My previous posting was on 'The loss of church as public', and I want to continue some thoughts in that vein in this post, of the ontological priority of ecclesiology.
For the autopoietic self, there does seem to be nothing that is prior to that ‘self’. No organisation or institution provides giveness to human identity except that which the self determines and orders within that organisation. In other words, with regard to the Church as an organisation and institution, there is no possessive plural pronoun and adjective. The ‘our’ of institution and the plural ‘ours’ of identity and being are missing. With popular modern missiologists increasingly asserting that ecclesiology is the most flexible of doctrines [1], there is nothing given to ecclesiology except that which we create for it.
And within that I fear that Christianity has not only accommodated itself to the privatisation of religion (within secularism and consumerism) but in doing so has also lost something inherent to its very nature and purpose. Any ecclesiology that does not seek to address this is destined to remain unable to establish and form Christian identity.
On my recent reading of Hütter[2] and O’Donovan[3], I am beginning to wonder whether there is in fact some giveness to ecclesiology, whether the flexible ecclesiologies of emerging culture have more to do with the historicism and voluntarism that reduces organisations to cultural artefacts – not just in terms of some existential ontological priority, but also in terms of performative actions and practices.
Perhaps the most audacious claim of Christianity in the modern world might be to suggest that human nature and the purpose of that life are not self-creating and self-authenticating but find their rule, organisation and fulfilment in the theological anthropology of Jesus Christ. Subsequent to this, the most controversial claim to place amidst current missiologies might then be the suggestion that ecclesiology is not a free-for-all, that, in order to counter the endless self-creation of the modern agent, we must rediscover the giveness of ecclesiology from a theological and traditioned reading of Church history with regard to ecclesiology. And that to do so is inherent in the very nature of Christianity itself.
Yet in trying to get at and to that ‘giveness’, I want to assert that no ‘single institutional form or set of relations can claim finality of truthful expression of God’s order’[4], but there is a distinctiveness beyond how the Church appears and what it does that ‘lies in how God is present to and within the Church’.
(I am hoping to discover this 'giveness', via some the main discourses of the Christian tradition of Catholic (social teaching), Anglican (Radical Orthodoxy) and the Anabaptists (Hauerwas et al)).
Bretherton in a critique of O’Donovan’s ecclesiology suggests that there is something to be made of the space between resurrection and ascension (this gap in events is something O’Donovan references in Resurrection and Moral Order). Bretherton posits this space as the eschatological tension central to the establishment of the Church and the nature of its specifity.
To paraphrase Bretherton, we might ask whether there are practices that structure the relationship between Christians and others in public in such a way as to recapitulate the ascension and Pentecost moments of the Christ event.
This would co-inhere with my previous suggestions of how space forms the initial experience of humanity in Christ’s redemption before further experience in the eschaton. This Christ-event space might give rise to an eschatological understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in the creation of concrete missional spaces, the ‘space–time nexus’ that forms the locus of the public of the Holy Spirit, as Hütter describes.
I think this possibility offers some exciting avenues for ecclesiological exploration.
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[1] For example see, Frost, Michael, and Alan Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come : Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003.
[2] Hütter, Reinhard. Suffering Divine Things : Theology as Church Practice. Grand Rapids, Mich. ; Cambridge: W.B. Eerdmans, 2000.
[3] O'Donovan, Oliver. Resurrection and Moral Order : An Outline for Evangelical Ethics. 2nd ed. ed. Leicester: Apollas, 1994.
[4] Bretherton, Luke. "A Proposal for How Christians and Non-Christians Should Relate to Each Other with Regards to Ethical Disputes in Light of Alasdair Macintyre, Germain Grisez and Oliver O'donovan's Work." Kings College London, 2001.
Jason,
Is it possible to unpack this idea of 'the giveness to ecclesiology' that ‘lies in how God is present to and within the Church’ in more concrete terms ie what an actual church/body/fellowship/community might look like which is in tune with your ideas about ecclesiology. Do you see any encouraging signs in the contemporary church scene in the West at present? I am not trained in theology but I am interested in what your ideas might look in concrete church practice.
many thanks,
Rodney
Posted by: rodney neill | July 05, 2008 at 07:15 AM
Jason, just curious where you got your distinction of "autopoietic self"?
Posted by: Jonathan Brink | July 05, 2008 at 12:27 PM
Rodney: Thanks for the question, I'll get to it later in the week when I am back in my office.
Posted by: Jason Clark | July 05, 2008 at 04:30 PM
Jonathan: I got that articulation from Hütter, in the book listed above in the footnotes to the post.
Posted by: Jason Clark | July 05, 2008 at 04:31 PM
Rodney: It's far easier to consumer ideas of church, to idealise it, to talk about what you don't like about church, than to engage in church in reality.
Your question is the place I want to land, in terms of practices connected to reflection.
I think we have to reconnect agency, human action to community action, and identity. I think it's why my community now follows the church calendar, to be shaped in our year by the christian story instead of the consumer story.
Liturgy can be stabilizing and connect agency and deepen it. I think a process of catechism, that is about the ethics of the christian life, rather than propositional facts, a lived faith, is vital to our discipleship too.
So much emerging ecclesiology seems centre about the aesthetics of worship, and with the human agent as the subject rather than God, or to be defined about it's de-conversion from faith and church.
The groups that give me the most hope are the urban/new monasticism, with a focus on catechism, and the integration of worshiping together, personal reflection and community mission.
These are groups that I will be laying my research alongside, in it's later stages.
Posted by: Jason Clark | July 07, 2008 at 03:01 AM