What is the church? Really, we need to think about it. What is the church? What makes a church? Is a Bible study at Starbuck’s “church”?
If you read into this topic you will encounter the great Roman Catholic theologian Avery Dulles quickly, and Dulles proposed a five-fold set of models for what the church is, which sometimes means as much what the church does. Dulles said those models are:
the church as institution,
the church as mystical communion,
the church as sacrament,
the church as herald,
and the church as servant.
Dulles made that proposal years back, scholars have returned to it to tweak his proposal, and the most recent such book is an excellent textbook by Matt Jenson and David Wilhite: Church: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides For The Perplexed).
For each model Jenson and Wilhite know there are all sorts of issues with terms (what does “institutional” or “sacrament” means and who defines the term?) examine a specific theologian, a modern proponent, and they know the models are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Yet, these models help us think about the church. They examine, then, Vatican I (and he ties in Zizoulas), Dulles and Boff and Vatican II, Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, John Webster and Lesslie Newbigin.
What then is the church?Each model is discussed with careful nuance, and the book needs to be read by seminarians and theologians, but where Jenson and Wilhite land makes for a sound basis for further thinking. They make five points:
1. The church is a mystical communion.
2. Institutional elements are here to stay.
3. The church must be externally focused – mission, preaching, etc.
4. The church must be visibly manifested: institutional elements, sacramental practices, evangelical proclamation or missional deeds.
5. The church is ineradicably local.
They finally appeal to Hütter: the church invisible becomes the church visible through its practices.
Scot,
Where in Dulles proposals or the follow through by Jensen and Wilhite do we find any indication of Church as a community? Or is this not relevant?
Comment by rjs — July 11, 2011 @ 6:37 am
rjs, the first point [at bottom, second for Dulles] — mystical communion — which means something like a spiritual universal church united into a communion or fellowship — seems to be at the heart of most understandings of church today.
Comment by Scot McKnight — July 11, 2011 @ 6:45 am
Oh, and the 5th point in the observations of Jenson/Wilhite makes this local, local, local.
Comment by Scot McKnight — July 11, 2011 @ 6:46 am
I work with young adults via ‘Fresh Expressions of Church’. In various forms I must have heard this ‘is this proper church’ discussion a hundred times this year. Despite the repetition it’s a worthwhile question and I’m glad you’ve reminded us of Dulles, Jenson and Wilhite. There have always been ‘fresh expressions’ – new ventures that offend establishment imagination. I imagine that a Gentile Church in Antioch looked pretty scary from Jerusalem.
Some of the ‘is this church’ debate is unhelpful for innovation. It puts pressure on the fledgeling churches to conform in quite inappropriate ways. I very much hope that ‘fresh expressions’ don’t learn our bad Christendom habits, including definitions of ‘church’ that in reality are just the clergy making a case for their own necessity. The devil is in the definition. The Eucharist is something quite different when the ‘president’ has to wear a dog collar.
Cafe churches are a interesting case. Most of the problems I’ve seen have been to do with such churches importing an inappropriate way of being church into a cafe setting: http://radref.blogspot.com/2011/02/other-cafe-church.html
I’ve been holding out for forms of cafe church that sit alongside existing relationships in a coffee shop rather displacing existing customers.
Comment by Phil Wood — July 11, 2011 @ 6:51 am
Mystical Communion as the church universal sounds like skirting the question of defining church as specific and tangible community. For instance, could I not be a part of the church universal even if I am not a part of a particular community of believers that meets together for what have you?
But then does that make me ‘a church’? Can one man perform sacraments, proclaim the message, etc.? Hebrews, among other sources, seems to suggest that there is something special and particular about meeting together that we are called to.
Institutional elements also sounds like an arbitrary distinction to me when all I really read out of that is that we need *some* mechanism(s) to coherently order our tangible communities so that they can operate. And though while I think that establishing institutional elements is the most convenient and effective manner of creating that order, I would certainly contend that there have been communes of believers that I would call ‘churches’ that were not necessarily ‘institutionlized’.
Comment by Amos Paul — July 11, 2011 @ 8:57 am
In college, Intervarsity was our church. Even though we were told over, and over again that it wasn’t supposed to be, it was. No question about it. Why? For starters, we had control of some the leadership. That wouldn’t happen in a real church. Coupled with that, it was the community and friendships that made it church. Upon college graduation we quickly learned why our staff leader told us Intervarsity should not be our church.
Comment by Taylor G — July 11, 2011 @ 9:28 am
This looks to be very, very flexible from this summary, which I think is right. Certainly many individuals are “Christians” without knowing or living out all that being Christ’s entails, and communities of believers are the same. We’ve got churches with different sacramental practices all over the map, mission practices all over the map, institutional shapes all over the map, but I can’t say that many of my least favorite examples of all these are not “churches” at all. We’re all different (in intended and in flawed ways) as individuals and as communities, but the Spirit works with us as we are, thank God.
This reminds me of Renovare’s materials: I’d like to see all communities of faith in Christ become more evangelical, more incarnational, more contemplative, more charismatic, etc. But that’s different from the issue of “is this a church at all?” I think that bar is much lower than the question of what a church can or should be and act.
Comment by T — July 11, 2011 @ 9:45 am
Thanks Scot. This is timely for me: I’ve been wrestling with this question deeply lately (studying historical theology does that to you!). In a recent CT article on the Bell kerfuffle, Mark Galli suggested that we need to become “radically Protestant again” in order to mediate such hard questions. But I wonder — isn’t the notion of being “radically Protestant” part of what got us into some of the problems we evangelicals experience? Yet every time I get intimate with what the RCC or the EO understands “Church” to mean — especially on contemporary issues like women in ministry and some family issues (family planning) — I have to balk. Let there be a way forward.
Comment by dopderbeck — July 11, 2011 @ 10:06 am
dopderbeck – so you recognize the church as it should be but cannot conform to one or two polarizing issues?
Comment by Taylor G — July 11, 2011 @ 10:26 am
So are they talking about how the church functions, or what the church is? If I were to answer the question, “What is the church?”, I don’t think I would come up with their answers. Three things come to my mind: the body of Christ on earth, the living temple of God on earth, and the eschatological bride of Christ being prepared for him by the Father. So I would say:
1. The church, through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, is the means by which Jesus extends his rule and reign on earth.
2. The church is where God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, dwells on earth.
3. The church, consisting of believers both alive and dead, is being prepared by the Father to be the bride of Christ after he has put all enemies under his feet and restored all things.
Comment by Andy Holt — July 11, 2011 @ 10:33 am
Taylor (#9) — these issues, and others, tend to drive me back to some of the themes of the Reformation. They are also tied to deeper issues, like the meaning of “sin” and who — God alone or the Church — defines who can and cannot be saved. Even after Vatican II, the core issues that fueled the Reformation — justification, grace, merit, indulgences, the meaning of the Church’s authority to loose and bind (Matt. 18:18) — IMHO remain very much live issues. So, it is not just submitting to certain ecclesiologically unique practices — e.g., forgoing (artificial) birth control and accepting an entirely celibate, entirely male priesthood, etc. It is submitting to the theology that underlies what those practices mean specifically in the RCC context — which, as far as I can tell, is still tied to a legalistic sense of sin, merit and judgment, in which the Church has authority to judge what is lawful and therefore who is in and out, not just of the local body, but of the Kingdom. For me personally, that is the biggest divide.
Where I waver uncomfortably is on the notion of continuity and Apostolic succession. In the summary in the post, I don’t see any reference to Apostolic continuity. To me, that is really troubling. There is no “scripture principle” to rely on, for example, without some idea of Apostolic continuity — without some idea of continuity, arguably there is no canon (though source criticism suggests that some of the early Church’s judgments about Apostolicicity were mistaken…).
So my question would be: what historical basis supports the Reformation? And what historical basis today continues to support a divided Church?
Comment by dopderbeck — July 11, 2011 @ 11:28 am
Instead of “preaching,” how about “learning?” One does not guarantee the other.
Comment by Fred — July 11, 2011 @ 11:33 am
Not that this is especially shocking given my low-church background, but the absence of Apostolic continuity, as such is often defined to me, doesn’t really bother me, and, if it belongs anywhere, I would imagine it as a way of talking about the Church’s mystical communion. Paul himself is certainly open to the charge that his ministry lacked apostolic continuity with the 12, at least in the sense that apostolic succession is often used today. And we also see Jesus correcting the 12 when they tried to stop a man from preaching and healing in Jesus’ name because he wasn’t part of the disciples’ group. The 12 were clearly authorized by Christ for his work, but also not granted a monopoly over God’s action in Christ. Further still, we see a very analogous situation with the issue of membership in the people of God or being a citizen of the kingdom as a matter of Jewish-ness and how such is defined. As Paul dealt with, is being Jewish a matter of physical pedigree or physical circumcision? Or is Abraham my father for the same reason? No; even the Jewish leader must be “born again” of the Spirit, who blows where he wills. And sons of Abraham act as Abraham would. Taken together, these ideas (let alone Jesus’ teachings on leadership in the church) make it difficult for me to buy into any kind of necessity for apostolic succession, except as such is provided by submission to the one Lord, one Father, one Spirit of the Apostles’ gospel.
Comment by T — July 11, 2011 @ 12:52 pm
T and Dopderbeck – So what is our authority then? When we disagree on what the Bible teaches how do we decide? We can’t just take issue X and say we’re uncomfortable with it and decide that the reformation was great afterall. SOMETHING must guide and direct. SOMETHING must be the final authority. What is it? I’m not saying I have the answers – I am asking this as a real question.
Comment by Taylor G — July 11, 2011 @ 1:05 pm
Taylor (#14) — first, you’re terribly micharacterizing what I said. You’re also not catching the genuine struggle I have with trying to determine where I stand.
Second, why does SOMETHING — some one thing — have to be the final authority? Why can’t it simply be about “Truth,” which is fully known only to the Triune God, who in Himself is the one final authority, and who makes Himself known in varied ways, including scripture, tradition, reason and experience?
Even under the RCC Magesterium, there are grey areas and issues about which you as an individual believer have to exercise interpretive judgment. The Magesterium, like scripture, is a text, and all texts have to be interpreted. When I catch myself longing to be entirely free from personal responsibility for my choices and beliefs, I have to realize that this is not an authentic spiritual development.
Comment by dopderbeck — July 11, 2011 @ 1:12 pm
T: but there are those pesky texts like Matt. 18:18: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
I’ve not seen any Protestant theology that deals with this sort of text effectively. Not just bound and loosed on earth — “in heaven.” (The context of Matt. 18:18, BTW, is the resolution of Church disputes, which in my mind makes it even a more powerful text in favor of some notion of Apostolic continuity…)
Comment by dopderbeck — July 11, 2011 @ 1:16 pm
David (16),
That is an interesting text with a lot in it, but I can’t help but think that it is an assumption of some significance to move from the conclusion “these people Jesus was speaking to were given this authority” to the additional conclusion that these people were given this authority exclusively or that it could only be transferred from them from that point forward.
But further, don’t you have some issue with using this text as a prop for apostolic authority/succession when the process for Church disputes is (i) offender, (ii) offender with witnesses, (iii)_offender with the whole body? How exactly does this have anything to do with the apostles at all, let alone who, if anyone, would “succeed” them and how? If Jesus’ teaching had echoed Jethro’s advice to Moses (and it could have) and the apostles had been set up as some kind of court of last resort . . . then we’d have some cause to think about “succession” based on this passage, but that’s not our passage. Final authority to expel rested with the whole community, not the 12 or the 3 or the like.
Comment by T — July 11, 2011 @ 1:53 pm
Dopderbeck – I am sorry for micharacterizing. I just get carried away with this issue because I cannot figure it out myself. You know how highly I regard your theological thinking.
Comment by Taylor G — July 11, 2011 @ 1:55 pm
mischaracterizing
Comment by Taylor G — July 11, 2011 @ 1:56 pm
Taylor,
Yeah, I’m not seeing the necessity to have a “decider” on every point of doctrine. We have, as David highlighted, a process to deal with offenses within the body. Too much is made of the need to have an “official position” on everything, creating an inevitable and damaging chasm b/n on the record and off the record beliefs. The phrase “cafeteria Catholic” refers to an inevitable reality within such a system. Outward conformity is not the same as inward conformity. At the same time, I can have valuable unity with Catholics, Methodists, etc. because we are committed to the one Lord, one Father, and even the one faith, as long as we can all keep to the main and plain, which is a lot.
Comment by T — July 11, 2011 @ 2:16 pm
Is there such thing as a “disembodied body”? While creative expressions of faith and community have always been a part of the evangelistic edge of Christianity, subtracting leadership, sacraments, community identity, mutual submission and some formal commitment to Biblical and apostolic doctrine seems to come close to the disembodiment of the Body of Christ.
Comment by Tom McGee — July 11, 2011 @ 2:52 pm
T(17) — well, you take this text along with other of Jesus’ statements about Church authority (e.g., Matt. 16:18)and then you follow them through to the book of Acts and the authority exercised by the Apostles and particularly by Peter at the Council of Jerusalem, and then you follow that through in the First and Second Century Bishoprics, and then you follow that through to the Council of Nicea…. and it seems like much more than a “prop” for an innovation, doesn’t it?
I was very impressed last summer when I had a chance to visit the Catacombs in Rome where many of the early Popes are burried. There they lay — the Bishops of Rome through the first few centuries of the Church. The myth of an early Church without institutions and heirarchy really is a myth.
Comment by dopderbeck — July 11, 2011 @ 3:15 pm
I’ve been dipping into this discussion all day. It’s an excellent conversation and I’ll pick it up this weekend in my radref Saturday breakfast post.
I think what Dopderbeck is looking for is Anabaptism, which Walter Klaasen once called ‘Neither Catholic Nor Protestant’. The best treatment of Matt 18.18 I’ve come across is J.H.Yoder’s ‘Binding and Loosing’ in ‘Body Politics’.
Comment by Phil Wood — July 11, 2011 @ 3:26 pm
dopderbeck,
The rootedness and age of the Church is a powerful testimony. But one also doesn’t have to read very long or far to see the stain and destructive influence of power and influence and position and pride in the church and the leadership of the church. We do not have an error-free christocentric apostolic succession from the very beginning. We don’t even have error and sin free apostolic leaders, for all the honor and authority we (rightly) surrender to them. Unless of course you define “the church” as the determinative source of error free thinking.
Comment by rjs — July 11, 2011 @ 3:33 pm
EO, RCC and the Anglicans all claim apostolic continuity, as do many offshoots from these. So I’m not sure how helpful apostolic continuity actually is.
Comment by Jeff Doles — July 11, 2011 @ 3:41 pm
David,
Well, I’m not saying that the early church was void of leadership. And not just in the apostles, but in Jesus’ brothers and various elders and servants and lots of unexpected people. And further, both then and now, I think relationship that allows a “laying on of hands” is the best and most routine way that faithful leadership is passed from one generation to the next. But all that said, God seems to have no problem with stepping outside of “our group” when he sees fit, ahead of our laying on of hands or circumcizing or whatever. So, yes, the myth of the lack of leadership and/or institution I will gladly agree is a myth. But, again, showing that “A” has authority to do “X” isn’t the same as showing that someone else can’t have it or have it given to them directly as well.
I’m thinking, as another illustration, of how Amos was a prophet-farmer. He came from outside the customary “schools” or backgrounds for prophets. The established institutions for grooming prophets failed to do what was necessary, so God acted outside those institutions and called a farmer. The NT shows no signs of God becoming less willing to continue such action as needed. I would put the Reformation in such a category. So institutions are great and even normal. Authority via the laying on of hands of those who can trace such affirmation to the apostles is the norm. But it is not the only way. Unless, of course, there is no actual church of Christ at all outside of the RCC, which history won’t permit me to say, anymore than Peter could call Cornelius and fam “unclean” for being a gentile. What God has made clean, do not call unclean, and that, in a nutshell, is the history of the protestant church. Not perfect by any stretch, but affirmed by God as legitimate churches, as glorious and human as any other.
Comment by T — July 11, 2011 @ 3:42 pm
Nicely put T. Much better than I said, but along the lines of my thinking on this.
Comment by rjs — July 11, 2011 @ 3:54 pm
Jeff Doles (#25) — excellent comment. Yes, the unity of the Church was broken — first in the Great Schism of the 11th Century and also by the Schism of the Reformation. And RJS (#24) — yes, absolutely, the Western (Roman) Church became institutionally corrupt. The Reformation was necessary because of that corruption — indulgences are Exhibit A, but we can include the Crusades, graft, nepotism, and on and on. And because I do believe the Reformation was necessary, and that the Reformation is not yet over, I’m a Protestant.
Still — I can’t fathom a definition of “Church” without some concept of Apostolic continuity. And I’ll add, some concept of liturgical and sacramental continuity. I’m not claiming I know just what that looks like, though.
Comment by dopderbeck — July 11, 2011 @ 3:54 pm
T (#26) and RJS (#27) — but what I’ve been struggling with lately is (a) how that sort of narrative permits any sort of stability or authority at all; and (b) how it comports with history, specifically the history of the development of doctrine.
It’s remarkable that much of the basic Christian doctrine we take for granted developed over the course of about 1000 years of substantial unity. True, that unity was challenged — but by the Gnostics and Arians. Unless you want to buy in to the Elaine Pagels / Bart Ehrmann / Dan Brown school of Church history, you have to say that these challenges were rightly (even if perhaps imperfectly) rebuffed by the unified Church gathered in ecumenical Council.
There’s no such thing as doctrine without history, and there’s no history of doctrine without the unified Church. I’m honestly not sure how to be a Christian theologian and a radical Protestant at the same time. Well, I see two ways: (1) a foundationalist-Fundamentalism that supposedly roots everything in the Bible (but really doesn’t); or (2) Barth’s very immanent concept of revelation, which can lead to relativism.
Comment by dopderbeck — July 11, 2011 @ 4:05 pm
Phil (#23) — thanks I’ll check that out. Curious to hear more of your thoughts.
Comment by dopderbeck — July 11, 2011 @ 4:07 pm
Dopderbeck,
For me the regula fidei is that authority. It is anchored in 1 Cor 15 and is the continuity to the creeds. There also is our apostolic succession. No computer so I’m quitting there.
Comment by Scot McKnight — July 11, 2011 @ 4:11 pm
Interestingly (and picking up on the question of community) in the second edition of his work Dulles proposes that there is a model that integrates the five previously expounded – Community of Disciples. I’ve tended to use this to shape my own understanding since. My recollection of this point is clear because I had to concentrate so hard on it because of the worst bumpy flight I’ve ever had, between Louisville and Orlando – wow, was that a storm?! Worse than Big Thunder Mountain with the kids!
Comment by Jared H — July 11, 2011 @ 4:11 pm
Dopderbeck,
While I understand your desire for an objective, Earthly authority as God’s standard for ‘the church’–I humbly submit that Jesus himself made it sound like *all* believers get their authority on Earth directly from Him.
Jhn 14:12 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.
And, rather than fully submit to each others’ authority as an ultimate standard, Jesus also suggested that our attitude was to be more one of fellow students to Him that are learning alongside one another.
Mat 23:8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.
Mat 23:10 Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.
While we might learn from obviously outstanding students and fellow workers in the field… even follow their example when it has proven itself true, I’ve personally come believe that a desire for a specific and objective historical-earthly authority is in vain. It’s an act of faith to trust that God will exert his authority many different ways all us. Testing the spirits and listening to the cloud of witnesses that is our fellow saints ought to prove this.
And historically, I also believe it pertinent to note that at *one time* it is said that Arianism was actually the dominant theology in the church. Indeed, Nestorianism was another heresy that also may have claimed the majority of Christian believers in the world at another time–though these believers were in the Near and Far Eastern world outside of the Western church’s notice and authority. Both of these instances were prior to the “First” major split in the church after 1,000.
Comment by Amos Paul — July 11, 2011 @ 9:17 pm
David,
On the first question, it’s hard to get your full meaning, but I don’t buy the argument that true unity, unity worth having, unity worth seeking and praising, is equivalent to being under the RCC umbrella and leadership structure, whether now or a thousand years ago.
I was reading through Ephesians as a result of this conversation (thanks!) and there’s so much in there about unity. It talks about Jesus himself being our peace, about his cross destroying the hostility (b/n Jews and gentiles), about him being the cornerstone, the apostles and prophets being the foundation, etc., but also about how the whole church is brought to unity and maturity together as the different parts do their work in love. So I have a hard time with the suggestion that we’ll have “unity” in the biblical sense if we all just join the RCC. The unity the scriptures talk about and praise is far more holistic and beautiful than that and seems to be related more to real maturity in Christ than in shared hierarchies. That said, I would join the RCC ASAP if God told me to, but it would be a while, if ever, that I actually believed any differently than I do now on a host of issues. I would then develop different practices and relationships and of course change moderately over time. So is that really ‘unity’?
I agree with you though about the hesitancy to embrace the goal of becoming a ‘radical Protestant.’ It reminds me of the goal to become a “Christian male” that so frequently seems like a different picture than the Son of Man. Speaking of whom, what does Christ’s role as a cornerstone for the building of the church, and the role of the apostles and prophets as the foundation, play in giving us any sort of stability and authority? Certainly, too, if all we had were stories and history, but no living God throughout each age, our lack of stability and guiding authority would be more tenuous as well. But the very fact that God is alive gives considerable stability and authority in addition to all the instruments and revelations he has given in history.
Comment by T — July 12, 2011 @ 7:51 am
Amos (33) and T (34) — yes, I’m there with you. I’m still a protestant. BUT — it seems to me that there still has to be a thread running through our beliefs, institutions, and practices, right back to the Apostles and from them to Christ. Scot mentions the rule of faith in this regard — yes on beliefs, but what about institutions and practices? Can a “church” without Bishops, without a liturgy, with a minimalist practice of baptism and the Eucharist, really and fully reflect “the Church” as it is envisioned in Acts and extended in the first few centuries? Are free-floating missional free-church communities really “the Church,” or do they function more like the monasteries of the middle ages? I’m not saying I’ve answered this fully for myself but obviously I’m yearning for something more historically rich.
Comment by dopderbeck — July 12, 2011 @ 10:10 am
David,
I sympathize with the yearning for something more historically rich, which I feel and/or appreciate from time to time. I also like your very generous comparison of modern, missional free-churches to monasteries. It’s funny, tho, I often ask the same question you do, but substitute shared prophetic practice and intimacy and a robust doctrine and practice of God’s presence and power via the Spirit for “Bishops . . . liturgy, . . . [and] minimalist practice of baptism and the Eucharist.” How can we lay aside the way missions and even mutual, prophetic edification was done in the church of Acts (and the churches of Galatia, Ephesus and Corinth) and still be the church that came into being in the NT?
But I also appreciate the historical richness of many of the liturgical practices of the RCC, EOC and even the Anglican Communion. The depth of wisdom and the power of consistency is hard not to admire. I would love to see more pursuit of historical practices (dare I call tongues and prophecy such a practice?), and (if not) more contemporaneous Spirit-powered ones as well. I think we need connection to the strong, deep roots of the historical church and even Israel’s practices and wisdom, and we also need our branches and leaves flexible enough to be moved by the Wind without being snapped by its strength. I wish I saw more churches that even attempted to connect with the Spirit in both ways.
Comment by T — July 12, 2011 @ 11:19 am
By the way, David, I doubt that it comes accross nearly enough in comments, so I’ll say it expressly. I really appreciate you. If someone was looking for a man of peace in the blogosphere, or at least at Jesus Creed, you would fit the bill with grace to spare.
I pray for you and your family. I feel like you are a man who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, and I pray that you and your family will be filled with it.
Grace and Peace to you.
Comment by T — July 12, 2011 @ 11:38 am