Between Congregation and Church: Denomination and Christian Life Together 9780567658340, 9780567668813, 9780567658364

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Between Congregation and Church

ii

Between Congregation and Church Denomination and Christian Life Together Barry Ensign-George

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2018 Paperback edition first published 2019 Copyright © Barry Ensign-George, 2018 Barry Ensign-George has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ensign-George, Barry A., author. Title: Between congregation and church : denomination and Christian life together / by Barry Arthur Ensign-George. Description: 1 [edition]. | New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017036093 (print) | LCCN 2017038900 (ebook) | ISBN 9780567658364 (ePDF) | ISBN 9780567658357 (ePUB) | ISBN 9780567658340 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780567658333 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Christian sects. | Communities–Religious aspects–Christianity. Classification: LCC BR157 (ebook) | LCC BR157 .E57 2017 (print) | DDC 280–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017036093 ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-5834-0 PB: 978-0-5676-8915-3 ePDF: 978-0-5676-5836-4 ePub: 978-0-5676-5835-7 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

I dedicate this work to my wife, Betsy, who has walked this long journey with me, supportive all along the way.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction

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PART I Considering Denomination PART I: PREFACE

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1 Philip Schaff and the multiform church

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2 H. Richard Niebuhr: Rejecting and accepting denomination 55 3 The church historians: Winthrop Hudson, Sidney Mead, Russell E. Richey 97 PART I: SUMMARY

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PART II Denomination:  The Diversity, Unity, and Communion to Which God Calls Us PART II: PREFACE

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4 Denomination: A normative definition 5 The diversity to which we are called

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CONTENTS

6 The unity to which we are called

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7 The communion to which we are called: Church and denomination 281 PART II: SUMMARY Conclusion

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Bibliography 347 Biblical Citations Index 363 Author Index 365 Subject Index 367

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many friends, too many to name, have contributed to my progress on this book—by their conversation and insight, their steady interest and encouragement, their demurrals and disagreements. Their gentle prodding has been a help. Those friends include members of the Core Cluster of the Re-Forming Ministry program, a community of theological friendship that has been just such a community for me for years. I am grateful also for twelve years of working with wonderful colleagues in the Office of Theology and Worship of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, and particularly to the two supervisors I had in those years: Joseph D. Small and Charles Wiley. The former arranged a three-month sabbatical that was crucial for completion of the dissertation. I am grateful. This book is built on my PhD dissertation. I am grateful to the faculty of the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University for their willingness to receive the dissertation in the face of its long development process. I hope the results gathered here are good compensation. William Babcock, former director of the GPRS, provided encouragement and opened possibilities at a crucial stage in the dissertation work. Thanks to the members of my dissertation committee:  Professors William B.  Lawrence, Bruce D. Marshall, and John P. Burgess. Above all, I wish to thank Professor William J.  Abraham (dissertation supervisor) for his unstinting encouragement and wise guidance. Professor William Babcock, while serving as chair of the GPRS, helped this work along at a key point in its development. I am grateful to T&T Clark for their willingness to take on this project, and for their support in the process. In particular, Anna Turton has guided the project along steadily. Miriam Cantwell offered great encouragement during a significant stage of the process. Sarah Blake has walked me through several steps of the publication process with grace and good cheer.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Finally, my family, who have carried this project with me. To my parents, Keith and Bobbie George, and my in-laws, Allyn and Jean Ensign. To our children, Hannah, Arthur, and Alice. Above all, Betsy, who has borne this project, encouraged me in it, and shares my delight in its completion.

Introduction

Why denomination now? Protestantism is haunted by an enduring, unresolved theological problem: Protestantism exists in denominations, and yet has failed to produce careful, deep-going, theological reflection on denomination itself––as a way of gathering together to be the church. Is there a legitimate place for denomination as an ecclesial structure within the unity of the church? If so, what is denomination, such that it could have a place in the church that the triune God brings into being?1 Denominations are a primary mode of trans-congregational structure and life within the church today, particularly in America but also around the globe. For American Christians, denominations have been a (and arguably the) primary mode for transcongregational structure and life since the early days of the nation. Yet little beyond the bare rudiments of a broadly shared theological assessment of denomination exists in the theological literature today. This lack of shared understanding and assessment leaves us (Protestants who are in denominations) without sharp ideas— conceptual tools—for evaluating what is happening in denominations. Lacking effective tools, efforts to respond faithfully are hobbled. There is a pressing need in the church for its theologians to do better, to provide meaningful theological help. At present, systematic theology offers no meaningful help in understanding denomination theologically. While denomination has 1

Portions of this introduction have been printed in my essay, “Denomination as Ecclesiological Category:  Sketching an Assessment,” in Denomination:  Assessing an Ecclesiological Category, ed. Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George, Ecclesiological Investigations, Vol. 11 (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 1–21.

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been a standard concept in the fields of sociology and church history for decades, systematic theologians have, over the last seventyfive to eighty years, largely ignored the concept of denomination. Some theologians dismiss denomination as nothing more than a sociological term, asserting that it is not properly theological.2 Standard introductions to and compendia of theology also fail to offer a theological account of denomination.3 These examples are representative: we have no significant theological analysis and discussion of the major structure in which large numbers of Christians have lived and do live out their faith. This is a significant gap in the scholarly literature. When systematic theologians speak of denomination it is most often reduced to denominationalism, and denominations are widely, vociferously denounced.4 Denounced, in fact,

2 Edwin Van Driel, for example, says, “The issue is that ‘denomination’ is not a theological but a sociological concept.” Edwin Chr. Van Driel, “Church and Covenant:  Theological Resources for Divided Denominations,” Theology Today 65, No. 4 (January 2009), 449–61. This is false, both historically and in current usage. Historically, the term denomination came into use among church leaders and theologians. Much later, it was taken up by sociologists. Winthrop Hudson, in a 1955 article, traced the use of the term back to “the early years of the Evangelical Revival,” citing John Wesley. Winthrop S. Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis for Ecumenicity:  A  Seventeenth Century Conception,” Church History 24, No. 1 (March 1955), 32–50; reprinted (without footnotes) in Russell E. Richey, ed., Denominationalism (Nashville:  Abingdon, 1977), 21–42. Hudson could equally well have cited Gilbert Tennent, a significant figure in the history of American Presbyterianism (the tradition in which both Van Driel and I stand): “All Societies, who profess Christianity, and retain the Foundation-Principles thereof, notwithstanding their different Denominations and Diversity of Sentiments in smaller Things, are in Reality, but One Church of Christ,” quoted in Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition: A Re-examination of Colonial Presbyterianism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949), 132. Trinterud also notes that a draft of the first American Presbyterian Directory for Public Worship also speaks of other ecclesial bodies as “denominations.” Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition, 277–8. The intensive work of Philip Schaff on the topic of denomination (which will be examined closely in Chapter  1), written well before sociologists took up the term, is clearly theological. Nor is this merely a matter of past usage. For example, it is clear in the current Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that denomination is interchangeable with church (see e.g., Book of Order, 2015–2017, Louisville, KY: Office of the General Assembly, 2009: G-5.02). 3 See, e.g., Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jensen, eds., Christian Dogmatics (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). 4 Russell Richey’s observations on this situation, offered in 1976, describe our present moment well: “In mainstream Protestantism . . . denominationalism is taboo. A topic

INTRODUCTION

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with great regularity by theologians who are themselves members of, and frequently ordained ministers in, particular denominations. As for the denominations themselves, they have been unable (or unconcerned) to provide a theological understanding of themselves. My own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (hereinafter, PC(USA)), offers abundant examples. Not least among those examples is the basic polity document of the PC(USA), the Book of Order. The failure to provide a theological understanding of denomination is evident in the way in which the word “church” is used with sliding referents in the Book of Order. To take two examples:  in its first chapter, “The Mission of the Church,” the Book of Order claims that “Christ calls the Church into being, giving it all that is necessary for its mission to the world, for its building up, and for its service to God.”5 At this point “church” clearly means the church across denominations—including but not limited to the PC(USA). A few pages later there is a statement on “The Historic Principles of Church Government.” That section in its entirety reads as follows: The radical principles of Presbyterian church government and discipline are: That the several different congregations of believers,

best shunned. If comment is required, denunciation shows good taste and theological sophistication. It is not uncommon to find denominations and the fact of denominational divisions scathingly treated and blamed for the various ills in Protestantism.” Russell E. Richey, “Denominationalism:  A  Theological Mandate,” Drew Gateway 47 (1976–7), 93. This essay is reprinted, in slightly modified form, as “Denominatio nalism: A Theological Problem?” in Denominationalism Illustrated and Explained, ed. Russell E.  Richey (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2013), 261–79. This quote, slightly modified, is on p. 262. Richey has edited or coedited two volumes that have countered this neglect—Denominationalism (see n.  1), and Robert Bruce Mullin and Russell E. Richey, eds., Reimagining Denominationalism:  Interpretive Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 5 The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part II: Book of Order, 2015– 2017, (Louisville, KY: The Office of the General Assembly, 2015), F-3.02, n. 6. This statement was formerly in the main body of the text; following a revision adopted in 2011 the statement was moved to a footnote. The Book of Order includes four parts: The Foundations of Presbyterian Polity (F-), The Form of Government (G-), The Directory for Worship (W-), and The Rules of Discipline (D-). Reference is by part, chapter, section and subsection, and lettered paragraph (where necessary). E.g., G-1.0100b refers to The Form of Government, Chapter 1, Section 1, lettered paragraph b. The Book of Order is available online at http://www.pcusa.org/oga/boo/ boo-online.htm.

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taken collectively, constitute one Church of Christ, called emphatically the Church; that a larger part of the Church, or a representation of it, should govern a smaller, or determine matters of controversy which arise therein; that, in like manner, a representation of the whole should govern and determine in regard to every part, and to all the parts united:  that is, that a majority shall govern; and consequently that appeals may be carried from lower to higher governing bodies, till they be finally decided by the collected wisdom and united voice of the whole Church. For these principles and this procedure, the example of the apostles and the practice of the primitive Church are considered as authority.6 The passage that follows the initial colon is taken from a statement worked out by American Presbyterians in 1797. While Presbyterians in 1797 might have been ready to declare that the boundaries of “emphatically the Church” were coterminous with the boundaries of their denomination, the PC(USA) today rejects such a claim. Hence the referent of the word church in the quoted paragraph is elusive. Does the first statement, regarding congregations and the definition of church, mean to prescribe for those beyond the PC(USA)? Perhaps. Is the indicated pattern of authorities (representative government, the larger ruling the smaller, and so forth) a prescriptive statement of what should be the case even beyond the PC(USA)? Perhaps, but probably not. And the final clause, “till they be finally decided by the collected wisdom and united voice of the whole Church”? Does this prescribe the PC(USA)’s submission to the authority of a “whole Church” that stretches beyond the PC(USA)? Certainly not. Again, we see that the notion of denomination is a theological blank. Not only have theologians failed to offer close analysis of this notion— the denominations themselves have failed to do so. I  believe that efforts to fill in this gap are a pressing matter. This theological gap has strong (indeed, devastating) practical consequences. Absent a strong, coherent self-understanding, denominations will be unable to provide compelling accounts of their own continued existence to their own members, to other denominations and ecclesial bodies, or to a watching world. Unable to provide a

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Book of Order, G-1.0400.

INTRODUCTION

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compelling account of their own existence to their own members, denominations find they have no meaningful internal coherence and are unable to resist centrifugal forces that arise within.7 Unable to provide a compelling account of their own existence to other denominations and ecclesial bodies, the ecumenical movement has entered a time many experienced ecumenists tell us is an impasse (the so-called “ecumenical winter”). Unable to provide a compelling account of their own existence to a watching world, denominations find they have no way to explain why newcomers might want to join their particular embodiment of the Christian faith. Ecumenical dialogue is hobbled by the failure to articulate what denomination is and what place it has within the church. The 2005 document of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission, The Nature and Mission of the Church, makes precisely this point in a section on “Community and Diversity,” placing the following as a matter about which “differences remain both within and between churches”: “In order for the Churches to move further towards complete mutual recognition and full communion, they need to reflect on how they understand and claim their own ecclesial identity and how they regard the ecclesial status of other churches and other Christians.”8 Denominations cannot be full and effective partners in ecumenical dialogue if they are unable to give a reasoned, thick account of what they are. The failure of theologians to provide the conceptual theological tools necessary for fashioning an account of denomination is surely a factor in the difficulty the ecumenical movement is having in moving forward. Yet though much maligned, denomination is potentially one of God’s good gifts to the church. It is a form in which Christians can live out varying understandings of faith in Jesus Christ and what that faith requires in terms of right belief and right practice. Denomination provides a form in which new insights into the faith,

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The centrifugal forces have been glaringly evident among US denominations over the last decade. Several of the old mainline denominations are in the midst of splitting, unable to hold significant numbers of congregations within their denominational structures, leading to the establishment of new denominations. 8 The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement (Faith and Order Paper 198; Geneva:  World Council of Churches, 2005), 11, 38. Following this quote, the document goes on to list several types of ecclesiology, with denominationalism identified as a variation of the “branch theory.”

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or new applications of old insights to changing context and circumstance, can be tested by being lived out. Denomination provides a form in which humans, finite and creaturely, can live in the freedom to pursue the multiplicity of patterns of life and belief that are generated by the richness of the gospel, and to do so in a way that is partial and fragmentary, and thus dependent on and therein essentially connected to the wholeness of the gospel. Providentially, the present moment is a particularly opportune time for careful theological assessment of denomination. Formal ecumenical dialogue has raised the level of understanding across denominational lines, undercutting both explicit and implicit claims that the boundaries of one’s own denomination are identical to the known boundaries of the church. A host of institutional structures and agreements embody this acknowledgment of one another.9 There is also a vernacular ecumenism at work at the ground level among individual Christians and congregations, a relativizing of denominational claims for reasons both good and bad.10 In this situation it is easier than it may once have been to see and claim the distinctions between church, denomination, and congregation.

The core thesis and aim In this book I argue that denomination has a legitimate place within the unity of the church.

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Examples of such institutions and agreements include the Councils of Churches at local, national, and world levels; multi- and bilateral agreements such as the Porvoo or Meissen Agreements; and full communion agreements being made that create a web of interrelationships, such as the full communion agreement between The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (“Called to Common Mission”), alongside the agreement that established full communion between the ELCA, the PCUSA, the United Church of Christ, and the Reformed Church in America (“A Formula of Agreement”). 10 The fluidity of religious commitment among Americans and the erosion of denominational loyalty were highlighted in the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” conducted under the auspices of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (cf. http:// religions.pewforum.org/). Michael Root comments on this phenomenon, on both that which is good and that which is bad about it, in “The Unity of the Church and the Reality of the Denominations,” Modern Theology 9, No. 4 (October 1993), 385–401, esp. 386–94.

INTRODUCTION

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Denomination is a middle term between congregation and church. It brings together a number (often a very large number) of congregations in a pattern of life that is thick and concrete and, in doing so, enables congregations to begin to live out their affirmation of the existence of “one holy catholic and apostolic” church in thick and concrete ways. As such, denomination is one form of intermediary structure in the life of the church.11 The Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches offer examples of intermediary structures within the church: regional conferences of bishops, religious orders, Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, and autocephalous churches. The key question for denomination, then, is not “do diverse intermediary structures have a legitimate place in the church?” The key question is, “is denomination one of the legitimate forms of intermediary structure in the church?” The central task of this book is to sketch an affirmation that denomination can be a legitimate intermediary ecclesial structure in the church. This book will not provide a full-fledged ecclesiology. Its aim is to study a particular question within ecclesiology: the nature and legitimacy of denomination. This is a specialized matter, and this study is made with an awareness that it is exploring a specialized matter—though, as already indicated, a specialized matter that potentially has a deep impact within the life of denominations and the church. Along the way this book will touch on matters that are the focus of large bodies of literature, for example, the unity of the church. This study will not attempt to be a comprehensive survey of those bodies of literature. The aim here is to gather from those bodies of literature that which will be helpful in working out an account of denomination. The understanding of denomination proposed in this book is not simply descriptive. It is prescriptive, and as such is an attempt to counter false understandings of denomination. The author is Presbyterian, and the argument of the book will reflect a Reformed theological and ecclesiological outlook. Nevertheless, because denomination is a reality across the church, and because denomination is so strikingly under-analyzed, to provide an account of

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I am grateful to Peter de Mey for articulating the importance of intermediary structures during a discussion in November 2009.

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denomination from within one strand of Protestantism will have ecumenical value. One further brief note. For the purposes of this study I am bracketing the question of whether the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches can correctly be identified as denominations on the basis of the defining marks I offer. I do so in part because the matter is strongly disputed, but primarily because one cannot answer this question until we have a fairly clear idea of what “denomination” is, and a fairly clear judgment about its legitimacy. At present we have no such thing—hence this study.

The structure of the argument What this book seeks to do is to provide a theological account of denomination:  what it is (properly understood) and the implications of denomination (so understood) for the unity, diversity, and communion to which the church is called. Part I provides a survey of some forerunners in theological exploration of denomination. The three chapters of Part I focus on Philip Schaff (Chapter  1), H.  Richard Niebuhr (Chapter  2), and three church historians:  Winthrop Hudson, Sidney Mead, and Russell E.  Richey (Chapter  3). These thinkers have identified key elements of denomination and their work provides insights that help in fashioning a constructive account of denomination. Philip Schaff arrived in America shortly after state establishment of churches had been abolished with the end of the establishment of the Congregational Church in Connecticut in 1818, and the end of state-enforced religious membership in Massachusetts in 1833. Having grown up in and been trained by institutions of state-established churches in Switzerland and Germany, and having heard stories of ecclesiological chaos across the Atlantic, Schaff arrived with a ready-made condemnation of denomination. He was, however, an acute observer of the life of the church, and over his lifetime some of his central theological affirmations led him to a fuller understanding, support, and theological account of denomination. H. Richard Niebuhr’s The Social Sources of Denominationalism, published in 1929, has been taken to be the definitive, conclusive statement of the illegitimacy of denomination. However, closer

INTRODUCTION

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examination of Niebuhr’s writings (beginning with a more attentive reading of Social Sources) reveals that he had a clear appreciation of denomination and its legitimacy in the church, even as he continued to be a fierce critic of abuses of denomination. It was noted above that systematic theologians have failed to offer the theological account of denomination that is so needed. Church historians—particularly historians of the church in North America—have had no such luxury. They have had no choice but to probe denomination, this dominant form of ecclesial structure in North America. Along the way, they have made contributions to a theological account of denomination, often stepping into the gap left by the neglect of systematic theologians. Part II turns to a constructive account of denomination. Chapter  4 is a direct theological exploration of denomination. It places denomination among other forms of intermediary ecclesial structure, arguing that, like those other forms, denomination has a legitimate place in the unity of the church. Chapters  5, 6, and 7 explore the implications of denomination for understanding the diversity, unity, and communion to which the church is called. Diversity is treated first, in Chapter  5. Denominations are diverse and numerous. One question immediately raised by asserting the legitimacy of denomination is that of legitimate diversity. How much diversity is legitimate within the unity of the church? Diversity of what? The WCC document, The Nature and Mission of the Church, readily acknowledges the diversity of gifts received by individual Christians, and it readily acknowledges the legitimacy of diversity “born out of the diversity of cultural and historical context.” These diversities are recognized in the part of the document that sets forth matters on which there is theological agreement. But diversity of “ecclesial and confessional identity” is placed among matters that remain disputed among the churches, on which there is no consensus or agreement.12 Decisions about what diversity is legitimate and what illegitimate rest to a significant degree on how one understands the diversity generated by God within the created order. Chapter 5 explores key biblical passages that give a strong

12 The Nature and Mission of the Church, 35–8. The document that succeeded Nature and Mission, the convergence document The Church: Towards a Common Vision, offers comments on these matters that are less extensive and incisive.

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view of the diversity generated by God within the created order—its nature and character. Chapter 6 explores the unity to which the church is called. It takes as axiomatic an observation made by Michael Kinnamon:  “The two concepts—unity and diversity—are symbiotic.”13 The task undertaken in Chapter  6 is to explore the form of unity that is symbiotically related to the kind of diversity embodied in denomination. In order to do so, there is a summary exploration of the long conversation that has gone on in the ecumenical movement regarding the nature of the unity we seek.14 The chapter offers an account of articulated unity, making the case for a unity that is relational, complex, and variable. Chapter  7 turns to a more general account of the church, seeking to identify some of the ways in which denomination fits within the church. The brief ecclesiology offered in this chapter will build on four framing elements:  narrative arc, communion, mission of God, and people of God. The narrative arc of the Christian Bible runs from the Garden of Eden to the garden city, the New Jerusalem. This is the arc of creation, from its beginning to its telos, and the work of creation is the work of creating creatures who are fit for communion—communion with God and with all other creatures, a communion in which creaturely finitude and interdependence embody the fullness of life. The creation of such communion is the mission of God. And this mission of God gathers a people to be creaturely agents of the mission. The people of God is a reality across all of creation, though it takes differing forms along the way. The church is one of those forms, and denomination is a form of organizing part of the people of God within the church. Chapter 7 seeks to gather together elements from the preceding chapters and order them toward a vision of the church. Finally, I offer concluding reflections, including an appeal to my Protestant sisters and brothers to be willing to be what so many of us are: denominations. 13

Michael Kinnamon, The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2003), 51. 14 Borrowing from the title of The Nature of the Unity We Seek:  Official Report of the North American Conference on Faith and Order, September 3–10, 1957, Oberlin, Ohio, ed. Paul S. Minear (St. Louis, MO: Bethany Press, 1958).

INTRODUCTION

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In working on this book I have often thought of denomination as the ugly duckling of topics. In my theological education I learned the common assessment that denominations are (in the words of one of my former co-workers in the denominational offices of the PC(USA)!) the “spawn of Satan.” That’s melodramatic and overdrawn, but it is rooted in a standard contempt for the theological (un-)worthiness of denomination. And yet the undeniable reality is that my co-worker and millions and millions of his Christian sisters and brothers live out the Christian faith in the context of actual denominations. If denominations are inherently opposed to the Gospel and to the prayer of our Lord and Savior for unity among his followers, then we cannot with integrity and faithfulness be in them. Theologians who do their theological work in service to the church must do better—we must begin to fashion a theological assessment of denomination, providing tools by which denominations and their members can understand what and why the denominations are. This book is a contribution toward meeting that responsibility. The understanding of denomination offered here may be judged to be inadequate, or simply wrong. But whatever one’s judgment of this account, the task of providing an account remains, an account that will have depth, providing the theological tools so desperately needed, especially now, for faithful living in the midst of deep challenges.

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PART I

Considering Denomination

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PART I: PREFACE

Although denomination has been widely disdained and ignored as a topic for theological investigation, there have been scholars who have thought against the standard condemnations, making significant contributions to a theological account of denomination. Denomination has received greater interest and attention among historians of Christianity (especially historians of American Christianity) and sociologists of religion. Yet there have been theologians as well. In Part I I  consider the contributions made to a theological account of denomination by five scholars: Philip Schaff, H. Richard Niebuhr, Winthrop Hudson, Sidney Mead, and Russell E. Richey. Philip Schaff arrived in America to take up his teaching duties at Mercersburg Seminary about twenty-five years after the state of Connecticut ended the last of the state establishments of religion in the United States. It was a propitious time to think theologically about the nature of the church in the context of this new experiment in religious liberty. The experiment had shown that it had the ability to last. Schaff arrived with European ecclesiological presuppositions that could only see chaos in this new experiment, and the new immigrant articulated that vision of chaos with force. Schaff was, however, an attentive observer, committed to the belief that the Holy Spirit is active in history, and Schaff attentively weighed what he saw in the Christianity of his new country. And he did so over most of the remainder of the nineteenth century. He recognized the theological issues brought to the surface by denomination and addressed them with persistence and insight. In his final essay, delivered at the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893, he offered a positive theological account of denomination.

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H. Richard Niebuhr’s first published book, The Social Sources of Denominationalism, is often taken to be the definitive indictment of denomination. Following publication of this work denomination no longer appears as a significant matter for investigation among theologians, and the topic falls into disrepute. The contempt in which denomination is held, even by theologians who are themselves members of denominations, is unfortunate. The denominations themselves have had to make their way forward without help from their theologians in understanding who and what they are. A  close reading, however, makes it clear that The Social Sources of Denominationalism is not able to bear the weight that has been put on it. Social Sources is a classic jeremiad, sweeping but thin. No one was more aware of this than Niebuhr himself, who prefaced his next solely-authored book with an account of his dissatisfaction with Social Sources, citing his treatment of Christian unity— which is central to the question of denomination itself—as the least satisfactory part of the book. In subsequent publications, Niebuhr worked toward a richer understanding of denomination. In spite of his reputation as the one who definitively demonstrated the illegitimacy of denomination, Niebuhr is explicit about the legitimate place denomination has in a church faithful to its calling. Sociologists and historians have not been able to ignore denomination:  it is too obvious a fact of social reality and of history, particularly the history of Christianity in America. Three historians in particular have provided a rich picture of denomination both across its history and in its present reality. At times, they have stepped into the gap left by theologians and provided theological assessments of denomination. Winthrop Hudson and Sidney Mead published seminal articles in successive issues of the journal Church History in 1954–5. Hudson’s article, published second, probes the early history of the idea of denomination, finding its roots in the Westminster Assembly (1643–53), in the argument between the Presbyterians and the Independents over state establishment of religion. Mead’s article provides a description of denomination as it has taken and changed form in the United States, giving a broad view of what denomination is. Russell E. Richey has built on the work of Hudson and Mead, exploring denomination in both England and the United States, studying its history and also its present reality. Richey has edited or coedited two collections of essays on denomination, each

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gathering significant insights both historical and contemporary. He has published a number of essays and encyclopedia and dictionary entries that provide a rich and varied understanding of the reality of denomination. He has done so in the face of an acute awareness of the general disregard for the topic of denomination, the contempt in which it is often held. Together, these five scholars provide a rich literature for understanding denomination and building a theological assessment of it.

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1 Philip Schaff and the multiform church

From Berlin to Pennsylvania: Schaff arrives in the United States Philip Schaff was a unique observer of Christianity in the United States. His education and life experiences provided him tools for seeing and appraising Christianity as it was taking new forms around him in the nation that became his new home. As he himself put it, “I am a Swiss by birth, a German by education, an American by choice.”1 Born into modest family and financial circumstances in Chur, Switzerland, on the first day of 1819, Schaff finished his schooling in Germany.2 He studied at the universities of Tübingen, Halle, and finally Berlin, where he earned the status of Privatdozent. Schaff’s mentors believed that he would go on to a distinguished academic

1 David S. Schaff, The Life of Philip Schaff, in Part Autobiographical (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897), 1. The author, Philip Schaff’s son, continues:  “In these words Philip Schaff was accustomed to express his threefold indebtedness to Switzerland, Germany and the United States. Each of these countries made permanent contributions to his mind and character.” This biography is the primary source for information about Schaff’s life. 2 The story of Schaff’s early years in Chur is explored in Ulrich Gäbler, “Philip Schaff at Chur, 1819–1834,” in Probing the Reformed Tradition:  Historical Studies in Honor of Edward A.  Dowey, Jr., ed. Elsie Ann McKee and Brian G. Armstrong (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1989), 408–23.

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career in the German universities, a belief well grounded in the arc of Schaff’s course through his studies.3 It was at this point, in 1843, that Schaff’s life took a turn away from the standard German academic career-track of his day. Offered a position as the second faculty member of the German Reformed Church’s seminary in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, he gave up a likely appointment to a professorship in Zürich and accepted the position in America.4 There were some among Schaff’s German contemporaries who anticipated that his sojourn in America would be temporary. “[Karl Friedrich von] Eichhorn, minister of education and worship, promised that ‘a position would be open for him [Schaff], when he returned,’ and Hengstenberg urged him to keep this in mind and to carry on his work with an eye to it.”5 But Schaff’s 3

See Schaff, Life, 35, 63. Schaff’s account of his decision to pursue a career teaching theology notes the encouragement of his mentors:  “My life’s work has been as an educator of ministers in the class room and through the pen. I was strongly encouraged to give myelf up to teaching by my beloved professors, Drs. Schmid of Tübingen, Tholuck and Müller of Halle, and Neander, Twesten and Hengstenberg of Berlin.” Schaff, Life, 64, cf. 64–5. David Schaff offers no date for this autobiographical reminiscence. It is notable that earlier in this reminiscence Philip Schaff comments, “I am sure I am called to be a teacher of theology” (63). Present-day academic boundaries might lead one to expect that Schaff, a central figure in establishing the field of church history as an academic discipline in the United States and beyond, would identify his calling as teacher of church history. That he identifies himself rather as a teacher of theology is an expression of his view both of his own work and of the proper work of church history, matters to which I return shortly. 4 See Schaff, Life, 70–8 for reflections on this decision by Schaff and by contemporaries, including a warm affirmation written by Isaak Dorner (75). Schaff himself commented on the unexpectedness of his arrival in the United States in his inaugural address before the synod of the German Reformed Church: “Little more than a year ago I had not the most distant idea of ever visiting the new world, while to you all my very existence was unknown.” Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism, ed. Bard Thompson and George H. Bricker, trans. John W. Nevin, Lancaster Series on the Mercersburg Theology, Vol. 1 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004), 53. The Wipf & Stock publication reprints a publication of the United Church Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1964. The United Church Press volume is a republication of the original, Chambersburg, PA: Publication Office of the German Reformed Church, 1845. The 1845 volume includes, as an appendix, Nevin’s sermon “Christian Unity.” Nevin’s sermon is not included in either of the more recent volumes. 5 Schaff, Life, 75. Eichhorn was minister of the Prussian Ministry of Education and Church Affairs from 1840 to 1848. See the chronology in Marjorie Lamberti, State, Society, and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), xi. In his inaugural address Schaff expressed uncertainty about how long he would remain in the United States. Schaff, Principle, 55.

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sojourn was not to be temporary. He remained in the United States, which was, for him, both a matter of divine calling and a personal commitment to this particular place. “If I was not born here, it was not my fault, but I am an American by the call of Providence and by free choice with all my heart.”6 Schaff arrived at an ideal time to begin the work of making a theological assessment of denomination. By the time of his arrival in the United States, religious liberty, and with it denomination as a form within the church, had existed long enough to have become well established. Religious liberty was not simply an idea, nor a theoretical construct found in documents. When Schaff arrived in 1844 the last of the state establishments of religion had been dissolved (Massachusetts in 1833). Fears that the churches would be ruined without state sanction had been allayed. The United States had lived out religious liberty and denomination for decades. The results of the experiment were already coming in. Furthermore, because he stayed in the United States, Schaff was able to observe and evaluate this new form of structure within the church over a long period of time. Other European commentators on the United States—de Tocqueville most significant among them—stayed only for a while before returning to Europe. Schaff had direct, personal knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the US experiment in religious liberty. He was a unique observer, at an opportune moment. Shaped by these experiences, by this education, Philip Schaff was unusually well-equipped to assess Christianity in the United States, and in particular to seek to make sense of denomination. He made a commitment to his new country even in the face of reasonable expectation that he could fulfill his hopes for himself in the German university system. An immigrant who deeply embraced his new country, he brought an outsider’s eye to a new context that he had made his own. This new context required him to make significant shifts in his judgments about Christianity as he found it in the United States, particularly judgments about the flourishing growth of denomination. The theological convictions Schaff brought with him, reinforced by academic study, enabled him to make the needed shifts in judgment, even as the new context drove a sorting and refining of those theological commitments. It 6

Schaff, Life, 92.

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is striking and unfortunate that after his death Schaff’s contributions on the question of denomination were lost, due in large part to shifts in academic culture. These shifts can be seen in the fate of his vision of church history as a form of theological investigation, a fate embodied in the discontinuation and then refoundation of the American Society of Church History in the years immediately following Schaff’s death in 1893. The following exploration of Schaff’s views on denomination proceeds in four sections. First, I  consider Schaff’s early judgments about denomination, particularly as found in his publications of the 1840s and 1850s. Second, I  consider the transition in Schaff’s views of denomination as a form within the church, from an almost entirely negative assessment to a positive one. Third, I consider Schaff’s mature view of denomination, embodied most clearly in “The Reunion of Christendom,” the address he prepared for the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. Fourth, I offer a concluding summary assessment of Philip Schaff’s contributions to a theological assessment of denomination.

Schaff ’s early assessment of denomination Newly arrived in America, Schaff was confronted with an American Christianity that included forms of Christianity far more diverse and varied than he had known in Europe, with a growth of denominations that was difficult to make sense of. What Schaff found, however, was not unexpected. Like many of his European contemporaries Schaff thought of Christianity in the United States as consumed by sectarian factionalism, a sad deviation from true Christianity. His initial assessment of denomination, articulated even before he first arrived in America, was condemnation.7 7

Between accepting the offer of a professorship in Mercersburg and his actual departure, Schaff was ordained in April 1844. In his ordination sermon (on Acts 16:9, Paul’s vision of the “man of Macedonia” pleading for help) Schaff painted an expansive picture of the desperate need of German immigrants in America for spiritual, moral, and educational guidance. Among the evils besetting these immigrants Schaff highlighted sectarianism, by which he was, says David Schaff, “appalled”

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And yet, even in these early publications, there is a countercurrent, identifying good elements in the welter of denominational differentiation.

Schaff ’s assessment of the problem: Division is sectarianism In the spring of 1844, newly arrived at Mercersburg to take up the position of professor of Bible and church history, Schaff delivered an inaugural address, which he expanded and published in German and then in English (translated by his lone colleague on the faculty, John Williamson Nevin). That book, The Principle of Protestantism, offered Schaff’s analysis of Protestantism—its material and formal principles, its present state, and its future prospects.8 Schaff identified two diseases in the present state of Protestantism:  rationalism and sectarianism. Rationalism reduced the faith of the church to a set of doctrines whose content was severed from the life of the church and the life of faith. Once so severed, doctrines were rootless and became conceptually brittle. Thus desiccated, doctrines could then be dismissed. Rationalism devolves into moralism: “rationalism; the nature of which holds in this, that it allows the idea of religion to resolve itself into simple morality, or in the end into mere good citizenship.”9 Sectarianism was the second great disease of contemporary Protestantism. Indeed, sectarianism was, Schaff wrote, more dangerous than even Roman Catholicism’s growing presence in the United States. “The most dangerous foe with which we are called to contend, is again not the Church of Rome but the sect plague in our own midst . . . holding in the form of a mere private judgment and private will.”10 (Life, 81). The exaggerated view of the deplorable condition of German-Americans expressed in Schaff’s sermon created significant ill will when the sermon made news in the German-American press in the United States (Schaff, Life, 105). 8 Schaff’s inaugural address and the resulting book landed him in further controversy within the German Reformed Church. Schaff was tried for heresy because his theological views were thought to be excessively Roman Catholic. For the story, see Schaff, Life, 114–21. 9 Schaff, Principle, 131. 10 Schaff, Principle, 154.

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Sectarianism was, Schaff held, a disordering of the church—a problem of church polity that was rooted in a false understanding of the relationships between Jesus Christ, the individual, and the church. Schaff identified sectarianism as a besetting problem for the Reformed tradition in particular, a problem characteristically found in the Anglo-Saxon lands in which the Reformed tradition had flourished, lands whose peoples were, in Schaff’s view, characteristically practical. “While rationalism has been nurtured mainly in the bosom of the Lutheran Church, the poisonous plant of sectarianism has flourished most on Reformed ground, and with the practical nations, England, and her now full-grown, emancipated daughter America.”11 Sectarianism, for Schaff, allows individuals to believe that they have a relationship with Jesus apart from the church, a relationship that allows that individual to condemn existing churches as false churches, and then to seek to establish the true church in their place. “Anyone who has, or fancies that he has, some inward experience and a ready tongue, may persuade himself that he is called to be a reformer; and so proceed at once, in his spiritual vanity and pride, to a revolutionary rupture with the historical life of the church, to which he holds himself immeasurably superior.”12 Schaff believed that denominations should be done away with, though only in a future synthesis brought about not by human effort, but by the Holy Spirit. “Away with human denominations, down with religious sects! Let our watchword be:  One spirit and one body! One Shepherd and one flock! All conventicles and chapels must perish, that from their ashes may rise the One Church of God, phoenixlike and resplendent with glory, as a bride adorned for her bridegroom.”13

11 Schaff, Principle, 141. Schaff thought about the world in terms of distinctive national identities. What this quote does not express is Schaff’s belief that rationalism was characteristic not only of Lutheranism, but specifically of the Germans. “This difference has its ground in the national character of the Germans and the English, who stand in a relation to each other similar to that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. For the better understanding then of this part of our subject, a short ethnographic digression may not be out of place” (Principle, 142). Following this quote Schaff discusses at greater length the differences between the two national characters. He was, in this regard, clearly of his age. 12 Schaff, Principle, 149. 13 Schaff, Principle, 155. It should be noted that Schaff included the Roman Catholic Church and the magisterial Reformation traditions in this future perishing.

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It turns out, however, that Schaff’s indictment of sectarianism was not absolute, even at this very early point in his academic career and his knowledge of Christianity in the United States. Schaff modified his indictment of sectarianism in key ways. First, he found that he needed to defend Protestantism (and insofar himself) from the accusation that Protestantism is inherently and essentially sectarian, spinning out one division after another. Schaff makes his defense by claiming that the Reformers were justified in dividing the church, but others are not. The details of this defense are tangled. Schaff is unable to provide meaningful tools for determining whether division is justified today. His point is that the Reformers were justified in setting up new ecclesial organizations, and therefore the structures they established continued to be justified as well. But newcomers could not claim to do the same. Second, ever openminded about what the Holy Spirit is doing in historical events, Schaff provided a defense for the existence of sects, claiming that they played an important corrective function in the life of the church. Both points bear closer examination. First, Schaff’s indictment of sectarianism runs into complications. Like all Protestants who condemn the loss of unity, Schaff finds himself in danger of being hoist with his own petard (it is very much to his credit that he recognizes the problem, and deals with it by doing something in addition to blaming the Roman Catholic Church for the division that created his denomination or the Protestant tradition14). To be Protestant is to participate in the Reformers’ division of the church. How then can one condemn other divisions in the church? At one point Schaff attempts a distinction: “Even those divisions of the church that are essentially rooted in the same evangelical soil, and that cannot well be included in the category of sects, stand for the most part in such hostile relations to one another, and show so little inclination or impulse toward

14

Though Schaff does blame the Roman Catholic Church for the Reformation, alleging that the actions of the Roman Catholic Church made the actions of the Reformers necessary and faithful to Jesus Christ. A  crude rendition of this account of the Reformation can be found in the final chapter of The Principle of Protestantism: “The separation was produced, not by the will of the Reformers, but by the stiff-necked papacy, which like Judaism at the time of Christ, identifying itself in a fleshly way with the idea of the absolute church, refused to admit the onward movement.” Schaff, Principle, 224.

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an inward and outward union in the Lord, that one might weep to think of it.”15 Divisions that “cannot well be included in the category of sects” presumably include Schaff’s own denomination, and others of which he approves—German Reformed, Lutheran, and Presbyterian. Schaff’s indictment of sectarianism doesn’t (in his view) invalidate the Reformed division from both the Roman Catholic Church and from all other Protestant groups (including those closest to the Reformed, such as the Lutherans). Implicitly here Schaff is arguing that there are legitimate grounds for groups of Christians to live in different ecclesial, institutional structures. Further, he proposes that the disunity that is contrary to the Gospel is to be found in enmity between Christians rather than in their separation into different denominations. But Schaff was unable, at this point in his thinking, to bring these possibilities into the open and make them explicit. There were, nevertheless, seeds here of a different way of understanding denominations in the church, seeds that would grow over the course of his life. Second, in The Principle of Protestantism, Schaff is sensitive to the argument that sectarianism is inherent to Protestantism.16 He defends the departure of the Reformers from the Roman Catholic Church, making the well-rehearsed argument that the Protestant Reformation was caused by the Roman Catholic Church. Schaff

15

Schaff, Principle, 150. Schaff understood that the accusation that Protestantism is inherently sectarian is powerful because it is prima facie so plausible. He took up this issue again ten years later in lectures on America that he delivered during a trip to Germany. “In forming our judgment of the American sect system, therefore, we are led back to the general question, whether Protestantism constitutionally involves a tendency towards denominationalism and sectarianism, wherever it is not hindered by the secular power. This we cannot so very easily deny.” Those lectures were published in German (1854) and then in English translation (1855). This quote is in Philip Schaff, America: A Sketch of Its Political, Social, and Religious Character, ed. Perry Miller, John Harvard Library Series (Cambridge:  Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961), 101. This volume is a republication of Philip Schaff, America: A Sketch of the Political, Social, and Religious Character of the United States of North America, in Two Lectures, Delivered at Berlin, with a Report Read Before the German Church Diet at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Sept., 1854, trans. Edward D. Yeomans (New York:  C. Scribner, 1855). Information on the publishing history of this set of lectures can be found in Klaus Penzel’s introduction to selections from the book, Klaus Penzel, ed., Philip Schaff, Historian and Ambassador of the Universal Church: Selected Writings (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1991), 151–8. 16

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rejects the notion that the Reformers’ willingness to divide from Rome provides a justification for post-Reformation Protestant division: When, moreover, the Reformers, for conscience’ sake, and because they would obey God and his word rather than men and their ordinances, proceeded to form a communion of their own, nothing could be further from their intention in doing so than to throw open the door for the system of sects. Their object was not to upset the church, and break the regular course of its historical life; but only to restore to it once more the clear light and sure rule of God’s word; not to emancipate the individual to uncontrolled freedom, but to bind him to the definite objective authority of God’s truth and grace.17 Schaff clearly believed that what was legitimate for the Reformers was illegitimate for those who came after. But it remains unclear why later Protestants could not (and indeed should not) follow the same logic in separating from their own ecclesial, institutional structures. How is one to judge when it is legitimate to form a new communion in order to “obey God and his word rather than men and their ordinances”? In America Schaff proposes that Scripture and spiritual maturity will overcome false division. “Protestantism is Christianity in the form of free subjectivity; of course not an unregenerate subjectivity, resting on natural reason—for this is the essence of rationalism—but a regenerate subjectivity, based on and submitting to the Word of God.”18 This is not much help in the midst of deciding what should be done. Those who divide existing denominations, or create new ones, generally affirm that they are “based on and submitting to the Word of God.” This criterion is inadequate to the task of discernment. Schaff did offer some suggestions for moving forward. He explicitly called on Protestants to a) recognize the evils of the sect system, and b) reject the claim that all Christians need to be in an ecclesial structure ordered under a single head. Schaff had direct personal experience of Christians in the United States who were resolute in

17

Schaff, Principle, 153. Schaff, America, 101.

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proclaiming that their particular denomination was the true church in ways that others were not. Among the resolute were some of Schaff's colleagues in the German Reformed Church, who brought heresy charges against him soon after his arrival (1845), judging that his theological views were excessively Roman Catholic.Chief among the German Reformed pressing for Schaff to be tried for heresy was Rev. Joseph Berg, pastor of the First German Reformed Church of Philadelphia, who charged Schaff with holding Roman Catholic, and therefore heretical, views on Scripture, tradition, and the sacraments.19 Berg stood out for the virulence of his antiCatholicism. But Berg was clearly not an isolated case in affirming his denomination’s theological views over against those of other denominations. A different appraisal of denomination is again visible in Schaff’s call to reject the claim that the unity of the church requires all Christians to be gathered in one ecclesial structure organized under a single head: “Neither is a single organization absolutely necessary, as the Puseyites dream. The unity must proceed from within, from the deepest ground of the religious life itself, and then it will provide for itself a suitable external form.”20 Schaff’s early writings on the church, its unity, and its visible form do not probe the question of what, structurally, the unity of the church requires. Yet it is a matter that will gain significance as Schaff continues, across the years, to make sense of what he learns about the Christian faith by studying the living of that faith in the United States. In the end, Schaff was unable to offer tools for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate institutional division. And yet he knew that decisions had to be made about denominations and membership in them—whether to stay, whether to move, and whether to start anew. He was left urging Protestants to stay in the denomination to which they already belonged: As members of a particular division of the Church of Christ, we must be true to the patrimony of our fathers, conscientiously turn to profit the pound entrusted to our care, and advance with free, 19

See Schaff, Life, 114–21. Schaff, Principle, 210. By Puseyites, Schaff refers to the Tractarian Movement in the Church of England.

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genuine historical progress as the wants of the time may require. To forsake the church communion in which we have been born naturally and spiritually, without urgent reason, is base perfidy. Let us labor then within our own denomination and for it, as knowing that God has given us here our own special commission to fulfill. We will manifest, in this very way, our church feeling and regard for history. Only, let all be subordinated to the interest of the general kingdom of God. If we have any right idea of the church as the communion of the redeemed transcending all limits of time and space, we shall feel that we cannot extend our view too far.21 This advice—“stay in the denomination into which you were born”—fails to provide help. First, Philip Schaff himself failed to do so, moving to the Presbyterian Church in 1870,22 which made it clear that there could be legitimate grounds for moving between denominations. Presumably he would have granted the same to others. Finally, his call to stay in the denomination into which one was born offered no help for those who were not born into any denomination. Some would modify Schaff’s call to “stay in the 21

Schaff, Principle, 215. See Schaff, Life, 221–2. David Schaff comments:  “On his [Philip Schaff’s] election to a professorship in the Union Theological Seminary, he transferred his relations from the Reformed to the Presbyterian Church. He was not, however, again as closely identified with the doctrinal fortunes and outward progress of a single denomination as he had been before.” David Schaff attributes this to Philip Schaff’s involvement in ecumenical initiatives. Later in the Life David Schaff relates this transfer again: Schaff accepted the offer of a professorship at Union Seminary and “at the same time he sought admission to the Presbytery of New York. It was understood, however, that this step indicated a change of ecclesiastical relation, not a change of theological views.” Schaff, Life, 282. Late in life Philip Schaff faced the possibility that the Presbyterian Church would divide over questions of biblical authority. He expressed regret at the possible divide. And he contemplated what he would do should the Presbyterian Church adopt a doctrinal affirmation that he could not accept. He thought he would return to the German Reformed Church. Yet he lamented this, “But where could I  go, if I  were to leave the Presbyterian Church, and be, upon the whole, better suited? One will find things to object to in all churches. Perfection is not to be found on the earth.” It is surely the case that no denomination is perfect, but that did not lead Schaff to believe that any denomination was as good a place as any other. Some were more suitable for him than others. David Schaff is directly quoting his father, though without clearly identifying the source. Schaff, Life, 434, cf. 433–4.

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denomination you are in now.”23 But, that raises insuperable issues for Protestants:  all Protestant churches exist because they were founded by people who left the church they were in. How can one be required to stay in an ecclesial body that has its origin in departure from some other ecclesial body? In The Principle of Protestantism Schaff did attribute a positive, corrective function to sects (denominations). Historian Stephen Graham draws out this point:  “The significance of sects, Schaff believed at this early stage of his career, was their negative role as ‘a disciplinary scourge, a voice of awakening and admonition by which the church is urged to a new life and a more conscientious discharge of her duties.’ ”24 At the end of The Principle of Protestantism Schaff offers a set of 112 “Theses for the Time” as a summary of the book’s argument. The ninety-third and ninetyfourth theses address the positive role played by sects: 93. Separation, where it is characterized by religious life, springs almost always from some real evil in the state of the church, and hence sectarism is to be regarded as a necessary disciplinarian and reformer of the church in its practical life. 94. Almost every sect represents in strong relief some single particular aspect of piety, and contributes to the fuller evolution of individual religious activity.25 Schaff specified that once the main body of the church had corrected its error, the sect should cease to exist. “Thus,” Graham

23 See for example, Christian van Driel, “Church and Covenant:  Theological Resources for Divided Denominations,” Theology Today 65, No. 4 (January 2009), 449–61. 24 Stephen R. Graham, Cosmos in the Chaos:  Philip Schaff’s Interpretation of Nineteenth-Century American Religion (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans. 1995), 16–17, quoting Schaff, Principle, 171–2. In America Schaff catalogs several Christian groups that had appeared among the German-Americans, such as Herrenhuters, Tunkers, Schwenkfeldians, United Brethren, and Weinbrennerians, and then comments that such groups play precisely the role of disciplinary scourge: “All these sects are a reproach and humiliation to the Lutheran, Reformed, and United churches; but should at the same time stimulate them to persevering self-purification . . . so long as the church neglects its duty, sects are necessary and beneficial, as taskmasters and troublers” (Schaff, America, 168). 25 Schaff, Principle, 231. “Sectarism” is in the printed text.

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summarizes, “at the point in [Schaff’s] intellectual development when he wrote The Principle of Protestantism, Schaff could see only a limited negative purpose in sects. Their goal should be to cease to exist.”26 Lacking usable tools for sorting out legitimate from illegitimate ecclesial differentiation, Schaff offers eschatology, a vision of grand synthesis in the future. “We believe, indeed, by all means, that the present divided condition of Protestantism, is only a temporary transition state, but that it will produce something far more grand and glorious, than Catholicism ever presented in its best days.”27 Anticipation of a grand future synthesis that would gather up what was true and good in both Protestantism and Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) was a constant across Schaff’s life. It is present from The Principle of Protestantism in 1844 to his 1884 address to the Eighth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, “The Discord and Concord of Christendom.”28 Only in Schaff’s final address, “The Reunion of Christendom” (1893), does his understanding of the unity and diversity of the church shift. Schaff expected that this grand synthesis would take place in the Christianity of the United States. He recognized that in the United States a wide variety of forms of Christianity had equal legal standing, none enjoying the backing and favor of the state. While the present situation of Christianity in the United States appeared chaotic, it was, Schaff affirmed, a chaos in which something new was forming. “American church-history is still in the storm-and-pressure 26

Graham, Cosmos, 17. Schaff, America, 103. Schaff had a deep appreciation of the Christianity of the Middle Ages and the wide range and aesthetic power of its cultural products. He expressed this deep appreciation in the teeth of American anti-Catholicism, at significant personal cost. See, e.g., Schaff, Principle, 175–6. 28 Schaff, Principle, 216–18, 231 Thesis 91, and 234 Thesis 112. In the Address to the Evangelical Alliance Schaff said:  “The end of history will be the rich harvest of the preceding growth in summer and spring. The temporary scaffolding will be taken down, but the building will stand . . . all human imperfections, sins and errors will be done away, that the work which God has wrought through all these ecclesiastical and denominational agencies, may appear in all its purity, beauty and grandeur.” Philip Schaff, “The Discord and Concord of Christendom: Or, Denominational Variety and Christian Unity,” in Philip Schaff, Christ and Christianity (Eugene, OR:  Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004), 302–3. This is a reprint, originally published in New York by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885. 27

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period . . . the prolegomena are laid out on the most comprehensive scale; the cosmos lies in the chaos, as man in embryo, and He who at the beginning said: ‘Let there be light!’ lives and rules with his Divine Spirit, brooding over the ecclesiastical Thohuvavohu of the New World”: In North America . . . the fate of the Reformation is to be decided . . . There it will be seen, whether it, as its enemies prophecy, being left to its centrifugal and unchurchly tendencies, will at last break up into atoms, and prepare a greater triumph for Catholicism than even the victory over the Old Roman and Germanic heathenism; or whether, as we believe and hope, following its positive Christian principles, with the Word of God in hand and heart, it will come together, consolidate, concentrate itself, and out of the phœnix-ashes of all Christian denominations and sects, rise glorified, as the truly universal, evangelical Catholic Bride of the Lord, adorned with the fairest flowers of the church-history of all centuries.29

Theological roots of Schaff ’s assessment of denomination: History and the Holy Spirit Philip Schaff’s assessment of American Christianity, and of denomination in particular, was rooted in his vision of the history of the church as the record of the unfolding, ever-widening and deepening, understanding of the Christian faith, a faith that was given fully in and with Jesus Christ but is known and understood only gradually, as it unfolds through the history of God’s engagement with the world in and through the church. This way of understanding the church and its history not only enabled, but motivated Schaff to seek out what was good in what actually happened in the life of the church as it actually existed. Seeking out what is good in what has happened is, as in this case, seeking to trace the work of the Holy Spirit across time. Throughout his life, Schaff held to the view that the Christian faith was given in nuce in Jesus Christ and has unfolded across the history of the church. As James Hastings Nichols notes in 29

Schaff, America, 213.

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his history of the Mercersburg Theology, “The guiding metaphor in Schaf’s [sic] historical thought was the idea of biological growth, in which change is regulated by an inner power, preserving unity through diverse stages of maturation.”30 Contrasting his own view of the church and its history against that of those who claimed that the Christian faith had been fully and completely given and understood in the time of Jesus Christ and the Apostles, Schaff explains, we, on the other hand, distinguish between truth as objectively present in Christ and in the scriptures, and truth as subjectively present in the consciousness of the church, and say: Christianity in itself and objectively considered is complete in Christ, in whom dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; as also in his word, which is exhibited in the holy scriptures of the New Testament, in a pure, original, perfect and absolutely normative form, for all times. Subjective Christianity, on the contrary, or the life of the God-man in his Church, is a process, a development, which begins small, and grows always larger, till it comes at last to full manhood in Christ; that is, till the believing human world may have appropriated to itself, both outwardly and inwardly, the entire fullness of objective Christianity, or the life of Christ. In this view the word of God also was not at once understood by the church from the beginning, in all its depth and comprehension, but gradually always more and more with the advancing age of the church.31

30

James Hastings Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology:  Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1961), 116. Nichols spells Schaff’s name with a single “f,” and offers this note: “Philip Schaf changed the spelling of his name to Schaff in 1847” (Nichols, Romanticism, 1, n. 1). 31 Philip Schaff, What Is Church History? A  Vindication of the Idea of Historical Development (Philadelphia, PA:  J. B.  Lippincott and Co., 1846), reprinted in Reformed and Catholic:  Selected Historical and Theological Writings of Philip Schaff, ed. Charles Yrigoyen, Jr. and George M. Bricker, Pittsburgh Original Texts and Translations Series, No. 4 (Pittsburgh, PA: Pickwick Press, 1979), 17–144. This reprint reproduces the pagination of the original book, but that pagination does not match the pagination in the reprint volume. The passage here quoted is found on page 97 of the reprint (which is also page 81 of the original text). Further quotation will be referenced to the pagination of the reprint volume.

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This is the organic or developmental view of the life of the church across history. As Schaff puts it, “We may characterize our standpoint, then, in few words, with regard to the first point here noticed, as that of regular or organic development, and with regard to the view taken of orthodoxy and dissent, as that of free, or protestant, evangelically catholic, ecclesiasticism.”32 Schaff argued for this view against other views of church history. That defense could, at times, take on aphoristic compression:  “Only that which is dead has the privilege of being done. All, on the other hand, that can lay claim to life, is in its inmost nature a genesis, movement, process, development.”33 Schaff drew on both organic and dialectical imagery for understanding organic development and its workings. Historian E.  Brooks Holifield has observed:  “In his descriptions of development, Schaff was not always consistent. Sometimes he emphasized romantic images of biological growth, cumulative through various stages of maturity, delayed by periodic disease. Sometimes he used a dialectical scheme in which logical contraries collided before giving way to a higher synthesis.”34 Holifield suggests that Schaff’s descriptions become more consistent in light of Schaff’s praise of his teacher, August Neander: “for restoring ‘the religious and practical interest to its due prominence’ in historical studies. For him, the practical interest required a belief that the church was ‘the depository and continuation of the earthly human life of the Redeemer.’ ”35 Schaff’s images and the theory of organic development itself point to key sources for his theological and historical thinking. The organic images point to the role of the Romantic movement in Germany, which deeply shaped Schaff”s outlook. Klaus Penzel has underlined the importance of

32

Schaff, What Is Church History, 99. Schaff, What Is Church History, 99. 34 E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America:  Christian Thought From the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2003), 474. Holifield drily notes: “These inconsistencies suggest that philosophical precision was not [Schaff’s] driving aim.” 35 Holifield, Theology, 474, quoting Philip Schaff’s 1853 publication, History of the Apostolic Church, with a General Introduction to Church History. 33

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the romantic understanding of the whole Christian world with its multiplicity of distinct historical phenomena as being but the necessary individualization of the Christian spirit. This understanding then led him to affirm that diversity itself belongs to the very nature of Christianity and that diversity is therefore also essential to Christian unity. “Unity in diversity, and diversity in unity,” this slogan would be the ecumenical battlecry of Schaff’s later years.36 Nichols points to Herder and Hegel as key sources.37 Schaff himself identifies Herder as central in articulating a view of history as organic development, and he offers his Englishspeaking readers a brief explanation of the key Hegelian term aufheben.38 Whatever its precise sources, Schaff’s view of the unfolding of the theological content of the Christian faith played a major role in the change that came about in his understanding and appraisal of denomination, a role I  explore further in the next section. The primary note in Schaff’s early writings on denomination is one of condemnation. Denominational differentiation is sectarianism. This is the view of denomination Schaff had formed in Europe, and it was clearly the assessment commonly shared among Schaff’s teachers and peers. At the same time, secondary counter-notes are sounded as well, complicating his condemnation. Denominations (at this point, not clearly distinguished from sects) sometimes are permissible as corrections to the failings of the church. They build on genuine elements of the Christian life. And, they have actually come to exist in a history that is the unfolding of the Christian faith, and thus must have some role to play. Schaff’s education undergirds both his condemnation of denomination and his complicating qualifications. His eduation, and his basic theological commitments, will in time provide the basis for a change in his assessment of denomination.

36

Penzel, editorial introduction, Philip Schaff, lv. Nichols, Romanticism, 114–15. 38 For Herder, see “What Is Church History,” Reformed and Catholic, 89; for aufheben, see the same text, 101. Schaff critiques Hegel’s philosophy in the same text, 91–3. 37

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Transition: “The work of history is not in vain” Yet ambivalence over denominationalism is nothing new. A case in point is the course traveled by Philip Schaff, often called the patriarch of the discipline of church history in America. As a relative newcomer to America, he attempted in 1854 to explain his new homeland and its institutions in America: A Sketch of its Political, Social and Religious Character, in which he was largely critical of the American denominational system . . . Yet forty years later, at the end of his life in America, he came to a very different appreciation of denominationalism. His experience with American denominations convinced him that these divisions expressed not the failure of the Christian impulse but the vitality of religion in America.39 Students of Schaff’s assessment of denomination have repeatedly called attention to the transition in Schaff’s views between his initial writings on the subject and his later writings. They are right to do so: there is a clear change. But that change was grounded in something more than Schaff’s personal experience—important as his experience clearly was. As we have begun to see already, Schaff held theological views that equipped him to make sense of his personal experience with a particular depth and richness. Those theological views drove the change in his assessment of denomination. Schaff seems to have had few trailblazers to follow.40 Making sense 39 Russell Richey and Robert Bruce Mullin, introduction, Reimagining Denominationalism:  Interpretive Essays, ed. Russell Richey and Robert Bruce Mullin (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1994), 4. Stephen Graham found a transition in Schaff’s views as well: “Although Schaff maintained his driving passion for the unity of all Christians, he began to realize that his ideas about the means of union had to change. The Principle of Protestantism contained Schaff’s primal vision for the church and the essence of that vision remained unaltered. The longer he lived in his adopted homeland, however, his ideas about how Christian union would be achieved developed markedly as he immersed himself in the theological, ecclesiastical, and cultural life of America. Almost immediately Schaff began to modify his original conception of the sectarian system in America” (Graham, Cosmos, 21). 40 Schaff himself comments on this, with regard to the separation of church and state in particular:  “This relationship of church and state marks an epoch. It is a new chapter in the history of Christianity, and the most important one which America

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of denomination required Schaff to deploy his existing theological beliefs in a new way. In this section I  consider some of the theological beliefs that enabled the change in Schaff’s assessment of denomination. Two in particular were central to Schaff’s change of views. First, Schaff held to the belief that the history of the church is the divinely superintended unfolding of the fullness of the truth of the Christian faith. This meant that for Schaff the study of the history of the church was a form of theological research: it was a way of understanding the content of the Christian faith. Second, religious liberty came to be central to Schaff’s view of faithful living. He understood that embracing religious liberty had implications for how Christians would live out their faith, including a willingness to make room for differing convictions about the shape of faithful Christian living and belief. For Schaff, the history of the church was the unfolding, or unpacking, of the truth which was objectively present in Jesus Christ and Scripture, truth which then had to be subjectively appropriated by humanity. Shaped as he was by German Romanticism’s focus on organic growth, Schaff regarded organic growth as a regular pattern in the created order, governing plants, animals, and human beings, and “parallel precisely with the bodily life” of human beings “in this view, is the life also of his spirit.”41 In the case of the church, Schaff emphasizes that God oversees and orders the process of the unfolding of the truth objectively present in Jesus Christ and Scripture. We maintain . . . that the Spirit of Christ himself, uninterruptedly present in the church, is the chief factor in history, to whose power all human factors, which are also to be acknowledged in their place, must be regarded as subordinate; and that nothing which has once come to be of true historical weight can be absolutely negated or made to become null, but must ever has so far contributed . . . and yet, strange to say, it has never received the treatment it deserves, either from the historical or the philosophical point of view, although it is often incidentally mentioned, especially in discussions of religion in the public schools.” Philip Schaff, Church and State in the United States, or, The American Idea of Religious Liberty and Its Practical Effects, with Official Documents (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), 9. 41 Schaff, “What Is Church History,” in Reformed and Catholic, 101.

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incorporate itself as an abiding element into the subsequent part of the process.42 Schaff’s insight here might be translated into a different conceptual structure. The revelation in Jesus Christ, mediated to the world in Scripture, bears plenitude, the “whole fullness of deity” in bodily, finite, creaturely form (Col. 2:9). Human beings can only unfold such plenitude gradually, across time. The work of the Holy Spirit in the world is, at least in part, to oversee this gradual unfolding of that whose fullness is present in Jesus Christ. To know fully who Jesus Christ is, to know fully what Christ’s body, the church is, one must look at what the church has been historically.43 And, by implication, one must know what the church actually is in the present. Schaff’s advocacy for this view of the study of Church History took institutional form—the founding of an academic society to support its flourishing. “Dr. Schaff’s services in the department of church history were not confined to the volumes proceeding from his pen. He was concerned to encourage the study of church history and to develope [sic] a new generation of historical students in the United States.”44 This led Schaff to found the American Society of Church History (ASCH). “To him the American Society of Church History owed its foundation. It was organized in his study, March 23, 1888, and he acted as its president till the time of his death . . . The series of American Denominational Histories, published under the auspices of the society, was due to his suggestion and to the measures he perfected for their composition and publication.”45 This new academic society would not long carry Schaff’s vision. The early history of the ASCH illustrates the fate of Schaff’s understanding of the study of the history of the church as a form of 42

Schaff, “What Is Church History,” 98–9. Schaff links together the theological claims being made here in The Principle of Protestantism, Chapter 6 (his 112 “Theses for the Time”) Theses 3 to 25. Specifically, Thesis 3: “The church is the Body of Jesus Christ. This expresses her communion with her Head, and also the relation of her members to one another.” And Thesis 6: “The definition implies further that as the life of the parents flows forward in the child, so the church also is the depository and continuation of the earthly human life of the Redeemer, in his threefold office of prophet, priest, and king” (Schaff, Principle, 220). 44 Schaff, Life, 464. 45 Schaff, Life, 465. 43

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theological investigation. The story of this episode in the history of academia is important for this study because Schaff arrived at his positive understanding of the place of denomination in the life of the church in part because of his commitment to the view of church history the ASCH was founded to promote. During the 1880s, Schaff had once again become alarmed by the “negative and destructive criticism” that continued to grow in America. His way to combat such tendencies was to help develop opposition on the highest intellectual level. Schaff created the American Society of Church History to foster such intellectual power in American theology, and at the same time to maintain a correct understanding of church history as a theological discipline. Concerning the latter emphasis, he was conspicuously out of step with the emerging methodological understanding of historians in the last decade of the nineteenth century. His belief that church history was a particularly theological discipline and not a subspecies of general history became a point of contention both within the ASCH and between leaders of the ASCH and the American Historical Association. Finally, in 1896, just three years after Schaff’s death, lacking his personal presence to lend credibility to the “theological” view of church history, the “modern” view prevailed and the ASCH was dissolved as a separate organization, its membership becoming a section of the American Historical Association . . . When the ASCH was reestablished in 1906, it was without the methodological focus that had been one of the ruling themes in Schaff’s original vision.46 The views of the patriarch of the discipline were rejected. In a history of the discipline of Church History in the United States, Henry Warner Bowden points to the changing conceptual context as the motive force in the dissolution of the ASCH. By 1896 the more secular and scientifically oriented historians gained control of the ASCH and brought an end to its independent existence. Among the reasons given to explain the move for dissolution, the most important one concerned methodology and 46

Graham, Cosmos, 118–19.

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struck directly at one of Schaff’s fundamental ideas. Denying any uniqueness to the historical church or any special consideration to a study of its history, the final resolution stated that, since “Church History is only a part of general history, its students should ally themselves with the students of the general subject.”47 Bowden believes that some members of the dissolved ASCH may still have adhered to Schaff’s vision, but they were unable successfully to defend those views, and in the end they too were unable to overcome changes in what constituted academically legitimate (at the time it was called “scientific”) historical study. Nine years after it began, the ASCH was dissolved and made a section of the AHA [American Historical Association]. The original format of the ASCH which attempted to foster a distinct set of ideas about proper church historiography had become outmoded during the last decades of the nineteenth century because of prevailing scientific standards. The climate of opinion which had been gaining ascendancy since the 1870s made it increasingly difficult to write a serious narrative that emphasized spiritual agents of the theological significance of ecclesiastical activity. By the 1890s it had become virtually impossible to base church history on a confession of faith and still command respect in the scholarly world. Termination of the society marked a turning point in American intellectual history because it was a significant indication that secularists had replaced religious spokesmen in a domain which the latter had occupied for centuries.48 The dissolution of the ASCH was not simply a change in institutional arrangements. It was driven by theological/philosophical issues, and it represented the victory of one party in the debate over those issues. Schaff’s richly theological vision of the purpose of the study of Church History was demoted from the realm of

47 Henry Warner Bowden, Church History in the Age of Science: Historiographical Patterns in the United States 1876–1918 (Chapel Hill, NC:  University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 66–7. 48 Bowden, Church History, 67. Bowden sees the subsequent history of the discipline of church history in the period he is studying as shaped by the tension between scientific and theological conceptions of the field (67–8).

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intellectual respectability. This demotion has had implications for academic church historians and, most importantly for this book, for academic theologians. For later historians of American Christianity, the question of what theological assessment to make of the massive fact of denominations remained compelling and unanswered. Denomination has been a massive—perhaps the massive—feature of American Christianity since a time very near the first arrival of Christians in this country. Those who would write the history of American Christianity cannot avoid making some sense of denomination. And, church historians have again and again felt the need to make theological sense of denomination. Indeed, theological reflection on denomination has remained particularly live among historians. Thus, later we will turn to the work of church historians as participants in the ongoing conversation about the theological assessment of denomination, particularly in the writings of Winthrop Hudson, Sidney Mead, and Russell Richey. Theologians have not been so responsive to the need to offer an account of denomination. Part of the reason for this failure is no doubt a direct result of changes in the view of what constitutes academically respectable study of the history of the church. For Schaff, study of the history of the church was study of the unfolding of divine revelation. Schaff thus felt compelled to make theological sense of what was unfolding, and had been for some time unfolding, all around him in the United States. Scientific church historians felt themselves not only relieved of the task of making theological sense—they felt precluded from doing so. Theologians have felt little need to fill in the gap. This lack of motivation was fed in the twentieth century by the peculiarities of academic ecclesiology, gripped as it was by what Nicholas Healy has called “blueprint ecclesiology,” an impulse to write ecclesiologies that described an ideal church, rather than ecclesiologies that built from the forms taken by the church that actually exists. Shaped by such patterns of ecclesiological thinking, theologians have largely ignored denomination.49 The boundaries and self-understandings of academic disciplines 49 Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World, and the Christian Life:  Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine, Vol. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 25–51. Healy offers suggestions for a theological history of the church (158–64).

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have made theological assessment of denomination more difficult. When the church historians conceive of the history of the church as atheological, it runs against the grain for those in another academic field––theology––to offer theological interpretations of the history of the church. It is little wonder then that denomination comes to be regarded as primarily a sociological reality.50 The influence of European models of church and sect (state-sanctioned church over against all other ecclesial bodies, which are sects)—the very model that Schaff argued failed to fit the United States—provided a ready conceptuality for interpreting denomination. This was reinforced by H. Richard Niebuhr’s scorching attack on the denominations of his day in The Social Sources of Denominationalism, and denomination became a virtual non-topic. These developments are traced further in the sections that follow. Particular beliefs about the theological import of history were one factor enabling Schaff to modify his assessment of denomination. A  second key factor was his growing appreciation of the importance of religious liberty, his appraisal of which shifted significantly across his years in the United States. Religious liberty plays almost no role in The Principle of Protestantism, appearing only in a mention of the separation of church and state. And the role played in the church by separation of church and state is held to be negative, because there was no longer any power to force conformity: “As there was now no hierarchic bond on the one hand, as in the Church of Rome, so neither was there any civil supremacy on the other, as in Germany, the Episcopal Church of England, and the Greek Church of Russia, by which the single elements might be held together.”51 Immigration brought new forms of Christianity to the United States; separation of church and state allowed those as well as newborn forms to flourish. “All the

50

Theologians who challenge these disciplinary boundaries are not the only ones to meet with hostility from historians. Healy cites historian Karlfried Froehlich in a footnote: “Froehlich argues for ‘the need to reclaim church history as a theological discipline’ from the ‘imperialism of historical scholarship’ ” (Healy, Church, World, and the Christian Life, 164, n.  21). Healy is quoting from Karlfried Froehlich, “Church History and the Bible,’ in Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective, ed. Mark S. Burrows and Paul Rorem (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B.  Eerdmans, 1991), 3. 51 Schaff, Principle, 148–9.

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circumstances of the country, in one word, have contributed to precipitate the church into those evils precisely with which she was least qualified in her original character successfully to contend.”52 Schaff saw in the United States the very evils that had been predicted by those who insisted the powers of the government be used to favor a single church body. Schaff was at this point a true child of the European state-sanctioned church. Over the course of his life Schaff came to value religious liberty very highly. In America, explaining and, in part, defending Christianity in the United States, he connected denomination (“the sect system”) with religious liberty: Finally, the SECT SYSTEM is certainly a great evil. It contradicts the idea of the unity of the church; which we can no more give up, than the unity of God, the unity of Christ, the unity and inward harmony of truth. But, in the first place, so long as confessional controversies are unsettled, it is an inevitable consequence of the universal freedom of religion and worship, which seems to be making progress even in the public opinion of Europe, and the advantages of which on the whole outweigh the disadvantages of a police force and dead uniformity.53 Dispute over matters of doctrine and polity, when added to religious liberty, combine to yield the denomination. Schaff goes on to make an argument that he will retain throughout the rest of his life: religious belief cannot be compelled, and it is wrong to attempt to compel religious adherence against conscience. “For religion is the deepest and holiest interest of man, and thrives best in the atmosphere of freedom. It is, in fact, itself the highest freedom, the liberation of the spirit from the bonds of sin and the merely natural life. ‘Faith,’ says Luther, ‘is a free thing, which can be forced upon no one.’ Compulsion in this sphere only produces hypocrisy and infidelity.”54 Schaff insisted that religious liberty is not inherently 52

Schaff, Principle, 149. Schaff, America, 10. 54 Schaff, America, 10. In later years Schaff tended to quote Tertullian rather than Luther:  “It is not a part of religion, says Tertullian, to enforce religion. It loses all its value if it is not free and voluntary.” Schaff, “The Discord and Concord of Christendom; or, Denominational Variety and Christian Unity,” in Schaff, Christ and Christianity, 296. Schaff quotes Tertullian (from Ad Scapulam) at length in Philip 53

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driven by religious indifference (clearly a concern for his European audiences). No, Schaff repeatedly affirmed, religious liberty is faithful: “The principle of religious freedom rests [in the United States] on a religious basis, as the result of many sufferings and persecutions for the sake of faith and conscience; and thus differs very materially from some modern theories of toleration, which run out into sheer religious indifference and unbelief.”55 Schaff pointed again and again to the many ways in which Christianity was flourishing in the United States. He also pointed to ways in which state policies were shaped by Christianity—citing especially the church’s role in marriage, the Sabbath laws, and religious education in the public schools.56 Schaff forthrightly acknowledged that religious liberty necessarily brought with it the possibility of further denominational differentiation and division. But he also held that religious liberty was the necessary condition for bringing about the true unity of the church. The inevitable division of the Church into an indefinite number of denominations is made the strongest objection to the free-church system by the advocates of ecclesiastical establishments. But free separation is more honest than forced union . . . The tendency to division and split is inherent in Protestantism, and it must be allowed free scope until every legitimate type of Christianity is developed and matured. The work of history is not in vain. But division is only a means to a higher unity than the world has yet seen . . . True unity must rest on liberty and include the greatest variety.57 Throughout the rest of his life Schaff repeatedly found himself explaining and defending American Christianity. In his academic Schaff, The Progress of Religious Freedom as Shown in the History of Toleration Acts (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1889), 5–6. 55 Schaff, America, 91. Italics in original. 56 See Schaff, Church and State, 69–78. This list, with the exception of Sabbath laws (it now requires an exercise of historical imagination to understand how there could be controversy over the repeal of such laws), is a reminder of the truism that the more things change, the more they stay the same. 57 Schaff, Church and State, 81–2. Thus Schaff goes back on his earlier insistence that division is not inherent to Protestantism. Schaff was driven to do so in part by his emphasis on the importance of diversity, a point to which we will return.

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and in his churchly endeavors Schaff was regularly in situations that called for such explanation and defense. Across these explanations, the separation of church and state, along with religious liberty, is a constant theme.58 The rejection of coercion, as found particularly in the separation of church and state, along with the freedom of conscience, became central convictions for Schaff. Freedom of religion is one of the greatest gifts of God to man, without distinction of race and color. He is the author and lord of conscience, and no power on earth has a right to stand between God and conscience. A violation of this divine law written in the heart is an assault upon the majesty of God and the image of God in man. Granting the freedom of conscience, we must, by logical necessity, also grant the freedom of its manifestation and exercise in public worship.59 Following his reflections further yet, Schaff came to insist on the difference between religious toleration and religious liberty, arguing that religious toleration was a halfway measure between coercion and liberty.60 One mark of the importance of these issues to Schaff was the publication in the late 1880s of two related books, devoted to religious liberty. In 1888 Schaff published Church and State in the United States, or, The American Idea of Religious Liberty and Its Practical Effects, with Official Documents, publishing it both in the Papers of the American Historical Association and as a separate off-print. In 1889 he followed with The Progress of Religious Freedom as Shown in the History of Toleration Acts, which grew out of a paper presented to the first annual meeting of the ASCH. While many of Schaff’s papers have been reprinted, neither of these volumes has, nor have they or any part of them appeared in any of the anthologies of writings of Schaff or the Mercersburg School. Again, Schaff’s theological work on questions related to denomination has fallen by the wayside. Even so, these works convey one of the key elements in his changing assessment of denomination. 58

See e.g., “Christianity in America,” in Reformed and Catholic, 345–91. Schaff, Church and State, 15. 60 Schaff, Progess, 2 and Schaff, “The Development of Religious Freedom,” in Christ and Christianity, 285. Also, see n. 43 59

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Religious commitments are to be freely made and pursued, something best achieved by state commitment to religious liberty. The history of the church as the divinely superintended unfolding of the plenitude present in Jesus Christ and Scripture, and the critical importance of religious liberty that would allow human beings to respond to God without coercive overlay: these theological commitments were key factors leading Schaff to a different assessment of denomination in the church.

Schaff ’s mature view of denomination The transition in Schaff’s assessment of denomination came to full expression in his final essay, “The Reunion of Christendom.”61 He wrote this essay to be delivered as an address to the World’s Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in September of 1893. In poor health since a stroke in the summer of 1892, Schaff was strongly advised not to make the trip to Chicago for the Parliament. He made the trip but was, nonetheless, too weak to deliver his address himself, though he sat on the platform as it was delivered.62 In “Reunion” Schaff probes the meanings of unity and diversity, advocating a particular view of the right balance of the two; he presses for a better vocabulary, distinguishing denomination and sect, and pointing to the inapplicability of sect when there is religious liberty; he makes a set of recommendations for living the unity of the church faithfully in the midst of denominational diversity; and finally he lifts up and praises the distinctive contributions to the living of Christian faith made by varied denominations. Schaff came to see that the meaning of church unity was not selfevident, though there clearly was an assumption that it meant all Christians gathered in a single institutional, organizational structure, a notion he rejected early. This pushed him, in his later writings, to explore what unity meant when applied to the church. In his essay “Creeds and Confessions of Faith” Schaff suggested that there 61

Schaff, “The Reunion of Christendom,” in Penzel, Philip Schaff, 302–40. The story of Schaff’s presence at the Parliament is told in Schaff, Life, 482–91; also, in Klaus Penzel, introduction to “The Reunion of Christendom,” in Penzel, Philip Schaff, 293–301. Penzel also sorts out the somewhat complicated publication history of this essay (294–5). 62

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were four modes of bringing about a unified creed—unification of creed thus offering a test for modes of church unification. The four modes were “absorptive,” uniting all in one creed (Schaff judged this impossible); “negative,” doing away with all creeds, presumably claiming the Bible alone as a creed (Schaff judged this pointless:  issues dealt with by the creeds would reemerge and require creedal response); “eclectic,” combining “fragments from all creeds” (which would be artificial, gaining no one’s adherence); and “a conservative union, which recognizes, from a broad and comprehensive evangelical catholic platform, all the creeds in their relative rights as far as they represent different aspects of divine truth, without attempting an amalgamation or organic union of denominations.”63 In “Reunion,” Schaff identifies three forms of Christian union:  “individual,” which is a voluntary association of individual Christians “for a common purpose”; “Federal or confederate union,” which is the voluntary association of denominations, “all recognizing one another as sisters with equal rights, and cooperating in general enterprises”; and finally “Organic or corporate union of all the Churches under one government.” Schaff rejected this last form of unity.64 He understood the inadequacy of appeals to the unity of the church that failed to provide some definition of what that unity was and which church structures would faithfully embody that unity. And he put his cards on the table:  he argued that the unity of the church did not require all Christians to be in a single institutional structure. “We must, first of all, make a distinction between Christian union and ecclesiastical amalgamation. The former is possible without the latter and must, at all events, precede it.”65 Schaff also understood that, as theologian and ecumenist Michael Kinnamon has observed, “The two concepts—unity and diversity— are symbiotic.”66 Schaff’s exploration of unity went hand-in-hand with increasing attention to diversity. Schaff came to a strong affirmation that God’s way in the created order is one of exuberant multiplicity and diversity. “Variety in unity and unity in variety is the 63

Schaff, “Creeds and Confessions of Faith,” in Christ and Christianity, 146–8. Schaff, “Reunion,” 313–14. 65 Schaff, “Discord and Concord,” 298. 66 Michael Kinnamon, The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2003), 51. 64

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law of God in nature, in history, and in his kingdom. Unity without variety is dead uniformity. There is beauty in variety.” Schaff then cites instances of the great value of rich diversity: musical harmony, gardens, differences of nations and people, and diversity of denominations. “The world will never become wholly Greek, nor wholly Roman, nor wholly Protestant, but it will become wholly Christian, and will include every type and every aspect, every virtue and every grace of Christianity—an endless variety in harmonious unity, Christ being all in all.”67 Schaff understood that unity and diversity were symbiotically related, meaning that one’s understanding of the unity of the church has direct implications for one’s understanding of what constitutes legitimate diversity in the church. He understood that church unity and diversity made a continuum, from the extreme of monolithic uniformity to atomism, and Schaff was willing to declare an understanding of both together. He called for an understanding of unity that would have room to include a very wide and rich diversity. Schaff was clear that Christianity in the United States presented a reality that existing terms for the unity and diversity of the church failed to capture. In particular, the terms sect and dissenter make sense only in a context in which church means that ecclesial body favored by the state as its preferred ecclesial body for its realm. Such terms have no meaning in contexts of religious liberty, in which church and state are separated. “Toleration exists where the government supports one or more churches, and permits other religious communities under the name of sects (as on the continent), or dissenters and nonconformists (as in England), under certain conditions. In America, there are no such distinctions, but only churches or denominations on a footing of perfect equality before the law.”68 The distinction Schaff found most important to make was between denomination and sect. “There is a great difference

67

Schaff, “Reunion,” 311. Schaff had worked these same ideas in an extended form in his essay “The Discord and Concord of Christendom,” given as an address to the Evangelical Alliance and Danish royalty in Copenhagen, in September 1884. “Diversity in unity is the law of God’s physical and moral universe, and the condition of all beauty and harmony. Variety is life; uniformity is death.” Schaff, “The Discord and Concord of Christendom,” in Schaff, Christ and Christianity, 298. 68 Schaff, Church and State, 9. The irrelevance of the church/sect distinction is a point historian Sidney Mead felt compelled to make eighty and more years later.

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between denominationalism and sectarianism:  the first is consistent with Church unity as well as military corps are with the unity of an army, or the many monastic orders with the unity of the papacy; the second is nothing but extended selfishness and bigotry. Denominationalism is a blessing; sectarianism is a curse.”69 In the essay “The Discord and Concord of Christendom” Schaff asks how unity is to be achieved, and replies: “Not by a crusade against denominations . . . The evil lies not in denominationalism and confessionalism, but in sectarianism; not in variety, but in selfish exclusiveness. Denominationalism or confessionalism grows out of the diversity of divine gifts, and may co-exist with true catholicity and large-hearted charity. But sectarianism is an abuse and excess of denominationalism.”70 Schaff makes this distinction, and defends denominationalism, not because he supports a general, abstract notion of diversity, but because he believes that the diversity of denominations has generated genuine value that could not have been achieved in any other way. This belief is captured in occasional aphoristic statements about the value of what happens in history, such as this: “History is no child’s play,”71 and “the work of history is not in vain.”72 This is true for denominations: There are divisions in the church which cannot be justified, and there are sects which have fulfilled their mission and ought to cease. But the historic denominations are permanent forces and represent various aspects of the Christian religion which supplement each other. As the life of our Saviour could not be fully exhibited by one Gospel, nor his doctrine fully set forth by one Apostle, much less could any one Christian body comprehend and manifest the whole fullness of Christ and the entire extent of his mission to mankind. Every one of the great divisions of the Church has had, and still has, its peculiar mission as to territory, race and nationality, and modes of operation . . . None of them could be spared without great detriment to the cause of religion

69

Schaff, “Reunion,” 308–9. Schaff, “Discord and Concord,” 298. 71 Schaff, “Creeds and Confessions,” 147. 72 Schaff, Church and State, 82. 70

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and morality, and without leaving its territory and constituency spiritually destitute.73 Schaff does make recommendations regarding what should be done to live faithfully when denominations fail to live peaceably with one another. In “Creeds and Confessions of Faith” Schaff commends three distinctions: “We must dismiss all idea of a perfect uniformity of belief”; “we must distinguish between truth and dogma” (truth being divine, dogma being human); “another important distinction must be made between religious and theological differences.”74 A  few years later Schaff recommends cultivation of an irenic spirit, cooperation in good works, noninterference in one another’s mission work, a deepened knowledge of one another’s beliefs, and a prayer for unity.75 These tools for unity are modest, but perhaps modest tools are the best tools for our human participation in a task Schaff felt would only be completed by the Holy Spirit. Finally, in perfect consistency with Schaff’s reassessment of the value and legitimacy of denomination, “The Reunion of Christendom” closes with an extended paean to the glories of the various denominational groups, extolling their distinctive strengths and beauties, from the Greek Church, to the Unitarians, and the Salvation Army. “The Greek Church is a glorious church: for in her language have come down to us the oracles of God, the Septuagint, the Gospels, and Epistles; hers are the early confessors and martyrs, the Christian fathers, bishops, patriarchs, and emperors; hers the immortal writings of Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, and Chrysostom; hers the Ecumenical Councils and the Nicene Creed.” And on the list rolls: “The Latin Church is a glorious Church . . . The Evangelical Lutheran Church, the first-born daughter of the Reformation, is a glorious Church . . . The Evangelical Reformed Church is a glorious Church.”76 73

Schaff, “Reunion,” 309. In “Discord and Concord” Schaff put it this way: “Every Christian church or denomination has its special charisma and mission, and there is abundant room and abundant labor for all in this great and wicked world . . . the cause of Christ would be marred and weakened if any one of the historic churches should be extinguished, or be absorbed into another” (299–300). 74 Schaff, “Creeds and Confessions,” 149–51. 75 Schaff, “Reunion,” 334–5. 76 Schaff, “Reunion,” 336–7.

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Guided by several key theological commitments, Schaff journeyed in his new land to a new view of the church, and its unity and diversity.

Conclusion Philip Schaff was a unique observer of Christianity in America. Possessed of a strong theological education, which gave expansiveness to his central theological affirmations, he arrived in the United States at an ideal time to make sense of that which was new in the life of the church in his new land. In this section, by way of conclusion, I do two things. First, I enumerate key elements of the positive assessment of denomination worked out by Schaff. Second, I consider some weaknesses in Schaff’s assessment, as well as the loss of his contribution following his death. Schaff recognized some of the key theological cruxes in making a theological assessment of denomination. One striking feature of a theological assessment of denomination is that it presents the theologian with forced choices on some basic theological issues. First, Schaff recognized the need to make a theological judgment about what has happened in the history of the church, a judgment about whether concrete historical developments were part of God’s good purpose for the church and thus for all people and all creation—or not. Faced with the massive reality of religious liberty and denomination in the United States, Schaff toyed with outright condemnation in his early writings, but came to a contrary view. Second, in coming to that positive assessment, Schaff recognized (implicitly) that unity and diversity were symbiotically related, and that the meaning of each was far from self-evident. He accepted the responsibility this recognition placed on him, by trying to work out what unity and diversity should properly mean when applied to the church, and how those meanings were grounded theologically, in God’s ways with the created order. Not all theologians who speak of the church’s unity (and disunity) are so clear in discharging this responsibility. Third, Schaff recognized that theological reflection on denomination required careful attention to terms. The church/sect (or established/dissenting) distinction made no sense in the context of American religious liberty. These distinctions failed to communicate what was happening in the church in the United States. Schaff

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paid attention to the terms being used, and the way they were being used, and he offered clarification. Fourth, Schaff had the grace to recognize that he was himself implicated in the theological assessment of denomination because he was a Protestant. If structural differentiation within the church is unfaithful, then Protestantism itself is a mistake. Protestants who insist that the unity of the church requires that all Christians be in one institutional structure will need to make choices in defending their own separated ecclesial location. All these matters, present in force in Schaff’s writings, remain vital for a theological account of denomination today. Schaff was a forerunner. He recognized where the theological cruxes lay and he made a choice about how to understand and order key theological affirmations in the face of the forced choices presented by those cruxes. And yet, he failed to launch a sustained theological conversation about the assessment of denomination. His contribution to this theological assessment was swept aside. There are two central reasons for this: Schaff’s lack of systematic rigor, and changes in academic disciplines and their drawing of boundary lines. The story of shifting boundary lines has already been told. Schaff founded the American Society for Church History to advance a deeply theological vision of the importance of the study of the history of the church. This vision was overturned, and for a decade the ASCH ceased to exist as a separate organization. The establishment of the ASCH, already in its original form, was a marker of the rise of disciplinary boundaries within theological study, boundaries that have continually served to isolate theologians from the work of church historians. Theologians have thus faced double hurdles in appropriating Schaff’s work on denomination: the hurdle between systematic theology and church history (which has included historical theology),77 and the hurdle set up between Schaff’s understanding of church history and a scientific, academically respected understanding. Schaff’s contributions to a theological assessment of denomination have in part been lost behind these barriers. Schaff’s contributions have also been lost because of weaknesses in the forms of those contributions. Thanks to their shared work on the Mercersburg Theology, Schaff is often considered alongside John Williamson Nevin. E. Brooks Holifield has highlighted a difference 77

At present there are efforts to remove these hurdles (see n. 65).

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between the two that brings out a key weakness in Schaff’s writings on denomination. Holifield observes of Nevin: “Although he never wrote a systematic theology, he was the most systematic American religious thinker of his era.”78 We have already seen Holifield’s observation that inconsistencies in Schaff’s explication of organic development “suggest that philosophical precision was not his driving aim.”79 His late writings on denomination—particularly “The Discord and Concord of Christendom” and “The Reunion of Christendom”—are spare presentations of Schaff’s theological assessment. Schaff presents particular claims that are key to his argument in compressed form, rather than building a full argument for those claims. Schaff affirms that exuberant diversity is characteristic of God’s work in the world. But he makes the point by offering a series of examples of rich diversity in the created order. Examples substitute for argument. Schaff made his contributions to the assessment of denomination in a form that did not have sufficient systematic density and weight to enable them to make their own way. He was, rightly, regarded as the model church historian, yet, his way of doing church history was regarded as outdated, and his writings on denomination shared that fate. And yet, Schaff is remarkable for his ability to apply his theological commitments and training to a novel situation in a novel way. His writings on denomination are vital because he recognized key theological issues raised by denomination, and he sought to address them. It was a loss for the church that Schaff’s contributions on this matter were lost. Schaff provides key way markers in the effort to make a theological account of denomination.

78

Holifield, Theology, 475. Holifield, Theology, 474.

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2 H. Richard Niebuhr: Rejecting and accepting denomination

Introduction H. Richard Niebuhr’s The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929) is a classic assessment of the institutional structures adopted by the church in America, particularly denomination. It remains a standard reference for treatments of denomination down to the present day.1 Niebuhr’s book has often been taken to be a definitive account of the evils of denomination, an indictment that decisively settles the case against denomination. But that was not Niebuhr’s own view of the achievement of Social Sources, nor does condemnation represent Niebuhr’s settled view of denomination. In what follows I consider Niebuhr’s understanding and assessment of denomination, beginning with Social Sources and moving on from that book to consider his views across his career. Like Schaff’s, Niebuhr’s view of denomination shifted. The sharp critique found in Social Sources left Niebuhr, in his own word, “dissatisfied.” Niebuhr began to address that dissatisfaction 1

Social Sources is used in just this way by e.g., Stanley Hauerwas, “H. Richard Niebuhr,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology Since 1918, ed. David F. Ford with Rachel Muers (Malden, MA:  Blackwell Publishing, 3rd ed., 2005), 194–203; and Gregory Baum, “The Church in a North-American Perspective,” in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, ed. Gerard Mannion and Lewis Mudge (New York: Routledge, 2008), 354.

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in his next book, The Kingdom of God in America (1937). His views shifted further in the years following that book, as he came to acknowledge with increasing clarity the legitimate place of denomination in living the Christian faith. I begin by considering how Niebuhr analyzes denomination in The Social Sources of Denominationalism. Central to his analysis is the distinction between church and sect, borrowed from Ernst Troeltsch but refashioned by Niebuhr for an American context that did not (and does not) match Troeltsch’s European setting, with its state-sanctioned churches. I note strengths of Niebuhr’s analysis and also offer a critique of his analysis that identifies four significant failings. As noted, Niebuhr himself found the analysis of denomination in Social Sources to be unsatisfactory—particularly regarding church unity and disunity—and set about to correct its failings, beginning with The Kingdom of God in America. His correction of Social Sources unfolds gradually in the writings that followed. The Kingdom of God in America represents the beginning of a process of correction that stretches beyond its pages. But the basic shape of Niebuhr’s correction is already apparent there, and came into fuller expression in subsequent writings. I consider those beginning stages and the general shape that Niebuhr’s correction begins to take in The Kingdom of God in America. In writings dating from the mid-1940s through his death in 1962, Niebuhr fully develops the correction of Social Sources already apparent in The Kingdom of God in America. I draw out this fully developed assessment by considering several of Niebuhr’s essays and his substantive work in The Purpose of the Church and its Ministry (1956). Finally, I offer a few concluding remarks.

The Social Sources of Denominationalism Niebuhr’s first book, The Social Sources of Denominationalism,2 raises the standard condemnations of denomination, reflected so clearly in the early publications of Philip Schaff, to a higher power. 2

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denomnationalism (New York:  Henry Holt and Co., 1929). This book has been reprinted many times:  e.g., in 1957 (New York: Meridian Books), in 1975 (New York: New American Library), and in 1987 (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith).

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It is a jeremiad against the capitulation of all Christian groups (not only denominations), across the entire history of Christianity, to forces alien to the Christian faith, including social forces that destroy human well-being and resist humanity’s movement toward fulfillment. Ironically, The Social Sources of Denominationalism grew out of Niebuhr’s effort to teach a class on symbolics. Symbolics was a common term for the study of the confessional statements of the various denominations, seeking to create understanding of the differences between and the commonalities of various denominational groups. Study of such matters has for the most part become part of ecumenical theology.3 Indeed, what was once called symbolics remains a central element of ecumenical dialogue.4 Niebuhr found the study of confessional documents to be useless in the task of understanding the differences and commonalities of the various denominations. The Social Sources of Denominationalism is the result of Niebuhr’s search for a better approach to the differences among ecclesial bodies, particularly denominations: The present work is the outcome of a course in “Symbolics” which the author was called upon to teach some years ago. The effort to distinguish churches primarily by reference to their doctrine and to approach the problem of church unity from a purely theological point of view appeared to him to be a procedure so artificial and fruitless that he found himself compelled to turn 3 See Timothy F. Lull, “Symbolics,” in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. Alan Richardson and John Bowden (Philadelphia:  The Westminster Press, 1983), 557, col. 1–559, col. 2. “The discipline of symbolic in its broader definition of giving a description of the comparative life and teachings of the churches became known in Germany as Konfessionskunde” (558, col. 2). And, “the field of theological inquiry which was traditionally known as symbolic is being recast as ecumenical theology in a changed church situation. Yet in that very process, the traditional techniques of symbolic (historical and theological examination of formally held positions of the churches) still play a helpful role. So great have been the changes in recent decades that the major modern works of symbolic remain to be written at this time” (559, col. 2). Philip Schaff made many contributions to the field of symbolics, perhaps most significant of them being The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), a recent reprint of a three-volume set first published in 1876. 4 The Roman Catholic–Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Justification of the Faith is one fruit of the study once known as symbolics.

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from theology to history, sociology, and ethics for a more satisfactory account of denominational differences and a more significant approach to the question of union.5 Niebuhr’s “more satisfactory account” and “more significant approach” were extended attacks on Christianity’s embrace of ideals and identities determined by cultural forces inimical to what Christianity could and must provide to humanity. Niebuhr announces his indictment in the first sentence of the first chapter:  “Christendom has often achieved apparent success by ignoring the precepts of its founder.”6 Christian ecclesial bodies have engaged in a massive violation of Christ’s message. Niebuhr’s ways of identifying that to which the church has surrendered are somewhat fluid—the caste system, economic status, regional difference, and race. One constant is the caste system of the surrounding society. “For the denominations, churches, sects, are sociological groups whose principle of differentiation is to be sought in their conformity to the order of social classes and castes. It would not be true to affirm that the denominations are not religious groups with religious purposes, but it is true that they represent the accommodation of religion to the caste system.” The denominations, churches, and sects thus embody the divisive, destructive forces they should serve to combat: “They are emblems, therefore, of the victory of the world over the church, of the secularization of Christianity, of the church’s sanction of that divisiveness which the church’s gospel condemns. Denominationalism thus represents the moral failure of Christianity.”7 Niebuhr also constantly refers to economic forces of division: Denominational Christianity, that is a Christianity which surrenders its leadership to the social forces of national and economic life, offers no hope to the divided world. Lacking an integrating ethics, lacking a universal appeal, it continues to follow the 5 Niebuhr, Social Sources, vii. That final comment, “a more significant approach to the question of union” turns out to be telling. Niebuhr later identifies the approach to unity taken in Social Sources as the book’s greatest weakness. We will return to this in considering The Kingdom of God in America. 6 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 3. 7 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 25.

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fortunes of the world, gaining petty victories in a war that it has long lost. From it the world can expect none of the prophetic guidance it requires in its search for synthesis.8 Economic forces of division both feed and reinforce other sources of social division: the divide between richer and poorer, which in Social Sources is focused as the divide between the disinherited and the bourgeoisie;9 the churches’ adherence to nationalism;10 the impact of differing situations in various regions, identified in Social Sources as Sectionalism;11 the impact of immigration;12 and the color line dividing black and white people in the United States.13 Central to Niebuhr’s analysis of denominations is his use of the church/sect distinction, taken over from Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch. “Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch have demonstrated how important are the differences in the sociological structure of religious groups in the determination of their doctrine. The primary distinction to be made here is that between the church and the sect, of which the former is a natural social group akin to the family or the nation while the latter is a voluntary association.”14 As we have seen, Philip Schaff accepted these terms (church/sect) early on, but later rejected them because of their failure to grasp what he saw happening in American Christianity. But Niebuhr defines these

8 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 275. See also the opening sentences of Chapter 2, “The Churches of the Disinherited”: “One phase of denominationalism is largely explicable by means of a modified economic interpretation of religious history; for the divisions of the church have been occasioned more frequently by the direct and indirect operation of economic factors than by the influence of any other major interest of man. Furthermore, it is evident that economic stratification is often responsible for maintaining divisions which were originally due to differences of another sort” (Social Sources, 26). 9 Niebuhr, Social Sources, Chapters 2–3 on “The Churches of the Disinherited” and Chapter 4 on “The Churches of the Middle Class” (26–105). 10 Niebuhr, Social Sources, Chapter 5, “Nationalism and the Churches” (106–34). 11 Niebuhr, Social Sources, Chapter  6, “Sectionalism and Denominationalism in America” and Chapter  7, “Sectionalism and Denominationalism (continued)” (135–99). 12 Niebuhr, Social Sources, Chapter 8, “The Churches of the Immigrants” (200–35). 13 Niebuhr, Social Sources, Chapter  9, “Denominationalism and the Color Line” (236–63). 14 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 17.

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terms somewhat differently than does Schaff. Where Schaff defined church and sect in terms of their relationships to the state, Niebuhr defines them in relationship to something that encompasses the state, but is larger. Niebuhr never settles on a single name for this something larger, though society or culture probably come closest.15 Church and sect are defined by their relationships to the larger society or culture. He describes the difference between church and sect in this way: The difference has been well described as lying primarily in the fact that members are born into the church while they must join the sect. Churches are inclusive institutions, frequently are national in scope, and emphasize the universalism of the gospel; while sects are exclusive in character, appeal to the individualistic element in Christianity, and emphasize its ethical demands. Membership in a church is socially obligatory, the necessary consequence of birth into a family or nation, and no special requirements condition its privileges; the sect, on the other hand, is likely to demand some definite type of religious experience as a pre-requisite of membership.16 Social forces are the primary determinants for sorting people into churches or sects. Sects draw those who are marginalized and disadvantaged. Sects provide two critical things for those in such circumstances: religious experiences rich in emotion, and a vision of the reversal of the present, unjust social order that causes their suffering. Churches draw those who are better off economically and educationally, providing support for their way of life, lived in a context that is advantageous to those who are socially, economically, and educationally privileged. Niebuhr emphasizes that there is dynamism in these categories, particularly for sects, which have difficulty maintaining their sectarianism. The second generation, who are born into the group

15

There is an indeterminateness in Niebuhr’s use of church and sect that makes for good polemic, but is unhelpful for clear theological thinking. That indeterminateness has remained a feature of uses of these terms within the life of the churches. It is interesting that in the study of religion, sect has been sharply critiqued and has fallen into disuse. 16 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 17–18.

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(and thus violate a central point of differentiation between sect and church, as defined sociologically by Niebuhr), presses sects to lessen their demands on members. Those born into the second and subsequent generations may not have the religious experience that is a marker of membership. They need to be educated into the sect’s beliefs and way of life. “The sociological character of sectarianism, however, is almost always modified in the course of time by the natural processes of birth and death . . . By its very nature the sectarian type of organization is valid only for one generation. The children born to the voluntary members of the first generation begin to make the sect a church long before they have arrived at the years of discretion.”17 By the very nature of the social forces at work in all groups, sects naturally become churches, unless some coercive force is at work to stop the process.18 While common usage suggests that sect is something bad, and church is (by comparison) something good, Niebuhr does not valorize either. He does, however, affirm the value and importance of sects in a way reminiscent of the early Schaff’s claim that sects play a medicinal, corrective role. Niebuhr affirms this positive role in a passage that raises—and does not answer—the question of exactly what it is about denomination(s) that is wrong. The evils of denominationalism do not lie, however, in this differentiation of church and sects. On the contrary, the rise of new sects to champion the uncompromising ethics of Jesus and “to preach the gospel to the poor” has again and again been the effective means of recalling Christendom to its mission. This phase of denominational history must be regarded as helpful, despite the

17

Niebuhr, Social Sources, 19. Niebuhr identifies the Anabaptists and the Quakers as sects who have failed to follow the natural process of movement from sect to church, due to violent repression. “But with [Menno] Simons began also the inevitable tendency accompanying the rise of a religious group in fortune and culture—the tendency toward a relaxation of the ethical demand and toward formalization of the cult. From violent revolution the path of development led through stubborn non-resistance and unyielding assertion by non-assertion of the principles of equality and love to an accommodating quietism. The Anabaptists, however, were too broken by the Protestant Inquisition to become a strong church, affiliated with wealth and prestige. Isolated by persecution, as the Jews had been isolated, they formed a narrow sect” Niebuhr, Social Sources, 38–9 (for the Quakers, see 53). 18

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break in unity which it brings about. The evil of denominationalism lies in the conditions which makes [sic] the rise of sects desirable and necessary: in the failure of the churches to transcend the social conditions which fashion them into caste-organizations, to sublimate their loyalties to standards and institutions only remotely relevant if not contrary to the Christian ideal, to resist the temptation of making their own self-preservation and extension the primary object of their endeavor.19 At the same time, Niebuhr’s attack on the moral failure of Christian groups takes in both sects and churches. He indicts both for embodying not the Christian message, but rather the divisive, destructive values of their social context. Religious liberty, so important to Schaff’s changing assessment of denomination, also plays a part in Niebuhr’s analysis, though an ambiguous one. What democracy and free land have meant for the political and economic development of America the separation of church and state has meant for its religious development. On the one hand that separation has given to each immigrant group the privilege of maintaining and developing its own religious faith; on the other hand it has placed the immigrant churches in an environment of free competition, unprotected and unmolested by state interference, and so it has provided the background for a process of religious accommodation, of a kind of religious Americanization.20 Americanization has meant that when European churches arrive in the United States, they find that they are now denominations.21 The state-sanctioned or -preferred church, common in Europe, turns out not to be the universal model for the church, but rather a highly contextual way of being the church. Adaptation to the American context, Niebuhr claims, has been part of a process of

19

Niebuhr, Social Sources, 21. Niebuhr does not reference Schaff, nor is there any clear indication that he was engaging Schaff’s work on denomination, church/sect, or religious liberty. 20 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 201. It is unclear how state coercion in matters of religion would impede the process of religious accommodation, or Americanization. 21 This is a point I learned from my former colleague Charles Wiley.

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developing a distinctively American type of church institution. “So the accommodation of the immigrant churches to the new political environment has tended in some respects toward the establishment of a new, common American church type . . . This tendency toward uniformity has been reinforced by their common assimilation of a new culture as well as by their common adjustment to a new type of civil government.”22 Faced with this homogenization, denominations have emphasized their distinctiveness over against all the other instances of this new type: “The process of synthesis has been accompanied by differentiation . . . The situation, as is the case in other kinds of competition, promoted a high social selfconsciousness and the emphasis of the peculiar characteristics of the group. Agreements with competitors were minimized, disagreements stressed.”23 In the final chapter of Social Sources Niebuhr considers what is to be done in the face of the church’s massive failure. Niebuhr sees human society outside the church (he names it the “world”) riven by divisive forces that keep the world from functioning as it should. The church, for Niebuhr, must supply the key antidote to this social division and conflict: The problem of the world is the problem of a synthesis of culture—of the building up of an organic whole in which the various interests and the separate nations and classes will be integrated into a harmonious, interacting society, serving one common end in diverse manners. Such a synthesis of culture can be built only upon a common world-view and a common ethics. Without these no civilization has flourished or left a contribution for the future. And every civilization which has possessed itself by possessing such a synthesis has received it from its religion.24 In Niebuhr’s analysis, the task of humanity is to synthesize, to integrate, to find ways to live harmoniously. The only way to succeed 22

Niebuhr, Social Sources, 211. Niebuhr, Social Sources, 220, 221. This point has also been made by Sidney Mead. See e.g., Sidney Mead, “Denominationalism: The Shape of Protestantism in America,” Church History 23, No. 4 (December 1954): 315–18. 24 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 266. 23

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in doing so is to work on the basis of a powerful, gripping vision of such wholeness. Only religion can supply such a vision and motivating force. Yet, the church has persistently failed to provide such vision and force. When Niebuhr says that religion must be the source of that vision and force, he does not necessarily mean Christianity. Niebuhr notes that some in his time were looking to the East for a religion that could provide what was needed. “Hence there is abroad the cry for a new religion; homesick souls delude themselves with the belief that some Eastern temple, redolent with the incense of quiet centuries, will offer a refuge from the distractions of a divided world.”25 Niebuhr rejects this proposal. He rejects it not because Eastern religions are incapable of supplying what is needed, nor because Christianity is objectively superior (either generally superior, or a superior source of integrative vision), but because the West has historic ties to Christianity, and it would not be possible to adapt Western culture and Eastern religion to one another. “The realistic observer of social life, while acknowledging the æsthetic beauty of an Oriental creed, knows that the day is too far spent, the working day of the West too far advanced, for the realization of such a new dawn of Eastern light.”26 Western civilization will have to look to Christianity. And Christianity has a duty to be the instrument of this general human, societal need. How, then, shall that be done? How can there be a church that supplies Western society with the needed integrative vision? Niebuhr offers two suggestions. First, he detects social forces at work that have a tendency to bring people together across divisions. It is true that under the influence of social forces which are arising out of the modern world, with the extension of communication, the passing of provincialisms, the rise of once suppressed economic groups to financial respectability and the acceptance on the part of a vast majority of such a population as the American of standard common culture, old lines of cleavage are being erased and the possibilities of church union on the basis of a common social background are being established. 25 26

Niebuhr, Social Sources, 268. Niebuhr, Social Sources, 269.

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Already in the 1920s, Niebuhr saw forces of societal and cultural homogenization at work.27 Given his strong view of the dependence of all existing ecclesial bodies on cultural and societal forces, it was logical that the churches would be drawn along in the wake of these homogenizing trends. But Niebuhr was also deeply aware of social and cultural forces of division. In a strikingly pragmatic passage, he proposes that the leaders of the churches should import social and cultural homogenizing tendencies to bring people together, alert always to counter-tendencies toward division.28 In the end, however, social and cultural forces of homogenization are unreliable. Niebuhr’s second suggestion is more radical: the church as it exists needs to be eliminated, obliterated, and a different church established. Utilizing social and cultural forces of homogenization without being used by those forces presents an insoluble problem, which “points to the need of some other type of Christianity than the religion which merely adjusts itself to social conditions whether these make for union or for schism.”29 Niebuhr finds that other type of Christianity in the Gospels. The Christianity of the gospels doubtless contains the required ideal. Its purpose is not the foundation of an ecclesiastical institution or the proclamation of a metaphysical creed, though it seeks the formation of a divine society and presupposes the metaphysics of a Christlike God. Its purpose is the revelation to men of their potential childhood to the Father and their possible brotherhood with each other. That revelation is made not in terms of dogma but of life, above all in the life of Christ. The ideal that humans need in order to fulfill the human project and to live lives that are whole and fully integrated is contained in the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus Christ. “The summum bonum which this faith sets before men is nothing less than the eternal harmony of love, in which each individual can realize the 27

“The transition from cultural heterogeneity to cultural homogeneity on the part of the American people” (Niebuhr, Social Sources, 270). 28 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 273. The pragmatism in this passage is surprising given Niebuhr’s persistent condemnation of compromises made by the churches to advance their interests. 29 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 274.

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full potentiality of an eternal life in self-sacrificing devotion to the Beloved Community of the Father and all the brethren.”30 Those outside the church, Niebuhr claims, are longing for this ideal and will respond warmly to it. The church that conveys this ideal to humankind will be a church unlike the church that actually exists. Indeed, such a church has only occasionally actually existed. For the proclamation of this Christianity of Christ and the Gospels a church is needed which has transcended the divisions of the world and has adjusted itself not to the local interests and needs of classes, races, or nations but to the common interests of mankind and to the constitution of the unrealized kingdom of God. No denominational Christianity, no matter how broad its scope, suffices for the task.31 Such a church will be, Niebuhr says, supranational, it will practice the sharing of goods so as to do away with the distinction of rich and poor, it will be interracial and multicultural. It will produce these same fruits in the world.32 Niebuhr insists that this church has actually existed in the world, if only for brief moments. It has been an ecclesiola in ecclesia. The church of the book of Acts, which shared possessions, was one embodiment. So too the early Franciscan movement, and the early Quaker movement under George Fox. And, Niebuhr claims, it has existed in less-noticed embodiments across history:  “There have been countless other, less dramatic appearances of the fellowship of love, but for the most part it does its work quietly, in hospitals under the tropical sun or in the icy north, in prisons where lovers of peace atone for the hatreds of war, in industrial establishments where owners and workers have learned to share their problems and their profits.”33 What is to be done? Eliminate existing forms of Christian social bodies, and establish, on an ongoing and permanent basis, a way of being Christian together that has managed to exist only in flashes 30

Niebuhr, Social Sources, 279. Niebuhr, Social Sources, 280. 32 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 280–1. 33 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 283. 31

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across history. This belief that the only way to a faithful church is wiping away existing church bodies, to be replaced by an organization that fits Niebuhr’s vision of a faithful church, is a deeply Protestant move, embodying a willingness to condemn and dismiss the messy church that actually exits, in favor of a more faithful ideal that exists in the theologian’s mind. Two strengths of The Social Sources of Denominationalism should be noted. First, the book is rich in historical examples, particularly in its middle chapters (2–9). Niebuhr finds instances of the moral failings he condemns in a wide array of American Christian groups. This is as it should be, given that his theory is that concrete social conditions determine the shape of denominations as they actually exist. Social Sources presents itself as (in at least significant part) a sociological analysis, and sociological evidence is both required and supplied. The richness and range of these examples are part of the reason the book has had such an impact. Second, Niebuhr’s critique of the color line in the church identifies perhaps the purest example of social forces of division embraced by Christians in the United States. The social causes of schism have been obscured so frequently by theological rationalization that the frankness with which the color line has been drawn in the church is unusual . . . the sufficient reason for the frankness with which the color line has been drawn in the church is the fact that race discrimination is so respectable an attitude in America that it could be accepted by the church without subterfuge of any sort. The church’s embrace of division on racial lines remains an ongoing challenge to the church, a focus of intensive discussion and of coordinated effort both within denominations and between them.34 Niebuhr’s attack on existing denominations is complete, played out at length and in detail. At the same time, it is deeply problematic. First, from the beginning of the book, Niebuhr sets up a stark contrast between the ideal and the real, which is essential to his 34

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), for example, has made a denominational commitment to address racial division in its “Growing the Church Deep and Wide” initiative (see http://gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/deepandwide).

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critique of existing church structures, and is a quasi-gnostic devaluation of that which is embodied. Embodiment is always a betrayal of the ideal, and is therefore always to be critiqued, indeed assailed. This contrast is so stark, however, that it cannot be maintained, and by the final chapter, when Niebuhr needs to offer guidance to groups of Christians who are embodied and who seek to shape an embodied life together, the stark contrast between ideal and real is set aside. Second, Niebuhr’s critique and his positive proposal depend on a rejection of the church as it has existed across its entire existence. In Niebuhr’s jeremiad the church has been a betrayal of Christianity across its entire history. Niebuhr’s understanding of history and of the activity of the triune God in that history contrast sharply with Schaff’s views. Niebuhr’s condemnation of the church raises questions about the possibility for creatures, who are real and embodied, to embody a religious faith viewed as such an ideal. Niebuhr’s stark contrast raises the question of whether the Holy Spirit has been able to overcome opposing forces. Third, Social Sources is a relentlessly untheological book. It reduces the church’s existence to material factors, and is deterministic in its account of the role social forces play in determining the structure of the church. Finally, in Social Sources, Niebuhr fails to identify and account for his own implication in the very denominationalism he so vociferously denounces (he was ordained in, served, and remained a member of the German Evangelical Synod, a body he could not possibly have mistaken for anything other than a denomination). Niebuhr’s analysis suggests that there is little an individual—say, H. Richard Niebuhr, for example—can do about the pervasive faithlessness of actual church institutions. This is connected to his proposed “ways to unity.” On the one hand, the true church, which human society needs as an antidote to tendencies toward social division and conflict, can happen in daily life in spite of the faithlessness of the church structures in which one actually lives, meaning that one can be faithful without addressing the faithless church structures in which one lives. On the other hand, for the true church to come into being will require completely sweeping away all existing church structures, a sort of scorched-earth policy, which is a task far beyond the ability of any individual to produce, and thus a justification (whatever its adequacy or lack thereof) for failing to enact that policy. Consider each of these four failings in Niebuhr’s analysis. First, Niebuhr sets up a stark contrast between real and ideal.

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It has often been pointed out that no ideal can be incorporated without the loss of some of its ideal character . . . And the gospel of Christ is especially subject to this sacrifice of character in the interest of organic embodiment; for the very essence of Christianity lies in the tension which it presupposes or creates between the worlds of nature and of spirit, and in its resolution of that conflict by means of justifying faith. It demands the impossible in conduct and belief; it runs counter to the instinctive life of man and exalts the rationality of the irrational; in a world of relativity it calls for unyielding loyalty to unchangeable absolutes . . . At the end, if not at the beginning, of every effort to incorporate Christianity there is, therefore, a compromise . . . The fact that compromise is inevitable does not make it less an evil.35 Niebuhr cites examples of the necessary loss that occurs when one embodies an ideal, a loss that is especially acute when groups attempt to embody ideals: Clothe its faith in terms of philosophy, whether medieval or modern, and you lose the meaning of its high desires, of its living experience, reducing these to a set of opinions often irrelevant, sometimes contrary, to the original content. Organize its ethics—as organize them you must whenever two or three are gathered in the name of Christ—and the free spirit of forgiving love becomes a new law, requiring interpretation, commentary, and all the machinery of justice— just the sort of impersonal relationship which the gospel denies and combats.36 This contrast is thematic for most of the rest of Social Sources. In the following chapters Niebuhr lays out the various ways in which Christian groups have organized and thought about their common life. For Niebuhr, every Christian ecclesial body necessarily makes claims that are at best irrelevant to and at worst outright contradictions of Christian faith. Wholesale condemnation of the church is, of course, not uncommon among Christians, and particularly among Protestants. The ideal is played as judge of the real,

35

Niebuhr, Social Sources, 4, 5. Niebuhr, Social Sources, 4.

36

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the invisible is set over against the sinful, base, quotidian, and visible. Armed with this distinction, Niebuhr scans the history of the church and condemns it wholesale. The history of the church is a history of failure. In the end, when Niebuhr faces the need to tell readers how to avoid this massive failure of the church, he backs off his stark contrast. After detailing how wrong it is for the church to accept social forces, he recommends that it would be wise for leaders in the church to make use of social forces in order to achieve the aim of embodying the absolute. Against his own claim that embodiment of the ideal necessarily distorts it, Niebuhr nevertheless recommends sweeping away existing structures and setting up new structures that will—in some way that he never clarifies—succeed where the old structures failed. Second, Niebuhr’s contrast, and the polemic tied to it, present a view of the history of the church that raises questions about creatureliness and pneumatology. Has the history of the church been a long, unrelieved saga of betrayal, from the church’s earliest years right down to the present? Clearly, for Niebuhr, the answer is yes. For Schaff the history of the church was the unfolding, within creation, of the ideal. For Niebuhr it is a history of betrayal. The only way to be faithful in the present and the future is to reject that entire history and start over. Niebuhr’s ideal/real contrast, which demands a wholesale condemnation of the church across its history, raises deeper theological questions. Is Incarnation possible? Is it possible for human beings and human groups faithfully (which is not the same as exhaustively) to embody God’s good purposes? Is the Holy Spirit able to call forth and sustain faithful embodiment of the Christian faith not only for moments in the lives of individuals, but also in gathered communities of Christians across time? Certainly, as noted above, Niebuhr is willing to grant that there have been moments—isolated, brief moments—when Christian groups have faithfully embodied Christian faith. He offers three such moments: the church described as sharing possessions in Acts 2–5 (though apparently not the church of Acts 6 that established an office of deacon to see to the fair distribution of those shared possessions), the early Franciscan movement (before it took on substantive institutional forms), George Fox and the Society of Friends under his influence (again, before the institutional forms that the movement would eventually develop). Beyond

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these three Niebuhr makes an appeal to hidden instances of faithful embodiment of Christian faith.37 The striking thing, though, about all these examples is the absence of meaningful ecclesial structure in each. The church has on rare occasions been faithful, but only by not being fully structured as a human social group. This puts to readers the question: has the Holy Spirit, the One sent by Jesus Christ, the One promised to be with the followers of Jesus Christ always, in fact been a failure?38 On Niebuhr’s account, the Holy Spirit has indeed been largely unable to achieve its aims. Reality, on Niebuhr’s account, is not a medium within which the Holy Spirit can work successfully. Third, these problems serve as one major illustration of an odd feature of Social Sources:  it is a relentlessly untheological book. There are moments when Niebuhr acknowledges that nonmaterial factors (like theological convictions) have to be taken into account in explaining why the real church is what it is, conceding that theology does play a role. But those acknowledgments have no traction in Niebuhr’s account; his concessions are only apparent. In fact, there is a curious stylistic tic that characteristically shows up when Niebuhr makes these acknowledgments. It is not possible to reduce all religious opinions and ideas to the category of rationalization, that is, to explain them as results of the universal human tendency to find respectable reasons for a practice desired from motives quite independent of the reasons urged. The psychology which regards all intellectual activity as such a rationalizing process is too patently one-sided to be able to maintain itself in the long run. Yet it is no less evident that much opinion or belief is in fact mere rationalization and that the reasons advanced for pursuing a given course of action are often far removed from the inspiring motive.39 “Yet”:  what precedes this word is a concession, allowing that there might be nonmaterial motives (though Niebuhr is not willing to acknowledge that these other motives are specifically 37

Niebuhr, Social Sources, 278–84. See, e.g., Jn 15:26–7, 16:4–15, and Mt. 28:16–20. 39 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 13–14. 38

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theological).40 Once Niebuhr has enunciated his yet, these nonmaterial motives fall completely out of view.41 Not only does Niebuhr himself offer no account of what those motives might be, and how they work; he offers no account of how anyone might take those motives into consideration. Having articulated a possible concession, Niebuhr returns to his materialistic explanation, and theological considerations never come into view. Material conditions determine what the real church is. Niebuhr’s analysis is relentlessly untheological. Undergirding Niebuhr’s materialistic determinism is a philosophical analysis. Where Schaff built on Hegel and Herder, Niebuhr builds (whether directly or mediated through Weber and Troeltsch) on Marx. The base determines the superstructure. The material means of production, which is to say, the economic ordering of society, determines the shape and content of ideas that are expressed in cultural realms, including religion. Theological concerns are epiphenomena, to be seen through—which is what Niebuhr does in Social Sources. Fourth, in The Social Sources of Denominationalism Niebuhr fails to identify, much less account for, his own entanglement in the denominationalism he so strenuously denounces. Niebuhr’s father was a pastor in the Evangelical Synod of North America. H. Richard Niebuhr was ordained to the ministry by the Evangelical Synod in 1916 and pastored one of its congregations from 1916 to 1918.42 Later the Synod merged, in 1934, with the (German) Reformed Church in the United States to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church. In 1957 the merged denomination joined with others to form the United Church of Christ. Niebuhr was a member of all three of these denominations. He could have been in no doubt that the real church body in and through which he held his ministry and lived out his faith was a denomination. In Social Sources he does mention the German Evangelical Synod, citing it 40

Elsewhere Niebuhr identifies these nonmaterial motives as ideological—see Niebuhr, Social Sources, 16, 20. 41 For further examples of this use of “yet” see Niebuhr, Social Sources, 27, 78–9. 42 It is possible that Niebuhr’s fierce condemnation of denomination in Social Sources is driven by a need to reckon with his own denomination and the frustrations of doing so—both his own frustrations, and those of his father and brother as together they sought to lead their denomination to a broader and more positive engagement with the majority culture of the United States.

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as one among the “churches of the immigrants,” an instance of the social forces at work within immigrant denominations.43 But nowhere does Niebuhr offer an account of how he personally can be faithful in his particular denomination. He offers readers nothing. This is connected to his proposal that the only way for the church to be faithful is to sweep away all existing church structures and build a new, different, faithful church where the ground has been completely cleared. Such a vision gives no place to remedial work within one’s existing denomination. Existing denominations cannot increase in faithfulness:  they are entirely faithless. Furthermore, sweeping away all existing church structures is far too big a job for one individual. It would require a massive movement. An individual can participate in that mass movement, but as long as there is no mass movement there is nothing to participate in. So, one can perhaps do whatever, in one’s judgment, will help to bring about that mass movement. But meanwhile one apparently remains in the faithless ecclesial body one is in. Whatever his reasoning, Niebuhr remained a member and pastor in what was clearly a denomination. The Social Sources of Denominationalism has had an outsized impact. It has for decades been taken as a definitive statement on denomination, a definitive condemnation. It has influenced the work of church history, but has also had an impact on systematic theology. In the latter field the book has served to render denomination a non-topic, something that does not need to be addressed theologically, something that need only be considered long enough to condemn it wholesale, a condemnation that can be cast in language as strong as that used by Niebuhr. Social Sources rendered the topic of denomination radioactive amongst theologians. Russell Richey captured this radioactivity well in an essay published in 1976: “In mainstream Protestantism . . . denominationalism is taboo. A topic best shunned. If comment is required, denunciation shows good taste and theological sophistication. It is not uncommon to find denominations and the fact of denominational divisions scathingly treated and blamed for the various ills in Protestantism.”44 Ironically, even theologians who are members 43

Niebuhr, Social Sources, 215–16. Russell E. Richey, “Denominationalism: A Theological Mandate,” Drew Gateway 47 (1976–7): 93. 44

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of denominations, who are as deeply entagled in denomination as Niebuhr, have carefully respected and supported this taboo. This represents a failure on the part of theologians to do the work of the field. The Social Sources of Denominationalism is inadequate to bear this weight.45 The time is long past for systematic theologians to do better. Niebuhr himself recognized this, and over the rest of his life worked toward a more adequate theological assessment of denomination.

“The account left me dissatisfied at a number of points”: Correcting The Social Sources of Denominationalism The Social Sources of Denominationalism is a narrowly focused book. Jeremiads always are:  it is the nature of the genre. Social Sources focuses on the submission of all forms of the church, past as well as present, to social factors that are at best extraneous to and at worst inimical to the Christian faith.46 Within the bounds of this focus Niebuhr is relentless:  again and again he provides examples of such submission, from across the history of the church—especially the history of the church in the United States, but not only there. The power of the book comes in significant part from Niebuhr’s intense focus on his accusation. But that 45

James R.  Nieman, who argues that there is a legitimate place for denomination within the unity of the church, offers a different, complementary critique of The Social Sources of Denominationalism in “The Theological Work of Denominations,” in Church, Identity, and Change:  Theology and Denominational Structures in Unsettled Times, ed. David A  Roozen and James R.  Nieman (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. 2005), 649–53. Nieman’s need to address Social Sources even in an article on the topic is testimony to the continuing importance of the book. 46 As such, the title of the book is misleading. As we noted earlier in closely considering the book, Niebuhr’s critique is not limited to denominations—as though other institutional forms of the church were less likely to be subservient to social, cultural forces. Niebuhr’s analysis reaches to all institutional forms. Denominations are immediately at hand, they are the institutional form in the midst of which Niebuhr lived and carried out his theological work, and thus denominations are the immediate target of his jeremiad. But they are far from being the only target. Social Sources is a sweeping condemnation of every single institutional form taken by the Christian church across its entire existence.

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intense focus should not blind readers to the thinness of the claim he is making. No one was clearer about the thinness and limitations of The Social Sources of Denominationalism than Niebuhr himself. He had painted himself into a very small corner. Niebuhr appears to have recognized that thinness very quickly and to have set to work to offer correction soon after the publication of Social Sources. In the preface of his next major book, The Kingdom of God in America (published eight years after Social Sources, in 1937), Niebuhr offers an evaluation of the limitations of the earlier book: In a previous study, The Social Sources of Denominationalism, I sought to discover the nature of the relations of religion to culture and throw light on the complexity of American Christianity by examining the influence of social forces on faith and by tracing the sociological pattern of race, class and sectional interests as it manifested itself in the denominations. The account left me dissatisfied at a number of points. Though the sociological approach helped to explain why the religious stream flowed in these particular channels it did not account for the force of the stream itself; while it seemed relevant enough to the institutionalized churches it did not explain the Christian movement which produced these churches; while it accounted for the diversity in American religion it did not explain the unity which our faith possesses despite its variety; while it could deal with the religion which was dependent on culture it left unexplained the faith which is independent, which is aggressive rather than passive, and which molds culture instead of being molded by it. Furthermore, the only answer I was able to give to the problem of Christian disunity was in the form of a new appeal to good will to overcome stubborn social divisions and to incarnate the ideal of Jesus. This appeal seemed, upon critical reflection, to be wholly inadequate.47 It is important to note where Niebuhr starts in listing the unsatisfactory elements of Social Sources. He begins with a 47

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (1937; repr. with intro. by Martin E. Marty, Middletown, CT:  Wesleyan University Press, 1988), xix–xx. Hereafter Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, followed by page number(s).

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forceful recognition of the limits of sociological explanations of the church’s life (explanations which were the content of Social Sources). After the publication of the earlier book Niebuhr came to believe that social factors, influential as they were in the life of the institutional forms of the church, failed to capture what makes Christian faith what it is. Niebuhr does not abandon sociological analysis. He remains fully convinced of the power of sociological factors to shape Christian institutional forms and the individual Christians in those institutions. In the introduction of The Kingdom of God in America, Niebuhr makes a strong case for the value, importance, and strength of sociological explanations. “The sociological answer . . . is exceedingly attractive to the searcher after the meaning of ecclesiastical culture. It satisfies the demand for a simple hypothesis and explains many of the facts which otherwise remain obscure.”48 Niebuhr notes that simplistic forms of sociological explanation (specifically economic determinism) are easily recognized as oversimplifications. But “more moderate theories of the social basis of religion must continue to receive serious consideration.”49 Sociological explanations of Christian institutions and life are valuable, but only when placed alongside other analyses. “The obvious pertinence of such a description [a sociologically determined description] of the pattern of religious life in the United States makes it very attractive; yet doubt as to its adequacy cannot be quelled.”50 As Niebuhr has already noted in his preface (quoted earlier), while sociological methods could trace the conformity of religious institutions and life to societal forces, they are not well equipped to account for religion’s power to shape societies and societal forces A few pages later he puts the point in this way: “For the kingdom of God to which these men and the movements they initiated were loyal was not simply American culture or political and economic interest exalted and idealized; it was rather a kingdom which was prior to America and to which this nation, in its politics and economics, was required to conform.”51 Expanding on an insight from Henri Bergson, Niebuhr proposes that religion includes both static 48

Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 6. Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 6. 50 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 9. Bracketed words inserted. 51 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 10. 49

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elements and dynamic elements—structures and movement.52 Sociological descriptions tell us something about static elements, but they fail adequately to describe the movement that generates (and regenerates and reshapes) those static elements. Niebuhr’s judgment on the inadequacy of Social Sources also specifically critiques his earlier call to unity.53 Unfortunately, he does not devote any section of The Kingdom of God in America to addressing the specific question of the unity of the church. He does, however, provide raw materials for such an address, along with indications of how those raw materials might be used. These raw materials take the form of guiding principles for understanding the church and its unity:  Christianity is a movement; the movement generates institutional structures as “stopping-points” along the way; these stopping-points can only properly be understood and valued in relation to the invisible church; they exist in dialectical relation to one another and the (invisible) church, and they are fragmentary (and so, again, must be understood in the context of the whole). In what follows each of these guiding principles is considered in turn. Niebuhr’s affirmation that Christianity is essentially a movement undergirds The Kingdom of God in America, and much of Niebuhr’s subsequent theological work. Niebuhr names it first among the convictions that shape the book. “May I underscore some convictions which this study has fostered in me and which are even stronger than appears in the book? First is the conviction that Christianity, whether in America or anywhere else but particularly in Protestantism and in America, must be understood as a movement rather than as an institution or series of institutions.”54 Christianity “is more dynamic than static.” This affirmation goes to the very heart of Niebuhr’s understanding of the Christian faith: “Since [Christianity’s] goal is the infinite and eternal God, only movement or life directed toward the ever transcendent can express its meaning.”55 The same point is

52

Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 11–12. It is ironic that Niebuhr judged the treatment of the unity of the church in Social Sources to be one of the book’s most significant weaknesses. The question of the place (if any) of denomination within the church is precisely a question of the unity of the church. 54 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, xxiii–xxiv. 55 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, xxiv. 53

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made near the end of the book, with specific reference to the kingdom of God: “The kingdom of God in America is neither an ideal nor an organization. It is a movement which, like the city of God described by Augustine in ancient times, appears in only partial and mixed manner in the ideas and institutions in which men seek to fix it.”56 Thus the affirmation that Christianity is a movement connects with Niebuhr’s critique of institutions, so pervasive in The Social Sources of Denominationalism. There are hints in The Kingdom of God in America that Niebuhr’s view of ecclesial institutions is shifting. Institutions seem to have a role to play as stopping-points, fashioned to preserve and transmit insights gained in the movement. “Institutionalized Christianity as it appears in denominations as well as in state churches, in liberal programs as well as in conservative creeds, is only a halting place between Christian movements. The Franciscan revolution not the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformation not the Protestant churches, the Evangelical revival not the denominations which conserved its fruits—and denied it—show what Christianity is.”57 Clearly critique and condemnation still dominate here. But there are seeds of a different view, of appreciation in Niebuhr’s willingness to grant that institutions do exist to preserve genuine gains (and at least partially succeed in doing so). Institutions exist as stopping-points along the way taken by the movement. They play a necessary role. But these remain hints, and seeds. They are countered by a continuing anti-institutionalism that finds fullest expression in the fifth chapter of The Kingdom of God in America, “Institutionalization and Secularization of the Kingdom.” There he echoes the stringent polemic against institutional structures that so thoroughly shaped Social Sources. On the one hand, there is an acknowledgment that institutional structures might have a vital role to play:

56

Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 164. Niebuhr utilizes the same dynamic/static distinction to identify the central positive element in the Protestant Reformation:  “I am trying to speak throughout these chapters of Protestantism as a positive affirmation of the Christian gospel rather than as an anti-Catholic movement. Insofar as it was a dynamic manifestation of the Christian faith it was in opposition to the static form which faith had assumed in the church; insofar as it became static in turn it had little if any advantage over its Catholic rival” (Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, n., 27–8). 57 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, xxiv.

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Such phenomena of institutionalization always have an ambiguous character. On the one hand they are genuine efforts to conserve for post-revolutionary generations the gains made by a revolutionary movement . . . Without such stabilization and conservation the great movements would have passed like storms at sea, leaving behind them nothing but the wreckage of the earlier establishments they had destroyed.”58 On the other hand, that acknowledgment of a legitimate place for institutional structures is consumed by Niebuhr’s stringent condemnation of institutions: “Yet institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static whereas its parent movement had been dynamic; it confines men within its limits while the movement had liberated them from the bondage of institutions; it looks to the past, the movement had pointed forward.”59 Nor is that the worst of what institutions do to the movements that generate them: Institutions, however, differ not only in spirit from their parent movements; they tend also to change the content which they are trying to conserve. When the great insights of a creative time are put into the symbolic form of words, formulas and creeds, much must always be omitted . . . So by limitation and loss of symbolic reference, and by the substitution of the static for the dynamic, institutions deny what they wish to affirm and become the antithesis to their own thesis. The antithesis is never complete; something is always conserved, but much is lost and repudiated.60 Niebuhr is unable to see a way out of this impasse: “This universal process from which there seems to be no escape in time . . . the tendency toward petrification” that “manifests itself, indeed, throughout the movement.”61

58

Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 167. Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 168. The bondage of institutions is a constant theme running through Niebuhr’s understanding of the church in Social Sources and The Kingdom of God in America. 60 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 168–9. 61 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 169. Niebuhr found Cotton Mather to be a paradigmatic instance of this petrification through institutionalization (Kingdom of God, 59

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Nevertheless, Niebuhr’s conviction that Christianity is a movement and his growing awareness that institutional forms have positive roles to play in that movement are among the raw materials for a different assessment of denomination. Added to them is a strong affirmation of the invisible church. The invisible church plays, for Niebuhr, a vital role coordinating the various institutional forms within the one church, institutional forms that are both necessary and necessarily partial, limited, and fragmentary. The invisibility of the catholic church is due not only to the fact that no one society or nation of Christians can represent the universal but also to the fact that no one time, but only all times together, can set forth the full meaning of the movement toward the eternal and its created image. One of the great needs of present-day institutionalized and divided Christianity, perhaps particularly in America with its denominations, is recovery of faith in the invisible catholic church. The recognition of the dialectic character and of the continuity of the Christian movement is one aid to such a recovery. It helps us to tolerate, understand and love those who express another phase of the Christian movement than our own group expresses; it warns us of our own limitations, yet encourages us to do our own work with all our might and to seek unity not on the level of hazy sentimentalism but of the active intellectual and moral conflict of those who contend fruitfully because they share a common faith.62 There are two theological claims of significance for a theological account of denomination in these words. First, the invisible church 170–2). Church historian Harry Stout finds Niebuhr to err both in absolving movements of determination by social forces and in engaging in a one-sided critique of institutional forms that misreads institutionalization and Cotton Mather. Harry S. Stout, “The Historical Legacy of H. Richard Niebuhr,” in The Legacy of H. Richard Niebuhr, ed. Ronald F. Thiemann (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 96–7. 62 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, xxv–xxvi. It is only natural that Niebuhr would draw on the notion of the visible and invisible church, a central element of Reformed ecclesiology. This doctrine has been strongly challenged, particularly by Stanley Hauerwas. For an analysis of this doctrine in light of Hauerwas’s challenge, see Charles Aden Wiley, III, “Responding to God:  The Church as Visible and Invisible in Calvin, Schleiermacher, and Barth” (PhD diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2002).

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becomes the organizing, coordinating principle for the multiplicity of very visible, concrete forms of the church that we encounter. The invisible church, Niebuhr proposes, allows us to see ourselves and others as partial and fragmentary; it enables us to do so with confidence born of the reliability of that organizing and coordinating principle for gathering the varied forms into a coherent whole. The invisible church is ultimately a feature of God and God’s own relationship to the created order. As such, Niebuhr suggests, the invisible church can be understood as a sort of ecclesiological analogue to Protestantism’s steadfast affirmation of the priesthood of all believers: in both cases there is a direct relationship to the sovereign God. Niebuhr argues that the priesthood of all believers is itself inherent in the sovereignty of God, which relativizes all human authority. The positive counterpart of this negation of all human sovereignty was more important. It was the affirmation of God’s direct rule. He governed all things immediately by the word of his mouth, and to him all political organizations, churches and individuals were directly responsible. In place of the hierarchical structure in which the higher governed the lower, the Protestant set forth the idea of multiplicity in which many equals were all related directly, without mediation, to the ultimate ruler. In religious life this conception of the kingdom was expressed in terms of the priesthood of all believers . . . the confession of the sole rulership of God and the declaration of loyalty to his kingdom was an even more important element in the Protestant faith than was the rejection of mundane representatives of the divine rule.63 63

Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 23–4. In a book published in 1953 Niebuhr makes more explicit the connection between the equal, direct, and unmediated relationship of all Christians to Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and the equal, direct, and unmediated relationship of the various institutional structures to that same Jesus Christ: “The confusion between part [e.g., denominations] and whole [the church] is not to be avoided by denying the reality of the parts but only by the acceptance of diversity and limitation and the corollary recognition that all the parts are equally related in the whole to the ultimate object of the Church.” H. Richard Niebuhr, The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry:  Reflections on the Aims of Theological Education, in collaboration with Daniel Day Williams and James M.  Gustafson (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 40–1.

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“Many equals [are] all related directly, without mediation, to the ultimate rule.” The invisible church functions in much the same way: it is related directly, without mediation, to the many equal and individual institutional forms in the church. The second theological claim is that the invisible church, which is the true church, is embodied in institutional forms that are inherently fragmentary and limited, standing alongside other fragmentary Christian groups that are made up of “those who express another phase of the Christian movement than our own group expresses; it warns us of our own limitations, yet encourages us to do our own work with all our might.”64 No one institutional structure can fully embody the church. Institutional forms embody only a particular phase, a limited aspect of the church. In The Kingdom of God in America Niebuhr began correcting some of what he judged to be failings in The Social Sources of Denominationalism. Central to that correction was the affirmation that Christianity is a movement, which takes on institutional forms as stopping-points along the way (ambiguous as that is), institutional forms that are themselves limited and fragmentary, yet coordinated by their direct relationship to the invisible church. Before moving to the more positive account of denomination that emerges in Niebuhr’s writings subsequent to The Kingdom of God in America, there are connections between Niebuhr and Philip Schaff that should be explored. In The Kingdom of God in America Niebuhr is doing precisely the kind of church history that Schaff practiced and tried to establish more broadly by founding the American Society of Church History (ASCH).65 Though seeking to probe the history of the church in America for signs of God at work, Niebuhr articulates his search in language that is reticent to name God as the final object of his studies. The boundaries drawn some three decades earlier between the academic fields of church history and theology have to be addressed in order to explain and justify Niebuhr’s The Kingdom of God in America. In his preface Niebuhr touches on the relationship of theology and history, defending his theological study of the history of American Christianity: “This may seem to be an effort to present theology in the guise of history, yet 64 65

Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, xxvi. A story told in Chapter 1, xx-x.

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the theology has grown out of the history as much as the history has grown out of the theology.”66 Niebuhr’s reticence about naming God leads him to articulate what he is looking for in other terms, but it is God and God’s presence that stands within these other terms. On the one hand, Niebuhr names what he is studying in terms of human faith: “American Christianity and American culture cannot be understood at all save on the basis of faith in a sovereign, living, loving God.”67 It is risky to claim that God is visibly active in particular human events, movements, and structures; it is safer to identify the faith of the very visible human beings who have faith in God and behave in ways related to that faith. Ever a careful thinker and a precise writer, Niebuhr implicitly acknowledges these difficulties. Nevertheless, to speak of human faith in God can be an indirect, roundabout way of talking about God. Niebuhr’s reticence is also apparent in his use of functional synonyms for God, especially kingdom of God and the ideal. Thus, to cite the former, he closes the substantive part of his preface with this: The history of the idea of the kingdom of God leads on to the history of the kingdom of God. Hence my greatest hope is that such a work as this may serve “even as a stepping stone” to the work of some American Augustine who will write a City of God that will trace the story of the eternal city in its relations to modern civilization instead of to ancient Rome, or of Jonathan Edwards redivivus who will bring down to our own time the History of the Work of Redemption.68 The idea leads on to the reality; the idea leads on to a specific history in a particular place. The ideal is another circumlocution used by Niebuhr: “But first of all we need to interpret our Christianity out of itself; we need to seek the pattern within it, not to superimpose some other pattern upon it. The ideal needs to be looked for in the real, not imported from without.”69

66

Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, xxiii. Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, xxvi. 68 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, xxvi. 69 Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 14. This is in striking contrast to the way Niebuhr played the ideal against the real in Social Sources. I  will return to the change in Niebuhr’s understanding of the relationship between ideal and real. 67

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Some of Niebuhr’s reticence plainly to articulate his theological aims may stem from the struggles that we noted earlier over how to understand the field of church history. Is the field of church history a part of theological inquiry, or is it a subset of historical research conceived apart from theological concerns? Niebuhr assumes the latter, and thus identifies himself as not a church historian:  “The pursuit of these and related problems led me to a renewed study of American Christianity—although it is only as an amateur, as one who feels the need of testing the abstract ideas of theology and ethics in the laboratory of history, that I  am able to pursue such studies.”70 Nor was this only a work of testing theories. Niebuhr’s study was also driven by a present need in the church for guidance in living the faith now. All attempts to interpret the past are indirect attempts to understand the present and its future . . . In this respect Christians of the twentieth century are like the biblical Israelites who needed to remind themselves in every period of crisis of their deliverance from Egypt, of their wanderings in the desert and their ancient covenant with Jehovah, not only that they might have consolation but even more that they might find direction.71 Schaff would have understood these needs and the study of history that they generated. Niebuhr is doing historical research and writing for thoroughly theological purposes. In this light it is striking that the first chapter of The Kingdom of God in America goes after the question of what Protestantism is, particularly in relationship to Roman Catholicism. Before Niebuhr can make sense of the broad sweep of Christianity in America, he first feels compelled to make sense of Protestantism itself. As such The Kingdom of God in America is an analogue to Schaff’s The Principle of Protestantism. In both cases a Protestant pastor and theologian dealing with the church, particularly as it has existed in the United States of America, finds that he must begin by offering an apologia for Protestantism, describing what it is, examining its deformities and strengths, and justifying its ongoing separate

70 71

Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, xx. Niebuhr, Kingdom of God, 1.

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existence in the face of the Christian affirmation (and each author’s own affirmation) that the church is one. Their apologias function in different ways but each is an apologia. In this light, it is remarkable that Niebuhr nowhere names, much less engages Schaff (though Niebuhr did make significant use of volumes in the American Denominational Histories series that Schaff originated and the publication of which he oversaw).

Acknowledging denomination’s legitimate place: After The Kingdom of God in America Denominationalism not the denominations; ecclesiasticism not the churches; Biblicism not the Bible; Christism not Jesus Christ; these represent the chief present perversions and confusions in Church and theology.72 Niebuhr’s understanding of the institutional forms taken by the church (and his understanding of denomination as one of those institutional forms) changed in the course of his theological reflection and writing:  from blunt condemnation of all institutional forms, including particularly denomination, to a grudging moderation of that anti-institutionalism, and then to a willingness to grant the genuine need for institutions in the church— institutions among which are denominations. Because Niebuhr’s blunt condemnation of denomination in The Social Sources of Denominationalism has been so deeply influential, it is important to see very clearly that he moved to a much more appreciative assessment of institutional structures and of denomination in particular. Niebuhr’s more positive assessment includes four elements. First, he was clear that there is a drive in Christian faith and in the human experience impelling people toward one

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H. Richard Niebuhr, The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry: Reflections on the Aims of Theological Education, in collaboration with Daniel Day Williams and James M. Gustafson (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 46.

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another:  Christians cannot live without membership in some ecclesial institutional structure. Second, he considers the relationship between the church and the institutions in which it takes form in the world: he critiques the idealistic rejection of all institutions, and argues for the necessity of institutional structures. Third, drawing on 1 Corinthians 12, Niebuhr makes the case that the varied institutions in the church are to be regarded as members of the body of Christ, necessary to the body and potentially a sign of the body’s health. Fourth, in the midst of this more positive appraisal Niebuhr continues his stringent criticism of the failings of denomination and the denominations. First, Niebuhr is clear that there is a force in human existence generally, and in the church in particular, that draws us to one another. The move toward social forms and structures is part of what it is to be human, one of the shaping drives of human being. “The relation of the community of Christ to religious societies, institutions and organizations is one of the constant problems of Christians. It has a peculiar poignancy in our time when the desire for community is so strong among men. This desire manifests itself in the first place as a searching and hungering for intimate, warm and reliable companionship.”73 Niebuhr notes that in the middle of the twentieth century this search for community was made acute by the depersonalization and atomization characteristic of modern life. It is not only a search for human community, but also a search for community with all creation, a search that has a religious shape and character. He cites the ecumenical movement as one embodiment of this search for community. Niebuhr summarizes: “In all of this we express our desire for a church beyond the churches, for a community of Christ, distinct from but not unrelated to the societies of national and denominational churches, associations and sects.”74 Human beings are wired for community, a wiring that is part of God’s good purposes in creation.

73 H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” in H.  Richard Niebuhr, “The Responsibility of the Church for Society” and Other Essays by H. Richard Niebuhr, ed. Kristine A. Culp, Library of Theological Ethics (Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 118. This essay is the text of a lecture delivered in 1953. 74 Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” 121.

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This drive toward community is itself a drive toward the creation of institutional structures, including institutions in which the church takes concrete forms. Without these institutional forms, it is not possible to live the God-given drive to community with one another:  “We do not know how to aspire after membership in the Church without joining the churches nor how to build the holy Catholic society, the universal fellowship of reconciliation, without increasing, reforming, supporting, and even defending those contradictory organizations—our religious institutions, these Western counterparts of Shintoist and Hindu cults.”75 Implicit in these words is critique and correction of the one-sided condemnation of institution in Social Sources. The second element of Niebuhr’s more positive assessment of denomination is his general reconsideration of the relationship between church and institutions. Niebuhr came to recognize a positive role for institutional structures in the life of the church. As a logical implication of this shift, Niebuhr clearly identifies excessive anti-institutionalism as a significant error. The dissatisfaction that we feel with all our religious societies, our churches, sects, and institutions; the aspiration in men after a community that transcends all these can easily be idealized in undue fashion. When we think of these things we may be led astray into a self-pitying and self-congratulatory romanticism. We are tempted in Rousseauistic spirit to place the blame for all human failure to achieve ultimate community on the established institutions and perhaps on men who are thought to be using these institutions for narrow, personal or class ends. And with this analysis of the situation we often combine a hortatory idealism, persuading men to try and try again to achieve an ideal that through all the ages of the past they have been unable to realize. This way of dealing with the problem of the relationship of the community of Christ to the Christian societies is highly dubious.76 75

H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Hidden Church and the Churches in Sight,” in Niebuhr, “The Responsibility of the Church for Society,” 55. This essay was originally published in Religion in Life 15, No. 1 (Winter 1945–6): 106–16. 76 Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” 123.

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Here, in a lecture delivered in 1953, Niebuhr’s critique of the inadequacies of his treatment of Christian disunity in Social Sources reaches sharp clarity at last—“Rousseauistic spirit” and “hortatory idealism.” Niebuhr is in this passage moving beyond a blanket condemnation of the forms Christian community takes in reality, where life is lived day in and day out. But these words are not only, or even primarily, a confession of personal sin. Niebuhr recognizes that excessive anti-institutionalism is a failing shared by many of his contemporaries. He not only calls for recognizing this failing, but for overcoming it. One of the ways to overcome excessive anti-institutionalism is to recognize and articulate the relationship between the institutions and community. In writings later in his life, Niebuhr is clear that community and institution exist in a polar relationship with one another, mutually implicated, both equally necessary. “We need to define Church further by use of the polar terms ‘community’ and ‘institution.’ A social reality such as the Church cannot be described by means of one of these categories only and much misconception of the Church results from such exclusive use.”77 It is not possible to separate the two from one another without distorting both. “The questions whether Church is primarily institution or primarily community, or whether one of these is prior, are . . . unanswerable.”78 Recognition of this polar relationship leads directly to the question of how to assess denomination. The American and Canadian Church scene . . . indicates how much institution and community belong together, yet how distinct they are. In part the realization of the Church community in the New World waits on the development of institutions able to give it form and wholeness; in part the institutionalization in denominations expresses the variety and unity characteristic of the community on this part of the planet.79

77

Niebuhr, Purpose of the Church, 21. Kristine Culp offers an explanation of Niebuhr’s “method of polar analysis” in her introduction to the volume of Niebuhr’s ecclesiological writings she edited: Niebuhr, “The Responsibility of the Church for Society,” xiii–xvi. 78 Niebuhr, Purpose of the Church, 22. 79 Niebuhr, Purpose of the Church, 23.

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Community finds embodiment in institutions; those institutions function as embodiments of communion when they exist not for their own sake but rather as embodiments of a particular community. How are the “variety and unity characteristic of the community” to be understood? Niebuhr conceptualizes variety and unity by utilizing the body and members imagery found in 1 Cor. 12:12–31. The third element in Niebuhr’s more positive assessment of denomination is his increasingly clear affirmation that the church does have within it institutional structures that are members of that one body which is the church. These members of the body are necessary if the (invisible) church is to take concrete form. At the same time, these members exist only in service to the church itself: they are not ends in and of themselves. Further, the multiplicity and variety of these members may be a sign of faithfulness. In his later writings Niebuhr finds that varied institutional structures within the church are not just grudgingly to be accepted, but are in fact necessary. When he takes up the task of defining the church in The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry, he proceeds by means of a series of polarities (as noted earlier). Among them is the polarity “of unity and plurality”: The Church is one, yet  also many. It is a pluralism moving toward unity and a unity diversifying and specifying itself. It is, in the inescapable New Testament figure, a body with many members none of which is the whole in miniature but in each of which the whole is symbolized. Every national church, every denomination, every local church, every temporal church order, can call itself Church by virtue of its participation in the whole; yet every one is only a member needing all the others in order to be truly itself and in order to participate in the whole. Without the members there is no body; without the body no members.80

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Niebuhr, Purpose of the Church, 23–4. In an earlier article, written for and published as preparatory material for the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948, Niebuhr made the same point: “We may regard the groups called denominations, national churches, vocational orders such as the clergy, local congregations and other associations of Christians, as organs of the body.” H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Disorder of Man in the Church of God,” in Niebuhr, “The Responsibility of the Church for Society,” 38. Niebuhr utilizes this image in “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” published in 1953:  “The most adequate parable of the situation

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Niebuhr has moved a long way from the sweeping condemnation in Social Sources. It is intriguing that 1 Corinthians 12 so clearly provided concepts that enabled Niebuhr to articulate this more positive understanding of varied institutional forms within the church. The Apostle Paul clearly intends the metaphor to apply to individuals: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27). Niebuhr offers a hermeneutical extension of the passage to take in gathered groups of Christians and the institutions generated by those gathered groups. Some will find this hermeneutical extension unfounded. They will find the leap from individual believers to gathered groups of believers to be a leap too far. But Niebuhr’s extension captures the way in which gathered groups of believers have the same limitedness, the same fragmentariness as individuals. No one individual Christian can embody the fullness of the Christian faith. In the same way, neither can any particular gathered group of Christians (no matter how numerous that gathering may be) embody the fullness of Christian faith. This is not in and of itself a failing. It is a condition of creaturely existence and of its finitude. Niebuhr is clear that gathered groups of Christians and their institutional structures are always in danger of coming to see themselves as ends. But, he insists, there is equal danger in seeking to compel all Christians to be in one single institutional structure: Neither would one be justified in maintaining that a Church of undifferentiated wholeness and unity can exist or that the elimination of denominational differences would solve the underlying problem. The confusion between part and whole is not to be avoided by denying the reality of the parts but only by the acceptance of diversity and limitation and the corollary recognition that all the parts are equally related in the whole to the ultimate object of the Church.81 The unity of the church has room for a range of differentiated institutional structures, gathering Christians to live the faith in distinctive and varied ways. in which we find ourselves is the New Testament parable of the body of Christ.” Neibuhr follows this sentence with quotation of 1 Cor. 12:12 (“The Responsibility of the Church for Society,” 127–8). 81 Niebuhr, Purpose of the Church, 40–1.

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These varied institutional structures in the church can, possibly, be a sign of faithfulness:  “A multiplicity of special groups in the Church, serving men for God’s sake in many diverse places and situations and cultures and performing many special functions, may be a sign of obedience to one Master and hence of order rather than of disorder.” Niebuhr extends this principle to groups within these special groups: “The presence in these congregations, denominations, and associations of many different special types of organization may also be indicative of such obedience.”82 So there is a legitimate, faithful place in the church for a variety of institutional structures in and through which Christians live out their membership in the church–– institutional structures including denominations. But living this out is challenging. We often find ourselves caught between the longing for community that has the breadth of God’s own good purposes, and the institutional church structures we actually have. Niebuhr catches the acuteness of this problem, turning back and forth: “We are deeply aware of our need for one, holy, universal community . . . We are highly aware of the artificiality of our divisions from each other in denominations, national churches and all other societies . . . we are aware . . . of the healthful and necessary part the denominations, federations and all the other societal organizations of Christendom play.” The question we face cuts deeply: “What can we do in this situation?”83 In part, Niebuhr replies, we can keep working to achieve institutional unions of various sorts, even as we know they can never carry us to union in a single institutional structure: we will continue “endeavors to achieve unions and federations of the denominations and other societies, yet we are well aware that all such efforts can only lead to new organizations in which the old ambivalent pattern of denial and affirmation of the One, Holy Catholic church will be expressed.”84 And there is also the eschatological hope, confident that “the One Holy Catholic” (and Apostolic?) church will come into existence in the end.

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Niebuhr, “The Disorder of Man in the Church of God,” 41. Niebuhr goes on to note that differentiation within these special groups may be obedient in the same way: “The presence in these congregations, denominations, and associations of many different special types of organization may also be indicative of such obedience.” 83 Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” 125–6. 84 Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” 126.

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But Niebuhr calls for something more. “We can realize the actuality of the church beyond the churches, of the community of Christ that is more than the sum of all the societies and that is something different in kind from these societies.” This realization of the community of Christ has power to order the denominations properly to one another and to Jesus Christ, who is their head. “In the realization of the actuality of that community we can so use our membership in the Christian societies and can so qualify the activities of these societies that they shall increasingly become servants of the community and members of it.”85 Once again the invisible church is at work here as a coordinating principle, one which relativizes the denominations and other institutional structures, placing them in a larger entity that relates them not only to itself but to one another. Denominations are secondary; they serve primary realities, particularly the church. The realization Niebuhr calls for may seem ethereal, insubstantial, and theoretical. Niebuhr disagrees. “When we call [the community of Christ] a spiritual reality we are likely to be misunderstood as meaning that it is not real but that it exists only in the minds of men. But the communities that exist in the minds, in the personalities and in the interpersonal relations of men, are often more real and powerful than the visible societies.”86 The community of Christ is a concept, an idea. But these have real power in our lives. “There is a community of Christ and in Christ that is actual and that exerts its power over the minds and wills and emotions of us all. The societies are its instruments and partial expressions but no more than that. It is prior to them in power as well as in value.”87 This brings us to the fourth element in Niebuhr’s more positive assessment of denomination:  his continued criticism of distorted understandings of denomination—particularly of one’s own denomination. Niebuhr applies the relativizing force of clear awareness of and commitment to the encompassing community of Christ: Insofar as we consciously recognize the reality of this community in which we live, we begin to qualify the actions and claims 85

Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” 126. Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” 126. 87 Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” 127. 86

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of our various societies and begin, perhaps, to make them better instruments of the community. We no longer speak of our societies as the church but as agencies or orders of the church. We no longer consider ourselves, as individuals, to be members of the church by virtue of our membership in the societies but only by virtue of our belonging to Christ.88 Church institutional structures are faithful only if they serve the community of Christ. “To realize the actuality of the community is to realize the relative character of the claims any particular society of Christians can make upon us and the necessity of regarding ourselves as related to the community of Christ and not vice versa— related to Christ through our societies.”89 There is a faithful place in the church for intermediary structures, for institutional structures that partially embody the fullness of the church, a place that compels those institutional structures to recognize and affirm their partialness and thus their relationship to and dependence on other, similar structures.90 Niebuhr is clear that there is an abiding temptation within these institutional structures to mistake themselves for the whole, to overestimate their claim on Christians. A  “more prevalent source of disorder [in the church] lies in the confusion of a part with the whole. Thus a part of the Church regards itself as the whole or as representative of the whole . . . Christendom is full of these confusions and so multiplicity of order is converted into disorder by the absolutizing of every relative, ordered pattern of action.”91 This is the mistaken denominationalism that Niebuhr contrasts with a faithful place for denomination.92

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Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” 127. Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” 127. 90 For example, Niebuhr proposes that the Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church have the ability to correct one another and to fill weaknesses and gaps in each other. H. Richard Niebuhr, “Issues Between Catholics and Protestants,” in The Paradox of Church and World:  Selected Writings of H.  Richard Niebuhr, ed. Jon Diefenthaler (Minneapolis, MN:  Fortress Press, 2015), 451–60. 91 Niebuhr, “The Disorder of Man and the Church of God,” 40–1. Niebuhr also identifies this problem in “The Hidden Church and the Churches in Sight,” 57, and in Purpose of the Church, 40: “the confusion of a branch of the Church with the whole Church.” 92 In the quote cited at the beginning of this subsection. 89

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Summary: H. Richard Niebuhr and denomination H. Richard Niebuhr’s The Social Sources of Denominationalism has had a decisive impact on the theological exploration and assessment of denomination as a form within the church. Niebuhr’s fierce condemnation of the church for its pervasive submission to social forces that are inimical to the Christian faith has been taken to be a decisive criticism of one particular form of church institutional structure. Close reading of Niebuhr’s published work in ecclesiology reveals both a more complicated view of Social Sources and a significant shift in Niebuhr’s view of institutional structures in the church following the publication of that book in 1929, early in his career. The fierce anti-institutional polemic of Social Sources does not entirely disappear in subsequent writings, but it is very significantly changed, to a view that is far more nuanced. What was a wrecking ball becomes a more supple, precise conceptual tool. Niebuhr recognized the thinness and failings of Social Sources soon after its publication. His initial corrections appeared in The Kingdom of God in America, published eight years later. In it his assessment of institutional forms shifts, taking on more positive elements. But The Kingdom of God in America was largely absorbed in its narrative of the ways in which notions of the Kingdom of God shifted across the history of American Christianity. Niebuhr’s reconsideration of denomination in the church came to full expression only in the years following publication of The Kingdom of God in America. Unfortunately, his revised view of denomination failed to overcome the impression made by Social Sources and its fierce critique, perhaps because of the forms and places in which his revised view was published. Niebuhr’s revised view was published in scattered articles, and as a single chapter of The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry—a book whose primary message lay elsewhere, in an analysis of theological education in the United States. His revised view of denomination was never published in a single, focused, and extended argument. Nevertheless, Niebuhr’s revised view of denomination affirmed that the church will take concrete form in a variety of institutional forms, no one of which fully embodies the church. He denied that the unity of the church requires that all Christians be part of a

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single institutional structure that is of a particular character. Rather, the Christian faith is super-abundant, and institutional forms are limited. This situation is not necessarily a violation of the Christian faith, though it is open to abuse and has often been abused, especially when denominations, though finite and partial, take themselves to be the whole of the church. In the end, Niebuhr’s assessment of denomination followed a development reminiscent of Schaff’s assessment: early critique, followed by gradual reassessment, leading to a positive assessment characterized by continued rejection of distortions, but marked by an awareness of the implications of this form of church for questions such as how to evaluate God’s activity in the world and particularly in churches, the relationship between the church’s unity and its diversity, and the ability or inability of human structures to embody divine purpose and presence. These remain central theological loci implicated in the assessment of denomination as a form in the church.

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3 The church historians: Winthrop Hudson, Sidney Mead, Russell E. Richey

Introduction In the years following H.  Richard Niebuhr’s The Social Sources of Denominationalism, theological analysis of denomination faded away. As we have seen, Niebuhr himself made further contributions, but they had none of the impact of Social Sources, scattered as they were in journals, lectures, and publications devoted to other subjects. European theologians largely continued to regard denomination (when they noticed it) as an American aberration, a non-theological and therefore extra-ecclesial oddity.1 Theologians

1

So, for example, an essay by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written in 1939 though not published until after his death, entitled “Protestantism without Reformation.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Essay about Protestantism in the United States of America, August 1939,” in Theological Education Underground:  1937–1940, ed. Victoria Barnett, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English, Vol. 15 (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2012), 438–62. Bonhoeffer comments, “The concept of denomination is not entirely clear. It is not a theological concept. It says more about historical, political, and social conditions.” Bonhoeffer denies that denominations are organized around any shared theological or confessional commitments, and he then uses confession as a way to distinguish the European “churches of the Reformation.” Bonhoeffer does not cite Niebuhr’s work on denomination, but makes similar observations.

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who worked on the doctrine of the church were focused on what Nicholas Healy has called “blueprint ecclesiologies,” committed to working out broad views of the nature of the church that were resolutely distant from the concrete details of the church’s institutional forms.2 Denomination seemed to merit little theological reflection. Trends in theology mitigated against attending to denomination: these years saw continuing energy poured into the ecumenical movement; they saw the rise of European theological movements that were unconcerned with denomination, which was easy to ignore in a time when both England and Germany—the two primary European conversation partners for American theologians— still held to a Christianity dominated by state churches. They were years in which theology found itself grappling with movements from beyond the church:  economic depression, communism, fascism, war, growing pluralism, independence movements, liberation movements, and the end of European empires. Nevertheless, in the 1950s denomination reemerged as a focus of theological reflection. But it reemerged outside the field of systematic theology, in the work of historians of American Christianity. That development was logical. Denomination is the primary ecclesiological pattern of American Christianity; while it was possible for European theologians and church historians to ignore denomination, scholars of American Christianity had to offer some account (however minimal) of denomination, identifying its distinctive traits. Three historians in particular have made significant contributions to the theological assessment of denomination: Winthrop Hudson, Sidney Mead, and Russell E. Richey. Hudson and Mead published a pair of seminal essays on denomination in quick succession in the mid-1950s. Hudson’s “Denominationalism as a Basis for Ecumenicity:  A  Seventeenth Century Conception,” published in 1955, and Mead’s “Denominationalism:  The Shape of Protestantism in America,” published a few months earlier, in late 1954, offer programmatic accounts of denomination as a form within the church.3 Together they offer an account of the history of 2

See Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine, Vol. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp. Ch. 2, “Blueprint Ecclesiologies,” 25–51. 3 The two essays were published in successive issues of the journal Church History. Sidney Mead, “Denominationalism:  The Shape of Protestantism in America,”

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denomination; each also offers a normative definition of denomination, marking out important aspects of the church that were realized through denomination. Hudson’s essay offers an account of the historical origins of the concept of denomination, locating them in the writings of the Independents in Britain, particularly during the time of the Westminster Assembly. He lays out a set of theological affirmations that together undergird denomination. Mead’s article provides a phenomenology of denomination, identifying significant traits of denomination as this form has developed. While Mead’s description is helpful, equally important is his acute awareness, expressed in publications throughout his career, that American Christianity has significantly failed to provide a rich theological account of denomination, the most characteristic feature of church life during the nation’s history. Finally, I  conclude this section by considering Russell Richey’s work on the topic of denomination. Richey has for decades recognized the importance of this topic and has worked to provide resources and analysis. He has extended the work of Hudson and Mead, filling in historical detail as well as providing conceptual resources for understanding and analyzing denomination.

Winthrop Hudson Hudson’s provocatively titled “Denomination as a Basis for Ecumenicity” begins with a history of the term:  “The use of the word ‘denomination’ to describe a religious group came into vogue during the early years of the Evangelical Revival.” Hudson cites John Wesley as a prime example of this use of the word.4 He then Church History 23, No. 4 (December 1954), 291–320. Winthrop Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis for Ecumenicity: A Seventeenth Century Conception,” Church History 24, No. 1 (March 1955), 32–50. Both essays are published (without footnotes) in Russell E. Richey, ed., Denominationalism (Nashville, TN:  Abingdon, 1977), 19–42 (Hudson) and 68–105 (Mead). 4 “Typical of the mood which gave currency to the new term are John Wesley’s oft-quoted words; ‘I . . . refuse to be distinguished from other men by any but the common principles of Christianity . . . I renounce and detest all other marks of distinction. But from real Christians, of whatever denomination, I earnestly desire not to be distinguished at all . . . Dost thou love and fear God? It is enough! I give thee the right hand of fellowship.’ ” Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 32, citing

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offers an extended definition of denomination, before telling the story of the development of this concept. The extended definition is this: Denominationalism is the opposite of sectarianism. The word “denomination” implies that the group referred to is but one member of a larger group, called or denominated by a particular name. The basic contention of the denominational theory of the church is that the true church is not to be identified in any exclusive sense with any particular ecclesiastical institution. The outward forms of worship and organization are at best but differing attempts to give visible expression to the life of the church in the life of the world. No denomination claims to represent the whole church of Christ. No denomination claims that all other churches are false churches. No denomination claims that all members of society should be incorporated within its own membership. No denomination claims that the whole of society should be incorporated within its own membership. No denomination claims that the whole of society and the state should submit to its ecclesiastical regulations. Yet  all denominations recognize their responsibility for the whole of society and they expect to cooperate in freedom and mutual respect with other denominations in discharging that responsibility.5 Being a historian, Hudson does not provide a theological elaboration of the claims for denomination made in this definition. Rather, he probes the genealogy of this concept, the fabric of claims that undergird this definition, as seen in the writings of those who first hammered it out—seventeenth-century Independents in Britain, and especially the “Dissenting Brethren” at the Westminster Assembly.6 John Wesley, The Character of a Methodist, reprinted in The Works of John Wesley, 4th ed., Vol. 8 (London: John Mason,1841), 332–33. 5 Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 32. 6 The “Dissenting Brethren” dissented from the Presbyterian effort to ensure the uniformity of Presbyterian church government and practice in England. The document An Apologeticall Narration, published in 1644, served as a manifesto for their cause. See Robert S. Paul, The Assembly of the Lord:  Politics and Religion in the Westminster Assembly and the “Grand Debate” (Edinburgh:  T&T Clark, 1985), 121–7.

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The presenting issue at the Assembly, a flash point that forced the Independents to articulate and defend their ideas, was the effort of the Presbyterian party to have Presbyterianism made the established church of the nation, replacing the Church of England. The Presbyterians favored uniformity of religion within the nation— they just wanted the nation to be uniformly Presbyterian, rather than Anglican. The Dissenting Brethren rejected establishment and government-enforced uniformity altogether. Their rejection of establishment was rooted in a set of theological claims. Charting those theological claims requires first working back a bit from the presenting issue in order then to present the theological claims in a more orderly way. First, an observation about government establishment of religion and the use of coercive force: government establishment of religious practice and belief applies the coercive force of the state to matters of religious belief and practice, in order to ensure uniform adherence. For the Dissenting Brethren and their contemporaries belief and practice were deeply intertwined. Because this was so, worship was the focal point for much of their debate, especially what was done in worship, understood in what way, by whom. In worship, belief and practice are combined, and worshippers participate bodily in those practices, engaging in actions that enact particular beliefs. Coercive force, the Dissenting Brethren pointed out, by its very nature runs roughshod over conscience (personal conviction). In so doing, they insisted, it violates the inalienable duty of Christians to believe and practice the faith only in the way they understand Christ to have taught them to do. The Dissenting Brethren claimed that Christian faith requires personal assent; but state coercion pays no attention to personal assent. Thus, the Dissenting Brethren rejected coercion altogether. Again at this point there is a note to make. The Dissenting Brethren knew whereof they spoke (often from personal experience) when they talked about the coercive force of the state being applied to compel people to profess beliefs and engage in religious practices against their own conscience. They had themselves been coerced, and many had gone into exile rather than submit to coercion. This was not a theoretical concern. Faced with coercive force applied in an attempt to compel them to act against their consciences, the Dissenting Brethren (and Independents generally) had made choices. Years before the

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Westminster Assembly, the Independents had faced the choice between submission to the established church’s liturgy, to which they objected as a matter of conscience, or separation from the established church, with all the dangers inherent in such a choice. They chose separation.7 One of the central innovations of the Independents enters at just this point. They refused to unchurch those from whom they separated. Historically those who separated from the established church had almost always declared that the corporate bodies they left behind were no longer church, or no longer sufficiently church to claim adherence. As Hudson narrates the story, pursuing reformation of the church, the Independents had worked in congregations across England to introduce changes in liturgy and practice that would purify the church of what they believed were false accretions. Then they found those false accretions reimposed by the established church, with the reimposition enforced by the state, applying its coercive power. “Yet, even when the force of circumstance compelled them to establish a separate worship, they were unwilling to adopt the Separatist contention that the conforming churches were to be disowned as false churches, and they continued to maintain communion, so far as they were able, with their former parish churches.”8 This was a deep-going claim, a significant reordering of ecclesiology. How, then, did they justify Christians forming a distinct worshipping community around particular theological affirmations (and the practices that embody those beliefs) without unchurching those gathered around different theological affirmations and practices?9 Hudson offers an extended quote from one of the Dissenting

7

Those dangers did not come to an end with the Interregnum. During the Restoration era the dangers returned with a vengeance, and the disadvantages of separation remained for centuries. 8 Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 34. 9 It should be noted that Protestants are not the only ones to face—and answer— this question. Roman Catholic orders are one way of establishing such varied worshipping communities, in which authorization by and answerability to the rest of the church, in the person of the bishop (and ultimately the Bishop of Rome), are a central unitive factor. It is noteworthy that this authorization and answerability remain matters of discussion and disagreement:  what do they require in specific circumstances? The autocephalous churches of the Orthodox Church are yet

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Brethren, Jeremiah Burroughes, in response to this question.10 Burroughes lays out a series of theological claims that together provide a basis for varied worshipping communities gathered around varied doctrinal commitments. (In what follows I will present them in a slightly different order than does Burroughes.) First, matters of religious belief are beyond full knowledge: “the things of religion are hidden mysteries. They are the secrets of God. They are hard to be understood. God reveals them in a differing way. They are not ordinarily so clearly revealed but that the apprehensions of them are like to be different.”11 When dealing with the things of religion, certainty is unattainable, and in the presence of uncertainty one must deal with others in ways that embody a constant awareness that one may oneself be in error. Second, the absence of certainty in our knowledge of the truth in matters of religion, combined with the inherent partiality of our perspective on the object we seek to know, necessarily create differing another way to introduce varied worshipping communities. The difficulty of and struggle over balance between variety and unity are most readily apparent in the existence of geographically overlapping Orthodox dioceses in the United States and Western Europe. For an analysis of the issues, including a proposal to allow multiple forms of Orthodox Church within a single geographic area, see the three-part article by Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, “ ‘One City–One Bishop–One Church’:  The Principle of Canonical Territory and the Appearance of ‘Parallel Hierarchies’,” Europaica Bulletin No. 84 (January 23, 2006) (http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/14/84.aspx#5, accessed March 10, 2006); idem., “The Canonical Territories of the Local Orthodox Churches,” Europaica Bulletin No. 85 (February 6, 2006) (http://orthodoxeurope. org/page/14/85.aspx#3, accessed March 10, 2006); idem., “The Practical Application of the Principle of Canonical Territory,” Europaica Bulletin No. 87 (February 17, 2006) (http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/14/87.aspx#5, accessed March 10, 2006). 10 Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 38–9. The work quoted is Burroughes’s Irenicum, to the Lovers of Truth and Peace. Heart-Divisions Opened in the Causes and Evils of Them: With Cautions That We May Not Be Hurt by Them, and Endeavours to Heal Them (London: Printed for Robert Davvlman, 1653). Republished: Jeremiah Burroughes, Irenicum to the Lovers of Truth and Peace:  Heart-Divisions Opened in the Causes and Evils of Them, with Cautions That We May Not Be Hurt by Them, and Endeavors to Heal Them, ed. Don Kistler (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1997). Accessible online at https://play.google.com/books/reader?id =cDM3AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&authuser=0&hl=en (accessed June 22, 2012). I quote from Hudson, who has modernized spelling and grammar in some cases; in footnotes, I cite Hudson, then the Kistler edition, then the page number of the 1653 edition as it appears online. 11 Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 39; Kistler, ed., 345; 1653 online, 239.

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views of the faith. “First, every godly man prizes and seeks after knowledge . . . the godly man prizes every truth at a high rate, worth the contending for to the uttermost . . . When men discuss things and desire to see farther in them, it is impossible, considering the weakness of the best and the variety of men’s apprehensions, but there must needs to be much difference in men’s judgments.”12 We know God and the things of God only in part, but we do not all know the same part, seen in the same way. Rather, we know slightly different elements and features of our common faith, and we know them in varied ways. Third, matters of religion are of a particular character.13 They are ultimate matters, meaning that compromise on them is a category mistake. And, what is at stake in these matters is holiness. Again here, as we have noted, belief and practice are entirely interdependent. Beliefs about God, the created order, and the relationship between the two are not just ideas to be entertained in idle reflection. Ideas implicate practice, and practice implicates ideas. Burroughes puts the first of these points in this way: the things that the Saints are conversant about are great things, things of a high nature, about their last end, their eternal estate. Hence everyone is very chary and careful and strongly set to maintain what he apprehends . . . Where there are different apprehensions of those things that concern men’s eternal estates, even among godly men, they must needs stand out one against the other, till God causes one of them to see things otherwise than he now doth.14 In the elision Burroughes notes that those who do not recognize “the infinite consequence of those things” cannot understand why everyone doesn’t just compromise their beliefs and practices. Such attitudes represent a failure to understand the issues at hand. Burroughes puts the second of these points in this way (driving home the practical import of these matters of belief): godly men give up themselves to the strictest rules of holiness. They walk in the narrow way of Christ. It is broad enough to 12

Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 38; Kistler ed., 343; 1653 online, 237–8. I am combining two of Burroughes’s points here, his third and fourth. 14 Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 38; Kistler ed., 345; 1653 online, 239. 13

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the spiritual part, but in regard of our corruptions it is a narrow pent way. They dare not give way to themselves . . . to gratify others . . . Hence there is a clashing, everyone not having the same thoughts of the rule and way that others have. Those who walk by loose rules in ways that are broad . . . can suit themselves one to another easily . . . Godly men cannot yield for peace sake to such terms as other men can.15 The “things that the Saints are conversant about” are indeed great, touching on the holiness or faithfulness with which one follows Jesus Christ, and thus one cannot yield apart from conviction. These are matters that require genuine assent.16 Fourth, because these matters require assent, the Dissenting Brethren insisted on freedom of conscience. Godly men are free men. Christ made them so, and requires them not to suffer themselves to be brought under bondage. They must not, cannot submit their consciences to the opinions, determinations, decrees of any men living. They cannot submit to any as lords over their faith. This others can do. As for points of religion, say some, let the learned men judge of them; we will not be wiser than they; we will submit and others must submit to what they shall determine. This makes quick work of divisions, but this those who fear God cannot do. They must see everything they own as a truth with their own light . . . received from Jesus Christ. Though they reverence men of greater parts, deeper learning, yet they have the charge of Christ upon them not to acknowledge it as truth till they understand it to be so.17 Conscience, having to do with self-government and integrity, must not be coerced. Conscience here clearly means something other 15

Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 38; Kistler ed., 344–5; 1653 online, 238–9. 16 Burroughes is on good scriptural ground here: Jesus invites but does not coerce. The rich young ruler declines the cost of Jesus’s invitation to follow, and Jesus allows the young one to turn away. Faced with Jesus’s teaching about the bread from heaven, many followers turn aside, and Jesus asks the twelve what they choose to do—follow or no? Again and again Jesus heals, and then says to the one who asked for the healing, “your faith has made you well.” 17 Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 38; Kistler ed., 343–4; 1653 online, 238.

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than moral assessment of one’s own actions or those of others. It is striking that in common, contemporary usage, it is moral assessment that generally predominates. But here in Burroughes it means something more like one’s general convictions about the way things are, and particularly about who God is and what God requires. Here again the categories of belief and practice, of that which is true and that which is good, are intermixed in Burroughes in ways that common contemporary usage avoids. It is striking, then, that conscience, defined as we find it in Burroughes, does continue to have a place today. In particular, it finds a place in judgments about what one can and cannot accede to in matters of faith.18 Hudson (summarizing Burroughes) names four theological affirmations that undergird denomination. First, matters of religious belief cannot be known with complete certainty. Religious knowledge always has a degree of uncertainty. Second, because of this lack of certainty, and the limited perspective of every human knower, each Christian knows the faith only in part, each apprehending the faith from a distinct, limited point of view. Third, matters of religion are ultimate. To compromise in such matters is to mistake them for something less. Fourth, such matters require freedom of conscience—freedom to live in accord with one’s convictions in these matters. If these four broad affirmations set the parameters for corporate bodies in which Christians live their faith, how are Christians to be 18 Thus the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) continues to affirm (in words taken from the very Westminster Assembly in which Burroughes participated) that “God alone is the Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship. Therefore we consider the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, as universal and unalienable:  We do not even wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil power,” The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part II, Book of Order, 2015–2017 (Louisville, KY:  Office of the General Assembly, 2011), F-3.0101. This foundational material in the Book of Order carries forward language from early American Presbyterianism. It is remarkable how much that language sounds like the words of the Dissenting Brethren quoted in Hudson’s article. During the Interregnum, English Presbyterians favored establishment, believing the moment had come in which the Presbyterian Church would become the established church. A  century later, in North America, it was clear that the Presbyterians had no chance of becoming the established church, and they found themselves affirming the views of their past opponents.

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united? Hudson draws from the Independents three necessary recognitions that will shape how Christians proceed. First, “it is necessary to recognize that diversity will continue and that ‘love and peace’ among Christians, therefore, cannot be procured without ‘liberty of conscience.’ ”19 This implies that unity must be brought about through persuasion, rather than coercion. Persuasion is arduous, time-consuming, and often unsuccessful, which means that the temptation to turn to some form of coercion is ever-present. But coercion cannot possibly produce genuine Christian unity. Second, “it is necessary to recognize . . . the unity that does exist among Christians.”20 The Dissenting Brethren had a deep conviction that those with whom they disagreed, from whom they departed in matters of worship and some matters of belief, were still Christians. The Dissenting Brethren were indeed unwilling to unchurch those with whom they disagreed, and from whom they parted over some matters. The question that they force is “what are the necessary markers of full Christian unity?” This remains a pressing question for Christian theology in the present. Third, “it should be recognized . . . that the mere fact of separation does not of itself constitute schism.”21 Again we confront the question of what markers are necessary for full Christian unity. Must all Christians be part of a single institutional structure, a structure ordered in a particular way (say, as a tightly ordered institution marked by clear lines of authority from top to bottom) in order for full Christian unity to exist? Or is full Christian unity to be found in aspects of life other than institutional structures? Again, these questions are pressingly contemporary, and the long work of the ecumenical movement bears witness to their complexity and difficulty. Hudson closes his article with a reflection on the fate of the vision of the church articulated by the Independents and particularly the Dissenting Brethren. Their efforts were brought to an end by the Restoration of the Monarchy and the Established Church. Nevertheless, their ideas continued to work their way through both church and state, appearing in the Toleration Act of 1689, the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century, and the 19

Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 44. Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 44–5. 21 Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 45. 20

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twentieth-century ecumenical movement. And, it should be added, in the principle of the removal of government coercion from matters of religion codified in the United States Constitution. Hudson’s article is seminal for a theological assessment of denomination, because it illuminates a critical moment in the life of the church, when it became possible to think of the church apart from the coercive power of the government. The Independents generally, and the Dissenting Brethren in particular, were pioneers in thinking through the implications of church without coercion. They identified central beliefs that could shape the life of the church in the absence of state coercion, or of any state intervention on the church’s behalf.

Sidney Mead Sidney Mead provided a genealogy and a descriptive definition of denomination. Mead argued that denomination came to full expression in the context of particular historical realities in the United States. Pan-European immigration, frontier dispersion, and a broad embrace of religious freedom (or, alternatively, rejection of coercion in religion) provided the environment in which the incipiently denominational ecclesiology of the post-Reformation Western church came to full expression.22 Mead explored the notion of denomination directly in his 1954 article, “Denominationalism: The Shape of Protestantism in America.”23 Mead’s genealogy of denomination begins with European church divisions, imported into the North American colonies.

22

For the impact of pan-European immigration and frontier dispersion see esp. Sidney Mead, The Lively Experiment:  The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 1–15 (Chapter 1, “The American People: Their Space, Time, and Religion”). For the rejection of coercion and embrace of religious liberty see esp. Mead, The Lively Experiment, 16–37 (Ch. 2, “From Coercion to Persuasion:  Another Look at the Rise of Religious Liberty and the Emergence of Denominationalism”). 23 Sidney E. Mead, “Denominationalism:  The Shape of Protestantism in America,” Church History 23, No. 4 (December 1954): 291–320. This article has been reprinted as Chapter  7 of Sidney E.  Mead, The Lively Experiment, 103–33; this article is also reprinted (without footnotes) in Russell E. Richey, ed., Denominationalism (Nashville: Abingdon, 1977), 70–105. Further citations from this essay will refer to the pagination in The Lively Experiment.

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The Reformation had broken the once tangibly unified Christendom into the warring, absolutistic, rival faiths of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the time that Dutch and English planting had begun in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the fragments were somewhat stabilized in Europe . . . Confessional stabilization was achieved primarily on a territorial basis . . . Each of these groups claimed within its territory religious absolutism. All the dominant groups believed in and demanded religious uniformity within their civil commonwealth enforced by the civil power . . . The remarkable thing about the English settlements in America is that there, in the brief period between 1607 and 1787, these traditionally antagonistic groups of people learned to dwell together side by side in relative peace. First, they learned to tolerate one another, and eventually they began to think of freedom for all as an inherent or natural right.24 Mead does not, at this point, draw on a critical insight offered by Winthrop Hudson: denomination was able to emerge in America in part because denomination was implicit in the late Reformation religious settlement in Western Europe. Hudson points out that what happened among Christians as they settled in America was already implicit in Western Europe and required only the right conditions to take hold. The preconditions necessary for the emergence of denomination were already in place. Hudson finds the first of these preconditions in the ecclesiology of the magisterial Reformers. “The true church, they affirmed, is not an institution, although in the life of the world it must assume institutional form. But the church must not and cannot be identified in any exclusive sense with any particular institution.”25 Hudson cites a passage from Calvin’s Institutes to the effect that the boundaries of the true church are known only to God.26 Hudson raises the point:  “Thus the Reformers recognized as true churches all churches which possessed an 24

Mead, The Lively Experiment, 2–3. Hudson, “Denomination as a Basis,” 33. 26 Hudson cites the “Prefatory Address to King Francis” of the Institutes. Hudson cites the translation by John Allen. In the Battles translation, the sentence reads:  “They rage if the church cannot always be pointed to with the finger . . . Rather, since the Lord alone ‘knows who are his’ [2 Tim. 2:19], let us leave to him the fact that he sometimes removes from men’s sight the external signs by which the church is known.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. 25

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essentially common faith . . . All these churches in their various geographical areas were different manifestations of the whole church of Christ which embraced them all.”27 The churches were clearly different and understood themselves to be different one from another. Yet they recognized that they were nevertheless each part of a faith that encompassed all. When these various churches were brought to the American colonies, their adherents found themselves geographically mixed and therefore no longer able to distinguish themselves from one another by means of geographical borders. The new element which was to be introduced into this type of thinking was the application of the basic convictions of the Reformers to a situation in which religious diversity existed within a particular geographical area rather than between different geographical areas. Formerly it had been a question as to whether or not a church in England could be and was in communion with a church in Holland. The answer of Protestantism in general had been that they both could be and were in communion with one another. In seventeenth century England, it was to McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics, Vols. 20 and 21 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), Vol. 1, 25. 27 Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 33. Hudson might have cited the following from the Second Helvetic Confession in support of his point: THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH IS NOT IN EXTERNAL RITES. Furthermore, we diligently teach that care is to be taken wherein the truth and unity of the Church chiefly lies, lest we rashly provoke and foster schisms in the Church. Unity consists not in outward rites and ceremonies, but rather in the truth and unity of the catholic faith. The catholic faith is not given to us by human laws, but by Holy Scriptures, of which the Apostles’ Creed is a compendium. And, therefore, we read in the ancient writers that there was a manifold diversity of rites, but that they were free, and no one ever thought that the unity of the Church was thereby dissolved. So we teach that the true harmony of the Church consists in doctrines and in the true and harmonious preaching of the Gospel of Christ, and in rites that have been expressly delivered by the Lord. And here we especially urge that saying of the apostle: “Let those of us who are perfect have this mind; and if in any thing you are otherwise minded, God will reveal that also to you. Nevertheless let us walk by the same rule according to what we have attained, and let us be of the same mind” (Phil. 3:15 f.). This is the final paragraph of Chapter XVII of the Confession. The Book of Confessions (Louisville, KY: Office of the General Assembly), 5.141.

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be suggested that this was equally true of Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist churches when they were located on opposite corners in the same city.28 What Hudson notes is that the settlement of the early modern religious wars (codified in the treaty of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the principle cuius regio, eius religio set forth in that treaty) contained ecclesiological building blocks for a notion of denomination that was to develop later. Hudson is clearly overoptimistic in flatly asserting that the various national churches recognized one another. Yet contained within the churches affected by the settlement was an affirmation that the differences they had with one another could legitimately exist within the Christian faith. Lutherans (for example), affirmed that it was both vital and legitimate for the distinctive beliefs and practices of their churches to continue to exist in the face of Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Reformed disagreement and insistence on other distinctives.

Defining denomination In his 1954 article, Mead starts with Kenneth Scott Latourette’s observation that Christianity in America developed “features which marked it as distinct from previous Christianity in any other land.”29 Mead suggests that the distinctness highlighted by Latourette is to be found in the institutional forms that arose in American Christianity rather than in theological reflection. Indeed, Mead claims that the theology of American Christianity has been surprisingly weak.30 28

Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 33. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, Vol. 4 (New  York:  Harper & Brothers, 1941), 424, quoted in Mead, “Denominationalism,” 291. 30 Mead, The Lively Experiment, 54. “[The alignment of traditionalism and sectarianpietism against rationalism’s] weaknesses effectively scuttled much of the intellectual structure of Protestantism. When the tremendous growth and innumerable good works of American Protestantism are celebrated, it must also be noted that ‘no theologian or theology of first rank issued from the nineteenth-century Christianity of the United States.’ ” Mead is quoting Latourette at the end of this passage: Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, Vol. 4 (New York:  Harper & Brothers, 1937–45), 415. 29

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For Mead, the primary institutional form developed in American Christianity is the denomination, itself an expression of what Mead calls “the ‘free church’ idea.” Mead defines the free church idea, and links it with denomination in this way: The basis of this institutional uniqueness has been the “free church” idea. The phrase “free churches” is used in various and confusing ways—sometimes to designate those churches of congregational polity, sometimes those peculiarly distinguished by their “liberal” views. But most properly the phrase designates those churches under the system of separation of Church and State. Here the qualifying word “free” is used in the basic sense of independent and autonomous, and in the context of long tradition thus designates those churches that are independent of the State and autonomous in relation to it. The denomination is the organizational form which the “free churches” have accepted and assumed.31 What Mead calls the “free church” idea is what Philip Schaff called religious liberty. The two scholars agree in seeing religious liberty as formative for the development of Christianity in the United States. Mead goes on to distinguish denomination from other ways of conceptualizing and actualizing the life of the church. In particular, Mead sets forth denomination as an alternative to the church–sect distinction, insisting denomination cannot be assimilated to one or the other. The denomination, unlike the traditional forms of the Church, is not primarily confessional, and it is certainly not territorial. Rather it is purposive. And unlike any previous “church” in Christendom, it has no official connection with a civil power whatsoever. A “church” as “church” has no legal existence in the United States, but is represented legally by a civil corporation in whose name the property is held32 and the necessary business transacted. Neither is the denomination a “sect” in any traditional sense, and certainly 31

Mead, Lively Experiment, 103. Holding property in the name of the denomination is not, I  eventually argue, a necessary feature of denomination.

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not in the most common sense of a dissenting body in relationship to an Established Church. It is, rather, a voluntary association of like-hearted and like-minded individuals, who are united on the basis of common beliefs for the purpose of accomplishing tangible and defined objectives. One of the primary objectives is the propagation of its point of view, which it in some sense holds to be “true.” Hence to try to divide the many religious bodies in the United States under the categories of “church” and “sect” is usually more confusing than helpful, especially since by long custom “church’ is commonly used in a way that implies approbation, and “sect” in a way that implies derogation.33 Thus for Mead denomination is a voluntary association of Christians gathered in an institution in order to pursue “tangible and defined objectives” together on the basis of common beliefs. Such a voluntary association is made possible by the withdrawal of state power from the maintenance of church institutional structures and membership: the coercive power of the state is no longer used to enforce membership in one particular church body. Therefore, denominations are not to be equated with sects, which by their very definition require the presence of an established church that utilizes state power to enforce membership and compliance with its regulations. In the absence of such a church, it is impossible for there to be such a thing as a sect.34 Mead makes some claims (explicitly or implicitly) that should be evaluated before moving to consider his descriptive analysis of denomination. Mead’s claim that denominations are defined by the pursuit of “tangible and defined objectives” is central to his proposed definition of denomination. Yet even on the basis of Mead’s own words it is worth questioning his claim that the “denomination, unlike traditional forms of the Church, is not primarily confessional, and it is certainly not territorial.” Mead goes on to suggest that denominations are formed of people who are “united on the basis of common beliefs” in order to achieve 33

Mead, Lively Experiment, 103. Mead does not consider whether, in places where there is a state church (e.g., England or Scotland), it is possible for there to be denominations which are not sects. This is not surprising, given the specifically American focus of Mead’s article, yet it is a question worth bearing in mind.

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shared aims. Whether those common beliefs are formulated and promulgated in a formally recognized confessional document, it remains the case that for Mead denominations are built on some level of shared theological belief. Certainly it is possible for such shared beliefs to be foundational to a denomination even when not formulated in a confessional document. Even for Mead denominations depend on a set of common beliefs that have some formative authority in the life and structure of the denomination itself. Mead’s claim that denomination is not territorial is yet more clearly debatable. If territorial means the only organized church body within a specified territory, the denomination is not territorial. And yet it is clearly the case that denominations generally extend only over a limited geographical area—a reality underlined in the very name of many denominations—for example, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or the Church of Sweden.35 Furthermore, Mead draws too sharp a distinction between the institutional and the theological elements of Christian life and organization. The free church idea itself embodies theological claims. Mead notes “the qualifying word ‘free’ is used in the basic sense of independent and autonomous, and in the context of long tradition thus designates those churches that are independent of the State and autonomous in relation to it.”36 This claim itself is built on theological judgments about the proper relation between the coercive power of the civil government and the church—judgments that have been disputed at various times in Christian history.37 What Mead assumes, but nowhere makes explicit, is that denomination also contains the assumption that it is legitimate for particular denominations to exist not just independently and autonomously vis-à-vis the State, but also independently and autonomously 35 It is striking that the United Methodist Church and the Anglican Communion find themselves grappling with precisely this question: should the denomination be organized in ways that are at least partially bound by national boundaries? Should the US members of these groups be self-governed, making decisions about belief and practice that will be valid only within national boundaries, doing so without having such selfdetermination affect their membership in the whole (that is, requiring the whole to acknowledge the legitimacy of decisions they have made about beliefs and practices)? 36 Mead, Lively Experiment,103. 37 Dramatically played out in the medieval Investiture Controversy, theatrically so in the snows at Canossa.

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vis-à-vis one another. This too is not simply an institutional innovation. It is also a deeply theological claim. That Mead would assume the validity of such theological claims is another indicator of how deeply ingrained are the theological judgments necessary to conclude that the existence of denominations is legitimate. Having made these clarifications, Mead’s 1954 article goes on to lay out six “elements that were woven into the denominational structure during the formative years [of denomination—1783 to 1850, for Mead] and which subsequently have conditioned the thought, life and work of American Protestantism down to the present”38 Mead’s elements provide a phenomenology of denomination. Mead does acknowledge that denominationalism took a very particular form in the American context, leaving open the possibility that it might exist in other forms:  “An understanding of the development of what we note as characteristic traits of the denominations hinges in large part upon a study of the characteristic attitudes and practices that came to be accepted during the [American] colonial period.”39 The six characteristic elements are: a “sectarian” tendency40, the voluntary principle (voluntaryism), the mission enterprise, revivalism, the flight from reason, and interdenominational competition. In what follows I will consider each in turn. A sectarian tendency, the first of Mead’s characteristic elements, is identified in this way: “the ‘sectarian’ tendency of each American denomination to seek to justify its peculiar interpretations and practices as more closely conforming to those of the early Church as pictured in the New Testament than the views and policies of its rivals.” Mead notes that American Protestantism, particularly in the nineteenth Century, was marked by “a kind of historylessness”: the belief that it was possible to leap back in time, across a history of 38

Mead, Lively Experiment,104. Mead, The Lively Experiment, 108. 40 Mead’s sectarian tendency matches what Niebuhr called denominationalism. Mead’s terminology on this point is unfortunately inconsistent. Having identified sect as a term both specific to state church contexts and laden with negative value judgments, Mead then, confusingly, insists on using sect, claiming that it can nonetheless be used with value-neutral valence: “I have for the sake of variety followed the practice common in America when discussing the Protestant bodies, of using the words ‘church,’ ‘sect,’ and ‘denomination’ as synonymous” (Mead, The Lively Experiment, 104). Elegant variation can, as here, easily be overvalued. 39

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faithlessness and error in the history of the church, to reconnect with the normative and pure church of the Apostolic Age, picking up the thread of faithfulness anew. This quest to reconnect with the church of the New Testament characterized the life of denominations in America, particularly as each denomination sought to explain and defend its own unique shape. Mead distinguishes two broad approaches taken by denominational groups in the United States as they sought to establish the superiority of their claim to be the best embodiment of the early church. Mead places Protestant bodies into two groups—rightwing and left-wing. On the one hand are the right-wing groups— Protestant bodies that managed to become the established church, enjoying state sanction, somewhere and at some time, either in Western Europe prior to arrival in America or in the American colonies. They include Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. These groups were churches in at least some places in Europe or in European colonies. The ecclesiology of the right-wing groups was shaped by their status as established churches—their ecclesiology tended to hold that there should only be one institutional body for the church, separation from which was assumed to be separation from the body of Christ. On the other hand Mead identifies left-wing Protestant groups as those that emerged apart from state establishment and in opposition to efforts to impose religious and ecclesiastical uniformity. These groups fell into the category of sects in the European context. This would include various Baptist groups and the Quakers, the Reformed in some contexts (France, for instance), and Lutherans in others (Geneva, for instance). Their ecclesiologies also tended to be shaped by the experience of separation from whatever group was the established church in their area. As groups of both right and left varieties made their way in an America in which in the end none would be established by the State it was Mead’s left-wing groups that established the basis on which the denominations would reason with and against one another: The ‘left-wing’ sects, in their fight for existence against almost universal opposition, sought a source of unquestioned authority that would undercut all the tradition-based claims of both Roman Catholics and ‘right-wing’ Protestants over them. They

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found it in the Bible, which as the commonly recognized Word of God, they proposed to place directly in the hands of the Spiritguided individual Christian as his only necessary guide to faith and practice. The common thrust of these groups was toward ‘no creed but the Bible’ and the right of ‘private judgment,’ under grace, in its interpretation. In practice this meant appeal over all churches and historical traditions to the authority of the beliefs and practices of primitive Christianity as pictured in the New Testament.41 Mead’s right-wing groups found that in the absence of state establishment they had to make the case for their existence and attract new members on the basis of shared, generally recognized authorities. The Bible was virtually the sole such authority.42 This was a significant challenge for these groups. Mead’s second characteristic element is “the voluntary principle,” which he also calls “voluntaryism”: Voluntaryism is the necessary corollary of religious freedom. Resting on the principle of free, uncoerced consent, the several religious groups became voluntary associations, equal before but, independent of the civil power and of each other. What the churches actually gave up with religious freedom was coercive power.  —The revolution in Christian thinking which they accepted was dependence upon persuasion alone.43 Rejection of state coercion implied acceptance of persuasion as the means of expanding and maintaining church membership. Mead states here, with sharp clarity, a point many seem to miss: persuasion, which relies on voluntary choice, is a necessary implication of rejecting coercion. Those who reject both coercion and voluntary association as principles operative in matters of church membership will need to show another way (a preferable way) to gain and maintain membership in a Christian group. 41

Mead, The Lively Experiment, 109. Italics in original. The instability of this authority (Scripture as interpreted by the Spirit-guided individual) is closely examined in Steve Bruce, A House Divided: Protestantism, Schism, and Secularization (London: Routledge, 1990). 43 Mead, The Lively Experiment, 113. 42

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Mead posits that it was the dramatic success of early American revivals that made it possible for the various denominational groups to accept the challenges of voluntaryism. For it was the revivals that showed the potential for outreach and growth on the basis of persuasion, instead of seeking converts through state coercion. Mead notes that the population in early America was, by some estimates, ninety percent without church connection (what we today would call “unchurched”). Such people were not part of any alternate group, but were rather individuals or small groups who needed to be communicated with and persuaded on (for the most part) a oneto-one basis.44 The spectacular successes of the revivals in drawing people into the churches served to ease anxieties about the viability of the churches in the absence of state establishment. The acceptance of the voluntary principle then shaped denomination. Conceiving the church as a voluntary association tends to push tangible, practical considerations to the fore by placing primary emphasis on the free, uncoerced consent of the individual . . . The center of a denomination, as of any other voluntary association, is a tangible, defined objective to which consent can be given. During the actual struggles for religious freedom, the common objective was recognition of the right to worship God in public as each saw fit, free from traditional civil restraints or disabilities. Once this was achieved, each group was free to define its own peculiar objectives.45 Mead notes that the centrality of a group purpose eventually generates contradictions. Once a purpose is central and definitive, anything that might impede carrying out that purpose comes to be seen as divisive. In particular, Mead suggests, this has been true 44

Mead, The Lively Experiment, 122, citing Winfred E. Garrison, “Characteristics of American Organized Religion,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 256 (March 1948), 19; see also Timothy L. Smith, “Congregation, State, and Denomination: The Forming of the American Religious Structure,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 25, No. 2 (April 1968), 155– 76, which highlights the isolation, social flux, and instability characteristic of early America, realities that atomized those making their way in the colonies, creating deep longing for a solid community life. 45 Mead, The Lively Experiment, 113–14.

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of theology, which in Mead’s view tends to generate disagreement and therefore conflict, and therefore came to be regarded as a distraction from the tangible, defined, and (presumably) common objective of the denomination.46 As theology is ignored, however, the denomination begins to lose its grip on the common belief on which it is, in part, built. As its grip loosens, the denomination then finds itself unable to draw on those beliefs in order to maintain its unity, its basic coherence as an institution. Mead’s third characteristic element, the mission enterprise, flows from the emphasis on “a tangible, defined objective.” In the early nineteenth century, commitment to the work of personal evangelization was a common objective across denominational lines. Of course, given each denomination’s affirmation that its beliefs were closest to the truth (Mead’s first characteristic element), in practice such conversion meant conversion to membership in that particular denomination. And as such it meant conversion to participation in that denomination’s particular objectives. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, there was significant debate about the aim of the mission enterprise, and thus about the objectives around which denominations had been organized. In particular, some argued that the conversion of persons to the church should either be replaced or achieved by means of an emphasis on social amelioration. Much of the history of twentieth-century American Protestantism was marked by shifting disagreements over the proper objectives for denominations, and in particular over the right way to order personal conversion and general social amelioration.47 46

Mead’s point is constantly being demonstrated in present-day denominational conflicts. One frequently, repetitively hears appeals to stop fighting and focus on what the speaker assumes to be the overriding, “tangible, defined objective” of the denomination—focus that is impossible to achieve when fighting over these other— and by logical implication secondary (if not tertiary)—matters. These appeals generally fail to acknowledge the lack of agreement about the “tangible, defined objective.” Generally, these appeals carry a claim that our objective is the objective to which I am committed. There is often an assumption that others do not and could not with integrity disagree with what I regard as our objective. 47 Mead has an extended discussion of the shifts occurring in these debates. Mead, The Lively Experiment, 117–21. He notes the importance of shifting understandings of mission:  “Since the missionary enterprise plays a central and definitive role in theAmerican denomination’s self-conscious conception of itself, even slight changes in the conception of the mission works subtle changes in the character of the denomination itself” (Mead, The Lively Experiment, 117–8).

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Mead notes that building a denomination around an objective can have ambiguous results. The reason for this is that denominations are not only purposive. They are also, as we have seen and as Mead has noted (without allowing the insight to have its full impact), built on common belief. The ambiguity arises with the potential for separation between the denomination’s beliefs and its objectives. Historically it has been possible for denominations to encounter people who share its objectives and would like to join, yet reject the common beliefs on which the denomination is built. In denominations that are attentive, this requires an appraisal of the relative importance of these two founding commitments. Is the denomination primarily committed to the objective, so that rejection of its beliefs is acceptable? Or vice versa? Or some intermediate position? Mead’s fourth characteristic element is revivalism. Mead has several observations to make about this element of denomination. First, he notes that revivalism quickly developed a repertoire of techniques designed to produce certain results in groups of listeners—not simply conversions, but particular kinds of conversion. When all groups relied on persuasion for institutional growth it was difficult to resist the urge to hone techniques that seemed to assure good results. Mead notes the opposition to revivalism— Old School Presbyterianism, for example—and yet underlines that the demands of the American context “tended to make [revivalism] imperative.”48 Mead emphasizes the impact of the acceptance of revivalism, noting that “revivalism tended to undercut the traditional churchly standards of doctrine and practice.”49 It does so for several reasons. First, revivalism tends toward oversimplification because of the need to explain matters to listeners assumed to have no prior knowledge and because of the need to confront those listeners with a dramatic choice (crudely put, heaven or hell) that must be made now. Revivalism thus devalued Christian nurture, favoring dramatic conversion. Second, revivalism makes individual choice decisive: it is the listener’s decision that makes the decisive difference. Third, revivalism came to stress results as adequate justification for means.

48 49

Mead, The Lively Experiment, 122. Mead, The Lively Experiment, 123.

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Fourth, revivalism devalued Christian nurture in favor of dramatic moments of conversion, and by extension favored leaders who produced the desired results. Finally, Mead identifies anti-intellectual bias as an important and pervasive by-product of the embrace of revivalism.50 Mead’s analysis at this point marks out a concern for any notion of church that would embrace voluntary association. His observations chart some of the ways in which voluntary association and the acceptance of the need for persuasion can go wrong.51 Yet it is by no means clear that revivalism, particularly as Mead describes it, is an essential element of denomination. Mead certainly does not claim it is an essential element: rather, he notes it as a historical reality. Mead’s fifth characteristic element is a flight from reason, a complex matter wrapped in developments that stretch well beyond American Protestantism. He turns back to the eighteenth century, before denomination achieved its full form, and finds that the two main trends in Protestantism in that century were rationalism (specifically deism) and pietism. In Mead’s view, during the French Revolution many Protestants judged that rationalism had come to show its true essence in the anti-Christian fervor of the French revolutionaries. This led many Protestants, Mead believes, to a rejection not simply of rationalism but to a rejection of the main currents of the Enlightenment altogether. All that was left to these Protestants was pietistic revivalism and scholastic orthodoxy. Mead notes that this rejection of the Enlightenment heritage generated incoherencies in American Protestantism. In particular, the American Protestant embrace of religious freedom and the turn to voluntary association generated problems. For, Mead claims (in a passage omitted when this article was printed in book form), it was Enlightenment rationalism that hammered out the arguments for religious freedom, articulating those arguments in its own terms (one need think only of John Locke’s central place in the movement for toleration). The nature of the reaction against the eighteenth century during the Revolutionary Epoch, also meant that the “free churches” accepted 50

Mead, The Lively Experiment, 123–6. In this way Mead’s analysis is similar to Niebuhr’s critique of ways in which denomination can become distorted.

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religious freedom in practice but rejected the rationalists’ rationale for it. And finding within the right-wing scholastic orthodox tradition that they fell back upon little theological basis for the practice, the denominations have never really worked out a Protestant theological orientation for it. Here is the basis for a widespread psychosomatic indigestion in American Protestantism, since it can neither digest the Enlightenment’s theory nor regurgitate its practice.52 To rephrase this point: American Protestantism has embraced denomination without working out a theological account of and justification for denomination. Indeed, much of American Protestantism has assumed a theology (specifically, an ecclesiology) that is basically inimical to denomination, having been drawn from theological documents that assume that there will be one church institution in a particular geographic area, established by the civil government in that area. Denomination has been an ecclesial institution with no apparent theological rationale.53 Mead’s sixth and final characteristic element of denominations is “the competition among the denominations.”54 Mead suggests that in part such competition was justified on rationalist grounds: “In good rationalistic theory, which was basic, competition among the several religious sects [denominations], was of the essence of the free-church [denominational] idea under the system of separation of 52

Mead, “Denominationalism: The Shape,” 314. This particular paragraph does not appear in the version of this essay published in Mead, The Lively Experiment. It does appear in an essay published a year after the publication of The Lively Experiment, which was then included in Mead’s next book: “The Post-Protestant Concept and America’s Two Religions,” Chapter 2 of Sidney Mead, The Nation With the Soul of a Church (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 11–28 (see 27). 53 Mead’s claim that American Protestantism has rejected Enlightenment rationalism is not self-evidently true. To take just one example:  though Mead does not mention him, J.  Gresham Machen might be a paradigm case embodying Mead’s turn from Enlightenment views of reason to “hard headed reactionary scholastic orthodoxy”:  Mead, “Denominationalism:  The Shape,” 312. (Mead modified this phrase when his essay was included in The Lively Experiment, deleting “reactionary”: Mead, The Lively Experiment, 128.) Yet scholars have explored the ways in which Machen’s religious views were in their own particular way deeply modernist, commited to reason and forms of reasoning that are rooted in the Enlightenment. See D. G. Hart, “When Is a Fundamentalist a Modernist? J. Gresham Machen, Cultural Modernism, and Conservative Protestantism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65, No. 3 (1997), 605–33. 54 Mead, The Lively Experiment, 129.

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church and state.”55 Mead goes on to note that “The free-churches [denominations] were not reluctant to accept this view since” (and here he quotes Leonard W.  Bacon’s A History of American Christianity, published in 1900) “in the existence of any Christian sect [denomination] [the] presumption is of course implied, if not asserted . . . that it is holding the absolute right and truth, or at least more nearly that than other sects [denominations]; and the inference, to a religious mind, is that the right and true must, in the long run, prevail.”56 Not only were there theoretical considerations fueling interdenominational competition, there were also practical considerations. Mead speaks of America as “the vast market of souls,”57 in which denominations and their members could easily be motivated in outreach by a concern that other denominations might gather in persons who could be persuaded to join one’s own denomination. Further, speaking in the early 1950s, Mead pointed out that in a context in which a high percentage of the population was understood to be churched there was great pressure to increase the size of one’s own denomination by drawing new members from other denominations. Mead notes that the reality of inter-denominational competition could lead to a hardening of denominational identity around those factors that were believed to distinguish one’s own denomination from all others. This was in spite of the fact that the denominations were Christian, and thus had some common beliefs, practices and traits: “Finally each sect [denomination] stood by itself against all others, a law unto itself in defense of its peculiar tenets which it implicitly held as absolute. The general effect of such competition was an accentuation of minor as well as substantial differences . . . and a submergence of the consciousness of a common Christian tradition.”58 Indeed, as Mead notes, inter-denominational competition could lead to a situation in which the perpetuation of such differences could become the primary reason for a denomination’s continued existence. 55

Mead, The Lively Experiment, 129. Leonard W. Bacon, A History of American Christianity (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s, 1900), 176; as quoted by Mead, The Lively Experiment, 130. 57 Mead, The Lively Experiment, 130. 58 Mead, The Lively Experiment, 131–2. 56

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Mead closes by suggesting two possible futures for American Protestant denominations. First, he suggests that denominational distinctives will increasingly be reduced and hollowed out: other factors have tended to a general erosion of interest in the historical distinctions and definable theological differences between the religious sects [Christian denominations]. Increasingly the competition among them seems to stem from such nontheological concerns as nationality or racial background, social status, and convenient accessibility of a local church.59 In some respects this vision seems to have come true—though nationality and social status would seem to play a smaller distinguishing role between denominations today than they did in 1954. Mead speculates that the emergence of “the pluralistic culture” in America might create a religious context in America defined not by differences between Protestant denominations, but rather by the differences between “the general traditional ethos of the large families, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish.”60 Here again Mead’s vision has in some respects come true, though in ways that stretch well beyond what Mead here envisions, given both the clear presence of a far wider range of religions in America, and the impact of the cultural disestablishment of Christianity. In other respects Mead’s vision has not been realized. Denomination does remain a pervasive feature of Christianity in America, the decisive form for Protestantism, and the implicit form for Catholicism and Orthodoxy (even in the face of their rejection of the validity of denomination).

Calling for a theological account of denomination In addition to Mead’s descriptive analysis of the nature of denomination as it developed in the United States, Mead has a second vital contribution to make to a theological account of denomination. He persistently called for just that—Mead was fiercely insistent on the need for a theological account of denomination and on the failure 59 60

Mead, The Lively Experiment, 132. Mead, The Lively Experiment, 133.

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of the denominations to provide such an account. Throughout his career, he persistently pointed out the incoherencies that result from the failure to present such an account. Eventually, he came to claim that religious liberty was a central first principle of the constitutional order of the United States. The failure of American Christians to articulate an ecclesiology that accounted for religious liberty meant that Christian theology was fundamentally at odds with the ideas embodied in the constitutional order of the nation, ideas that shaped the forms taken by the church. Reading Mead’s writings across the years of his research and reflection, one has the sense that he was both disappointed and frustrated by the failure of his call for such a theological account to meet with any meaningful response from theologians or denominations.61 Mead was disappointed and frustrated in part because he knew that there were theologians who had attempted to come to terms with religious liberty and the changes such liberty wrought in the doctrine of the church. Religious liberty brings with it pluralism among religious bodies, pluralism that the state accepts. There is a largely neglected strand in the Protestant tradition representing the attempt to come to terms theologically with religious pluralism and, indeed, to it as a positive good. Winthrop Hudson delineated its emergence among some of the Independent divines of seventeenth-century England. From thence I think it might be traced historically through eighteenthcentury pietistic and evangelical movements to its flowering in the formation of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846. By that time its leaders had adumbrated a doctrine of the church (denominationalism as over against sectarianism) consistent with the practice of religious freedom. But, for whatever reasons, their work has become an almost forgotten chapter in American church history.62

61 This becomes particularly clear in Mead’s late book, The Old Religion in the Brave New World: Reflections on the Relations Between Christendom and the Republic (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1977). In this book the frustration overshadows disappointment. 62 Sidney Mead, The Nation with the Soul of a Church (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 27–8. At the end of the sentence that mentions Winthrop Hudson, Mead inserts a footnote referring to Hudson’s article, “Denomination as a Basis.”

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In another essay Mead points to the careful ecclesiological distinctions made by the few nineteenth-century theologians who attempted to offer a theological account of denomination: “Those evangelicals saw a real difference, and made a sharp distinction, between ‘the church,’ a ‘denomination,’ and a ‘sect’—and between ‘denominationalism’ and ‘sectarianism’—all key concepts, in the discussion of the matter before us, which today are often used interchangeably.”63 In this ecclesiology, the church is truly one, made up of all Christians. The phrase the church was recognized, not as a description of what was observed, but as a theological assertion of the unity of all believers in the ‘idea and purpose’ of God, in ‘the mystical union’ with Christ, and in ‘the willing and conscious bond of union’ called ‘faith.’ The church, the body of Christ, is one: this was the primary premise of the inherited conceptual order which they brought to the observation of the new fact of division into numerous independent religious organizations.64 Clearly the church is divided into multiple institutional structures. To account for the multiplicity Hudson turns to an essay by Charles Hodge, published in the papers of the sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, held in 1873, in which Hodge attributes the multiple institutional structures to the limitation of human knowledge. Because Christians are “not promised that ‘they shall be perfect [and therefore one] in knowledge” therefore it “follows that ‘diversity of doctrine . . . among believers is unavoidable in our imperfect state,’ and diversity of doctrine has led to disagreements respecting proper forms which are institutionalized in the several separate organizations. From this perspective, division into numerous groups is not a sin.”65 The oneness of the church, together with the incompleteness of human knowledge, led to denomination. In this conceptual context a denomination was seen as an organized group that, accepting these premises, recognized itself as 63 Mead, Nation with the Soul, 41. The essay is “The Fact of Pluralism and the Persistence of Sectarianism,” which is Chapter 3 of the book (29–47). 64 Mead, Nation with the Soul, 41–2. 65 Mead, Nation with the Soul, 42. The phrase in brackets is Mead’s.

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a visible but finitely limited part of the church founded upon imperfect knowledge, apprehension, and exemplification of the gospel. A  denomination did not make the claim exclusively to be the church. It did not absolutize or universalize any of the particularities that distinguished it from other Christian groups. A sect was defined by these nineteenth-century evangelicals as a group that does make such claims.66 Mead goes on to quote Philip Schaff on the distinction between denominationalism and sectarianism. Mead lamented the loss of these theological insights and called on Christians to embrace and affirm them, or to do better. Theologians have remained unresponsive to Mead’s call. Historian Russell Richey has carried forward Mead’s work toward developing a deeper understanding of denomination.

Russell E. Richey Russell Richey has carried forward the investigations of denomination by Hudson and Mead. Richey has contributed both through his own publications and through editing two central collections of essays on the topic. Richey’s early published essays probed English Dissenting denominations in the eighteenth century, with a particular focus on English Presbyterianism and the stages through which a significant part of English Presbyterianism became Unitarian.67 Richey has made significant contributions to Methodist Studies, and some

66

Mead, Nation with the Soul, 42. Russell E. Richey, “Did the English Presbyterians Become Unitarian?” Church History 43, No. 1 (1973):  58–72; idem, “From Puritanism to Unitarianism in England: A Study in Candour,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 41, No. 3 (1973):  371–85; idem, “English Baptists and Eighteenth-Century Dissent,” Foundations:  A  Baptist Journal of History and Theology 16, No. 4 (1973):  347– 54; idem, “The Origins of British Radicalism:  The Changing Rationale for Dissent,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 7, No. 2 (1973–74):  179–92; idem, “Effects of Toleration on Eighteenth-Century Dissent,” The Journal of Religious History 8, No. 4 (1975):  350–63. These essays have been reprinted in Russell E. Richey, Denominationalism Illustrated and Explained (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013). The essays are printed there as the following chapters (following the sequence above): chapters 5, 6, 3, 4, and 2. 67

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of that work has focused on what it has meant and still means for the United Methodist Church to be a denomination.68 Richey’s papers on denomination moved from a focus on specific denominations to an exploration of denominationalism, which Richey defines as the larger pattern or genre that is instantiated in particular denominations: ‘Denomination’ named voluntary religious organizations (initially Christian) operating under conditions of religious pluralism, codes of civility, and some measure of toleration. The collective term denominationalism references the existence and coexistence of tolerated voluntary religious bodies, their uneasy competition with one another establishing a larger pattern, the production thereby of an organizational field, and the emergence of a set of beliefs or practices that govern participation in the denominational order.69 Richey has published a number of essays and articles in journals and reference works that explore the history of this system of denominations, as well as probing a variety of approaches to studying both individual denominations and the system ofdenominations as a whole.70 These articles have appeared in publications associated 68

See especially Russell E. Richey, “Culture Wars and Denominational Loyalties:  A  Methodist Case Study” Quarterly Review 18, No. 1 (1998):  3–17; idem., “History as a Bearer of Denominational Identity:  Methodism as a Case Study,” in Beyond Establishment: Protestant Identity in a Post-Protestant Age, ed. Jackson W. Carroll and Wade Clark Roof (Louisville, KY:  Westminster /John Knox Press, 1993), 270–95; idem., “United Methodism:  Its Identity as Denomination,” in Denomination:  Assessing an Ecclesiological Category, ed. Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George, Ecclesiological Investigations (New  York:  T & T Clark International, 2011), 67–85. The first two of these essays are reprinted in Richey, Denominationalism Illustrated, chapters 11 and 10, respectively. 69 Russell E. Richey, “Denominationalism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion in America, ed, Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (Washington, DC:  CQ Press, 2010), 1:542. (Richey, Denominationalism Illustrated, chapter 8.) In accord with the subject matter of the encyclopedia in which this is published, Richey tries to stretch the term denomination to fit non-Christian religious bodies. I believe this stretches the term in odd ways, much as efforts to label these religious bodies churches did for the term church. Richey’s definitions spring from his engagement with Christianity and Christian religious groups. 70 Russell E. Richey, “Denominationalism: A Theological Mandate,” Drew Gateway 47, No. 2–3 (1976–7):  93–106; idem., “‘Catholic’ Protestantism and American

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with denominations other than the United Methodist Church— bearing witness to the degree to which Richey is an authoritative voice on denomination generally. Finally, Richey has edited two collections of essays that are seminal for the study of denomination. The first, published in 1977, gathered a number of essays and excerpts by a variety of authors, most of which had previously been published in journals, with an introduction both to the entire volume and to the individual articles by Richey himself.71 These articles and excerpts gather work done across the twentieth century, but particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, bringing together significant contributions to understanding denominations and the rise of the system of denominations. Then, together with Robert Bruce Mullin, Richey coedited a volume of newly written essays published in 1994, Reimagining Denominationalism: Interpretive Essays.72 This body of historical and theological work has made significant contributions in at least three broad ways:  Richey has persistently called attention to the importance of denomination, in spite of the topic’s disrepute; he has enriched the historical picture Denominationalism,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 16, No. 2 (1979):  213– 31; idem., “Institutional Forms of Religion,” in Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience:  Studies of Traditions and Movements, ed. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s, 1988), 1:31–50; idem., “Denominations and Denominationalism:  An American Morphology,” in Reimagining Denominationalism:  Interpretive Essays, ed. Robert Bruce Mullin and Russell E. Richey (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1994) 649–53; idem., “Denomination/Denominationalismus,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Tübingen:  Mohr Siebeck, 4th ed., 1999) 2:  666–7.; idem., “Denominationalism in Perspective,” Journal of Presbyterian History 79, No. 3 (2001):  199–213; idem., “Denominationalism,” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, 2nd ed., ed. Nicholas Lossky, José Míguez Bonino, John Pobee, Tom F. Stransky, Geoffrey Wainwright, Pauline Webb (Geneva:  WCC Publications, 2002) 294–6.; idem., “Denominations and Denominationalism: Past, Present, and Future,” Word & World 25, No. 1 (2005):  15–22; idem., “Denominations,” in The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America, ed. Philip Goff (Malden, MA:  Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) 90– 103; and the article cited in the previous footnote. The first three essays appear as chapters 13, 1, and 7, the sixth as chapter 12, the eighth as the introduction in Richey, Denominationalism Illustrated. 71 Russell E. Richey, ed., Denominationalism (Nashville:  Abingdon, 1977). This collection was reprinted by Wipf & Stock, Eugene, OR in 2011. 72 Robert Bruce Mullin and Russell E. Richey, eds., Reimagining Denominationalism: Interpretive Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

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of the development of denomination, examining both British and American developments, often in their interactions; and he has contributed to the effort to define what a denomination is, and what the system of denominations taken together is. In what follows I examine Richey’s explorations of each of these matters.

The importance of the topic Richey has produced a significant body of work on denomination, in constant awareness of the almost universal disdain for the topic. In his provocatively titled essay, “Denominationalism: A  Theological Mandate” of 1976–7, Richey described the general reaction in theological circles of contempt for the concept.73 In an article for a reference work published thirty-three years later, Richey observes that the topic of denomination is generally viewed in the same way: Within the religious community and specifically among mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics, ecumenical agendas and commitments have imaged denominationalism as the foil, the problem, the dividedness to be overcome, a compromise of the Gospel, the capitulation of Christianity to culture, an accommodation to social factors of class, caste, race, region, language and national origin. Infiltrate denominations, one of my Union Seminary teachers counseled, and pull them down from within. While such ‘terrorist’ attitudes were the exception, a mainline denominational leader best avoided embarrassment by refraining from championing or celebrating to excess one’s own denomination and denominational accomplishments.74 For Richey, sustained attention to denomination is not an odd form of contrarianism. It is demanded by the present circumstances of denominations in the United States, across the 73

Richey’s pungent comments on the status of denomination as a topic of study have been quoted in the Introduction and Chapter 2 of the present work. See, 2n. 4, 73. 74 Russell E. Richey, “Denominations” in The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America, ed. Philip Goff (Malden, MA.:  Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 90. Henceforth cited as Richey, Blackwell Companion: page number.

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spectra of polities, worship styles, and theological, political, and social views. Denominations face multiple challenges, and academic disdain is sustained in a time when “Each problem tests denominational will and invites restatement of denominational identity and purpose. At no other time have the denominations had a greater need for clarity about themselves and been less able to achieve it.”75 In a later article Richey outlines the importance of careful study of the long historical development of denominations—both development internal to a particular denomination, and also the development of the broader system of denominations. Above all, thick study of denomination and its history provides crucial context in which to respond to those who see the present moment as the final gasp of an imploding system of denominations. Richey, a historian, holds that historians have a particular responsibility for probing and articulating the larger historical record of denomination:  in face of the voices of doom, “the longer view helps us see persisting patterns among the changes. The longer view also reminds us that periods of chaos and rapid change, which to actors therein seem to portend the end to organized religion as they have known it, have yielded repeated yet renewed patterns of the old.”76 Richey is clear that theologians have been conspicuously absent in the effort to understand denomination: “The basic structuring of the church in modern democratic societies has somehow escaped the theologians’ serious attention.”77

Filling in the historical picture Winthrop Hudson laid out the history of early steps in the rise of the notion of denomination in “Denomination as a Basis for

75 Russell E. Richey, foreword, in Denominationalism, ed. Russell E. Richey (Nashville: Abingdon, 1977), 9–10. Henceforth cited as Richey, Denominationalism: page number. 76 Russell E. Richey, “Denominationalism in Perspective,” Journal of Presbyterian History 79, No. 3 (2001):  211. Henceforth cited as Richey, “Perspective”:  page number. 77 Russell E. Richey, “Denominationalism:  A  Theological Mandate,” The Drew Gateway 47, Nos. 2–3 (1976–77):  95. Hereafter cited as Richey, “Mandate”: page number.

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Ecumenicity,” following the argument that developed between Presbyterians and Independents at the Westminster Assembly. As we have seen, both Hudson and Sidney Mead did their historical writing with a strong awareness of the importance of denomination in the story of American Christianity. But neither focused on the later history of denomination as a system. Richey has carried that focus forward. First, Richey has added detail to Hudson’s picture of the early development of the idea of denomination. Richey acknowledges the importance of the Independents at the Westminster Assembly, but he adds other contributors to Hudson’s picture. In the Englishspeaking West, the conceptual building blocks of denomination were shaped by the Independents, along with the Latitudinarians (or “Middle-Way Men”), the Pietists and Evangelicals, and moderate (or Christian) Enlightenment thinkers.78 These latter three groups worked out a notion of catholicity that allowed that distinct denominations could exist in the one church. Generally they did so by finding unity in some essential or essentials that were held in common.79 Second, Richey’s work on the transformation of English Presbyterianism into Unitarianism demonstrates the fluidity of denominational identity, while also tracing the pressure exerted on English denominations by the government’s support of establishment status for the Church of England.80 Third, Richey has worked out a periodization for the development of denomination in the United States of America. His periodization highlights the flexibility and adaptability of denomination as a form of church.81 Further, his periodization helps to anatomize

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Russell E. Richey, “Denomination/Denominationalismus,” Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 4th ed. (Tübingen:  Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 2:667. Hereafter cited as Richey, RGG: page number. 79 Richey focuses on these groups and their ideas in Russell E. Richey, “‘Catholic’ Protestantism and American Denominationalism,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 16, No. 2 (1979): 213–31. Hereafter cited as Richey, “Catholic”: page number. 80 The relevant essays are listed in n. 67. 81 Richey draws on and extends the periodization offered in a seminal article by Craig Dykstra and James Hudnut-Beumler, “The National Organizational Structures of Protestant Denominations: An Invitation to a Conversation,” in The Organizational Revolution: Presbyterians and American Denominationalism, ed. Milton J. Coalter, John M. Mulder, and Louis B. Weeks, The Presbyterian Presence:  The TwentiethCentury Experience, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 307–31.

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the complexity of denomination: Richey notes that as earlier forms of denomination are superseded they leave traits that survive in and shape later forms. He finds that there have been five dominant forms of denomination across the history of the church in the United States, with the present being a moment in which a new form appears to be gestating. The first, ethnic voluntarism or provincial voluntarism, characterized movements in the religiously pluralistic middle colonies of the eighteenth century, with Presbyterians serving as the best example. The second, purposive missionary association, emerged in the early national period, the form fabricated by Methodists and Baptists and the theory worked out by the Reformed. The third, ‘churchly’ style qualified the second, rather than transforming it fully. It flourished after the Civil War, drew some inspiration from Romantic currents, derived impetus from massive immigration and resulting competition, and took expressive form in both high-church and primitivist movements (Episcopal, Lutheran, Landmark Baptist, Christian). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, corporate or managerial organization, the fourth stage, swept virtually the entire Protestant mainstream, producing the structures of denominational organization familiar today. The fifth style, perhaps like the third qualifying rather than displacing its immediate predecessor, emerged in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Dykstra compares it with its secular counterpart, the regulatory agency. We prefer to see it as combining a number of contemporary cultural forms—the franchise, the regulatory agency, the caucus, the mall, the media.82

82

This programmatic statement of this periodization is found in Russell E. Richey, “Denominations and Denominationalism: An American Morphology,” in Reimagining Denominationalism:  Interpretive Essays, ed. Robert Bruce Mullin and Russell E. Richey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 74–98 (the quoted sentences are on page 77). Hereafter cited as Richey, “Morphology”: page number. This periodization appears in other articles as well—e.g., Richey, RGG; Richey, “Perspective”: 204– 10; Russell E. Richey, “Denominationalism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion in America, ed. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (Washington, DC:  CQ Press, 2010), 1:542–7. Hereafter cited as Richey, Encyclopedia:  page number. Richey, Blackwell Companion, 97–102 runs through the periods in reverse chronological order.

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The final feature of Richey’s enriched picture of denomination to note is his analysis of the leading approaches for analyzing denomination: denominational history; the study of voluntarism and voluntary associations; the study of organizations and particularly of religious organizations; ideal typologies such as church, sect, mysticism, and denomination; and ethnic studies, in which the impact of race on denomination is studied, as well as studies that take denominations to be analogous to ethnicity.83

Richey’s definition Richey has offered a compact definition of denomination. He has also offered a few additional observations that add to his compact definition, and these observations also need to be taken into account. Richey’s compact definition came to expression after he had been studying denomination for some time, and built on his earlier studies. Denomination is “a voluntary ecclesial body”: Denominationalism presents the denomination as a voluntaristic ecclesial body. It is voluntary and therefore presupposes a condition of legal or de facto toleration and religious freedom—an environment within which it is possible, in fact, willingly to join or not join and that provides ‘space’ to exist alongside or outside of any religious establishment. The denomination exists in a situation of religious pluralism, typically a pluralism of denominations. It is ecclesial, a movement or body understanding itself to be legitimate and self-sufficient, a proper ‘church’ (or religious movement.) It is a voluntary church, a body that concedes the authenticity of other churches even as it claims its own. It need not, however, concede that authenticity indiscriminately; it need not, and typically does not, regard all other denominations as orthodox. And it is an ecclesial body or form, an organized religious movement, with intentions and the capacity for selfperpetuation, with a sense of itself as located within time and 83

There is a clear statement of these approaches in Russell E. Richey, “Institutional Forms of Religion,” in Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience: Studies of Traditions and Movements, ed. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), 1:31–50. Hereafter cited as Richey, “Institutional Forms”: page number.

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with awareness of its relations to the longer Christian tradition. It knows itself as denominated, as named, as recognized and recognizable, as having boundaries, as possessing adherents, as having a history.84 Richey’s compact definition of denomination lacks the theological detail that will be of concern to theologians, for example in not evaluating the claim that the existence of multiple denominations does not violate the unity of the church. Richey acknowledges that his compact definition brackets theological assessment: “Whether such division of Christians [into denominations] is, in ethical or eternal perspective, a good thing will not concern us here.”85 Nevertheless, features of Richey’s compact definition that are important for a theological assessment of denomination can be pointed out. First, denomination arises in a context in which state coercion of the church is either limited or removed. State establishment of church (of a particular form of church, to be more precise) requires the application of state coercion to see to it that as far as possible all citizens live out their Christian faith in one particular way, within one organizational structure. When state coercion is removed, what is left is choices made on the basis of other factors. There is a direct connection between judgments about religious liberty and the application of coercion in matters of Christian living, on the one hand, and judgments about the legitimacy of denomination as a form of church, on the other. Second, denomination assumes that there are multiple faithful ways to live out the Christian faith, and that Christians may organize into denominations in order to support one another in living out the Christian faith in a particular way.86 Third, denomination locates 84

Richey, “Morphology”: 75–6. Richey, “Morphology”: 75. 86 “The key notion [of denomination] was that schism did not apply to the mere fact of division but rather to attitudes and relationships, specifically to the want of love between Christian groups that put brothers at enmity with one another. On that premise, groups could recognize one another as legitimate, as part of the church.” Russell E. Richey, “Denominationalism,” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, 2nd ed., ed. Nicholas Lossky, José Míguez Bonino, John Pobee, Tom F. Stransky, Geoffrey Wainwright, Pauline Webb (Geneva:  WCC Publications, 2002), 295. Hereafter cited as Richey, Dict. Ecum.: page number. 85

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the unity of the church in something other than organizational or institutional structures. Denomination embodies a particular way of balancing unity and diversity, creating space for significant diversity. Theological assessments of denomination will need to make theological judgments about both the unity and the diversity to which Christians are called—as we have seen in the work of Philip Schaff. Fourth, Richey’s compact definition emphasizes the role of purpose in shaping denominations—a feature of denomination also underlined by Sidney Mead. Richey spells out the role of purpose by connecting it to a denomination’s self-awareness. Theologian Ann Riggs has suggested that purpose might better be understood by the notion of agency. “To be a ‘denomination,’ a body requires not only the authority necessary to make certain ecclesial decisions and carry out certain ecclesial actions; it needs also the power to do so, whatever the source of such is understood to be.”87 Denominations are distinct, they have a sense of particular identity within the common identity, Christian. A theological assessment of denomination will take some account of how that can be so in the Body of Christ. These theological matters are taken up in Part II. Three additional features of Richey’s compact definition are worthy of note. First, Richey picks up an important point from Winthrop Hudson: denomination as a system carried with it an ecclesiology, even though that ecclesiology generally remained only implicit. “Underlying denominationalism, argues Hudson, was an ecclesiology, a theory of the church, expressed in the meaning of the word ‘denomination’ itself. Indeed, it was predicated upon unity and used by Evangelicals to denote a group within the body of Christians.” Richey then quotes Hudson: “The word ‘denomination’ implies that the group referred to is but one member of a larger group, called or denominated by a particular name.”88 Richey’s historical work has been an effort, in

87

Ann K. Riggs, “Denomination Beyond the North Atlantic Ecclesial World,” in Denomination:  Assessing an Ecclesiological Category, ed. Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George, Ecclesiological Investigations Series (New York: T & T Clark International, 2011), 128–9. Riggs offers an extended discussion of agency (126–9). 88 Richey, “Catholic”:  217, quoting Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis”:  32. Richey underlines this point in his introduction to Hudson’s article in Russell E.

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significant part, to spell out elements of the ecclesiology implicit in denomination. Second, a related point: Richey insists that the idea of denomination does carry with it a particular understanding of unity, and denomination as a system is a force for this particular kind of unity. Comprehension and indulgence (or the principles of catholicity and toleration) were two prominent options (not necessarily exclusive options) for resolving the religious conflicts of seventeenth-century England . . . These two ideals, not just toleration, but both catholicity and toleration, became the intellectual underpinnings of the nineteenth-century American resolution of the problem of dissent and consent—denominationalism. Though seldom adequately discussed by the nineteenth-century church leaders, these two ideals made denominationalism a viable form of the Christian church.89 Richey’s point is vital. Denominations are so often thought of as the embodiment of schism that the understanding of unity underlying denomination must be emphasized. Philip Schaff worked his way toward such an understanding over the length of his career, covering the second half of the nineteenth-century. Clearly, Christians both then and now have failed adequately to discuss denomination in theological terms; Schaff’s long wrestling with denomination perhaps indicates the difficulty of the topic. Third, Richey affirms that the ecclesiology embodied in denomination “. . . functions with a branch theory of the church, the notion that the church exists and is known in the present as an organism with many branches. That affirmation entails an act of selfrecognition, that one is only a branch, and the realization that the church has other legitimate, even vital branches.”90

Richey, ed., Denominationalism (Nashville:  Abingdon, 1977), 19, “underlying denominationalism is a new theory or theology of the church. There is theological legitimacy for denominationally divided Christianity.” 89 Richey, “Catholic”: 214. 90 This is in a footnote:  Richey, “Morphology”:  93, n.  11. See also Richey, “Perspective”: 202–3 (cf. n. 68); and Richey, Blackwell Companion, 96.

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Summary Richey has worked, across years of academic study of denomination, on tracing the history and the present, complex state of denomination, both in the United States and in England. He has persistently insisted on the importance and relevance of this topic, in the face of the concept’s disrepute. Richey has enriched our understanding of denomination as a form within the church, offering both fine-grained and broad-sweep historical investigations of denomination. Richey has hammered out a substantive definition of denomination, rooted in his historical research, a definition carefully worked through in multiple publications. One of the things that makes this research of such value is Richey’s clear awareness of the difficulties denominations face in our present moment (especially the old mainline American denominations, including his own United Methodist Church), and his ability to place present difficulties in a larger historical and theological context that enables those in denominations to respond to present difficulties with greater steadiness and understanding, in the face of the general tendency in these denominations toward panic and incomprehension. Richey’s work on denomination, standing on the work of Schaff, Niebuhr, Hudson, and Mead in particular, provides a rich historical and contemporary context for theological reflection on denomination.

PART I: SUMMARY

Schaff, Niebuhr, Hudson, Mead, and Richey together provide a thick description of denomination. Philip Schaff, a careful observer of what God was (he affirmed) actively doing around him, came in the course of a long career to a deep appreciation of denomination as a form in the church, in the absence of the evils of state coercion in matters of religious belief and belonging. Schaff perceived that denomination raised the question of the unity and diversity to which the church is called. He recognized the responsibility of theologians to answer this question and worked persistently to provide such answers. The particular nature and markers of the unity to which the church is called by its Lord, and the particular nature and markers of the diversity to which the church is called by its Lord: neither of these can be taken for granted, both must be fleshed out, articulated. Any ecclesiology concerned with the unity of the church should spell out what the paired realities unity and diversity mean in the church, but spelling out that meaning is central for a theological account of denomination. Such a spelling out forms a significant portion of Part II of this book. H. Richard Niebuhr fashioned a powerful indictment of the sins of all institutional forms taken by the church across its entire history, including particularly denomination, in The Social Sources of Denominationalism, prosecuting the case along one line of division after another. And yet, having made that case and published it, he found himself needing to offer a deeper analysis, one that would capture more of the actual forms that the church has taken across its history, particularly that part of its history played out in the United States. Philip Schaff had come, by the last years of the

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nineteenth century, to a positive assessment of denomination. He had worked out the beginnings of a theological account of denomination. That theological account was blown beyond the margins of awareness by Niebuhr’s Social Sources, coming as it did on the early winds of the conciliar ecumenical movement. Across the remainder of his life, Niebuhr followed a course of reflection and reassessment reminiscent of Schaff’s, wrestling with the actual forms the church has taken, looking for the work of the Holy Spirit therein, and finding that denomination does indeed press for careful thinking about unity and diversity, and about how to assess the forms the church has actually taken. Winthrop Hudson looked for the roots of denomination and found them in an unlikely place:  the Westminster Assembly, in the midst of the Presbyterian push to become the state-established church. Writing later than Niebuhr in the history of the ecumenical movement, Hudson saw the ecumenical value of denomination and made a case for it. Hudson recognized the seeds of denomination in the Protestant Reformation and saw those seeds growing to maturity in American Protestantism. He recognized that denomination embodies a distinct ecclesiology, a distinct understanding of the unity and the diversity to which the church is called, and sought to bring that ecclesiology to light. Sidney Mead offered a phenomenological account of denomination across its history in the United States, recognizing that denomination is a distinct form in the church. He also persistently called for theologians to fulfill their calling by taking up the question of a theological assessment and exploration of denomination, making that call even though it went without apparent effect. Russell E.  Richey has studied denomination from a range of angles, for a range of purposes. He has contributed to identifying the historical development of denomination. Studying both English and American developments, he has offered fine-grained studies of denominations in the process of change and development. He has recognized and pointed to theological questions raised by the reality of denomination. He has provided studies of the present condition of denomination and denominations and has offered overviews of the study of denominations. He has persistently taken up Mead’s call for a careful, generous evaluation of denomination, this form which is central to the way in which millions of Christians have in the past and do now live out their faith. Richey has been attentive to

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the present difficulties of denomination and has sought to provide conceptual tools and materials with which to shape an understanding of this present moment, an understanding that will empower positive action in the midst of present difficulties rather than lamentation and incomprehension. He has contributed richly to the thick description of denomination. The writings of these five scholars lay the groundwork for a theological assessment of denomination, to which we turn next.

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PART II

Denomination: The Diversity, Unity, and Communion to Which God Calls Us

14

PART II: PREFACE Despite the long neglect of denomination as a matter for theological investigation, there have been theologians and historians who have evaluated denomination theologically, often by attending to the history of denomination as a way of organizing within the church. Schaff and Niebuhr provided theological investigations grounded in attentiveness to the historical development of denomination; Hudson, Mead, and Richey provided historical investigations of denomination that are attentive to the theological issues raised by this form of church life. Their analyses lay the groundwork for theological investigation of denomination today. That exploration makes up Part II, the chapters of which pursue the exploration in four steps. First, I  offer a theological account of denomination itself. Denomination is an intermediary ecclesial structure within the church. It stands between the congregation and the one church. In denomination, a number of congregations gather together to enable one another to live out the Christian faith in a particular way. Denominations become necessary because there are multiple faithful ways to live the Christian life together. But choosing one way generally means choosing not to live the faith in different, equally faithful ways. The Christian life cannot be lived out in isolation—it must be lived together with other Christians. Each of these faithful ways of Christian living requires support, support that abides over time. Therefore, each will generate a set of institutional structures that undergird and nurture a particular way of living the Christian life. Existing between congregation and church gives denomination particular characteristics. Denominations are intermediary, contingent, partial, interdependent, and permeable. These characteristics mark out ways in which denomination relates to congregations and

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the one church; they also mark out ways in which denominations faithfully relate to one another. Denomination has long raised the question of the unity of the church. A  theological account of denomination must offer an account of how denomination fits with the unity of the church. But unity does not exist alone, and understandings of the unity of the church are at the same time concepts of the diversity of the church. Ecumenical theologian Michael Kinnamon has offered an axiom capturing the relationship between unity and diversity: “The two concepts—unity and diversity—are symbiotic.”1 In order to deal with the unity of the church, one must deal at the same time with the diversity of the church. The church is called to unity. This is clear from the New Testament and is the motivating force behind the modern ecumenical movement.2 The call to unity is regularly recognized, acknowledged, and underlined. But there is also a call to diversity, a call less frequently recognized in conversations about the church and its reality in the world. Chapters 5 and 6 explore the call to diversity and the call to unity. Diversity is not a simple, undifferentiated thing. In considering the call to diversity it is crucial to consider the particular nature and extent of the diversity that is characteristic of God’s action in the created order. There is a distinct quality or character to the diversity that is characteristic of God’s action in the world. In Chapter 5 I explore the particular diversity brought forth by God, the diversity God calls Christians to join. The character of the divine impulse and call to diversity is best seen by tracking the way in which God’s action in creation brings florid diversity across both the Old and the New Testaments, where God’s impulse to diversity is met by God’s ability to gather diversity into a coherent whole. I track the particular diversity brought forth by God as Scripture shows it, from the first chapters of Genesis through to the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation. 1

Michael Kinnamon, The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2003), 51. 2 Frequently cited New Testament texts include, above all, Jesus’s prayer for unity in Jn 17:20–26, as well as texts from the Pauline corpus, such as Eph. 4:1–16 and 1 Cor. 12:12–31.

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Unity is not a simple, undifferentiated thing, whose definition is clear, simple, and universally shared. In Chapter 6 I explore the unity that is symbiotically related to the diversity generated by the divine action. The unity of the church has been a topic of theological exploration and debate since the church’s origin. In the modern age the ecumenical movement has carried on an intensive conversation about the unity to which the church is called—a long conversation about the goal of the ecumenical movement itself, a conversation about the aim that shapes ecumenical work. Chapter  6 considers the ecumenical conversation about the unity of the church, which serves as a springboard for an account of the unity to which God calls us. The unity to which we are called, symbiotically related to the diversity to which we are called, can be described as “articulated unity.” The diversity and unity to which God calls the followers of Jesus Christ are in the service of the church’s participation in God’s mission in the world. The church is included in the people of God who are called forth to be agents of God’s mission, participating in their own distinct ways in that mission. That mission is the creation of creatures who flourish in communion with God and with one another. In Chapter 7 I draw together the discussion of the previous three chapters by considering ecclesiology more broadly, exploring the communion to which we are called by God.

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4 Denomination: A normative definition

Introduction What is denomination? What other ecclesiological realities and structures is it particularly related to, and in what ways? How might denomination serve faithful living of the Christian life? In this chapter I offer a definition of denomination that seeks to grasp features that make denomination a fit structure for faithful living of the Christian life. I begin by considering the ecclesiological space in which denomination is located. This space lies between the congregation and the universal church. Situated in this space, denomination seeks to mediate between the church universal and the congregation, and as such it embodies in its own particular way some features of both. It has some of the concrete particularity of the congregation, linking the congregation with other congregations in a committed pattern of life that embodies in concrete ways the affirmation of belief in one holy catholic and apostolic church. Denomination also looks to the comprehensiveness of the universal church. It does so by bringing the presence of other congregations to bear on the life of the local congregation. Denominational ties affirm that a congregation is not the fullness of the church. The congregation is a necessary, but not sufficient, embodiment of the church.1 By their commitment 1

In the words of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): “The congregation is the basic form of the church, but it is not of itself a sufficient form of the church. Thus congregations are bound together in communion with one another,

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to a denomination’s structure and way of life, local congregations find themselves tied to a particular set of other congregations. A local congregation is identified as one among them;2 it agrees to limit its freedom of action by adhering to certain denominational standards and decisions, and its outlook on the world beyond itself is in part tied to consideration of the other congregations in its denomination.3 Denomination is a particular pattern of committed relationships with a set of other congregations, a pattern that is larger than any of the congregations that belong to it, and small enough so that those mutual commitments can have concreteness, particularity, and purchase in a congregation’s own life. The commitments that bind congregations together in a denomination are at root theological—built around shared agreement about certain matters of Christian belief and practice, about what is to be believed and done in order to live the Christian life faithfully and fully. These matters of belief and practice are open to dispute. There can be dispute as to whether these particular beliefs and practices do enable faithful and full living of the Christian faith. Or, the dispute can run deeper; there may be dispute as to whether these particular beliefs and practices (singly or all together) are even Christian. Living the Christian life requires making decisions, however tentatively, about any number of disputed beliefs and practices. There is no agreement about the one faithful way to live the Christian faith. There has been no agreement from the united in relationships of accountability and responsibility, contributing their strengths to the benefit of the whole, and are called, collectively, the church.” The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part I, The Book of Order 2015– 17 (Louisville, KY: The Office of the General Assembly, 2015), G-1.0101. 2 That is, a congregation understands itself to be one among those other congregations. It understands itself to share with those congregations a particular way of living the Christian faith. As such, a congregation’s identity is in part determined by its relationship to that particular group of congregations. Furthermore, that congregation’s public identity, outside its own membership, will in part be shaped by the larger group of congregations to which it is committed (that is to say, the by the denomination of which it is a member). 3 One aim of the ecumenical movement is to bring the presence of congregations outside one’s own denomination to bear on the life of every congregation. The degree to which the presence of those other congregations bears is the degree to which the ecumenical movement has succeeded in reaching this aim.

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beginning. And yet, in the face of disagreement, the Christian life is lived now (and has been all along). Denomination provides a structure in which to live in the midst of such disagreements, in all their variety. Denomination comes into being when governmental coercion is removed from the life of the church. Having been removed, the government’s coercive power can no longer be used to enforce one denomination’s way of living the Christian life, outlawing all alternatives, or privileging one way of living the Christian life to the disadvantage of others. With the removal of government coercion the state is no longer choosing which way of living the Christian life will be mandated or preferred for those under its governance.4 Historically, the gradual withdrawal of the government’s coercive power was paralleled by the gradual emergence of denomination as an ecclesiological form within the church. Winthrop Hudson has pointed out that the pattern in Western Europe following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, in which the particular form of Christianity practiced in each area in Western Europe was determined by the ruler over that region (cuius regio, eius religio), is an incipient form of denomination. Actually, the denominational theory of the church was implicit in the thinking of the Protestant Reformers . . . the Reformers recognized as true churches all churches which possessed an essentially common faith, whether they were Lutheran churches as in Germany and Scandinavia; Reformed churches as in Switzerland, Holland, and Scotland, or an Anglican church as in England. All these churches in their various geographical areas were different manifestations of the whole church of Christ which embraced them all. The new element which was to be introduced into this type of thinking was the application of the basic convictions of the Reformers to a situation in which religious diversity existed within a particular geographical area rather than between different geographical areas. Formerly it

4

The relationship of the state to various ways of living the Christian faith is, of course, a complicated matter, constantly shifting, as evidenced by the vast literature on church-state relations. My comments perforce elide the complications in order to pursue a different topic.

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had been a question as to whether or not a church in England could be and was in communion with a church in Holland. The answer of Protestantism in general had been that they both could be and were in communion with one another. In seventeenth century England, it was to be suggested that this was equally true of Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist churches when they were located on opposite corners in the same city.5 The principle established by the Peace of Westphalia was a sort of half-measure to denomination. All that was needed for the emergence of denomination in the basic form we know it today was the emigration of persons from those various regions, bringing their particular forms of Christian faith with them to a place in which the government declined (for a variety of reasons) to enforce or could not enforce the ruler’s decision about which form of Christianity was to be practiced in that place. Britain’s North American colonies are the place where these conditions came together most fully, and the logic of denomination rapidly emerged there.6 What follows is an effort to offer the basic elements of a theological understanding of denomination. It is intended to be a normative definition of denomination; it is not intended to be an empirical description of existing denominations. Empirical description is important, but it is not the primary work at hand. Theological work on denomination is no more limited to such empirical description than systematic theology generally is confined to defining Christian faith by compiling empirical descriptions of all the things actual Christians actually believe and the practices in which they engage. What is offered here is a normative definition—a theological definition of denomination.7 5

Winthrop S. Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis for Ecumenicity: A Seventeenth Century Conception,” Church History 24, No. 1 (March 1955): 33. 6 Charles Wiley, in conversation, has noted that no matter what a Christian intermediary structure understood itself to be in its home, when it comes to the United States it becomes a denomination. One could extend this point to other places: once government sanction is withdrawn from a state church then that (former) state church and all other alternatives become denominations. 7 Schubert Ogden clarifies the distinction between empirical description and normative definition in an essay on the relationship between the heritage of the Enlightenment

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Because denomination is often regarded as nothing more than a sociological entity, suggesting that the term itself and the reality to which the term refers are therefore not really properly theological, it is important to underline that what I  intend to offer is theological. Denomination is to be understood as lying within the unity and the diversity to which God calls Christians. Systematic theology’s long-standing prejudice against denomination as an ecclesiological form must be countered: it should no longer be allowed to permit theologians to be dismissive of a primary form in which the church—including many theologians themselves—live the Christian faith. The definition that follows proceeds in three steps. First, I  identify the place occupied by denomination in relationship to the congregation on one hand, and the church universal on the other. Denomination occupies a place between congregation and church universal, mediating between the two realities. Second, I consider the role that denomination plays in that place. Denomination enables Christians to live peaceably together in the midst of disagreement about the living of the Christian faith. Living together requires structures, institutional realities; denomination provides those structures. Third, I  explore five characteristics of denomination. Denomination is intermediary, contingent, interdependent, partial, and permeable. Each of these characteristics can be and has been distorted by denominations across history, producing some of the characteristic failings, or sins, of denomination.

and “the heritage of religious thought”:  “I need to say a few words about what I understand by the two principal terms of our discussion:  the Enlightenment heritage and the heritage of religious thought. So used, the word ‘heritage’ is like its synonym ‘tradition’ in that it can have two different senses. On the one hand, it can have a descriptive sense in which it refers indiscriminately to whatever in fact is passed down or handed on as belonging to the Enlightenment or to religious thought respectively, while, on the other hand, it can have a normative sense in which it refers discriminately only to what by right ought to be passed down or handed on as belonging to one or the other of these two traditions.” Schubert M. Ogden, “The Enlightenment Is Not Over,” in Knowledge and Belief in America:  Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought, ed. William M. Shea and Peter A. Huff, Woodrow Wilson Center Series (New  York:  Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1995), 321–2.

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Denomination: Intermediary structures in the church Denomination is a middle term between congregation and church. It brings together a number (often very large) of congregations in a pattern of life that is thick and concrete and in doing so enables congregations to begin to live out their affirmation of the existence of one holy catholic and apostolic church in concrete ways.

Intermediary structures: Their recognized legitimacy As such, denomination is one form of intermediary structure in the life of the church.8 Intermediary structures are widely present in the church. The need for and legitimacy of intermediary structures is generally recognized. That recognition is important, as we shall see, for a theological evaluation of denomination. Within the Roman Catholic Church there are conferences of bishops who gather with one another on a national or regional basis. There are religious orders that live a particular and distinctive life together built around the gift of a particular way of understanding and ordering elements of a common faith, living that particular and distinctive life amidst parishes and dioceses organized otherwise. And, there are the uniate churches, which are even more clearly intermediary structures within the whole, gathered around distinctive and particular patterns of rite, language, and culture.9 Among the Orthodox, there is the reality of autocephaly,

8

I am grateful to Peter de Mey for articulating the importance of intermediary structures in the life of the church. See Peter de Mey, “Is There a Future for Denominationalism? Reflections from the Perspective of Roman Catholic Ecclesiology and from the Perspective of the Future of the Ecumenical Movement,” in Denomination: Assessing an Ecclesiological Category, ed. Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George, Ecclesiological Investigations (New York: T&T Clark International, 2011), 147–64, esp. 153–5. 9 Cf. Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, as translated in Norman P. Tanner S.J., ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Volume Two, Trent to Vatican II (London: Sheed & Ward and Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), §13 (859); Orientalium Ecclesiarum, Tanner, Decrees, 900–7.

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the various Orthodox churches being, each one, an intermediary structure within Orthodoxy, again allowing for particular patterns of language and culture to find standing and embodiment within the unity of the church. Indeed, one of the pressing problems presently facing the Orthodox Churches is the reality of overlapping dioceses when the various autocephalous churches move into a common geographical area.10 The worldwide church communions (such as the Lutheran World Federation and the Baptist World Alliance) also, from a different angle, indicate the necessity and legitimacy of intermediary structures. In the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches the whole is assumed to be primary and the finer conceptual work is done in specifying the legitimate grounds for and limits of the intermediary structures named above.11 In the world communions the logic flows in a reverse direction. The communions start with intermediary structures (various denominations who understand themselves to be within a particular Christian tradition), and these denominations find themselves drawn to one another, fashioning together a global body to provide a structure in which those intermediary structures may embody something of the whole of which they are fragmentary parts.

10

There is discussion of this matter in Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, “ ‘One City– One Bishop–One Church’: The Principle of Canonical Territory and the Appearance of ‘Parallel Hierarchies’,” Europaica Bulletin No. 84 (January 23, 2006), http:// orthodoxeurope.org/page/14/84.aspx#5, accessed November 28, 2016; idem., “The Canonical Territories of the Local Orthodox Churches,” Europaica Bulletin No. 85 (February 6, 2006), http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/14/85.aspx#3, accessed 28 November 2016; idem., “The Practical Application of the Principle of Canonical Territory,” Europaica Bulletin No. 87 (February 17, 2006), http://orthodoxeurope. org/page/14/87.aspx#5, accessed November 28, 2016. 11 Which is not to elide the vigorous discussion within the Roman Catholic Church about the relative priority of the local church and the universal church, a discussion that was carried out several years ago in a public exchange between Walter Cardinal Kasper and the future Pope, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. For an account of this exchange, see Killian McDonnell, “The Ratzinger/Kasper Debate: The Universal Church and Local Churches” Theological Studies 63, No. 2 (2002), 227–250. The debate is also reviewed by Paul McPartlan, who suggests that the theology of John Zizioulas may provide a way of understanding, and a better way of resolving, the issues at stake in the Ratzinger/Kasper debate. Paul McPartlan, “The Local Church and the Universal Church:  Zizioulas and the Ratzinger-Kasper Debate,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 4, No. 1 (2004), 21–33.

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Intermediary structures: Generated by Christian faith It is necessary and right that intermediary structures should exist in the church. The need for intermediary structures arises from features of Christian life, the scope of the church, and human being. The Christian faith impels Christians toward one another. The scope of the church is as wide as Jesus Christ: it is universal. Yet while the church may be universal, human beings are not. Let us consider each of these threads individually. To be a Christian is to be woven into a web of relationships not of one’s own making. “The communion that is the church is not primally the communion of believers among themselves; it is primally God’s communion with us in the incarnate Christ; and because the God who thus admits us to communion is in himself a koinonia, the perichoresis, the ‘mutual inhabiting,’ of Father, Son and Spirit, we are drawn also to mutual love of one another.”12 To be a Christian is to be engrafted into Jesus Christ, and insofar it is to be placed in a new pattern of relationship with the triune God, and therein with all others. The New Testament writings build on the reality of this web of relationships again and again. “In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (Col. 1:3–5a). “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Rom. 12:4–5). 1 Corinthians 12 is an extended reflection on the reality of this web 12

Robert W. Jenson, “The Church and the Sacraments” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1997), 215. Jenson goes on to explore the place of the eucharist as the actualization of the communion of persons (human and divine). These matters are also explored in Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Vol. 2, The Works of God (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1999), 220–26. Michael Kinnamon also links together our relationship to Jesus Christ and thus to the triune God, the relationship with other creatures that flows from the new relationship to God, and the place of the eucharist as participation in the communion of persons. Michael Kinnamon, “The Nature of the Unity We Seek,” Ecumenical Trends 21, No. 5 (May 1992), 68/4.

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of relationship that brings together all Christians. The Christian faith impels Christians toward one another. It exposes the interdependence of human being as created by God, making unmistakably clear the degree to which human lives are interwoven with and enmeshed in one another. But Christian faith does not merely bring this interweaving and enmeshment to light:  by the power of the Holy Spirit it draws forth the power of such relationship, providing grace by which such complete relatedness becomes vibrant.13 In the absence of such grace our interwovenness and mutual enmeshment become a prison. In the absence of grace it is a blunt truth that “hell is other people.”14 Christian faith impels Christians toward one another. And not only toward other Christians. That drive in Christian faith toward other Christians is simply one element of an impelling motion toward all people and creatures beyond the gathering of those who openly and intentionally follow Jesus Christ. This impulse has both generated and been sustained by the concrete organizational forms the church has taken across its history.

Intermediary structures: Universal church and finite members The movement toward all creation is an element of the universality of the church. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the Heavenly places . . . With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to

13

“Finally, each denomination manifests collective action, using cooperative and translocal efforts both within and beyond itself. This commitment to being connected is not simply a result of how groups must function in a voluntaristic society but is also a serious theological claim about the church as group work rather than individual piety or abstract ideals, a claim that once again is at the very core of denominational self-understanding.” James R. Nieman, “The Theological Work of Denominations,” in Church, Identity, and Change: Theology and Denominational Structures, ed. David A. Roozen and James R. Nieman (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 637. 14 Quoting here, of course, Jean Paul Sartre’s play, No Exit. Jean Paul Sartre, No Exit, and Three Other Plays, trans. S. Gilbert and I. Able (New  York:  Vintage International, 1989), 45.

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his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:3, 8b–10). ).  Jesus’s disciples are called to live into the universal scope of the church in the Great Commission (“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” Matt. 28:19a) and the mission sending in Acts 1 (“you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” 1:8b). While the church is universal, the human beings who are incorporated into the church are not. We are finite in space and time, bounded, and limited. This is true of our being, of our thinking, and of our relating. We cannot be fully in relationship with all that is in the universe—only God can. We cannot be in intensely personal relationships with all others in the church; again, only God can. The church will of necessity be structured in a way that makes it a habitable dwelling for us, beings who are finite and creaturely. The church will provide structures, habitable spaces for such as us, while remaining universal in scope and telos.

Impelled toward one another: The congregation The impelling force pulling Christians toward one another finds its immediate expression in the local congregation. The Christian faith cannot be lived out by individuals on their own. That is because the Christian faith is lived in a new pattern of relationships;15 to attempt to live the Christian life on one’s own is to fail to understand or embody the Christian faith: “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Rom. 12:5). If the new pattern of relationships is to be anything more than a disembodied notion it has to be embodied in ways that match the limitations of our human ability to relate to others. Congregations are the first places in which this membership with one another can be embodied. Being human beings, we are finite and creaturely, and as such our relationships with all 15

This new pattern of relationships is explored by Paul in the image of the “new creation” in which Christians participate—cf. 2 Cor. 5:16–21, Gal. 6:11–17.

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other followers of Jesus Christ takes shape in patterns that are manageable for finite and creaturely beings.16 Our relationship to Jesus Christ takes shape in an ordered set of relationships to and with a particular (limited) group of human beings. Congregations are the immediate context in which our membership in Jesus Christ and in one another is embodied. Congregation is a setting in which relationships with sisters and brothers in the faith can have a high level of particularity and depth.17 It is in such relationships, with their full particularity, that the ways of Christian love can be learned and lived.18 The New Testament epistles are full of instruction and urging related to the full particularity of such relationships and the difficulty of learning the ways of Christian love:  Euodia and Syntyche (Phil. 4:2–3), Phoebe and Prisca and Aquila and Epaenetus and Mary (Rom. 16:1–6), and many more people of whom we know only their name. And others of whom we know rather more, but whose names we don’t know: the man

16

This point is explored again in Chapter 5, “The Diversity to Which We Are Called.” Michael Kinnamon speaks to this point:  “The idea of koinonia concentrates our attention on local relationships, on the ways we are actually present to one another, on the quality of our concern for one another—to the point that I am able to recognize your joys and sufferings as, in some real sense, my own.” Michael Kinnamon, “The Nature of the Unity We Seek,” 69/5. 17 Whether relationships within a congregation actually do have particularity and depth is another issue. It is perfectly possible for there to be congregations in which the web of relationships across the congregation is shallow and weak. Such congregations are not fully healthy. Large congregations (megachurches) are often notable for their concentrated efforts to ensure that their members are incorporated into smaller group settings which allow for relationships characterized by particularity, depth, and vibrancy. Small group ministries are among the means congregations establish in order to nurture such relationships. See the report by Scott Thuma and Warren Bird, “Not Who You Think They Are: A Profile of the People Who Attend America’s Megachurches” (Hartford, CT: Leadership Network and Hartford Seminary, 2009). Accessible online at http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/megachurch_attender_ report.htm, accessed 28 November 2016, 7–9. See also Scott Thuma and Warren Bird, “A New Decade of Megachurches: 2011 Profile of Large Attendance Churches in the United States” (Hartford, CT: Leadership Network and Hartford Seminary, 2011):  3, “Executive Summary,” accessible online at http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/New-Decade-of-Megachurches-2011Profile.pdf. 18 Michael Kinnamon speaks of “the intensity of common life we experience in our particular traditions” (traditions here appears to mean denominations). Kinnamon, “Nature of the Unity,” 70/6.

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in the Corinthian congregation who is living with his father’s wife (1 Cor. 5:1). In congregations it is possible to build relationships which have full particularity. There it is possible to be open to one another and to know each other with greater clarity and depth. There it is possible for one’s openness to be fully received. It is right, then, that the congregation is the ordinary context in which the sacraments are celebrated. The concrete particularity of the sacraments has a density or substantiveness that matches the density of the congregation.19 The congregation, like our lives, is local. It is striking that there is no scriptural commandment or instruction on the right size of congregations:  they and their leadership make such decisions on a case-by-case basis, exercising reasoned judgments and discernment, whether well or poorly. The standard for discernment seems to be the ability to maintain a life together that continues to be a thick, concrete embodiment of a particular part of the web of relationships into which we are incorporated as we are in Christ. Congregations are not the only embodied form taken by the impelling force with which Christian faith moves Christians toward one another. Congregations themselves are impelled by that

19

Theologian Steven R. Harmon has noted that in Baptist theology, with its affirmation that the church is really and fully present “where two or three are gathered in my name” (quoting Mt. 18:20), the local congregation, gathered in worship, provides all the density necessary. Harmon quotes John Howard Yoder, who saw the ecumenical potential of a high view of gathering in the name of Jesus Christ: Yoder made a similar point about the possibilities of free church ecclesiology for envisioning an ecumenical gathering as a gathered community under the lordship of Christ that gathers for the purpose of seeking his rule in the community: “This view gives more, not less, weight to ecumenical gatherings. The ‘high’ views of ordered churchdom can legitimate the worship of a General Assembly or a study conference only by stretching the rules, for its rules do not foresee ad hoc ‘churches’; only thoroughgoing congregationalism fulfills its hopes and definities whenever and wherever it sees ‘church’ happen.”

Steven R. Harmon, “The Ecumenical Dimensions of Baptist Denominational Identity,” in Denomination:  Assessing an Ecclesiological Category, ed. Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George, Ecclesiological Investigations (London:  T&T Clark International, 2011), 42–3. Harmon quotes John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood:  Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 236.

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same quality of Christian faith toward other Christian assemblies. Congregations will find ways to connect with other congregations who share faith in Jesus Christ. Even so-called nondenominational congregations reflect this reality, particularly as they deal with the challenges of existing through time. Finding new pastoral leadership, locating or developing resources for education or worship, addressing issues in society—in such situations the need for connection manifests itself even in the lives of congregations that seek a high degree of independence. However persuasive such pragmatic considerations may be, at work in and through and beyond those pragmatic considerations remains the pattern of relationships in which we are placed in following Jesus Christ, a pattern whose reach is as wide as the global scope of the gospel.20

Impelled together: Intermediary structures Congregation is a first, immediate locus for living the pattern of relationships into which faith in Jesus Christ incorporates us. Intermediary structures in the church are a second locus for living that pattern of relationships. Intermediary structures come into being because they enable Christians to live, in a concrete and particular way, their affirmation “we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.” That commitment is always in danger of becoming vague and abstract. It is an affirmation of one’s essential relatedness to unknown others, who in the multitude of their particularities exceed the grasp of our knowledge—and, indeed, largely exceed the grasp of our imagining. In the creed we affirm our essential relatedness to a vast body of others whose lives and identities are so rich with particularities that they completely outstrip our capacities of knowledge and of relationship. We can affirm our relatedness to them intellectually, but that affirmation has a

20

“The congregation, although an actual instance of the church, is not coextensive with the entire church and stands as church only insofar as it exists for witness in the world. Genuine formation in theological identity through a congregation therefore depends on a sense that an adequate witness includes other times and places. It is just this kind of scope that the national level of a denomination is distinctly able to offer. It can guard local efforts against the myopia and tunnel vision that insulate theological identity from the larger church and world” (Nieman, “The Theological Work,” 640).

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high level of abstraction. If that affirmation is to be anything more than a highly abstract notion entertained in intellectual reflection, then we require actual structures that commit us to particular kinds of relationships. By their very nature these structures will be smaller than universal. They will be intermediary. In the congregation we form our thickest, most particularized embodiment of the web of relationships into which God places us. Beyond the congregation, in intermediary structures, we live a broader and yet thinner embodiment of that web of relationships. The intermediary structures reflect the particular shape of the congregations that are brought together in those intermediary structures. Beyond the borders of these intermediary structures we then seek institutional structures that embody the full web of relationships into which God places us. And here we bump up against a basic divergence within the Christian faith. The Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches make the institutional structures that embody the full web of relationships primary. The structures for living the full web are basic; they are logically prior.21 In the case of the various world communions (for example, the Lutheran World Federation, and the World Communion of Reformed Churches) what comes first are the various intermediary bodies, who form a global structure in which to embody the universal scope of the church.22 21

Though there has been debate about the relative priority of local and universal at the highest levels in the Roman Catholic Church. As noted earlier, that debate was carried out in a very public way by (then-)Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Walter Cardinal Kasper. See Kilian McDonnell, “The Ratzinger/Kasper Debate” (see n. 11) for a summary of the articles and essays in which Ratzinger and Kasper carried out this debate. Ratzinger was consistently concerned for the concrete and fundamental reality of the universal church; Kasper was consistently concerned for the full ecclesiality of the local church in its concreteness. 22 The Anglican Communion is presently in the midst of intense struggle over the question of the relative priority of local and global, and the proper relationship between the two. Christopher Seitz, Philip Turner, Ephraim Radner, and Mark McCall of the Anglican Communion Institute have offered this account of how Anglicanism (as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church) fashions its global institutional structures:  “As in the Roman Catholic Church, there may be intermediate bodies or conferences, but the key ecclesiological relationship is between the diocesan bishop and the universal college of bishops. And, that essential relationship can be given juridical force (polity), as in the Roman Catholic Church, or that relationship can be entered voluntarily as is the hope of Anglicanism.” (Italics added.) Christopher Seitz, Philip Turner, Ephraim Radner,

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Intermediary structures have a long existence in the life of the church. They hold a recognized place; the need for and legitimacy of such structures is unquestioned. The key question for denomination, then, is not “do diverse intermediary structures have a legitimate place in the church?” The key question is, “is denomination one of the legitimate forms of intermediary structure in the church?” The central task of this book is to make a case that denomination is a legitimate intermediary structure in the church.

Denomination: Space and structure for fullness and discernment Denomination: The multiple ways of faithfully living the Christian faith Denomination binds congregations together in formal patterns of mutual life. These patterns are built upon shared theological commitments about both belief and practice that are broad and deep enough to hold congregations and their members together in mutual commitment to a particular form of life together.23

and Mark McCall, “Communion With Autonomy and Accountability,” posted on the Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. website April 4, 2010, at http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/2010/04/communion-with-autonomy-and-accountability/; accessed 28 November 2016. In the views of these authors, Anglicanism lives the global, universal scope of the church in and through relatively autonomous intermediary structures related to one another voluntarily. The present fracturing of the Anglican Communion in the face of the unwillingness of member churches to surrender their autonomy is a good example of the difficulties that appear when one builds the relationship on a voluntary basis. Seitz et al. are clear in their unwillingness to surrender that voluntary element. Questions press in at this point. Is the church divided until those within in it will their unity? Is it reasonable to think that any human being will see the day in which all Christians will to enter into the kind of relationship the four authors advocate? Is that the one kind of relationship that Christians must have with one another in order for the church to be one? When I turn to the unity of the church in Chapter 6, I outline an understanding of unity that shares much with the stance set forth in “Communion With Autonomy and Accountability.” Ironically so, I think, given comments such as the following (from the final paragraph of the statement): “Autonomy without accountability leads to denominationalism and isolation.” 23 The disintegration that has occurred, for example, in many of the old mainline denominations in the United States is driven by individuals, congregations, and

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The need for shared theological commitments does not distinguish denomination from other ecclesiological forms. Some need for shared theological commitment has been clear from the very earliest moments of the church’s existence. The books of Scripture were both written and canonized in order to bring a certain level of shared commitment regarding belief and practice to the followers of Jesus Christ. The great creeds of the church were formulated in order to bring a level of shared theological commitment. Western Christianity has continued, across its existence, to formulate statements and practices (catechesis, shared liturgies, and theological education) that seek to bring shared theological commitment. All of this work has been necessary for the existence of the church over time. Denomination takes this heritage of concern to formulate shared theological commitment in distinctive directions, but the heritage itself is common to the church across the ages. These shared theological commitments come woven together into intricate wholes—not as isolated claims that form an aggregate, like a pile of stones any one of which can be removed without changing its basic identity as a pile of stones. Shared beliefs will be more or less tightly interwoven with one another and with particular practices that embody those particular beliefs and not others. Pentecostal beliefs about the Holy Spirit working outside of existing structures require a particular set of practices around discerning the Sprit in order to see where the Holy Spirit is working, and where not. Those in the Reformed tradition understand councils to have a key place in the oversight of ministry, and that affirmation takes shape in practices at all levels of church life: sessions, presbyteries/ classes, synods, and national assemblies. Part of the challenge of ecumenical work is that achieving consensus on a particular belief does not of itself lead to visible institutional unity. One reason is that beliefs and practices come interwoven in complex ways. What gives identity to a denomination is shared theological commitments that are interwoven with one another and with particular practices in just such complex ways. judicatories finding that their denomination’s shared theological commitments (to a particular way of living the faith) are no longer broad and deep enough to hold them together with others in their denomination. In the oft-cited words of William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” “the centre cannot hold” (cannot and does not).

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Shared theological commitments play out in denomination in at least two distinct ways. First, denominations are formed around shared theological commitments about matters of belief and practice that can faithfully be believed and practiced in more than one way. Denomination exists because the Christian faith can faithfully be lived in more than one way. Second, there will be disagreements amongst Christians about which particular matters of belief and practice can faithfully be decided in more than one way. The history of the church can be viewed as a history of disagreements about what must be believed and done in order to be fully Christian, and where there may be differing belief and practice (and how such differing belief and practice is best lived). The complexity of such matters has meant that discerning which is which has sometimes required very long periods of time. The church has thus always needed structures that will enable the living of different patterns of perceived faithfulness, and enable Christians to live in situations in which there is disagreement about whether a proposed pattern for living the Christian life is in fact faithful. The Christian faith generates something like a field of possible embodiments of that faith. In many cases, living one of these possible embodiments will preclude living other possible embodiments. Must the functions of bishop be exercised by an individual, or may they be exercised by a collective body such as a presbytery? Must ordinations include an episcopal laying-on of hands that runs in a particular kind of succession from the Apostles? Must (or even, should) commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior be manifest in particular evidences of the presence of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life? Must Christians refuse military service? Such questions (and others that are like them) must be answered by every congregation in order for it to function as a distinct body, and such questions must also be answered when multiple congregations come to live in a denomination. Further, in such cases it is not possible to have it both ways. Embodiment requires choosing among multiple possibilities.24 Embodying the Christian faith is no different—it requires making choices among various faithful possibilities. To 24

Making such choices is part of what it is to be a creature. In the following chapter I explore the importance of embodiment, looking more closely at the finitude and creatureliness that are central features of human being.

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decide for one such possibility is to decide against other such possibilities. Denomination provides a form in which multiple faithful possibilities for Christian life can be lived.25 Denomination is a structure for living disagreement in matters about which faithful Christians may disagree. There will be disagreement about these possibilities for faithfully living the Christian life. Which proposed or actual forms of Christian life together actually fail to be fully or even meaningfully Christian? Mormonism is one significant example of a situation in which precisely such a question is being continually asked and answered. The Roman Catholic Church’s continuing, reaffirmed judgment (in, for example, the declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, issued in 2000) that most Protestant ecclesial bodies are “ecclesial communions” rather than being part of the church, lacking “the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery,” provides another example of such judgments. The Roman Catholic Church has thus declared its judgment that some ecclesial bodies fail to be fully Christian (even in the face of the “many elements . . . of sanctification and truth” to be found “in those Churches and ecclesial communities which are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church”); the Churches and ecclesial communities in question dispute that judgment.26 The challenge is to find structures in which to live such disagreements. One might assert that one’s own ecclesial structure should be presumed to 25

One of the difficulties of ecumenical dialogue is the existence of differences over precisely such matters. There are elements of Christian belief and practice that have a level of undecideability about them, matters in which the existing authoritative sources do not rule out all but one alternative. In such matters, shall we foreclose some of the alternatives for faithful Christian belief and practice? On what basis, and to what purpose? It is part of this argument that to be creatures of the living God is to be presented with areas in which there are multiple possibilities for faithful living open to us, not all of which we can realize ourselves—though it is possible that others may realize a different possibility than the particular possibility we are committed to realizing. Having accepted that claim, it is necessary to provide an account of the structures in and through which decisions about such matters can be lived. 26 The quotations are from Declaration Dominus Iesus On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, Ch. IV, secs. 16 and 17. http://www. vatican.va/ roman_ curia/ congregations/ cfaith/ documents/ rc_ con_ cfaith_ doc_ 20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html, accessed November 29, 2016.

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be correct until proven otherwise—but the problems inherent in such a stance are overwhelming, and render such an approach deeply unpersuasive.27 Denomination is a structure for living disagreement about what is fully and faithfully Christian belief and practice. Authority in the church becomes critical at precisely this point. Scripture, creeds, tradition, liturgies and liturgical practices, and persons who have authority—all are in place in order to fund discernment among the possibilities that arise within Christian life, particularly life together. The identification of the persons who are authorized to settle such matters is itself a matter of sustained dispute among Christians. Though these various authorities provide guidance, they don’t eliminate the need for discernment. Scripture does not determine all of the matters that have to be decided in order for us to live together. The ecumenical creeds (particularly the Apostles’ and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan) do not settle all such matters. The ecumenical creeds establish necessary conditions for recognition as Christian, but they do not establish sufficient conditions for the particular shape of Christian life together.28 What lies between the necessary conditions for recognition as Christian and the sufficient conditions for establishing life together are an array of possibilities. Some will be distortions of the Christian faith. Some will enable fuller living of the Christian life, others a thinner living of the faith. Distinguishing possibilities that distort the faith, that offer fuller or thinner Christian living, requires time and the opportunity for proposed possibilities to be embodied by individuals and by groups. What is not available in these circumstances is a set of rules, principles, or standards that provide a quick judgment on the validity or invalidity, the faithfulness or sinfulness, of movements to live the faith in particular ways. In such cases all we have available 27

The problems are pervasive. To assert that my ecclesial body should be presumed by all disputants to be correct until proven otherwise is to assert the presumptive superiority of my stance. That assertion allows no room for other approaches. Even if this approach were to be taken, who is competent to decide which disputant is correct, or more nearly correct? An individual? A group, or council? Why and how will their judgment be taken as authoritative? 28 To this point, see William J. Abraham, Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology:  From the Fathers to Feminism (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1998), especially Chapter 2, “The Emergence of the Canonical Heritage of the Church,” 27–56.

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are judgments, patience, and persuasion. Denomination, properly understood, provides for such discernment. As such, denomination provides space and structure for living out the fullness of the Gospel, growing from the Gospel’s own generative power. Also, denominations arise as a way of corporate Christian life in situations in which there is disagreement about what constitutes faithful belief and practice and there is no agent present with the power to coerce acceptance of a particular set of beliefs and practices. In such situations denomination provides space and structure in which discernment (which happens only across a period of time when the matter being discerned is complex) may occur. There are significant historical precedents for the need for and existence of diverse and distinctive ways of living out the Christian faith, and for the existence of those diverse ways alongside one another. Monasticism provides a major example, and the history of monasticism includes a long process of discernment of the appropriateness of monastic forms—both monasticism in general, and particular forms of monastic discipline. The stories of the Desert Fathers and Mothers tell of Christians driven by the need to live out the Christian faith in ways distinctly different than what was available to them in regular parish life. The Apophthegmata Patrum, in its Greek Alphabetical Series, offers this to open the sayings of and related to Arsenius: “While still living in the palace, Abba Arsenius prayed to God in these words, ‘Lord, lead me in the way of salvation.’ And a voice came saying to him, ‘Arsenius, flee from men and you will be saved.’ ” This is followed by: “Having withdrawn to the solitary life he made the same prayer again and he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Arsenius, flee, be silent, pray always, for these are the source of sinlessness.’ ”29 Compelled by God’s calling, Arsenius eventually arrived in the Egyptian desert, taking a place in the community there. The monastic movement in which Arsenius was participating developed alongside and perhaps apart from the established ecclesial structures of that time. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, was central to negotiating the relationship between this monastic movement and the ecclesial structure built around the authority of a bishop. William Harmless, in exploring the political

29 The Sayings of the Desert Fathers:  The Alphabetical Collection, trans Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1975), 9.

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shaping of Athanasius’s Life of Antony, underlines the potential precariousness of the relationship between ecclesial structures and new ways of living the Christian faith taking shape in the desert: It is important to see the issue from Athanasius’s point of view:  what, after all, is a hermit’s relationship to the church? There was no church on Antony’s Inner Mountain. And Antony and his disciples were not clergy. In fact, monks resisted becoming clergy. With the desert becoming a ‘city,’ Athanasius faced in the monastic movement a potentially churchless Christianity.30 Athanasius’s Life of Antony is a critical document in the process of finding a way to make room for monasticism within the church, establishing a place for an alternative way of living the Christian faith. A similar dynamic can be traced in struggles generated by the Franciscan movement’s vow of poverty. Francis pursued a distinctive way of living the Christian life, and he gathered his followers into an order to do the same. That way of life looked much like other contemporary movements that had been judged to be heretical, so it was important that Francis insisted on submission to the hierarchy of the church, which eased the way forward for his nascent movement.31 Nevertheless, after Francis’ death the vow of poverty which Francis made central to the Franciscan order remained the subject of conflicting interpretations and open conflict deep into the fourteenth century. At stake in the controversy over poverty and 30

William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 93–94. Harmless explores the ambiguities of the situation, having explained the precariousness of Athanasius’s situation during the years in which the Life of Antony was composed: Athanasius was a fugitive from the Emperor Constantius and was hidden by monks, at considerable risk to themselves. 31 “The Friars Minor would live among the people; they would become integrated with social reality by means of paid work, prayer with the Christian community, and preaching in the vernacular. And . . . they would display total detachment, especially where money was concerned. In this they reflected the same longing for a true return to the Gospel which had given birth to the heterodox movements, but they differed sharply from these in their refusal to denounce public wrongs, their message of peace and love, and particularly in their submissive and filial adherence to the representatives of the established Church:  the Church of Rome, its bishops, and its clergy.” Lazaro Iriarte, Franciscan History: The Three Orders of St. Francis of Assisi, trans. Patricia Ross (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982), 9.

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wealth were differing ways of living the Christian life, and how to establish structures that would allow them to be lived out. Both the effort to make room for the Desert Christians (and their particular form of monasticism), and the Franciscans (and the long struggle to make room for particular understandings of poverty and how it might shape ways of living the Christian faith), each unfolded in a context shaped by the potential use of coercive force in order to preclude some proposed ways of living the Christian faith. As coercive force was gradually withdrawn, denomination began to emerge as an alternative structure for embodying various ways of living out the Christian faith. Indeed, in his archaeology of the word denomination, Winthrop Hudson offers this intriguing note: While the word “denomination” does not appear to have taken on a technical meaning to denote a religious body much before the 1740’s, it was used occasionally by John Goodwin . . . The earlier equivalent of the word “denomination,” which was used by the seventeenth century divines, was the word “way.” They would speak of those of the Episcopal Way, the Presbyterian Way, and the Congregational Way.32 “Way” conveys the intermediary and partial status of denomination perhaps better than denomination itself.

Denomination as ecclesial form Denomination binds a set of congregations together in formal patterns of mutual life, mediating between congregation and church universal. These formal patterns of mutual life are based on shared theological commitments (regarding belief and practice) on matters that could faithfully be decided otherwise. Those shared theological commitments both flow from and undergird a particular way of living the Christian faith. 32 Winthrop S. Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 48, n. 2. Russell E. Richey has noted that denomination is used as a term for intermediary bodies in the church early enough for it to appear as the self-designation of a group in 1702. “By 1702, the term ‘denomination’ took on its modern religious meaning, signaled by the establishment of ‘the body of the Dissenting Ministers of the Three Denominations in and about the City of London.’ ” Russell E. Richey, “Denominations” in The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America, ed. Philip Goff (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 94.

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Denomination is to be distinguished from movements and para-church organizations, which are generally built around a particular task. What distinguishes denomination is that denominations are structured to enable congregations to carry out tasks that are specifically ecclesial. The decisive distinguishing mark of denomination is authorizing corporate worship and leadership for such worship—on its own authority. When a movement begins, on its own authority, to authorize worship and worship leaders, it has become a distinct denomination.33 This is no surprise:  worship is central to living the Christian faith together, and is a central element of ecclesiality. In particular, denominations are structures in and through which tasks of identifying and training those who will be ordained will be carried out. Michael Kinnamon notes that councils of churches are not churches themselves, and a decisive marker of such councils not being churches is precisely the fact that councils are not involved in ordaining to the ministry. “Councils of churches are not the church. They do not ordain a ministry of word and sacrament.”34 Robert Jenson notes that ordered ministry is in service of the preservation and administration of the sacraments, which are themselves central to the communion that is the life of the church. “The polity of the church, in so far as it is truly necessary at any time or place, is therefore nothing but the structures by which eucharistic fellowship is enabled and bounded.”35 Denomination, in its role of 33

Methodism is a classic case of this distinguishing mark. John Wesley was Anglican and expected that the movement he founded and oversaw would itself remain Anglican. But in America, following the Revolutionary War, Anglican church structures were unable to provide the pastoral care and worship necessary to sustain Methodists. Wesley decided to provide for an independent denomination in 1784. Russell Richey comments “that the formal separation in 1784 actually involved a threefold disengagement—(a) from the Church of England; (b)  from the North American Anglicans among whom the Methodists had labored, who were then also being reconstituted as an independent church and among whom were kindred spirits . . . and (c) eventually from Mr. Wesley and British Wesleyanism.” Russell E. Richey, “Culture Wars and Denominational Loyalties: A Methodist Case Study,” Quarterly Review 18, No. 1 (Spring 1998): 7. 34 Michael Kinnamon, “The Nature of the Unity We Seek,” 70/6. 35 Robert Jenson, “The Church and the Sacraments” (see n.  12), 218. In the same place Jenson comments:  “The local church is a communion of persons; the one catholic church is the communion of all local churches; and if there are intermediate levels—patriarchal, regional, perhaps even confessional—these too are communions of communions and embraced in the one catholic communion.”

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mediating the church universal to the congregation, participates in the ordering of ministry as part of enabling the congregation to live into the fullness of the church one holy catholic and apostolic. Denomination is implicated in the celebration of the sacraments in the congregations that make it up by its role in shaping the celebration of the sacraments—providing instruction to congregations on what sacraments are to be celebrated, and when and how these sacraments are to be celebrated, and providing discipline in those celebrations. Denominations are also active in starting congregations, and work to weave congregations together in ways that enable them to embody more fully the church that exists beyond the boundaries of any given congregation. Denomination is an ecclesial form; it is not the church itself but it does stand within the church, it is a structure in which the church can be embodied in the world by a particular group of Christians. Denominations are marked out by being made up of congregations, and by their direct involvement in particularly ecclesiastical tasks and actions. It is only in virtue of this participation in ecclesiastical tasks and actions, a participation rooted in the intermediary character of denomination, that it is legitimate to call denominations church. One of the great difficulties of our present moment is the inveterate unwillingness of denominations to acknowledge fully, with blunt directness, that they are denominations. Denomination has become a forbidden term, regarded as demeaning, and so denominations refuse to allow themselves to be named as what they are. Once denomination has been removed from the table of licit names, denominations no longer have a vocabulary with which to discuss their own reality. In place of denomination what is used most frequently is church. The problem here is the constant temptation on the part of denominations to regard themselves (and to demand that others regard them) as something more than denominations—to regard themselves as church tout court. This feeds confusion about the difference between the church universal and a denomination. This confusion feeds the constant temptation denominations face to arrogate to themselves characteristics that properly and fully belong only to the church universal. Therefore, while there is a sense in which it is legitimate for denominations to be called church, the refusal of denominations to acknowledge that they are denominations, substituting church where denomination is to the point, continually malforms them.

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The essentials/adiaphora distinction: An excursus In the midst of the sorts of theological disagreements under consideration here, an appeal is sometimes made to the distinction between essentials and adiaphora (adiaphora being matters indifferent, which is to say, matters on which faithful Christians may hold differing views; these matters are sometimes simply designated non-essential). The essentials/adiaphora distinction has frequently been turned to as a way of managing disagreements about Christian belief and practice.36 It regularly comes to expression in the phrase “in essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity.”37 Variations on the essentials/adiaphora distinction include the appeal to fundamental teachings and those that are not fundamental; or, the Roman Catholic affirmation of a “hierarchy of truths.”38 To repeat, the essentials/adiaphora distinction is frequently brought into discussion of theological matters in the church in the belief that it will provide a way for Christians to resolve disputes. The distinction is turned to as if it were a mechanism for resolving disputes about Christian faith and life, like a procedure for precipitating out what really matters in a fluid and murky situation. On this theory, Christians are to be allowed to make their own decisions about non-essentials, 36

See e.g., Bernard J. Vanderkamp, The Indifferent Mean:  Adiaphorism in the English Reformation to 1554, Studies in the Reformation, Vol. I (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press and Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1977), for an analysis of the role of the essentials/adiaphora distinction in the Reformation in England. For an exploration of the role of adiaphora in Lutheran theology, see Robert Jensen and Eric Gritsch, Lutheranism (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1976), esp. Ch. 14, “Adiaphora—Freedom or Bondage.” 37 This saying is frequently attributed to Augustine. Though Augustine did write passages that sound similar, he was not the author of this phrase. It was expressed in its concise form by Peter Meiderlinus, who published under the pseudonym (an anagram of the Latin form of his given name) Rupert Meldenius. For details see Yves Congar, Diversity and Communion, trans. John Bowden, (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1984), 107–9 and n. to 206. The history is also told in the text of a lecture given by Hans Rollmann, “‘In Essentials Unity’: The Pre-History and History of a Restoration Movement Slogan,” Restoration Quarterly 39, 3 (1997), 129–39. 38 See, e.g., Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part I, Section I, Chapter 2, Article 2, §90. Yves Congar, Diversity and Communion, Chapters  6, 7, 10, 11 and William Henn, The Hierarchy of Truths According to Yves Congar, O.P. (Rome:  Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1987).

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and to do as they deem best in such matters. While presented as a way of peaceable living, the essentials/adiaphora distinction, when used in this way, has its own (often submerged) power dynamic. If those in positions of authority deem a matter to be non-essential, they thereby require those under their authority to accept the legitimacy of variations on that matter. I have chosen not to frame denomination in terms of the essentials/adiaphora distinction because this distinction suffers from significant conceptual problems, which ensure it cannot function in the promised way. The primary problem is this: while it seems perfectly reasonable to believe that there is a set of beliefs and practices that are essential to the Christian faith, it is in no way clear which particular beliefs and practices should be in that set. That there are essentials is reasonable, but the fact that it is reasonable to think there is a set of essentials does not help us in any way to determine which items are included in that set. And, the process of identifying which items belong in that set becomes a way of fighting out the very issues that were supposed to be settled by the appeal to the essentials/nonessentials distinction. Essentials only help resolve our disagreements if the disputants agree on the contents of the category called essentials. But often there is no such agreement. Indeed, often the alleged essentials are themselves in dispute. Assertions about what is and is not essential simply reiterate our disagreements, transposed into a different intellectual register, and a different vocabulary. The essentials/adiaphora distinction is not a tool for resolving our difficulties (as if the essentials were some theological equivalent of litmus paper, already at hand, sitting on the shelf, waiting to be utilized when we are uncertain whether a belief or practice falls within the range of acceptability). The concept of a set of essentials is empty, and filling up that set replays our disagreements.39 39

This is made abundantly (and perhaps depressingly) clear in Jenson and Gritsch’s chapter on adiaphora in Lutheranism, where the history of the use of the essentials/ adiaphora distinction is a history of dispute over what should be considered essential and what non-essential (or, as Jenson and Gritsch translate adiaphora: “what is ‘not necessary’ to be done” (200)). They note that the emptiness of the set of essentials is written into Lutheran confessional documents. “The Lutheran confessions did not establish a list of adiaphora for all time. What are adiaphora is a decision the church must make at various times in various places” [here Lutheran confessional documents are cited]. Jenson and Gritsch, Lutheranism, 197. It is striking that when Jenson

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A second conceptual problem undercuts the value of the essentials/adiaphora distinction. On most accounts of what are the essentials, the essentials themselves are not broad or thick enough to provide the basis for a living ecclesial structure. The lists of essentials are too small to resolve the problems that arise in shaping a life together. No group of Christians can exist as a distinct body through time on the basis of essentials or “mere Christianity” alone (on most accounts of what is essential).40 In most accounts of essentials the adiaphora include matters of great importance.41 Christians takes up the question of moral issues that divide denominations (in an essay written several years after the book co-authored with Gritsch) he chooses not to use the essentials/adiaphora distinction at all: Robert W. Jenson, “Can Ethical Disagreement Divide the Church?” in The Morally Divided Body: Ethical Disagreement and the Disunity of the Church, ed. Michael Root and James J. Buckley, The Pro Ecclesia Series (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 1–11. 40 The qualification recognizes the possibility that a group of Christians could conceivably declare that every aspect of its beliefs and practices is essential and that those who fail to hold to all of its beliefs and practices are not Christian. Congar notes tendencies in this direction in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, citing Pius XI, who “made a vigorous criticism of the idea of fundamental articles, in conjunction with what he called a plan of ‘pan-Christianity.” Congar, Diversity: 118, cf. chapters 11 and 12. Congar goes on to quote from Pius XI’s encyclical Mortalium animos of January 6, 1928, which includes the following: Besides this, in connection with things which must be believed, it is nowise licit to use that distinction which some have seen fit to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and those which are not fundamental, as they say, as if the former are to be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent of the faithful: for the supernatural virtue of faith has a formal cause, namely the authority of God revealing, and this is patient of no such distinction. For this reason it is that all who are truly Christ’s believe, for example, the Conception of the Mother of God without stain of original sin with the same faith as they believe the mystery of the August Trinity, and the Incarnation of our Lord just as they do the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, according to the sense in which it was defined by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. Pius XI, Mortalium animos January 6, 1928, section 9.  Accessible online at (http:// www.vatican.va/ holy_ father/ pius_ xi/ encyclicals/ documents/ hf_ p- xi_ enc_ 19280106_mortalium-animos_en.html, accessed March 29, 2010). 41 “even though these differences of opinion [about the implications of the Christian faith for the outward life of the church] do not involve the fundamentals of the faith, they are not matters of mere indifference.” Winthrop Hudson, American Protestantism, Chicago History of American Civilization, series ed. Daniel J. Boorstin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 41.

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must make decisions about at least some alleged adiaphora in order to live together. Our life together is dependent on shared decisions about matters that generally are not included in lists of essentials. Further, essentials must be applied and interpreted, and who is in a position to do that? Ecumenical dialogues on the questions of authority, teaching authority, tradition, interpretation of authoritative sources (the Bible above all), and other matters represent an acknowledgment of the depth of this problem. The existence of such dialogues is an acknowledgment that the essentials/adiaphora distinction is problematic in the life of the church. A third problem is closely related to the emptiness and narrowness of essentials. If one affirms a set of essentials, how are nonessentials related to the essentials? Is it possible that some beliefs and practices that are judged to be adiaphora are in fact linked so closely, logically, to essentials that even though they might be judged to be non-essential, they function as essential? In the midst of present debates about faithful Christian practice in sexual matters it is sometimes asserted such matters are not essentials of the faith, and therefore a variety of beliefs and practices are to be recognized as equally valid, and equally faithful. This requires that there be a clean distinction, a logical gap, between essentials and adiaphora. Adiaphora must not carry implications for essentials; beliefs and practices deemed non-essential can then be affirmed or practiced with equal faithfulness to the essentials. But clearly that cannot be the case. If faithfulness to the scriptural witness is taken to be an essential of the faith (as it generally is), and the scriptural witness does give imperatives on matters of faithful sexual practice, then our decisions about matters of faithful sexual practice (allegedly non-essential) will by their very nature be decisions about faithfulness to the scriptural witness (allegedly essential). There is no way of disentangling the two. This is only one example of what is generally true about the idea of a distinction between essentials and adiaphora: decisions about alleged adiaphora will often have direct implications for alleged essentials. In these cases the essentials/adiaphora distinction is incoherent. That being the case, the essentials/ adiaphora distinction, which was supposed to provide a tool with which we could peaceably manage and resolve our disagreements, in fact turns out to be a way of fighting out our disagreements with a different set of weapons. Little wonder, then, that the essentials/ adiaphora distinction has proven across the history of the church to

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be so ineffective a tool for resolving our disagreements. It is inherently incapable of doing so. The search for essentials is a theological analogue to philosophical foundationalism. This is not surprising. Both philosophical foundationalism and the essentials/adiaphora distinction arose in the wake of the Reformation, which introduced significant doubt about what it was to be Christian and about the validity of claims to knowledge. Philosophical foundationalism is a strategy for dealing with skeptical questions about what we claim to know, in the same way that the essentials/adiaphora distinction is a strategy for dealing with skeptical questions about Christian beliefs and practices. Skepticism, in its stronger forms, claims that we don’t truly know anything—we can have no truly certain knowledge of anything, however much certitude we may have about what we think we know. Foundationalism claims that there are certain features of the world which, when properly understood, are beyond doubting. Knowledge of these features can then provide a sure foundation for other claims to knowledge, provided that those other claims to knowledge are related in a valid way to the sure foundations. As such, foundationalism offers a way in which disputes about what is the case can be adjudicated. Disputes can be resolved by reference to claims that are certain and foundational. In an analogous way, the essentials/adiaphora distinction proposes that there exists a set of theological affirmations about belief and practice that are basic and can serve as a firm foundation for sorting out other beliefs and practices. The essentials/adiaphora distinction is no more successful a strategy than philosophical foundationalism.42

42

See Paul K. Moser, “Foundationalism” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Robert Audi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 276–8. Moser defines the term: “the view that knowledge and epistemic . . . justification have a two-tier structure:  some instances of knowledge and justification are non-inferential, or foundational; and all other instances thereof are inferential, or non-foundational, in that they derive ultimately from foundational knowledge or justification.” Moser then identifies two major issues for foundationalism: “Versions of foundationalism differ on two main projects: (a) the precise explanation of the nature of non-inferential, or foundational, knowledge and justification, and (b)  the specific explanation of how foundational knowledge and justification can be transmitted to non-foundational beliefs” (276–7). These problems are analogous to two of the problems I’ve identified in the essentials/ adiaphora structure: what are the essentials and why should they be regarded as essential; and, how do adiaphora connect to the essentials in a substantive way?

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Naming essentials (and therefore adiaphora) is another vocabulary in which to carry out our disagreements with one another. Denomination is one way of living in the midst of the disagreements that fail to be resolved by arguing about essentials and adiaphora.

Denomination: Intermediary, contingent, partial, interdependent, and permeable How, then, shall we understand denomination? I would offer five characteristics of denomination, understood as a structured entity between congregation and church. Denomination is a contingent, intermediary, interdependent, partial, and permeable embodiment of the church.

Intermediary Denomination is intermediary in the sense that denominations exist to mediate between two realities: the church universal and the local congregation. Denominations exist rightly only when they serve as a means for something else—a means by which congregations live into the affirmation that they belong to a church that is much larger, a church that is one. At the beginning of this chapter we considered the way in which the Christian faith draws, even impels Christians towards one another. To be a Christian is to be woven into a new pattern of relationships, and that new pattern of relationships is a reality that will come into embodied expression as Christians live the Christian faith.43 What needs to be emphasized at this point is that denomination exists to mediate between two realities—congregation and church. Denomination exists as a structured form of Christian life together in which congregations live their affirmation of belief, one holy catholic and apostolic church. This belief will, like other Christian beliefs, have an inherent drive toward embodiment. Denomination becomes a form in which congregations can live more of the reality 43

This aspect of the Christian life can, of course, be resisted, and is resisted in varying degrees and varying ways.

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of the one holy catholic and apostolic church, doing so in ways appropriate to an intermediary structure. One’s relationship with all other Christians must be lived in a particularized, human way; denomination is particularization of the church on a human scale. Denomination is thus a means toward something larger than itself on the one side (the church) and denser or more particular than itself on the other side (the congregation). Denomination opens the congregation to ties beyond itself, ties that are manageable because they are not universal, and can continue to carry some of the density and particularity of the congregation’s internal life. Denominations provide a means, or medium, for relationships to be established. Amongst these are relationships with other congregations in one’s own denomination, and the members of those congregations, who will be encountered in a myriad of ways including committees, conferences, and social and political action initiatives. Denominations provide a context in which relationships can be formed and sustained through and for mission, which can be local, national, or international. Denominations have the organizational substance and capacity to establish and sustain relationships across national boundaries. Denominations provide a context for relationships with other denominations and their members:  ecumenical relationships that recognize both commonalities and differences. This ability to establish and sustain relationship can be—and is— distorted as it is lived out, but our awareness of the distortions must not deprive us of the ability to see, acknowledge, and nurture the positive capacity that is distorted. Another significant way in which denomination becomes distorted, and comes to be a vehicle for sin, is in forgetting this inbetweenness. The distortion can happen in a number of different ways. Denominations can be characterized by a failure to see the wider church; failing to see that denomination is a structure built toward something larger, they take the denomination to be an end in and of itself.44 A  denomination can also fail to see the reality 44

“Rather the denomination—and this means any earthly ecclesiastical institution— points to the ultimate, it bears witness to the eternal gospel, it carries the continuing (though partial) tradition of those who reach back to the Christ-event, it provides forms for the effective expression of the fellowship among Christians, it serves the mission of the church . . . No denomination, no particular institutional structure, is

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of the congregations whom it opens out toward church; a denomination can come to see congregations as atomized parts of itself, thereby failing to acknowledge that each congregation has a specific identity that is not lost in the congregation’s relationship to the denomination (or, more generally, to the intermediary structures).45 Above all, denominations distort themselves by losing sight of the mediating core of their identity. Because denomination is a means for living something beyond it in both the direction of universality and the direction of concrete particularity, it is idolatry for denominations to proclaim themselves to be ends, whether the proclamation is made in word or deed. Denominations are continually tempted to focus on themselves rather than on the realities they exist to serve.

Contingent Denomination is contingent in that it is not a necessary pattern of Christian life together. This is true both of denomination as a general category, and of any particular denomination. In the case of denomination as a general category, it came into being at a particular historical moment, the result of a confluence of developments. There was a time when there were no denominations. Denomination arose in a particular time and place because it served for faithful Christian living. It has continued because it continues to serve that purpose. There may come a time in the future in which denomination no longer serves that original, or any other significant purpose. Denomination as a general type of intermediary structure in the church is contingent both in its origins and in its continued existence.46 of the essence of the church.” Ronald Osborn, “The Role of the Denomination: An Essay in Ecclesiology,” Encounter 22, No. 2 (Spring 1961), 168. Shortly after this Osborn notes: “It [the denomination] exists not for its own sake but for the sake of the whole church” (170–1). This is further considered later in this chapter when I take up consideration of the partial character of denomination. 45 Finding the right balance here requires constant adjustment. 46 Ronald E.  Osborn, in his generally helpful article “The Role of the Denomination: An Essay in Ecclesiology,” appears to miss this point. He argues that “historically . . . the denomination is inevitable and necessary” (Osborn, “The Role of the Denomination,” 166–167, cf. 162). In an earlier article Osborn identifies the historical contingency of denomination: “In its own historical time the denomination

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Particular denominations also exist contingently. There is a particular set of circumstances in which they come into being. My own denomination was founded in the early eighteenth century in Britain’s North American colonies, in large part as a result of Scots-Irish immigration. It has had a particular identity as a result of those circumstances of its founding (among other contingent circumstances that have also shaped it over the course of its history). The same is true for other denominations as well. The contingency that characterizes the existence of denomination as a form within the church distinguishes denomination from both the congregation and the church. While there will always be some set of contingent circumstances in which a particular congregation comes into being, it is necessary that there be congregations. In the same way, the church exists where there are followers of Jesus Christ, knit into the Body of Christ through baptism. Denomination exists secondarily to congregation and church.47 The Acts of the Apostles tells of the contingent circumstances in which several of the earliest Christian congregations were founded. In the story of the Apostle Paul’s first missionary journey, undertaken with Barnabbas, we learn of the founding of congregations at Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and other cities.48 Congregations are founded in particular contexts, with all of their variable elements—geography, culture, and social characteristics. The necessity by which congregations exist is inherent to the Christian Gospel, as it is lived out among human beings. The emerged as a legitimate, though limited, institutional means of relating local congregations to the larger life of the church.” Osborn, Ronald E., “The Church of Christ, the Denomination, and the Council of Churches,” Encounter 20, No. 1 (Winter 1959), 82. Osborn saw clearly the place of denomination and the importance of developing a theological understanding of it. James R. Nieman sees this point and its implications clearly: “Denominations must always discern when, for the sake of mission, their theological identity narratives require separate organizational forms, and when they call instead for structural rearrangement, merger, or dissolution” (Nieman, “The Theological Work,” 651). 47 Miroslav Volf identifies denominations and intermediary ecclesial structures as having a secondary place:  “A particular denomination, the local churches in a cultural or political region, or the totality of local churches can be called ‘church’ only in a secondary rather than a strictly theological sense.” Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness:  The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids:  William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 138. 48 Acts 13–14.

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Christian faith impels individual Christians toward one another by virtue of the way in which the Christian faith is a pattern of relationships, a distinct pattern of relationships both within faith in Jesus Christ (relationships internal to the church) and beyond those who share faith in Jesus Christ (relationships beyond the church). These relationships establish patterns of implication and dependence. Further, given the kind of beings humans are—particular, finite, creaturely—we cannot bring these relationships into embodiment in their fullness. We cannot be concretely related to all Christians, much less to all God’s creatures. We are able to live the pattern of relationships in which Christian faith places us in a fullness of particularity that matches the full particularity of our own being only with a limited circle of people. Congregations exist by a necessity that is generated by the combination of the nature of the Christian faith and our nature, we human beings who live that faith. Denomination arose as a form of intermediary structure in the midst of the contingencies of history: there were certain preconditions that were necessary. One of the questions that denomination puts to systematic theologians is how to evaluate this coming to be in the midst of contingent happenings. Was the Holy Spirit at work in the coming to be of this particular form of intermediary structure in the church? How might we make such a judgment—on the basis of what criteria? One way in which this question presses particularly powerfully is in considering claims made by the Roman Catholic Church that its ecclesial structures exist by divine command, rooted in words and actions of Jesus most particularly in relationship to Peter. On the side of denomination the question is, can a significant way of structuring the church arise in the course of much later history without claiming that it is specifically present in the words of Jesus, or the instructions to the early church found beyond the Gospels in the New Testament? I affirm that denomination, rightly understood and lived, is in fact part of God’s providential provision for the church. The question of the Holy Spirit’s approving (or not) presence in bringing denomination into being exerts pressure in other aspects of theological reflection on the church as well. Specifically, what place can and should sociological and historical research have in ecclesiological explorations of the church carried out by those who understand themselves to be working within systematic theology? Nicholas Healy has commented that one of the defining features of

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twentieth-century theological works on the church is their marked tendency to turn away from sociological studies in particular. Twentieth-century theologies of the church were, Healy comments, “blueprint” ecclesiologies. He notes that twentieth-century ecclesiological reflection had a marked “tendency to reflect upon the church in abstraction from its concrete identity” leading to “a tendency to present idealized accounts of the church.”49 He comments that the twentieth-century theologies he has been evaluating display to some degree a tendency to concentrate their efforts upon setting forth more or less complete descriptions of what the perfect church should look like. They present blueprints of what the church should ideally become. This . . . reflects the widespread lack of explicit and careful analysis of the church’s present practices and institutions and how they might bear upon that description.50 Theological assessment of denomination requires engaging the lived realities of the church, against the tendency of contemporary ecclesiology to work at a more generalized, non-particular level. There have also been theological voices calling for engagement with sociological reflection on the church. James Gustafson’s Treasure in Earthen Vessels is an example of such theological engagement with sociological research, as is, from a much earlier part of the century, the work of H. Richard Niebuhr, as we have seen.51 Healy’s note that blueprint ecclesiologies present visions of the perfect church and what it should be points to an additional problem with the blueprint approach: it turns away from the messy, often faithless reality of the church as it is in favor of perfection. Yet the messy, often 49

Nicholas Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life:  Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine, Vol. 7 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 26. 50 Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life, 36. 51 James Gustafson, Treasure in Earthen Vessels: The Church as a Human Community (New York:  Harper & Brothers, 1961). H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New  York:  Henry Holt and Co., 1929); Niebuhr continued to be attentive to sociological analysis of the life of the church: see e.g., H. Richard Niebuhr, in collaboration with Daniel Day Williams and James M. Gustafson, The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry:  Reflections on the Aims of Theological Education (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956).

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faithless reality is precisely where the Holy Spirit is at work making the church. Niebuhr’s The Social Sources of Denominationalism is, ironically, an example of engagement with sociological study of the church that shares this tendency to a sort of ecclesiological Docetism:  sociological study of the church is taken to demonstrate just how completely the existing church falls short of the ideal.52 The contingency inherent to the existence of denomination generally and of any particular denomination is a challenge not only for systematic theology, but also for the denominations themselves. Denominations exist in the face of an abiding question: is the separate existence of this particular denomination still justified? Ronald Osborn puts the point in this way:  “No denomination should be continued as a separate religious body unless there is genuine contemporary reason for it to maintain its distinct existence. The positive statement of this position is to demand that the institutional life of the church always show integrity, that there be real reason for every particular ecclesiastical structure.”53 Denomination is a structure that exists dynamically in the life of the church. It comes into being in particular circumstances and it can cease to exist. Particular denominations most often cease to exist through merger, but it is possible that a denomination would simply dissolve. It is perhaps worth pointing out that denomination is not unique in this regard. Congregations are established within contingent circumstances and also cease to exist. It is highly unlikely that a particular denomination will declare that there is no longer any justification for its separate existence and therefore it is going to bring its existence to an end. A declaration that there is no justification for a denomination’s continued separate existence will generally be implicit in a decision to merge, whether declared explicitly or implicitly. The contingency inherent to denomination in general and to any given denomination sets a boundary to the claims that any denomination can make for itself. To repeat: denominations exist contingently, they are secondary to congregation and church. Denominations are always prone to claim something more for their existence. The temptation is to make them somehow necessary 52

I return to the need for an ecclesiology able to see God at work even in faithless realities when I  consider narrative as a basic framing element of ecclesiology, in Chapter 7. 53 Osborn, “The Role of the Denomination,” 171–2.

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to the Christian faith. This temptation works itself out in part as the notion that the particular way of living out the Christian faith which is sustained by one’s own denomination is not just one pattern for living the faith alongside others that are also faithful. The particular way we follow becomes the superior way, or simply the way to live the Christian life. What is particular comes to be seen as universal. One of the reasons for pursuing a theological assessment of denomination is precisely to try to fashion tools for identifying such overreaching and for providing correction.

Partial It follows then that denomination is partial in that no denomination is ever the full embodiment of the church universal in this time. No denomination alone is the full breadth of the church.54 Denominations are built on decisions about matters of belief and practice, matters that faithful Christians might (and have) decided differently. But no one denomination can have it both ways in most such matters. Denominations, being partial, have to choose among the available possibilities (they are no different than congregations in that regard). Hence, denominations necessarily embody only part of the fullness of Christian life and witness. Denominations are dependent on other ecclesial bodies, and especially on other denominations, for the embodiment of the fullness of the church— as we shall see in considering interdependence. The essentially partial nature of denominations is not a problem so long as denominations live in full acknowledgment of their own fragmentariness. Acknowledging their own fragmentariness has long been difficult for denominations. Commenting on the present situation of denominations in the United States (after a prior age of triumphal proclamations of a denomination’s own superiority and the inferiority of all others), Joseph D. Small notes that improvements in the relationship of denominations to one another may be built on the failure to acknowledge the essentially partial nature of every denomination: “Generous openness to the other has not

54

Ronald Osborn is again to the point:  “No existing religious institution is coterminous with the whole church of Christ.” Osborn, “The Church of Christ, the Denomination,” 80.

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led to urgent engagements that might create genuine visible unity, however. Instead, mutuality leads Protestant churches [denominations] to see in others as well as in themselves an essential ecclesial self-sufficiency: each embodies the one holy catholic and apostolic church and so each has everything needed to be Christ’s faithful church.”55 The failure of denominations to recognize and reckon with their own partial character is a constant problem, a besetting sin of denomination. Ironically, Small’s article itself displays one factor that contributes to this failure:  language. Specifically, one of the reasons we are unable to recognize, much less reckon with the essentially partial nature of any denomination is the fact that we are unable— or unwilling—to name them denomination, preferring instead to label one another as church. But, as discussed earlier in this chapter, denominations are church only in a way secondary to the congregation and the church universal. Calling denominations church is at best a sort of honorific, true in a secondary way. But as is the way with our naming of things, an identity which is properly secondary easily comes to be taken as primary. This is one of the reasons that careful theological reflection on denomination is so important to the church, and to the denominations. Willingness to name what we actually are is one of the first steps toward living what we are in faithful ways. Small shines strong light on the persistence with which denominations view themselves as whole. Equally critical to this situation, 55

Joseph D. Small, “The Travail of Faith and Order,” Pro Ecclesia 18, No. 3 (2009), 243 (I have added the bracketed word). Small has noted that this is very clear in the case of his and my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Elsewhere Small commented: “The PCUSA constitution often uses the word ‘church’ ambiguously. Its Book of Order opens with a claim that is intended to refer to the one holy catholic apostolic church, but which most Presbyterians would take as referring to our own church, and would also be willing to grant to other churches: ‘Christ calls the Church into being, giving it all that is necessary for its mission to the world, for its building up, and for its service to God.’ If the churches each have ‘all that is necessary,’ there is no awareness of fundamental incompleteness, and thus no compelling need for the necessity of deep ecclesiological conversations that might lead to significant change in one or more of the churches.” This quote is from a personal communication from Joseph D.  Small, March 31, 2010, quoted by permission of the author. I’m grateful for the long conversation of which this communication is a stage, and for permission to quote here. The quote within the quote is from Book of Order, 2015–17, F-1.0202.

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as Small notes, is the insistence that each denomination is to judge itself. Denominations continue to insist that they are to be their own judge. That they then judge others by the same standard to which they hold themselves appears generous, but these judgments are only as good as the standard by which the judgment is made. I agree with Small that the standard being employed is false, and thus the judgments are false. “Even so-called full communion agreements between or among churches [denominations] are notable for the eagerness to preserve the individual integrity of the churches [denominations] in their continued separation . . . these agreements maintain the separate, independent identity of each church [denomination]. Maintenance of autonomy may even be key to their approval.”56 Indeed, I would suggest that it is key. As Small notes, “The conviction of ecclesial self-sufficiency is so fundamental to churches’ self-understanding that they assume it even when voicing regret about the reality of continuing division.” It need not be so. It is possible for denominations to acknowledge that they are only partial embodiments of the church, dependent on others for the embodiment of the fullness of the church. Such acknowledgment can be found—in a qualified and nuanced way—in the Roman Catholic Church. Lumen Gentium, having stated that the church “subsists in the Catholic Church,” goes on to say, “nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and truth are found outside its visible confines. Since these are gifts belonging to the church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards catholic unity.”57 I have intentionally bracketed out the question whether the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches may properly be called denominations; it is not my intent to pass any judgment on that question here. What is to the point is to find the Roman Catholic Church, which would deny that it is a denomination, yet acknowledging that there is something of the fullness of the church existing outside its visible bounds.58 The same acknowledgment is at work 56

Small, “Travail of Faith and Order,” 244. Lumen Gentium §8. 58 Robert Jenson notes that such acknowledgment has a significant theological impact. “Between separated churches of the West, the very fact of a dialogue in which renewed churchly fellowship is recognized as the goal—however distant— constitutes recognition that somehow there is church on both sides of the dialogue. If one party were not church, why would the other party or parties want to be reunited with it?” Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, 169. 57

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in the recent initiative called Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning. Paul Murray, a leading figure in the initiative, describes Receptive Ecumenism in this way:  “the fundamental principle within Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning is that each tradition should focus first on the self-critical question: ‘What can we learn, or receive, with integrity from our various others in order to facilitate our own growth together into deepened communion in Christ and the Spirit?’ ”59 Murray surveys developments within the Roman Catholic understanding of the faith that undergirds a recognition that one’s knowledge of the faith is partial, in need of greater fullness: Within modern Roman Catholicism, the key relevant developments took place at the Second Vatican Council with the move beyond a straightforward identification, without remainder, of the church of Christ with the Roman Catholic Church to speaking of the former as subsisting in the latter and, with this, maintaining that whilst the Catholic Church lacks none of the essential marks of the church of Christ, these marks cannot, therefore, be regarded as being present either exclusively (perhaps with the exception of Roman Catholic understanding of the unity of the church) or perfectly within Roman Catholicism. On the contrary, the Catholic Church, itself always in need of purification, semper purificanda, can properly appreciate and receive from the aspects of catholicity present in other traditions which, as Cardinal Kasper has recognized, may be being lived there more adequately, in part, than within Roman Catholicism itself. This, taken along with the recognition that Catholicism was itself complicit in the tragic events

59 Paul D. Murray, preface, in Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism, ed. Paul D. Murray, with the assistance of Luca Badini-Confalonieri (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ix–x. Where Murray refers to traditions, I would suggest we substitute denominations, though Murray clearly intends something somewhat broader. In referring to traditions Murray is, of course, following a theological, and particularly ecumenical, custom. And yet it needs to be asked whether this custom has not arisen within theology, and most particularly within ecumenism, as way to avoid using denomination. This can be justified as a gracious courtesy, and yet it serves to continue to obscure, even to occlude the reality of our belonging to denominations. The danger is that courtesy casts a haze that makes it more difficult to understand the reality of our present situation.

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of the sixteenth century [Murray cites here Unitatis Redintegratio, §3], marked a significant development beyond the theology of the one-way return that had previously explicitly characterized official Roman Catholic ecumenical thinking.60 A similar recognition that something of the fullness of the church lies beyond the boundaries of one’s own ecclesial structures has been suggested among the Orthodox as well, by Georges Florovsky.61 It is ironic that a substantial initiative to recognize the partial character of one’s own ecclesial body or denomination would arise among Roman Catholics rather than among those who have for some time given official acknowledgment of the partial character of their embodiment of the faith by acknowledging that other denominations are also part of the church—Protestant denominations. Denomination is a form of intermediary structure in the church. A  denomination embodies a particular way of living out the Christian faith, one alongside others that are also faithful. The claims a denomination makes for itself must be in accord with this partial character of its own existence. Acknowledging its partial character should drive a focused curiosity about other ways of living the faith, an eagerness to learn from them, better to know the fullness of life in Jesus Christ. A denomination is by its very nature dependent on others not only for the embodiment of the fullness of the faith; as the Receptive Ecumenism initiative makes clear, it is dependent on them even for knowledge of what the fullness of Christian faith might be. 60

Paul D. Murray, “Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning—Establishing the Agenda” in Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning, 13. 61 George Florovsky, “The Limits of the Church,” The Church Quarterly Review, No. 233 (October 1933), 117–31; this essay was reprinted in a slightly altered form as “The Boundaries of the Church,” in Georges Florovsky, Ecumenism I:  A  Doctrinal Approach, The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, Vol. 13 (Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1989), 36–45. Florovsky argues that the (Orthodox) church can recognize the validity of some baptisms that happen outside the Orthodox Church, doing so in affirmation that the Holy Spirit does sometimes work in extraordinary ways. This is a controversial claim. Tamara Grdzelidze has explored Florovsky’s claims, inquiring particularly whether his distinctions could be useful in ecumenical dialogue. She argues that these distinctions are not open to wider application. Tamara Grdzelidze, “Using the Principle of Oikonomia in Ecumenical Discussions: Reflections on ‘The Limits of the Church’ by George Florovsky,” The Ecumenical Review 56, No. 2 (April 2004), 234–46.

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Interdependent Denomination is inherently interdependent in that any given denomination depends on the existence of other denominations for the fullness of Christian life and witness to be embodied in the world. The decisions one denomination makes about many theological matters will embody only possible ways in which those matters might be decided faithfully. That particular denomination realizes only one among the possible embodiments of the church. It depends on other denominations to embody other possible ways of deciding such matters, and only together can those denominations embody the fullness of the church. Interdependence is related to and yet something other than being partial. The church is more than any particular embodiment of the church. The fullness of the Christian life is more than can be realized by any one person, through the way offered by any denomination or congregation. A Christian is dependent on other Christians for knowledge of the fullness of the Christian life, which means that a Christian is dependent on others for knowledge and understanding of the Lord and Savior, communion with whom is the Christian life. A  Christian congregation shares this same interdependence. A congregation is dependent on other congregations for knowledge and understanding of the fullness of the Christian life and of the Lord and Savior with whom congregations are in communion. And the same is true for denominations as well. To know Christ requires others who live the Christian life in other ways.62 The Christian life calls us to a fullness we cannot fashion or attain on our own. It draws us ever more completely into the fullness of Christ: “For

62

This insight animates the Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning initiative:  “Similarly, fundamental to the Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning project is the conviction that the life of faith, personally and communally—or, better, ecclesially—is always in essence a matter of becoming more fully, more richly, what we already are; what we have been called to be and are destined be and in which we already share, albeit in part . . . In this perspective, the core concern of the Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning project is to explore how ecumenical encounter, ecumenical engagement, ecumenical responsibility and calling can be privileged contexts for promoting this process of personal and ecclesial growth into more intensely configured communion in Christ and the Spirit.” Paul D.  Murray, “Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning—Establishing the Agenda,” in Murray ed., Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning, 6–7.

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in [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority” (Col. 2:9–10). There is a certain modesty or humility that is inherent to denomination.63 Denominations are embodiments of the church; they share in the venture of living the Christian faith, providing structure for that living. But denominations by their very nature are not the whole of the faith. To be interdependent requires confidence and humility. In practice, the combination of confidence and humility has proven no easier for groups of people gathered in a denomination than it is for any of us individually. Many of the sins of denominations flow out of the failure to balance confidence and humility faithfully. One of the most characteristic failings of denominations is to regard themselves as the whole of the church, rather than recognizing that they are partial. At times, denominations have made this failing explicit, regarding all other ecclesial bodies as outside the church; but denominations make this failing in ways that are less explicit, simply living as if they were the wholeness of the church, paying little attention to those beyond their own members. The mutual anathemas of the Reformation era are a painful example of explicit claims to be the church over against the alleged illegitimacy of other ecclesial bodies claiming to be church. These anathemas have been lifted only recently, in some cases, as the result of long reflection and conversation.64 The Orthodox churches have struggled over the proper way of understanding those who claim to follow Jesus Christ and live the faith outside the Orthodox churches.65 The Protestant denominations have

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“There is a non-exclusive impulse at the heart of denomination: to claim a denominational identity is to see one’s own body as a part of the universal church but not as the whole church.” Amy Plantinga Pauw, “Presbyterianism and Denomination,” in Denomination: Assessing an Ecclesiological Category, ed. Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George, Ecclesiological Investigations (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 133. 64 The great fruit of such long effort is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, worked out between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation (1999), and signed as well by the World Methodist Council (2006) and the World Communion of Reformed Churches (2017). 65 See the “Patriarchal and Synodal Encyclical on the Sunday of Orthodoxy (February 21, 2010)” of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople for an instance of the ongoing discussion of the Orthodox participation in ecumenical dialogue—dialogue

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practiced this failing with particular vigor across the years. The failure to acknowledge interdependence has often led to mutual denunciations, a practice of anger toward one another that feeds itself over years.66 Indeed, one factor leading to neglect of denomination as a topic for systematic theological reflection has been precisely the tendency among denominations to regard themselves as having no decisive need for those who embody the Christian faith in other ways. This judgment that “I have no need of you” can take forms that seem to be entirely benign. We noted earlier Joseph Small’s strong critique of the contemporary situation in which denominations reject their fundamental need for one another, doing so by means of what appears to be a high regard for others. We judge ourselves to be self-sufficient, and we are glad to regard you as equally selfsufficient. Which means that just as we have no particular need for you or any insights you might have, so you have no particular need for us since you don’t lack anything we might have. There is an outlook at work in this pattern of relationship that declares ourselves to be closed to you. Any suggestion you make that we lack something you have is regarded as rudeness. If you will treat us politely, we are glad to do the same to you. The basic logic at work is selfprotection, to be achieved by a sort of mutual nonintervention pact. Small calls attention to “Called to Be the One Church,” a statement prepared by the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission and adopted by the Ninth Assembly of the WCC. It “declares:  ‘Each church must become aware of all that is provisional in its life and have the courage to acknowledge this to other churches.’ The statement admits that ‘churches have not always acknowledged their mutual responsibility to one another, and have that brings a kind of recognition of Christians beyond the formal boundaries of the Orthodox churches. See especially the fourth, fifth and sixth paragraphs of the encyclical. The text of the encyclical is accessible online at http://www.patriarchate. org/documents/sunday-orthodoxy-2010; accessed April 16, 2010. 66 In my own denomination the recrimination and contempt is most intense toward ecclesial bodies that have their origin in a departure from us, or from one of our predecessor denominations. The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), which was founded by congregations who left the predecessor denominations of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is the focus of a contempt that is unreflective, a reflex among us that belittles them as a contrast to us, in the spirit of “God, I thank you that I am not like other people” (Lk. 18:11).

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not always recognized the need to give account to one another of their faith, life, and witness, as well as to articulate the factors that keep them apart.’ ”67

Permeable Denomination is permeable in that denominations must be structured in ways that allow for movement in and out of any given denomination, and that allow for movement on the part of the denomination itself. No denomination can make total, ultimate claims on its own members. There will be those who come to share the particular theological commitments that shape a particular denomination’s life, and they should be welcomed in. There will also be those within a denomination who find themselves no longer sharing that denomination’s judgments, and they should be permitted to leave. Further, any particular denomination will find its shared judgments changing over time. Denomination is an intermediary structure, contingent in its existence, partial in its being, essentially interdependent—and as such, as we have seen, it cannot make ultimate claims for itself. It is not ultimate. It mediates the claims of the church universal to congregations, and mediates the commitment of the congregation to living in the church. Because denomination is not the church, denominations cannot claim that all Christians are committed to it—only those who find themselves drawn to the way of living the Christian faith it supports through its structures. Denomination is by its very nature a matter of contingent circumstances. Any particular denomination will live in the midst of circumstances that change and will find that its structures and membership must have a level of porousness in order to survive. Members will come in; others will find themselves no longer following its way of living the Christian faith, and they will find their way out. Because denomination is partial, denominations must recognize that there 67

Joseph D.  Small, “Travail,” 246. Small quotes “Called to Be the One Church,” Statement of the Ninth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (Porto Alegre 2006), II.7, and V.12. Accessible online at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/ documents/assembly/porto-alegre-2006/1-statements-documents-adopted/christianunity-and-message-to-the-churches/called-to-be-the-one-church-as-adopted.html. Accessed November 30, 2016.

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are other parts within the whole; a denomination’s members might find resources in another denomination for a fuller living of the Christian faith—either by borrowing (a very significant reality in the life of the church today)68 or by moving from one’s denomination to another. Particular denominations may be impacted by the way of Christian life embodied by other denominations or movements around them.69 One of the features of denomination is its combination of continuity and mutability, which provides both strength and weakness. Continuity across time is essential to all forms of human flourishing, and is affirmed in a particular way within the Christian life. Continuity across time allows those in the present to live in cultural and institutional forms that embody lessons learned by those who went before. They created a structure within which to live, freeing those in the present from having to figure out everything all at once. Within the Christian faith, continuity across time is shaped by the relationships which bind together Christians today with Christians of previous times. In the church universal Christians are related to one another not simply by means of simple chronological succession:  the unity of the church relates those living today more personally to those who went before.

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One example of this borrowing would be Protestants who become oblates of Roman Catholic monastic orders. See e.g., Kathleen Norris, Dakota:  A  Spiritual Geography (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1993). This borrowing is laden with complications. It is easily confused with consumerist syncretism; discerning faithful from faithless borrowing will always be complicated. Those who do such borrowing will need to be able to show to others in the denomination that such borrowing is coherent with the particular way of living the Christian life around which their denomination is structured. 69 The last half-century has seen significant examples of this in the liturgical renewal movement and the charismatic movement. The movement for liturgical renewal has stretched across denominations, permeating denominations that one might have thought impervious to the insights and recommendations of those engaged in this movement. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has not only seen congregations and individuals adopting practices that Presbyterians once would have regarded as irredeemably Roman Catholic, but it has codified many of those changes in its widely utilized Book of Common Worship (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993).

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Denomination provides structures in which this continuity can be embodied. The lessons learned by a particular group of Christians about the living of the Christian life are embodied in the structures they build for their life together, and these structures are inhabited by later generations. A key problem with such continuity is the need for modification:  structures that worked well yesterday may not work equally well, in all their details, today. What is needed is the right balance of continuity and mutability. Because denomination is a structural form that is permeable, denomination incorporates potential for change. Actually, the permeability of denominations would seem to be hopeful for ecumenical work:  there is an openness to influences that might happen through ecumenical interaction. Full ecumenical engagement requires that denominations and other ecclesial bodies have an openness to one another, a willingness to learn about another way of living the Christian faith. Nor is this only a learning about those with whom one is in conversation. Full ecumenical engagement includes a willingness to learn more about one’s own way of living the Christian faith by seeing one’s own living of the faith from the vantage point of a different living of that same faith. Denominations could and should be good places in which the presence and insights of other denominations can permeate one’s own denominational way. That denominations often do not function in such a way is a failing of many of them, and of the Christians in them. But it is not an inherent failing of denomination as an ecclesiological form.

Denomination and “ecclesial communions” Are denominations ecclesial communions? Is the Roman Catholic Church correct in its judgment that Protestant denominations contain only loose elements of the wholeness of the church—in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church itself? This view was articulated with particular directness in the declaration “ ‘Dominus Iesus’: On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church.” It claims that “the ecclesial

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communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church.”70 Protestants have been unwilling to grant these claims about themselves. Rejection of the Roman Catholic claim was made with corresponding directness by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (predecessor to the World Communion of Reformed Churches), in a letter signed by its general secretary, Setri Nyomi. An exclusive claim that identifies the Roman Catholic Church as the one church of Jesus Christ, as we read in the statement released today, goes against the spirit of our Christian calling towards oneness in Christ . . . we are thankful to God that our calling to be part of the church of Jesus Christ is not dependent on the interpretation of the Vatican. It is a gift of God. Receiving this gift, we appreciate the Roman Catholic Church as a part of this family.”71 This Protestant rejection of the Roman Catholic Church’s claim is both understandable and odd. It was offensive, no doubt, for Protestant groups to be reminded that in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church they are not themselves fully church. Nevertheless, it was odd:  the document simply reiterated standing Roman Catholic doctrine. Recognizing that fact, some Protestant groups responded mildly to the declaration. .72 Judgments will need to be made about the claims of the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches, that they

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Dominus Iesus, §17 (cf. n. 22). The letter appears in a news release, “WARC Questions Vatican Statement on Status of Reformed Churches,” accessible online at http://warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/side. jsp?news_id=1209&part_id=0&navi=6, accessed December 10, 2012. 72 For example, in response to the declaration the World Methodist Council issued a statement recognizing this fact. See http://archives.umc.org/umns/ news_ archive2000.asp?ptid=&story=%7B27E24DAA- A65F- 4D5F- B151F6C1E72D803F%7D&mid=3366. Accessed November 30, 2016. 71

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are the true church, and other Christian groups are either not, or are ecclesiologically deficient. It is possible that Protestants could grant the Roman Catholic Church’s claim that the one holy catholic and apostolic church subsists in it, provided that there is room in the one holy catholic and apostolic church for other embodiments of faithful ecclesial structure. And, provided that it is clear that the Roman Catholic Church is not the fullness of embodiment of the church apart from the groups it thinks of as ecclesial communions. Thus, Protestants would grant that the Roman Catholic Church views Protestant denominations as fragments. Under the proposal of this book, that’s simply the truth of the matter. Denominations should acknowledge that they themselves are fragmentary, not the whole. But Protestants will understand their own fragmentariness (and that of the Roman Catholic Church itself) in a different way. Protestants will view the Roman Catholic Church as itself fragmentary so long as it is separated from Protestants (and from the Orthodox). Deep theological discussion of these issues has been hindered because Protestants generally lack an understanding of themselves that has the clarity and the traction of the Roman Catholic Church’s articulate position. Here again, part of the reason for Protestant inarticulateness is our unwillingness to be forthright about who we are, particularly about the denominations in and through which we seek faithfully to follow Jesus Christ.

Conclusion Denomination is one form of intermediary structure in the church. It is located between congregation, on the one hand, and the whole church on the other. It shares some of the concrete specificity of the congregation, but that specificity is thinned out a bit in order to enable multiple congregations, in all their variety and particularity, to live in a pattern of relationship that embodies their affirmation that the church is larger than any one congregation or any group of congregations. Denomination is a concrete way in which congregations and their members live their belief in the one holy catholic and apostolic church which, by being part of a denomination, they acknowledge is larger than their own congregation.

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Denomination leans toward the universal church; it is a structure of life in the universal church, but that universality is particularized a bit, gaining concreteness, in order to enable multiple congregations to have a share in one another’s lives that is more than an abstraction, an idea. Denomination is generated by the fecundity of the Christian faith. The Christian faith can be lived faithfully in more than one way, within more than one pattern of decisions about how faithfully to embody Christian belief and practice. The church must include space in which candidate patterns for faithful Christian living can be proposed, attempted, embodied, and tested. Denomination provides such space. As such, denomination, properly understood, has at least five characteristics. A denomination is intermediary, contingent, partial, interdependent, and permeable. A  denomination exists to mediate between congregation and church, between particular congregations and the universal church. One way in which denominations become unfaithful (indeed, one of the besetting sins of denomination) is by coming to view themselves as ends rather than means, as the whole rather than a means for relating two forms of gathering together in the church (congregation and universal church) that are themselves whole, in distinct ways. Every denomination exists contingently. There was a time when it was not, and there may perfectly well be a time when it will cease to be. Denominations form around particular ways of living Christian faith, and those particular ways themselves may reach a point in which they no longer make sense. Denominations are partial, they are not the whole. Denominations must live that partialness. Denominations are interdependent in that they depend on one another for the embodiment of the fullness of the Christian faith. Any given denomination will not be able to live or understand the fullness of the Christian faith out of its own resources alone, but will have to receive elements of that fullness from others. Finally, denominations are permeable. They shift and change over time, they are open to insights originally gained beyond their borders, with an ability to incorporate those insights. Doing so will shift a denomination’s sense of itself, which, it finds, shifts its sense of itself and what it means faithfully to live the Christian faith.

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Each of these characteristics carries with it the potential for distortion, and I believe it would be possible to find multiple examples of such failures—perhaps even within the history of any one denomination. Faithful Christian living requires steadfast vigilance in the face of the potential for distortion.

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5 The diversity to which we are called

Introduction In the previous chapter I  set forth a normative definition of denomination. Denomination grows out of the openness of the authoritative materials of Christian belief and practice to multiple interpretations and embodiments. Denomination arises as an ecclesiological form in a context in which state coercion has been either removed or thoroughly diminished, leaving persuasion as the primary means of settling disagreements about the proper shape of faithful Christian belief and practice.1 Living the faith together requires us to act on, or to embody affirmations we make about the shape of the Christian life, including those affirmations that are disputed. There is no free space or time for long disquisition and debate over these matters. The Christian faith is lived out now and in order to do so we are required to live on the basis of affirmations about the Christian faith, some of which are opposed by Christian sisters, brothers, and other ecclesial bodies (with the range of opposition running from casual to intense). What we require is not complete agreement before we begin to live the faith; what we require are structures that enable us to 1

It is the primary means but not the only factor that might play in settling or overlooking disputes. One can imagine contexts in which disputes over proper Christian belief and practice might recede in the face, for example, of factors external to the church, which become so significant that all energies must be turned to addressing the challenge at hand. Situations of persecution create such conditions.

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live our differences as we are in the process of discerning who among us is right about the disputed matters. And, it should be noted, there never has been nor ever will be a time in the life of the church when such structures are not needed. Denomination enables Christians to fashion the structures of a life together in the midst of disagreements. Rightly understood as an ecclesiological category, denomination is intermediary, contingent, partial, interdependent, and permeable. The previous chapter explored each of those attributes. In the following three chapters we turn our focus from denomination to the wider church in which denomination exists. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed offers four marks of the church:  one holy catholic and apostolic. These marks are basic for ecclesiology. In this chapter and the next I consider the Nicene mark that sets the clearest standard relevant to denomination as an ecclesiological category: “one.” The New Testament repeatedly calls the followers of Jesus Christ to be in union with one another, most centrally in Jesus’s prayer for his followers in John 17 (here verses 20–3): I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I  have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. While Scripture’s call to unity is clear, the specific forms and structures of that unity are not fully specified.2 Here there has been significant divergence across the life of the church and significant difference in the present. It is not self-evident what ecclesiological forms and structures are required by, or will meet the standard of

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I turn later to the question of what is specified, particularly in Scripture.

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the call to be one. Theological discussions of the unity of the church, if they wish to be relevant to the church as it lives the faith, must offer some help in determining the structures that will faithfully embody the call to oneness as well as those that unfaithfully violate that call. A century after the establishment of the modern ecumenical movement it is not adequate to tell us, once again, that unity is a good and is to be pursued. The issue is not whether to pursue unity, the issue is what forms and structures embody the unity to which we are called.3 Decisions about unity are decisions about diversity. Decisions about the unity of the church and the structures that can legitimately claim to embody the unity to which we are called will also be decisions about diversity, its proper place, and the forms that it can take. It is worth noting that all serious theological understandings of the church allow for both unity and diversity. The question is not unity or diversity; the question is what forms unity and diversity should take in order that Christians may live together in a way that faithfully fulfills the call to be one. Indeed, as Michael Kinnamon has noted, unity and diversity are symbiotic.4 The way in which one understands unity will directly shape how one understands diversity, and vice versa. It is not adequate simply to speak of unity;

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There may be some Christian groups and individuals who still need to be persuaded that they are called to pursue the unity of the church. I suspect that these groups and individuals form a minority, and not a large one. Their apparent rejection of the call to unity should always be engaged. But for most Christians I believe the call to unity is recognized and acknowledged. What is needed is to specify the forms that unity should take, to make the case for those forms, and to show how to move from the present situation to those forms. It is unfortunate that discussions of the unity of the church all too frequently take the form of extended statements that say little more than unity, good; disunity, bad. E.g., J. H.  (Amie) van Wyk, “‘Is Christ Divided?’—An Analysis of the Theological Justification of a Church Schism,” in Eduardus Van der Borght, ed., The Unity of the Church: A Theological State of the Art and Beyond, Studies in Reformed Theology, 18 (Leiden: Brill, 2010) 51–67. 4 Michael Kinnamon, The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2003), 51. So also Diane Kessler and Kinnamon: “The goal of the [ecumenical] movement, however, is not so much to unite diversity as to recognize the proper diversity of our given oneness.” Diane Kessler and Michael Kinnamon, Councils of Churches and the Ecumenical Vision, Risk Book Series (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2000), 8–9.

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one must also speak of diversity, describing its proper forms and parameters. We are not called only to be one. There is also in the Christian faith a call to diversity. This call to diversity rests in the divine work of creation, which generates diversity within the whole. The created universe has a particular coherence and a set of boundary conditions that shape all creaturely existence. Within those boundaries there is diversity generated as the possibilities inherent in the boundary conditions are explored and realized across time. We see this pattern in the earth, which is a bounded space, with a particular set of boundary conditions, and yet has generated staggering diversity as the possibilities inherent in the earth’s particular conditions are realized. Something similar is true for humanity as it lives in this universe, on this earth. Diversity is not accidental to God’s purposes and thus it is not irrelevant to what the church properly is (at all levels of the church, from universal to congregational). Diversity (of people, of cultures, and of ways of being the church) is not a sociological accident, but an embodiment of God’s purposes. There is inherent in God’s work of creation a call to and a generating force toward very significant diversity.5 It is a call that is renewed in redemption. It stands alongside the call to unity, neither cancelling nor overshadowing the other. While the call to diversity is, I argue, clear, the specific forms and structures of that diversity are not fully specified. Here again, there has been and still is significant disagreement amongst ecclesial bodies and Christian traditions about how best to embody the diversity to which we are called. The challenge is to offer an account of the forms that this diversity can take that will be in harmony with the unity to which we are called.

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James R.  Nieman underlines the theological nature of this call, and the importance of the call to diversity for understanding the place of denomination within the unity of the church. Denominations proclaim the Christian Gospel with specificity and particularity—they embody the Gospel not in generic but in particular ways. “Precisely in this group particularity, it makes an argument for a diversity and difference essential to Christian witness in the world.” Naming its particular embodiment of the Gospel “is how a denomination claims its space in, as, and for the church in a way that enriches the ecclesial whole rather than being a sinful or schismatic embarrassment” (Nieman, “The Theological Work,” 638).

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In this and the following chapter I explore denomination as a way of living out God’s call to diversity and unity. Because denomination is so frequently condemned for its failure to meet a standard of unity that I believe itself rests upon a failure to hear God’s call to diversity, in this chapter I begin with God’s call to diversity, making a case for the importance of diversity in the life of the church, and the need for forms that allow Christians to live diversity in the world—which requires that there be institutions, namely ecclesiological forms and structures that embody that diversity. Denomination is, I argue, a form in which it is possible to do so. In Chapter 6, I consider the unity to which we are called, and argue that the unity to which we are called is not that of a single institutional structure, organized in a particular way from top to bottom, but rather a unity of multiple institutional structures. I  argue that as we live the Christian life together across time we need structures that enable us to explore the possibilities inherent in the Christian faith, and that denomination provides a form for doing so. Understood as a structure that exists within the church, intermediate between congregation and church universal, denomination grows out of theological and scriptural roots. It is not simply a human fabrication, a merely sociological adaptation serving purposes that are isolated from some set of higher purposes served by the church. Denomination embodies, it is a realization of certain theological affirmations. Specifically, denominations are generated within a conceptual space marked out by at least the following features of the Christian life:  the underdetermination of the divine instructions for the corporate ordering of the followers of Jesus Christ; the superabundance of the divine work of creation and redemption; the finitude and creatureliness of human existence (social as well as individual), which mean that human existence is necessarily shaped in structures that are finite (partial) and creaturely; and the fact that the Christian community is best realized when freely chosen, apart from coercion. These theological affirmations undergird the further, general affirmation that there are varieties of diversity to which God calls creation (including the followers of Christ individually and corporately). This call to diversity will shape the lives of Christians as they are the church embodied.

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The polity and structure of the church: The underdetermination of scriptural instruction One of the most striking features of the New Testament is the sparseness of its instructions (commandments) for shaping the ecclesial bodies into which Christians are gathered. The Torah is replete with instructions for shaping the corporate body formed by the followers of the God of Abraham and Sarah—so full of such instructions that the majority of the Torah continues to be a challenge for many Christians. Much of the instruction in the Torah is concerned with worship—its forms, its materials, its space, and its personnel.6 But the instructions extend well beyond worship to limits on royal power (Deut. 17:14–20), economic righteousness (Deut. 24:14–15), sanitary regulations (Deut. 23: 12–14), and a myriad of other matters. These collections of legal materials and the decision to include them in the canon of Scripture represent an effort to specify the ordering of the corporate life of the people of God. Clearly the inclusion of such detail did not do away with the need for interpretation.7 Nevertheless, the gathering and canonization of such material indicates a desire to provide authoritative material that will give as much determination as possible in the written materials that shape a corporate life. In the Old Testament the strategy for constituting the common life of the people of God is maximalist: provide much detail. The New Testament follows a different strategy. Legal material is de-emphasized, and other forms of instruction are thereby elevated. Thus in the New Testament we find a gathering of narratives that display the life to be led in following Jesus, for both individuals and

6

The book of Leviticus is a primary example. The book of Deuteronomy, the second telling of the Law, is testimony to the need for interpretation in what the text itself identifies as a new context. Jesus’s ongoing disputes with a variety of groups within the Judaism of his time run across the Gospels. These disputes are disagreements over the right interpretation of the legal material in the Torah and elsewhere in Scripture (those Scriptures Jesus and his contemporaries shared). This is only one indication that the need for interpretation is not eliminated by gathering a significant body of laws.

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for the community gathered together in Christ and in pursuit of Christ in the world. There are passages that look to be imperatives for corporate life; “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another” (Rom. 12:14–17a). There are repeated instructions for specific individuals within congregations, having to do with their individual faithfulness to Jesus Christ, touching generally on the impact they are having on the larger congregation:  “I urge Euodia and I  urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel” (Phil. 4:2–3). There are also more concrete instructions for the shaping of corporate life, which bear a resemblance to some of the instructions in the Torah: “The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher” (1 Tim. 3:1–2). There is a list of functions to be fulfilled or offices to be filled: “The gifts [God] gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints” (Eph. 4:11–12a). Missing from those verses in Ephesians is the office of deacon, narrated in Acts 6:1–6. There are lists of gifts given by the Holy Spirit to enable Christians to live as they should (1 Corinthians 12; Eph. 6:10–20). There are also lists of character qualities that are to be marks of the followers of Jesus Christ (Gal. 5:22–23). Yet these varied materials remain just that:  varied, and not fully coordinated with one another. Here again, the instructions have themselves been a source of significant controversy in the life of the church, in part because they are not tightly coordinated within the text of Scripture. They have required extensive interpretation, and they have received such interpretation. Interpretation of such passages has been central to the long debate within the church about the existence and content of a divine law (ius divinum) specifying the ordering of the life of the church.8 8

Avery Dulles, A Church to Believe In: Discipleship and the Dynamics of Freedom (New  York:  Crossroad, 1982), Ch. 6 (80–102). See also George Lindbeck, “Papacy and Ius Divinum: A Lutheran View” in Papal Primacy and the Universal Church: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue V, ed. Paul C. Empie and T. Austin Murphy (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1974), 193–208.

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Disagreements about the right structuring of the church during the period of the Reformation hinged on disagreements about the content of the ius divinum.9 In my own tradition it was long held that the ius divinum specified Presbyterian government as the divinely ordained structure for the Christian church.10 That belief, however, no longer holds in my denomination.11 Such controversy has arisen because strong and divergent interpretations of the scriptural materials relevant to the ordering of the church can be worked out. The scriptural witness funds varied interpretations. Scripture is not indeterminate in these matters, but it is underdetermined.12 9

Dulles, A Church to Believe In, 80, 82–7. John H. Leith, An Introduction to the Reformed Tradition:  A  Way of Being the Christian Community (Atlanta, GA:  John Knox Press, rev. ed., 1981), 145. For a robust, nineteenth-century defense of Presbyterianism as the divinely commanded form of church government, see Thomas Witherow, “The Apostolic Church: Which Is It?” in Paradigms in Polity: Classic Readings in Reformed and Presbyterian Church Government, ed. David W. Hall and Joseph H. Hall (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans Press, 1994), 35–52. 11 “The presbyterian system of government in the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is established in light of Scripture but is not regarded as essential for the existence of the Christian Church nor required of all Christians.” The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part II, Book of Order, 2011–2013 (Louisville, KY: The Office of the General Assembly, 2011), F-1.0402. This affirmation has confessional standing, in the denomination’s Confession of 1967:  “The institutions of the people of God change and vary as their mission requires in different times and places. The unity of the church is compatible with a wide variety of forms, but it is hidden and distorted when variant forms are allowed to harden into sectarian divisions, exclusive denominations, and rival factions.” The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part I, Book of Confessions (Louisville, KY: The Office of the General Assembly, 2016), 9.34. 12 It should be noted that it is not part of the case I am making to assert that all texts or all biblical texts are inherently indeterminate. Francis Watson’s defense of a determinate meaning for biblical texts is set up in contrast to understandings of texts that regard texts as inherently indeterminate. “It is said that we must now abandon the dogma of the single sense of the biblical texts, characterized by an emphasis on verbal meaning, authorial intention and historical circumstances of origin. No text has a single meaning, fixed for all time; that view derives from ideas of ‘objectivity’ or ‘value-free neutrality’ that must now be recognized as untenable, and indeed as ideologically conditioned.” Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edinburgh:  T&T Clark, 1997), 95. Watson goes on to cite views that meaning is determined by readers, with all readings being of equal legitimacy; and the view that this set of theories about the meaning(s) of texts is advantageous in that it creates a situation in which theological readings are as legitimate as any other readings. What Watson sets up here is a dichotomy that does not account for the 10

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This underdetermination of scriptural instruction on the concrete form of the church could be regarded as a threat. One might hold that there is a specific structure for the church that God desires be realized on earth, meaning that if the divine instruction in Scripture does not give us a clear and determinate picture of this structure, then we are left in the terrible position of being required to guess what it is that the Lord requires of us as we shape structures for our life together. Mistakes in perceiving what God wants would, in this vision, be viewed as incredibly costly—not only for ourselves, but for all those who might end up leading the life of faith within structures that fail to match the pattern God expects of us. In such a set of circumstances, one would have to seek out and establish another way of specifying the structures to be followed, filling in what Scripture leaves blank, clarifying matters about which the scriptural witness is obscure or unclear, and guessing what God decrees. But the matter does not have to be viewed in this way. It is also possible to view the underdetermination of the scriptural materials relating to the ordering of the church positively, as authorizing a variety of forms of existence for the church. Such a variety of forms might be viewed as creating space for a range of ways of reaching out into the world with the call to join in following Jesus Christ. Such a variety of forms might be viewed as fully consonant with the work of the Holy Spirit.13 Indeed, the underdetermination of the divine instructions (commandments) for shaping the ecclesial bodies into which Christians are gathered is tied to the superabundance, the plenitude of the created order (an aspect of divine creation to be considered next). The

possibility that texts may have determinate meanings, and yet those meanings may still be partial and fragmentary. That is what I claim: the New Testament passages dealing with the structure of the church in the world are not meaningless or open to any interpretation. They do have meanings that can be determined. My claim is that those texts, with their meanings, are not sufficient singly or all together to tell us how we should order the church as it exists in the world. They require not only interpretation but also extension. It is the need for interpretation and extension that makes tradition a continuing crux of ecumenical dialogue. 13 The Spirit who, like the wind, “blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (Jn. 3:8)— characteristics of the Spirit that are evidenced regularly in the book of Acts (e.g., 1:8; 2; 8:15–17; 10:44–48).

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divine instructions for shaping ecclesial bodies present a situation in which those instructions may be embodied in a variety of ways. Scriptural material that bears on the right ordering of the people of God is generative—it generates possibilities for the life of the church.14 There is no guarantee that these various realizations of the instructions we’ve been given will be free of all significant incompatibilities. What remains clear about the work of the Holy Spirit in particular, and thus the life of the church that is powered by the Spirit, is that “God is not a God of disorder but of peace” (1 Cor. 14:33a). The question at hand is, as always, at what point, and in what ways, does diversity become disorder? The burden of the argument being presented here is that there must be room for significant diversity in shaping life together—differing theological emphases, different ways of patterning the ministry of oversight, different realizations of the ministry. Denomination is a way in which room can be held open for these sorts of diversities, room that allows time to assay the claim of legitimacy made by particular realizations of Christian life together that differ from those presently in existence.15 This has implications for how we view one another as we realize various possibilities inherent in the scriptural imperatives. It implies at least the potential legitimacy of other realizations. The issue between denominations as they organize around realizing 14

Walter Cardinal Kasper suggests something similar for tradition and memory in the life of the church. “We should not imagine that we possess more of the Holy Spirit today than the church of the early church fathers and the great theologians of the early Middle Ages. Anamnesis/memoria is there a fundamental category. It does not in any way exclude vital development and actualization, but must also be understood as ‘dangerous memory,’ disclosing for us the unresolved alternatives within the tradition and thus liberating us from the spell and the blindness created by prevailing fashions and plausibilities” (italics in the final sentence are mine). Walter Kasper, “ ‘Credo Unam Sanctam Ecclesiam’—The Relationship Between the Catholic and the Protestant Principles in Fundamental Ecclesiology” in Murray, ed., Receptive Ecumenism, 84–5. 15 For example, Episcopalian tendencies toward hierarchical structuring over against the Reformed emphasis on councils; Pentecostal or Quaker openness to the movements of the Spirit over against Presbyterian concern to weed out the movements of false spirits (which has taken concrete form in the Reformed concentration on “decently and in order,” leading to the development of rules of polity aimed at keeping those spirits out).

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differing possibilities inherent in the scriptural imperatives is thus not “You are not organized as we are,” but rather, do we ourselves and that other denomination realize possibilities that authentically fulfill the divine imperatives, and does it serve the Gospel of Jesus Christ for our denominations to continue to exist distinct from one another?

Superabundance God’s creative power in the world generates superabundance and rich diversity. In what follows I consider that creative superabundance and its implications for the church. I do so by focusing on key passages from the Bible that explore the nature and degree of diversity to which God calls us, the nature and degree of diversity generated by God’s superabundant creative power. One of the questions the church faces is how faithfully to structure a life together that is responsive to God’s creative superabundance. The superabundance of God’s work of creation is clearly expressed in Scripture (and plainly visible around us when we look and listen attentively). The account of creation in Gen. 1:1–2:3 traces the work of creation as the unfolding of increasing abundance and complexity. Other texts in the Old Testament, such as Job 38–41, and Psalms 48 and 104 explore the theological importance of the superabundance of God’s creating work.16 The superabundance of creation is realized in distinctive ways among human beings. There are, of course, the multiple spectra of differences realized by individual human beings—differences of culture, experience, family structure, education, ethnicity, social status, interests, gifts, size, and so forth. The superabundance of God’s work of creation also generates social bodies that embody and explore diverse realizations of the manifold possibilities of sociality. This latter aspect of superabundance is set forth forcefully in the biblical account of the appearance and spread of the generations (which become the nations) in the early chapters of Genesis, particularly Genesis 5 and 10.

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Pss. 104:27 summarizes this line of thinking:  “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.”

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These two chapters provide genealogies that tie the narrative of prehistory together as it moves from one event to the next, while also articulating the diversification of humanity. The genealogies in Genesis 5 and 10 show the outworking of the divine command articulated in Gen. 1:28, “God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.’ ”17 The genealogy in Genesis 5 is a record of the effectiveness of the divine blessing, calling for humans and all creatures to be fruitful and multiply, demonstrated by the succession of generations, from parents to children (especially father to eldest son).18 Gen. 1:28 has been controversial historically, particularly because of the latter half of the verse: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” When this verse has been taken to authorize complete human control over other creatures, it has served as license for destruction in the service of merely human purposes. Human beings, called to be stewards, come to be destroyers, and the instruction to fill the earth can then be taken to underwrite extending that destruction globally. “Multiply” comes to be focused on sheer numerical increase, and “fill” comes to look like a call to fill completely to the brim, displacing all else. But the context of Gen. 1:1–2:3 makes it abundantly clear that this is not a valid reading of 1:28. Throughout the preceding verses of Genesis 1 what we find is that creation brings diversity and abundance, not a monolithic filling that displaces all else. The emphasis is not on numerical increase of one kind, but on the increase of kinds. In God’s order of things creation is not cloning.19 Thus, “be fruitful and multiply” might plausibly be translated “be fruitful and diversify.” Diversification is what has happened in the verses preceding 1:28, and it is what happens in the verses and chapters that follow it.20 17

The blessing “be fruitful and multiply” is first spoken to the sea creatures and the birds, on the fifth day of creation (Gen. 1:22), and is then repeated on the sixth day. 18 In every case except Noah, who is the final man named in this genealogy (Gen. 5:32), we are told that in addition to the son named as successor, each father “had other sons and daughters” (Gen. 5:4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 26, and 30). 19 In God’s good order procreation is also not cloning. 20 Gen. 1:24 offers a nice example of this diversification:  God creates “livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds.” Livestock,

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The command in Gen. 1:28 to be fruitful, diversify, and fill the earth is repeated in the stories following the disembarkation from the Ark, after Noah’s family and the creatures have survived the flood: “God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth’ ” (Gen. 9:1). This command is then repeated at the end of this particular divine address: “And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it” (Gen. 9:7). The genealogy in Genesis 10 again shows the divine command at work, and it adds information about geography and the rise of tribes and nations. The structure of the genealogy in Genesis 10 differs from that in Genesis 5, adding significant elements. Genesis 5 is structured as a family genealogy—a lineage across generations,21 running through eldest sons, with other siblings mentioned but remaining unnamed. Genesis 10 names each of Noah’s sons, and then names descendants of each one. The genealogy is no longer a lineage. Rather, genealogy has become a mapping of a growing diversity of peoples (the names of descendants are in several cases the names of distinct tribes or even nations22) and of their spreading out across the earth. In each of these two chapters God’s blessing generates the rapid spread and diversification of the nations. Genesis 5 ties this outworking of peoples directly to the blessing that is an element of divine creation. Its genealogy begins with an introductory statement that looks back to Genesis 1: “This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made them in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created” (5:1–2). To be a human creature is to be blessed by God and that blessing generates a humanity that is differentiated within its commonalities.23

creeping things, beasts of the earth:  it is a miscellany of not entirely matched things—domesticated animals, insects of all sorts, other animals of all sorts. It is a flash of exuberance in the midst of the careful ordering that marks this first account of creation. 21 It is striking that the summary which comes at the end of the first creation speaks of the days of creation as generations:  “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created” (Gen. 2:4a). The Hebrew word translated as generations appears again in the genealogies. 22 E.g. Gen. 10:6: “The descendants of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.” 23 See Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Continental Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion S.J. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), 360–2, for an exploration of the theological importance of Genesis 5.

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The genealogy in Genesis 10 makes explicit the link between generations of descendants and the differentiation into nations by using a repeated summary phrase, “These are the descendants of [Japheth, Ham, Shem] in their lands, with their own language, by their families, in their nations” (here verse 5, with slight variation in vv. 20 and 31). As Claus Westermann comments, “As far as we know this is the first attempt in the history of humankind to conceive and define the basic elements of the entity ‘people.’ It arose from the theological impulse to express how the separation of humankind into people is grounded in the will and blessing of the creator.”24 What begins to emerge in these genealogies and the narrative of which they are a part is the rise of distinctive particularities within humanity, identities held in common by some but not by all, shared identities that weave together individuals who are themselves distinguished from one another, each bearing their own particularity and distinctive identity. Humanness is social, and the diversity of the social bodies formed by human beings flows, in part, from the superabundance of the divine work of creation. It is striking that these genealogies precede the story of Babel in Gen. 11:1–9. The Babel story interrupts the flow of genealogies that both precede and follow. In it sin is manifested by a human rejection of the divine command to “abound on the earth and multiply in it” (Gen. 9:7 which, as we have seen, repeats the call of Gen. 1:28 to be fruitful and diversify). God’s intervention into the project of Babel, scattering the people and confusing their languages, undoes a concentration of humanity that runs counter to God’s blessing.25 The project of building the tower of Babel is a project of homogenization, uniting and tightly ordering human beings in a single undertaking that subsumes their diversity and particularity. Not 24

Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 509. “The purpose of God’s intervention in v.  8 is to guard humanity against a danger that grows with its unity; and so there is no longer any opposition to Gen 10. The human race exists in a plurality of peoples over the earth with an abundance of potential for development in individual peoples, cf. 10:5, 20, 31. This is what humanity is and this is what preserves it in being” (Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 556). Theodore Hiebert has explored the ways in which the story of Babel is a story of the rejection of diversity in a quest for uniformity. Theodore Hiebert, “Cultural Diversity:  Punishment or Plan? Two Interpretations of the Story of the Tower of Babel” in Toppling the Tower: Essays on Babel and Diversity, ed. Theodore Hiebert (Chicago, IL: McCormick Theological Seminary, 2004), 1–11.

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surprisingly, that single undertaking is the project of building a way to God. There is danger in the concentration of human beings in a single task, in a single place.26 Such concentration is not good, denying the particularity and diversity that is part of the flourishing for which God created creatures. God intervenes (Gen. 11:8), scattering the people and confusing their languages. Following God’s termination of the Babel project, the flow of generations and nations moves the narrative of Genesis forward directly to God’s focusing the divine work through a particular nation among nations—a small nation, distinct, unique, and in that uniqueness the human agent of a divine blessing directed to all peoples. This differentiation into peoples, nations, and tribes is not only a feature of creation, even as filtered through the Fall. It is also a feature of redemption. The story of God scattering the peoples in Genesis 11, cutting off the false unity that led to the Tower of Babel project, is inverted by the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2. The scattering of the peoples was sealed by the confusion of different languages. In Acts 2 the miracle lies in the ability of the followers of Jesus to proclaim God’s deeds of power in the languages of all the nations. There is an interpretive crux at just this point in the story of Pentecost. The exegetical question is: was the miracle of Pentecost in the ears of the hearers, or in the mouths of the speakers? John Calvin, in his commentary on this chapter, notes that some think the miracle was in the hearers, giving them understanding of a foreign language, spoken by the Apostles and the followers of Jesus. Calvin rejects that view: “But we must first notice that the disciples spoke in strange tongues: the miracle would otherwise have been wrought not in them but in the hearers. The imagery therefore which He used earlier for the coming of the Spirit would have been false, the Spirit being given not to them but to the hearers.”27 Richard Pervo argues for the view that the miracle takes place in the listeners,

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In answer to the question “what is a poison,” one response is “too high a concentration of what is otherwise potentially a good thing.” That is certainly the case with medicines. One might note also here an early awareness of the problem of overpopulation. 27 John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries: The Acts of the Apostles, 1–13, trans. John W. Fraser and W. J. G. McDonald, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, Vol. 6 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1965), 52.

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not in the speakers:  “The primary difficulty for those who claim that this account describes either glossolalia proper or xenoglossia/ xenologia is the text, which speaks neither of unintelligible, ecstatic speech (glossolalia) nor of speech in foreign languages unknown to the speaker (one type of xenoglossia), but describes what the audience heard. By any reasonable criterion the primary recipients of the Spirit are the hearers.”28 Pervo fails to take account of precisely the features of the text that Calvin highlights:  those whom the text identifies as recipients of the gift. Calvin has the better interpretation.29 So the gift is not given to the listeners, enabling them to comprehend a single language in which the Gospel is to be proclaimed. God’s response to the rise of many languages is not to recreate “one language and the same words” (Gen. 11:1). The hearers hear the Gospel in their native tongues.30 There is one message, of the Savior, communicated to the listeners in their languages. This pattern is consistent with Scripture’s affirmation that the divine act of creation generates a multitude of creaturely forms that find a place within God’s redemptive purposes. One instantiation of the effect of the divine act of creation is in fact the multitude of languages: the divine act of creation generates a multiplicity of languages, each of them a fit vehicle for the revelation of God.31 The missionary

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Richard I. Pervo, Acts:  A  Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN:  Fortress Press, 2009), 64. 29 Pervo refers readers to a list of advocates of various positions that is to be found in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible, Vol. 31 (New York:  Doubleday, 1998), 239. Fitzmyer himself leans toward the miracle occurring in the speakers, enabling them to speak in foreign languages (236). 30 Cf. C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles: A Shorter Commentary (London: T&T Clark, 2002), 19, commenting on verse 8: “8. Our own native languages, literally, our own languages in which we were born.” 31 The importance of translation and of the integrity of native languages as vehicles for divine revelation has been explored by Lamin Sanneh. The translatability of the Bible and of the Christian faith itself (indeed, the Christian faith’s inherent requirement that it be translated) is of deep theological significance, because it valorizes the rich diversity generated by the superabundance of the divine act of creation. “That Islam should spread as well as it does and still preserve the Quran in the original Arabic makes for a fascinating study in contrast, and illuminates a crucial feature of the temper of Christianity as a religious dispensation. Without a counterpart to the revealed Quran of Muslims, Christians transmitted the Scripture in the languages of

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sending of the church again makes this point. The peoples are not to come to one place in order to live faithfully. No one place, even Jerusalem, is made the center for spreading the Gospel.32 The expansion and differentiation of peoples and nations in Genesis 5, 10, and 11 finds its telos in Revelation 21 amid the new heaven and the new earth, in the New Jerusalem. The glories generated by the nations established out of God’s blessing are gathered into God’s new order. “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb . . . The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it . . . People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations” (Rev. 21:22, 24, 26). The differentiation of peoples and nations that appears in Genesis, in the prelude to the calling of a particular people, finds its complement in the gathering in of the nations in Revelation, a sign that the calling of a particular people will have achieved its purposes. The nations have continued until the very end, and they have value (“their glory,” “the glory and honor”) to the end, value that will be drawn into the New Jerusalem with its new ordering of creaturely existence.33 The diversity which has arisen within creation, as the embodiment of divine blessing, is part of the divine purpose for creation, and it yields glory that will be preserved by God. Across the history that stretches from the

other people, indicating thereby that these languages have a priority in the Christian scheme.” And, on Bible translations: “The task [of Bible translation] itself is guided by the view of God’s interest in all peoples and their cultures.” Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), 100, 115. 32 “The authorial audience of Luke/Acts may have been aware of several different streams of tradition, which located Jerusalem in relationship to the rest of the world . . . But Luke’s view presents the audience with another alternative, which may be stated negatively: in the final analysis, Jerusalem does not stand in the center of Luke’s symbolic world . . . It stands at the end of the story of Jesus as the goal of his journey and at the beginning of the story of the church as the starting point for Christian witness in the world.” Mikeal C. Parsons, Acts, Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 40. Jerusalem does stand at the end of the story, but only in the form of the New Jerusalem, which will only appear at the end (Revelation 21–22). 33 My understanding of these verses has been spurred by Kevin Park, “Nations Will Bring Their Glory (A Homily on Rev. 21:22–26).” Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought 19, No. 9 (November 2004):  24. Accessible online at:  https:// perspectivesjournal.org/blog/2004/11/16/nations-will-bring-their-glory/.

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Garden of Eden to the garden city, the New Jerusalem, there are values to be gained that can only be gained by the diversification of the nations. God does not cast those values aside, but gathers them in. The divine pattern is not one of monocultures but of differentiation, of spaces created for the best realization of as full an array of particular goods as possible.34 Scripture itself, of course, joins the themes highlighted above with other themes. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:27–29).35 A central inspiration of the ecumenical movement has been Christ’s prayer in John 17: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I  have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one” (Jn 17:20–22). What is at stake in these scriptural, theological themes is our evaluation both of diversity and its place within God’s purposes, and of unity and its place. Paul, speaking in Galatians, seeks to explode an apparatus of distinctions that has covered over God’s purposes and action in the world. In the midst of that demolition it remains clear that Paul does not envision God doing away with all particularity (which would be equivalent to doing away with creatures). Interpreting Gal. 3:28, “for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” James D. G. Dunn offers these theological reflections: Elsewhere Paul never expresses himself in just this way, but he regularly spoke of many believers as “one,” using the imagery of

34 To this point, Lamin Sanneh: “In religious translation, however, the operative assumption is a theological notion that a universal God saw fit to apportion the human family into a diversity of nations (Acts 17:26) in preparation for the establishment of the true kingdom (Dan. 7:14).” Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, rev. and exp. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009), 240. 35 Verse 29 is important in this passage because of the way in which, following directly on the heels of verses that abolish a set of particularities, we find Paul returning to a particular—namely Abraham, who is clearly here no generic or abstract principle.

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a single body consisting of many members36 . . . and this is probably what he had in mind here . . . In which case the character of the “oneness” becomes clearer: not as a leveling and abolishing of all racial, social or gender differences, but as an integration of just such differences into a common participation “in Christ,” wherein they enhance (rather than detract from) the unity of the body, and enrich the mutual interdependence and service of its members. In other words, it is a oneness, because such differences cease to be a barrier and cause of pride or regret or embarrassment, and become rather a means to display the diverse richness of God’s creation and grace, both in the acceptance of the “all” and in the gifting of each.37 Bernard Ukwuegbu makes similar points in interpreting the same verses: If in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek,” . . . how is this to be understood? Could it be taken to mean that Christianity becomes an overarching ‘monoculture’ that simply obliterates every other culture? “By no means!”, to use one of Paul’s frequent retorts (Rom. 6:2). Unity, for Paul, does not mean uniformity. He perceives Christian unity to involve the coming together of diverse members who are joined, despite (or, rather, because of) their diversity, with none making absolute claim over the other in 36

Citing here Rom. 7:4–5; 1 Cor. 6:15–17; 10:17; 12:12–20; Col. 3:15; also Eph. 4:4–16. 37 James D.  G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (Peabody, MA:  Hendrickson Publishers, 1993), 207–8. J.  Louis Martyn emphasizes the obliteration of the binary distinctions by which the old creation is structured with the advent of the new creation in Christ. J.  Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible, Vol. 33a (New  York:  Doubleday, 1997), esp. 570–4 (Comment #51). One of the strengths of Martyn’s interpretation is the seriousness with which it takes the strength of Paul’s claim in Galatians. One of the weaknesses of Martyn’s interpretation is the way in which it does not integrate Paul’s claims here in Galatians with claims made elsewhere in Paul’s letters, in the Epistles altogether, in the New Testament, or in Scripture as a whole, in contrast to Dunn. Martyn’s interpretation does not carry us far in understanding how actual bodies of Christians should fashion structures of life together. But then, such tasks lie beyond what Martyn is doing in his commentary; they are part of the work being attempted here.

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terms of superiority of birth or class. Our unity in Christ does not consist in an amalgamated or undifferentiated identity.38 Distinctions and differences are inherent in particularity. They are inherent to creatureliness. The challenge is finding ways to value those distinctions rightly, to overcome the temptations to absolutize that which is particular and contingent. That is precisely the challenge presented by (though not unique to) denomination. As we live in the midst of that challenge, Scripture and tradition call us to unity. Christ’s prayer for the church in John 17 is a particularly clear articulation of a theme found across the New Testament (e.g., 1 Cor. 12, Eph. 4:1–6). What these passages do not resolve is what concrete form this unity is to take. The effort to resolve that question is, of course, the heart of the modern ecumenical movement. It is also at the heart of the proposal being offered in this book.

Finitude and creatureliness While human beings are blessed creatures, we remain creatures. As such, we are finite, limited in our ranges of knowledge, perception, openness, and capacity for relationship. Our finitude is tied together with our embodiment. However widely our thinking may range, our bodies locate us in a particular place in space and time, partakers in and shaped by specific contexts. Being such creatures, we require structures that are less than universal in which to live. No serious ecclesiology disputes the legitimacy of congregations, in which we gather in separate groups for living out the Christian faith in worship and in manifold other ways (catechesis/Christian education, mission, service in the world, and interaction with the broader church). Our shared recognition of the necessity of local gatherings for worship and for communal life is a recognition of the nature of finite, creaturely existence (that is to say, it is at least an implicit recognition). 38

Bernard Ukwuegbu, “‘Neither Jew nor Greek’: The Church in Africa and the Quest for Self-Understanding in the Light of the Pauline Vision and Today’s Context of Cultural Pluralism,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 8, No. 4 (November 2008): 309.

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Which is not to say that our present way of gathering in congregations is unproblematic. Must one, for example, participate in worship at the gathering place that is geographically closest to one’s home? Must congregations be organized on the basis of geographical parishes? It is clear in the North American context that in practice our answer to this question is no, even in ecclesial bodies that one might expect would require that its members do so (especially Roman Catholicism; the overlapping boundaries of Orthodox churches in, for example, North America pose similar issues). Nevertheless, the legitimacy of such localized gatherings in congregations is undisputed. The recognition of the importance of gathering in local congregations is itself a recognition of our finitude and creatureliness. Christians are called to be one with all other followers of Jesus Christ, but no individual Christian is capable of developing such oneness in a concrete form with all other followers of Jesus (and beyond Christians there remains the command to love all people). The recognition of the importance and value of particular congregations as a context (perhaps the primary context) in which we can live our way into the unity granted to us in Christ with all other Christians is a recognition of the conditions created by our finitude and creatureliness. Knitting together universal and local is a key feature of Christian faith. In an article in which he puts “the anthropological term . . . tribe” into play as a means of understanding ecumenism and, especially, the persistent problem of the reception of ecumenical dialogue, James Sweeney summarizes this key feature of Christian faith: The fundamental issue is a familiar one, the universal and the particular, and it lies at the heart of Christianity as a faith imbued with a universal vision yet sunk in the contingency of history, with a belief in the God who is one and transcendent and yet revealed in the man Jesus. The practice of this faith involves paradox. We must respect the necessary boundaries of the human while impelled to break out beyond them. Seemingly of two minds, this actually exhibits the elusive paradox of Christianity itself. Put concretely, the open community has its boundaries; and not simply as a concession to human frailty, but because the drive to oneness and universality will dissipate unless it is held and channeled in the visible, sacramental community of the faithful.

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The church is universal; human beings are not. As Sweeney puts it, “The ‘tribe’ has its place.”39 He notes: Church communities are socio-cultural creations as well as faith responses to the Word, and faith and culture cannot simply be separated out; faith must find cultural expression. In this sense, the “tribe”—the particular and distinct community—is not antipathetic but belongs to the Gospel, in the same way that in the Divine dispensation one chosen people, the Jews, and one man, Jesus, constitute the offer of universal salvation. The implication is that the ecumenical goal in discerning the shape of the church to come should be to enhance particularity, to cherish the maximum diversity of expression of authentic church order, not permit the minimum. Such idealism is also, paradoxically, the most realistic path to take since it respects actual church communities.40 The question is, at what level and in what forms do such limited gatherings of Christians become illegitimate? What intermediate structures are permissible between congregations and the global church? That there are such intermediate structures is clear as already noted. Roman Catholicism includes national and regional conferences of bishops, in which bishops of a particular nation or region gather to reflect together on their particular context for ministry; it recognizes both religious orders and uniate churches, an acknowledgment of the need for intermediate structures and an effort to accommodate them. Orthodoxy includes autocephaly, which also both reflects and allows for responses to the particularities of regional contexts for ministry. Baptist congregations gather in associations that allow for contextualization and the engagement of the particularities of specific contexts. Lutheran congregations live in patterns of commitment (denominations) that stretch both nationally and globally. The examples could be multiplied.

39

James Sweeney, CP, “Receptive Ecumenism, Ecclesial Learning, and the ‘Tribe’,” in Murray, ed., Receptive Ecumenism, 335. Tribes could be a problematic term, given its overtones of tribalism. Clearly Sweeney uses the term in a sense other than as a shorthand for tribalism, and I am doing so as well. 40 Sweeney, “Ecumenism,” 341.

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Global bodies formed within particular Christian traditions, such as the Lutheran World Federation, in many cases arise because within those traditions the intermediate ecclesial structures, while strong, have found a need for institutional forms that enable concrete ways of living toward the global, universal reality of the church. Councils of churches embody the same impulse, a movement through intermediate ecclesial structures toward the reality of the church, which is also universal.41 Such intermediary structures are necessary because humans are finite and creaturely. The biblical witness is remarkable for its insistence that the divine work among human beings moves toward universal ends through localized means. In the story of the creation, the first human is created in a place that is not specified—simply somewhere on earth, a generic place whose specificity is not identified and goes unnamed (Gen. 2:7). Having created the first human in a generic place, God immediately places that human being in a very specific place: “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen. 2:8). Creatures are preserved during the flood by a very particular group of human beings, in a very concrete structure, a place that floats. Redemption is worked for a created order broken by sin through a very particular people who spring from very particular individuals. Across the rest of Scripture God’s commitment to achieving universal goals through particular persons and structures carries forward this scandal of particularity. A scandal that should not be a scandal. God works in the created order on a creaturely scale, in creaturely dimensions.42 Being 41

Cf. Diane Kessler and Michael Kinnamon, Councils of Churches and the Ecumenical Vision (cf. n.  4 ).  See also Alan Falconer, “An Ecclesiological Understanding of Councils of Churches” in Community—Unity—Communion:  Essays in Honour of Mary Tanner, ed. Colin Podmore (London:  Church House, 1998), 104–16, esp. 112–15. 42 Even in a passage like the theophany in Isaiah 6 one is struck by the way in which God’s being and presence is conceptualized in profoundly creaturely ways: “And the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings.” The same pattern of conceptualization is present in the visions of heaven in the book of Revelation (e.g., Rev. 4–5). God’s availability to creatures in just these sorts of ways flows from God’s loving accommodation to creatures, a theme that is a hallmark of John Calvin’s theology in particular. See Ford Lewis Battles, Interpreting John Calvin, ed. Robert Benedetto (Grand Rapids, MI:  Baker Books, 1996), esp. Chapter 4 “God Was Accomodating Himself to Human Capacity,” 117–37.

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finite and creaturely, human beings require finite and creaturely structures in which to live out our faith. And, it is clear that these structures are needed not only on a local scale (congregations), but on broader scales as well (intermediary structures). Denomination, as noted above, provides such broader structures.. The finitude and creatureliness of ecclesial bodies leads to their dynamic character. Ecclesial bodies arise in particular moments, on the basis of particular insights or energies. And, ecclesial bodies also fall away and cease to exist when the insights prove unable to continue to sustain the ecclesial body, when the energies dissipate and no new impulse arises to sustain the institutional structures that have grown to carry these insights across time. Denomination provides one way of embodying this dynamism. Some ecclesial bodies arise through migration or evangelism. The presence of the Roman Catholic Church in the Americas, or wide areas of Africa and Asia, would be an example that has frequently combined evangelization and the movements of peoples. The presence of Orthodox churches in the Americas is an example that combines migration and evangelization in different degrees. The rise of religious orders in Roman Catholicism also bears witness to the power of such dynamic developments and the importance of establishing means for the embodiment of those developments.43

In the absence of coercion: Religious liberty and ecclesiology One of the most profound developments in the life of the church in the modern era has been the gradual removal of state coercion from matters of religious belief and belonging. This development has been particularly clear and dramatic in the case of the United States, where the separation of church and state was written into the nation’s constitutional documents. But this development is not, nor has it ever been, confined to the United States. The rise of

43 Of the many examples one might cite, suffice it to point to the religious orders that sprang from the ministries of Saints Francis and Dominic. More than once I’ve heard a rueful wish that the Roman Catholic Church had found itself similarly able to accommodate Martin Luther’s insights and the energies unleashed by those insights.

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religious liberty is directly relevant to denomination and the diversity to which God calls us. State coercion was a powerful force for suppressing diversity within the church. State establishment of religion, whether enforced directly through the use of state power, making it illegal to participate in other ecclesial bodies, or indirectly by the state granting preferential treatment to one particular form of Christian order, means that the state is granted the power to select which form of Christianity its citizens will be required or encouraged to follow.44 When the state no longer chooses among the various possible ways of living the Christian faith, then the diversity of ways of living the faith is allowed to emerge. As Philip Schaff learned and affirmed over a lifetime of engagement with diversity in the church, the removal of state coercion is of profound importance for the doctrine of the church. The diversity inherent to the Christian faith can only be suppressed by coercive force. Schaff identified significant theological reasons for affirming the removal of state coercion:  the church’s embrace of that removal is not merely another case of the church adopting ways of understanding itself and the world that are alien to its faith. Sidney Mead pointed out, in writings from across his career, that American Christianity had embraced the removal of state coercion (whether consistently or not), without working out an account of what such removal means for its understanding of the church (and more broadly, of the Christian faith and the living of that faith). In what follows I consider some of the ramifications of the removal of state coercion and the religious liberty thereby allowed. I consider three matters in particular.45 First, removal of state coercion allows for

44

State coercion can, of course, also be used to enforce adherence to whatever religion the state chooses. State coercion can sanction non-Christian religions as well. State coercion or preference can also enforce the view that all religions are to be exercised in purely private ways, or the view that all religions are wrong and thus to be opposed. (Both of these latter views are, in their own way, religious—they carry implicit claims about religion and religious matters.) 45 Religious liberty also puts hard questions before those who affirm that the unity of the church requires that all Christians must be members of a single ecclesiastical structure or polity, organized in a particular way. They will need to clarify how that is to be accomplished—whether through state coercion (again, whether that coercion be in hard or soft forms) or in some other way. If so, then one of the questions that follows will ask what place such coercion has in God’s good ordering of the world. If not, then a central question that follows will ask what realistic alternative exists.

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the existence of ecclesial bodies, the validity of whose claim to be faithful embodiments of the church is not immediately apparent to other Christians, requiring that discernment be exercised. Second, removal of state coercion means that there will be different ecclesial bodies in the same geographic area, organized around differing ways of shaping Christian life together—a reality that conflicts with some views of how the church should be organized. Third, the removal of state coercion requires reflection on the relationships of these geographically overlapping intermediary ecclesial bodies to one another. Religious liberty (freedom in matters of religious commitment and belonging) does not generate ecclesial diversity of itself. Rather, it allows the realization of the organizational diversity inherent in the Christian faith. It is in this context that denomination takes its place. The organizing principle for denomination is partly geographical, as a matter of physical proximity, but there is more. Denomination, as noted earlier, is also organized on the basis of shared affirmations about the beliefs and practices that make up the Christian faith—affirmations shared with some Christians but not all. That is in the nature of the Christian faith. As noted in the previous chapter, Scripture and the ecumenical creeds do not determine everything that has to be determined for us to live together. In the face of this reality, discernment is required. Such discernment will often require that a group of Christians be free to commit themselves to the embodiment of a particular way of living the Christian faith, a way they affirm (but others are uncertain) is faithful. Their belief that it represents the realization of one of the possibilities for faithful Christian life generally can only be tested in practice. An understanding of the church that fails to create room for the realization and evaluation of such possibilities also fails to allow the church to be what it is. This means diversity of ecclesial bodies will exist geographically. There will be the possibility of more than one ecclesial body in any one place. This possibility will meet with differing responses among the existing ecclesial bodies. Those in the Free Church tradition will find the possibility of multiple ecclesial bodies in the same geographic area unproblematic in and of itself. Other Protestants have had varying stances on this issue. Initially, the Protestant traditions that are sometimes called magisterial (Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican) rejected this possibility. When no one of these traditions

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(nor the Roman Catholic Church) was able to establish itself as the one true church over Europe, the alternative settled on in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire was cuius regio, eius religio, established originally through the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and extended in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism would be the legal options for Christian believers in those lands, with the ruler of the particular region deciding which would be established in that ruler’s territory.46 Inherent in this settlement is a recognition that there may be more than one way of living out the Christian faith. Within the territory of the (fading) Holy Roman Empire, it was necessary to create a possibility for multiple realizations of Christian faith, in differing ecclesial bodies. A similar pattern was followed in Britain. Initially the main religious groups (Anglicans and Presbyterians) continued to affirm that there should be only one ecclesial body within the territory of a ruler, and each group asserted that they should be the one. This affirmation generated struggle for decades, leading, among other things, to the 1689 Act of Toleration, which committed the government to a restricted recognition of the possibility of multiple ecclesial bodies existing in the same geographical space. Historian Winthrop Hudson noted that these limited, implicit recognitions of the possibility of multiple ecclesial bodies within Christianity were carried to North America and simply extended:  ecclesial bodies that had made room, however grudging, for different ecclesial bodies, staring at one another across the borders of the nation-state, would now find themselves in the same city, staring across the street at one another, none of them able to utilize the powers of government to eliminate the presence of its neighbors.47 Once religious liberty allows diverse ecclesial bodies legal standing to exist openly, a central issue raised is clearly the question of

46

The entry in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church drily summarizes: “It [the Peace of Augsburg] recognized the existence of both Catholicism and Lutheranism (but not Calvinism) in Germany, providing that in each land subjects should follow the religion of their ruler (cuius regio, eius religio). Those not content with this settlement were permitted, after selling their property, to migrate to other lands.” Permission to liquidate one’s property and migrate is a narrow way of escape. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingston, eds., Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., 2005) s.v. “Augsburg, Peace of (1555).” 47 Winthrop S. Hudson, “Denominationalism as a Basis,” 32–3.

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their relationships to one another. How can intermediary bodies embody the unity of the church if there is no structure in place that orders their relationship and forces them to stay together? How can the church embody its unity in the absence of coercion by the state or some other human power? Jesus’s prayer for his followers in John 17 calls for oneness in their relationships with one another. Across the New Testament the nature and marks of these relationships of oneness are probed. The Gospels show Jesus embodying right relationship and calling his followers, particularly the disciples, to do the same.48 1 John calls for relationships among Christians marked by mutual love (1 Jn 2:7–11; 4:7–21). The letters of Paul return repeatedly to exploration of the relationships of Christians within the church, calling for a love that comprehends the differences present within the church. Imagery of the body and its parts provides a model for such a love, an image of relationships capable of holding followers of Jesus Christ together across the multitude of their differences—differences of spiritual gift, of wealth and social standing, or of pre-Christian religious commitment.49 In these passages, and others like them, the character or quality of the relationships among all Christians is specified. So the church searches for institutional structures that provide an abiding framework in which relationships with such characteristics can exist. The various ways of ordering the church in the world have sought to provide such a framework. Ways of ordering the church could be classified on the basis of their implied vision of the key characteristics of the relationships Christians are to have with one another, and their visions of the institutional arrangements that best nurture relationships characterized by those key qualities. Those visions are interwoven with deeply theological commitments—visions of the human flourishing to which God calls all people and for which God is fitting us through the work of redemption, visions of the right relationship between God and human beings, visions of the right 48

For Jesus’s embodiment of right relationship, see e.g., Mt. 20:28; Jn 17:21–23. For his call to do the same, see e.g., Mt. 19:27–30, 20:20–28 and parallels. 49 For differences of spiritual gift, Rom. 12:3–8; 1 Cor. 12–14. For differences of wealth and social standing, 1 Cor. 1:26–31; 11:17–34. For differences of religious background before faith in Jesus Christ, Gal. 3:27–29.

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ordering of human social bodies, and visions of particularity and creatureliness and their value. For example, patterned relationship is clearly central to the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches and their vision of a framework that will nurture relationships that embody the unity of the church. In this vision, the hierarchy is a pattern of layered relationships in and through which all are structurally related to one another. The relationships are relationships of communion, meaning that the Eucharist becomes the marker (and maker) of this pattern of relationship.50 Laypeople in a parish are related in particular ways to their parish priest, and through him to all others in the church.51 The parish priest is related to the bishop of his diocese, and through the bishop is related to all others in the church. The diocesan bishop is related in a particular way to all other bishops of the church, and through them the bishop is related in a particular way to all others in the church. These relationships are, as for laypeople and parish priests, an immediate instance of the communion of the church. And, in the Roman Catholic case, the bishop is related in a particular way to the Bishop of Rome, and through him the bishop is related in a particular way to all.52 Again, these relationships are the concrete presence of the communion of the church. This sweeping pattern of relationship is also an institutional structure. The primary vision at work in this way of shaping the life of the church is one of connection, the life that is necessary 50

Lunmen Gentium, §3 “Likewise, in the sacrament of the Eucharistic bread, the unity of believers, who form one body in Christ (see 1 Cor. 10:17), is both expressed and achieved.” Robert Jenson cites John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, 4.13, on the appropriateness of calling the Eucharist communion:  “For through it we both commune with Christ, and share in his body as well as in his deity, and commune and are united with one another. For as we all eat of one loaf we become one body and one blood of Christ and members of one another” (Jenson, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, 212). 51 Not that the layperson is related to others in the church only through her priest. Rather, that there is a particular kind of relationship, central to the existence of the church, which flows through the layperson’s relationship to their priest. The same is true in the following consideration of priests, bishops and (in the Roman Catholic case) the Pope. 52 The proper nature of this relationship is among the central points of disagreement and dialogue between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics. What is at work in the disagreement and dialogue is the question of what institutional structures best carry forward the right relationship to which we are called.

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and possible only when we live life together. However, this vision is also one that identifies those who are out. If participation in the communion which is the church is determined by standing in a particular kind of relationship to the parish and its priest, to the diocesan bishop and on to the Bishop of Rome, and thence to Jesus Christ, then that provides grounds for identifying those who are not participants in the communion that is the church. The Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church in its various specific forms, and some Protestant denominations have been willing to follow this implication and to assert that at least some of those who are not participants in that communion are thereby not in the church, regardless of claims those persons make to the contrary, because their claim to be part of the church is in fact false. And yet these apparently clear boundary lines have become fuzzy in some cases. If one is willing to recognize that some of those outside this structure are themselves in some way in communion with Christ, then that raises the question of the possibility of a faithful relationship to Christ that runs outside the structure and relationships that make up one’s own church. Recognition of the validity of baptisms performed outside the structure of relationships that make up the communion of the church in Roman Catholic and Orthodox visions of the church raises precisely such questions.53 Jean-Marie Tillard has focused attention on the real communion that already exists among ecclesial bodies that are reticent to grant this fact. In an address written for (but not delivered at) the World Council of Churches Plenary held in Moshi in 1996, Tillard called for “a critical theological evaluation of the co-existence of ‘the confessions.’ It is a matter of perceiving the ecclesiological significance of their ministering of grace, building on the certainty of ‘the one baptism.’ For wherever true baptism is administered there

53

Robert Jenson notes that ecclesiology has become a significant topic today in large part because the ecumenical movement has altered views of one’s own part of the church and of other parts as well:  “the very fact of a dialogue in which renewed churchly fellowship is recognized as the goal—however distant—constitutes recognition that somehow there is church on both sides of the dialogue. If one party were not church, why would the other party or parties want to be reunited with it?” (Jenson, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, 169).

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is a universally recognized life of grace.”54 To decline to rebaptize a person who was baptized within the life of another ecclesial body, by ministers ordained in that other ecclesial body, is to grant validity to that baptism and, by extension, to grant some level of validity to the ministry carried out by the ecclesial body that performed it. Tillard is calling on the churches/denominations to place their disagreements with accuracy, in order to gain better leverage on coming to an understanding of those matters on which they apparently disagree. The time has come for us, together, to pinpoint clearly the nature and concrete impact of these faith convictions, which transcend our differences and which unite us despite our confessional divisions. For—and I  have been defending this position for a long time, but with very little response—these shared faith convictions are without a shadow of doubt what underlies by the grace of the Spirit our imperfect but none the less real koinonia. It is not in any way a question of all or nothing. There really is communion, albeit an imperfect communion. This communion is, moreover, truly based on baptism, even though it is an underlying reality beneath the chequer-board of our confessions. It is thus truly a communion of faith, even though our statements of faith often conflict.55 What Tillard is identifying here is the reality of the work of the Holy Spirit, incorporating people into communion with Jesus Christ, outside the structure of relationships which is the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church(es). Roman Catholic theology has long wrestled with this challenge, with particular intensity since the Second Vatican Council and the acknowledgment of the at least partial validity of ecclesial structures beyond the formal structure of the Roman Catholic Church. Nor have these issues been bypassed by the Orthodox. Georges Florovsky, in his

54

J.-M. R. Tillard, “From BEM to Koinonia,” in Faith and Order in Moshi: The 1996 Commission Meeting, ed. Alan Falconer, trans. Tony Coates, Faith and Order Paper No. 177 (Geneva, WCC Publications, 1998), 183. The French original was published: “Du BEM à la Koinônia,” Irénikon 69, No. 3 (3me trimester 1996): 325–31; the quoted passage is on 326. 55 J.-M. R. Tillard, “From BEM to Koinonia”: 184; “Du BEM à la Koinônia”: 327.

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1933 article, “The Limits of the Church,” also granted the possibility that the Holy Spirit could draw people into Jesus Christ beyond the boundaries of the church.56 In both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches we find a wrestling with the challenge of accounting for those who are in communion with Jesus Christ and yet are not in communion with the structure of relationships that is affirmed as constitutive of those churches. What is striking is the unwillingness to deny the reality of Christian faith in these cases—striking because of the apparent difficulties that unwillingness creates for Roman Catholic and Orthodox understandings of the church and of communion with the church’s Lord. Uniate churches, religious orders, and autocephalous churches—in each of these ways the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches have shaped an ecclesial framework that makes room for relationships that span great diversities, diversities that are worthy of embodiment in the life of the church, worthy of structural differentiation, and marked by distinct institutional bodies. Diversities of language and culture, diversities even of ecclesial heritage,57 and diversities of charisma and mission—all of these spectra of diversity are given place. In each case, those diversities are limited; they are firmly placed within the structure of particular relationships (e.g., submission to the hierarchy). And yet, they represent in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions a significant valorization of diversity, along with an insistence that these are appropriate diversities, Godgiven, as is shown by the ability to place them within the structure of right relationship. But have the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions developed adequate structures for the identification and placement of all appropriate diversity within the body of the church? The inability of the Roman Catholic Church to find structural means for accommodating the reforming impulse and the power of theological insight that burst out during the period of the Reformation suggests not. The inability of most existing ecclesial bodies to accommodate the powerful surge of discipleship and evangelism that broke forth in the Pentecostal movement of the twentieth century (though they 56

See Chapter 4, n. 61. Cf. the creation of an ordinariate for an Anglican rite in the Roman Catholic Church, established in the apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus in 2009.

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had been able to incorporate, for example, the missionary impulse that propelled faithful believers to new parts of the world during the course especially of the nineteenth century) points to the ongoing inability of existing ecclesial structures to accommodate relationships spanning the diversities that continue to be generated as the Holy Spirit continues the triune God’s mission of creation and redemption. Denomination represents a means of making room, conceptually and ecclesiologically, for those diversities. What the notion of denomination being proposed here requires is a widening of the range of relationships that are deemed to be properly part of the communion with Christ and the followers of Christ that is the church. What is being proposed is adding a few degrees of independence beyond what is already in place for, say, uniate churches. If unity is a matter of relationships with a particular shape and content—then can the range of acceptable relationships be widened? Could it be that the denominations would be understood as in union with one another through baptism, with that unity taking a variety of forms? I will make a case for such a complex form of relationship in the next chapter. Before moving forward, it must be acknowledged that denominations have had difficulty structuring right relationship with others beyond their own membership. In part this is the result of a past in which the known boundaries of the church tended to be identified with the boundaries of one’s own denomination. Part of what has been happening through ecumenical dialogue has been a search for the structures that will embody right relationship: the Councils of Churches represent one experiment, and bilateral and multilateral agreements in their varieties represent another. The present moment may be the ecumenical winter, but it can be viewed as a time of intense creative struggle. We have reached a point at which these various experiments can be assessed, as is clearly happening, and we can be in the process of searching for new forms that will carry what has been learned into new formations. This book seeks to contribute to that search by trying to clear away some of the conceptual debris that has piled up around denomination . Denominations have often defined themselves over against other denominations,58 vociferously so, directing collective and individual 58

This is not a problem confined to the past. My own denomination continues to understand itself, to a significant degree, over against some other denominations—the

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energy and efforts to establishing the faithlessness of others, and the righteousness of one’s own group59 They have embodied bad relationship. But it doesn’t have to be so. Denominations can recognize one another as distinctive ways of faithfully living the Christian faith. And they have done so in a variety of ways, particularly in full communion agreements.60

Denomination and schism The under-determination of Scriptural rules for ordering the church, together with the superabundance of divine creativity, generates diverse faithful ways of living the Christian faith. These diverse ways generate diverse church orders and ecclesial bodies. Faced with these diversities, Christians have often turned to the language of schism, effectively condemning diversity as schism, and fusing diversity and schism together. This fusion represents a theological and intellectual impoverishment. J. M. R. Tillard has noted the impoverishment of ecclesiological categories:  ecclesiology “knows only two states of the Church of God:  the state of communion in organic unity and the state of separation or schism.”61 In the case of schism this impoverishment runs still deeper. We lack a body of careful reflection on schism itself: what it is, when it arises, and where. Lacking such reflection, the accusation of schism is made with startling ease and absoluteness, while at the same

Southern Baptist Convention, the Roman Catholic Church, those we regard as more conservative, and above all other Presbyterian denominations. 59 Such energies and efforts embody anew the words of the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Lk.18:11b). 60 See, e.g., “A Formula of Agreement Between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America, and the United Church of Christ on Entering Into Full Communion on the Basis of A Common Calling.” This document forms Appendix B in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Book of Order. 61 J. M. R. Tillard, “An Ecclesiology of Councils of Churches,” Mid-Stream 22, No. 2 (April 1983):  189. Quoted in Falconer, “An Ecclesiological Understanding”: 113 (see n. 40 ).

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time ecclesial bodies in the midst of division lack precise tools for addressing their situation. The failure to provide and work with a reasonably carefully elaborated understanding of schism is particularly problematic for Protestant denominations. When schism means “separate ecclesial bodies,” how is it that Protestant denominations are not (as they have often been accused of being) all schismatic bodies? Protestant denominations were all established when a group set up an independent ecclesial structure. Protestant denominations exist today in separation from other denominations, separation that these denominations continue by their very existence to maintain and thus to affirm. A common definition of schism is:  “Formal and willful separation from the unity of the Church.”62 Another source defines it as a “formal division in or separation from a church or religious body.”63 The central elements of this common usage are: first, the division is a matter of institutional arrangements - an ecclesial body is being left, or divided, and common usage generally also holds that a new ecclesial body is being established, though these two definitions are unclear as to whether that is so; second, the break is formal in some way. This common definition is problematic. What exactly constitutes formal and willful separation:  why the two adjectives, and what do those two adjectives pick out, among other possible forms of separation, which are, presumably, legitimate? Would it be because they are informal, unwillful, or informal and unwillful? We’ve seen already that, for example, the Roman Catholic Church has orders and there are distinct Orthodox churches, all of them formally established, all of them willed—are they legitimate? And if so, what specifically distinguishes them from illegitimate separation? And “formal division in or separation from a religious body”? So are Protestant denominations all guilty, by their very nature, of such schism? If Protestants were schismatic at their origins, do they continue to be schismatic throughout their subsequent existence, or is there a point at which, if a separated body continues to exist, it is 62

F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., 2005) s.v. “schism.” 63 s.v. “Schism,” Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA:  G.  & C. Merriam, 1977), 1033.

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absolved of its own sin of schism, and becomes a body that can be sinned against when some within it create a new division? Many Protestant denominations have adopted a generous approach to these matters, at least in dealing with other denominations that are already established. An example of this is the Full Communion Agreement between the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and (reaching beyond the Reformed Tradition) the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In the Full Communion Formula of Agreement these four denominations publicly recognize and testify that “the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered according to the Word of God”64 in one another’s denominations, while at the same time affirming that each denomination will continue its distinct (that is to say, separated) denominational existence. That is to say, they affirm that one another’s denominations are fully church, and they affirm that they will continue to exist in formal separation from one another.65 For Protestant denominations in particular, concern for careful usage of the word schism is not academic nitpicking over definitions. For Protestants the danger of hypocrisy is endemic to the accusation of schism. This hypocrisy is nicely captured in a quote from D. Martin Lloyd-Jones: The term schism was, obviously, one that was bandied about a great deal [at the time of the Reformation]. That is not at all surprising, and the term was used by all sorts of people. The Roman Catholic Church, of course, used it with respect to all Protestants, the Church of England included. Then, the Church of England began to use it with respect to the Presbyterians. And then both the Church of England and the Presbyterians used it with respect to the Independents.66 64

Book of Order 2015–2017 (Louisville, KY: Office of the General Assembly, 2011), Appendix B, B-1. 65 Joseph D. Small subjects the claim of being in full communion to probing analysis in Joseph D. Small, “What Is Communion, and When Is It Full?” Ecclesiology 2, No. 1 (2005), 71–87. 66 D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “John Owen on Schism,” in Puritan Papers, Volume 3:1963–1964, ed. J. I. Packer (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing Company, 2001), 83–4. Italics in original. Insertion in brackets replaces these words in the original: “three hundred years ago.”

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Schism is a complex term, though in common usage it is used as if it were simple. In the face of all that is problematic in common usage of the word schism, it is curious to note New Testament usage of the Greek root word which is the origin of our English word schism:  schizo in its verbal form, schismata in its nominal form. These words are used to refer to two different kinds of referents. First and most concretely, they are used in the Synoptic Gospels for tearing a piece of cloth. For example, repairing a tear in an old piece of cloth with a patch made of new cloth will only result in a tear that is worse; or, at the moment of Jesus’s death the curtain in the Temple is torn from top to bottom.67 Second, as a metaphorical extension of the first usage, in the Gospel of John, Acts, and the Epistles these Greek words refer to tears or divisions within groups of people. The curiosity lies here, for with one exception68 the schism that happens does not involve groups separating from one another into distinctly different organizational structures.69 Rather, in New Testament usage, schism is schism without separation. In this usage schism refers to disagreement and dissension that remains within a group. Schism refers to the absence of love, replaced by hatred, hostility, and the mutual contempt that is such hatred.70 In these New Testament texts schism is a spiritual matter, a matter of internally broken relationship.71 Schism is wrong

67

For the first usage: Mt. 9:16, Lk. 5:36, and Jn 19:24 (not tearing Jesus’s cloak but gambling for it); for the Temple curtain: Mt. 27:51, Mk 15:38, Lk. 23:45. 68 In Acts 23:7 Paul’s speech before the Roman tribune and the Jewish council divides Sadducees from Pharisees over the question of resurrection from the dead. 69 So Jn 7:43 (crowd divided), 9:16 (Pharisees divided), 10:19 (Jews divided), Acts 14:4 (residents of Iconium divided), 1 Cor. 1:10, 11:18, 12:25 (division within the congregation at Corinth). 70 Ephraim Radner has suggested that such hatred and hostility should be recognized as a distinct part of Christian theology: eristology. “I would suggest, in fact, that a more proper framework in which to lodge a discussion of Christian division today would be something like ‘eristology’—from the Greek word associated with the goddess of discord. Eristology, then, is the study of hostility in its disordering forms and forces.” Ephraim Radner, A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), 4–5, italics in original. A Brutal Unity is a thorough eristology. 71 By this standard of schism-without-separation my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has been in (unacknowledged) schism for several years. I believe that the same has been and remains true of several other denominations today, particularly among the denominations generally called mainline.

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relationship among Christians, setting them against one another, seeing in one another that which is to be hated. It is only subsequent to such internal breakdown of relationship that schism becomes formal, and takes structural form. What matters about the illegitimate, sinful forms of “formal and willful separation” is not the separation, but the hatred that is embodied in such separations. Part of what makes the common usage of schism deadly for Christians is the way in which it obscures shared responsibility for the breakdown of relationship that constitutes the true meaning of schism, in all its deadliness.

Conclusion It is a basic affirmation of the Christian faith, stated directly and authoritatively in the Nicene Creed, that the church is one. The Creed is simply repeating a clear message in Scripture: “There is one body and one Spirit” (Eph. 4:4a). At the same time, the church is equally shaped by and to the superabundant diversity that is generated by God’s creative power. The challenge is to explore how these two imperatives, to unity and to diversity, are to be held together. Too often it is assumed that diversity and unity are clear concepts that require little or no explanation. But in fact, when applied to the church, neither is transparently clear. Both need exploration. Careful exploration of the two terms will probe the fact that the two terms are, as Michael Kinnamon has observed, symbiotic.72 This chapter has explored the diversity to which the church is called, in the midst of its unity and oneness. It has sought to give a fuller picture of the nature and extent of that diversity. As Christians we turn to the Bible for authoritative guidance on how to shape faithful Christian living, both for us as individuals and for the collective bodies into which the church pulls us as the Gospel of Jesus Christ impels us toward one another. The striking thing about the New Testament and the guidance it gives on the life we share in the church is that its instructions are unsystematic and open. It gives instructions that are spare and not fully integrated with one another. This means that those very instructions can be

72

Michael Kinnamon, The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement: 51. (See n. 4)

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lived out faithfully in more than one way. Scripture does not decree a single way of ordering the life of the church; it is open to multiple instantiations. It is irreducibly open to a diversity of orders and forms. This openness fits coherently with the nature of God’s creative action. Divine creativity generates a florid superabundance of creaturely forms. There is a strand of scriptural reflection of and on this superabundance that runs from the creation stories in Genesis through the final chapters of Revelation, running through Genesis 5 and 10 with their genealogies that record the outworking of the divine command to be fruitful, to multiply, to spread (which is a command to diversify), through the story of Babel and the human effort to reverse the divine command (Genesis 11), appearing again in Acts 2 and the story of Pentecost and the divine work of gathering together that which is (and remains) genuinely diverse, to the final chapters of Revelation in which the telos for this diversification is not that it is obliterated and cast aside, but rather that the goods generated by superabundant diversification are gathered in and preserved by God. The openness of scriptural instructions about the structures and polity of the church, and the superabundance of divine creativity, fit coherently with the finitude and creatureliness that are defining marks of human (and more generally creaturely) life. The church is universal, but we human beings are not. We do not have the capacity for full relationship with all others in the church. Rather, we have to experience that fullness in finite, manageable forms. We do so first in congregations, which are settings for the fullness of our relatedness in Jesus Christ to be experienced with particular depth. Among congregations we experience something of the breadth of the universal church through the relationships that are held by intermediary structures—and particularly by denominations. Intermediary bodies enable us to experience the oneness of the universal (catholic) church in forms that have real impact and bearing, with real traction on the life of our congregations, and therefore on our own lives. The diversity to which we are called can be, and has been suppressed. The coercive power of governments has been used, over centuries, to ensure significant (though never total) uniformity in the living out of the Christian faith. In the modern era this government coercion has gradually been dismantled, leaving

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the church to settle questions of fragmentation, diversity, unity, and uniformity in other ways. The removal of state coercion has allowed for the rise of ecclesial bodies organized around and in support of a variety of ways of living the Christian faith. This has brought its own challenges to be met and problems to be addressed. Finally, diversity can go wrong. It can become schism. Schism, like diversity and unity, is often treated as though it were a simple term with a basically transparent meaning understood by almost all. But this is not true. The term is commonly used to refer to formal and structural division in (and, presumably, between) ecclesial bodies. But this common usage is deeply problematic, especially among Protestants—though the deep problems are seldom acknowledged, in the drive to moral condemnation of others, the strong need to condemn “them.” Schism is best understood as broken relationships among Christians. Christians sometimes regard one another with contempt, which is a form of hatred. This broken relationship can and often does happen without any formal, structural break. Denominations sometimes remain institutionally connected even though their members are in schismatic relationships with one another. Formal structural divisions are secondary:  they are the outworkings of broken relationships. It is easier to focus on formal structural breaks than it is to heal the broken relationships that are the primary and true form of schism. The accusation of schism is generally about others, and the evil things they are doing. Schism, by contrast, is not only about another, but also about myself. Little wonder that we prefer to define schism in terms of formal structural division. It makes life so much easier for the accusers.73 We are not called only to unity. God also calls us to and draws us into wide, unexpected diversity. We cannot faithfully live out the divine imperative to unity without also living out the divine imperative to diversity. When our efforts to live the oneness we are given in Jesus Christ suppress or overlook the diversity and abundance to which we are called by that same God, unity comes into conflict with diversity, a sure sign that we have lost our way. 73

I have explored these issues in greater depth, with particular reference to the Reformed tradition, in a paper presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, “Schism and the Reformed Embrace of Denomination.”

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We are not called only to diversity. Christians are one in Jesus Christ, and we are called to live that out. In the next chapter we turn to exploring the unity to which we are called in our diversity, just as we have here explored the diversity to which we are called in our unity.

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6 The unity to which we are called

Introduction Michael Kinnamon, as noted earlier, has identified an axiom for discussions of the unity of the church: “The two concepts—unity and diversity—are symbiotic.”1 Unity, diversity, and the symbiotic relationship between them stand, Kinnamon notes, “at the heart of the ecumenical movement.”2 The unity and the diversity of the church are symbiotically related. Particular understandings of the unity that Christ gives the church and that we are called to embody will carry within them judgments about what forms of diversity are faithful and consonant with unity so understood. Particular understandings of the diversity that Christ gives to the church and that we are called to embody will carry within them judgments about the particular shape of the unity that is ours and that we live into as we are incorporated into Christ.

1

Michael Kinnamon, The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How it Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2003), 51. 2 Kinnamon, The Vision, 51. He notes that the ecumenical exploration of unity and diversity in the church is related to the long conceptual exploration of unity and diversity in the West: “At the heart of the ecumenical movement is a problem that has troubled political philosophers from Plato to the authors of the United States Constitution: the relationship between the one and the many, between the unity of the community and the diversity of its particular parts.”

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Ecumenical dialogue has reached a stage at which it is imperative to articulate specifically what diversity of forms and structures are to be welcomed within the visible unity of the church, and what forms and structures make disunity visible. There is a genre of writing on the unity of the church that consists of arguments to persuade an audience that unity is good, and division is bad. While there may be audiences who need to be persuaded, they are surely a minority. What we require now are analyses attuned to the symbiosis of unity and diversity. Such analyses will flesh out the judgments about faithful diversity that are inherent in a proposal about unity, and the judgments about visible unity that are inherent in a proposal about diversity. We need these analyses to push the next step further and name those church realities, those ecclesial structures, forms, and behaviors that are faithful, as well as those that fail to be faithful, with an explanation of the basis for those judgments. In this chapter I  explore the form of unity implicit in the proposal I’ve offered about how denomination can be lived as a faithful response to Christ’s call to diversity and unity. What then, on my proposal, of the unity of the church? What is the nature of the unity implied by this account of denomination? Is the church nothing more than a notion, or an eschatological concept? Is it the “church invisible,” an ideal that stands beyond the mundane reality of actually existing church bodies? Is the church simply an aggregate of all the denominations and other ecclesial structures, heaped together? It is not. The church is indeed visible in the multitude of congregations, gathered in denominations and other intermediary structures. The church exists now around the globe, in continuity with the church across the ages. So, the church both now and through time is visible in these ecclesial structures taken as a whole—both as they presently exist, and as congregations and denominations have existed across time. Christians, congregations, denominations, and other intermediary structures in the church are fully visible to the world; the relationships they have with one another are visible, and in them the church is made visible as they live the Christian faith in distinctive ways. The unity of the church is, or should be, visible in the relationships between these bodies—both individuals and the various corporate structures that they form together. The unity of the church

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is made visible in the relationships they bear toward one another.3 The church’s unity will be visible in a particular sort or variety of relationships, specifically, those that embody the love into which Christians are enfolded and to which they are called in our common incorporation into Jesus Christ. These relationships embody the unity of the church to the degree that they embody the marks of church unity identified at the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches, held in New Delhi in 1961, as will be seen. Relationships that faithfully embody the unity of the church tell the truth about our finitude and corporality, our need for intermediary structures and the contingent, intermediary, interdependent, partial, and permeable nature of denominations and congregations. These relationships find embodiment in an array of forms (councils, communions, covenants, multilateral and bilateral initiatives, and full communion agreements). There is no single organizational form in which faithful relationships must exist. Carried in these varied forms, the relationships will grow or fade away, abide or mutate, be rediscovered and renewed or remain constant. The relationships between these bodies can obscure the unity of the church, either intentionally or inadvertently. Denominations are particularly prone to contradict unity by explicitly or implicitly asserting that they are something other than denominations. They are constantly tempted to take the characteristics of the one true church upon themselves, thereby denying their finitude and fragmentariness. Denominations are persistently tempted to arrogate to themselves the characteristics of the church universal; much of the sin that emanates from particular denominations can be traced to such arrogation. Conversely, denominations are tempted to understand themselves as something less than intermediary embodiments of the church, reducing themselves to interest groups.

3

Harding Meyer points out that the concern for structures that embody the unity of the church is secondary to the relationships that such structures exist to sustain. “It is not a concern with structures that primarily serve an external, organizational unity of the church. Rather, it is the communion, lived in common faith, witness, and action, that calls for common structural forms in faith, life, and action, in other words, from within itself, so that this togetherness in faith may come about and be maintained.” Harding Meyer, That All May Be One: Perceptions and Models of Ecumenicity, trans. William G. Rusch (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B.  Eerdmans, 1999), 57.

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Denominations are taken to be little more than consumerist options in a religious free market. The relationship of one denomination to another is taken to be a matter of indifference, since one choice is as good as another, and denominational differences are regarded as having little importance beyond style. One’s commitment to one’s denomination also becomes selective, and tentative. If one’s choice of denomination is little more than a form of self-expression, then one will naturally accept or reject elements of that denomination’s shared beliefs or practices according to whether one chooses any of those elements for oneself, thereby making those elements (but not others) valid and authoritative for oneself. The form of unity that is symbiotically related to denominational diversity is complex and dynamic. It is not the tightly linked institutional unity that many of us find attractive. Over the last few decades there has been vigorous discussion of “reconciled diversity” as a helpful way of understanding the unity to which we are called. The phrase is constructed in a way that makes diversity the substantive term, the noun, and unity (“reconciled”) a modifier. What is proposed in this book would better be called “articulated unity.” This is a unity in which the relationships among ecclesial bodies take an array of forms. Some ecclesial bodies move toward organic, structural union— they form unions,4 or one agrees to be assimilated by another.5 Other ecclesial bodies form full communion agreements, which provide complex patters of formal links among denominations.6 There continue to be councils of churches of varying geographic scope. What is central is the quality, the character of

4

For over fifty years the journal Ecumenical Review has published periodic reports surveying church union discussions around the globe. 5 British Methodism has provided a dramatic example of the willingness to be assimilated by another denomination, in the expressed willingness of the leaders of The Methodist Church of Great Britain to merge into the Church of England. See “A Pastoral Letter to the Methodist People from the President and Vice-President of the Conference and the General Secretary.” Accessible online at http://methodistpresandvp.blogspot.com/ 2010/ 02/ pastoral- letter- to- methodist- people.html , accessed December 12, 2016. 6 As an example of such complexity, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is in full communion with both The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (PCUSA), but TEC and the PCUSA are not in full communion with one another. In Europe the Leuenberg, Meissen, and Porvoo Agreements have been the bases for these sorts of relationships among distinct denominations.

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the relationships ecclesial bodies and their individual members have with one another. Such a unity is built and maintained with the arts of persuasion as its toolbox. Some will find this unsatisfactory. Persuasion is fraught with difficulty and uncertainty. It depends upon my ability to communicate with you in such a way that you are persuaded to think or do either in the way that I am commending, or in a way that that you and I discover together. Put the other way around, persuasion depends on your willingness to change, and to be persuaded. Perhaps we regard persuasion with trepidation because it involves the risk that as we reason together I will be persuaded to change, rather than persuading you to adopt my view. Persuasion, like coercion, is dangerous. It can go wrong at every moment, hemmed in at every turn with the possibility of failure: failure to communicate clearly, failure to understand another’s concerns, failure to be openhearted and open-minded, and on the list goes. Persuasion is a frail vehicle for achieving any end, especially one as important as the unity of the church. That is why we Christians have sought so long and assiduously for something more forceful. There has been our long utilization of the coercive power of civil government, in many permutations. As we increasingly find ourselves separated from those powers, the temptation to seek some other form of compulsion abides. We seek some theological argument, some compelling theologumenon, resistance to which would be a sign of sin. Something that could compel the recalcitrant. None has appeared, because none exists. Persuasion will always run the risk of failure. But the embrace of persuasion, and the rejection of coercion, stands on good theological ground. Thus, for example, use of the arts of persuasion is apparent throughout the Gospel accounts of the ministry of Jesus Christ—Gospels that display again and again the reality of the failure to persuade.7 Not only should we expect no different, we must reckon also with the possibility that the reason others fail to be persuaded by arguments we find compelling may lie with us—we may be the ones who are mistaken. 7

See e.g., the story of the rich young man (Mk 10:17–22), or Jesus’s many encounters with religious leaders and groups, or the two men crucified alongside Jesus (Lk. 23:39–43). Do these instances show a failure to persuade, or is it a failure to be persuaded? This ambiguity is central to the difficulty of the way of persuasion as the tool of Christian unity.

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Persuasion is not, perhaps, the longed-for ecumenical “killer app.” But then, what better tools might we have? Persuasion is a slow process. It requires a constant willingness to fail. The ecumenical project is sometimes portrayed as a temporary (though in no way brief) program for reaching a goal—visible unity. The ecumenical movement in the twentieth century drew considerable energy from a clear belief that the denominations could be visibly united “in this generation” (to borrow a phrase from an equally energized movement of a slightly earlier period, the mission movement). Ecumenism was regarded as a movement, which we Christians shared in starting (acknowledging the prior and sustaining work of the Holy Spirit), a movement that would progress steadily in the face of significant challenges toward the ecumenical goal, however conceived by each participant. Movement has been a key trope for understanding ecumenical work. Much of the sense of malaise and failure in the ecumenical movement over the last few decades is surely attributable to precisely the failure to arrive at the desired destination in this generation.8 The ecumenical movement no longer feels like it is moving ahead toward the destination at which we thought we were going to arrive. The vision of unity proposed here implies that the work of ecumenical dialogue is not a temporary project for arriving at a destination, but is instead a permanent element of life for Christians and, especially, for the ecclesial bodies (denominations) in which they gather together. This chapter explores the unity of the church in light of the reality of denomination. First, a bit of history:  I  briefly survey theological investigation of the unity of the church over the course of roughly the last century, looking for significant turning-points in what has been a very wide-ranging discussion. Second, I explore the form of unity symbiotically related to the denominational diversity 8

Christopher Asprey, in assessing the state of ecumenism today, comments: “Perhaps, however, the very term ‘ecumenical movement’ has been unhelpful, in so far as it conveys the impression that ecumenism happens in a ‘place’ above and beyond the churches themselves.” Christopher Asprey, “The Universal Church and the Ecumenical Movement” in Ecumenism Today:  The Universal Church in the 21st Century, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy and Christopher Asprey (Aldershot:  Ashgate Publishing, 2008), 4 (the essay is pp. 3–13). The problem is not simply that the term conveys a separate place, but that the term implies steady progress and accumulating participation and energy.

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considered in the previous chapters: articulated unity. Third, I consider three characteristic ways in which particular denominations fail to understand themselves fully, thereby turning away from the unity of the church—particularly that kind of unity sketched in this chapter. These characteristic ways of failure constitute, one might say, denomination’s besetting sins. Finally, I offer concluding remarks.

The unity we seek: The long conversation in the ecumenical movement As the central aim of the ecumenical movement, unity has been a constant focus of theological dialogue and study. The understanding of the unity to which the church is called has rightly received singular attention. Harding Meyer, a significant contributor to this conversation, has narrated its course, and in this section I draw on his work to highlight key conceptual developments.9 First, Meyer emphasizes a key distinction that emerged in the conversation about unity:  the distinction between understandings of unity and “models of union.” This crucial distinction was only made clear at the Commission on Faith and Order meeting at Louvain, in 1971. It was a breakthrough: a differentiation that was novel in its clarity; the distinction between “concepts of unity” and “models of union.” . . . The “concepts of unity” are said to concern the fundamental understanding of “the nature of (the church’s) unity”:  its essential characteristics and marks, its constitutive elements, and its basic requirements. The “models of union” concern the “forms of

9

Other accounts of the history of this conversation include Melanie A. May, “The Unity We Share, the Unity We Seek,” in A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Volume 3: 1968–2000, ed. John Briggs, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, and Georges Tsetsis (Geneva, World Council of Churches, 2004), 83–102. A  brief overview is offered by William G. Rusch, “A Survey of Ecumenical Reflection about Unity,” in The Ecumenical Future:  Background Papers for In One Body through the Cross:  The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 1–10.

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manifestation” of ecclesiastical unity, the details of its concrete assumption of form, of its form of materialization. Meyer underlines the importance of the distinction between understandings and models: One and the same understanding or concept of unity can be realized in different models of union. An agreement in the understanding or concept of unity can be realized in different models of union. An agreement in the understanding or concept of unity thus in no way implies that an agreement also exists or must exist in regard to the model of union, that is, about the form in which unity is to be realized.10 Meyer notes that failure to distinguish understandings of unity and models of union resulted in fierce disagreement within the ecumenical movement:  the rejection of a model of unity was taken by that model’s defenders to be a rejection of the goal of unity itself.11 The distinction between understandings of unity and models of union makes it possible to be fully committed to the goal of church unity while exploring and disagreeing about the concrete structures that will enable the church to embody that understanding.

Understandings of unity The World Council of Churches Assembly at New Delhi, held in 1961, adopted a definition of church unity and the marks of that

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Meyer, That All May Be One, 5. Meyer finds the word concepts in the Louvain document to be confusing, and thus in his book replaces it with understandings for the sake of clarity. 11 Meyer, That All May Be One, 79: the three basic models of unity were clarified at the Faith and Order Conference at Edinburgh in 1937, “but one must remember that the important distinction between the understanding of unity and models of union, as they became popular after New Delhi and especially in the 1970s, was still not worked out then in a clear fashion. Both understandings of unity and models of union were still closely interwoven . . . this often gave the debate on models of union, however important that debate is, a sharpness and narrowness that it should not have.”

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unity that has become a widely accepted standard.12 The New Delhi definition has been elaborated on and deepened in subsequent discussion, but it has not been significantly altered.13 The definition was formulated in a single sentence: We believe that the unity which is both God’s will and his gift to his Church is being made visible as all in each place who are baptized into Jesus Christ and confess him as Lord and Saviour are brought by the Holy Spirit into one fully committed fellowship, holding the one apostolic faith, preaching the one Gospel, breaking the one bread, joining in common prayer, and having a corporate life reaching out in witness and service to all and who at the same time are united with the whole Christian fellowship in all places and ages in such wise that ministry and members are accepted by all, and that all can act and speak together as occasion requires for the tasks to which God calls his people.14 This definition has served as a basic statement of the marks of the unity of the church. While it does not have confessional status, it can—and for this book will—serve as a summary statement, in a fashion roughly analogous to the Nicene marks of the church (one holy catholic and apostolic) or the Reformation notes of the church (Word and Sacrament—and, in some cases, discipline). The New Delhi definition incorporates distinct elements. First, there is baptism into Jesus Christ and the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. Next, those baptized into and confessing

12

“The importance of the New Delhi Declaration and its commentary for the ecumenical movement cannot be stressed too much.” Rusch, “A Survey,” 5. 13 Meyer, That All May Be One, 43: “All later declarations of unity, both within and outside the World Council, stand, so to speak, on the shoulders of this first declaration of unity. As has often been said . . . these subsequent declarations constitute important explications or expansions of specific aspects of the New Delhi declaration. They do not simply abandon New Delhi, however, but rather remain fundamentally committed to it.” 14 The New Delhi Report: The Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches, 1961 (New York: Association Press, 1961): 116. This sentence is almost the entirety of the second paragraph of the report of the Unity Section of this WCC Assembly. The rest of the report explicates this sentence, phrase by phrase, followed by a consideration of the implications of this sentence. New Delhi Report, 116–35. Also Meyer, That All May Be One, 42.

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Jesus Christ are drawn into a (one) fellowship that is fully committed. What follows are marks that are widely recognized:  confessing the apostolic faith, preaching one Gospel, sharing together in the Lord’s Supper, praying in common, and together witnessing to and serving the world. Next the definition turns to union with all Christians of all ages, a union that includes recognition both of members and of ministers. Finally, this union makes it possible for the church together to address the world in word and action as specific contexts require.15 Meyer insists that the elements of the New Delhi definition (however they are enumerated) are a coherent and interdependent whole. “All these belong together, and together they comprise the visible unity of the church. None is allowed to be lacking or to regard itself as absolute. None is allowed to stifle the other or to become stunted in its shadow.”16 Meyer does not trace their interdependence in detail. Yet it is clear that the elements of the definition connect to one another. They are mutually reinforcing and interdependent. For Meyer, the New Delhi definition of church unity not only serves as a summary statement. It also serves as a set of criteria by which to evaluate proposed models of union. “In relation to 15

Meyer offers a somewhat different, more synthetic, enumeration of the elements of the New Delhi definition: 

Agreement in the confession of the faith and mutuality in the sacraments and in the ecclesiastical office (ministry);



Common worship life and prayer;



Common witness and common service to all human beings;



The ability to act and speak together in view of concrete tasks and challenges;



The local as well as the universal dimension of ecclesiastical unity;



Unity as well as diversity.

Meyer, That All May Be One, 43. Meyer’s synthesis—particularly the final item— seems to be targeted to an argument he makes throughout his book about the significance and legitimate forms of diversity to be allowed within the unity of the church. He has been a central figure in working out the “unity in reconciled diversity” model of church union, a model that insists on the importance of preserving diversity in the church, particularly confessional diversity. Meyer’s argument is consonant with the argument of this book. Nevertheless, it is not clear that the final item in his enumeration is well supported by the New Delhi definition itself. Rusch also offers an enumeration, “A Survey,” 5. 16 Meyer, That All May Be One, 43.

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the understanding of unity as it has become determinative for the ecumenical movement” [specifically, in the New Delhi definition], “each model of union has to guarantee that in it a ‘fully committed fellowship’ (koinonia) is realized and therefore must include” the elements specified in the definition.17 “A model of union that lacks one of these dimensions or constitutive elements or that concentrates on only one of them while ignoring others can thus only be viewed as a model of partial union.”18 The long conversation about unity in the ecumenical movement did not, of course, come to a halt in 1961. Meyer draws attention to four points of further exploration and deepening. First, there was discussion of the universality of unity alongside appreciation of the wide diversity within that unity. This generated attention to the catholicity of the church and its unity (the universality), together with a “quest for diversity.”19 Second, there was renewed attention to the structures necessary for faithful embodiment of the unity of the church. This discussion led to a consensus that the unity of the church will be embodied in conciliar structures.20 Third, there was an intense focus on the mission of the church. This took the form of a strong call for the church to engage in addressing the deep, pressing needs of the world (such as violence, warfare, oppression, hunger, disease, and ecological degradation) and to do so with a singularity of focus, purpose, and immediacy.21 Meyer stresses that the church’s mission and its unity are 17

Meyer, That All May Be One, 73. Meyer, That All May Be One, 74. 19 Meyer, That All May Be One, 51–3. 20 Meyer, That All May Be One, 54–7. Meyer summarizes the results of the World Council of Churches Assembly in Uppsala, Sweden in 1968: “The Uppsala Assembly carried this process forward and concretized it in that from now on the thought of conciliarity determines more exactly the nature of the structures required for communion. The ‘common life’ in the one church should have a ‘conciliar form’ ” (56). 21 Meyer, That All May Be One, 57–62. Meyer raises a concern that the emphasis on addressing these pressing needs has led not only to an eclipse of focus on the unity of the church, but even to a devaluing of the search for the unity of the church itself as secondary, a distraction from that which is most important. He suggests that this emphasis has revived historic divisions in the ecumenical movement between Faith and Order, on the one hand, and Life and Work, on the other. This concern is the theme of the final section of Meyer’s book, “Assessment and Perspectives,” which opens with a section titled “Crisis of the Ecumenical Movement?” Meyer, That All May Be One, 151–6. 18

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interdependent:  addressing the world’s needs.22 Fourth, the ecumenical discussion of unity (in both its conciliar and bilateral forms) has taken communion/koinonia to be the basic concept by which to understand both the church and the unity to which the church is called.23

Models of union Meyer holds that there have been three basic models of union in the ecumenical movement. These models were articulated (though not satisfactorily) at the World Conference of the Faith and Order Movement held at Edinburgh in 1937: the cooperative-federal, the mutual recognition, and the organic union models. The cooperative-federal model brings churches and denominations together for common action, especially for common evangelism and service. The common action is understood to be comprehensive and enduring, and therefore requires structures to hold it and carry it forward. The common action can be carried out if the churches and denominations involved remain independent: it does not require that they unite into a single ecclesial structure. Meyer cites the Federal Council of Churches in the United States as an example of this model of union.24 The mutual recognition model of union is relatively newer than the other two models, having first been explored in the period between the Lausanne (1927) and Edinburgh (1937) World Conferences of the Faith and Order Movement. The focus of this model is not first on common action, but rather on “the relation of the churches to one another, that is, the unity ad intra.”25 Confessional distinctives 22

Meyer points to the Holy Spirit’s gift of catholicity as that which binds the unity of the church to the unity of all creation, and thus calls the church to engage, in unity, the needs of all creation. “Thus the ‘gift’ of catholicity bestowed on the church is at the same time ‘a task, a call, and a commitment’ for the church. As the Holy Spirit bestows this catholicity on the church, it ‘empowers the Church in her unity to be a ferment in society, for the renewal and unity of mankind.’ ” Meyer is quoting the report of WCC Assembly at Uppsala: The Uppsala Report 1968: Official Report of the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1968). Meyer, That All May Be One, 59. 23 Meyer, That All May Be One, 63–72. 24 Meyer, That All May Be One, 81–8. 25 Meyer, That All May Be One, 91; italics in original.

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may remain, along with the various ecclesiastical structures that are shaped by and carry forward these differences. Differences are viewed as potentially part of the legitimate diversity within the church.26 The model of organic union was the dominant model of union from at least the time of the Edinburgh World Conference of Faith and Order to the 1970s, and continues to be the model affirmed by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as many others. In the model of organic union all Christians are gathered into a single ecclesiastical structure that is recognizably organized as a single institutional structure on a global basis, with relatively clear and consistent organizational levels from the global to the local. Within this model lines of authority from the global to the local are relatively clear, and consistent, and similarly structured. The oneness of the church, on this model, will be readily understandable to any reasonable observer.27 Meyer notes that the discussion of models of union, which was particularly intense in the 1970s, has yielded two further developments of the three basic models. First, there is the model of church fellowship. This is a refinement of the model of mutual recognition. It is embodied particularly in full communion agreements, such as the Leuenberg Church Fellowship in Europe. In the model of church fellowship denominations and churches maintain their independent ecclesial structures, but these structures (and their members) relate to one another in ways that embody the elements of church unity. “What is fundamentally changed is the relations between the different confessions, that is, the understanding of this relation. It is no longer separation but rather communion. This is made possible by the development and binding reception of a ‘consensus.’ ”28 Second, a way of conceptualizing the combination of diversity and unity in the church was developed in discussions between the World Council of Churches and the world confessional communions— particularly the Lutheran World Federation: unity in reconciled diversity. Meyer quotes from a document of the Lutheran World Federation: We consider the variety of denominational heritages legitimate insofar as the truth of the one faith explicates itself in 26

Meyer, That All May Be One, 89–93. Meyer, That All May Be One, 94–100. 28 Meyer, That All May Be One, 111. 27

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history in a variety of expressions. We do not overlook the fact that such explications of the faith have been marked by error which has threatened the unity of the church. On the other hand, it needs to be seen that a heritage remains legitimate and can be preserved if it is properly translated into new historical situations. If it is, it remains a valuable contribution to the richness of life in the church universal . . . Therefore, unity and fellowship among the churches do not require uniformity of faith and order, but can and must encompass a plurality or diversity of convictions and traditions . . . Confessional loyalty and ecumenical commitment are no contradiction, but are one—paradoxical as it may seem. When existing differences between churches lose their divisive character, there emerges a vision of unity that has the character of a “reconciled diversity.”29 Unity in reconciled diversity values the distinctives of various ways of understanding Christian faith, and the various church orders that are both generated by and supportive of these various ways of understanding, while at the same time valuing the unity of the church that can and must be embodied in the relationships between denominations and other ecclesial structures. There is a basic decision—a sort of fork in the road—to be made in understanding the unity of the church and the models of union appropriate to that unity, a basic decision underlined in Meyer’s account of the ecumenical conversation about the unity of the church: “Is the ecumenical movement guided by an understanding of its aim that integrates and preserves the churches’ unique characteristics and diversities arising from their history, or does it leave them aside?”30 Is the diversity of ways of articulating and living the Christian faith together a mistake, or is it a feature of that faith itself? Does the unity of the church require a single ecclesiastical structure, built around a coherent set of 29

Meyer, That All May Be One, 121–2. Meyer is quoting here from a discussion paper on the Ecumenical Role of the World Confessional Families in the One Ecumenical Movement, prepared in 1974 by the World Confessional Families. Portions of this paper are printed in The Unity of the Church:  Requirements and Structure, ed. Günther Gassmann and Harding Meyer (LWF Report, 15; Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1983), 27–32. 30 Meyer, That All May Be One, 123.

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doctrinal and organizational principles with lines of authority from top to bottom, which embodies the unity of the church in a manner obvious and clear to all observers? The convictions guiding this book should already be clear. What remains is to explore the unity appropriate to the vision and valuation of confessional and ecclesial diversity.

Articulated unity The visibility of the church and its unity: Persons, ecclesial structures, relationships The church exists in the world in Christians who are gathered together in congregations that are themselves gathered in intermediary ecclesial structures, and all these levels (persons, congregations, and intermediary ecclesial structures) together are the church in the world. They are the form that the church takes in the present moment. They are authentically the church, though never the entirety of the church. The relationships among these finite members of the church are a vital element of the whole, the church. These persons, congregations, and intermediary ecclesial structures are thoroughly visible. In and through them the church is visible, as is its unity and its disunity. The unity of the church is visible (or not) in the relationships among and between Christians, congregations, and intermediary ecclesial structures. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). The visible unity of the church is a matter of that which lies between and among denominations and other ecclesial structures, congregations, and Christians. The unity of the church is the life lived between each as they live the Christian life together (or decline to do so, either explicitly or implicitly). Harding Meyer notes that it is precisely relationship, and the quality of relationship, that stands at the heart of koinonia (communion), and thus at the heart of the unity of the church: Church is a lived “communion” of human beings and grows and lives from the fact that human beings have “communion” with the

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triune God, who lives in the “communion” of the three persons— as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and turns to humankind. Thus in every respect church is “life in relation”—whether viewed “from above” or “from below,” in its “vertical” or in its “horizontal” dimensions. And the kind or quality of this relation—whether in the relation of human beings to one another, whether in their relation to the triune God, or in the relation among three divine persons—is always “communion” as understood in the specific meaning of the New Testament concept of “koinonia”:  participation, giving or receiving a place, and sharing with one another. Therefore, at its core meaning, koinonia is “our shared life.”31 Such relationships are the primary and central substance of the unity to which the church is called. One implication is that the unity to which Christians are called is in part about doing. It is continuously enacted. Disunity too is enacted. Christians do not rightly understand their faith if they believe that the unity of the church is a matter handled by someone or something else—by clergy, say, or by institutions. The problem of church disunity arises at precisely this point, as noted in Chapter 5 when discussing schism. Division arises when disagreement about the faith (belief and practice) or about other matters (e.g., political opinions and convictions) leads to attacks on those with whom we disagree. The love that we are to have for one another in Christ is replaced by contempt and hatred. Contempt and hatred are a form of relationship—a form that fails to bear authentic witness to Jesus Christ.

Relationships and structures, ecclesial and other: The forms of visibility Relationships between Christians, congregations, and intermediary ecclesial structures take concrete, particular forms. They must 31

Meyer, That All May Be One, 66–7. Meyer is quoting from On the Way to Fuller Koinonia:  Official Report of the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1993), 231. This Conference met in Santiago de Compostela in 1993. The quotations are from the “Report of Section I:  The Understanding of Koinonia and Its Implications” (230–7), and from the official Report of the Conference (225–7).

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do so in order to exist through time in the world. Relationships will exist in institutional structures and in common practices that are themselves shaped and supported by the structures. Institutional forms are built to provide a framework in which relationships can flourish and endure. Ecclesial structures, rightly understood, provide a dwelling-place for the relationships that embody and are the unity to which Christians are called. The structures that embody unity will take a variety of forms. Central to this study are denominations, along with the congregations that make them up. But there are other forms as well: ecumenical councils which provide aspects of a full life together; the world confessional communions, which again provide particular elements of full life together; and institutional structures formed through agreements between denominations, such as the structures that facilitate the embodiment of the Leuenberg and Porvoo agreements or, in a different way, the Church Unity Commission in Southern Africa.32 Still other institutions, formed for other particular purposes, are also forms in which the unity of the church comes to be embodied. These include Christian relief agencies, such as Church World Service or Tearfund. Another example is provided by institutions for common shaping of worship, such as the Consultation on Common Texts or the English Language Liturgical Consultation for those worshipping in English. These institutions are clearly not themselves denominations (they do not authorize worship or worship leadership). Yet they make the unity of the church visible by drawing Christians together into a common effort, grounded by the elements of Christian faith that they hold together.33 These institutional structures thus contribute to making visible the unity of the church. 32

For the Church Unity Commission in Southern Africa, see Alastair Rodger, “Reports on Union Negotiations: Africa: Southern Africa,” The Ecumenical Review 58 (2006):  301–6. The “Reports on Union Negotiations” includes reports on other institutions for living a life together, offered by other contributors:  e.g., Abraham P.  Athyal, “India:  The Communion of Churches in India” (313–18), and Thomas E. Dipko, “North America: United States: Churches Uniting in Christ” (345–9). 33 These institutions are able to gather Christians together for a common purpose because they successfully bracket out some of the issues that in other contexts have to be resolved in order for a group to function together over time. Church World Service does not need to decide what makes for a proper, valid ordination in order to do its work. By remaining neutral on such issues it can bring together Christians

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The unity of the church is lived in the relationships supported by these institutional structures. The visibility of the unity of the church will be a function of the quality or character of these relationships. While the relationships cannot be sustained without institutional structures, the structures exist to provide a wellshaped space for the flourishing of relationships that embody unity. Institutional structures are secondary in the visibility of the unity of the church. Ecumenical work is the sustained effort to appraise the relationships among us, searching for ways in which these relationships can embody the character and quality of the relationship we have with one another by our incorporation into Jesus Christ. The ecumenical movement focuses on the relationships among intermediary ecclesial structures in particular—those structures that support and sustain particular ways of living out the Christian faith. These are the denominations, and the ecumenical movement has rightly focused on relationships among denominations and the particular Christian traditions that they embody. As noted in Chapter 4, a central feature of such ecclesial structures is that they authorize worship and worship leadership. The New Delhi definition of church unity applies particularly to these structures.

Visible indicators of the unity of the church The New Delhi definition of the unity of the church supplies indicators of unity. It is no surprise that worship is central to the definition, given the central role that worship plays in differentiating intermediary ecclesial structures, particularly denominations.34 The unity of the church is made visible in baptism, which identifies a particular people, who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior (acts of confession that include adoration and praise in addition to formal confession of faith), preaching that proclaims the Good

with a variety of opposing commitments on such matters, CWS itself providing structures not for ordination, but for work addressing particular kinds of human need. In doing so institutions such as CWS authentically make visible the real unity of the church, however partially. 34 See Chapter 4, “Denomination as ecclesial form”, pp. 170–2 above.

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News, sharing in the Lord’s Supper (communing in Communion), praying together, and enacting this worship in the world into which followers of Jesus Christ are sent from their gathered worship.35 Because of their role as markers of the unity to which the church is called, these elements of unity serve dialogue about the relationships among intermediary ecclesial bodies, which are marked off from one another in part by the manners in which and contexts for which they authorize worship and worship leaders. These elements of unity help denominations and other intermediary ecclesial structures focus dialogue with one another about how they will embody together the unity God gives the church. Common acts of worship, and common address to and action in the world that enact and embody the content of worship—these are markers of the unity to which the church is called. In addition to the New Delhi definition, one of the measures of that unity will be the degree to which we make decisions that are tentative, awaiting sanction by others.36 Am I  willing to allow a strong conviction of my own to be submitted to sisters and brothers for their judgment? Are we willing to forego what we would choose to do on our own because those with whom we are in relationship oppose it? One of the indicators of visible unity is the willingness

35

This leaves out only a few elements of the definition, whose roots in worship can readily be drawn out: “one fully committed fellowship” (which can and should be enacted in worship, in which participants are a congregation, not an aggregation of isolated individuals), “holding the one apostolic faith” (which can be a part of worship if confession of faith—the one apostolic faith—is in some form part of worship), “united with the whole Christian fellowship in all places and ages” (which can be an ongoing part of worship in prayer for and telling of the stories of those in that wide expanse of others); “that ministry and members are accepted by all” (this acceptance is most centrally and fully enacted—or not—in worship); and, “all can act and speak together” (which moves, finally, beyond specific acts of worship to settings in which praise of and obedience to God becomes engagement with the needs of the world). 36 Joseph D. Small notes that one of the failings of so-called full communion agreements is that they often fail to produce relationships in which the denominations in the agreement even consult with one another before making changes to their own internal life and order. “Churches ‘in full communion’ continue to frame theological statements, take moral positions, order ministries, and amend polities without consultation, let  alone the concurrence of their sister churches. Mutual responsibility and accountability, so fundamental to koinonia, falls away as churches order much of their faith and life apart from one another” (“What is Communion,” 85).

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to shape our lives by serious engagement with one another, to alter one’s course in cooperation with others.

A complex unity The form of unity that I am proposing is complex. It is not under any centralized control—be it that of an individual, a small group of individuals, or a central council of however many members. This form of unity is not tightly woven. It is not formed of institutional structures with clear lines from top to bottom, and from local to world-wide. Rather, it is an articulated unity, with an open texture and character, formed of many specific and concrete ties between specific and concrete bodies of Christians. Articulated unity does not require that visible unity take a single form across the life of the church as it lives in the world. Rather, it grants that the forms and structures of visible unity will be multiform, and no less real for that. Articulated unity does not wait for a particular group of Christians to determine a single, overall, global structure of visible unity in which all Christians and their ecclesial structures are to be gathered. Rather, it takes seriously the claim that the unity of the church is made visible in the pattern of relationships that Christians form between one another and between the intermediary structures in and through which they live the Christian faith. The complex, multiform nature of articulated unity will be clear in the forms that unity takes. Denominations and other ecclesial structures will form varying structures of visible unity with various other denominations. This can be seen among some of the denominations in the United States. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for example, is in full communion with the Episcopal Church and with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), while the latter two are not in full communion with one another.37 The Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are together in other visible structures of unity, such as the National Council of Churches and Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC). Churches Uniting in Christ is the successor to a prior institutional structure, the Consultation on Church Union, which disbanded because, among other factors, its effort to bring 37

Joseph D. Small has examined what it means, both in theory and in practice, to be in full communion: Small, “What is Communion.”

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structural union was unable to resolve incompatible theological commitments regarding ordered ministry, particularly between the Episcopal Church and the Reformed bodies in the consultation.38 This is the same issue that led to the dissolution of the Scottish Church Initiative for Union, where disagreement about ordered ministry involved denominations from the same denominational traditions—Anglican and Reformed.39 So, we have here four denominations, in two different geographical contexts, which continue to live out the Christian faith in two distinct ways. Those who are part of these bodies continue to understand their two distinct ways of living the Christian faith to be incompatible. And all parties remain committed to their way of living the Christian life. At the same time, they acknowledge that those others who are living the Christian life in a different way are Christians. And, all of them participate in structures of visible unity with one another, in spite of their disagreements about ordered ministry. The structures of visible unity embody a real unity, though different from the one that would be present if they were to, say, merge their denominations together into a new denominational structure.

Unity: Present reality and longed-for fullness The unity of the church is a complex matter when lived. It is not monolithic, a matter of all or nothing. It exists as a spectrum whose

38

See Michael Kinnamon, “United States of America” Ecumenical Review 52, No. 1 (January 2000):  41–3. This report is part of Thomas F. Best and Church Union Correspondents, “Survey of Church Union Negotiations 1996–1999,” Ecumenical Review 52, No. 1 (January 2000):  3–45. See also Thomas F. Best, “North America, United States of America, Churches Uniting in Christ” Ecumenical Review 54, No. 3 (July 2002):  402–6. The reports on CUIC, both that published in 2002 and that included in the “Survey of Church Union Negotiations 2003–2006,” published in 2006, emphasize that CUIC is a new relationship among the denominations that make up CUIC. Thus, in Best’s report published in 2002, “Thus Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC) signals a new relationship among churches which, although they retain their independence and inherited structures, have pledged before God ‘to draw closer in sacred things’ ” Best (2002): 405 [emphasis in original]. “New relationship” appears again and again in the reports on CUIC. 39 See Sheilagh M. Kresting, “United Kingdom—Scotland,” Ecumenical Review 58, Nos. 3–4 (July–October 2006): 338. This is a contribution to a larger report: Thomas F. Best and Church Union Correspondents, “Survey of Church Union negotiations 2003–2006,” Ecumenical Review 58, Nos. 3–4 (July–October 2006): 297–385.

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end points run to ideal states. Creatureliness will produce no other. “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:21b–23). To be one as the first and second persons of the Trinity are one runs to an ideal state; while God is fully capable of achieving that condition in and through us, it remains an eschatological telos. “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). Acknowledging that such a telos is eschatological is not resignation, for the New Testament.40 Rather, it is both a profound reliance on the present work of the triune God within and among us and a focusing of one’s energies, gathering them toward the best end, one that strengthens those energies. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:12–14) Paul goes on to add an encouragement appropriate here: “Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you” (Phil. 3:15).41 40 41

Joseph D. Small makes this point as well (Small, “What Is Communion,” 86). Robert W. Jenson uses the term anticipation to speak of this eschatological space: Perhaps the best category for the foundation of the church’s being is the category of anticipation, if we eliminate any idea that anticipating is an action that the church herself is to achieve. The church is community, but this community cannot gather as one until the last day; thus this community’s binding spirit is that Spirit whose very reality among us is “down payment” (Ephesians 1:14). The church is the Body of Christ, but she is the body of that Christ whose bodily communion with the Father involved precisely a bodily departure from his disciples and whose return in like fashion we still await.

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The visible unity of the church, then, is variable—there can be less and more of it.

Changeability and the forms of visible unity: The dynamism of unity and its structures The visible unity of the church will take form in varied structures— full communion agreements, united churches, councils of churches, and more, as noted earlier. These structures of unity will themselves be changeable. They will not be static, anymore than the institutional structures that they bring together are static. In some cases these forms of visible unity will move from one form toward another—for example, from full communion to organic union.42 Denominations will find that their disagreements about the way to live the Christian faith, and the theological commitments that undergird and frame that way are no longer significant. The ways of living the Christian faith to which each is presently committed have now merged to a degree that there is no longer any need for separate institutional structures. Changeability can come in other forms as well. Some denominations will, over time, lose members or find they no longer live the way of Christian life to which that denomination was originally committed. Or, changes in context may blur the distinctions

The church is what she is just and only as anticipation of what she is to be. (Jenson, “The Church and the Sacraments,” 216) 42

Meyer cites the Reformed and Lutheran churches in the Netherlands as instances of moving from church fellowship (a form of unity in reconciled diversity) to organic union. “The present discussion and negotiations between the Reformed and Lutheran churches in Holland, which aim at the formation of a united Protestant church in that country, appear to be an exception [to the observation that bilateral dialogues rarely move to organic union]. As is stated there on occasion, the intent is ‘to go beyond Leuenberg’ ” (Meyer, That All May Be One, 126, n. 129). These negotiations have led to an organic union, now called The Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PCN). It is striking to note that within the union allowance has been made for congregations to continue to maintain a distinctly Reformed or Lutheran ordering within their congregation, and there is an Evangelical Lutheran Synod within the PCN. See http://www.pkn.nl/organisatie/protestant-church/Paginas/Organisation. aspx, accessed February 16, 2013.

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between two denominations beyond recognition. Writing about Protestants in China, Gu Mengfei makes the claim that in current circumstances the denominational differences brought by missionaries from the West a century or more ago are no longer relevant, as the various Protestant groups (at least some of them) find a common home in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.43 Changeability will also come as denominations that had entered into a form of visible unity find that they have undergone internal changes that led them out of that particular form of visible unity. An attempt to forge a church union in Scotland provides an example of this. Efforts to form a union among several of the Protestant denominations in Scotland led to the formation in 1967 of the Multilateral Church Conversation in Scotland (MCCS), with the participation of the following denominations: Church of Scotland, Congregational Union of Scotland, Methodist Church in Scotland, Scottish Episcopal Church, United Free Church of Scotland, and United Reformed Church.44 By the mid-1990s it became clear that the MCCS would not succeed in its “specific aim . . . to produce a basis and plan of union for the participating churches.”45 A  new initiative involving five of the six participants in the MCCS was

43

Gu Mengfei, “The Post-Denominational Era Chinese Churches on the Way Towards Unity,” The Ecumenical Review 60, No. 3 (July 2008):  271–87. Mengfei makes a strong claim that the Three-Self Movement is “postdenominational,” bringing an end to denomination in China. But it is not clear that this claim is entirely accurate. On Mengfei’s own account, the Three-Self Movement does not include the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, in China there are at least two ecclesial structures in the same region claiming to be the church, a situation that immediately raises questions about the relationship of these two structures to the one church, and thus to one another. Mengfei does not, in this article, make the claim that the Three-Self Movement is the one true church in China, and the Roman Catholic Church is not. Further, Mengfei seems not to see that the Three-Self Movement itself is a denomination, an intermediary structure between a particular, limited number of Christian congregations and the one true church. Mengfei’s claim is also undercut by reports that the Three-Self Movement, important as it is, does not include all Protestants in China. See M. Ruokanen, “K. H.  Ting’s Contribution to the Contextualization of Christianity in China,” Modern Theology 25, No. 1 (2009): 120–1, n. 1. 44 John N. Wylie, “Scotland,” Ecumenical Review 47, No. 1 (January 1995):  93. This report is a contribution to a larger report:  Thomas F. Best and Church Union Correspondents, “Survey of Church Union negotiations 1992–1994,” Ecumenical Review 47, No. 1 (January 1995): 70–103. 45 Wylie, “Scotland,” 94.

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launched in February 1996, as the Scottish Church Initiative for Union (SCIFU). Participants included the Church of Scotland, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church (through the  Synod of Scotland), and the United Reformed Church (in 2000  the URC and the Scottish Congregational Church merged). In 2002 those working together in SCIFU published a proposal, not for a plan of union, but outlining the steps to be taken in order to prepare a plan of union.46 The member denominations were asked for their commitment to taking these next steps. Two of the denominations, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church, made the requested commitment. The Church of Scotland overwhelmingly declined. In debate on the measure it was clear that for a strong majority the framework for the proposed union was unacceptable, requiring sacrifice of some of the Church of Scotland’s theological commitments regarding the role of councils in church governance, in favor of bishops. The Scottish Episcopal Church, which considered the matter after the Church of Scotland, declined to commit to moving forward, also indicating that the framework for the proposed union required unacceptable sacrifice of some of its theological commitments regarding the role of the bishop in the life of the church. What emerges in the story of the Scottish Church Initiative for Union is the ongoing vitality of two distinct ways of living out the Christian faith––presbyterian and episcopal. There are no independent grounds for ruling one, the other, or both to be a distortion of the Christian faith. Neither the Church of Scotland nor the Scottish Episcopal Church was willing to declare that the other was a false church (had either been willing to do so, they would never have entered into conversations about possible union). The union talks were conducted in the hope that it would be possible to fashion a form of life together in which there would come to be a single denominational structure. In the end, it proved impossible to do so. The forms in which the unity of the church will be visibly embodied are changeable, as they exist across time. They will be as dynamic as the visible church. This is one of the strengths of

46

Sheilagh M. Kresting, “United Kingdom–Scotland,” 338. I rely on Kresting’s report in what follows.

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articulated unity:  its ability to change and adapt as intermediary ecclesial structures adapt and change.

Some objections: Walter Cardinal Kasper Objections to suggestions that the visible unity of the church might be structured in this way are not hard to find. In the introduction to his book, That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity Today, Walter Cardinal Kasper offers typical criticisms of the notion of reconciled diversity.47 Kasper accounts for the development of the notion of reconciled diversity in this way: having noted the absence of significant ecumenical consensus in ecclesiology, he remarks that “The different understandings of the Church have necessarily led to different conceptions of the envisaged unity of the churches. This, in turn, has burdened and hampered the ecumenical dialogue. Certainly, all agree that the united Church cannot be a unitary Church but a unity in diversity. We often speak of reconciled diversity.”48 Kasper goes on to suggest the need for further analysis on two fronts. First, there is the need to have a clear, substantive, and shared understanding of the goal toward which we journey, which is visible unity. Harding Meyer has made the same point:  “The desire for unity among Christians and churches never results in actual, concrete steps toward overcoming divisions without at least an implicit notion of the kind of unity or community toward which one is striving in the first place . . . A goal-oriented movement of this sort must articulate as clearly as possible the aims commonly agreed upon by its adherents.”49 There can be little question that this is correct: if we have different destinations in mind, the journey is going to be far more difficult. Second, Kasper suggests that there needs to be intensive ecumenical work on ecclesiology, and also asserts that there is general agreement that the unity of the church cannot be monolithic, but must be diverse. Kasper’s text suggests that the way of talking about this non-monolithic, diverse unity is by use of the

47 Walter Kasper, That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity (London:  Burns & Oates, 2004). 48 Kasper, That They May All, 3. 49 Meyer, That All May Be One,1.

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concept of reconciled diversity. But it is unclear what Kasper actually intends, given what follows. Having arrived at “unity in reconciled diversity,” Kasper turns to assessing that concept. “This formula,” he notes, “can be understood in different ways.” Kasper continues with a Roman Catholic understanding of reconciled diversity: The Catholic Church, respecting all possible and legitimate traditions, aims at unity in faith, sacraments and church ministries. The churches of the Reformation refer instead to the Augsburg Confession, which states in article 7 that the preaching of the Gospel in its purity and the administration of the sacraments according to the Gospel are sufficient conditions (satis est) for the unity of the Church. There is today a widespread interpretation that this means that unity only requires an agreement on the fundamental understanding of the Gospel, and that church communion does not rule out differences in understanding of ministries, in institutional forms and in confessions of faith, which are sometimes even contradictory. According to this position, each church can be in Eucharistic and church communion with the others while keeping its own independence and structures.50 Kasper then draws the conclusion: “The conviction on which this book is based is that aiming at this form of unity is theologically too modest and even contradictory. The churches should certainly remain churches, but also progressively become one Church (J. Ratzinger).”51 It’s difficult to know quite what to make of this. On the one hand, Kasper takes it as a settled matter that there must and will be diversity in the church. He asserts that “the churches should certainly remain churches.” And yet those churches must in some way

50

Kasper, That They May All, 3.  On Kasper’s account the Catholic Church and the churches of the Reformation agree that the unity to which the church is called includes unity in faith and in sacraments, with the Catholic Church adding unity in ministries (as does, in its own way, the New Delhi definition: “in such wise that ministry and members are accepted by all”). Of course, having agreement on what we should agree about is not the same as agreeing on those matters. 51 Kasper, That They May All, 3–4.

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cease to be churches and become one Church.52 Everyone is said to be in agreement that the unity of the church must be a unity in diversity, and our common way of speaking of unity in diversity is reconciled diversity, and yet reconciled diversity is to be rejected because it really is a cover for “unreconciled diversity and a union of churches without real unity rather than of a reconciled diversity.” We can be said to be agreed that there must be diversity in the unity, but once that point has been made there is no pressing need to explore what that necessary diversity must be—diversity of culture, of worship style, or of ecclesial structure? At least a few things are clear in the apparent contradictions in this passage from an author with a long and distinguished record of commitment to ecumenical work and living. First, it is indeed generally agreed that the unity of the church is not monolithic, and our efforts to make the unity of the church visible in the world cannot be driven by visions of a monolithic structure to be constructed by our own effort. That was the vision of the builders of the Tower of Babel. So far, so good. But that gets us only small traction on the issues we face. Once we have agreed that the unity of the church is not monolithic, it is incumbent on us to go on and specify what forms of diversity are to be expected in a church that is living the Christian faith faithfully. What are the specific indicators of the visibility of the unity of the church? What specific structures presently in place obscure or oppose the visibility of the unity of the church? Clearly, there has long been an implication that denomination somehow falls into the latter category. Equally clearly, it is the claim of this study that denomination is not inherently a denial of the unity of the church. The Christian faith can be lived faithfully in more than one way, and we cannot live all of them at once. Christians can, indeed must, live their faith in one of these ways. Christians will perforce gather in intermediary bodies to explore the embodiment of these ways. Geographical proximity is not the decisive factor in forming these intermediary bodies and

52 The shift from lower case to upper case is surely to the point here—what is envisioned is a transition from multiple bodies that belong to the genus “church” to a single body that in its concrete specificity stands as the sole instantiation of the genus “Church.” Kasper seems to wish to deny and to assert, at one and the same time, traditional Roman Catholic insistence that the visible unity of the church calls for a return to Rome.

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the congregations that make them up.53 There can be more than one of them within the same space.

An illustration: The Anglican Communion There are vivid examples in the church today, as at most times in its existence, of the difficulty in maintaining the unity of the church while making space for significant difference and disagreement, and the struggles generated by the effort to make such space. The struggles within many denominations over sexual ethics, and particularly the assessment of same-sex relationships vividly display the difficulties reaching a common mind and living that common understanding of the faith. A document published within the context of the Anglican Communion’s ongoing struggle over the unity and autonomy of its provinces provides a sharp account of the issues at stake in that struggle; what follows is a close reading of the document, seeking to draw out the ways in which it illuminates the issues at stake in this chapter. At issue in the conflict within the Anglican Communion is the struggle to hold together two impulses or imperatives:  autonomy (which is an element of diversity) and unity. In 2010 a group called the Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) published an essay, “Communion With Autonomy and Accountability,”54 which probes 53

Cuius regio, eius religio (cf. Chapter 5, n. 45) and the patchwork of churches that resulted shows the breakdown of the combination of geography with a requirement that there be only one ecclesial structure within a geographical area. On this side of the river we are Reformed, on that side they are Roman Catholic, and if you are Roman Catholic, wish to remain so, and are living on this side of the river, then you have to choose—convert from Roman Catholicism, or sell your possessions and move to the other side of the river. But why only those two choices? Why not allow Roman Catholics and Reformed on this side of the river? Of course, one might suggest that you and I  should talk it through and come to some agreement, perhaps forming a third kind of ecclesial body that melds and sublimates Reformed and Roman Catholic. But surely one result of a century of intensive ecumenical dialogue is a belief that such a melding represents, in many cases, an unacceptable loss of riches into which God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, has led us. 54 See Chapter  4, n.  22. 298. The authors are participants in the struggles they describe, and have a particular viewpoint on the events about which they speak. I  take up their work not to give an even-handed telling of the history involved, but because this particular paper identifies with great directness issues that are also raised by the articulated unity that I am proposing.

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the effort to balance autonomy and unity in a distinctively Anglican way (which the authors would presumably view as useful and appropriate well beyond the life of the Anglican Communion). In the essay the authors explore some of the issues that come into play when Christian ecclesial structures that are clearly distinct from one another, having clear internal coherence and a reasonably high level of mutual commitment internally among their members, then come into relationship with other, similar ecclesial structures to whom they are related more loosely, with a lower level of mutual commitment. The authors begin by noting that they have made the case that the dioceses of The Episcopal Church (TEC) have always had a significant degree of autonomy one from another. They note that this diocesan autonomy is analogous to TEC’s claims about the autonomy of the members of Anglican Communion in relationship to one another. The authors continue by noting that mutual accountability55 is required if two autonomous bodies are genuinely to be in communion with one another. That is, the churches of the Communion are autonomous in the sense that they are self-governing, but by tradition, now articulated in the Anglican Covenant, they are bound one to another by mutual subjection in the Lord. In The Episcopal Church our dioceses, by constitution, are autonomous. What we all too often have not practiced either in our internal or external relations is mutual subjection.56 Autonomy, these authors note, can become “self-absorbed,” as a diocese or province turns in on itself, living by its own standards, with reference only to its own concerns. The exercise of selfabsorbed autonomy, the authors continue, has had destructive

55 Early in the document the authors use the phrase “mutual subjection” to express this accountability, though they quickly begin to use accountability in place of subjection: “First, autonomy is not an end in itself. For Christians, autonomy is always to be exercised for a higher purpose. In a communion of churches that autonomy should be exercised, in the words of the Anglican Covenant, with ‘accountability.’ ” 56 The difficult part is mutual subjection, not subjection. Subjection (coercion) is much easier (though not necessarily easy).

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consequences.57 In the midst of the destructive consequences of autonomy exercised in such a way, questions clamor for attention:  “How are these destructive consequences to be reconciled with autonomy? Is autonomy itself the problem? Must autonomy be rejected in favor of authoritarian structures?” In other words, where does the root problem lie: in autonomy itself, or in the particular way autonomy is being exercised?58 The authors insist that it is the latter. Autonomy itself is not the problem. Rather, the problem lies in the abuse of autonomy. They seek to clarify both the legitimacy and proper function of autonomy. Their starting point is an insistence that autonomy does not stand alone, but must be set alongside and limited by accountability to those with whom one is in relationship.59 “First, autonomy is not an end in itself. For Christians, autonomy is always to be exercised for a higher purpose. In a communion of churches that autonomy should be exercised, in the words of the Anglican Covenant, with ‘accountability.’ Indeed, without accountability there is no communion, and a church that is unaccountable has by definition ordered its life outside the communion of churches.” Autonomy must be limited by accountability to other churches. What accountability amounts to will, of course, be the subject of debate. Equally important, and very much to the point of this investigation of denomination, is the question, who are the other churches to whom a given church must be accountable? In the context of the ACI document, clearly the intent is that a province of the Anglican Communion must be accountable to the other provinces of the Anglican Communion. But why stop there? Why limit a province’s accountability to the other members of the Anglican Communion? If there should be such accountability, what form 57

Here is their list of consequences, drawn from the acts of those with differing views: “bishops who permit communion of the unbaptized and same sex marriages in direct violation of the Book of Common Prayer and the canons; dioceses that withdraw from TEC altogether; TEC’s repudiation of the Communion’s moratoria; and the breaking of communion and resulting cross-border interventions by other provinces.” 58 These questions apply to denominations generally. 59 In terms of the argument presented in this book, the unity of the Anglican Communion is a matter of the nature, the character of the relationships between the bodies that belong to it, relationships that structural arrangements must serve.

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should it take? Why should a province not be accountable to, say, the Roman Catholic Church? The long history of intense dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church embodies a deeply committed endeavor to discover how such accountability might be offered and received. Nevertheless, in the meantime, the provinces of the Anglican Communion are (on this way of understanding accountability in the Anglican Communion) accountable in some way only to one another. Dioceses of a province must, presumably, be accountable to one another. Presumably, too, a diocese is accountable to the other provinces of the Anglican Communion. But in the present circumstances of Anglicanism, that is also disputed. In the view of the paper’s authors, In the past, TEC has exercised its autonomy with accountability in communion with the other Anglican churches . . . But TEC has now repudiated any accountability to the larger communion. This presents TEC’s dioceses with an awful choice. How will they exercise their autonomy? To whom will they be accountable? To no one but themselves? To an isolated and declining body that itself rejects accountability to the church catholic? Or, through the Anglican Covenant, to the wider Communion? So there are dioceses in TEC that will have to choose to whom they will be accountable. They will surely make that choice based in part on a discernment: with whom do we share the broadest set of theological commitments?60 Living the Christian faith together in a particular way, on the basis of shared commitments about belief and practice, was noted earlier as one of the basic elements of denomination. What the authors of this document are trying to do is to work out how to live the unity and diversity to which Christ calls us. They are seeking clarity on precisely the questions at stake in this chapter: how faithfully to live the unity that we have been given in Christ, without suppressing the diversity that has equally been given to us.61 60

Because these dioceses are members of TEC, the denomination itself will have something to say about to whom they will be accountable. 61 The authors are clear that the unity of the church is not something we make, but something we have been given, and which makes us:

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The authors advance a vision of unity that they set in contrast to what they understand to be the Roman Catholic Church’s way of structuring unity. As in the Roman Catholic Church, there may be intermediate bodies or conferences, but the key ecclesiological relationship is between the diocesan bishop and the universal college of bishops. And, that essential relationship can be given juridical force (polity), as in the Roman Catholic Church, or that relationship can be entered voluntarily as is the hope of Anglicanism. The authors claim that the bond of unity in Anglicanism (mutual accountability) is to be entered into only voluntarily. They understand this to be different than the bond of unity operative in the Roman Catholic Church. But the Roman Catholic Church surely asks of its bishops that they also will the connection that the institutional arrangements make for them (relationship to all other However, the relationship [the key ecclesiological relationship . . . between the diocesan bishop and the universal college of bishops] itself is a given if the Church is to be truly the Church of Christ. Hence, the earlier 1920 Lambeth Conference said, in its bold appeal for Christian unity, that “God wills fellowship,” through his own act in and through Jesus and his Spirit, and that this fellowship must be “manifest so far as this world is concerned, in an outward, visible, and united society, holding one faith, having its own recognized officers, using God-given means of grace, and inspiring all its members to the world-wide service of the Kingdom of God. This is what we mean by the Catholic Church.” There is no such thing as a “diocese” or “province” or local “church” that is also “Catholic” outside such a visible, episcopally “ordered” “society”. At its best, Anglicanism cannot be catholic alone; at its worst, we can be woefully sub-ecclesial in our complacent bits and pieces. Provinces, dioceses, and congregations are all varieties of intermediary structures in the church, all in varying degrees fragments, and thus they exist alongside one another, dependent on one another for embodying the fullness of the church. Only in the final sentence do the authors show any willingness to grant that the Anglican Communion itself is also partial and interdependent. Curious here is the way in which the authors insist on episcopal church order as a necessary condition for a province, diocese, or local congregation to be “Catholic,” when their quotation from the Lambeth Conference of 1920 does not insist on bishops (“having its own recognized officers”). Further, the authors are unclear whether the “universal college of bishops” with whom a diocesan bishop is to be in relationship includes bishops of other denominations and ecclesial structures—say, the college of Roman Catholic bishops, or the bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

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bishops and to the Pope), but should a bishop or group of bishops waver in willing, the structure remains and will be enforced. The role of bishop places a bishop into a particular structural relationship with “the universal college of [Roman Catholic] bishops,” (phrase in brackets not in original) all of them set in a particular structural relationship to the Pope. For the Anglican Communion, these authors propose, the structure of the Anglican Communion does not do so at this time. There is ongoing debate about establishing such structures. The tug of the Roman Catholic Church and its way of structuring unity is a constant foil throughout the essay. They clearly view Roman Catholicism as an example of mutual submission without autonomy.62 The challenge they face is to describe a workable alternative that allows autonomy and yet involves real mutual accountability––accountability that has meaningful power to limit the exercise of autonomy. They suggest that the general concepts of ecclesiology will provide leverage on the hard specificity of church polity and its specification of what level authority resides with whom, for what purposes. This distinction between autonomy and the exercise of that autonomy in communion with accountability reflects another distinction: that between the narrow concept of polity and the broader one of ecclesiology. Church polity is the “law” governing the church; such legal structures range from those emphasizing autonomy to those that are more authoritarian. But to assume that a polity respecting autonomy necessarily entails a self-absorbed ecclesiology [viz., an ecclesiology in which autonomy is exercised with no accountability to any other ecclesial body] is to give up on Anglicanism! It is to confuse the “human construct” of polity with an ecclesiology that accepts God’s “gracious gift” of communion. It is the goal of the Anglican experiment to manifest a universal or catholic ecclesiology through the voluntary mutual subjection of lawful autonomy to the wider communion. To think that ecclesiology must be exhaustively 62

The debate between then-Cardinals Ratzinger and Kasper over the relationship between the local and the universal church, referenced already, makes it clear that the right balance of autonomy and accountability is also a matter of disagreement within Roman Catholicism.

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incorporated into polity—that polity begets a full ecclesiology— is to decide that communion is not possible without authoritarian structures. We are unwilling to concede this point.63 Central here is the search for structures of unity that do not require “juridical force (polity)” in order to function. Given the authors’ judgment that TEC has renounced mutual accountability, and the present fragmented state of the Anglican Communion, the life of the Anglican Communion is a portrait of the difficulties “manifest[ing] a universal or catholic ecclesiology through the voluntary mutual subjection of lawful autonomy to the wider communion.” Unity in the absence of coercion is a profoundly difficult task.

Pretending we’re not what we are: Denomination’s besetting sins Denominations suffer from two characteristic failings, which distort the defining elements of denomination. These characteristic failings can be thought of as denomination’s besetting sins—sins to which denominations easily incline by virtue of what they are. These besetting sins involve a failure to mediate between congregation and church. Denominations fall into these patterns of sin when they come to regard themselves or to behave as ends rather than means. Each of these besetting sins distorts the unity of the church and the church’s effort to live its unity in visible ways. First, denominations are inclined to proclaim themselves to be the one true church in its entirety. They arrogate to themselves characteristics of the one true church that they properly possess only by virtue of their intermediary purpose and function; they claim to possess fully and properly characteristics they have only secondarily, by virtue of their relationship to the one church. Denominations that have succumbed to this sin regard their own boundaries as coterminous with the boundaries of the church itself. The normative definition of denomination offered above specified that denominations are organized around one among multiple ways of living the 63

The proposal being offered in this book shares the unwillingness to concede that point.

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Christian faith. To absolutize one’s denomination is to absolutize that which is not absolute. It is a form of idolatry. Denominational idolatry erases the distinction between one’s denomination and the church universal. Denomination is no longer taken to be a middle term, a mediating reality. Denominational ties and commitments are absolutized. One sure sign of a slip into this besetting sin is the willingness of a denomination to begin to make absolute claims, either externally on other denominations, or internally on its own members. It is not difficult to understand how denominations might be drawn to this besetting sin: denominations are, in the account offered in this book, vessels of holy things, mediators between the one true church and the congregations in which Christians live out their worship of and commitment to Jesus Christ. There is a constant danger of confusing vessels with that which fills them. Denominations embody that confusion by making claims for themselves that they may not faithfully make. Second, denominations also characteristically veer toward the opposite sin, a form of blasphemy. Denominations (and particularly those who are in them) often come to regard denominations as being entirely unholy—mere human arrangements, established and controlled by human beings for purely human benefit. It is not hard to understand how this might happen. Denominations are institutional structures, shaped and changed by human beings, according to the best wisdom particular human beings have in a particular context. It is always possible to see the vessel and fail to see that which fills it, its place in service of something larger. The chalice, paten, bread, and wine of the eucharist: each is a deeply human artifact, none of them occurring simply naturally. They, like denominations, can be regarded in isolation from God’s use of these particular artifacts, in a unique way, for embodiment of the Christian life. This besetting sin of denomination is a form of blasphemy—treating a denomination as if there is nothing of Jesus Christ in it, as if it were devoid of the body of Christ, and merely a human contraption. This disregard of the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in and through denominations often leads to a willingness to treat denominational commitments and the relationships built on those commitments as if they were little more than conveniences, or inconveniences to be dropped at will.

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Other denominational sins also need to be taken into account while considering the case against denomination. Denominations have often been characterized by institutionalism, parochialism, tribalism, nationalism, the problem of wealth, and fractious instability (the oft-cited multiplication of denominations), to consider only a few of the possible charges.64 The sins of denominations, it is far beyond denying, are various. An examination of the history of denominations could provide many examples. But an examination of the history of denomination also provides resources for a positive understanding of this ecclesiological category.

Conclusion “The two concepts—unity and diversity—are symbiotic.”65 One’s understanding of the unity to which the church is called has direct implications for one’s understanding of the diversity to which the church is called. The two terms are interdependent. Denomination places a high value on the diversity of ways of living out the Christian faith; it has a vision of unity that makes space for such diversity. Denomination implies a unity that is complex and rich and varied, a vision of articulated unity over against visions of a unity that is to have the same form across the church. The question of the nature of the unity we seek has constantly been before the church, and has been a constant within the modern ecumenical movement since its earliest days. It is a perennial question, and even the achievement of a statement such as the New Delhi definition calls for further work to be done in exploring the unity and diversity to which the church is called. The unity to which the church is called is a unity of relationship, and only secondarily of institutional structures. This is as true

64

Amy Plantinga Pauw explores denominational sins, and the need to confess and repent of them in “Presbyterianism and Denomination,” particularly in a section headed “Confessing the sin of the denominational church,” in Denomination, ed. Collins and Ensign-George, 136–43. On this point, Niebuhr’s The Social Sources of Denominationalism is on point, with its stringent identification of denominational sins. 65 Kinnamon, The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement, 51.

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for organic unity as it is for forms of reconciled diversity. As such, unity is a task, an action to be carried out ever anew. The challenge is to fashion institutional structures that will allow relationship to develop—the kind of relationship the Holy Spirit is prodding us toward and enabling us to undertake. Denominations and the relationships they form with one another can be such structures, though they often fail, frequently understanding themselves to be something more or less than what they are.

7 The communion to which we are called: Church and denomination

Introduction God does not call us only to diversity and unity. God calls us to communion, that for which we were created, on which we depend, and into which we are redeemed. The church is called to be both a locus and an agent of communion, gathering its members together, and drawing them into the place where we are reminded of, where we are fitted for, and where we learn to tell of God’s communion. The church sends its members into the world where we live and work as agents of the communion that is God’s good gift. Gathered to be sent, and sent to be gathered, we are offered in each way the invitation to live and tell the fullness of life found in this way of life together. The calls to diversity and to unity serve the comprehensive call to communion; they are part of the outworking of the communion that God creates. And so in this chapter we turn to the larger call, to communion, and to the church, which denomination is to serve. The previous chapters have set forth an understanding of denomination, making the case that denomination is among the legitimate forms of intermediary structure in the church. This was followed by analysis of God’s call to diversity and unity, those characteristics of the church woven together in symbiotic relationship. These two chapters approached the ecclesiological issues raised

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by denomination by working from particular (congregation and denomination) toward general (church) aspects of the church and its life. This chapter moves in the reverse direction, offering a general theological view of the church in which denomination is located and placed. This chapter gathers up elements of the previous three chapters and seeks to coordinate them within a broad ecclesiological framework in which denomination has a role that can be identified and understood. The work done here integrates denomination into an understanding of the church. There are many understandings of the church, some of which have been elaborated at great length and to significant effect:  for example, Body of Christ, Bride of Christ, People of God, Agent of God’s Liberating Work, and many more. The understanding of the church presented here begins with a general statement about the church. The identity of the church is then framed by four interconnecting ecclesiological framing elements that together provide avenues further to explore the content of the general statement about the church. The four framing elements are narrative (or story, particularly a history), communion (often referred to by koinonia, the Greek word translated as communion), the mission of God, and the people of God. Having elaborated those four framing elements, I  follow by briefly considering the church’s nature, mission, and structure, and the place of denomination.

The church: A general view Questions about the church, about its faithfulness or unfaithfulness, about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the organizational forms and institutional structures it adopts, and about who belongs to it, on what grounds—questions such as these can be answered only on the basis of a general, primary understanding of the church: what it is, and who it is.1 1

Cheryl M.  Peterson has proposed that the question “Who is the church?” is more helpful to mainline Protestants in the United States today than “What is the church?” Cheryl M. Peterson, Who Is the Church: An Ecclesiology for the TwentyFirst Century (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2013). Joseph Komonchak articulates the importance of the question “Who?” in Joseph A. Komonchak, Who Are the

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There is broad ecumenical agreement today that the church’s being is grounded in its participation in God’s mission, a mission to bring creatures into communion with God and with one another, a mission carried out by a distinct people gathered and empowered by God.2 Central to this broad agreement are: the story played out by the long narrative arc of God’s mission across the span of history, from initial creation to consummation; communion; the mission of God; and, the people of God. The importance of narrative arc, communion, the mission of God, and the people of God can be seen in three documents drawn from different traditions within the Christian faith: first, the ecumenical convergence document The Church: Towards a Common Vision; second, Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church; and third, The Scots Confession, from the Reformed tradition. The similarities and differences in the way these documents handle the narrative arc, communion, the mission of God, and the people of God shed light on the theological advantages and issues involved in using these four elements to frame a general understanding of the church.

Ecumenical convergence: The Church: Towards a common vision The centrality of communion (and the community in which it is lived) in God’s purposes for creation is articulated in The Church? The Père Marquette Lecture in Theology 2008 (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2008). Komonchak points out that this question was put before theologians by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his essay, “Who Is the Church?” in which von Balthasar offered his own answer: in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology, Vol. II, Spouse of the Word, trans. A. V. Littledale with Alexander Dru (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1991), 143–91. The question, who is the church, appropriate as it is, cannot replace the question, what is the church. 2 “The Church, as the body of Christ, acts by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue his life-giving mission in prophetic and compassionate ministry and so participates in God’s work of healing a broken world.” The Church: Towards a Common Vision, Faith & Order Paper No. 214 (Geneva: WCC, 2013), §1. (Henceforth references will be to TCTCV, with the paragraph number, except in cases such as this one, where reference is made to a part of the text outside the numbered paragraphs.) This focus on the church’s participation in God’s mission is often referred to by the Latin words so translated: the missio Dei.

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Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV), an ecumenical convergence text developed by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches.3 TCTCV cites the Great Commission (Mt. 28:18–20), and then draws out the implications for understanding the church: This command by Jesus already hints at what he wanted his Church to be in order to carry out this mission. It was to be a community of witness, proclaiming the kingdom which Jesus had first proclaimed, inviting human beings from all nations to saving faith. It was to be a community of worship, initiating new members by baptism in the name of the Holy Trinity. It was to be a community of discipleship, in which the apostles, by proclaiming the Word, baptizing and celebrating the Lord’s Supper, were to guide new believers to observe all that Jesus himself had commanded.4 Saving faith (to which the church is “inviting human beings from all nations”) is faith that in Jesus Christ we have a way into right relationship with God and therein with one another, a relationship that belongs to the kingdom of God, a relationship that is communion. To stand in this way in the kingdom of God is to participate in a community ordered in ways that embody life in its fullness. To be in this community is to live in communion with God and other creatures, and to be empowered to call others to join it, in this way participating in God’s mission. As TCTCV puts it a bit later, “In the Church, through the Holy Spirit, believers are united with Jesus Christ and thereby share a living relationship with the Father, who speaks to them and calls forth their trustful response.”5 Nor is communion only to be found between believers and God. God’s work of redemption enables people to enter into communion with one

3

In the introduction of TCTCV the Faith and Order Commission identifies a convergence text as “a text which, while not expressing full consensus on all the issues considered, is much more than simply an instrument to stimulate further study. Rather, the following pages express how far Christian communities have come in their common understanding of the Church, showing the progress that has been made and indicating work that still needs to be done” (TCTCV, §1). 4 TCTCV, §2. 5 TCTCV, §13.

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another: “Christians believe that in the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit, God established the new covenant for the purpose of uniting all human beings with himself and with one another.”6 TCTCV finds the source of this communion in God’s very being, seeing the Trinity as itself a communion of divine persons. “Communion, whose source is the very life of the Holy Trinity, is both the gift by which the Church lives and, at the same time, the gift that God calls the Church to offer to a wounded and divided humanity in hope of reconciliation and healing.”7 Communion is not simply one of God’s intentions for the creation, but is found in the nature of God’s triune being. TCTCV also emphasizes the mission of God and the role of the church in that mission. In its first paragraph, TCTCV articulates the relationship of the mission of God and the church. “The Church, as the body of Christ, acts by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue his life-giving mission in prophetic and compassionate ministry and so participates in God’s work of healing a broken world.”8 Here again this aspect of the church is rooted in God’s triune being: “God’s plan to save the world (sometimes referred to with the Latin expression missio Dei or ‘the mission of God’) is carried out through the sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit. This saving activity of the Holy Trinity is essential to an adequate understanding of the Church.”9 TCTCV is explicit in naming mission as central to the existence of the church. “As divinely established communion, the Church belongs to God and does not exist for itself. It is by its very nature missionary, called and sent to witness in its own life to that communion which God intends for all humanity and for all creation in the kingdom.”10 The church exists not for itself, not for communion focused only inward on its members, but for participation in the mission of God, which includes and also extends beyond humanity, to the entire creation. The creation of community is related to the narrative arc of creation. TCTCV roots the drive to communion at the very beginning 6

TCTCV, §17. TCTCV, §1. 8 TCTCV, §1. 9 TCTCV, §3. 10 TCTCV, §13. 7

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of the narrative arc that runs from creation to eschaton: “According to the Bible, man and woman were created in God’s image (cf. Gen. 1:26–27), so bearing an inherent capacity for communion (in Greek koinonia) with God and with one another.”11 This communion is damaged by human sin. God is thereafter active in the world to repair communion, with definitive and irreversible repair happening in and through Jesus Christ. “But God persisted in faithfulness despite human sin and error. The dynamic history of God’s restoration of koinonia found its irreversible achievement in the incarnation and paschal mystery of Jesus Christ.”12 Communion is central to God’s work of creation and thus also to the life and work of the church. The forms and structures in which the church exists are to be in service of joining God’s mission of creating and restoring communion. Two weaknesses in TCTCV are relevant to this chapter. First, TCTCV has noticeably little to say about the people of God prior to and existing alongside the church that is inaugurated in Jesus Christ—about Judaism and the Jewish people, ancient or post-biblical. A catalog of biblical citations in TCTCV shows that the document includes 150 biblical citations, eight of which are from the Old Testament. Of those, four are cited in TCTCV because they are quoted or echoed in the New Testament. This pattern of citations is an indicator of the subdued role played by the people of God in TCTCV, for the people of God clearly includes the Jewish people and their distinct patterns of worship and beliefs. Our other two documents (Lumen Gentium and the Scots Confession) focus more attention on the people of God as a central concept for understanding the church. Second, TCTCV flinches in the face of one of the central ecumenical questions: does the unity of the church allow for multiple ecclesiastical structures to exist within the church without being coordinated within a single overarching ecclesiastical institution— a single polity over which a single ecclesiastical authority would exercise governing power? This is, of course, precisely the question raised by the existence of denominations and the question of their legitimacy within the unity of the church. TCTCV insists both that

11 12

TCTCV, §1. TCTCV, §1.

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there is room for legitimate diversity, and that there must be unity. Presumably, all Christian groups would acknowledge the truth of that claim. The issue is in defining legitimate. Here TCTCV has set aside the more thorough discussion of this matter found in its predecessor document, The Nature and Mission of the Church (hereafter, Nature and Mission). Nature and Mission did not claim to resolve the question of how to divide legitimate from illegitimate diversity. What it offered was a substantial appraisal of what affirmations can be made in this disputed area regarding the need both for unity and for diversity, and factors that shape our discernment of what marks off legitimate from illegitimate diversity.13 This appraisal includes the following helpful distinction:  “Diversity is not the same as division. Within the Church, divisions (heresies and schisms), as well as political conflicts and expressions of hatred, threaten God’s gift of communion.”14 What distinguishes division from diversity is hostility and hatred between groups and individuals, as we have seen. While it is understandable that in developing TCTCV it was necessary drop material from Nature and Mission, it is unfortunate that the distinctions made in these sentences of Nature and Mission were deleted. Following its discussion of affirmations that can be made regarding the value of unity and diversity, Nature and Mission provides a substantial section that seeks to lay out what constitutes the disagreement in regard to legitimate unity, and identifies points on which dialogue is needed.15 In TCTCV the question of what distinguishes legitimate from illegitimate diversity is given a more cursory treatment. The value of diversity is affirmed.16 The need to prevent diversity from violating unity is 13

The Nature and Mission of the Church:  A  Stage on the Way to a Common Statement (Faith and Order Paper 198; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2005), §§60–3, the subsection on “Communion and Diversity.” Note that the title of this subsection is not the common and generic “Unity and Diversity.” This acknowledges that in God’s mission, and therefore in the church, unity has a particular valence: not all unity is communion. 14 Nature and Mission, §63. 15 Nature and Mission includes sections printed in shaded boxes that indicate places of continuing disagreement that were identified but not resolved by the groups that worked on developing the document. They are not included in the series of numbered paragraphs. The section laying out disagreements related to distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate diversity, titled “Limits of Diversity?” is found in Nature and Mission, 37-9. 16 TCTCV, §28.

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also affirmed, underlining the importance of unity.17 There follows a statement of the long history of difficulty distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate diversity, followed by statements of the imperative of keeping diversity within legitimate bounds, defending unity, and defending legitimate diversities.18 TCTCV affirms that “There are limits to legitimate diversity,” but never clarifies where those limits lie, thereby bypassing the central question in these matters. The reality of a church that exists in multiple ecclesial organizations, in particular the question of the legitimacy of denomination, goes unaddressed. TCTCV develops a view of the church that gives prominent place to communion and to the mission of God, exploring both elements of the church’s life. It reveals some of the strengths and weaknesses of these elements, strengths and weakness also probed in Lumen Gentium and the Scots Confession.

The Roman Catholic Church: Lumen Gentium The same emphasis on communion and the mission of God are found in the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. At its beginning the church is identified: it “is in Christ as a sacrament or instrumental sign of intimate union with God and of the unity of all humanity,” and the Council affirms the role of the church in attaining “full unity in Christ.” Communion, beginning with communion with God, is at the heart of the church’s being and identity. This initial statement is immediately broadened, as the theme of communion is woven together with the narrative arc of God’s purposes across history: The eternal Father, by a completely free and mysterious design of his wisdom, created the whole world. He decided to raise human beings to share in the divine life; and when in Adam they fell, he did not abandon them but provided them always with the means of salvation, having in view Christ the redeemer . . . All those who believe in Christ he decided to call together within holy church,

17 18

TCTCV, §29. TCTCV, §30.

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which right from the beginning of the world had been foreshadowed, wonderfully prepared in the history of the people of Israel and in the ancient covenant, established in these last times and made manifest through the outpouring of the Spirit; it will reach its glorious completion at the end of time. Then, as we read in the holy fathers, all the just from Adam onward, “from Abel the just right to the last of the elect,” will be gathered together in the universal church in the Father’s presence.19 Here God’s mission—creating communion, particularly with humanity—stretches back from the ministry of Jesus Christ to the creation, as it stretches forward to the New Jerusalem. Communion is central to God’s purposes from the very beginning. And from the beginning those who believe are gathered together into a distinct body of people. “It has pleased God . . . to sanctify and save men and women not individually and without regard for what binds them together, but to set them up as a people who would acknowledge him in truth and serve him in holiness.” The people of Israel are chosen to be that people. God chose them and “made a covenant with them and instructed them step by step, making himself and his intention know to them in their history and sanctifying them for himself.” Following on from this, there is “the new covenant that Christ instituted . . . calling together from Jews and gentiles a people which would be bound together in unity not according to the flesh but in the Spirit, and which would be the new people of God.”20 The mission of God includes the establishment of a particular people, called either the people of God or the church. Thus within God’s purpose the church exists, in some form, even prior to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and prior to the day of Pentecost. Making this claim requires some way of accounting for the differences between the Jewish people, ordered in a particular way in the history narrated by the Old Testament, and the Christian church whose origin is narrated, and which is spoken to in the texts of the

19

Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, as translated in Norman P. Tanner S.J., ed.; Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Volume Two, Trent to Vatican II (London: Sheed & Ward and Washington, DC:  Georgetown University Press, 1990), §2 (849–50). 20 Lumen Gentium, §9 (855). The quotations earlier in this paragraph are from this source.

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New Testament. There is an additional complication: the relationship of Christians to the people of God (the Jewish people) prior to Pentecost may be different than the relationship between the two after Pentecost, Pentecost being the point at which the followers of Jesus Christ are empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit to be the people of God in a distinct way. If we are to see the church as part of the outworking of the mission of God that stretches from creation to consummation, then it will be necessary to understand the relationship between the church that flows from Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry, and the group of people whose story is in part narrated in the Old Testament. This is necessary not only for Lumen Gentium, but for all accounts of the people of God that begin earlier than the ministry of Jesus Christ. Lumen Gentium offers two ways of understanding the existence of the people of God (or, the church) in these two distinct forms. The first and primary way is found already in the second section of the document: “All those who believe in Christ he [God] decided to call together within holy church, which right from the beginning of the world had been foreshadowed, wonderfully prepared in the history of the people of Israel and in the ancient covenant.”21 Here the church exists prior to Pentecost in a shadow way, as “foreshadowed.” This gathered people of God prior to Jesus’ ministry is understood to be a forerunner: “the history of the people of Israel” lays the groundwork for the establishment of the church “in these last times,” in which the church now is no longer shadowy, but is “made manifest.”22 A second way of understanding God’s work in and through this group of people is hinted at in Lumen Gentium. Just as Israel according to the flesh, who wandered in the desert, is already called the church of God (see 2 Es 13,1; Nm 20,4; Dt 23:1 ff.), so the new Israel, while journeying through this present world in search of a permanent city which lies in the future (see

21

Lumen Gentium, §2. This way of understanding the relationship of the two forms of the people of God is echoed in Nostra Aetate, Declaration on the Church’s Relation to Non-Christian Religions, as translated in Norman P. Tanner S.J., ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Volume Two, Trent to Vatican II (London: Sheed & Ward and Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), §1, 2 (968–71), §4. 22

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Heb 13,14), is also called the church of Christ (see Mt 16,18), since he has acquired it by his own blood (see Ac 20, 28), has filled it with his Spirit and set it up with means suitable for visible and social unity.23 Here the qualifiers are removed, the shadows are dispelled, and the people of God gathered prior to Jesus Christ’s ministry are called the church of God. This bold identification of the people of God prior to Jesus Christ as church is clearly secondary: the qualifications return later in the same sentence with “the church of Christ.” The distinctions made in Lumen Gentium clearly seek to acknowledge the differences between the way in which the people of God are ordered before Christ, and after Christ. Lumen Genium utilizes the distinction between old and new as a way of marking this difference: the history of the people of Israel prior to Jesus is “a preparation and a figure of that new and perfect covenant which was to be struck with Christ, and of the more complete revelation that was to be made through the Word of God himself made flesh . . . This is the new covenant that Christ instituted . . . calling together from Jews and gentiles a people . . . which would be the new people of God.”24 There is a continuity between old and new, the continuity of foreshadowing, in which the old is an image of the new, an anticipation of the new, much as the church today is an image and anticipation of the eschatological reality yet to come. Thus Lumen Gentium interprets the relationship between the two forms of the one people of God through typology, with its power to evoke similarities between events that are otherwise disparate.25 The people of Israel prior to Jesus Christ’s initiation of the church are understood to be a prelude to and preparation for the church, which is then regarded as the fullness of the people of God. This way of understanding the people of God prior to the church leaves

23

Lumen Gentium, §9 Lumen Gentium, §9. 25 Typology as a Christian interpretive practice is explored in John J. O’Keefe and R. R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 69–88. The relationship between the various forms of the people of God is also read typologically in Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd ed., Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §§758–62. 24

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open questions about the status of that people after the initiation of the church. I will return to these questions when considering the people of God as a framing element for understanding the church.

From the Reformed tradition: The Scots Confession The Scots Confession was written in 1560 and adopted by the Scottish Parliament that year. It articulates a robust claim that there is a people of God who form one body, the “Kirk” (church), continuous across the narrative arc of God’s mission running from initial creation to completion in the New Jerusalem. In Chapter XVI the Scots Confession makes this affirmation: As we believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so we firmly believe that from the beginning there has been, now is, and to the end of the world shall be one Kirk, that is to say, one company and multitude of men chosen by God, who rightly worship and embrace him by true faith in Christ Jesus, who is the only Head of the Kirk, even as it is the body and spouse of Christ Jesus. This Kirk is catholic, that is, universal, because it contains the chosen of all ages, of all realms, nations, and tongues, be they of the Jews or be they of the Gentiles, who have communion and society with God the Father, and with his Son, Christ Jesus, through the sanctification of his Holy Spirit. It is therefore called the communion, not of profane persons, but of saints, who, as citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, have the fruit of inestimable benefits, one God, one Lord Jesus, one faith, and one baptism.26 Here the people of God27 is brought together with blunt directness. Earlier in the Confession one of its brief chapters addresses 26

“The Scots Confession,” Chapter XVI, “The Kirk,” in The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part I, Book of Confessions (Louisville, KY: Office of the General Assembly, 2014), 18 (3.16). 27 Unlike Lumen Gentium, the Scots Confession does not use the concept of people of God as a distinctive way of talking about the church and the proto-church. The Scots Confession does speak of people, who are God’s, but “people of God” does not operate as a distinct way of thinking about the church.

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the people of God before Jesus Christ, also identifying that people of God as simply the Kirk: “We most surely believe that God preserved, instructed, multiplied, honored, adorned, and called from death to life his Kirk in all ages since Adam until the coming of Christ Jesus in the flesh.”28 What follows in that chapter (Chapter V) is a brief recitation, beginning with Abraham, of God’s provision for the “continuance, increase, and preservation” of this church. In later chapters the Confession outlines in greater detail God’s provision for the maintenance of the Kirk. The Confession consistently views this people of God as one. For the Scots Confession this people is “Kirk,” in the time from creation to Christ, just as in the time from Christ to “the end of the world.” The Scots Confession handles the difference between the people of God before Jesus Christ, and the people of God after by absorbing those who went before into Jesus Christ. In the passage quoted above (from Chapter XVI of the Confession) the Kirk is made up of a “company and multitude” of people who are “chosen by God, who rightly worship and embrace him by true faith in Christ Jesus, who is the only head of the Kirk.” Membership in the Kirk is determined by divine election, right worship, and right faith (in Jesus Christ). The Scots Confession does not explain how it is that those who lived before Jesus Christ could have had faith in him, other than affirming that they had faith in one whom they would meet only much later. The Confession makes clear that God responded to Adam and Eve’s fall into sin by, among other things, promising redemption. Redemption happens through Jesus Christ. The promise of redemption made to Eve and Adam was preserved and provided hope from the time it was made to the time when it was fulfilled in Jesus Christ: This promise was repeated and made clearer from time to time; it was embraced with joy, and most constantly received by all the faithful from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to David, and so onwards to the incarnation of Christ 28

“The Scots Confession,” Chapter V, “The Continuance, Increase, and Preservation of the Kirk,” Book of Confessions, 12 (3.05).

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Jesus; all (we mean the believing fathers under the law) did see the joyful day of Christ Jesus, and did rejoice.29 For the Scots Confession God’s mission gathers a people who are in communion with Jesus Christ—those who lived before Jesus Christ being in communion with the Messiah in anticipation, and those afterward knowing that the Messiah’s name is Jesus Christ. Those who lived before Jesus Christ and those who lived during and after his ministry form a single community, though a community with diverse and changing forms of organization and structure. The survival of this people of God across changes in organizational structure is particularly clear when one considers the forms taken by the people of God prior to Jesus Christ:  extended family, refugee community on at least two occasions, tribal federation, monarchy, and colonized community. The unity of the people of God did not require that they all be part of a single organizational structure, much less a structure organized in a particular way from top to bottom.

The church: A general statement Narrative arc (story or history), communion, the mission of God, and the people of God are central elements in both contemporary and earlier understandings of the church. Insights into each from the documents just considered can be brought together to form a general view of the church, in which denomination is to be placed. Building on the three documents just considered, a general statement about the church can be made. The church is made up of all those creatures who are incorporated into Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and who thereby are brought into full communion with the triune God, who is their Creator. Those incorporated into Jesus Christ are in this way incorporated into God’s mission, becoming participants in that mission, creaturely agents who in seeking communion with God seek also to direct their own agency toward participation in God’s mission. By their incorporation into

29

“The Scots Confession,” Chapter IV, “The Revelation of the Promise,” Book of Confessions, 12 (3.04). Though not cited in the Confession, the thought is consonant with a Biblical passage such as 1 Pet. 1:10–12.

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Jesus Christ they are incorporated into the people of God, whom God has been gathering together across creation, from the early days of human being, represented in Scripture’s telling of God’s call to Adam and Eve to launch that mission by being fruitful and spreading (thereby making space for additional peoples). Normally this incorporation into Jesus Christ and thus into the mission of God is visible, enacted in the life of the church as it is gathered together into an organized social body within the life of the world, through the sacraments and through participation in the worship and specific mission of a particular congregation. Because the church is made up of creatures, incorporation into communion with God happens in creaturely ways. Incorporation into God’s mission happens in and through time, existence through time being one of the primary characteristics of creaturely being. Existence through time is history, and history has a narrative shape—sequences of events that link together across time in ways that are not random, not merely one random thing after another, and that thus are to be told as story. As Robert Jenson has noted, “the world God creates is not a thing, a ‘cosmos,’ but is rather a history. God does not create a world that thereupon has a history; he creates a history that is a world, in that it is purposive and so makes a whole.”30 Furthermore, as creatures always exist in mutual interdependence, incorporation into communion with God places human beings into a mutual interdependence that opens toward the fullness of life, a pattern of relationship that embodies and enables flourishing. Those so drawn into the divine life become God’s companions. This companionship takes literal, concrete form in the sacrament of Communion, the Lord’s Supper. Etymologically, “companion” stems from the Latin “com,” with, and “panis,” bread—a companion is one with whom one breaks bread. The meaning of this sharing in bread is deepened in the Gospel of John, Chapter 6 and in the words of institution of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. In John 6 companionship with God is taking in the very being of Jesus Christ, who is God come among us: Jesus says to the crowd that has gathered to see and hear him: “I am the bread of life . . . I am

30 Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, Vol. II, The Works of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 14.

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the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn 6:48, 51). The words of institution underline the point that to partake of the Lord’s Supper is to commune in and with God, through Jesus Christ: “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And likewise the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’ ” (Lk. 22:19–20). This communion with God in Jesus Christ is by its nature communion with all those who are also in communion with God. The Apostle Paul emphasizes this interdependence in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12: “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Rom. 12:5). In both of these chapters Paul persistently calls those who together follow Christ to a life together that embodies this reality, their identity as ones who are mutually dependent as they live the truth of their identity in Jesus Christ. This communal existence is to be as visible as the persons who make it up. That the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper would be a central affirmation of communion with God and with one another is not accidental to the concrete forms taken by the church. The sacrament is an embodied event that occurs not in the imagination, not in theoretical contemplation, but in an actual place, with embodied others, partaking of concrete elements. In Chapter 4 we noted that the authorization of worship on a group’s own authority is among the definitive markers that a denomination exists. When the congregation celebrates the sacraments, its beliefs about the church are being enacted. Those gathered are by their participation submitting to a particular ordering of worship and to the authority on which that ordering rests. They bodily enact those commitments. Communion with God and with other followers of Jesus Christ is enacted, and is realized in the sacrament. This general view of the church has implications to be explored:  the church’s identity as a distinct, particular group of people among all people; and the visibility (or invisibility) of the church in the world. Not everyone is (at present, anyway) a follower of Jesus Christ. The church is something distinct in the world. There are implications that flow from this reality. First, the church is a particular

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group of people, with a distinctive identity. The church includes some, but not all people. Its distinct identity gives shape to its participation in God’s mission: the church participates in God’s invitation to those not yet in it, the invitation to step into full communion with the triune God through Jesus Christ, full communion for which they also were created. Second, the distinct identity of the church carries with it temptations—particularly the temptation to overemphasize or underemphasize the church’s distinctness. In Chapter 4 these temptations were identified as denominational idolatry and denominational blasphemy. Overemphasis on the church’s distinctness undergirds sectarianism, an exaggerated belief that the church stands over against those who are not within its number. Overemphasis on the church’s distinctness at the very least calls into question the interdependence of its members with those beyond its number, and challenges the church’s ability to participate in the mission of God. At its worst, overemphasis on the church’s distinctness denies both creaturely interdependence and the mission of God. Underemphasis on the church’s distinctness denies the particularity of God’s mission, its call to a distinct way of life. When the distinctness of the church is underemphasized the church appears to be secondary—what the church is and does is of no more than secondary importance, and the church begins to matter only insofar as it serves whatever is of primary importance. For example, the church faces a constant temptation to view political or ideological commitments as primary, in which case the church has importance and value only insofar as it serves political or ideological commitments. In the United States over the last several decades we have seen parts of the church apparently making the church secondary to commitment to the aims and initiatives of the Religious Left or the Religious Right.31 The general statement about the church made at the beginning of this section points to the long-disputed distinction between the visible and the invisible church. To say “The church is made up of 31

For an incisive, indeed devastating, examination of the American mainline Protestant version of this, see David A. Hollinger, “After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Protestantism and the Modern American Encounter with Diversity,” in After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 18–55.

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all those creatures who are incorporated into Jesus Christ,” does not clarify how to identify that particular group. It does not tell us where the boundary lies between being part of the church and not being part of it, between those who are within and those who are without. And here Christians have followed a variety of paths. Following some path has been a necessity: the church is made up of creatures, and is itself creaturely in its nature. This means it does have boundaries, boundaries that must be acknowledged. So who is the church? What are its boundaries? This is a point at which basic theological commitments regarding the particular shape of God’s ordering of the church for its participation in God’s mission come into conflict. The issue remains ecumenically unsettled and unsettling. Disagreement at this point came to expression at the time of the Protestant Reformation and continues to shape all ecclesial bodies. The Roman Catholic Church has claimed that membership in the church is publicly knowable, a claim articulated in Lumen Gentium. They are fully incorporated into the society of the church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, accept its whole structure and all the means of salvation that have been established within it, and within its visible framework are united with Christ, who governs it through the supreme pontiff and the bishops, by the bonds of profession of faith, the sacraments, ecclesiastical government and communion.32 The commitments called for here are publicly affirmed (they happen “within its visible framework”) and thereby publicly known. People publicly “accept its [the Roman Catholic Church’s] whole structure and all the means of salvation that have been established within it.” And by so doing they come to be part of (that) Church. If one wanted to know who is in the Church, one would count up those who have made that acceptance. This is one way of expressing the Roman Catholic Church’s affirmation that in it the one church of Christ is present and real on earth.33 32

Lumen Gentium, §14. This is a complex, nuanced claim. In a famous passage, Lumen Gentium makes the claim that the one church of Christ “subsists in the catholic church.” Interpretation 33

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In the Scots Confession we find a different way of identifying the boundaries of the church, one that is deeply concerned to emphasize that God is free to include people in the church in ways that other people cannot see. So, for the Confession, the church is primarily invisible, while also being (in part) visible. On the one hand, the Kirk, being “one company and multitude of men chosen by God,” is “invisible, known only to God, who alone knows whom he has chosen.”34 Election is central to the claims made here, as one would expect in a confession written within the Reformed tradition. Election is, among other things, an affirmation of God’s sovereignty and grace. One way in which God’s sovereignty and grace appear in ecclesiology is in the affirmation that God is free to include people in the church whose membership is known only to God. Incorporation into the church is a matter of God’s grace, enacted in the divine decision to gather people into the people of God, apart from merit. So membership in the church, and thus in the people of God, does not depend on any human actions or attitudes or traits. Only God knows who is included. But the Scots Confession also insists that the church does take visible form. Shortly after the statement just quoted, the Confession goes on to offer an extensive discussion of the “notes of the true Kirk,” the practices and characteristics that enable one to verify that a visible congregation is authentically part of the true church. In line with most of the Reformed tradition, the Scots Confession names:  “the true preaching of the Word of God,” and “the right administration of the sacraments of Jesus Christ.” The Confession adds a third note, one familiar in the Reformed tradition, but not as widely elevated to the status of a defining note of the church: “ecclesiastical discipline rightly administered.” These notes identify visible embodiments of the true church. “Then wherever these notes are seen and continue for any time, be the number complete or not,

of this claim has been widely discussed and disputed, discussion that has included clarification of the meaning of the phrase offered in 2007 by the Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith, which offers official response to theological developments in the Roman Catholic Church: “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church.” Accessible online at http://www.vatican. va/ roman_ curia/ congregations/ cfaith/ documents/ rc_ con_ cfaith_ doc_ 20070629_ responsa-quaestiones_en.html. (Accessed September 20, 2016.) 34 “The Scots Confession,” Chapter XVI, “The Kirk,” Book of Confessions, 3.16.

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there, beyond any doubt, is the true Kirk of Christ, who, according to his promise, is in its midst.” So the invisible church is actually visible in some of the visible bodies that claim to be the church. The Confession tries to distinguish this visible church from the invisible, without separating the two: “This [the visible church] is not that universal Kirk of which we have spoken before but particular Kirks, such as were in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, and other places where the ministry was planted by Paul and which he himself called Kirks of God.” And then, perhaps more to the point for the Scots who wrote and adopted this Confession, “Such Kirks, we the inhabitants of the realm of Scotland confessing Christ Jesus, do claim to have in our cities, towns, and reformed districts because of the doctrine taught in our Kirks, contained in the written Word of God.”35 Some particular local congregations are a visible form of the church—part of it though not the whole. In lectures explicating the Scots Confession, Karl Barth proposes a way to understand the church as simultaneously invisible and visible. In Barth’s exploration of the Scots Confession the invisible and the visible church are inextricably linked together without being coterminous. The invisible church is operative in and through the visible. “Such is the life of the Church of Jesus Christ; that it is one and is holy is certainly hidden and is a matter for faith. But that it exists is manifest and can be seen as well as believed. As a divine establishment and foundation it is hidden, but as a human assembly and community it is manifest.”36 Barth goes on to say, “It is true that He [Jesus Christ] lives in His church, as it is hidden and not as it is manifest. But He lives in His church and not outside it, i.e. not in such a way that one could seek Him and shun his people, or love Him and hate His people.”37 For Barth, the link between the invisible and the visible is to be found in two realities. 35

“The Scots Confession,” Chapter XVIII, “The Notes by Which the True Kirk Shall Be Determined from the False, and Who Shall Be Judge of Doctrine,” The Book of Confessions, 19–20 (3.18). All quotes in this paragraph are from this Chapter of the Scots Confession. 36 Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation. Recalling the Scottish Confession of 1560, The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Aberdeen in 1937 and 1938, trans. J. L. M. Haire and Ian Henderson (London:  Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), 152. Italics in original. 37 Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God, 154.

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From God’s side, the link is found in God’s decision that the visible church is the primary creaturely agent of God’s mission. From the human side, the link is found in worship, as those who follow Jesus Christ gather to focus their attention on God, and God’s Word for them and for all others (gathered worship having been named in this book as central to denominations). “As the body and bride of Jesus Christ it [the church] is hidden, but . . . it is manifest wherever men wish truly and obediently to worship God and to embrace Him through faith in Jesus Christ.”38 Indeed, in Barth’s engagement of the Scots Confession, worship itself participates in the mission of God through its function as proclamation, issuing the call to communion with God and with creatures:  “Jesus Christ lives by the tidings about Him being proclaimed and heard. This is His life on earth. He lives where two or three are gathered together in His name. He lives where men hope to be united to Him and so to be sanctified by Him as a body.”39 There is in these Reformed affirmations a reticence about the visible form taken by the church—its institutional, ecclesiastical embodiment. Such reticence is understandable in light of the Reformed tradition’s birth amidst the Protestant rejection of claims made by the Roman Catholic Church, with its very visible presence, backed by state power that was regularly exercised. Perhaps that is sufficient background to help make sense of the suspicion of ecclesiastical institutions that so pervades the Reformed stances considered here—suspicion that leads to, for example, the perceived need for a set of notes by which to recognize false churches.40 Yet this

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Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God, 152–3. Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God, 153–4. Kimlyn Bender formulates the distinctions Barth makes in his ecclesiology as follows (Bender is interpreting texts from Barth’s Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV): “The church is thus visible in time as a particular gathering of people (and as an institution), but it is truly perceived as the real church only with the eyes of faith, for it is faith alone which sees not only the church’s visible and historical manifestation but the invisible power that grounds its reality. As the church remains dependent upon receiving the Word of God anew, and thus in openness to Christ through the Spirit, the church comes into existence and endures through time.” Kimlyn Bender, Karl Barth’s Christological Ecclesiology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013), 155. 40 These suspicions can be found in full-throated, acidic form in the Scots Confession, Chapter XVIII, “The Notes by Which the True Kirk Shall Be Determined from the False, and Who Shall Be Judge of Doctrine.” Ironically, these notes, as we have seen 39

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reticence makes it more difficult for those in the Reformed tradition to make good theological sense of the ecclesiastical structures in which the tradition itself has lived, and continues to do so. Wariness about the imperfections and failings of institutional forms, when taken to excess, can leave one unable to offer a positive account of the very institutions in which one lives. Lumen Gentium and the Scots Confession offer complicated ways of understanding the distinctness and boundaries of the church, and each has places in which it struggles conceptually to hold together the theological claims it makes with the realities it seeks to describe. The view expressed in Lumen Gentium has the great strength of being able to show, visibly and concretely, who exactly is fully in the church, and who is not. As noted before, all one would need to do is count up those who have “accept[ed] its whole structure and all the means of salvation.” Yet Lumen Gentium also attempts to work out ways of recognizing the reality that there are other groups that seem to be church—especially the various Orthodox churches, but Protestant denominations as well. That working out appears in the sentence that claims that the one true church “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church:  “This church, set up and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the catholic church, governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him, although outside its structure many elements of sanctification and of truth are to be found which, as proper gifts to the church of Christ, impel towards catholic unity.”41 The last half of that sentence can be seen as an acknowledgment of Jesus’s words to Nicodemus: “The wind [Spirit] blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”42 Lumen Gentium is working to account for the very thing that is central to the Scots Confession’s understanding of these matters: God’s freedom.43 The Scots Confession also has places where in quotes above, need not actually all be present. So criteria are laid down and undercut in almost the same breath. 41 Lumen Gentium, §8. 42 Jn 3:8. 43 Lumen Gentium is not the only document of the Second Vatican Council to work at recognition of the apparent presence of what looks like authentic church outside the visible boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church. The Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio also discusses these matters.

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its understanding of these matters begins to look disjointed. Its claim that the church is invisible, known only to God, taken on its own, leaves us with no way of understanding how the church can function in a meaningful way in the world: if we don’t know where it is, then how can we know it is having any impact on our lives? Further, this claim, on its own, leaves us with no way to understand the actual entities calling themselves church that we find around us. What are they, and how are they related to that invisible church known only to God? Finally, this claim leaves us with no way of understanding the social dimension of the faith—the way in which God’s mission gathers a people, who have a share in God’s mission, a mission that takes forms that are as real and concrete as the people to whom that mission is addressed. If the church is known only to God, then it is unknown to us. The Confession claims that the invisible church is actually visible, in places, but it never quite works out how the relationship between the visible and the invisible works. The Confession is clear that there are churches that are genuinely part of the true, if invisible, church—particularly the congregations in Scotland (those that are part of the Reformation movement, anyway)! Holding together the understandings of the boundaries of the church in Lumen Gentium and the Scots Confession, what becomes clear is the need to balance a strong affirmation of visibility (a strength of Lumen Gentium and the Roman Catholic understanding that it articulates) with a strong affirmation of God’s freedom to work both in and apart from the visible church (a strength of the Scots Confession and the Reformed understanding it articulates). The general view of the church that I have proposed stands close to the Scots Confession on the question of knowing the boundaries of the church. Only God knows who is “incorporated into Jesus Christ.” In this regard the church is invisible to the human eye. At the same time, using the people of God and the mission of God as organizing elements for this general view of the church affirms the visibility of the church. The people of God are a people among the peoples of the world, pointing toward God (Isa. 49:6; Mt. 5:14–16, Acts 13:47). The people of God are a distinct group from among all people, they gather together in ways that are visible, and they engage in actions and practices of worship and faithfulness that intend to speak God’s word to the world, pointing those not (yet) of their number to God. The mission of God has always gathered a particular people:  a community of people who are marked off

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by their worship of, devotion to, and commitment to God, and God incarnate in Jesus Christ, and therein to one another and to the common life that they make together, a life which they seek to extend to others. This gathered people has taken different forms across the long narrative arc of God’s mission. And, again, God can incorporate into the people of God persons whose incorporation therein would surprise.

The church: Four framing elements There are four aspects of God’s relationship with creation that together provide a framework that can orient more detailed theological exploration of the church, a framework that could then be filled in by exploring concepts, images, and characteristics of the church.44 These four framing elements are (1) the narrative arc that unfolds from Eden to the New Jerusalem, (2) communion, (3) the mission of God, and (4)  the people of God. These four framing elements are interrelated.45 The narrative arc that runs from the Garden of Eden to the garden city (the New Jerusalem) is the story of God’s creation of creatures to share, in a way appropriate to creatures, in communion, in that communion shared by the divine persons in the Trinity. The communion God creates provides a home, a habitation, in which creatures can mutually flourish. God’s

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In similar fashion Darrell Guder has shown how taking the mission of God (mission Dei) as basic leads to reading the Nicene marks of the church in a particular way, with Guder proposing that when read in such a way the four marks are best understood in reverse order. Darrell L. Guder, Called to Witness: Doing Missional Theology, The Gospel and Our Culture Series (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans, 2015), 78–89, 197–203. 45 The interrelatedness of these elements is recognized in TCTCV §1, and was expressed in compact form in the draft that preceded it, The Nature and Mission of the Church (cf. n. 13 ), §34: It is God’s design to gather all creation under the Lordship of Christ (cf. Eph 1:10), and to bring humanity and all creation into communion. As a reflection of the communion in the Triune God, the Church is God’s instrument in fulfilling this goal. The Church is called to manifest God’s mercy to humanity, and to bring humanity to its purpose—to praise and glorify God together with all the heavenly hosts. The mission of the Church is to serve the purpose of God as a gift given to the world in order that all may believe. (cf. Jn 17:21)

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mission is the continuing creation, recreation, and fitting of creatures to inhabit that home. This mission of God gathers a people, the people of God, who are participants in God’s mission, who by their way of life and their proclamation are inviting others to join in the communion with God and others in which all creatures flourish. As such, these four elements provide a framework for more detailed exploration of the church.

Framing ecclesiology, Element 1: Narrative arc and story The narrative arc (running from creation to consummation) and the story that it unfolds provides the first of our framing elements for understanding the church. God’s initial creation sets time unfolding, and it is in and through time that God’s mission exists, gathering a people, from initial creation to final consummation in the new heaven and the new earth, at the heart of which stands the New Jerusalem.46 To tell what this people is requires telling the story of unfolding across time, a telling that is a narrative, a particular kind of history. George Lindbeck has proposed that story and narrative are central in understanding the church. Lindbeck grounds his focus on narrative by considering the self-understanding of the first Christians, as witnessed particularly in the writings of the New Testament:  “Early Christian communal self-understanding was narrative shaped. The Church, in other words, was fundamentally identified and characterized by its story.”47 Being fundamentally identified by its story means that the story is more basic than, and therefore is the norm for other ways of identifying the church, such

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It is striking that after the arrival of the new heaven and the new earth at the beginning of Revelation 21 (21:1), we hear little more about them. The focus is on the city, the New Jerusalem. The narrative arc of creation is from the garden to the garden city. 47 George A. Lindbeck, “The Church,” in The Church in a Postliberal Age, ed. James J. Buckley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 149. Further page references will be to this form of the essay. This essay is reprinted from George Lindbeck, “The Church,” in Keeping the Faith: Essays to Mark the Centenary of Lux Mundi, ed. Geoffrey Wainwright (Philadelphia:  Fortress Press, 1988), 179–208, with this quote appearing on 183.

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as images, concepts, and characteristics of the church. Story provides the organizing structure in which images, concepts, and characteristics of the church find their place and order.48 “Images such as ‘body of Christ’ or the traditional marks of ‘unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity’ cannot be first defined and then used to specify what was and what was not ‘church.’ The story was logically prior. It determined the meaning of images, concepts, doctrines and theories of the Church rather than being determined by them.”49 One of the great strengths of narrative arc is its ability to identify continuity amid change. Within story there is a particular kind of unity: the unity of continuity through time. Indeed, story is able to show continuity even across seemingly very significant changes. Lindbeck underlines the importance of this continuity particularly for the relationship between the church and ancient Israel (Israel both before the birth of the church and afterward): Israel and the Church were one people for the early Christians. There was no breach in continuity. A  new age had begun, but the story continued and therefore also the people which it identified. The French remain French after the revolution, the Quakers remain Quakers after becoming wealthy, and Israel remains Israel even when transformed by the arrival of the eschaton in Christ. The Church is simply Israel in the time between the times. The continuity of the story and the identity of the people are unbroken.50 Story (and history told as a story) narrates the unity of a thing that perdures across time. Thus people of God identifies a reality that exists across major changes in structure and organization: family, clan, expatriation and enslavement, tribal federation, monarchy, soon divided into two monarchies, exile, control by other empires, national defeat, dispersion, return, and rebuilding. The story continues, as the continuity of the people of God continues across great

48 The grounding role of narrative has been explored by Kendall Soulen, in R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), especially 13–17. 49 Lindbeck, “The Church,” 149. 50 Lindbeck, “The Church,” 150. The continuity between church and Israel is a matter to which I return in considering the people of God as a framing element.

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differences in the form of their life together. Following from the varied forms just named, the people of God is one reality taking form in small household gatherings across the Mediterranean basin, incipient organizations under bishops and the elaboration of the ecclesial offices by whom that organization is put to work, the increasing power of a hierarchy with the Bishop of Rome at its peak, and the multitude of other forms taken by Christians across recent centuries. The unity of the people of God is not found in its organizational structure, its polity. It is found rather in identification with a particular people and its history (which is its existence across time), and for the church this is the people who in and through Jesus Christ are grafted into the community and mission of God.51 This ability of narrative to show unity across time is directly relevant to the question of the unity of the church, the people of God. Narrative is relevant to discussion of unity, the unity to which God calls the church. It is particularly suited to identify the unity of the church, as it exists in and across time and across organizational forms. Continuity across time is provided by belief in the same God, rooted in the same writings and teachers who identified that God (hence, for Christians, the importance of the development of the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation), by commitment to a common lineage (hence, for Christians, the claim that baptism parallels circumcision as the rite of initiation into the community), by commitment to a common history, and by commitment to a common mission (hence, for Christians, the need to identify the mission of God in the writings that they came to identify as the Old Testament). In this unity institutional forms and structures are secondary, adopted and adapted as circumstances require, always in service of the needs and possibilities of the mission of God in each particular moment. The narrative arc that frames our understanding of the church is not generic. It is not an abstract quality, narrativity. Reflection on the church is framed by a specific narrative. That is the narrative arc that runs from creation to the eschaton, from the garden 51

“What is it that makes Christians the people of God? Ultimately, only a common history and a common destiny. We are a people because we have been called to make our own a particular history.” Geoffrey Preston, O.P., Faces of the Church:  Meditations on a Mystery and Its Images (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 22. Preston begins that particular history with creation.

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to the garden city, as we have seen. The narrative arc of God’s creation moves from the first communion in Eden to the full communion in the New Jerusalem. The basic pattern of this narrative arc of God’s creation is sending out and gathering in, at both macro and micro levels. At the macro level this is a basic pattern for theological reflection on the nature and workings of creation. It is found in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, and is often identified with him: an exitus-reditus (going forth, returning) pattern. Creation is understood as a going forth from God, and creatures are held to perfect their nature in a return in which beginning and end meet together. In Aquinas this going forth and returning is understood to be a basic pattern for all creatures, and is explicated by reference to Neoplatonic philosophical sources.52 Karl Barth identifies the same pattern in Jesus Christ. “The atonement as it took place in Jesus Christ is the one inclusive event of this going out of the Son of God and coming in of the Son of Man.”53 At the micro level the pattern is found in the basic pattern of the life of a congregation:  the congregation is sent forth into the world to bear witness to the Good News of salvation, redemption, and new life in Jesus Christ; it gathers again to worship the creating and redeeming God who seeks communion with creatures, is renewed and strengthened in worship, and equipped to be sent forth again.54 At a yet more focused level, the Christian life can be understood as going forth and returning, being sent forth by God who is present from birth onward,55

52 Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Aquinas’s Summa: Background, Structure, and Reception, trans. Benedict M. Guevin, O.S.B. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 27–8, 49–50. Also Mark D. Jordan, “Structure” in The Cambridge Companion to the Summa Theologiae, ed. Philip McCosker and Denys Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 34–47. 53 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part Two (Edinburgh:  T&T Clark, 1958), 21. Quoted by Bender, Karl Barth’s Christological Ecclesiology (n. 38), 131 n. 3. 54 As Geoffrey Preston puts it, the congregation is gathered to be strengthened for its work of gathering: “This people, being gathered together out of may peoples, can be called ‘Church’, a gathering, a people that both is gathered and gathers:  ecclesia congregata and ecclesia congregans” (Preston, Faces of the Church, 23). 55 Examples of God’s shaping intention at the beginning are found in Ps. 22:9–11, 139:13–16, Jer. 1:5, in the birth narratives of Jesus, Rom. 8:29–30, and Eph. 1:3–6.

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and returning to God, as articulated in the language of Christian funerals.56 As Lindbeck notes, this narrative is basic. It is prior to concepts, images, and identifying characteristics of the church. The narrative provides a context of meaning for those concepts, images, and characteristics that mark out the church in distinction from other groups. Concepts of the church identify a particular way of conceptualizing the church, for example, understanding the church as the elect.57 Images of the church offer pictures through which to understand who and what the church is, such as a flock.58 The line between concepts and images of the church is faint—the two tend to blur together.59 Characteristics of the church are traits such as those named in the Nicene Creed:  one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. So too the so-called Reformation notes identify characteristic activities of the church: “Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists.”60 In each case, it is the narrative of God’s mission in creation that undergirds, locating concepts, images, and characteristics in relation to one another and to the larger narrative. The narrative is more basic than, for example, the people of God, or the flock. People of God provides a way of understanding who it is that God’s mission gathers and sends, and names their identity as the people 56

Particularly in the prayer of thanksgiving, in which we give thanks for the deceased, “whose baptism is now complete in death.” See The Book of Common Worship (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 921. 57 As found in, for example, The Westminster Confession. See The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Part I, Book of Confessions, 6.140. 58 For example in Jn 10:1–18. Images for the church are explored at length in Preston, Faces of the Church, and Paul S. Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (New Testament Library; Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004). For flock imagery see Faces of the Church, 48–57; and Images of the Church, 84ff.. 59 As Geoffrey Preston notes. Following a list of potential images including “the remnant, the elect” he comments: “Not all of these are strictly or exclusively images of the Church; but all are in some way ecclesial images, ways of speaking about the life of the Church, before God, in this world” (Faces of the Church, 3). 60 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics, Vol. XXI (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), IV.i.9. As we have seen, other notes have been suggested. The Scots Confession also names church discipline as identifying the true church. See the Scots Confession, Ch. XVIII.

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who stand in a particular relationship with God, the God whose nature is revealed through the narrative. Flock identifies the nature of the relationship between this people and God, and in particular this image provides an understanding of the nature of leadership in this people—it is one of caring and protection, of keeping together. Narrative arc and story provide the first framing element for a general understanding of the church. This framing element has provided material for understanding the place of denomination in the life of the church, particularly by providing a way to identify unity across organizational variations.

Framing ecclesiology, Element 2: Communion Communion is basic to God’s purposes in creation.61 The act of creating is the making of a community of creatures fit for communion with God and one another, and creating habitable spaces in which creatures can live that communion. The range of meaning of communion or koinonia (particularly in the New Testament) is highlighted in TCTCV, which notes that The noun koinonia (communion, participation, fellowship, sharing), which derives from a verb meaning “to have something in common,” “to share,” “to participate,” “to have part in” or “to act together,” appears in passages recounting the sharing in the Lord’s Supper (cf. 1 Cor. 10:16–17), the reconciliation of Paul with Peter, James and John (cf. Gal. 2:7–10), the collection for the poor (cf. Rom. 15:26; 2 Cor. 8:3–4) and the experience and witness of the Church (cf. Acts 2:42–45).62 Communion is fullness of relationship in which interdependence is a strength rather than a hindrance or shackling. It is a pattern of relationship that sustains flourishing for all. Communion is not simply a generic life together. It is a particular kind of life together: a 61

Careful analysis of New Testament references to communion can be found in Joseph D. Small, “What is Communion and When is it Full?”, Ecclesiology 2, No. 1 (2005), 71–87. 62 TCTCV, §13.

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life that involves many parts, parts that take shape in florid diversity (as noted in Chapter 5), fitting together in a way that mutually reinforces flourishing. This is the pattern of relationship that we have seen to be at work in the creation accounts at the beginning of Genesis, and in the vision of the New Jerusalem at the end of the book of Revelation, and is also particularly emphasized in passages on diversity and unity such as 1 Corinthians 12. Communion, found at the beginning and the end, and a constant purpose in between, is rooted in and generated by God’s very being: “The communion that is the church is not primally the communion of believers among themselves; it is primally God’s communion with us in the incarnate Christ; and because the God who thus admits us to communion is in himself a koinonia, the perichoresis, the ‘mutual inhabiting’, of Father, Son and Spirit, we are drawn also to mutual love of one another.”63 The unity and diversity that we glimpse in the relationship of the three divine persons is not a unity of fragile homogeneity, but a unity that has the capability to open out to genuine relationship with others. That’s what happens in creation. To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “God created the world for the sake of communion with his divine life, a communion brought about by the ‘convocation’ of men in Christ, and this ‘convocation’ is the church.”64 The creation of creatures who are in communion with God and one another is basic to the mission of God carried out across the narrative arc that runs from beginning to end. This theme is sounded in Ephesians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who . . . has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:3a, 9–10). Creatures are created for and dependent on communion. And the church is to be both embodiment and herald of communion with God and all creatures, in and through Jesus Christ, made possible by the work of the Holy Spirit. 63

Robert W. Jenson, “The Church and the Sacraments,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin E. Gunton, 215 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 64 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §760. The Catechism is quoting the Panarion of St. Epiphanius.

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Finally, the relationships that enact communion are characterized by love, and not by hatred. The many calls in Scripture to love oneself and others (most plainly in the Great Commandment (Mt. 22:34– 40, Mk 12:28–34, Lk. 10:25–28)) are effectively a call to communion with God and, therein, with one another. The importance of love as the quality that characterizes communion is also underlined in Scripture’s many warnings against hatred. Thus, for example, in Eph. 4:25-5:2 there is a warning against allowing irritation to escalate into anger and thence into hatred and contempt (4:31), as well as an imperative to “live in love as Christ loved us” (5:2).65 Jesus’s new commandment to his disciples, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn 13:34) is a call to communion, and it is living in such communion that shows Christians to be disciples of Jesus Christ (Jn 13:35). God creates creatures for communion with God and with all other creatures. The institutional structures of the church exist to enable people to enter into communion with God and one another (and, by extension, with all creatures).66 These structures will of necessity be of creaturely dimension. To repeat, while the church is universal, we are not. Our capacity for communion is finite, and limited. We require intermediary structures in which to live in communion.

Framing ecclesiology, Element 3: The mission of God The mission of God is bound together with communion. The mission of God is the creation of communion with God and all other creatures. The church participates in this mission by its message and its way of life.67 The church is an agent of God’s mission within the created order, among all creatures of God. Recovery of the centrality of mission to the life of the church has been carried forward by the missional church movement. Darrell 65

For exegesis of this passage, particularly the escalation in 4:31, see Rudolf Schnackenburg, Ephesians: A Commentary, trans. Helen Heron (Edinburgh:  T&T Clark, 1991), 203–14. 66 Communion that includes all creatures, indeed all creation, is envisioned in Genesis 1 and 2, and in the vision of the peaceable kingdom in Isa. 11:1–9. 67 Lumen Gentium, §1: “The church is in Christ as a sacrament or instrumental sign of intimate union with God and of the unity of all humanity.”

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Guder articulates a central insight of missional theology by borrowing from the documents of the Second Vatican Council a brief statement of the centrality of mission for the church: “Based on the New Testament, it is abundantly clear that the fundamental assertion we must make about the church of Jesus Christ is that it is, in the words of Vatican II, ‘missionary by its very nature.’ ”68 Guder cites David Bosch, who points out the Trinitarian roots and shape of the mission of God (missio Dei): “David Bosch summarized the theology of the missio Dei as essentially Trinitarian: ‘[T]he classical doctrine on the missio Dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit . . . expanded to include yet another movement: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the church in the world.”69 The church’s participation in the mission of God requires certain patterns of behavior (Christian love) and certain particular behaviors (generosity, and certain ways of talking to, and therein of thinking about, others). So too the church’s participation in the narrative arc of God’s mission rules out certain patterns of behavior (hatred, and contempt) and certain particular behaviors (selfish disregard for the needs of others, and hateful speech about or to others). Guder discusses the way of life that embodies full participation in God’s mission in part by offering a missional interpretation of the Nicene identification of holiness as one mark of the church: “Holiness” defines the way in which God’s Spirit equips the church to practice its vocation so that witness can be credibly

68

Darrell L. Guder, Called to Witness, 81 (See n. 44 in this chapter). Guder is quoting Ad Gentes, the Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church, §2, Tanner, ed., Decrees, 1011. Two significant volumes have been basic to the development of missional theology: George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder, eds., The Church Between Gospel and Culture:  The Emerging Mission in North America (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B.  Eerdmans, 1996); and Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998). 69 Guder, Called to Witness, 22. Guder is quoting David Bosch, Transforming Mission:  Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis, 1991), 390. On the same page Bosch extends the point as he tells of developments in (what would come to be known as) missional theology:  “Our mission has no life of its own: only in the hands of the sending God can it truly be be called mission, not least since the missionary initiative comes from God alone.”

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made in the world. God’s Spirit “sanctifies,” makes holy, in order to create a community that can serve as “Christ’s letter to the world.” . . . Thus, every dimension of the community’s life is of importance, because all of it relates to the vocation of an apostolic, catholic community. If it is missional by its very nature, everything it does, how it lives, how it administers its money, how people relate to each other, how it resolves its disputes—all are potential demonstrations or witnesses to the rule of God in Christ in its midst.”70 The church is an agent of the mission of God, which is the creation of communion with God and all creatures, communion in which the interdependence of creatures on God and one another becomes life-giving, communion in which the fragmentariness of creatureliness finds itself held in a whole, in which the particularity of each creature becomes part of the great arc of God’s creating and recreating toward the fullness of communion in a new heaven and a new earth, centered in that New Jerusalem where shalom reigns.

Framing ecclesiology, Element 4: The people of God The final framing element is the people of God. The creation of communion requires a community, and across Scripture community is steadily being generated. There is the development of clans and tribes recorded in the first part of Genesis, the election of Abram and Sarai to be the origin of a particular people among the people of the earth, and onward to the followers of Jesus Christ, who “once . . . were not a people, but now . . . are God’s people” (1 Pet. 2:10). Steadfast across history, God is gathering people into community, to live in communion with God, with one another, and with all creation. As noted earlier, a significant strength of the people of God as a basic element in understanding the church is its capacity to identify unity across sometimes very significant change. Thus 70

Guder, Called to Witness, 87.

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the people of God gathered in the earliest Christian congregations, scattered in cities and towns across the Roman Empire, can be shown to be one people with the people of God gathered in the very different structure of parishes and dioceses, and across broad regions in the medieval and modern eras. So, Protestants in particular claim, the people of God gathered in the first congregations can be shown to be one people with the Protestant denominations. And, as was also noted earlier, Geoffrey Preston has made the case that what provides unity to the people of God is not race, land, language, institutions, law, or worship, but rather “a common history and a common destiny.”71 The common history and destiny of the people of God provides a way to show unity among what are in many respects highly diverse realities— the shared identity of a multi-thousand member Pentecostal congregation in South Korea and a small Lutheran congregation on the plains in North Dakota. For Christians there is one particular point at which claims about the unity of the people of God across the entire arc of God’s mission in creation face significant difficulty: the relationship of the people of God before Jesus Christ with the people of God after the triune God initiates what we know as the church. Specifically, what is the relationship between the community of Christians and the community of Jews who follow a different trajectory forward, in Judaism? This question, so fraught by its history of persistent violence against the Jewish community, is in its fullness and weight mostly beyond this study. Nevertheless, the claim made here that there are continuity and identity across the turning-point marked by Jesus Christ and the initiation of the (Christian) church requires comment. There are two particular comments to be made in addressing the question of the continuity of the people of God. First, a comment on that which, in Jesus Christ’s establishment and sending of the church, is in continuity and discontinuity with God’s mission in and through the people of God up to the time of his ministry and establishment of the church. Second, a comment on the difficulty Christians have had in theologically accounting for Judaism’s place in the people of God.

71

Preston, Faces of the Church, 14–22.

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First, Jesus Christ brings into existence something new. Jesus establishes a new community (Lk. 5:1–11, 8:1–3, Acts 1:12–26). He issues a new commandment that is to shape the life of this new community (Jn 13:34). Jesus establishes a new religious ordering, naming disciples who will become apostles and lead a new religious community (Lk. 6:12–16). This new community is established in a new way:  by commitment to Jesus Christ (Mt. 4:18–22, Lk. 5:27–28). Jesus establishes new rites for this new community— particularly baptism and the Lord’s Supper (Mk 14:22–25, 1 Cor. 11:23–26). These are clear discontinuities between the community that Jesus is establishing and what went before it. The discontinuity is clearest in Jesus’s criticism of other Jewish religious groups of his time (Lk. 11:37–54). In Jesus Christ something new has been established. At the same time, in Jesus Christ there is clear continuity with the people of God who went before him. All four Gospels are concerned to establish Jesus’s continuity with what went before, using genealogies and quotations from the Old Testament to establish the continuity. The genealogy in Matthew traces the continuity back through David to Abraham (Mt. 1:1–17), that in Luke back through David and Abraham to Adam (Lk. 3:23–38). The Gospel of John places Jesus Christ at the beginning of creation itself. The early sections of each of the four Gospels are dense with references to and quotations from the earlier history of the people of God. As the Gospels tell the story of Jesus’s ministry, continuity with the people of God before Jesus Christ is clear in the running, increasingly intense disputes over right interpretation of the religious laws that govern the practice of this faith. Concern to establish continuity drives Jesus’s somewhat obscure promise that the twelve disciples “will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Mt. 19:28; parallel in Lk. 22:30). Preservation of a full count of twelve disciples/apostles extends into the book of Acts, with the selection of Matthias. The continuity of twelve having been established once he is selected, Matthias then disappears from the book of Acts. The story of the initiation of the church in Acts 2 is again replete with quotations from the Old Testament. Reflection on the continuity of the people of God is found across the New Testament, but it takes concentrated form in passages such as chapters 9 to 11 of the book of Romans, and the entirety of the book of Hebrews. In all these ways Scripture is concerned to

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establish the clear continuity of the people of God across the initiation of the church. A key to the continuity and discontinuity of the church with the people of God is the mission of the people of God to all nations: the election of the descendants of Abraham to be agents of God’s mission, which is a mission to restore all creation to the communion for which it is made. The people of God is gathered in by the mission of God, and then becomes an agent of that mission, participating in God’s work of drawing all people into the fullness of communion with God and one another. The people of God are chosen by God for the sake of all people. This is clear already in God’s call to Abraham, in and through whom “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3b).72 The same affirmation that the people of God in ancient Israel are chosen to participate in God’s mission to all is sounded in the book of Isaiah, in the call to be “a light to the nations” (Isa. 42:6, 49:6). In Jesus Christ and the church he inaugurates, this mission to the nations takes on a new form. The promise to the nations, to bring God’s communion to them, to draw them into the community that is communion with God, is being fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Followers of Jesus Christ, empowered by Christ through the Holy Spirit, are sent to the people of the world to invite all people to enter into the communion that is fullness of life, doing so through the opening made by Jesus Christ. This is clear in the Great Commission (Mt. 28:16–20), in the event of Pentecost (Acts 2, especially:5–11), and above all in the ministry of Paul. The results of this mission are noted in passages such as Eph. 2:11–27:  “So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth . . . were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near” (:11–13).73 72

The interpretation of this verse is disputed. For a survey of older interpretations see Claus Westermann, Genesis 12–36:  A  Continental Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion, S.J. (Minneapolis, MN:  Fortress Press, 1995), 151–2. Westermann’s summary is to the point:  “In any case, what 12:3b is saying is this:  God’s action proclaimed in the promise to Abraham is not limited to him and his posterity, but reaches its goal only when it includes all the families of the earth” (152). 73 See also Rom. 11:11–32, 1 Pet. 2:9–10. Robert Jenson suggests that this process of bringing in through the church’s participation in God’s mission is a sort of detour in God’s planning to bring the consummation of creation in the arrival of the Messiah.

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What is the church’s proper understanding of the relationship of Judaism, the church, and the people of God after the church begins? If the nations are grafted into the people of God through union with Jesus Christ, what of those who were part of the people of God before Jesus Christ and the church, and who continue on apart from faith in Jesus Christ, moving forward in continuity with that past but in a way that is different than the church? They are living out a different line of development springing from shared origins. How are we to understand them? One way of understanding this other part of the people of God is supersessionism: the claim that after Jesus inaugurates the church, the Jewish people and Judaism are no longer part of the people of God, except insofar as Jewish people come to follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and abandon Judaism. This view holds that God rejected the Jewish people and Jewish belief and practices due to their unfaithfulness, specifically unfaithfulness embodied in not recognizing Jesus as the promised Messiah.74 In so doing, supersessionism raises the question of the reliability of God’s promises. If God withdraws the promise to Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, then all God’s promises are subject to being withdrawn. Supersessionism has been widely rejected, not least because it demands a theology in which God’s promises are conditional on human performance, making God into a monitor of goodness, and the granting of God’s grace dependent on our religious and moral achievement.75 For Protestants the rejection of this God should be obvious, a matter of course: when we come to think that God’s favor to us is dependent on our goodness we are committing ourselves to works righteousness in its most blunt form, and rejection of works righteousness has been a central tenet of Protestantism. Robert Jenson, “Toward a Christian Theology of Judaism,” in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Jews and Christians:  People of God (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), esp. 7–13. 74 Supersessionism and its theological implications are explored in David Novak, “From Supersessionism to Parallelism in Jewish-Christian Dalogue,” in Braaten and Jenson, Jews and Christians, 95–113, and in Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (see n. 48 ), esp. Chapter 1. 75 Lindbeck puts the point this way in his interpretation of developments in the early church: “Faithfulness became the mark of election, and election, conversely, became conditional on faithfulness” (Lindbeck, “The Church,” 152).

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Another way of understanding the relationship of Judaism, the church, and the people of God affirms that God’s election of and covenant with the Jewish people remain unbroken. The Jewish people continue to be the people of God—those who do not embrace Jesus as the Messiah (that is, those whose religious belief and practice became Judaism) as well as all people (including Jews) who do. Many Christian groups would make this affirmation: “more and more Christian communities, not least the Roman Catholic Church, have officially affirmed that God has not revoked his covenant with the Jews and have thereby rejected supersessionism (while continuing to insist in christologically orthodox fashion, at least in the Roman Catholic case, that Jesus Christ fulfills, though he does not replace, the Torah as God’s communally and universally normative self-revelation).”76 The affirmation made by these Christians is that the people of God, after the inauguration of the church, includes two distinct (distinct—not separated) groups of people: the Jews and those (Gentile and Jewish) who are rooted in the people of God by means of their union with Jesus Christ. These two groups are very different. So different that Christians have long been strongly inclined to say that they cannot be one people of God. This inclination will be driven by the way in which Christians understand the nature of the unity to which God calls the people of God. Understanding Judaism and the Jewish people in this way requires that Christians understand the unity of the people of God in a way that includes the possibility of wide difference in belief and practice. If the unity of the people of God permits this wide difference, then it is unclear why that same understanding of unity is inapplicable to the internal life of the church, and specifically to the ongoing existence of widely differing ecclesial structures (such as denominations) within the unity of one church.77 Exactly how this works itself out is often said (with specific reference to Romans 9–11) to be a mystery. “The continued existence

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George Lindbeck, “The Church as Israel:  Ecclesiology and Ecumenism,” in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Jews and Christians: People of God (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), 80. 77 Jesus’ interactions with the Samaritans—in narrative and in parable—might provide another example of unity being maintained across significant differences of religious organizational and belief. So e.g., Lk. 9:51–56, 10:25–37, 17:11–19, and Jn 4:1–42.

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of the Jewish people and of the church as communities elected by God is, as the apostle Paul expressed it, a ‘mystery’ (Rom. 11:25). We do not claim to fathom this mystery but we cannot ignore it.”78 One way of understanding the continuing existence of the people of God, gathered in these two apparently very different groups, is to see Christianity and Judaism as parallel forms of the people of God. David Novak offers such an understanding, formulated from a Jewish perspective. Novak notes that historically both Christianity and Judaism emerged at about the same time— during the first century. Neither of them is simply the religion of (what Christians call) the Old Testament carried forward, for the religion of the Old Testament, specifically the form it took in Second Temple Judaism, came to an end with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD/CE. Christianity emerged out of the Old Testament as it was read in the last days of the second temple, especially by the Pharisees. This is the Judaism that later Rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism of the post-temple period succeeded. Thus it can be said, with a certain degree of historical confidence, that Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism are two different traditions that emerged at roughly the same time, and they were both responses to the imminently future or imminently past destruction of the temple as the center of the covenant between God and Israel.79 The image prominently used in the New Testament for understanding the relationship of Gentiles (those who are united to Jesus Christ by faith in him as Lord and Savior) to the Jewish people is the image of a branch grafted into an olive tree. In Romans 11 Paul pictures the Jewish people as an olive tree, whose branches are as holy as its root. Paul then pictures gentile followers of Jesus Christ

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“A Theological Understanding of the Relationship Between Christians and Jews,” in Joseph D. Small, ed., Christians and Jews:  People of God (Louisville, KY: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), n.d.), 13. This document is also accessible online at https://www.pcusa.org/resource/theological-understanding-relationship-betweenchr/. 79 Novak, “From Supersessionism to Parallelism,” 108, italics in original. For a Christian proposal that Judaism and Christianity have a parallel existence, see Robert W. Jenson, “Toward a Christian Theology of Judaism.”

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as branches of wild olive, grafted into a cultivated olive tree. “But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you” (Rom. 11:17–18). Paul’s image acknowledges sameness (olive branches) and differences (cultivated or wild), bound together. The image also identifies what is primary (root) and what is secondary (branch). Set before the long, painful history of Christian violence against the Jewish people, the image is melancholy, with its implication that the engrafted branch comes to be drawn into the fabric of the tree. Nevertheless, the olive tree, with its root and branches, offers an image of two things that are both different and similar continuing to exist, growing forward entwined together. Taking the people of God as a primary framing element for a general understanding of the church, when worked out in a way that rejects supersessionism and affirms that the people of God includes two groups—both the Jewish people and those engrafted into the people of God through union with Jesus Christ—enables one to affirm both the continuity and the coherence of the narrative arc of God’s mission in creation, and does so in a way that envisions this one people of God as having a unity that is deeply complex. There are two further aspects of the people of God to be highlighted here. First, as we have seen, affirming that God elects a specific people, rather than an aggregate of individuals, offers a way of understanding how the oneness of this people, the common identity and relationship with God that they share, can contain significant difference. It can contain a judgement that some part of the people of God have turned away from God. Second, the Christian difficulty imagining that the people of God could be one while including within its unity Jews who do not regard Jesus as the Messiah as well as Christians (who affirm that Jesus Christ is Messiah, Savior, and Lord), is directly related to the difficulty that Christians have had envisioning the church as having a unity internally that includes differences on the order of those present in the unity of the people of God. What is at stake in both these further aspects of the people of God as a framing element for understanding the church is the church’s understanding of unity and oneness, a running concern throughout this book’s consideration of denomination.

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First, then, “people of God” has the capacity to understand difference, even perceived unfaithfulness, in a way that preserves (indeed, assumes) the continuing oneness of those who differ deeply with one another, differing even to the point of regarding some as violating the beliefs and practices that are central to the particular identity of the people of God. Lindbeck illustrates this point by turning to the example of the Old Testament prophets, who condemned part of the people of God (sometimes a very large part) as apostate. But in the usage of the prophets those who are apostate remain part of the people of God. If election is irrevocable, then those who are being unfaithful do remain part of the people of God. (It should be noted that in the moment it is often unclear who is being faithful and who unfaithful. Thus, for example, in 1 Kings 22 the prophet Micaiah ben Imlah alone predicts failure for the military plans of the allied kings Ahab and Jehoshaphat, and is only proven faithful when events go according to his version of the word of the Lord. The life of Jeremiah is marked throughout by such uncertainties, with Jeremiah again shown, though only after a time of uncertainty, to have spoken faithfully.) Unfaithfulness is understood as putting the ones deemed unfaithful in conflict with their own identity, with the community of the people of God, and in conflict with God, the One to whom they are committed. But that unfaithfulness does not cause them to lose their identity and status as people of God. Lindbeck points out that the Old Testament prophets name this state of unfaithfulness “adultery”—none more dramatically than Hosea. Lindbeck further notes the significance of the fact that when the church gathered its Scriptures, it included what became the Old Testament wholly—including its prophetic condemnations of the people’s unfaithfulness, embodied in story after story. “It was not only the favorable parts, such as the Old Testament accounts of faithful remnants, which they [the early Christians] applied to themselves. All the wickedness of the Israelites in the wilderness could be theirs.” Could, and was, as already in the letters of Paul.80 Lindbeck contrasts this insistence that election is irrevocable with the practice that developed in Christianity of regarding those in impaired relationship as no longer part of the people of God. “Heretical groups

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Lindbeck, “The Church,” 150. Lindbeck cites 1 Cor. 10:5–10, which puts the gathered Christian community into the story of the wanderings in the Wilderness.

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were more and more regarded as not really the church at all. They were not seen after the fashion of the ancient prophets as the adulterous spouse whom the Lord may cast out for a time but without divorcing.”81 Irrevocable election to be the people of God means that those who are regarded as faithless are kept in the people of God.82 The one people of God provides a way to conceptualize a unity that survives in the midst of deep disagreement. Second, there is a relationship between the church’s difficulty imagining that the one people of God could include Jews continuing to exist as the people of God apart from faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, and the church’s difficulty imagining its unity as holding together profound disagreements about the church’s beliefs and ecclesiastical structure. In both cases Christians are working with understandings of unity (and corresponding understandings of diversity) that can only with difficulty, if at all, find a meaningful way to conceptualize a genuine unity that stretches across such differences. Our notions of unity can manage disagreements that are less basic, where we can see underlying agreement broad enough to ease the disagreement. So, for example, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Benedictines all recognize the authority of the Pope and submit to that authority. Agreement on the authority of the Pope and submission to that authority is readily transmuted into ecclesiastical structures that make such agreements operative and visible:  the lines of relationship (that is to say, the lines of authority) are readily put in a chart, with the relevant personnel identified. But this

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Lindbeck, “The Church,” 152. For Lindbeck a key turning point in the history of the church happens following the emperor Constantine’s action making Christianity a legal religion. As more and more people streamed into the church, with an ever-more-abbreviated process of catechization and initiation, it became clear that the church was a mixture of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, making faithfulness a problematic marker of the church. “The church was now a corpus mixtum composed overwhelmingly of visible sinners rather than visible saints. The pressure was great to refer its high claims, not to the overall pattern of communal life, but to segregated aspects: to pure (ultimately infallible) doctrines, in individualistically (and, in vulgar understanding, magically) efficacious sacraments, and to divinely established institutions.” Lindbeck, “The Church,” 187–8. For an exploration of the process of abbreviation of catechetical preparation, and the impact thereof, see Alan Kreider, The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom, Christian Mission and Modern Culture (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999).

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leaves out those who either do not recognize the Pope’s authority, or who understand the authority of the Pope in a different way than does the Roman Catholic Church. And so we find ourselves in the midst of one of the most basic disagreements among Christian traditions. As already noted, Lindbeck points to the capacity of narrative arc and story as a way to account for unity that exists across massive changes, such as the change narrated in the Old Testament from a monarchy to exile. The trajectory of the narrative arc, of the story this people participates in, guaranteed by God,83 provides unity across huge differences. Locating the unity of the church in the unity of the people of God, and locating the unity of the people of God in their participation in the great narrative of God’s mission in the world, provides a way of understanding unity that is not dependent on membership in a single organizational structure, or a single ecclesial polity, a way of understanding unity that identifies what does unify them (in this case, God, specifically God’s action to gather a people to participate in and be agents of the mission of God).

Summary: Four framing elements; a view of the church The church participates in the narrative arc of God’s creation of communion with Himself and other creatures. The creation of communion with God and among creatures is the mission of God, a mission that requires time. The narrative arc was shifted by the Fall. Shifted, but not destroyed. The destination remains the same, though the setting-off point has been displaced. God’s work of creation now becomes as well the work of redemption, 83

The book of Jeremiah speaks directly to God’s guarantee of unity and of the continuation of this narrative arc. As the kingdom of Judah lurches toward its final defeat, as the city and especially the Temple are destroyed, and as many of the people are carried into exile, the people face changes that seem to have brought the narrative arc to an abrupt end, one that appears to give the narrative arc a new destination, and in so doing changes the content and significance of the entire narrative. Assurance of continuity across this apparent rupture comes in Jeremiah’s purchase of the field at Anathoth (Jer. 32)  and in the letter Jeremiah sends to the exiles in Babylon as they try to determine how to carry on (Jer. 29).

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a re-creation of human beings, fitting them to flourish once again in communion with God and others, their mutual interdependence transformed from fetter to fullness of life. That work of creation and redemption gathers a people to participate in God’s mission, to be the people of God. This people exists across significant changes in its structure, changes sometimes chosen by the people and sometimes forced on them by others. The question is always how to be faithful within the structures at hand, and how to maintain continuity of relationship with God across structural changes. The people of God, led as they are by the Spirit of God, exist in a variety of structural forms, which are not necessarily continuous when viewed from an organizational point of view.

The church: Nature, mission, and structures In what follows I explore the church from another angle, once again proposing a general view of the church in which aspects of denomination can be placed. Parts of previous sections and chapters are drawn into this way of viewing the church. This angle on the church considers the nature, mission, and structures of the church. Here again, I  take material from previous chapters, assembling it in a new way. In doing so this section can be more summary, offering reminders of other places where particular points are explored at greater depth. As has been noted, nature and mission are the primary elements of the title of the ecumenical document The Nature and Mission of the Church, which formed the last published preliminary draft of The Church: Towards a Common Vision. The title recognized that exploring the nature and mission of the church are primary ways of stating what the church is. Both of these ecumenical documents include discussion of the structures (or structure) that the church should take in order to be faithful to its mission. What follows considers the church through its nature, purpose, and structures, looking for the place of denomination when we view the church through these three themes.

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The nature of the church As pointed out in the previous section, the nature of the church is determined by God’s mission and the church’s participation in that mission. That is not to say that the nature and mission of the church are simply the same thing. Attention to the nature of the church serves to identify the thing itself. The nature of the church is that the church is a people created and redeemed for participation in the mission of God, enjoying and inviting others to enjoy communion with God and all creatures.84 Creatures are created for communion with God and with one another. Those who are in communion with God find that they are there with others, for it is not good to be alone. Indeed, creatures cannot live in isolation. Creatures are finite, and thereby dependent on others. Creaturely life is interdependent by its very nature, inescapably. The fullest form of life is communion:  relationship with others that is mutual care, and that knowledge of one another that is born of love. Being finite, interdependent, and personal, human life generates forms of community. Family, tribe, nation, association, club, and neighborhood—humans embody their dependence on one another in a multitude of ways. These forms of community are structured, with the structures becoming increasingly complex as their size (regarded as both number of members and geographical spread) increases. Creation does not, of course, unroll smoothly from its beginning to the gathering toward which it is aimed. There is the Fall, Adam and Eve sent out from the habitation made for them in the Garden, into the wide world. This Fall does not destroy the story God is building across time. Rather, it shifts the starting point of the story. God charts a new path to the New Jerusalem. God gathers a people among the peoples to participate in the mission of God to bring more and more into the communion with God which makes us whole. Ancient Israel participates in God’s mission, the story of expanding communion, pointing the way to our true destination in its 84

The vision of the goal of God’s mission is a vision of such communion. In addition to Revelation 21–22, already cited and explored, this vision is found e.g., in Isa. 25:6–10a and Phil. 2:1–11.

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worship, its proclamation, and its way of life.85 Jesus Christ opens new ways of joining the people of God and participating in God’s mission. Christ initiates a new gathering within the people of God. “Jesus’ life of service, his death and resurrection, are the foundation of a new community which is built up continually by the good news of the Gospel and the gifts of the sacraments. The Holy Spirit unites in a single body those who follow Jesus Christ and sends them as witnesses into the world. Belonging to the Church means living in communion with God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.”86 In Jesus Christ the mission to the nations that was present from the beginning is being carried out in ways that are mostly unexpected: one can be incorporated into the people of God, thus coming into its communion with God, without first going through the rites necessary to join the Jewish people. And so the people of God takes on its distinctive twofold shape. In and through Jesus Christ the church is redeemed for the communion that has been basic to the fullness of life since the creation itself. One of the significant aspects of redemption is that it does not simply erase history. Redemption takes what was once deadly—the wounds of sin that break communion—and renders it no longer deadly. There is an analogy to this in the body of the risen Christ:  after the resurrection Jesus still bears the wounds of his crucifixion, but those wounds are no longer deadly, and become markers of his identity, drained of the sting of death.87 Within creation there is no going back. God’s mission meets us where sin has (dis)placed us, and moves toward our destination from there.

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Proclamation is found, for example, in the evangelistic impulse present in the Psalms, such as 69:1–3 “O sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.” The Torah seeks to describe a way of life that is fit for, and itself embodies, the mission of God. 86 World Council of Churches, Faith and Order, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper No. 111; Geneva:  World Council of Churches, 1982), 20. This is in §1 of the “Ministry” section of the document. Henceforth reference will be to BEM, page number, and paragraph number. 87 So it is in the story of Thomas’s encounter with the risen Jesus: Jn 20:24–29. Beth Felker Jones has highlighted the importance for Christianity of the wounds of the risen Jesus. Beth Felker Jones, Marks of His Wounds:  Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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So the nature of the church is that it is a people created and redeemed for participation in the mission of God, enjoying and inviting others to enjoy communion with God and all creatures.

The mission of the church The mission of God was considered earlier in this chapter, and was important in the previous section. It was noted that the mission of God is central to the nature and being of the church. The mission of God is the creation of communion with and among creatures, and God gathers a people to invite all people to embody and enjoy and bear witness to this communion, God’s great and good gift.

Structure in the church It is here that a general consideration of the church comes most explicitly to denomination. The church is creaturely. As it is embodied in the world it belongs to the realm of creatures, and so it shares the characteristics of creatureliness. It is finite and limited, both in space and time. Creatures by their very nature are bounded. They must be to survive. Creatures are also located. They are local. This is right and good: creation brings into existence locations where creatures can function—it is the making of habitable habitations.88 So too the church is organized in structures that are to be habitable habitations, each with its limits, all necessary together. Church polity—the rules and recommendations by which the church makes its way as a particular organization in the world, whether formalized or informal—is the way in which the church is structured. Polity provides the bonds that structure a common way of life—that structure a group of people who together are living out one of the possible ways in which the Christian life can be lived. In this way, church polity is a bit like the rules of games in sports. Rules have the ability to provide a particular space in which excellence can emerge. Church polity, functioning properly, is able to do just that. Properly, the bonds of polity enable a group

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of people to embody God’s love for one another and for all others. Properly, they enable a mutual submission that is life-giving, enabling all those living in that polity together to be agents of life for those within and those beyond the group’s membership. Existing as they do in a fallen world, made up as they are of fallen people, the bonds formed by a church’s polity sometimes distort. Polity is used to force some out, or to the margin, it is used to silence, it is used to exercise power, and it is used to abuse. Faithfulness to God and the mission of God requires the church to be vigilant in watching for and correcting such uses of church polity.

Summary: The communion to which we are called Denomination is a significant reality in the life of the church, and has been so for centuries. Denomination is not in and of itself primary. That is one of the things that comes clear by considering the church in a more general way, as has been done in this chapter. Denomination is important because of its relationship to primary matters, particularly to the long narrative arc of God’s creation and redemption, to the communion into which the triune God incorporates us—communion that is the fullness of life, to the mission of God creating and recreating communion and fitting creatures to live in such a way, to the people of God who are made agents of God’s mission. Denomination provides a way to serve these primary concerns, and it is appropriate for such, gathering followers of Jesus Christ—that is, gathering the church in ways that enable congregations to connect with the one church in structures that are intermediate, and intermediary. While not theologically primary, denomination is theologically worthy, filling a function in the life and gathering of the church.

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Does the unity to which the church is called allow for the ongoing existence of multiple confessional forms and the church orders they generate? This question is a fork in the road in ecumenical work, and it is basic to the theological evaluation of denomination as a form of intermediary ecclesial structure. If multiple confessional forms and corresponding church orders are inherently a violation of the unity of the church, then there is no faithful, legitimate place for denomination in the church. If the unity of the church allows for the ongoing existence of multiple confessional forms and church orders, then there is at least potentially room for denomination within faithful Christian living. The task then is to make the case that denomination is a faithful embodiment of such differences. This book is based on the conviction that there is (indeed, that there must be) room in the church for multiple confessional forms and the church orders that those forms generate. Part I offers a survey of theological thinkers who have explored aspects of denomination that provide for faithful Christian living within the unity of the church. Part II offers an account of denomination that seeks to show why the unity of the church must be understood to include space for diversity of confessional form and church order. Part II also explores the diversity, unity, and communion to which the church is called, guided by the conviction that unity and diversity are symbiotically related, each shaping the other. Articulated unity presents a vision of unity that is complex. One of the advantages of organic unity is that it would yield a church structure whose unity is plain for all to see. It offers a vision of institutional unity that can clearly be grasped and understood: indeed, it can be understood virtually at a glance. Organic unity sets as a goal

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the construction of a concrete church order that is coherent from top to bottom, with unification taking common form throughout. This graspability is a clear advantage. Articulated unity offers a unity that is less uniform. It is difficult to grasp, for it requires tracking relationships that take many different forms, across a wide variety of institutional structures. The difficulty of seeing articulated unity clearly across the variety of the church is a disadvantage. Deciding between the two depends in significant part on one’s evaluation of what unity must be, and what structural shape it must take. Whatever one’s judgment of the account offered here, it is vital that we have a thick theological account of what denomination is and how it can (or cannot) be viewed as faithful to the Christian conviction that the church is one, and that the church is called to find concrete forms that enable it truthfully and faithfully to embody its oneness. The denominations have been weakened by the absence of such an account, as has the ecumenical dialogue in which so many of them are engaged.

Conclusion

Denomination: Object of theological neglect Denomination is a massive reality in the life of the church, and has been so for centuries. Yet it has been the subject of little analysis among theologians, most of whom have taken denomination to be unworthy of theological investigation. The need for theological analysis of denomination is acute. Without it, denominations are unable to offer an account of their existence internally, to their own members; ecumenically, to other denominations; or missionally, to the wider world. Unable to offer a rich theological account of why they exist and how they serve the well-being of the church, denominations are unable internally to offer a compelling account of why their members should remain within the denomination in the face of deep disagreements and challenges. Denominations are unable to fashion structures that will hold their members together because they don’t know what it means to be what they are. Unable to offer a rich theological account of why they exist and how they serve the well-being of the church, denominations are unable ecumenically to offer other denominations and ecclesial bodies an account of why they persist in existing as a separate group, or how the unity of the church is to be lived in the face of their continued existence as denominations. Unable to offer an account of themselves, denominations are unable missionally to clarify to those outside the church why that denomination exists and how joining that particular denomination enables one to live the Christian life (shared by all Christians) in a faithful way.

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Despite strong challenges, this is a good moment for theological analysis of denomination. The ecumenical movement has had significant success in breaking down hostilities between many denominations. At the level of congregations and members, a vernacular ecumenism has in many places dissolved the sense that to be a member of one denomination is to reject other denominations. Ecumenical dialogues (both multi- and bilateral) have provided places in which denominations are called to give an account of themselves. Denominations no longer exist (insofar as they ever did) in self-contained spaces in which much could be taken for granted. It has been the aim of this book to face these challenges and seize these opportunities, attempting to take a step toward a broader discussion of what it is to be a denomination and how denominations serve the well-being of the church. The book has moved forward on two fronts. First, it has sought to do descriptive work, exploring what denomination is—its characteristics, its place, and its functions. This descriptive work has proceeded by considering the work of earlier scholars who explored denomination, and by offering a constructive account of denomination, and of the diversity, unity, and communion to which God calls all Christians. Second, this book has sought to do normative work, offering a defense of the legitimacy of denomination as one form of intermediary structure in the church.

Exploring denomination: Forerunners Over against the widespread failure to provide a substantive theological account of denomination, there have been scholars who have not ignored denomination, but have instead explored it, offering insights for the task at hand. Philip Schaff recognized the importance of denomination. He sought to meet the need for a theological analysis of denomination and its place in the life of the church. Schaff’s evaluation of denomination shifted over the course of his life, from rejection of denomination starting already before he arrived in the United States, to affirmation of its legitimacy and value by the time of his address to the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893, at the end of his life. The shift in Schaff’s view of denomination was driven by four

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key affirmations, Schaff’s answers to questions that the reality of denomination still puts to us today. First, Schaff recognized the need to offer a theological assessment of what has actually happened in the history of the church. Was the rise and flourishing of denomination in the United States a good work of the Holy Spirit, or was it a work in opposition to the Holy Spirit? Schaff came to believe strongly that it was a good work of the Holy Spirit, and was to be received as such. And so the question stands before us as well: are denominations part of the good work of the Holy Spirit, or are they a mistake, opposed to the work of the Holy Spirit, and a massive marker of the Holy Spirit’s failure to bring into existence the church that Christ calls forth? Second, Schaff recognized that unity and diversity are symbiotically related. He accepted the need to offer interrelated accounts of both. And so the question stands before us: what do we mean by unity when we call for the unity of the church? Third, Schaff recognized the need for careful attention to terms. Specifically, he recognized that the church/sect distinction was not applicable to the United States. The church/sect distinction depends on government establishment of religion: the church is identifiable by its being established through the coercive power of the state. In the absence of state establishment the church/sect distinction becomes inapplicable. Again, the question is before us as well: do we recognize the inapplicability of the church/sect distinction and the need for a different, better analysis and terminology? Fourth, Schaff recognized that he himself was implicated in the question of denomination. If denomination is not a faithful way to gather Christians within the church, then he was in the wrong. Are those of us who are in denominations able to account for our own participation in them, and our dependence on them, doing something more than excusing ourselves from the great condemnation of the ecclesial structures in which we live the faith? H. Richard Niebuhr, like Schaff, also began with fierce condemnation of denomination—condemnation driven in part by his experiences, and those of his father and brother, with his own denomination, the (German) Evangelical Synod. Like Schaff, Niebuhr underwent an evolution in his view of denomination over the rest of his life, leading to explicit affirmation that the problem with denomination is not denomination itself, but rather what Niebuhr called denominationalism, a term he carefully defined (in contrast to so many uses of the word) as the mistake of taking one’s own

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denomination to be the totality of the church. Niebuhr’s condemnation of denomination in The Social Sources of Denominationalism has been taken to be the definitive theological account of denomination. That makes it all the more important to review the full record of Niebuhr’s reflections on denomination, to bring a more accurate picture of his assessment. When Niebuhr’s reflections on church and denomination over the full course of his work is examined, it is clear that the common view of Social Sources is mistaken. Niebuhr recognized the importance of God’s creative action in bringing florid diversity to the church, and he viewed denomination as a faithful form of the embodiment of that diversity. In the absence of investigation of denomination by theologians, church historians have explored denomination’s history and its present reality. Their work is a significant resource for theological analysis of denomination and for the denominations themselves as they seek to make sense of what they are, how they came to be what they are, and how they can faithfully move forward. Winthrop Hudson, Sidney Mead, and Russell E. Richey have developed a rich picture of denomination’s origins and of its history in the Anglophone world. Like Schaff and Niebuhr they have recognized the need to offer a theological appraisal of this history, asking whether the Holy Spirit has been at work in the development of denomination or not. These scholars have offered analysis of the features of denomination as it has been embodied across history, identifying that which endures and that which is of a particular moment or context.

Exploring denomination: Denomination as intermediary ecclesial structure Having considered the forerunners, this book has offered a constructive account of denomination, and the implications of denomination for understanding the diversity, unity, and communion to which the church is called. Denomination is an intermediary ecclesial structure within the unity of the church. It is a way of providing structure in which a group of Christians gather to support one another in living out the Christian faith in a particular way. The Christian faith can be lived in more than one faithful way—the faith generates multiple

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faithful ways. This has been clear throughout the history of the church: the community in and to which the author of the Gospel of Matthew wrote lived the faith in a different way than the community in and to which the author of the Gospel of Luke wrote; the desert fathers and mothers lived the faith in a different way than Christians who lived and worked in Alexandria or Rome; the Franciscans live the faith in a different way than the Benedictines; the Antiochian Orthodox Church lives the faith in (perhaps subtly) different ways than the Russian Orthodox Church. All these variations have generated intermediary ecclesial structures:  organizational forms within the church, larger than the congregation and smaller than the entire church universal, for living the Christian life together in a particular way. Denomination extends this category. Quakers live the faith in different ways than the Assembly of God, and both live the faith in different ways than Presbyterian denominations or the Roman Catholic Church. Denomination provides a space in which those committed to a particular way of living the Christian faith can live alongside Christians who are committed to living the Christian faith in another way. Denomination provides space and time in which to evaluate these various ways for their faithfulness and durability, without the need to suppress before having time to evaluate. Placed between congregation and the one church, denomination has particular characteristics: it is intermediary, contingent, partial, interdependent, and permeable. Denomination is intermediary; it mediates between the congregation and the one church: it is a structure in which congregations can live more concretely the abstractness of their confession that the church is one. This means that denominations are misunderstood when they are taken, openly or implicitly, as ends in themselves. They exist to mediate, not as ends. Denomination is contingent. It has not always existed in the church, and there may come a time when it fades away. Furthermore, every particular denomination arises contingently, in a particular context, through contingent causes, and it will at some point cease to be. Denomination is partial. Any particular denomination is only a part of the church. Denominations go wrong when they take themselves to be the whole. As such, denominations are interdependent: they depend on one another for the embodiment of the fullness of the Gospel. No one denomination embodies the fullness of possibility in the Gospel: they require other denominations for that fullness to

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begin to be lived. Finally, denominations are permeable. Members come in, and members leave; congregations may come in or leave as well. Denominations merge, and they divide. Such permeability is inherent to denomination. This understanding of denomination has implications for understanding the diversity and unity to which the church is called. Neither unity nor diversity is a simple term, whose meaning is selfevident. What these terms mean for the church must be explored. What is the character of the diversity to which the church is called? What of the unity? Chapters 5 and 6 explored each in turn. The character of the diversity to which the church is called can be discerned on the basis of four theological affirmations. First, room for diversification is built into the New Testament. The New Testament’s instructions for structuring the church are underdetermined: they do not provide enough instruction to limit the church to one or a few forms of organization or ways of living the Christian life faithfully. This is in striking contrast to the approach found in the Old Testament, where the Torah is replete with instructions for structuring life together. Second, the diversity that is generated by God’s creative action is superabundant. The power of God’s action to produce diversification is demonstrated in a place where contemporary Christians would not expect to find it: the genealogies that provide way markers across the first eleven chapters of Genesis (Gen. 2:4, 5:1–32, 10:1–32, 11:10–32). The importance of this diversification is affirmed at the end of the Book of Revelation, where the nations and their kings “will bring into [the New Jerusalem] the glory and the honor of the nations” (Rev. 21:26, and 24). The glory and honor that have developed in these diverse kingdoms are to be preserved. They are worth preservation: they are part of God’s good plan. Third, human finitude and creatureliness require structures that are also finite and creaturely and thus habitable. And there will need to be many of them. Finally, diversity results from the renunciation of coercion. Uniformity can only be maintained through coercion. Any vision of the unity of the church that requires coercion is thus to be questioned. The discussion of diversity concluded with an exploration of denomination and schism. It is often taken for granted that the meaning of “schism” is clear. It is generally taken to be a matter of ecclesial structures, and a split within one of them. This definition

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is misdirected and inadequate. Schism is a matter of broken relationship, of enmity; just as unity is a matter of right relationship, of love. A split in ecclesial structures is secondary to the enmity that leads to the split. Structural splits are one possible effect of schism, which can take other forms. Schism can exist without structural separation. Chapter  6 considered the unity to which the church is called. A  long conversation about the nature of the unity to which the church is called has unfolded across the ecumenical movement of the last century. Central to this conversation has been the question of confessional differences and the varying church orders they have generated. This remains a central, undecided point in the ecumenical conversation. This book shares with advocates of various forms of unity in reconciled diversity or church fellowship the conviction that such differences are to be preserved in the unity to which we are called—for reasons offered in Chapter 5. The unity that matches such diversity is articulated unity. Such unity will take varied forms as it is worked out between groups of denominations ranging from two denominations to many. This unity will be complex and multiform. It is a unity that is to be enacted anew daily, not a unity that is put in place permanently. It will be visible in the varied structures that are fashioned to hold these relationships, and it will be the unity to which the church is called insofar as these structures make visible relationships among Christians that embody the love of Jesus Christ. Finally, Chapter  7 proposed a general view of the church in which denomination was set. The church is known by its participation in the narrative arc of God’s mission in creation: the creation of creatures to share in the fullness of life found in communion with God and one another. The church is part of the people of God, whom God has called forth to be agents of God’s mission. This narrative arc holds together remarkably diverse institutional structures and organizational forms in and through which the people of God has lived out its participation in the mission of God. The particular structures taken up by the church are both important and secondary, servants of the community’s participation in the mission of God in each context. Denomination does have a place within the unity of the church, among intermediary ecclesial structures. It recognizes the movement of the Holy Spirit to generate diversities that would

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never be possible within the institutional structures we are able to assemble.

The legitimacy of denomination: The central question The question, whether denomination is even potentially a faithful way of organizing and living in the church revolves around a central issue: does the unity of the church require that all Christians be part of a single ecclesiastical structure, organized in a particular way, with clear lines of institutional relationship and authority running from top to bottom? When Jesus Christ prays, in the seventeenth chapter of John, asking for his followers of all time “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21), is Jesus asking that Christians may all be in a single ecclesiastical structure, organized in a particular way? It is regularly assumed that the answer is yes. Unfortunately, that assumption is rarely articulated, much less given reasoned arguments in its support. There are short-term advantages to the failure to articulate and defend that assumption:  one can cast those who disagree with this assumption as deficient in faithfulness, people who are opposed to the explicit command of the Lord Jesus Christ. But such advantages serve only to leave the church unable to make its way toward an understanding of unity that would help Christians better understand what the unity of the church demands of each of us here and now. Instead, the unity of the church appears to be a matter of the clash of institutions, carried on by institutional leaders. It will be clear from what has gone before that I  believe the only reasonable answer to this question is no. The unity to which the Lord Jesus Christ calls the church does not require that all Christians be part of a single ecclesiastical structure, organized in a particular way, with clear lines of institutional relationship and authority running from top to bottom. That puts me at odds with Christian sisters and brothers who affirm the answer yes to the question at hand.

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There is a biblical story that might serve as an analogy to the dispute between those who answer yes and those answering no: 1 Samuel 8.  Samuel is the latest (and, it will turn out, the last) of a long sequence of judges who lead the people of ancient Israel. Samuel has grown old and his heirs (and presumptive successors in leadership) are corrupt and unsuitable to lead the people. The elders of the people come to Samuel with a request—a demand, really— regarding the leadership of the people. The elders “said to [Samuel], ‘You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like the other nations’ ” (8:5). Samuel is “displeased,” but puts the request before God for God’s response. God is clearly no more pleased than Samuel: “and the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (8:8). Samuel warns the people about life under a monarch, but the people insist. “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles” (8:19b–20). Shall the tribes continue as a federation of relatively independent tribal groups united in a common identity, or shall the tribes become a more tightly structured polity with a clear sovereign and succession in office?1 Where shall the unity of the people be grounded and made public? Shall it be grounded in their participation in a particular narrative, decisively shaped by the divine choice of Abram and Sarai and their descendants? Or shall their unity be grounded in a polity that is centralized, exercising decisive authority over the tribes, subservient not to them, but they to it (this is the point of the warnings Samuel, at the behest of God, issues to the people: a monarch will have authority over you and will use that authority). A monarch will be an easily identifiable authority figure for this people, one publicly known, and who is visible. A monarch can be pointed to as central to the people’s identity. A tribal federation, with only occasional human executive leadership serving at 1

Governance by judges has itself been problematic, as the book of Judges makes very clear. The problems become ever more severe as the book proceeds, with a nadir reached in the final chapters. The final verse of the book crystallizes the problem: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (21:25; cf. 18:1 and 19:1).

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the behest of God, is hazier, less visible to outside observers. There is no single human figure serving as a unifying figure, identifiable for all.2 The one who exercises the basic authority in the federation is not available in the same way. What is clear is that God prefers the tribal federation. And yet, God is willing to accede to the people’s demand. God is able to work in and through either structure—and other structures that the people will develop as their context changes. The specific structure matters to God, but is secondary. What matters most is the mission of God, and that the people of God be agents of God’s mission. And indeed God does work through the monarchy that the people prefer. In the New Testament these two patterns meet: Jesus Christ stands explicitly in the royal line stemming from King David; at the same time, as we have seen, Jesus insists that the twelve disciples will serve as judges of the twelve tribes. So too, in its own way, with the church. When Christ prays for the unity of the church, which form of unity is it? Is it a unity that has a clearly identifiable, publicly visible structure, a unity grounded in particular persons? Or is the unity based in a common story and trajectory, a unity that is more complicated, a unity not embodied in tight organizational structures? Denomination clearly has its home in the latter form of unity. 1 Samuel 8, where two ways of structuring the people of God run into one another, provides a way of thinking about denomination and the claims denomination makes.

To my Protestant sisters and brothers: Shall we be what we are? The long history of disdain for denomination has done damage on many fronts. It is widely taken for granted that denominations are an evil. Whatever concessions might be made to good things that have happened in and through denominations, the underlying condemnation remains in place. This bias has been absorbed even by

2

Having a king also fails to guarantee unity or faithfulness. The monarchy is soon divided in two, leaving the people of God to embody their unity in some other way. The monarchs themselves are consistently faithless and lead the people in faithlessness.

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those who are in what are undeniably denominations. The basic polity document of my own denomination, the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was recently given a thorough revision. One of the significant contributors to drafting that revision acknowledged that in his work on the text he sought to eliminate the word denomination wherever possible. As I noted in response, eliminating the word does not eliminate the reality. No knowledgeable person can be in any doubt that the PCUSA is a denomination. Eliminating the word denomination from the basic polity of the PCUSA simply makes it that much more difficult for the PCUSA to be what it is—a denomination—and to be that with wisdom and insight, with a well-grounded understanding of its limitations and possibilities. And, as I have noted along the way, the absence of a well-developed self-understanding damages the denomination’s ability to relate well to its own members, to ecumenical partners, and to those who are presently outside the church and its faith. It is understandable that those in denominations that believe they are the one true embodiment of the church on earth would reject denomination. It is unfortunate that so many of those who are in denominations that acknowledge the presence of other denominations within the church also share the rejection of denomination. My call to sisters and brothers who are in denominations, who live their Christian faith in, with, and through denominations, would be to accept that reality, and to think about that reality well, that we might live that reality with wisdom, renouncing tempting visions of a perfect church that should be, visions that underwrite our rejection of the habitations in which we actually live. One of the realities standing in the way of a ready acceptance of denomination is the sheer modesty of denominations. They seem not to be nearly grand enough. The proposal in this book is that denominations are genuinely secondary:  they exist in service to other things, things that are primary: the congregation and the church. Denominations are church, but they carry that name only insofar as they are directed to the service of that which is primary. Clearly, the failings of denominations cannot be ignored. As the church is full of sinful people, so too are denominations. Denominations have been and are used for sinful purposes, or as media for sinful purposes. Denominations have embraced racism and oppression. They have supported nationalism. They have been used as a means of separating one group from those others deemed

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to be unholy and unfit for God’s presence. Denominations have been self-interested, -congratulatory, and -centered. They have become focused, sometimes desperately, on institutional survival above all else. Little wonder then that theologians have so often preferred the grand visions of blueprint ecclesiology—visions of the church that would be perfect (by the visionaries’ lights).3 Denominations are modest, limited, finite, and creaturely. It is understandable that there is an impulse to turn on them. But a better calling is to affirm and embrace their modesty. Embracing the modesty and worth of such a creaturely thing is not only a task with regard to denomination. In an illuminating exegesis of the final chapters of the book of Job, Carol A. Newsome has probed the difficulties of embracing that which is creaturely. Near the end of her exegesis, Newsome turns her attention to the end of Job’s speech in response to God:  “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I  despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6). Newsome notes that the final phrase can reasonably be translated in a different way: “What the divine speeches offer to Job in his pain . . . enables Job to say, not as the traditional translation has rendered it, ‘I repent in dust and ashes’ (42:6), but as it may equally well be translated, ‘I am comforted concerning dust and ashes’; that is, I am comforted concerning my finite humanity.”4 Job came to be comforted concerning creatureliness. Yes, denominations are modest things. They sometimes seem to push their failings before them, as so much baggage they cannot seem to deal with. This means that denominations are like us, mixtures of faithful- and faithlessness. This is unsurprising, since they are made up of us. Can we who are in denominations be comforted concerning their finitude, their modesty, and their creaturely dimensions and reality?

3 Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World, and the Christian Life:  Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine, Vol. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 25–51. 4 Carol A. Newsome, “The Moral Sense of Nature: Ethics in the Light of God’s Speech to Job,” The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 15, 1 New Series (1994), 26. In proposing the alternate translation Newsome is drawing on William Morrow, “Consolation, Rejection, and Repentance in Job 42:6,” Journal of Biblical Literature 105, No. 2 (1986), 211–25.

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One of the most significant theological problems confronting American Protestantism today is its failure to develop a theological account of denomination. Is there a legitimate place for denomination as an ecclesial structure? If so, what is denomination, such that it could have a place in the church that the triune God brings into being? Denomination is a major form of intermediary ecclesial structure in the church across the globe today. It enables the embodiment of the fullness and richness of the Christian faith, a faith open-ended, that can be lived in a variety of faithful ways. Denomination provides space for extended discernment and evaluation of proposed ways of living the faith. It allows for relationships to be built both within and between these ways of living the faith. Denomination has long been neglected by the church’s theologians. One may hope that neglect is at an end, that good theological tools will be fashioned, and that they will enable denominations to live faithfully in the midst of the challenges of this and every present moment.

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BIBLICAL CITATIONS INDEX

Genesis 1–2 Genesis 5 Genesis 9 Genesis 10 Genesis 11 Genesis 12 Deuteronomy 17 Deuteronomy 23 Deuteronomy 24 1 Samuel 8 1 Kings 22 Job 38–41 Job 42 Psalm 48 Psalm 104 Isaiah 6 Isaiah 42 Isaiah 49 Hosea Matthew 1 Matthew 4 Matthew 19 Matthew 22 Matthew 28 Mark 12 Mark 14 Luke 3 Luke 5 Luke 6 Luke 8

211, 212, 223, 286, 338 211–14, 338 214 211–14, 338 214–15, 338 317 206 206 206 341–2 322 211 344 211 211 223n. 42 317 317 322 316 316 316 312 158, 284, 317 312 316 316 316 316 316

Luke 10 Luke 11 Luke 18 Luke 22 John 3 John 6 John 13 John 17 Acts Acts 1 Acts 2 Acts 6 Acts Romans 6 Romans 9–11 Romans 12 Romans 15 Romans 16 1 Corinthians 5 1 Corinthians 10 1 Corinthians 11 1 Corinthians 12 1 Corinthians 14 2 Corinthians 5 2 Corinthians 8 Galatians 2

312 316 234n. 59 296, 316 209n. 15, 302 296 257, 312, 316 202, 218, 220, 228, 264, 340 209n. 15 158, 316 215–17, 310, 316, 317 207 13–14, 181 219 316, 319, 320–1 156, 158, 207, 296 310 159 160 310 316 86, 89, 156–7, 207, 220, 296 210 158n. 15 310 310

364

364

BIBLICAL CITATIONS INDEX

Galatians 3 Galatians 5 Galatians 6 Ephesians 1 Ephesians 2 Ephesians 4 Ephesians 5 Ephesians 6 Philippians 1

218–20 207 158n. 15 158, 311 317 207, 220, 312 312 207 264

Philippians 3 Philippians 4 Colossians 1 Colossians 2 1 Timothy 3 1 John Revelation 405 Revelation 4–5 Revelation 21

264 159, 207 156 191 207 228 223n. 42 223n. 42 217–20, 338

AUTHOR INDEX

Aquinas, Thomas 308 Barth, Karl 300–1, 308 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 97n. 1 Burroughes, Jeremiah 103–6

Kinnamon, Michael 10, 47, 146, 159, 171, 203, 238, 243, 279 Lindbeck, George 305–9 Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn 236

Calvin, John 109 desert fathers, mothers 168–9 Dunn, James D. G. 218–19 Dykstra, Craig 133 Florovsky, Georges 189, 231–2 Guder, Darrell 312–14 Healy, Nicholas 41, 98, 182–3 Hudson, Winthrop 16, 99–108, 140, 170, 227, 336 conscience, freedom of 105–6 definition of denomination 100 knowledge, partial 103–4 knowledge, uncertainty 103 persuasion, role of 107 pluralism 107 state coercion 101 state establishment 101–2 unchurching 102 ultimacy 104–5 Jenson, Robert 156n. 12, 229n. 50, 311 Kasper, Walter Cardinal 155n. 11, 162, 188, 210n. 14, 268–71

Mead, Sidney 16, 108–27, 140, 336 denominational competition 122–3 free church idea 112 purpose, defining 119–20 rationalism, rejection 121–2 religious liberty 125 revivalism, role of 120–1 theological account 121–2, 124–7 voluntary church membership 117–9 Meyer, Harding 245n. 3, 249–57, 268 Murray, Paul 186 Nevin, John Williamson 23, 52–3 Newsome, Carol A. 344 Niebuhr, H. Richard 9–10, 16, 55–95, 139–40, 184, 335–6 anti-institutionalism 79, 88 community, drive to 86–7 condemnation of denomination(alism) 8–9, 56–7, 67–8, 92–3 father and brother 72–3 German Evangelical Synod 72–3

36

366

AUTHOR INDEX

institutions, role of 87–91 invisible church 80–2, 86, 92 The Kingdom of God in America 75–85 need for institutions 88, 89 positive view of denomination 85–92 racial division 67 religious liberty 62–3 The Social Sources of Denominationalism 8–9, 55–85, 94, 97 Novak, David 320 Osborn, Ronald 184 Preston, Geoffrey 315 Ratzinger, Joseph 155n. 11, 162n. 21 Richey, Russell 16–7, 127–38, 140–1, 336 denominationalism, definition 128, 134–7 history of denomination 131–4

importance of denomination 130–1 Schaff, Philip 8, 15, 19–53, 139, 225, 334–5 America 27, 32, 36, 43 Church history as discipline 38–42, 52, 82–5 organic development of church 32–5 The Principle of Protestantism 23–32 religious liberty 42–6 “The Reunion of Christendom” 46–51 revelation, unfolding of 37–8 Small, Joseph D. 185–6, 192–3 Sweeney, James 221–2 Tillard, Jean-Marie 230–1, 234 Ukwuegbu, Bernard 219–20 Wesley, John 99–100 Westermann, Claus 214

SUBJECT INDEX

baptist churches 222 Baptist World Alliance 155 Bible as authority 116–17 underdetermined 208, 226, 238–9

People of God and 314–24 structures of 328–9 unity 243–80, 306–7, 339 visible/invisible 77, 80–2, 299–303 The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV) 283–8 church/sect distinction 46, 48–9, 51–2, 56, 59–62, 112–13, 335 Churches Uniting in Christ 262–3 coercion, see “State coercive power” communion/koinonia 254, 257–8, 283–5, 288, 310–12 Impelled together 158–63 congregation 158–61, 220–1 councils of churches 223 creaturliness 220–4, 328–9 cuius regio, eius religio 111, 151, 227, 271

China, church in 266 Christian faith embodied multiple ways 150–1, 165–7, 198 knowing fullness of 190–1 church boundaries of 298–304 communion and 310–12, 329 Judaism and 289–92, 306–7 Mission of God and 312–14, 328 nature of 326–8 structures of 328–9

denomination as “ways” 170 as “church” 172 authorize worship 171 belief and practice, shared 101– 6, 163–8, 185, 201, 226 cease to exist 30, 184, 224 committed relationship 150 contingent 180–5, 337 continuity and mutability 194–5 definition 100, 128, 134–7 dynamic 224 ecclesial 170–2

Act of Toleration (1689) 227 American Christianity and implicit Protestant ecclesiology 109–11 Theological weakness 111 American Society of Church History 38–41, 52, 82–5 Anglican Communion 162n. 22, 271–7 articulated unity 257–68, 331–2, 339 Augsburg Confession 269 authority 167, 171

368

368

SUBJECT INDEX

interdependent 190–3, 337–8 intermediary 149–50, 155–63, 178–80, 336–40 legitimacy of 6–7, 340–2 partial 89–93, 185–9, 337 permeable 193–5, 338 shared belief 163–4 heological neglect of 1–5, 11, 333–4 denominational sins 245–6, 277–9 assert self-sufficiency 180, 185–7, 191–3 blasphemy 278 idolatry 277–8 disagreement, living with 166–8, 226 discernment 167–8, 226 diversity, ecclesial 9–10, 201–41, 338 ecclesiology Magisterial Reformers 151–2 embodiment 165–6 The Episcopal Church 262, 272–7 essentials/adiaphora 173–8 establishment, state 101–2 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 114, 236, 262 Faith and Order Commission, WCC, see World Council of Churches finitude 220–4 foundationalism, philosophical 177 Franciscan movement 169–70 intermediary structures 7, 154–63, 336–40 Ius divinum 207–8 Leuenberg Church Fellowship 255, 259

life together impulse toward 86–7 Lumen Gentium, see Roman Catholic Church Lutheran World Federation 155, 162, 223, 255–6 Methodism 114n. 35, 128–9, 133, 171n. 33, 196n. 72, 246n. 5, 266–7 mission  role in denomination 119 Of God (missio Dei) 285, 312–14, 328 models of union 249–50, 254–7 church fellowship 255 cooperative-federal 254 mutual recognition 254–5 reconciled diversity 255–6, 268–71 narrative arc 285, 289, 305–10 New Delhi definition 250–4, 260 organic union 331–2 orthodox churches  autocephaly 154–5 overlapping territories 102n. 9, 155, 221 recognition of church 189 particularity 214–19, 221–3 Peace of Augsburg, see cuius regio, eius religio Peace of Westphalia, see cuius regio, eius religio People of God 289–94, 314–24 persuasion 107, 117, 247–8 polity, church 206–11 Presbyterian Church (USA) 181, 186n. 55, 208, 236, 262

SUBJECT INDEX

Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PCN) 265 receptive ecumenism 186 Reformed Church in America 236 relief agencies, Christian 259 religious liberty 108, 112, 125, 224–34see also “state coercive power” Roman Catholic Church 229–30 Catechism of the Catholic Church 311 Dominus Iesus (Declaration) 166, 195–7 ecclesial communions and 195–7 intermediary structures 102n. 9, 154 local/universal church 155n. 11, 162n. 21 Lumen Gentium 229n. 50, 288–92, 298 receptive ecumenism and 187–9 sacraments 160 schism 234–8, 240, 338–9 the Scots Confession 292–4, 299–309 Scottish Church Initiative for Union 263, 266–7 sectarianism 23–4, 26, 35, 49, 59–62, 100, 127, 297 sending/gathering 308 shared belief and denomination 118–9 state coercive power 101, 113, 150, 224–5 superabundance 211–20

369

theology account of denomination 121–2, 124–7 Three-Self Patriotic Movement, see China, church in United Church of Christ 236 unity and diversity, symbiotic 139–40, 243–4 unity of the church 243, see articulated unity, concepts of unity, models of union Indicators of church unity 260–2 voluntary principle 117–19, 134–5 Westminster Assembly  Independents/ Presbyterians 100–8 World Communion of Reformed Churches 162, 196 World Council of Churches (WCC) Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (BEM) 327 Faith and Order Commission 249–50, 254–5, 258n. 31, 284 The Nature and Mission of the Church 5, 9, 287, 325 New Delhi Assembly (1961) 250–3, 260–1, 279 Uppsala Assembly Worldwide Communions 155, 162, 196 worship mark of denomination 171–2, 259–60

370