all other doctrines and practices. If so, the question is, what
drives the ecclesiology if not these central doctrines?
13
It is not coincidental that Möhler's ecclesiology was written in the wake of the
great philosophical systems of German idealism.
14
There are real exceptions with regard to independence from central doctrines,
such as the ecclesiology of Karl Barth and that of Hans Urs von Balthasar, particularly in the
latter's Theodrama.
while Christology is acknowledged as "the sole starting point for a Christian

understanding of truth," the discussion of truth seems to rely rather more upon
the relational ontology worked out in the initial chapter of the book, which is
devoted to "Personhood and Being."15 Communion and ecclesiology determine
the treatment of all doctrines. The significance of Jesus Christ is that "he
realizes in history the very reality of the person and makes it the basis and
'hypostasis' of the person for every man."1 The Trinity is treated for the most
part as a description of the inner being of God, which provides theological
grounding for the relational ontology and informs the concept of communion.17
On the principle that the church is to "be an image of the way in which God
exists," and since God is essentially relationship or communion, so the church,
including its "entire structure" and "ministries," must be communion.18 Much
the same can be said for Tillard, whose book, Church of Churches, sets out to
recover what he believes is the "old patristic vision" in which the "entire vision"
of the church is oriented around communion.19
Modern Ecclesiology: New Challenges to the Church

Another difference between premodern and modern theological reflection on
the church, one that perhaps contributes to the methodological differences just
noted, has to do with the function and goal of ecclesiology. Over the course of
its history the church has often been forced to reflect upon itself, upon its na-
ture, structure, and functions, as it has dealt with internal disputes and
responded to external critics. Ecclesiology has therefore often taken on both an
internal and an external apologetic function. Augustine, for example, formulated
some key ecclesiological principles in his disputes with Donatism and as he
defended the church against accusations that the Empire's acceptance of Chris-
tianity was responsible for the first sack of Rome. ° The Reformers found it
15
Zizioulas, Being As Communion, 67.
16
Zizioulas, Being As Communion, 54 (Zizioulas's emphasis).
X1
Being As Communion, 27-65. Zizioulas's account is marred by his acceptance of
the thesis, first proposed by Théodore de Régnon, and taken up by influential theologians
such as Karl Rahner, that asserted a fundamental difference between Western (wrong) and
Eastern (right) conceptions of the Trinity (see 40). This seems to support an unconvincing
distinction between the Greek and the Roman "mind" (27-28). De Régnon's thesis has been
convincingly challenged in recent years. See e.g., Gilles Emery, "Essentialism or Personalism
in the Treatise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas?" The Thomist 64 (2000): 521-63. The re-
cent book by Tillard, Flesh of the Church (fn. 4 above), presents textual evidence against the
thesis.
l8
l9
Tillard, Church of Churches, xi. As if to drive home the point, the word "com-
munion" is italicized at every single instance throughout the book (as it is in the French
original, too).
20
One might possibly think that Augustine's City of God is a systematic ecclesiol-
ogy since it would seem to be all about the church, if one identifies the church, as some have
done, with the City of God. But a more careful reading makes it difficult to make that identi-
fication, since the two kinds of love that constitute the two cities are found within the one
pre-eschatological church. The work is more easily read as a theology of history, determined
in structure by the narrative of Scripture which counters and overcomes the Roman narrative.
Ecclesiology as such is not at the center of Augustine's concern, even in this work.
necessary to discuss the church as they sought to locate the true church in con-
tradistinction from the false and as they sorted out the implications of their
understanding of more central doctrines.
In the modern period, however, the challenge both from within the
church and from outside becomes qualitatively different. It is well-known that,
since the Enlightenment, the church's particular beliefs and practices have been
subjected to fundamental questioning on supposedly universal grounds. The
more significant issue for ecclesiology is that the Enlightenment ushered in a
radical challenge to the church itself and as such. Because modern intellectuals
believed epistemology to be the necessary basis for any rational inquiry, both
theoretical and practical, and because the epistemologies of the modern period
were predominantly individualistic and internalistic,2 the notion that participa-
tion in some form of communal way of life is necessary for right knowledge and
action was no longer self-evident. If it could no longer be taken for granted that
membership in a religious group is necessary and beneficial for the individual
person, the legitimacy and the authority of the church needed a new form of
intellectual support. Consequently, apologetical ecclesiology in the modern pe-
riod has found it necessary to go beyond justification of polity, beliefs, and
practices to argue more basically for the legitimacy and authority of the church.
This has been especially the case for the Roman Catholic Church, whose hierar-
chical polity and ecclesiastical claims were most obviously threatened.
The problem of legitimacy and authority persists into the present day,
though in a somewhat modified form as we move into what some have called
the late modern or postmodern period. Atheism now seems to be less of an issue
than it was, even in some parts of Europe. Belief in some kind of God or
supreme being of some sort is not always regarded as irrational, often more as if
it were a personal foible or a matter of taste. I have my religious beliefs; you
may have yours. We agree to differ without discussing the matter, for there is no
point in trying to convince the other that one of us is right.22 With what seems to
be a decline of interest in arguing over particular beliefs and practices, the
question of the church as such becomes all the more troubling, for now some
Christians believe that membership in the church is merely optional, even for
them. It is no longer self-evident that weekly churchgoing and submission to the
church's teachings has any particular salvine significance. "One can be a
2
'According to Roger Pouivet, Après Wittgenstein, Saint Thomas (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1997), "modern philosophy" is "internalistic and epistemologically
individualistic" (6). Internalism is a form of individualism, since the internalist holds that
justification of a belief requires one to examine the contents of one's mind to see if the belief
meets certain absolute criteria of justification (e.g., for Descartes, whether the belief is, or is
founded upon, a clear and distinct idea). By contrast, the externalist (among whom Pouivet
includes Thomas Aquinas and Wittgenstein) understands a belief to be justified if the process
by which the belief is acquired is reliable, a judgment that in turn requires membership in a
community that decides what kind of processes are reliable (6-8).
2
See Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 352, for definitions of the perspectivalism and
rationalism illustrated here.
Christian all by oneself is a not infrequent assumption. Much to the

displeasure and concern of the church authorities, not a few of those who
actually go to church tend to pick and choose among the church's offerings so
as to develop their own set of beliefs and practices, and thus their own religious
identity, in some degree of independence from the church.24
Of course, the church still insists that membership and participation in
the church is necessary, at the very least for those called to be Christian. So ec-
clesiology must now rise to meet a profound and novel challenge: to show just
why this is the case. It may well be that one reason why the blueprint forms of
communion ecclesiology are popular among church people is that they evi-
dently offer what for some is a convincing and powerful riposte to the prevalent
attitude.25 For they describe clearly and in detail what is special about the
church, and in such a way that full and active membership is evidently a gift and
privilege it would be foolish not to accept.
Thus in Being As Communion, Zizioulas argues that we are not real
people until we join the communion of the church through baptism. Outside the
church, we can only be "individuals." There we are tragically limited by our
"hypostasis of biological existence," which means that we exist by necessity
rather than in freedom, separate from others, unable to overcome the kind of
exclusivity in which "the family has priority in love over 'stranger,' the husband
lays exclusive claim to the love of his wife."26 Entering into the church liberates
us from such "individualism and egocentricity" by transforming us into authen-
tic persons, beings-in-relation.27 This transformation is salvation, for "salvation
is identified with the realization of personhood in man."28 When we acquire
personhood or "ecclesial being," we live in the image of the persons-in-relation
of the triune God. The form of salvation is thus conceived in a rather this-
worldly or, more strictly, a "this-churchly" manner, for the transformation to
true personhood seems to be achievable here and now, immanently, by joining
the church.
Less categorical yet similar moves are made by Tillard in his Church of
Churches. He acknowledges that communion may well extend beyond the visi-
ble koinonia of the church into the world.29 He makes a similar correlation of
salvation, communion, and the church. "For humanity is truly itself only in
communion. This is what saves it."30 That is why, "in the first centuries, Salva-
tion is called communion, for the human being finds his authenticity and affirms
See, e.g., Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of
the Baby Boom Generation (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).
24
See Robin Gill, Churchgoing and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1999). Gill's useful collection of data supports his thesis that churchgoers
display distinctive attitudes and behavior, but it also supports my assertion that they tend to
pick and choose.
25
They are popular for many other and much better reasons, too. I do not mean to
suggest that their popularity is reducible to this apologetic function.
26
Zizioulas, Being As Communion, 50-51.
27
28
29
Tillard, Church of Churches, 34.
30
his full singularity only in communion." It is "in the Church of God" that "the
humanity-that-God-wills is recreated."31 By contrast, the "drama of our history
is precisely that man has become an isolated being," so much so that "humanity
has condemned itself in reality to a state of non-existence" and "reduced itself
to becoming hardly more than a collage of individuals."32
For both Zizioulas and Tillard, though with different degrees of empha-
sis, ecclesial communion can be described as the form of salvation because
communion transforms us from egocentric and tragic individuals into authentic
persons. By membership in the church we become truly ourselves, namely im-
ages of God. What denotes the essential characteristic of the church is identical
with salvation and also with what is understood to be lacking or less evident or
attainable in the world outside the church. Significantly, too, the lack of com-
munion in the world is visible to all, not only to those with faith. The tragedy of
modern individualism and its deleterious consequences are described by both
Tillard and Zizioulas as if they are empirically obvious. Look around you, and
you will see that modern people are egocentric and superficial; only the church
offers true relationships and true personhood: so membership in the church is
the obvious move for anyone who knows that the church's essential being is
communion. To become a member of the church is to be saved from a world
that is corrupt and sinful so as to live as God lives, in communion.33
Let us leave aside concerns about the massive idealization of the
church, the failure to reckon at all adequately with its sin and confusion, and
what might seem to some a chillingly negative view of the modern world. In-
stead, let us note only how different this account of salvation is from earlier
theologies. It seems a fair generalization to say that premodern theologies de-
scribed salvation primarily in terms of the work of the triune God. Christ saved
us in entering our history: by becoming incarnate, by his actions, by his minis-
try, by his suffering and death, and by his resurrection and ascension. The Holy
Spirit acts now to bring to us the fruits of what Christ has achieved, to make us
partakers of his body and, at the end, to bring us in him with all creation to the
Father. For the earlier theologians, the church's role in our salvation is indeed a
real one, but it is always dependent upon and consequent to the work of the Son
and Spirit. Salvation for those called to be Christians is contingent upon mem-
bership in the church because it is through the church that one receives the grace
of the sacraments, the preached Word, and guidance in the Christian life by its
ministers, so that one may fulfill the call to be a Christian. What the church of-
fers us is not salvation as such, but the means to it. Consequently, the church is
31
Tillard, Church of Churches, 15. Tillard's "Church of God," ekklesia tou theou, is
not identical with the concrete church but is its ground, the church revealed at Pentecost. This
distinction helps to block complete identification of salvation and membership in the earthly
church, though it actually makes little or no difference to the shape of his ecclesiology.
32
33
To be sure, both Zizioulas and Tillard say things—though rather infrequently—
that indicate membership in the church communion is not identical with final salvation (e.g.,
Being In Communion, 162). But the heavy stress on what makes the church special turns such
caveats into nuances that get too easily overlooked.
discussed in the context of the Christian life and of grace, justification, and
sanctification.34
Thomas Aquinas
It is helpful to go beyond such generalizations to look very briefly at a specific
example of premodern ecclesiology. Thomas Aquinas's descriptions of the
church can be found mostly in the Summa Theologiae (ST) and in his biblical
commentaries. They are scattered throughout these and other works with noth-
ing like a complete account anywhere because, for Thomas, ecclesiology is
always a consequent topic, logically and materially dependent upon whatever is
said at a given point about the central doctrines, which therefore limits what can
be said at that point about the church. Thomas's theology in general, and thus
his ecclesiology in particular, are both structured by the overarching scriptural
narrative of salvation history, which moves from creation, through the time of
Israel to its center and ground, Jesus Christ, and so on to the church and eventu-
ally to the final consummation in which all is brought in Christ through the
Spirit to the Father (ST 1.73.1).35 Accordingly, Thomas considers the church to
be a historical entity in the theological sense that its nature and function are
conditioned by its place within this narrative.
Thomas usually discusses the church in the context of Christology and
pneumatology, because Christ opens up and shows us the way (via) to the Fa-
ther (ST 3 prol.), and through the Spirit, enables us to travel on that way.36 He
uses a number of different phrases to talk about the church,37 one of the more
important of which is the Pauline "Body of Christ." In a particularly significant
question within the christological treatise of the Summa Theologiae (ST 3.8),
Thomas discusses what it means to say that Christ is the Head of his Body.38 He
notes that it is only through our participation in Christ's body—or in other
words, only through our being in communion with him—that we may be
brought into communion with the Father (ST 3.48.1-2). Significantly, however,
"Body of Christ" is not synonymous with "church," for all people are members
of his body, whereas the church is limited to those who have, minimally, faith in
34
As Zizioulas notes: "During the patristic period, there was scarcely mention of the
being of the Church, whilst much was made of the being of God," Being As Communion, 15-
16. Not incidentally, the "patristic" organization is maintained in the Catechism of the Catho-
lic Church (Liguori: Liguori Publications, 1994).
35
See Gilles Emery, O. P., Trinité et Création dans les Commentaires aux Sen-
tences de Thomas d'Aquin et de ses Précurseurs Albert le Grand et Bonaventure (Paris: Vrin,
1995). In his Commentary on the Sentences, Thomas makes explicit use of the neo-Platonic
exitus-reditus schema. This persists in the Summa, but, as Emery shows, in a thoroughly
scriptural and trinitarian manner.
36
See Summa contra Gentiles, 4.22.2.
37
For a good full-length treatment of Thomas's ecclesiology which discusses his
various names for the church, see George Sabra, Thomas Aquinas 's Vision of the Church:
Fundamentals of an Oecumenical Theology (Mainz: Mathias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1987).
38
The following couple of paragraphs give a limited account of what Thomas says
in this question (ST 3.8). Additional references in parentheses refer to texts which help fill
out the account. Citations from the ST are from the translation by the fathers of the English
Dominican Province (Westminster: Benziger/Christian Classics, 1948/1981).
Christ. Christ is the head of all living people because his grace is sufficient for
the salvation of all (see also ST 1/2.114.6).
Christ's Body is complex because membership is determined, first, by
one's place within the history of salvation and, second, by the particular action
of the Holy Spirit. Those who have died now live in full communion with Christ
and so live with the Father in the Spirit (ST 1.68.4; 3.57.1 ad 3). They constitute
the heavenly church of those who have been transformed, who no longer sin and
therefore no longer need any virtue or gift except the perfect charity of the Holy
Spirit. Their perfect happiness and fulfillment consists in the beatific vision of
God. By contrast, the members of the church on earth are still on their way (in
via) to their final goal of full communion with God. Accordingly, the earthly
church has a function and form that the heavenly church does not. Its function is
to help its weak, sinful, and confused members achieve their ultimate, heavenly
goal by their meritorious actions here on earth (ST 1/2.114.4). The earthly
church performs its function by the means Christ has given it, especially the
sacraments and the preached word, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. To be a
member of the in via church is thus, at best, to be moving towards salvation.
Membership in the earthly church is not a guarantee of salvation. All
members of the church are in communion with Christ through their faith; they
constitute the congregatio fidelium (the congregation of the faithful), a phrase
Thomas uses frequently of the earthly church.3 Faith is not enough for salva-
tion unless it is formed by communion with the Holy Spirit. Some members of
the earthly church have been infused with charity; their living faith issues in
actions that are meritorious.40 But others have not been given the virtue of char-
ity, so their faith is more or less dead, especially but not only if they are in a
state of mortal sin. Their actions cannot be meritorious even if they are active
members of the earthly church, for without prevenient grace, nothing whatever
they do has any good effect on their relationship with God (ST 2/2.23.8). They
are still genuine members of the church and of the body of Christ, but unless
they are eventually given charity, they have been predestined to be permitted to
fall into sin and thus be "reprobated," rejected as future members of the heav-
enly church (ST 1.23.3). Even for those infused with charity, a particular
movement of the Holy Spirit (actually of all three persons of the Trinity) is nec-
essary each time for them to perform a particular action meritoriously (ST
1/2.109.9; 68.2 ad 2). Even infused virtues are not sufficient of themselves for
us to move towards our final end. Thomas notes, too, that it is impossible to
know with any certainty to which part of the earthly church any specific indi-
vidual, including oneself, belongs (ST 1/2.112.5).
Of the remaining members of the body of Christ, i.e., those who are not
presently members of either the heavenly or the earthly church, some will even-
tually become members of the church in via by their faith in Christ and, as it
may be, in the charity of the Holy Spirit, too. Others may not hear about Christ
In contrast to the heavenly church of the comprehensores, those who no longer

need faith because they see God. See Sabra, Thomas Aquinas 's Vision, 57-58.
40
For an excellent account of Thomas's teaching on merit and grace, see Joseph P.
Wawrykow, God's Grace and Human Action: 'Merit' in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas
(Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).
but yet be "instructed by an inward instinct as to the way of worshipping God"

and so participate in the body of Christ and, indeed, in the church in some fash-
ion (ST 2/2.93.1 ad 2).41 Faith in "the mystery of Christ's Incarnation" is always
necessary for salvation, according to Thomas. But such belief has "differed ac-
cording to differences of times and persons" (ST 2/2.2.7). In the past, belief in a
mediator or simply in a form of divine providence has been sufficient for mem-
bership in Christ's church (ST 2/2.2.7 ad 3). Such faith may be enlivened by the
Spirit, and thus be sufficient for membership in the heavenly church after their
death. Others, however, will be lost forever.
For Thomas, then, it is the form of one's communion with Christ and
the Holy Spirit that decides one's salvation. The particular form of communion
found within the earthly church is always fundamentally a consequence rather
than a cause of the communion with Christ and the Spirit. For whether or not
one is saved is not a consequence of the kind of communion obtaining within a
particular group, whether it be the heavenly or the earthly church, among those
with dead or living faith, or among those outside the earthly church but predes-
tined to eventual heavenly communion. Rather, these varied forms of
communion are consequences of the various forms of communion one may
have with Christ and whether or not one also has the loving fellowship of the
Holy Spirit, in its earthly or heavenly forms.
The concept of communion is thus used rather more analogously by
Thomas than by Zizioulas and Tillard. For the latter two, communion is, of
course, an analogous term, since there must be a dissimilarity between divine
communion and human communion. Ecclesial being is obviously not the same
as trinitarian communion, even though it is an image of it. But it would seem
that for them, ecclesial being—communion within the earthly church as such—
is a univocal concept, though it is found in varying degrees. By contrast, Tho-
mas treats the various forms of communion among creatures as analogies. If one
describes the essential nature of the church in via as communion, it cannot,
however perfect, be qualitatively the same kind of communion as the commun-
ion that obtains within the heavenly church, nor is it the same as the communion
that obtains among all the members of the body of Christ. Though they consti-
tute one communion of saints within the one body of Christ, the members of the
heavenly and the earthly churches are too diverse for the same concept to apply
univocally to their respective forms of existence, for they have radically differ-
ent ways of participating in Christ and the Spirit. Communion in via and eternal
life in full communion with the blessed Trinity are different in kind, the glory of
the latter unattainable and unknowable by anyone in this life (e.g. ST 1.12.13 ad
1 and 3).
Moreover, if communion in the sense, say, of unity in the church is
fundamentally a consequence of communion with Christ in faith and in the
charity of the Holy Spirit, any over-reliance on a reverse causal movement is
undermined. To begin with, the earthly church's communion has not always
been the sole way of attaining communion with Christ; the Holy Spirit may
41
Sometimes, as here, Thomas uses "Christ's church" as the equivalent of the body
of Christ, but not as synonymous with the earthly church.
work freely outside its boundaries. To be sure, the church—and its form of
communion—is certainly a means of salvation, and for those called to be Chris-
tian, it is the necessary means. The church is the living instrument of the Word
and the Spirit, a vital part of the body of Christ. But some of those who were not
members of the earthly church have become members of the heavenly body of
Christ; some of those in the church are not predestined to salvation, and for
those that are, additional and particular movements of the Holy Spirit are al-
ways necessary. Thus, earthly-ecclesial communion, though brought about by
grace, cannot be confused with salvation. Rather, the force of what Thomas says
about salvation and the church inhibits us from considering both concepts in
terms of any bearing they may have on one another, and pushes us instead to
consider both in the light of what the triune God does for us.
By comparison with Thomas, the two communion ecclesiologies show
a marked tendency, evident particularly in Zizioulas, to give primacy to the
church, to us and the possibility of our authentic humanity. While certainly not
ignoring the more traditional account of salvation, the Trinity is discussed less
as the doctrine of the God revealed in and through God's saving work than as
the divine template for our true form of personhood, for our existence in com-
munion. The doctrine of the Trinity contributes to our understanding of
ourselves and the form of our immanent salvation, rather more than it describes
or governs the Christian understanding of God revealed in God's actions for
us. Christology is primarily the description of the exemplary form of human
existence revealed to us in Christ, rather less the description of his person and
his work for us and for our sake.43 The doctrines that were central for the tradi-
tion have been displaced from the center of theology, which is now taken up by
ecclesiology. Thereby, the doctrine of the church has become the primary locus
of soteriology, and soteriology is now dominated by anthropology.44 As Ziziou-
las himself remarks of his work, "ecclesiology assumes a marked importance,
not only for all aspects of theology, but also for the existential needs of man in
every age."45
The New Ecclesiology

Before I suggest a possible reason for this movement of ecclesiology to the cen-
ter of theological inquiry, it may be of interest to look briefly and quite
generally at the new ecclesiology, for it sometimes makes a few not dissimilar
moves. In some ways, to be sure, the new ecclesiology represents a turn away
For an excellent discussion of the broader issues involved here, see Karen Kilby,
"Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity," New Black-
friars 81 (2000): 432-45.
43
^Naturally, this is much less likely to happen in the less exhaustive forms of com-
munion ecclesiology.
45
Zizioulas, Being As Communion, 15. See also Tillard, Church of Churches, 12:
"The Ekklesia is born on Pentecost by the dynamism which recreates the flesh of the world.
The Spirit of the Lord . . . knows how to break down the walls which imprison individuals
and groups from each other in order to bind them together in communion. . . . The Church is,
therefore, from its birth, involved in earnest in the world's problems."
from modern ecclesiology. Often drawing upon the work of Wittgenstein and
later social philosophers like Alasdair Maclntyre, it makes an intentional return
to more traditional forms within a postmodern or late modern context (hence my
name for it). Many of its proponents reject mediating theology to advocate, like
the premoderns, a greater reliance upon Scripture and Christian doctrine as the
primary sources and criteria of truth. They avoid heavy reliance upon a particu-
lar image or model of the nature of the church. They understand Christianity to
be a way of life rather than simply a set of beliefs, with the consequence that the
church cannot be discussed in terms of its nature alone, since it is constituted at
one level by its actions, especially those actions associated with its task of pro-
claiming and embodying the gospel. Refusing to separate beliefs from actions,
doctrine from ethics, and ethics from ecclesiology, the new ecclesiology is con-
cerned primarily with figuring out how the church can best fulfill its role of
communal witness to the truth revealed in Jesus Christ.46
Where the new ecclesiology is perhaps especially "new" is the extent to
which some of its advocates rely upon a concept of "practice."47 Practices have
been a part of traditional ecclesiologies, to be sure, though often under other
terms. But here it is said that the church is "constituted by its practices,"48 for it
is through fellowship in and with the church—i.e., "communion"—that the
church's members acquire Christian virtues and a Christian character so that
they may embody the gospel publicly and visibly. This is indeed a vital insight
too often missing in much modern ecclesiology. In some forms of the new ec-
clesiology, however, the focus on practices sometimes seems to drive
everything else, rather as communion does for the exhaustive versions of that
kind of ecclesiology. At times, the new ecclesiology concentrates so over-
whelmingly upon the details, forms and benefits of our human actions, or upon
the reasons why we should pay so much attention to such things, that the actions
of the Son and Holy Spirit are given relatively little attention. There is evidently
a functioning Christology and pneumatology in the work of both Lindbeck and
Hauerwas, but such doctrines remain largely implicit. This is quite reasonable
given the programmatic nature of Lindbeck's major work,49 Hauerwas's con-
cern to develop and practice virtue ethics, and the assumptions and concerns
prevalent among those with whom they must contend. But the comparative lack
of interest in situating the theology of the church within what have traditionally
46
In this they arguably draw close to Thomas Aquinas. I have compared his ap-
proach with theirs in my "Practices and the New Ecclesiology: Misplaced Concreteness?"
Internationaljournal of Systematic Theology 5 (2003): 287-308.1 have drawn upon that
article for some of the above material on Thomas.
47
The concept of practice varies in the new ecclesiology, in part due to its appro-
priation from a variety of sources, some of which are inconsistent with others.
48
By James Buckley and David Yeago, introduction to Knowing the Triune God, 11
(n. 11 above).
49
As Lindbeck himself notes in the preface to the German translation (reprinted in
The Church in a Postliberal Age, 196-200), his Nature of Doctrine was intended to be "an
ecumenical prolegomenon" (199), and thus "pretheological... interesting chiefly to doctri-
nally committed ecumenists" (198). It was, however, "captured by unanticipated interest
groups" (196) who shaped its public reception in ways that brought it into "the wider discus-
sion" over how to respond to the recent changes in modern culture (199).
been the more central doctrines persists in much of the new ecclesiology. And
when attention is paid to the Holy Spirit, as in the work of Reinhold Hütter, the
Spirit is so bound to the church's practices that it seems to have nofreedomto
act apart from the practices, with which it is virtually identified.50
At times, too, the new ecclesiology makes a strong distinction between
the church and the world. As in communion ecclesiology, so here the world is
the modern world developing out of the Enlightenment, an individualistic, nihil-
istic, and fundamentally violent world. A well-known example of this is
Hauerwas's Resident Aliens, written with William Willimon, in which the
church is characterized as "an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief." The
church "is God's means of a major offensive against the world, for the world."
God uses the church because it is "the only community formed around the truth,
which is Jesus Christ." God is against the world because it is there that "indi-
vidualistic, contextualist ethics is dependent on a 'community' that exists by
devaluing community." Again, in contrast to the church, the "post-Kantian
community" proclaims "that each of us is free to discover our own ethics for
ourselves, to grow up and become adult—liberated, autonomous, detached, free
individuals."5 It is because of such remarks that Hauerwas has been accused of
idealizing the church and demonizing the world.52
In spite of occasional rhetorical excesses, though, much of what the
new ecclesiology says certainly needs to be said, and said loudly, as part of the
church's witness to Jesus Christ. The church is indeed that special place
wherein God works within us and in which usually we are trained and enabled
to work for the world. My fear is that the combination of the focus on the
church's actions, to the comparative neglect of divine action, the sharp rhetoric
against the practices of the world and the heavy emphasis on ecclesial practices
may, as in some communion ecclesiologies, foster a confusion of sanctification
with salvation and ecclesiology with soteriology. In the new ecclesiology there
is little or no discussion of election. Nor is much attention paid to the
independent activity of the Holy Spirit who must always move us if we are to
perform any right action, even when we have the virtues for it, and who is
surely free to act within an individualistic world. There is comparatively little
account of the Word which judges the church as much as the world, and the
individuals within both independently of their membership in either. It is
sufficient for our salvation, it would almost seem, if we give ourselves over to
the church and its practices. The practices of the church almost—but to varying
degrees, finally do not—take the place of the Son and Spirit. But in the way of
emphasis and focus, for the most part the church does take their place in some
I note some of the differences in the respective treatments of practices and virtues
by Thomas and the new ecclesiology in my "Practices and the New Ecclesiology."
5
hauerwas, Resident Aliens, 49, 51, 77, 79, 80. Hauerwas is not alone in making
this strong distinction between church and world. Besides some of the essays in the collec-
tions noted above (n. 9) and William Cavanaugh's Torture and Eucharist, see Michael L.
Budde and Robert W. Brimlow, eds., The Church as Counterculture (Albany: SUNY Press,
2000).
52
See David Fergusson, Community, Liberalism and Christian Ethics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998); also Robin Gill, Churchgoing and Christian Ethics.
of the new ecclesiology, as it does in some of the communion ecclesiology, at

least by comparison with the older theologies. The church and ecclesiology
have become rather more identified with the gospel than in the past.
I put forward these concerns about the two major forms of contempo-
rary ecclesiology with the hope that advocates of both kinds of ecclesiology will
address the issues I raise. I do not mean at all to suggest that either group is fun-
damentally on the wrong track. Both forms of ecclesiology are of genuine and
vital significance and have much to offer the church.
Loss of Confidence?
There is, however, one further question that should be raised. I have noted that,
in both communion and the new ecclesiologies, the opponent against which the
church takes its stand is the modern world, characterized primarily by its indi-
vidualistic understanding of the person. Individualism and its consequent evils,
including everything from faulty epistemology to consumerism to exclusivism,
are that from which the church's communion or practices save its members. I
have suggested that perhaps not enough is said about salvation as it is more tra-
ditionally understood, that is, as something that involves far more than
membership in the church, and as something that can be discussed theologically
at least in part at some distance from ecclesiology. If peradventure the world or
parts of it should change and become for some little while communitarian in a
rather nice way, these ecclesiologies and soteriologies would have to be drasti-
cally re-written, whereas the traditional ecclesiologies and soteriologies would
not.
Sarah Coakley has remarked that, "[i]f theologians seem currently al-
most united in their collective fury against Cartesian 'individualism,' we may
well ask what political and ideological agendas (as well as what theology) pro-
pel them in this direction."53 I very tentatively offer the following, not as a
possible agenda, indeed, but as a possible contributing cause or context. Mi-
chael Buckley has noted how, when faced with modern atheism, the Roman
Catholic and some other churches abandoned attempts to argue for God on the
basis of the Christian narrative. Instead they adopted the same kind of philoso-
phical assumptions as the atheists of the time and fought back with arguments
that owed more to Cicero than to Scripture: "The Christian God was to be justi-
fied without Christ."54 Buckley's account reveals a loss of confidence in the
gospel, a failure to trust in Christianity's traditional message about salvation in
Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.
My question is whether something parallel to the church's earlier re-
sponse to the Enlightenment is surfacing in recent decades, this time in the
sphere of ecclesiology. The comparatively recent popularity of ecclesiology in
its communion and new forms has tended to shift theological attention away
from Jesus Christ and the scriptural portrayal of his saving acts, to the church
Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender

(Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 86.
54
Michael J. Buckley, S. J., At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1987), 346. See also 47, 54-55, 341-42 and throughout.
and its saving acts. Central doctrines are preserved and Scripture still used, but
they now tend to serve the ecclesiology. Perhaps the outrageousness of the gos
pel claims may seem less outrageous when they are placed within a critical
account of the woes of modernity and how we may be saved from them. After
all, every right thinking person rejects individualism (usually, though quite un
justifiably, equated in popular thinking with selfishness), and everyone now
seems to think that "community" is a good thing (whatever the term may actu
ally mean to them). So the church can be presented as the community within
which is the answer to modern social problems. Christianity is the way of life or
the way of being that saves us from the evident evils of the modern world. Ec
clesiology thereby takes on a new kind of apologetic function, that of
ameliorating the starkness of the gospel claims by situating them within a com
munal solution to contemporary social problems that appeals to well-meaning
moderns and postmoderne.
So can we detect a lack of confidence in the gospel within exhaustive
communion ecclesiology and the new ecclesiology? The question is obviously
unanswerable at this time, and not only because the answer depends upon how
they are further developed. It would certainly be patently absurd to suggest that
any one of the theologians I have mentioned impersonally lacking in confidence
in the gospel. And it also goes without saying that an ecclesiological-apologetic
accommodation of the gospel is not intended as a strategy by any of them; quite
definitely the contrary. I raise the issue only because it may be part of an as yet
undetected trend which can be forestalled before it gains any momentum. And
like any form of apologetics, an unintended kind may distort the faith even as it
defends it. I would speculate that more traditional theologians might be sur
prised at this recent move in ecclesiology. Premoderns like Thomas Aquinas
preached the gospel of Jesus Christ as the answer, not just to contemporary so
cial problems, but to the church and its social problems, too. There is no good
reason to think they would change their tack in response to the contemporary
challenges.
Whether or not the quest for church legitimacy is the root cause of the
emphasis upon ecclesiology in recent years, and whether or not this is driven by
a loss of confidence in the gospel, it may still be appropriate to follow premod
erns like Thomas Aquinas and move away from descriptions of the church
couched primarily in terms of what makes it different and thus necessary. The
formula: the world is x, and χ is inadequate or bad; the church is y, which com
pletes or counters x, is sometimes very appropriate, but the perils of modernity
and the systematic principles χ and y should not be permitted to structure our
ecclesiology. This would be as distorting as talking about salvation only as the
solution to the problem of sin, or revelation only as the solution to the problem
of how the infinite may enter into relation with the finite, or God only as the
solution to our religious questions. Salvation, revelation, and God are distorted
in each case.
It may therefore be more appropriate, particularly at this time, to attend
rather more to the action of the Son and Spirit who work for our salvation, to
the triune God revealed in that work, and thus to have in place some account of
the center of the gospel before going on to consider the church. It may be that
this would foster a more thoroughgoing eschatological conception of the

church, situating it more solidly within that world which the Father so loves that
he sent his only son to save. And this might help to forestall the idealization of
the church, and encourage in turn a more thoroughgoing analysis of its cultural
and social forms by this-worldly disciplines like sociology and ethnography.
None of these suggestions, if followed, would guarantee anything, of course.
Ecclesiology, like all theological inquiry, involves more than intellectual virtues
and skillfulness. Sin and confusion is always with us. But such an approach
might offer more suitable created instruments for the uncreated Spirit to use to
work in us to God's greater glory at this time.
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Ecclesiology and Communion

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Ecclesiology and Communion

Communion ecclesiology has become increasingly popular among theologians

Modern Ecclesiology: Blueprints

while Christology is acknowledged as "the sole starting point for a Christian

Modern Ecclesiology: New Challenges to the Church

Christian all by oneself is a not infrequent assumption. Much to the

In contrast to the heavenly church of the comprehensores, those who no longer

but yet be "instructed by an inward instinct as to the way of worshipping God"

The New Ecclesiology

of the new ecclesiology, as it does in some of the communion ecclesiology, at

Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender

this would foster a more thoroughgoing eschatological conception of the

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously

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