Natural society

Christian political thought has historically gotten off on the wrong foot through misinterpretation of Genesis 1-2. Adam and Eve are taken as “family,” and hence the family becomes a “natural” institution. Families band together and soon there are cities and kingdoms, also . . . . Continue Reading »

Bucer’s Ecumenism

In a 1549 letter to Calvin, Bucer sketched his hierarchy of loyalties. It’s one of the great statements of Protestant Catholicity: His aim, he said, was “most fullyto consent, first, with the Lord himself and the Holy Spirit, then also with thetrue and orthodox Church of primitive . . . . Continue Reading »

Vestigial organs

I tweeted, “In Christ’s body, there are no vestigial organs.” One might respond by pointing out that some members of the visible church are dead, some so cancerous that they take over other body parts. We might then say, “the whole body, being fitted and held together by . . . . Continue Reading »

Social Eucharist

The intimate link between the eucharistic and ecclesial body of Christ was a commonplace of medieval theology, and continued into the early Reformation. Thomas Davis writes that “before the Protestant conflicts over the presence of Christ’s true body in the Eucharist came about, it was . . . . Continue Reading »

Church, Ideal and Real

Aidan Nichols’s Figuring out the Church: Her Marks, and Her Masters is a brief, clear, workmanlike introduction to ecclesiology. The book is divided into two parts, the first organized around the marks of the church (one, holy, catholic, apostolic) and the second expounding the ecclesiologies . . . . Continue Reading »

One Person in Two

Aidan Nichols gives a neat summary of the Triune unity of the church in his Figuring out the Church: Her Marks, and Her Masters . Following Heribert Muhlen, he particularly emphasizes the role of the Spirit, who is “one Person in many persons” (27). More fully: “The Church’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Eucharistic church

Zizioulas ( The Eucharistic Communion and the World ) argues that “the New Testament Churches . . . seem to have so identified the Eucharist with the Church herself that the terms ‘Eucharist’ and ‘Church’ are interchangeable in the existing witnesses” (15). He . . . . Continue Reading »

Triune Unity

In a 1984 article in the journal Mid-Stream , Leslie Newbigin insisted that the basis of the demand for church unity is “the triune nature and action of God.” He gave this stirring explanation: “Because God the Father has given his Son tous, and in the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ . . . . Continue Reading »

Church and salvation

In his contribution to Ecumenical Theology in Worship, Doctrine, and Life , a Festschrift for Geoffrey Wainwright, Telford Work argues that ecclesiology is the proper setting for the ordo salutis . In what he admits is something of a caricature, he describes American evangelical ecclesiology in . . . . Continue Reading »