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In his books, Ephraim Radner offers numerous profound insights into the complications and implications of a divided Christianity. Near the beginning of Hope Among the Fragments <\/em> , he points to some of the dangers of post-Reformation efforts to \u201cdenote\u201d the church -that is, to describe the church as \u201csomething that can be pointed to, examined, analyzed, and wherever possible manipulated according to whatever current theories of cultural resistance or viability are at hand, all supposedly for the sake of God.\u201d Because the very definition of the church was contested, Protestants and Catholics sought for \u201csociological\u201d marks that would denote the true church, markers \u201cwhose scriptural character is simply absent.\u201d <\/p>\n This leads, Radner suggests, to a sociological reduction of ecclesiology: \u201cThe measures of the Church are now all neatly traced according to quantifiable signs given up by each republic\u2019s records, from which Scripture itself is detached except at some justifying cachet to the deeper argument over the implication of demographic figures. Is the South taking over the North in its Christian vigor? What do the numbers show? Are conservative churches growing faster than liberal bodies, and is it based on moral demands or the dynamics of education?\u201d <\/p>\n And this, in turn, shapes the church\u2019s hope and eschatology: \u201cwhen the reality and meaning of the Church are simply linked to the objective references of space and time, they become slaves to the standards by which these references are regularly, if usually unconsciously, analyzed by the cultural instruments of measurement \u2013 size, longevity, numerical expanse, ethnic representation, financial viability, and so on.\u201d If the church lacks success when judged by these (inherently this-worldly) standards, then the result is \u201cdespair over the Church,\u201d which Radner describes as \u201cthe great vice of modern Christianity.\u201d <\/p>\n All this is valuable and wise. But I\u2019d want to gloss things in a slightly different direction. While it is true that the church cannot be reduced to sociology, neither can any other community. So, following Milbank, I\u2019d suggest that sociology itself arises from an heretical ecclesiology and doctrine of providence, both ultimately arising from heresy in theology proper. It is not as if the church is suffused with mysteries, and everything else is transparent to reason (a point with which Radner agrees). There is surely a deeper mystery in the church, but that merely points to the fact that there are always more participants in any community than the living visible members of that community \u2013 though they be only the demons and the dead. Or, to follow Milbank again, the problem with sociological reduction is that there is no \u201csocial\u201d to reduce to, no purely immanent causation or community that can \u201cexplain\u201d what purports to be transcedent. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In his books, Ephraim Radner offers numerous profound insights into the complications and implications of a divided Christianity. Near the beginning of Hope Among the Fragments , he points to some of the dangers of post-Reformation efforts to \u201cdenote\u201d the church -that is, to describe the church as \u201csomething that can be pointed to, examined, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology-ecclesiology"],"yoast_head":"\n
Along with this ecclesial reduction to sociology, there is a simplification of providence. Christians have traditionally sought to grasp \u201csome link between Holy Spirit and . . . historical referents,\u201d but the new thing today \u201cis the almost complete disavowal of that linkage\u2019s intrinsic obscurity \u2013 and with that repudiation a consequent flight from the Spirit\u2019s more intricate and shadowy temporal corridors by theological adepts and Church leaders. Everyone seems to know what the world\u2019s objects signify, what events add up to, how each affects the other, and therefore what and how the Church is doing within time and space; and if we do not quite know it yet, further analysis will yield the pertinent information.\u201d <\/p>\n