Comparative Ecclesiology: Critical Investigations 9780567660510, 9780567032416

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In honour of Roger Haight, SJ, and in thanksgiving for his selfless work on behalf of the church This means we have to force each other mutually to be and to become as Christian as possible, and to understand what is really radical about the Christian message a little better. Even in its divisions Christianity today exists in a historical, social, cultural and spiritual situation which obliges all of these separated Christians to ask themselves how they do justice to the future which is pressing upon us. And where the theologies of the different churches are making an effort really to answer the questions which a non-Christian age is posing to Christianity, there will always be the best chance that this new theology being done by people who belong to different churches will slowly develop a theological unity from out of the questions being proposed to all of them in common. This unity will then move beyond many of the controversial theological problems which at the moment are insoluble, and will render them to a certain extent otiose. Karl Rahner Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Crossroad, 1997) p. 369

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WELCOME TO ECCLESIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS: A NEW INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH NETWORK Gerard Mannion Conversations about the nature, role and purpose of the Church today are increasingly preoccupying not just theologians, but the faithful, pastors and church leaders alike. A new international research network, ‘Ecclesiological Investigations’, has been established to provide encouragement, resources and facilitation for such dialogue. Here we briefly provide some background to the emergence and mission of this Network and warmly extend an invitation to others to join and sponsor its work.

Catholicity in Action: The St Deiniol’s First International Conference Theologians and activists from four different continents and from many different churches gathered at the St. Deiniol’s Library in Wales between 12–15 January 2007 to discuss the issues and themes of greatest importance to the church of today and of the future, including explorations concerning the nature and role of the Church. The event marked the first conference of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network. This conference was a landmark event for the new Network and followed on from another initiative exploring the nature and role of the Church which has proved very successful indeed, namely the establishment of the new Ecclesiological Investigations Group of the American Academy of Religion, which staged its first sessions in Washington DC at the end of November 2006. One hundred and fifty people attended the first session on ‘The Nature and Mission of the Church: Ecclesial Reality and Ecumenical Horizons for the 21st Century’, with much discussion being generated in relation to the recently issued document of the World Council of Churches. And 130 attended the second session on ‘Comparative Ecclesiology: Critical Investigations’, exploring the nature, scope and promise of this new method in general and the pioneering work of Roger Haight, SJ, in particular. The volume you hold in your hand originated in the papers presented to the latter session, which have all been considerably revised and expanded since and are

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now supplemented by various invited contributions from other noted scholars in the field. The Mission of the Ecclesiological Investigations Research Network The mission statement of this new Network states that it seeks to serve as a hub for national and international collaboration in ecclesiology, drawing together other groups and networks, initiating research ventures and providing administrative support as well as acting as a funding magnet to support conversations, research and education in this field. The abiding ethos of the Network will be that the Church must be inclusive if it is to be relevant and if it is truly to fulfil its mission. Finally, the task of this international Network is to foster and facilitate open and pluralistic conversation and collaboration. The Network’s Five fundamental Aims 1. The establishment of partnerships between scholars, research projects and research centres across the world. 2. The development of virtual, textual and actual conversation between the many persons and groups involved in research and debate about ecclesiology. 3. Organising and sharing in colloquia, symposia and conferences. 4. Encouraging joint teaching, exchanges of postgraduate students and faculty. 5. Publishing this new and ongoing series of volumes on Ecclesiological Investigations itself. Some Background The Network has emerged from small beginnings. In 2002 questions concerning the nature, role and contemporary life of the Church led four scholars to begin a series of meetings to present and discuss a series of papers on a wide variety of ecclesiological themes. Hence there emerged a three-year research initiative and series of conversations involving Paul Collins, Gerard Mannion, Gareth Powell, and Kenneth Wilson. They initially met under the auspices of Chichester University and hence the group took as their name ‘The Chichester Group’, which brought together an Anglican, a Roman Catholic and two Methodists. The volume that emerged from these discussions (Christian Community Now: Ecclesiological Investigations) has been published as the second volume in this series. In summer 2005 invitations were sent out to numerous persons in the UK to form a small steering group to help establish a broader network of people and institutions involved in the field of ecclesiology. The group’s chief aims included the intention to focus upon ecclesiology from the standpoint of different Christian denominations and from differing international and cultural perspectives

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(ecumenical and comparative intentions). The group was to share an openness to and celebration of the pluralistic reality in the midst of which the churches today find themselves living (pluralistic intentions). The work of the group would deal with the challenges facing churches today (praxis-oriented intentions). A major new publication series formed a key part of the new group’s intentions, along with the establishment of study days and teaching initiatives pertaining to the Church (educational intentions). A limited amount of funding was raised for the initial meetings of this group. Members from a wide variety of church and organisational backgrounds agreed to join the steering group. The outcome was the establishment of a partnership involving five institutions in which the Centre for the Study of the Contemporary Ecclesiology (originally located at Liverpool Hope University) has played a leading role. Links were established with numerous other centres and institutions pursuing similar aims across the international community. In addition to this research centre, the other four initial UK partners were thus the Department of Theology at Chichester University; Durham University’s Research Centre for Contemporary Catholic Studies; Heythrop College, London and Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Oxford. Further international partner institutions have since been added to their number, including from Canada (St Michael’s College, Toronto), the USA (Boston College), Belgium (Catholic University of Leuven), and three from India (Old Orthodox Seminary, Kottayam, The University of Calicut, and the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, Madurai). Most recently the Queen’s Ecumenical Foundation, Birmingham and the Milltown Institute, Dublin have also joined this expanding group. From this there has emerged The Ecclesiological Investigations Research Network. In November 2005, at Old Saint Joseph’s Parish Hall, Philadelphia, a reception was held to launch the proposed New Ecclesiology Program Group of the American Academy of Religion. Sponsored by Liverpool Hope University and organised by Paul Collins, Michael Fahey and Gerard Mannion, and with much support from elsewhere. In December that year the Academy approved the proposals. The new group also took the title Ecclesiological Investigations and has been established to provide a ready platform and further series of opportunities for dialogue for all those involved in the field of the study of the church in its numerous forms. From such beginnings, the AAR Group has progressed from strength to strength. In 2007 its sessions explored ‘Communion and Otherness: Contemporary Challenges of ‘‘Impaired Communion’’ ’ and ‘The Church and its Many Asian Faces/Perspectives on Transnational Communion’. Thus the Network has already made significant and swift progress which has brought new attention to the importance of the study of ecclesiology for our times. Network Initiatives to Date The Network has already made significant and swift progress which has brought new attention to the importance of the study of ecclesiology for our times. In

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addition to the popular new program unit of the AAR, a new seminar of the UK Society for the Study of Theology, also focusing upon ecclesiology, was established at the 2007 annual conference at Girton College, Cambridge and a twice-yearly series of ‘Study Days in Ecclesiology’ for research students and other interested parties in the field have been taking take place since 2006 with the first three being staged in the UK and the next due to take place in Ireland in 2008. Analogous events are also planned for in other countries. Discussions with T&T Clark International led to the launch of this new series of publications for the Network, with the first four volumes published in the first half of 2008.1 Obviously, the series seeks to help fulfil the broader aims and objectives of the Network itself and involves collaboration amongst a wide range of international scholars and research centres and projects across the field of ecclesiological enquiry. This includes work in historical, collaborative, denominational, methodological, ecumenical, inter-faith, conceptual, thematic and inter-disciplinary forms of ecclesiological enquiry, as well as studies of particular traditions, developments and debates pertinent to the broad field. Not only does the series seek to publish the very best of research presented to the Network’s various meetings, conferences and colloquia, it also seeks to be a visibly identifiable publication outlet for quality research in ecclesiology worldwide, tapping into a truly global network of research groups, projects, church organisations and practitioners, experts and scholars in the field. The series also aims to encourage and indeed commission collaborative volumes and ‘cuttingedge’ monographs in the field, as well as textbooks that will further enhance knowledge, understanding and dialogue. The series also seeks to offer a home to thematic collections of essays and conferences proceedings from numerous additional groups and research centres in the field. Thus, in particular, the series seeks to incorporate the best of the scholarly papers presented at the AAR Program Group papers, the annual Ecclesiological Investigations International Conference, and from similar gatherings of theological and ecclesial scholars from around the globe. It will also seek to reflect the wider debates generated in relation to such papers and meetings. The Network and series alike are in partnership with the journal Ecclesiology, edited by Paul Avis, which the Network endorses as a further worthy and most fruitful outlet for ongoing ecclesiological enquiry. The issue of January 2008 (vol. 4 no. 2) was especially devoted to the new Network, featuring, in particular, several papers presented at the First International Conference in 2007.

Developing the International Network Thus the Ecclesiological Investigations Network has been established to gather people together regularly to discuss issues and themes of interest and concern in contemporary ecclesiology. The plan is to spread the work of this group wider to embrace other partners in the international scene further afield. We are hence hoping to dovetail the work of the network with the efforts of the AAR Program

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Group to continue to establish broader and inclusive conversations and networks in ecclesiology and to raise the profile of the sub-discipline further. Each partner institution involved in the network to date brings considerable and diverse gifts and expertise to the Network. These international partners are institutions of the highest quality in which groundbreaking study and research in ecclesiology have been pursued for many years now. The geographical and social contexts in which their work is carried out, as well as the demonstrative societal benefits of such work, can only inform and enhance the work of institutions elsewhere and the Network in general alike. Furthermore, the initial conference sought to help mechanisms to be developed which will ensure that the experiences and insights of all international partners gain exposure, scrutiny and a wider hearing than might otherwise be possible. The rapid progress made in this initial work in building the foundations for this Network demonstrates that it is very much needed, can serve the requisite communities and scholars alike in a wide variety of ways, and will not simply enhance the standing of the discipline in the academic community across the globe, but might also, through bringing people and communities together in ongoing conversation and partnership, have a major positive impact on the lives of those communities that form the subject-matter which ecclesiology is engaged in studying. The Network will be also be groundbreaking in that in all its activities it seeks to build partnerships, collaboration and understanding, in contrast to the competitive ethos that prevails in much of the contemporary academic world. Collaboration rather than competition will be its guiding principle.

Intended and Enduring Collaborative Legacy The ethos behind the initial mission statement of the Network entails a firm commitment to exploring issues pertaining to pluralism, both religious and otherwise, as well as towards ethical debates of national, international and intercontinental relevance from the outset. Such endeavours offer further scope for the Network’s lasting legacy to be positive in numerous ways. The Network seeks to cut across a variety of disciplinary, cultural, religious and geographical boundaries. Finally, it is worth emphasizing that it is also a key aim of the network to involve particular partners from those regions of the world which have extremely limited access to funding to facilitate their participation in the broader international network. In January 2008, the Network’s second International Conference, taking the theme ‘Church in Pluralist Contexts’ was hosted at Old St Joseph’s Orthodox Seminary in Kerala, India (thanks to Fr K. M. George) and was enormously successful in launching the work of the Network in earnest in the South Asian continent, with the vast majority of contributors being from the region itself. Of equal significance and success was the linked conference in Trichur at the University of Calicut (thanks to the Chair of Christian Studies, Professor Paul

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Pulikkan) on Inculturation and Church. Paul M. Collins is owed a great debt of gratitude for his tireless efforts in overseeing the organization of these events. The Key to the Future: Major Funding and Support The next major task for the Network’s steering group is to secure the substantial funding necessary in order that all the initial faith, hope and charity come to longlasting fruition. This will require a coalition of funding organisations, institutions and individuals to help ensure the open, pluralistic and collaborative vision can bear much ongoing fruit in future. We invite all institutions, charities, organisations and individuals who are passionate about and committed to the life and mission of the church today and tomorrow, who believe in a church of churches that is called into being to bear witness to the gospel and to serve the wider human family through tireless work towards the kingdom ends of justice, peace and righteousness, to join and sponsor the collegial and collaborative work of this new Network. Pluralism is not an ideology; rather it is first of all a descriptive term for the way things are, for reality. At the same time it is also the name for the healthiest and most appropriate response to the way things are, as opposed to turning away from and attempting to deny that reality in various modes of self- and community delusion. Pluralism is all around us and inescapable. But why would anyone seek to escape the riches of the diverse gifts God gives humanity to share? Note 1. These are: Christian Community Now: Ecclesiological, Paul Collins, Gerard Mannion, Gareth Powell and Kenneth Wilson; The Nature and Mission of the, eds. Paul Collins and Michael Fahey; Church and Religious ‘Other’, ed. Gerard Mannion and Comparative Ecclesiology: Critical Investigations, ed. Gerard Mannion.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I must thank Roger Haight, SJ, to whom the volume is naturally dedicated, and whom I thank here, in particular, for his generosity in allowing his work to come under such public scrutiny, first of all at the Ecclesiological Investigations session at the Annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Washington DC, November 2006 and subsequently in a more extended form in this volume. His overall support of the foundation of the AAR group itself, as well as of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network, have been considerable. Roger has also contributed the essays that preface and conclude this volume and it is thanks to him, as well as to the insight and generosity of all the contributors, that this has turned out to be such a fine and stimulating collection in this fledgling field. My deep gratitude goes also to Michael Fahey, my co-chair of the AAR Ecclesiology group, for his ongoing wisdom, guidance, advice and support in relation to the group itself, to the wider network, and indeed in general. I am sincerely grateful, also, to the other members of the AAR Group Steering Committee, namely, Michael Attridge, Julie Clague, Paul M. Collins, Peter De Mey and Amy Plantinga Pauw, and to all who have supported and attended the group in any shape or form. Many further thanks are due, once again(!), to Paul Collins and to Keith Ward who undertook reviewing duties for this volume with good grace and diligent delivery, to Gareth Powell and to Kenneth Wilson (the other two members of the original quartet that helped bring Ecclesiological Investigations into being), and to Steven Shakespeare and Kevin T. Kelly – respectively the co-director and first Honorary Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Ecclesiology – for their comparative insights, great friendship, support and humour when such have been needed most! My profound respect and admiration to all the parishioners of both the Anglican and Roman Catholic ‘families’ that constitute the ecumenical parish, the true ecclesial communion of St Basil’s and All Saints, Hough Green, Widnes, Cheshire. They have been a living demonstration of the promise of comparative ecclesiology to me as to countless others. An enormous debt of gratitude is further due to Tom Kraft, whom I usually encounter when we are both globetrotting far beyond the UK(!), to Dominic Mattos and Slav Todorov as well as to all at T&T Clark/Continuum for their

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belief in the need for and potential of this new series. Especial thanks to Nick Fawcett and to Mark Bolland for their very careful scrutiny of the text during copy-editing and proof-reading, and a very great and particular debt of gratitude to Ignatius Edit for his scholarly and tireless labours in compiling the volumes index. We are truly fortunate to have had such a knowledgeable and willing ecclesiologist undertake this task. A very very big thank you to all the members of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network – particularly the steering group – and to the editorial executive committee and advisory board of this new series, itself. Your belief, encouragement and inspiration have made it a reality in a world and at a time when open and pluralistic dialogue and discussion across the churches and far beyond has never been more necessary. Last, but certainly by no means least, thank you, Philomena Cullen, from the bottom of my heart for your patience, love, support and generosity, and for being my best friend through cloudy weather and sunshine alike.

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CONTRIBUTORS

James Ginther received his PhD in medieval studies from the University of Toronto in 1995. He lectured in medieval theology in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds University until 2002 when he moved to Saint Louis University. He is now Associate Professor of Medieval Theology. He is the author of numerous articles on thirteenth-century theology, and a monograph entitled Master of the Sacred Page: A Study of the Theology of Robert Grosseteste (1229/30–1235) (Ashgate, 2004). He also co-edited a collection of essays in memory of Walter H. Principe, CSB in 2005. He has forthcoming A Handbook of Medieval Theology for Westminster/John Knox Press. Dr Ginther is also the CoDirector of the Institute of Digital Theology, a research institute that develops multimedia projects to support teaching and research in Theological Studies. He lives in St Louis with his wife, Diana, and two children. Roger Haight is a Jesuit of the New York Province. He did his doctorate in theology at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago (1973). Thereafter he taught at Jesuit graduate schools of theology in Manila, Chicago, Toronto, and Boston. He has been a visiting professor in Pune in India, Nairobi in Kenya, Lima in Peru, Paris, France, Glasgow in Scotland and is currently teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He has published works in the theology of grace, liberation theology, fundamental theology, and Christology. He is a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and was named Alumnus of the Year of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago for the year 2005. In addition to his three-volume comparative ecclesiology, Christian Community in History (published by Continuum, 2004, 2005, 2008), his award-winning books include The Experience and Language of Grace (NY, Paulist Press, 1979), Dynamics of Theology (NY, Paulist Press, 1990); An Alternative Vision: An Interpretation of Liberation Theology (NY, Paulist Press, 1985), and Jesus: Symbol of God (NY, Orbis Books, 1999). Minna Hietama¨ki received her master’s degree at the University of Helsinki (2001) and is currently Research Fellow at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). Her recently completed doctoral thesis investigated the notion of consensus in bilateral ecumenical dialogues. Her wider fields of interest include

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ecumenical theology and hermeneutics, theology and postmodernity, and ecumenical education. Bradford Hinze is Professor of Theology at Fordham University, New York. His recent book is entitled Practices of Dialogue in the Roman Catholic Church: Aims and Obstacles, Lessons and Laments (Continuum, 2006). He is the current President of the International Network of Societies of Catholic Theology, which promotes closer relations and greater communication between North American and European theologians and those in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Australia. He is currently advancing the study of synodal practices involved in ecclesial discernment and decision-making both in his writings and through his collaboration on ‘Communicative Theology’ with Bernd Jochen Hilberath (Tu¨bingen), Matthias Scharer (Innsbruck), and Mary Ann Hinsdale (Boston College). Gerard Jacobitz holds a PhD in philosophical and systematic theology from the University of Notre Dame. He is currently Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia. Reid B. Locklin serves as Assistant Professor of Christianity and the Intellectual Tradition in the Christianity and Culture Programme and the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He completed his PhD in systematic and comparative theology at Boston College, focusing on the religious pedagogies of Augustine of Hippo and Adi Shankaracharya. He is the author of Spiritual but Not Religious? An Oar Stroke Closer to the Farther Shore (Liturgical Press, 2005), as well as various articles and essays. He is currently writing a Christian theological commentary on Shankara’s independent treatise, A Thousand Teachings. Gerard Mannion studied at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, previously lectured at church colleges of the universities of Oxford and Leeds and served as Associate Professor of Ecclesiology and Ethics at Liverpool Hope University, where he was founding director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Ecclesiology. He currently serves as chair of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network and as editor of its publication series. He has authored, edited and co-edited numerous volumes in the fields of both ecclesiology and ethics, as well publishing various other writings on differing aspects of systematics and philosophy. His most recent publications include Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time (Liturgical Press, 2007) and The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (2008, ed. with Lewis Mudge). A member of the UK Catholic Theology Commission on Social Justice, he is presently a Visiting Senior Fellow of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Bernard P. Prusak is Professor for Historical and Systematic Theology and Chair of the Theology and Religious Studies Department at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. He has an STL from the Gregorian University, a JCD from the Lateran University, and also studied at the Liturgical Institute of Saint Anselm in Rome. His book, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries, was published by Paulist Press in 2004.

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PREFACE Roger Haight, SJ I am very grateful to the organizers of this new group of the American Academy of Religion, ‘Ecclesiological Investigations’, for putting Christian Community in History (CCH ), volumes I–II, on the programme in 2006. It is a significant honour to have one’s work be the occasion for public discussion in this arena. I thank too the presenters of the papers at the meeting and those who contributed papers thereafter for their critical reading of and insight into the texts of CCH and my other writing as well. I preface this collection of essays with straightforward observations about how I read and responded to them, and where we go from here. First of all, the essays are entirely constructive. They do not carry on the discussion in negative critique but carry it forward in positive reflection that either clarifies my thoughts or pushes them further. My first reaction to them is thus grateful reception of the discussion itself that has accommodated itself to my framework but seeks to extend it or shift it in ways that may be more incisive and salutary. So, for example, I have for the most part simply accepted and appropriated the essays of Gerard Mannion, James Ginther, Reid Locklin, Minna Hietama¨ki, Ann Caron, and Bernard Prusak. They represent important perspectives and make certain specific points that contribute significantly to the ongoing conversation. I will engage in a somewhat more pointed way, but still quite briefly, with certain observations made by Bradford Hinze and Gerard Jacobitz, not because I disagree with the points they address, but because they implicitly ask a question that requires a clarifying response. My chapter in this series of essays tries to extend the conversation into the future. In it I distinguish various kinds of comparative ecclesiology that are being written today. Comparative study designates a series of relatively distinct methodological approaches making it an analogous category. Pointing out those distinctions helps sort out and identify some of the different approaches that are brought to bear with the voices in this book. But the main burden of my essay consists in a simple appeal to the imagination of people in the churches and the theologians who represent them. It looks at the situation of the present and immediate future and asks whether the issues we face may be best addressed through the various different forms of comparative ecclesiology. In other words, the differentiations of comparative ecclesiology which are represented in the

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discussants at this table ronde are actually calibrated to respond to several of the problems we face today. This is an exciting prospect. Let me conclude with a brief indication of how I have myself moved forward to the systematic part of CCH after the completion of the first two volumes of historical and comparative ecclesiology. I did not begin the project in ecclesiology with an explicitly comparative method in mind. I wanted to write a historically conscious Roman Catholic systematic ecclesiology and was rather committed to working ‘from below’ in continuity with the method from Dynamics of Theology as it was applied to Christology in Jesus: Symbol of God. One cannot generate an adequate systematic understanding of any social organization without telling the story of its origins and development. But keeping ecclesiology in close dialogue with history meant that one had to include the whole range of historical phenomena to understand the whole church. The first comparative moment thus consisted in formulating still pictures of the church in successive historical epochs to demonstrate historicity, development, and change. In the sixteenth century, two things happened in the area of ecclesiology that forced explicit attention to a comparative method. First, the discipline of ecclesiology took on a more formal appearance and importance, beyond that represented by Torquemada in the century before, because of the Reformation and because people like Calvin and Hooker were defining distinct and different churches relative to the Roman Church and providing them with an integral rationale. Secondly, whereas in Volume one I had implicitly compared ecclesiologies by constructing those of successive eras because formal integral ecclesiologies did not exist, they now began to appear. A plurality of different comprehensive ecclesiologies that interacted with each other now dotted the landscape. I did not have to construct these ecclesiologies; I only had to lay them out in a manner that readily allowed comparison. The method of CCH II, therefore, shifts to a more formally comparative method that required understanding the ecclesiologies of all churches sympathetically as they understand themselves. This led to the recognition of a ‘whole–part’ distinction and dialectic: every church, although the whole church ‘subsists’ in it, cannot itself be considered the whole church. One can see this distinction implicitly at work across the history of ecclesiology, but it became explicit in the Reformation of the Western church. This distinction means that in order to understand the whole church one must do comparative ecclesiology. Thus I started out wanting to write a Roman Catholic systematic ecclesiology, but found that the historical method and approach I had adopted led me inexorably towards a constructive comparative ecclesiological method and a transdenominational ecclesiology in terms of content. CCH III, whose subtitle is Ecclesial Existence, is scheduled to appear in 2008. The first part of Ecclesial Existence describes the method and project of this systematic ecclesiology and the reasons that seem to demand it. When one looks at the signs of the times – at a church that is beginning to become non-Western, is being fragmented by inculturation, and is declining in the West, and where the church in its members is increasingly entering into positive dialogue with other religions – one needs a kind of ecclesiology that will keep the self-understanding of

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the churches in conversation and communion with each other and in dialogue with the religions. In that context and spirit let the conversation begin. But before moving ahead I want to express my gratitude to Gerard Mannion for taking the initiative in setting up the Ecclesiological Investigations Program Unit of the American Academy of Religions, along with his co-chair Michael Fahey, SJ. Gerard Mannion also took the initiative in editing these essays into the current volume, and I am sure I express the thanks of all the contributors for his skilful and responsive style of planning, organizing, and editing. Roger Haight, SJ

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Series Editor Gerard Mannion, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Series Editorial Committee Michael Attridge, St Michael’s College, University of Toronto Paul Avis, Church House, Westminster Mark Chapman, Ripon Theological College, Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire Paul Collins, University of Chichester Peter De Mey, Catholic University of Leuven Michael Fahey, Boston College K. M. George, Old St Joseph’s Seminary, Kottayam, India Bradford Hinze, Fordham University, New York

Paul Lakeland, Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Duke University Paul Murray, Durham University Gareth Powell, Cardiff University Anthony Reddie, Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, UK Gemma Simmonds, Heythrop College, University of London Kenneth Wilson, Chichester University and Sarum College, Salisbury

Series Editorial Advisory Board Michael Attridge, St Michael’s College, University of Toronto Paul Avis, Church House, Westminster Mark Chapman, Ripon Theological College, Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire Julie Clague, Glasgow University Paul Collins, University of Chichester Peter De Mey, Catholic University of Leuven Michael Fahey, Boston College K. M. George, Old St Joseph’s Seminary, Kottayam, India Janette Gray, Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Victoria, Australia Roger Haight, Union Theological Seminary, New York Nicholas Healy, University of San Diego, California Bradford Hinze, Fordham University, New York Paul Lakeland, Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut Mohan Larbeer, Tamilnadu Theological Seminary (TTS), Madurai, India Richard Lennan, Western Jesuit Theological Institute, Boston Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Duke University Gerard Mannion, Centre for the Study of Contemporary Ecclesiology Mark Mason, University of Chichester

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Michael Montgomery, Chicago Theological Seminary Paul Murray, Durham University Timothy Muldoon, Boston College, John O’Brien, Lahore, Pakistan Neil Ormerod, Australian Catholic University, Sydney Peter Phan, Georgetown University Gareth Powell, Cardiff University Paul Pulikkan, University of Calicutt Henk de Roest, University of Leiden Anthony Reddie, Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, UK Steven Shakespeare, Centre for the Study of Contemporary Ecclesiology and Liverpool Hope University Gemma Simmonds, Heythrop College, University of London Jutta Sperber, Bayreuth, Germany and the University of Rostock Gesa Thiessen, Milltown Institute, Dublin Ola Tjørhom, Stavanger and Uppsal, Norway Michael Walsh, Heythrop College, University of London Kenneth Wilson, Chichester University and Sarum College, Salisbury Henk Witte, University of Tilburg

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INTRODUCTION TO THE PRESENT VOLUME: COMPARATIVE ECCLESIOLOGY – CRITICAL INVESTIGATIONS Gerard Mannion This volume explores the nature, method and development of comparative ecclesiology, focusing, in particular, upon critical assessments as well as appreciations of Roger Haight’s three-volume work, Christian Community in History. It also attempts to discern the promise of and prospects for comparative, constructive and ecumenical ecclesiology in the future. Roger Haight is a Jesuit of the New York Province who undertook his doctoral work in theology at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, graduating after completing a thesis on Roman Catholic modernism (a fact that some would interpret as telling in his later work!) in 1973. Thereafter he taught at Jesuit graduate schools of theology in Manila in the Philippines, as well as in Chicago, Toronto and Boston. His impeccable credentials for undertaking comparative ecclesiological analysis are reflected in the fact that he has been exposed to so wide a variety of ecclesial contexts and inculturated traditions throughout his ministry and teaching career, not least of all through his serving as a visiting professor in Pune in India, Nairobi in Kenya, Lima in Peru, Paris, France and, most recently, Glasgow, Scotland. He is a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and was named Alumnus of the Year of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago for the year 2005. Currently, he serves as Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. A true Jesuit, Haight has written extensively, specifically in the fields of the theology of grace, liberation theology, fundamental theology, Christology and, of course, ecclesiology itself.1 He excels in addressing where the churches and theology currently find themselves at in the contemporary world and in suggesting ways forward for the future vis-a`-vis the engagement of the churches with those across numerous other churches, religions and with those beyond the confines of either. He champions the need for the church to embrace a dialogical mission that complements its mission of witness. We are delighted that Roger Haight, himself, has truly honoured the volume, just as he did the initial Ecclesiological Investigations Group Session of the 2006 American Academy of Religion which marked its genesis. He has freely given of his time, energy and perspective in order to provide both the opening Preface and closing chapter here. The former offers some background to the very idea of

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comparative ecclesiology and to the development of Haight’s own work in the field. In the final chapter Haight engages with issues raised in the foregoing chapters and also offers an extended essay on the subsequent direction taken by his own method as well as considering the prospects for comparative ecclesiology in the future. The volume is divided into three complementary parts. Part I explores the numerous issues concerning ecclesiological method, including the background to comparative ecclesiology itself, various questions pertaining to historical ecclesiology and the relationship of this to the latter, and also some of the wider implications of Haight’s ecclesiology vis-a`-vis theological method in general. Part II explores the wider implications of comparative ecclesiology, particularly with regard to questions concerning ecclesial communion, inclusion vis-a`-vis women and ministry and in relation to other faiths, here returning the debate to the ‘parent’ sub-discipline of comparative theology. The third and final part explores the promise of and prospects for the sub-discipline, looking at how it can help Christians better understand the church’s being and mission in relation to the will of God, how comparative ecclesiology’s most enduring value will be witnessed in the practical ecumenical and intra-ecclesial and interfaith dialogues it can help foster, and, finally, Roger Haight’s own reflections in the light of all the foregoing. Contributors discuss not simply Professor Haight’s work, but also engage with the issues he raises in a wider context, such as the respective methodological debates surrounding ecclesiology ‘from above’ and ‘from below’, to the nature and promise of comparative ecclesiology in itself, to the prospects for a ‘pluralistic ecclesiology’ in the world today, and the challenges such an undertaking presents to the Christian churches. With the exception of chapters 1 and 9, and those contributions by Roger Haight, himself, it should be noted that all other contributions were composed prior to the publication of and thus in ignorance of Roger Haight’s Ecclesial Existence, Volume III of Christian Community in History. So, following this introduction to the volume, I provide some additional background to Roger Haight and his work, as well as to the notion of ‘comparative ecclesiology’ in general and topics of discussion pertinent to this emergent subdiscipline. Thus, in Chapter 1, it is the nature, method and development of comparative ecclesiology which concern our reflections. There I locate comparative ecclesiology in the wider context of ecclesiology in general and offer an account of the method, its resources, characteristics and specific elements, particularly as developed by Roger Haight. Following a methodological prolegomenon, and Haight’s own comparative method in particular (most notably the contrast between ecclesiologies ‘from above’ and ‘from below’), I offer an extended discussion of Haight’s volumes on historical and then comparative ecclesiology focusing, in particular, upon the ‘principles for a historical ecclesiology’ that Haight discerns from each era and type of ecclesiology encountered along the way. I then discuss particular critiques, appreciations and evaluations of Haight and his ecclesiology before offering some thoughts on the lasting value to the whole church of his significant achievement here.

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In Chapter 2, Bradford Hinze identifies and explores certain critical issues in Haight’s ‘Historical Ecclesiology’, asking whether historical ecclesiology of the form commended by Haight necessarily must embrace the shape and form it does in Haight’s preferred approach ‘from below’. Hinze believes ecumenical, traditional and progressive ecclesiologies alike need not do so in order to be fruitful and to foster ecclesial dialogue. He commends a ‘pluriform’ historical ecclesiology and believes one need not be forced to choose between either an ecclesiology from ‘above’ or from ‘below’. Hinze place his own approach within the same broad category of theological method as Haight – that of ‘mediating and correlationist’ – yet wishes to explore still further hermeneutical insights, particularly with regard to doctrines and practices. Thus Hinze believes one also need not oppose faith and beliefs, nor experience and language. He believes Haight’s hermeneutical and phenomenological method of procedure, which here seems in accord with that of Lonergan, might benefit from additional formative currents of such thought that have appeared in recent years. If the correlationist method is developed further in such a way, the ‘always already linguistic and confessional character’ of faith and of particular ecclesiologies might thus shine through all the more brightly. Accompanying cognitive and affective ‘testimonies’ are also thereby better understood. Hinze believes this furthers genuine dialogue all the more and leads to the realization that there can be no ecclesiology from below without an ecclesiology from above. Hinze believes that, at times, Haight appears to affirm this circular character inherent to ecclesiology, yet at other times he seems to privilege approaches ‘from below’ and experience and faith over language and beliefs. Nonetheless, at the same time, all comparative ecclesiology must also, in addition to allowing its confessional character to come to the surface, be fully and truly critical. For Hinze, ‘the dialogical character of faith and the communicative action of the church is built on foundational acts of discernment and conversion’ (p. 50). Hinze finds further cause for concern in that Haight offers relatively little discussion of the clashes between progressives and traditionalists in modern and contemporary ecclesiology. Vital voices appear to be ‘missing’ from the historical landscape. Haight’s non-polemical approach might have helped develop such a non-polemical form of discernment in relation to these usually deemed to be opposing approaches. Nonetheless Hinze finds great promise overall in Haight’s ecclesiological work, not least in the renewed attention given therein to conciliar theories, and, as other chapters in this book illustrate (e.g. Preface, 1, 9 and 10), there is ultimately not a great deal upon which Haight and Hinze would not find themselves in agreement. In dialogue with Haight, amongst others, James R. Ginther takes issue with how some historical theologians appropriate history, and turns to consider differing ways in which a ‘historical ecclesiology’ might prove profitable. He does so via an ingenious ‘case study’ relating to some historiographical detective work on the ecclesiological thought and practice lying behind and informing a lesser-known medieval manuscript, The Norman Anonymous. Ginther contends that approaching ecclesiology ‘from below’ can yield some surprising results, including the

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revelation that not all ecclesiologies ‘from below’ might prove as positive in both intention and outcome as such an approach is described in Haight’s work. Ginther finds that this way of procedure, through embracing new potential sources through attentiveness not simply to ‘event-centred ecclesiology’ in historical context, but also to reflection from a given era upon authoritative texts, illustrates there is much more to this manuscript than previous commentators have focused upon, not least that it warns against unforeseen consequences of the Gregorian reform – namely a ‘love of law’ detrimental to ecclesial life where the true ‘law’ of Christ, that of love, should always prevail. For Ginther, contra much historical ecclesiology, even the predominant focus on ‘event-centred ecclesiology’ of the medieval period requires supplementation. He suggests such can be achieved via a realization of how metaphysics influenced such ecclesiology through an essentialist turn of ecclesiological mind, and, furthermore, that an approach to such ‘from below’ can only reconstruct the ‘in-church’ experience through attention to a much wider context of the influence of such essentialist ecclesial thinking, and also attention to contemporary social, intellectual and institutional trends and forms and, finally, to resultant practice. ‘Micro-history’ must therefore be explored in careful detail. Only through this approach can a ‘full contextualised reading’ of certain historical periods be achieved. Hence, in his ‘case study’, the Gregorian reforms supply the overarching ‘grand ecclesiological narrative’. The wider social, intellectual and institutional context was Norman cultural and political history, particularly in the region around Rouen. And consideration of these factors is followed by an explication of the manuscript’s reflections upon the prevailing ecclesial ideas, norms and practices of the day against such a backdrop. Evident concerns about the threat posed to cherished elements of ecclesial life are therefore brought to the surface. The nature of episcopacy and pastoral concerns loom large against conflicting voices elsewhere in this era which championed either imperial influence or clerical supremacy. Certainly no radically collegial or proto-ecumenical ecclesiology is forthcoming at this juncture – the manuscript offers up an ‘elitist ecclesiology’ – but warnings against overt authoritarianism and against shunning what we today call subsidiarity are sounded. Ginther sees an important contribution to our understanding of eleventh-century reformers thus furnished and its appropriation of innovative christological thought of the day is uncovered: ‘The tenor of the whole text is an attempt to moderate the tension between the love of law and the foundational principle of the church, the law of love.’ (p. 65) Whilst it ultimately offers a ‘failed’ ecclesiology, it nonetheless also allows us to discern a particular attempt ‘to understand church as an incarnational reality’ (p. 68). In Chapter 4, Gerard Jacobitz examines Haight’s ecclesiology in the context of its representing the third part of a wider overall trilogy of systematics alongside Dynamics of Theology and Jesus: Symbol of God. Viewed in relation to the wider context of the twentieth-century recovery of the notion of ‘real symbol’, Jacobitz draws upon pioneering theological work here by Tillich and Rahner, along with hermeneutical and phenomenological contributions by Husserl and the later Wittgenstein to explore the value of a renewed attention to the very nature of how

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signs ‘disclose’ truths and realities. His core aim is to illustrate ‘how a phenomenology of the sign can demythologize the theological notion of symbol that has been so much the mainstay of modern and postmodern theology’, which entails the need for a ‘genetic phenomenology of the religious symbol, one that begins with and is founded upon our everyday activity in the world’ (p. 75). For Jacobitz, it is important to understand that the sign belongs not to the user but to the ‘thing’ signified because it discloses the essential heart of the logos of that thing. Signs can be complex or diametrical. Thus Jacobitz discusses the ‘demythologized’ theology of symbol employed throughout the earlier systematic work of Haight, concluding that it ‘logically culminates in a comparative ecclesiology’, given that symbolic theology rests upon the premise that parts disclose the whole. Those ecclesial traditions that embrace sacramental realism rely upon an analogy of being in order to do so. This in turn is linked to trinitarian theology, and the respective theologies of grace and creation of a particular church is here deemed crucial as differing churches will emphasize differing elements here of the sacramental and/or symbolic nature of that doctrine. Jacobitz enters into debate with Haight on a number of issues, offering an incisive reflection upon sacramental theology and its ecclesiological implications. He believes that ‘A comparative ecclesiology can show how ecclesiological pluralism reflects the unity in difference of the triune God’ (p. 82) and he suggests his theory of signs (which ‘provides a phenomenology of the religious symbol that is better suited to Roger Haight’s overall project than the standard Tillich/Rahner one’ (p. 83)) can help further Haight’s intentions in his ecclesiological trilogy: ‘The identity of the church viewed as a transdenominational identity, what we might call the essential church, is only disclosed by way of its profiles, that is, particular church communities in history’ (p. 82). Similarly attentive to the prevalent theme of the plurality of the church in history throughout Haight’s ecclesiology, Minna Hietama¨ki discusses Haight’s comparative ecclesiology in the light of recent Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue and common declarations, drawing parallels between Haight’s intentions and such bilateral endeavours. Hietama¨ki commends the notion of a non-judgemental description of the various ‘forms and contexts of Christian community’ but wonders aloud whether the fundamental idea of ‘comparative ecclesiology’ has not been tried before and found wanting, at least as early as the Faith and Order ecumenical meeting at Lausanne in 1927. Many participants there found the method to fall short in demanding enough of the churches involved, presupposing static, comparable structures. Whilst Haight’s approach is obviously different, Hietama¨ki still wishes to ask whether the latter’s approach will prove more suited to bringing forth ecumenical fruit than its earlier forms. Thus she goes on to explore further probing questions such as attempting to discern whether ‘setting ecclesiologies side by side for comparison is in the end as innocent a procedure as it seems’ (p. 90) and whether such also entails unforeseen consequences that would prove in conflict with Haight’s own stated aims and objectives. Drawing upon the lessons of the ecumenical movement and ecumenical theology, Hietama¨ki cautions against underplaying theological and intellectual frameworks in favour of accentuating

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historical developments. Likewise, she believes any dichotomy between theory and practice has proved ecumenically inert. She also sees fundamental differences between the ecumenical endeavours and Haight, even with regard to the understanding of pluralism and the understanding of ‘unity in difference’ and of those very differences themselves. In effect, Hietama¨ki puts to the test the ‘proof in the pudding’ of comparative ecclesiology as Haight conceives it by discerning just how deep differences can actually be transcended through such a vision. She thus analyses the Lutheran– Roman Catholic dialogues as excellent case studies. Reflecting upon two documents in particular (Communio Sanctorum and the Church as Koinonia of Salvation), Hietama¨ki shows how they illustrate the value of ‘differentiated consensus’. In particular she explores how these documents ‘perceive the historical character of Christian community’ and seeks to discern the consequences of the historicity of the church vis-a`-vis ‘the perceived diversity in the churches’ (p. 93). Employing a ‘comparative method’ in relation to common ecclesial criteria and themes pertaining to both, Hietama¨ki also discloses a comparative approach in both documents themselves, but questions whether this is ‘enough’ to further ecumenism between these churches. Her chapter argues for an ecclesiology beyond ‘mere’ comparison and describes the Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue as being constitutive of an exemplary emerging ‘differentiated ecclesiology’. These investigations lead her to commend a ‘constructive endeavour [that] aims at theological approaches which do not cover but recognise differences and critically attempts to discern the legitimate and enriching differences from those which are illegitimate and destructive for the communion’ (p. 100). Thus, for the ecumenical endeavour, comparative ecclesiology is necessary, if not entirely sufficient. Anticipating Haight’s third and final volume, she concludes it can be further enhanced via a ‘critical and self-critical’ constructive ecclesiological approach. The following chapter (6) explores two of the most challenging questions for ecclesiology today, namely, whether participatory ecclesial governance and ‘a church without patriarchal structures’ are actually possible. Here, Ann Marie Caron explores theological ‘talking points’, choosing to focus upon the emerging lay ecclesial ministry across US Roman Catholic parishes (the vast majority of whom are women), against the wider backdrop of developments in comparative feminist ecclesiologies. Expounding upon the rich promise of the latter through reference to scholars such as Sandra Schneiders, Mary Himes, Natalie Watson and Lisa Sowle Cahill, Caron seeks to answer her initial questions by applying their insights to the actuality entailed by the 2005 US Conference of Catholic Bishops document on ‘lay ecclesial ministry’. Her goal is an attempt to elucidate a vision towards a more genuinely inclusive ecclesial communion and her engagement with these ‘as heuristic dialogue partners’ helps further such an end. Emphasizing how ‘the experience and situation of women’, particularly the experience of oppression and the struggle for liberation, feature explicitly amongst factors ‘that Haight identifies as determining the situation of theology/ecclesiology today’, Caron notes how patriarchal structures are widely acknowledged as the root cause of such oppression. The ultimate intention of her essay is to explore and

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suggest how ‘the iconic model of ‘‘trinitarian-communion ecclesiology’’ holds a potential for the Roman Catholic church to release its hold on patriarchal structures’ (p. 106). Noting how ‘Catholic feminist analysis began in ecclesial consciousness-raising’ (p. 109), Caron goes on to chart the emergence of the Christian women’s movement through the social analysis of patriarchy and on to Christian feminist theology, explicating the ecclesiological implications of such along the way. In the second part of the essay, she explores, in particular, ministries in the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic church in the United States and how this church has witnessed enormous ministerial commitments on the part of women and yet delivered ‘mixed messages’ on the part of the hierarchy. Acknowledging the ‘kairos moment’ of the US Catholic church at present, Caron charts not simply the pain of this moment, but also the ‘extraordinary opportunity’ offered as ‘in local churches around the world, the structure of ministry is changing in response to the challenge of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the mission of the church in the world and diverse local contexts with particular pastoral needs’ (p. 126). Caron expresses sincere hope and offers insights and resources towards the constructive ecclesiological work necessary to help ensure that a truly inclusive church without patriarchal domination becomes not simply possible, but moves closer to reality. It becomes evident throughout Haight’s trilogy and in many of the chapters of this present volume that ‘Christians are not alone in raising serious questions about such topics as community life, authority, mission and ministry’ (p. 142). Thus Reid Locklin, whose words these are, begins his own essay by reflecting upon Haight’s preference for a methodology ‘from below’, and suggests that his comparative ecclesiology’s openness to historical and contextual realities can be taken and applied in a still broader comparative study that seeks to learn from other world faiths. In acknowledged response to Haight’s own invitation that theologians pursue such ends, Locklin asks whether it is ‘possible that comparative ecclesiology, as a theological discipline, might become more comparative by incorporating some level of engagement with other religious traditions into the project at the front end’ (p. 126). Locklin thus proceeds to outline Haight’s own work towards ‘paving the way’ for such a more comparative ecclesiology, particularly with regard to his reflections upon other faiths and the ecclesiological challenges posed by the pluralist reality of the world today. Locklin admits that if contemporary ecclesiology is truly to learn something enduring from beyond the confines of Christianity itself, this will require the identification of ‘evidence of normative self-understandings and existential realizations of [other faith] communities across their histories’ (p. 129). He thus sets about providing a detailed demonstration of precisely how an exploration of such can prove ecclesiologically fruitful. The work of the Anglican comparative theologian, Keith Ward, is analysed and insightful explication of key Hindu texts and themes follows. Thus, utilizing Hindu traditions in particular, Locklin’s core examples are Sankara’s treatise A Thousand Teachings and the later vijaya literature that presents Sankara himself as divine incarnation and ‘world-conqueror’ on a mission to

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spread Advaita teaching throughout India. The themes of teaching authority and mission in these Hindu texts, Locklin believes, might offer interesting ecclesiological parallels and help lay the foundations for this ‘more comparative ecclesiology’ that is also simultaneously both normative, and apologetic. Indeed, lest anyone fear the ecclesiological focus has been somehow underplayed, he closes with suggestions concerning how ‘the Christian discipline of comparative ecclesiology might profit from a broader and deeper comparative engagement’ (p. 126). Amongst the core characteristics of such a more comparative approach would be, to a degree that even surpasses that indicative of Haight’s own approach, an ‘ongoing cultivation of humility and reverence’. As such, Locklin believes the promise of Haight’s method truly surpasses ‘even his own most extravagant ambitions’ (p. 142). Opening the third and final section of our volume, Bernard Prusak wishes to supplement the promise of Haight’s approach to the history of the church by exploring how we might discern whether and in what ways God’s will ‘has been operative in the development of the church over the course of two millennia’ in order to further influence ‘the way one understands God working in the development of the church in the present and the future’ (p. 154). Prusak commends an exploration of differing historical as well as ecclesiological paradigms, along with the attendant dominant ecclesial concepts and themes, in order to understand how even the meaning and understanding of predominant ideas and practices undergo change as well as development. Prusak believes attention to the history of the church discloses that continuity is not the only way in which God can be seen to be at work in the church. Sometimes real change and a break from past traditions can also be seen to be providential. Addressing debate in the Roman Catholic church of recent decades, he suggests that ‘By emphasizing the Church’s essential stability and embracing a rather pessimistic view of the contemporary world, one privileges the past at the expense of the present and future.’ The Spirit of God can be discerned to work through change as well as continuity and Vatican II teaches us that ‘the present is no less redeemable than any other period in the history of the Church’ (p. 155). Prusak believes that today that church needs a ‘more nuanced approach’ to understanding itself and its present and future alike. This involves a ‘creative retrieval’ of ecclesiological tradition exploring where horizons fuse and diverge – allowing past structures to be translated afresh in the light of the needs of the contemporary church (p. 156). Through an extended consideration of the concept of Ius Divinum, Prusak expounds his thesis in relation to key aspects of church organization, structure, ministry and self-understanding throughout history. He affirms a ‘positive role’ for human agency as the notion of the ‘will of God’ does not (indeed cannot) exclude a large role for such, in the shaping and reshaping of the church. Prusak concludes that the way forward for contemporary ecclesiology entails a ‘renewed eschatology’, whereby an orientation to the future of the world itself, allows both ecclesial continuity and discontinuity to be embraced against the backdrop of salvation history.

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In Chapter 9, I discuss the practical relevance and promise of comparative ecclesiology. In seeking to discern the ecumenical promise of and prospects for comparative ecclesiology, I turn to explore Haight’s development of the method from historical through comparative to constructive and, particularly, ecumenical ends. Haight’s enduring themes of historical consciousness and pluralism offer great promise here for how the churches can reflect upon where they ‘dwell in common’, their shared ecclesial sense of identity and existence and indeed mission. I thus offer an account of how Haight systematically and meticulously develops the principles of a ‘transdenominational ecclesiology’ that will facilitate the recognition of the need for and the means for achieving various degrees of ‘partial communion’. Observing that Haight does not shirk the remaining ‘Hard Questions’ that churches still face, I nonetheless suggest that his final volume offers hopeful and innovative methodological, epistemological and existential solutions to such ecclesial dilemmas. The enduring value and promise of this method are thus reflected upon in conclusion. Both this chapter and the final chapter help illustrate that Haight has already answered many of the questions and concerns of not simply the contributors to this volume, but also of reviewers and commentators elsewhere. In the final chapter, as indicated, Roger Haight offers a concluding essay, himself, which considers not only his own work, but also the broader method of comparative ecclesiology itself and its prospects for the future. As well as discussing different types of comparative ecclesiology along the way, he also provides some further reflections on the notion and ecclesial imperative of ‘partial communion’ that was first discussed towards the end of the preceding chapter. Roger Haight’s life and work epitomize in an exemplary fashion both the nature and fruit of the ecclesial vocation of the theologian. A further aim of this volume is to pay tribute to him and to express deep gratitude for that life and work. We are truly glad to honour him in this way and to thank him for his inspiration. Note 1. Among his award-winning books are The Experience and Language of Grace (New York: Paulist Press, 1979); Dynamics of Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1990; 2nd edn, Orbis Books, 2002); An Alternative Vision: An Interpretation of Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1985); Jesus: Symbol of God (New York: Orbis Books, 1999); and The Future of Christology (New York: Continuum, 2005).

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Chapter 1 WHAT IS COMPARATIVE ECCLESIOLOGY AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? ROGER HAIGHT’S PIONEERING METHODOLOGICAL INSIGHTS Gerard Mannion

Introductory Remarks: The Nature and Scope of Ecclesiology Ecclesiology involves more than just the doctrine of the church, i.e., church teaching about its own self-understanding. For ecclesiology also embraces the selfunderstanding of any given ecclesial community and of the church as a whole, along with study of the same. It also embraces the study of the story and ongoing development of church, the conversations and disagreements within and without the church, and must also include the aspirations of church, in local and universal contexts alike. Ecclesiology also embraces practical elements (or applied if one prefers), for ecclesial practices can influence any given self-understanding of the church, as well as vice versa. Although the term as first employed in a technical sense in the nineteenth century originally referred to the study of church architecture, fabric and the like, the much broader areas of study encompassed within the subsequent employment of the term have been prominent and prevalent areas of theological enquiry throughout much of the church’s existence itself. Ecclesiology will, of course, always involve engagement with Scripture and ongoing Christian tradition(s). Historical consciousness and hermeneutical principles are also of central importance to any ecclesiological undertaking. Ecclesiology can thus be defined as that science of envisaging and envisioning the church in a variety of ways. Ecclesiology is hence a sub-discipline of theology, and not simply the teaching of a particular community on a specific subject. It can be argued that ecclesiology is, above all else, an aspirational undertaking, for even its descriptive and of course normative forms are frequently connected with or aimed towards some teleological direction that transcends the exploratory and heuristic purposes connected with such.1 This, though, is not to negate the value of more specifically phenomenological and sociological forms of ecclesiology in any sense at all – quite the contrary.

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Gerard Mannion Ecclesial Life and Vision in Comparative Context

In essence, comparative ecclesiology is not a new or recent concept or even term. The notion of exploring, articulating, comparing and sometimes contrasting differing self-understandings of what it is to be a (or part of the) Christian community are as old as the church itself. The New Testament shows this in many places, from the ‘proto-’ (but in effect retrospective) ecclesiological insights to be gleaned from four very different Gospels, to the ‘Council’ of Jerusalem, throughout Paul’s varied interactions with different communities and their trials and tribulations both ad intra and ad extra alike, and on to the epistles of James, Peter, John, along with the epistle to the Hebrews and the book of Revelation, which evidences as many as seven different ‘ecclesiologies’. The emergent concept of the ‘catholic’ church and the emergence of structures and procedures governing mutual recognition and understanding of different Christian communities that emerged throughout the patristic period and beyond would have been impossible without a de facto comparative ecclesiological modus operandi. Indeed, the specific ministries of the five patriarchates of the church, along with the particular role of unity performed by that of Rome, were, in effect, grounded upon a critical yet constructive comparative ecclesiology, however anachronistic that might at first sound. A retreat into more sectarian and rigidly normative ecclesiological patterns of thinking (in other words, an insufficiently open and positive comparative method or procedure) was, however, something that was also present at various stages of the church’s early development and which came to the fore with particularly regrettable consequences during the era when the Eastern and Western churches moved apart and during the upheavals of the European reformations from at least the fifteenth century onwards. Indeed, the lack of a sufficiently dialogical, positive and comparative method of ecclesiological procedure was to characterize far too much ecclesiological thinking until the nineteenth century when, helped by philosophical, historical, social scientific and wider general cultural trends, the ecumenical movement began its path towards the great achievements of the twentieth century. Even then, some churches, at the official level at least, resisted such positive open and constructive comparative ways of exploring the various visions of ecclesial identity, as the fate of the Roman Catholic modernists at the beginning of the twentieth century illustrates all too well. Hence forms of negative comparative ecclesiological undertaking, whereby one particular model or understanding of the church is privileged and held up as a template and set of criteria against which others might be judged to be defective, have also always been with the church and has reared their heads in particularly ugly manifestations at key moments of ecclesiastical history, not least in renewed fashion in recent decades. So, if ecclesiology can be understood as that envisioning of the church, then comparative ecclesiology involves exploring two or more such visions or ways of understanding the church, its nature, mission and work or of the ecclesial life and aspirations of particular church communities and traditions. It can also involve

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exploring different ecclesiologies operative or once manifest within particular ecclesial traditions. Such differences can be identified and explored with reference to a variety of factors – geographical, social, cultural, methodological, theological, liturgical, missiological and indeed historical. Indeed, all such comparisons can be across time and across denominational boundaries or pertaining to these many factors in the present. Comparisons can thus be relevant to both universal and local ecclesiologies alike in numerous different ways. As with ecclesiology in general, comparative ecclesiology does not simply serve descriptive purposes. It can also serve very practical, moral and aspirational purposes for the church in both its universal and local contexts. It also offers the most promising starting point for churches wishing to embrace dialogue, openness and pluralism, as opposed to retreating inwards. We shall see further discussions of the practical relevance and promise of comparative ecclesiology throughout this volume in general, particularly in the final section. But insofar as it can be understood as a sub-discipline within the broader science of theology, comparative ecclesiology is a new term and Roger Haight has been its greatest pioneer. Various different forms and types of comparative ecclesiological enquiry will be encountered throughout the following chapters of this volume and discussed at length in the final chapter. This chapter is concerned with providing an overview and assessment of Haight’s own pioneering work in this field.2

Resources for Comparative Ecclesiology Comparative ecclesiology takes much from the recent methodological insights of comparative theology, that sub-discipline which seeks to explore other faiths and religious traditions, undertaking to do so in a critically positive light, whilst remaining fully at home and comfortable within one’s own religious tradition. Indeed, one of the main insights and wider benefits of comparative theology is to ‘return home’ to one’s own tradition after such explorations with one’s own appreciation and understanding of that tradition enhanced as a direct result of one’s encounter with other faith traditions. It is easy to make the step from this to the ecclesiological applications of an analogous method. The pioneering Anglican comparative theologian, Keith Ward, has spoken of the actuality of a ‘Pluralistic Christianity’3 and Roger Haight, in an earlier essay that pre-dates his own major work in comparative ecclesiology itself, spoke of the need for a ‘dialogical’ mission to complement the church’s mission of witness.4 Haight outlines the reality of this call for the church in our postmodern times: To be ecumenical, Christian theology must both attend and transcend the specific authorities and magisteria of particular churches . . . [T]his Christian church co-exists with other religions in a new common human history. This new context imposes what might be called a dialogical situation. Christian theology in this situation will attend to the faiths of other peoples and, being influenced by them, reformulate its selfunderstanding accordingly.5

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Here we see tentative methodological fundamentals laid down for that comparative method which he would go on to develop at much greater length. Indeed, Haight’s incisive deliberations over the contemporary nature and mission of the church stretch back to earlier writings still, back to the 1970s and even beyond. In underlining the need for (and inescapability of) the ‘new ecumenism’, David Tracy also highlights the path which comparative theology itself might take in efforts to ‘find new ways to learn from the other traditions’.6 For such a path is the pathway between conservative retreats into foundationalism and utter relativism. The comparative method allows the explorer to begin close to home7 and cherish what is of value there, but also to venture out to learn from what may enhance that homestead: The new search is likely to become that of more and more religious persons: stay faithful to your own tradition; go deeper and deeper into its particularities; defend and clarify its identity. At the same time, wander, Ulysses-like, willingly, even eagerly, among other great traditions and ways; try to learn something of their beauty and truth; concentrate on their otherness and differences as the new route to communality.8

Again, comparative ecclesiology is simply the ecclesiological application of such insights, and of the many further insights of comparative theology, to the study of and discourse concerning and reflecting upon the church. I would also suggest that it offers a key to the way forward in these debates concerning polarization and moving the church forward in these times.

Specific Elements of Comparative Ecclesiology: The Development and Emergence of Roger Haight’s Comparative Ecclesiological Method Haight is a Roman Catholic and, crucially, steeped in the Jesuit theological, philosophical and above all spiritual traditions. As such, he starts out from and frequently returns to these, his own ‘home’ traditions for inspiration, in ways that are both latent and more to the surface along the way. Nonetheless, his accounts of the ecclesiological traditions and insights, as well as controversies and debates in other Christian churches, have been acclaimed for their impartiality, ecumenical sensitivity and, above all, accuracy by numerous members of and experts in the ecclesiological thought of such traditions. Indeed, in his third volume Haight really expands upon his thinking of many years previous and embraces the notion of a truly ecumenical ecclesiology in his most thorough and meticulous fashion to date. In another recent essay elsewhere, Haight further clarifies his definition of comparative ecclesiology, stating that ‘Comparative ecclesiology studies the church in a way that takes into account the various levels of pluralism which mark its existence today . . . The thematic that constitutes an ecclesiology as comparative is precisely the various ways ecclesiology explicitly interacts with pluralism.’9 He thus confirms that comparative ecclesiology offers the best hope for meeting those

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challenges with regards to the necessity of dialogue and pluralism in the postmodern age. Indeed, Haight’s essential concerns in Christian Community in History were developed along the way in his numerous earlier writings. He tells us in this present volume10 how they were shaped by and are reflected in the methodological approaches taken by his earlier studies, most specifically in Dynamics of Theology and Jesus: Symbol of God. But I would wish to highlight here that we not only see the insights of his later work in Christian Community in History in those major volumes in embryonic form, but we also actually see a sophisticated form of his constructive and ecumenical ecclesiological thinking outlined in a number of his articles and chapters elsewhere, along the way, in the decades prior even to the publication of some of his earlier volumes.11 To this reader, of particular relevance to the development of Haight’s ecclesiology was the articulation of four theses ‘against sectarianism’ offered by Haight in an article from 1994. These are formulated vis-a`-vis certain radical transformations which our age has witnessed in our understanding of the idea of place, the idea of church, the idea of theology and, finally, the focus of theology. In this essay, Haight contends that the interrelationship between theology and the church has been transformed as a result of developments in knowledge, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue and the movements for human liberation. In all, Haight here offers, in effect, a systematic theology in brief and, although here addressing prospects for contemporary theology in general, also a particular foretaste of his later project in comparative ecclesiology itself. We here see already an alternative ecclesial vision that embraces ecumenism, critically affirms the world we find ourselves in and turns towards a truly pluralistic agenda that is neither fearful nor suspicious of the pluralistic reality of the world and the wider human family within it. Haight offers persuasive resources upon which to construct the case for the ecclesiological necessity of dialogue. Foreshadowing the particular constructive ends of his later comparative project, he asserts that ‘ecumenical theology must consider a variety of authoritative witnesses from many churches. It must also employ various comparative and dialectical procedures to frame a more general statement of the issue than will be reflected in the particular view of only one church.’12 Within the Christian church itself, this entails a call to acknowledge even the plurality of teaching authorities, of magisteria that are at work in the service of the gospel today. And hence to dialogue with and learn from each of these. Thus a further fundamental principle that we will see expanded in his later writings: But the church at the end of the twentieth century as a result of the ecumenical movement is recognized to be the whole or total church, despite its disunity and divisions. This means, negatively, that the church in the sense of a particular communion cannot by itself be a final or exclusive limit or constraint or criterion or norm for Christian theology today. Rather, positively, the many magisteria of various churches are witnesses to Christian truth and sources for data for Christian theology.13

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But the dialogue is also extended far beyond the confines of the church to those of other faiths and cultures. Essentially, in that article, as in his work in general, Haight was seeking to move theology and, in particular, ecclesiology, beyond all narrow, sectarian, absolutist and universalizing stances. There is a new reality for the church to take account of, and this naturally means a new reality for authority, structures and theology itself throughout the Christian church. Comparative ecclesiology holds great promise for challenges within as much as across ecclesial traditions, whatever ‘family difficulties and disagreements’ occur from time to time. As Haight, himself, states: comparative ecclesiology consists not in overcoming denominational Christianity or Christianity itself, but in transcending the limits of individual churches by expanding the sources brought to bear on the task of understanding the Christian faith, in this case, the church. What is learned from these sources is brought back as further light on the particularities of any given church. The concern for the truth contained in one’s own community guarantees that the discipline remains Christian theology.14

Ecclesiology ‘From Above’ and Ecclesiology ‘From Below’ Haight’s ecclesiological work acknowledges the difficulties when competing versions of that quest for a life-giving and aspirational ecclesiology for our times come into conflict with one another. In particular, Haight has sought to explore the methodological implications of different ways of approaching and articulating ecclesial self-understanding, and his work has been especially valuable in elucidating the difference between two ideal types here, namely, ecclesiologies that proceed ‘from above’ and ‘from below’. Whilst not unsympathetic to those who despair of the stereotypical nature of such binary compartmentalization as ‘above’ and ‘below’, ecclesiologically it is not so difficult as it may be theo-logically to place many scholars and church-people with regards to where they stand on the question of the church–world relationship and even more so on the questions concerning the relationship between nature and grace. Thus the constructive employment of such ideal types can prove most illuminating, as Haight’s own work has demonstrated in an exemplary fashion. Indeed, Haight’s work here is groundbreaking in both the approach it takes and the methodology it develops. He readily acknowledges that his own work should be categorized in the broader group of approaches that pursue their ecclesiological analysis ‘from below’. This typology is to be contrasted with other approaches both from recent decades and from other periods of ecclesial history. Haight goes to great lengths to explicate the methodological nuances that separate these two key ‘ideal types’ in Part I, Volume I of his Christian Community in History. Here, in ‘The Question of Method’, he explains that the type of ecclesiology that can be described as proceeding ‘from below’ is equivalent to a ‘historical ecclesiology’ and is analogous to the procedure of ‘Christology from below’. The method of an ecclesiology from below is one which is, firstly, ‘concrete, existential, and historical’.15 Second, it takes a ‘genetic approach’, being attentive

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to any particular ecclesiology’s ‘origins as well as its journey from them to the present’.16 This method also acknowledges that the church is an organization within which, and upon which, social forces have an impact. Thus we should utilize social and historical analysis to examine the church itself, for ‘the social and historical situation within which the church exists’ is ‘crucial for understanding its full reality’.17 The fourth defining characteristic of this method is that an ecclesiology from below is nonetheless a theological discipline ‘and as such cannot be reduced to conclusions that can be generated by history or sociology alone’.18 Nonetheless, it is important to discern precisely how the historical and sociological aspects relate to the theological dimension of such an ecclesiology. For Haight this is, namely, because ‘this church is experienced religiously or theologically because in it and through it people recognize the presence and activity of God’. Likewise, the ecclesiological employment of symbols ‘pointing and referring to God’, displays the role of ‘theological imagination and judgment’ in the process.19 For Haight, the converse ecclesiological ‘ideal type’, namely, an ‘ecclesiology from above’ is marked by a (somewhat precritical) attempt to offer an account of the ‘essential nature and structure of the church that transcends any given context’.20 Such an essence is thus perceived to ‘transcend [the church’s] particular instantiations, and these can be grasped precisely by abstracting from those individualizing particulars which characterize the church wherever it is, but are precisely not its defining substance’.21 This method tends towards exclusivism because it entails ‘setting forth the limits or frontiers beyond which is nonchurch or a defective embodiment of it’.22 And this exclusivistic tendency goes further, for the understanding of the church which emerges tends to define the embodiment of that church as the ‘true church’. Furthermore, such an ecclesiology attempts to ground its validity in the highest authorities and therefore assumes certain ecclesiological doctrines or rather interpretations thereof as normative. In extreme forms, such an ecclesiology places the church in juxtaposition to the ‘world’ and human culture: In contrast to the world in its secularity, the church defines the sphere of the sacred. In Roman Catholic ecclesiology in the past, this polarity took the form of the supernatural over against the ‘merely’ natural, or the ‘fallen’ and sinful; the supernatural was considered as elevating and transforming the natural order. Implicitly, the church represented a social reality that was in some measure set apart from the world, usually in some sense ‘above’.23

As we shall see, Haight’s attentiveness to the church–world dynamic and the many questions, issues and implications demanded by such are constant themes throughout all three volumes of Christian Community in History, and especially so in the primarily constructive third volume. As I have sought to illustrate elsewhere,24 such an ecclesiological ‘mindset’ has returned centre-stage in many authoritative quarters of the church in recent decades and, indeed, across the various denominations. For Haight, ecclesiologies from above deal in ‘revealed’, ‘supernatural’ and doctrinal terms. Furthermore, a

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fourth characteristic is that such an ecclesiology will not admit a critical historical account of the church’s origins, but rather tends towards an attempt to affirm and uphold an a-critical doctrinal account: i.e., in accord with certain teachings concerning the church’s history, ‘God’s providence in history led to the church; God more or less ‘‘directly’’ founds the church in the work of Jesus Christ; and God as Spirit animates and directs the development of the church from its beginnings at Pentecost’.25 Thus such an ecclesiology, such a self-understanding of the church, takes on a special authority in its own right. It elevates itself above challenge and criticism. The appeal to authority is final and therefore ‘historical consciousness is controlled by doctrinal understanding’.26 The fifth defining aspect of ecclesiology from above is its ‘christocentrism’. By this, Haight does not mean to play down or criticize the importance of Christology for ecclesiology – far from it, as his three-volume study demonstrates in its entirety. Rather it is a specific ‘Christology from above’ and exclusivistic mentality which he questions. Namely, one that feeds into a view that the church, even when not considered constitutive of the salvation of all, is the summit of all religious forms, and the single, normative religion that is superior to all others because the church is constituted by Christ as its center. In short, in an ecclesiology from above christocentrism has a tendency to become ecclesiocentrism.27

Haight’s sixth and final aspect of the methodology of ecclesiology from above centres around the hierarchical structuring and ordering of the church itself and of the ministries within it: ‘the levels of power and authority have their foundation in God, and they descend’.28 Such breeds a ‘hierarchical imagination’ and the structures of ministries, themselves, are seen as ‘corresponding to the will of God’.29 This makes it very difficult for such an ecclesiology to adapt to changing circumstances and contexts, as well as making it more difficult for any church governed through such a determining vision to rise effectively, in accordance with the gospel, to meet new challenges. Thus all ‘new ministries’ will be ‘absorbed into traditional structures or patterns’.30 To appreciate just how important and illuminating such typological ecclesiological analysis can prove, one need only reflect upon the realities of the postmodern world which quite evidently entail that any ecclesiology from above which displays such features will prove to be highly problematic. The world we live in cries out for an ecclesiology that is attentive to its ‘joy and hope’, the ‘grief and anguish’, in the opening words of Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes. We live in a world of religious, ideological and cultural pluralism, and yet also a world of mass poverty, one where dehumanizing globalization rampages throughout every facet of present-day life, a world of ever more divisive and shocking conflict, a world where simplistic political and strategic analysis gives rise to tendencies and perceptions of a ‘clash of civilizations’: such a world is ill-served by exclusivistic, world-renouncing ecclesiologies for, as numerous studies have sought to illustrate, such ecclesiologies from above appear to turn their back on the world.

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In contrast, an ecclesiology ‘from below’ bears the promise that it can, in its attentiveness to historical context and its historical consciousness, better adapt itself towards meeting the challenges of the postmodern age. Thus, as Haight argues, such an ecclesiology will be more readily responsive to the challenges posed by globalization and pluralism, to the reality and value of other churches, other religions and the ‘world’ beyond religions. It will be all the more able to hear and respond to the anguished cry of the unparalleled human suffering in the world today. It will listen to, learn from and meet the challenges posed by the experience of women, just as it will face the realities of the rise in secularization in many parts of the globe, as well as the rise in individualism.31 Christian Community in History: Haight’s Ecclesiological Magnum Opus Haight’s three-volume study in comparative ecclesiology, Christian Community in History, constitutes a remarkable achievement from which all future ecclesiology will benefit. It is, of course, a monumental study in comparative ecclesiology itself, building upon those aforementioned insights developed in recent years in the more general sub-discipline of comparative theology. In all, Haight’s pioneering work in this emerging field of comparative ecclesiology (at least that which is explicitly named such – for Haight here further demonstrates just how much ecclesiological explorations have always been comparative in nature) encourages us to immerse our contemporary explorations in, first, historical consciousness, thereby inculcating the disposition of humility – both in methodological terms and, when one realizes how far short we fall of some of our ecclesial forebears, in terms of ecclesial life and practice as well. Second, as indicated, he commends the positive appreciation of pluralism. Third, a whole– part conception of church, neither placing universal over and above local nor vice versa. Fourth, we should be attentive to embracing the gifts and human challenges of religious pluralism. And, of course, fifth, Haight reassures those fearful that such undertaking might entail any loss for the churches: he reminds us how such ecclesiological encounters are and should be undertaken from within a particular confessional or ecclesial identity. Haight’s magnum opus, for such it can be considered, moves through a methodological development of three parts itself. The first volume comparatively explores ecclesiology in a specifically chronological historical sense. In Volume II, Haight outlines a more specifically comparative ecclesiology approach as being characterized by, first, utilizing social and historical science in its study of ecclesiologies; second, attention to representative and/or authoritative sources of particular ecclesiologies; third, organizing the different ecclesiologies under comparison according to a common pattern or template. He acknowledges that ‘The church has become a multicoloured tapestry of ecclesiologies, or a large river that has branched out in the delta of the sixteenth century, so that it is no longer possible to think that a single church could carry the full flow of Christian life in a single organizational form.’32 Volume III explores more constructive questions and ends, most specifically the formation of a ‘transdenominational ecclesiology’.

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Gerard Mannion From Historical Ecclesiology . . .

If such methodological as well as ecclesial prolegomena articulate the need for a differing approach, we see that in order to begin to develop such an ecclesiology, Haight returns to the sources to discern the ‘Historical Principles’ that might inform contemporary initiatives in the discipline. Against this methodological background he goes on, in Part II of Volume I, to chart ‘The Formation of the Church’, exploring three eras of development (‘The Genesis of the Church’, ‘The Pre-Constantinian Church’, ‘The Post-Constantinian Church: 300–600). For each era Haight proceeds through four modes of analysis, namely, ‘Historical Development’, ‘Social and Theological Analysis’, a ‘Descriptive’ account of the church in the period in question and, finally, drawing together these explorations to discern what ‘Principles for a Historical Ecclesiology’ they might inform. Thus, for example, in exploring the genesis of the church Haight begins by charting its historical development along the emergent path from Jesus to the Jerusalem community, the tensive relations between the emergent church and Judaism of the day (the various Hellenistic/Jewish debates in the communities), the numerous Pauline churches and later sub-apostolic communities, and on to the advent of what scholars term ‘early Catholicism’. Haight finally charts the church’s relation with the Empire before turning to consider this era in socialanthropological perspective. The incorporation of a ‘sociological imagination’ supplements the historical overview through illuminating the ‘social construction of human response to reality’.33 In particular, such can help show ‘dialectical tensions’ between objective statements of groups or individuals and subjective experiences relating to the same.34 It can show the inevitability of change for all institutions, along with the ‘historical, functional, pluralistic, [and] contextual’ nature of social structures. The anthropological (human) elements are situated and explained with reference to ‘this interrelational social matrix’.35 Haight thus illustrates how both the sociology of knowledge and of organizations, in particular, are of much benefit to ecclesiology. The latter helps us explore and understand the church and its development and change with reference to the variable nature of its membership, its goals (mission), its activities (including assemblies, rituals, ministries, ethics), its structures (through which attention is given to Scripture and canon, law and communication), and, finally, its environment and boundaries (e.g. in this era, the church and Judaism, the church and empire). The social-anthropological account is then balanced by Haight’s theological account which looks at the theological foundations of the church (e.g., in what sense we understand first Jesus and then God as Spirit as the foundation of the church itself and how this functioned and continue to function for the church). Haight next turns to look at the theology of ecclesial organization, i.e., supplementing the historical and social analysis with ‘a theological account of the divine height and depth of the religious experience of what was so generated’.36 Here scriptural and traditional theological language is analysed to unpack the ways in which the relationship of elements of the church’s being to God has been and

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continues to be understood and explained. Thus the categories from the socialanthropological account are viewed here through a theological lens. For example, the members of the church are understood as being ‘chosen in the Spirit to be the body of Christ’.37 The mission of the church is understood as the divine mission in history. The church’s activities are construed as those that ‘unite people to God and one another’.38 Church governance is explored through the notion of divine authorization. And the whole range of issues in relation to the church’s ‘divine’ identity vis-a`-vis ‘the world’ and elements thereof (again: in relation to Judaism, empire, as well as the wider ‘scheme of things’) are also considered. Here Haight moves towards a constructive emphasis as he lays the foundations for his reflections upon what ‘principles for a historical ecclesiology’ have thus been illustrated. In other words, what have we here learned that ‘will be instructive for understanding the church as it moves through history’ and in what sense, if any, can the normative function of the original church be understood as normative for its future history?39 So, in relation to this primal era of the church’s story, Haight suggests that we first learn that the presence of ‘multiple tensions’ in the church has been there from its very beginnings. He identifies seven areas where this can be seen, in particular. Thus, tensions are identified in relations between charisma and office; change and continuity; organization and environment; ideals and actuality; practice, institutional form and theology; unity and plurality; and in relation to the ‘interpenetration of large community and small community’. Understood on the level of social typological analysis here, all are seen to be ‘intrinsic to the constitution of the early church’,40 and hence to the very nature of the church.41 In terms of the ‘normativity’ of the church, Haight identifies particular characterizations of the church from the first two centuries that have emerged from the foregoing analysis. Both relate to the theological understanding of church as animated by the Spirit of God. One expands into understanding church as the institutionalization of such a community who ‘live in the faith that Jesus is the Christ of God’, whilst the second develops in a direction that emphasizes church as a ‘historical community of the disciples of Jesus’ whose mission is ‘to continue and expand Jesus’ message in history’.42 Haight believes the qualities of the church as understood in the original era to be as follows: Jesus is seen as the generative principle, and the church is understood as and seen to be developmental, pluralistic, and one (one church of churches in communion). Haight touches upon the tensions and pitfalls of allowing any ecclesiology to be considered as normative in an enduring sense and elucidates the sound principles that such normativity is best ‘understood in terms of a social anthropology, the continuity in existence of communities, and hermeneutical habits of interpreting the past and applying it to the present’.43 Understood against the backdrop of this social-anthropological horizon, Haight concludes that the early church can be considered to be normative ‘because it represents the original, classical reception of and response to the saving revelation of God in Jesus Christ which constitutes the church’.44 Such an understanding does not mean that development, change and difference do not feature in the understanding, interpretation and relationship of later churches to such a normative understanding; indeed the aforementioned tensions will characterize the relationship of all individual churches and the

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subsequent church of all eras, alike. A focus on the ‘generative principle’ of Jesus himself, along with a recognition of the developmental and differentiated nature of the church, as evidenced by the existence of a communion of interdependent, interactive and mutual churches, which should always be understood as Jesuscentred and spirit-filled at one and the same time: such are found to be serving as principles for healthy ecclesiological endeavours throughout the story of the church. Haight replicates this modus operandi for the pre- and post-Constantinian church era alike, In terms of the principles for a historical ecclesiology that are drawn from these respective explorations, with regard to the pre-Constantinian church, we see that unity emerges as a highest value along with the functional development of ecclesial institutions such as episcopal succession, reconciliation and priesthood. There is a tension between ‘structure and communitas’ (i.e., between office and charism or ‘official episcopal authority and unofficial spiritual authority in the community’).45 Haight concludes ‘such conflicts are constitutive of a historical church, an organization that makes its way through new times and changing circumstances’.46 From the study of the post-Constantinian church, the fact and range of development itself are fundamental, illustrated by no more striking example than ‘the emergence of the jurisdictional power and authority of the papacy’.47 Further key principles here include inculturation and a ‘commixture of conservative and progressive forces’, and also ‘institutional objectification’, along with the objective and existential tensions this entails. This relates to the distinction between the empirical church and the ‘Sanctified within’, and that between whole and part (both of which are very clearly illustrated by the Donatist controversy). The greatest change in this era of the church’s history came, however, in the area of the church’s relation to the wider ‘world’ and, more specifically, in the church’s relation to state and society as the church became the state religion. Nonetheless, such relations were manifest and understood in differing ways in differing historical and geographical contexts. Haight moves on, in Part III, to explore ‘The Church in the Middle Ages’. Here, again, he employs the very same methodology to explore ‘The Gregorian Reform and the New Medieval Church’ and ‘Conciliarism and the Late Medieval Church’. The principles that emerge from a lengthy examination of the Gregorian Reform and ‘New Medieval Church’ illustrate a unique combination of developments and characteristics that offer abiding lessons for the church (provided the accompanying form of ecclesiology is not seen to be universally normative), in both negative and positive terms alike. The Gregorian reforms further ‘objectified’ the church itself and, furthermore, this reflection upon the character of the medieval church captures very well the ‘dialectical relationship between doctrine and practice’.48 The ‘revolutionary power’ of tradition is witnessed in new situations, and the exercise of papal power and authority is seen to be variable and different. The reforms had effects of ambiguous character and the tensions between unity and division are best interpreted with reference to the categories of ‘church’ and ‘sect’.

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The late medieval church, in which conciliarism would flourish, offers insight into how ecclesiological change and development can have a profound effect upon prevailing general structures. Here the functional relationship between community and institution that was also illustrated with reference to the early church is accentuated still further as structures of ministry (apostolic church) are relativized to the ‘body of the faithful’ (universal church).49 Here we see laid bare the tension between unifying structure and pluralistic reality, with the latter demanding greater flexibility of the institutional administration in order to preserve the former – a principle that was not well adhered to during the subsequent era of reformations. A further principle demonstrated, in particular, by the schism and the conciliarist crisis is the ‘existential historical character of institutions’ which points to the need to maintain in tension the respective objective and subjective aspects of the holiness and authority, indeed the character in general, of church institutions, for the objective character itself is dependent upon the ‘corporate experience and consent of the body’.50 A principle that also emerges into sharp relief here in relation to this era is that the basis of the unity of the church is prior to its institutional character. With perhaps contemporary challenges for his own Roman Catholic tradition uppermost in mind here, Haight offers some tentative suggestions concerning the possibility of employing a conciliarist theory of the church without necessarily introducing a conciliarist form of government and hence this era provides examples of such. However, as Haight acknowledges, the church of later times would necessarily demand expanded conciliarist principles. A final principle here concerns the dialectical relationship between, first, the ontologically constitutive relations of the church to God and to the world (or to history and society), and, second, the dialectical character of the relationship between ecclesial ideals and actuality. Thus Haight draws to a close the more specifically ‘historical ecclesiology’ encountered in this volume although, as readers soon become aware, even this first volume really engages in both historical and comparative ecclesiological analysis. Nonetheless, the first volume does serve well as the foundations for a more ambitious and elaborate ‘comparative ecclesiology’, which unfolds throughout the pages of Volume II. . . . To Comparative Ecclesiology Volume II, as Haight tells us, takes on a ‘change in strategy’ which continues to be a form of historical ecclesiology, but which develops as befits ‘new circumstances’ in the church that have developed from the European Reformations onwards, as well as the emergence of ecclesiology as a discipline in its own right in the medieval period and beyond. Thus differing forms of ecclesiology, itself, are very much a central focus of the chapters here. Hence Volume II turns to a more comparative focus, whilst retaining the historical backdrop, and compares against a common set of exploratory criteria ecclesiological traditions, trends and developments either in the work of major

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representative figures of different churches, or authoritative or especially influential schools of thought, councils and texts. Although Haight stresses the comparisons therein are more implicit than explicit,51 he believes a more expanded explicit account of the comparisons would be beyond the task even of this 498-page tome. Leaving further debates on the table in such an implicit fashion also serves his always present ecumenical objectives, as well: ‘Differences are the first accent, but they cannot be the final word . . .’, rather, he settles for the more noble (if, as he admits, more broadly abstracted) aspiration of ‘building a large horizon for understanding the depth of a tradition that can sustain many different arrangements within the one church’.52 On the relationship between these two initial volumes, Haight offers the following: just as the Catholic Church has begun to adjust to the modern world of Christian pluralism, the context is on the verge of changing again, just as radically, to a postmodern, globalized world of the multicultural with ecclesiologies across the Christian traditions and new ones reflecting this diversity. In sum, comparative ecclesiology does not undermine the basic thrust of historical ecclesiology but sharpens its tensions and makes it considerably more interesting.53

Thus the second volume proceeds by concentrating not just on key periods in the development of ecclesiology. Each chapter once again has the same structure and ends with Haight’s reflections upon ‘Principles for a Historical Ecclesiology’, as informed by that chapter’s findings. So, Part I explores ‘the Church in the Sixteenth Century’ and begins with a chapter on Luther, moves on to chapters on Calvin, the Church in England, and, collectively, in Chapter 4, Anabaptist, Baptist and Roman Ecclesiology. The principles to emerge from an engagement with the era and experiences of Luther include lessons concerning the necessity and structure of reform itself, for which no single method will suffice (e.g., the Gregorian reform was ‘from above’, Lutheran reform, according to Haight, is better understood as reform ‘‘from below’ as represented by academics, lower clergy, and influential laity’).54 Further lessons concern the necessity of pluralism and division, the reappearance of a conciliarist principle and Luther’s employment of historical (as opposed to Aristotelian metaphysical) reason to retrieve an understanding of the functionality of office. The situation following Luther demonstrated that there was now a plurality not simply of churches, but also of ‘conceptions of what an authentic church was’55 – hence illustrating fundamental change in the conception of the nature of the church itself. Finally, Haight offers the observation that in such a pluralistic situation, the understanding and actual character of the relationship between the church and the world will also undergo change and reflect such differences – different groups will relate to the wider world in different ways and such a principle of ‘a particular and dynamic relationship to the world’ is seen as being a key element of any particular ecclesial identity.56 From Calvin, we gain an exemplary illustration of the (theological) principle of incarnation (or what, Haight suggests, might alternatively be termed the sacramental principle or ‘principle of divine accommodation’) as being that

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which defines and supports the role of the church in human history. So, too, do we see an exemplary emphasis upon the theological principle of the relation between the Word and the Spirit of God in the life of the church – a christocentric theology of the Word is reinforced by a ‘developed theology of the Spirit’. Thus from Calvin, ecclesiology also gains ‘profound theological warrant in the trinitarian summary of God’s dealing with humankind in history’.57 Calvin also illustrates well (unintentionally) that plurality of models of church polity stand in diverse modes of relation to that of the early church, despite the rhetoric offered to suggest a more direct and normative relationship. This offers lessons for any construal of the normative nature of New Testament ecclesiology for, as we have seen, even the latter is pluralistic itself. Appropriation must only be in the light of present-day historical and environmental contexts and, furthermore, different models of church organization at different times can claim validity by appeal to the New Testament itself. Once more, the tension between objective and existential, along with ideal and actual ecclesial elements, are highlighted by Haight’s consideration of Calvin, who ‘dramatizes’ such tensions considerably. Haight again believes that all churches exhibit such tension ‘along a variety of axes: understanding of doctrine, profession of faith, fidelity in prayer and worship, active commitment to church activities’.58 Finally, on the church–world relation, Calvin’s ecclesiology weds theological and organizational factors into ‘a powerful statement of the church’s involvement in society’ that offers abiding value for markedly different eras and contexts, as well.59 The principle for a historical ecclesiology learned from the early Church of England, Haight tells us, begins with the stark lesson from Tudor England that ‘Church development cannot go backward’ – and anachronistic restorationism is doomed to failure.60 The unity of the church here came to be understood less in terms of uniformity and of one polity. This in turn gave rise to further insights concerning the relation between the visible and invisible church, although no easy retreat behind such a distinction could theologically and so ecclesiologically succeed. One of Richard Hooker’s61 most innovative and ecumenically enduring ecclesiological insights, Haight suggests, is his understanding of the essentially human nature of ecclesial institutions, which are nonetheless simultaneously divinely assisted, supported and sanctioned. This allows such institutions to be understood as being ‘both lawful and open to exceptions and changeable’, which maintains a healthy dynamic tension between openness to change and yet ‘essential or dominical structure’.62 The whole–part tension leads, in Hooker, to a constructive theory and conciliarist ecclesial vision of ‘one church among many churches’.63 The very broad sweep of Chapter 4, which takes in Anabaptist, Baptist and ‘Roman’ ecclesiologies, leads Haight to divide the principles thereby learned for a historical ecclesiology into two typological camps that offer opposite ‘ends of the spectrum’ along which other sixteenth-century ecclesiologies can be located, namely: ‘Free Church’ for the Mennonite and Baptist ecclesiological lessons and the ‘Universal Institutional Church’ typology for lessons gleaned from the Tridentine church. Thus the free church ecclesiologies accentuate the applied theological principle against ‘nominal Christianity’ of personal faith that demands

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one be a ‘conscious, free and responsible’ member of the church.64 This relates to the principle of voluntary association and consequent primary referent of the local church with its distinctive interpretation of apostolicity as meaning ‘to be true to the apostles’ as opposed to standing in an unbroken line of ordinations.65 The principle of spiritual interiority, also follows, with consequent implications for orders, institutions and polity (such a church has only Christ as its head and thus is technically entirely lay, even if it does have charismatic leaders). Such a community is understood to be existentially holy insofar as the quality of the lives of members is subjectively ethical and holy. Ecclesiological emphasis upon objective forms of holiness (of doctrine, priesthood, sacrament, tradition, word) stand in contrast to this. Love of neighbour is stressed, particularly for ‘the poor and less fortunate’.66 Such a church is seen to range in its attitudes to the world from being ‘indifferent to society, to separation from society and state, to hostility to the world’. This can result in conceiving of the church as parallel society or radical, militant and millenarian activities vis-a`-vis the world, ‘But in all cases, the church and the people in it belong to God and not to the world.’67 In direct contrast, then, the ‘universal institutional church’, as exemplified here by the Catechism of the Council of Trent, is grounded upon the principle of institutionalization itself, rather than personal faith. Thus Trent offers a more public understanding of church conceived as an agent in history and ‘public phenomenon given for the world’ as testified by revelation, and exemplified by its tradition of doctrine and practice.68 It is a social institution that is objectively structured, with predetermined lines of leadership, offices, law and customs. Thus the principle of universality itself is central, grounded in revelation for all humanity as the church is thus conceived to be. Thus ‘the voluntary principle appears as dissidence, as breaking the unity of the community, and thus as attacking the very truth of the revelation on which the unity is ultimately founded’.69 The church, itself, mediates God’s salvation, according to the principle of external sacramentality where ‘Spirit is mediated through public external signs’70 and thus the church is structured accordingly, hence its God-given authority to teach, govern or rule. Clearly delineated structures prevail; lines of leadership and ministry are understood in objectively distinct terms. Such an understanding of the church perceives it to be an objectively holy institution, despite the subjective holiness or otherwise of its members, leaders and ministers. In relation to the world, the church is understood to be part of the world, of society and state, although it will sometimes stand in opposition, and more usually will reach compromise with these wider elements of the ‘world’, with the aim, in theory, of exerting positive influence upon that world. Haight’s exhaustive account of the five major ecclesiologies that emerged in the sixteenth century leads to the conclusion that will be further explicated in the third volume of the trilogy: ‘The church can never go back to a situation where Christian pluralism does not prevail. Nor should it. The typology demonstrates the positive value of living the Christian ecclesial life in different ways.’71 Part II of the second volume takes on the enormous task of analysing ‘The Church in the Modern Period’ and Haight acknowledges that here he has had to

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be more discerning still in the choice of representative figures and texts, so vast is the literature of the era. So, Chapter 5 engages ‘Modern Ecclesiology’, encompassing the nineteenth century in the ‘west’. Haight here considers the innovative phenomenon of the ‘missionary movement’, the distinctive forms of church–world relation here and the emergent modern Christian social movements, and the distinctive Protestant and Roman Catholic developments in theology. Haight then turns to discuss the representative and highly influential thought of both Friedrich Schleiermacher and (the earlier ecclesiological work) of Johann Adam Mo¨hler. In discerning the principles elucidated from his discussions of these two ecclesiologically pioneering figures, Haight believes both are wedded together by the bonds of modernity, and both equally teach us ‘that one cannot go back, or, if one attempts a ressourcement by retrieving the past, the past will always be brought forward into the new world of the present’.72 Schleiermacher and Mo¨hler share much in common, although their differences are vital, most strikingly so in the former’s emphasis upon the congregation and the latter’s upon the universal institution. Schleiermacher offers an exemplary version of an ecclesiology from below, but he also offers a ‘high’ ecclesiology located ‘within the context of a historical conception of the work of Christ’ located, as it is, within his wider dogmatics.73 Mo¨hler offers a pneumatocentric ecclesiology that does not quite embrace historical consciousness as far as Schleiermacher’s for which the ‘internalization of historical consciousness’ represents its most distinctive innovative feature.74 Yet Haight believes this consideration of them side by side can be particularly instructive today because we can appreciate that ‘today’s pluralistic culture forces distinctions about what is essential and allows recognition that both may be valid rather than competitive’.75 For both, community is seen to be primary when considered vis-a`-vis office, although the tension between the two is recognized as always present. Here Mo¨hler’s account is deemed to be more comprehensive. Office and institution thus emerge from and are dependent upon the community. Schleiermacher offers a modern and theologically sophisticated understanding of the visible–invisible church distinctions and an equally sophisticated understanding of the church–world relation, ‘The mission of the church in this light is to penetrate the world with its God-consciousness and all that accompanies it. The church is called to mediate the effects of God’s presence as Spirit to human history and society within itself and beyond itself.’76 Schleiermacher further helps show pluralism both across and within churches as something necessary and helps lay the theological foundations for modern ecumenical discourse. Taken as a whole, Haight’s considerations of these nineteenth-century ecclesiologies leads him to conclude that the achievements here can be laterally appropriated across the churches today and in the future. In particular, he highlights the sense of historical development and the necessity of the church to be ‘relevant to the world at any given time’,77 as well as an understanding of the Spirit, itself, as a principle of unity across those varied times, places and denominations. This ‘lateral application of historical consciousness and an

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expanded appreciation of the role of the Spirit within the church’78 was, Haight believes, increasingly internalized throughout the twentieth century. The following two chapters engage six areas of development that collectively represent the most significant areas of ‘Twentieth-Century Ecclesiology’, which is characterized by Haight as being most distinctive in the ‘growing consciousness, appreciation and organization of pluralism’,79 a shift in the internalized and actualized understanding of the church’s relation to the world and, finally, the entire geographical and existential world now increasingly ‘becomes the horizon for understanding the church’ itself.80 Here, Chapter 6 explores three such momentous developments in exploring the Ecumenical Movement and emergence of the World Council of Churches: the ecclesiology of Vatican II (and its aftermath, particularly the subsequent developments in relation to collegiality, the priority of mission, liturgy and its implications for understanding membership and a transformed understanding of the church’s relationship to the world), liberation ecclesiology and the emergence of basic ecclesial communities. It is here that the principles for a historical ecclesiology become more concretely and explicitly constructive and point towards Haight’s third volume and the ecumenical ecclesiology he seeks to develop there. Thus Chapter 6 discerns that the twentieth century offered two key and broad themes for ecclesiology in the appropriation and growth to maturity of both historical consciousness and social consciousness. Together they help constitute ‘an expanded horizon of mutual relationships’.81 Both have helped Christians appreciate the wider unity of the human family and also to distinguish better between essential differences and matters of lesser importance – Haight here drawing on the Anglican concept of ‘adiaphora’ and the Vatican II notion of ‘hierarchy of truths’.82 Such an understanding will permeate his third volume in its entirety. Hence principles here include the essential nature of the unity of the church; that this must be unity in difference and that uniformity is of considerably less value. What follows from this is that ‘Existential community in Christ holds priority over doctrinal agreement.’83 The appreciation of this wider and more open conception of Christianity is grounded upon a fundamental shift in the ‘epistemological structure’ of the faith brought about through the efforts of the World Council of Churches and Vatican II alike, which constitutes ‘a major ecclesiological development’. It makes possible mutual learning and enrichment between churches and differences are far from ignored but the shared ‘common substance of faith’ is perceived to be of much greater value.84 Communion ecclesiology – which is deliberately vague – can serve as the basis of an appropriate ‘creative imagination for ecclesiology’ today and provide the sense of wider unity that allows tensions to be lived with.85 In turn, the local church as ‘first existential referent’ is given renewed attention, as a further principle is that the actual size of the basic unit of church is variable and can be accommodated to the ‘religious needs of the people’.86 In these times, the church–world relation must be ‘explicitly’ understood in relation to inculturation and the change and adaptability this entails: ‘All Christian churches are inculturated in some culture.’87

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On the social and interreligious questions, Haight echoes his earlier writings here by stating as principles that matters of justice cannot be ignored by any ‘adequate ecclesiology’. Likewise the equality of men and women and, finally, the need, in a globalized world, for Christian mission to become ‘formally dialogical’.88 Thus, inculturation is seen as unavoidable, indeed necessary. Churches must shed their absolutist and imperial tendencies when engaging with other faiths thereby ‘learning humility before a God active outside the Christian sphere’.89 Again, Volume III expands upon each and every one of these themes at considerable length. The final chapter of Volume II (no. 7) continues the study of twentieth-century developments by exploring Orthodox ecclesiology (particularly John Zizioulas’s ‘iconic ecclesiology’) and Pentecostal ecclesiologies, before completing the account of the last century with an assessment of the WCC document, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. These final considerations again illustrate ‘two ends of a spectrum’ with a ‘negotiated centrist position’.90 The principles that emerge from such considerations are, first, the lessons from Orthodoxy that an ‘iconic imagination’ allows ecclesiology ‘to identify and constructively integrate’ ecclesial tensions. Second, Orthodoxy further and particularly illustrates how communion ecclesiology can continue to serve the church just as it has done so from the earliest times and this can be appropriated anew in relation to different times and ecclesial realities. The Pentecostal churches have helped illustrate how the church must meet the spiritual needs and cultures ‘of particular peoples’. Here Pentecostal ecclesiology closely mirrors the fluidity of much New Testament ecclesiology. The notion of speaking in tongues offers a rich symbol of pluralism itself – ‘unity expressed in diverse languages’.91 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry exudes an authority derived from many decades’ worth of conversation and as such it offers an impetus to and ‘temporary bridge’ for ‘further communication interchange’ concerning closer unity.92 In it, Haight sees an ‘outline for a transdenominational ecclesiology’,93 an outline that he will employ to great constructive purpose in Volume III. The function BEM thereby serves is to point towards the commonality in difference that all Christians share and to underline the fact that no single church constitutes the church in its entirety or even represents the self-understanding of the church in its fullness. Haight offers an inspiring brief set of concluding remarks that are essentially questions for ‘Ecclesiology in the Twenty-First Century’ relating, in particular, to new challenges posed to the churches by inculturation, relations with other faiths and the many and varied ecclesiological implications of the reality of pluralism in general. However, as Haight suggests, this is not really a proper conclusion – what serves more fittingly as such is his work since the publication of the first two volumes which has elaborated upon such reflections in an attempt to develop a constructive ecclesiology ‘schooled in the principles and axioms of historical and comparative ecclesiology’,94 and aimed towards consciously ecumenical ends. Hence, above all else, his third volume in the Christian Community in History trilogy, which was published in 2008, serves such ends in a most rich and inspiring fashion.

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This leads us to the purpose and focus of that third volume itself, which is concerned with the phenomenon of ecclesial existence, and might more properly be sub-titled constructive ecclesiology. It looks at recent and contemporary understandings of the nature, mission and purpose of the church and explores, in particular, ecumenical documents that represent the fruit of collective discussions and dialogue concerning the very same. Haight wishes to answer the question ‘why the church?’ or, more exactly, ‘why belong to the church?’95 What emerges is a thoroughly systematic constructive comparative ecclesiology that will serve as a resource for ecumenical conversations for a very long time to come.

Critical Voices Roger Haight’s work has received wide attention and been the subject of much discussion. In the various chapters that follow in this present volume, we will encounter various critical voices in relation to a number of areas of Haight’s theological work in general and his ecclesiological undertakings in particular. Having thus set forth a general outline of the development, method and purpose of Haight’s ecclesiology, here I wish simply to introduce some representative elements of the discussions of Haight’s work that have ensued in recent years – first considering his broader work and the Vatican’s condemnation of his Christology, and then considerations of criticisms of his comparative ecclesiology itself. Pluralism Condemned It need hardly be emphasized that the consistent emphasis upon dialogue and pluralism that permeates not simply Haight’s comparative ecclesiology, but his theology in general, does not meet with approval everywhere. Let us consider perhaps the most well-known example of a rejection of the sentiments expressed in Haight’s work, opposition which, of course, was far from being limited to or primarily focused upon Haight’s work in isolation. So strident was the opposition of Joseph Ratzinger, whilst Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (according to his biographer John Allen), that he went so far as essentially to equate pluralism with relativism.96 When commenting on the work of British pluralist theologian, John Hick, Ratzinger was moved to remark that in such an understanding of the Christian faith as Hick’s, ‘Concepts such as church, dogma and sacraments lose their unconditional character . . . The notion of dialogue becomes the quintessence of the relativist creed and the antithesis of conversion and mission . . . The relativist dissolution of Christology, and even more of ecclesiology, thus becomes a central commandment of religion.’97 The final part of this sentence is telling. I have long argued that, behind the curial condemnation of Catholic theologians such as Edward Schillebeeckx, Leonardo Boff, Tissa Balasuriya, Jacques Dupuis and, of course, Roger Haight, most of whom were supposedly condemned on christological grounds, lies a latent condemnation of the ecclesiological stances taken by such Catholic scholars.

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The sentiments expressed in the above quotation were further reflected and expanded upon in writings by Joseph Ratzinger as private theologian,98 as well as in church documents such as Communionis notio (1993), the ‘Note on the Expression ‘‘Sister Churches’’ ’ (30 June 2000), Dominus Iesus (2000) and the more recent clarification on ‘Responses to Some Questions Concerning Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church’ (July 2007). The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the source of each of the above documents, publicly condemned Haight’s work in Christology in February 2005, and he was henceforth prohibited from teaching Catholic theology and so forced to leave his post in the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and to transfer to the long-standing ‘Hermeneutical-Pluralist’ haven of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Not least of all, the Vatican condemnation made it clear that the CDF took issue with Haight’s affirmation of the need for Catholics to take the contemporary pluralist reality seriously. In response to his own condemnation by the Vatican in February 2005, Haight stated the following: ‘They’re saying that one has to attend to the tradition, to the community . . . I try to do that in what I write. I proceed very, very carefully and responsibly to address issues that cannot go unaddressed . . . My fear is that educated Catholics will walk if there isn’t space for an open attitude to other religions.’ Haight stressed his work was a service to the church and was simply an attempt to reinterpret and re-explicate traditional doctrines in language appropriate for postmodern times.99 In discussing the condemnation and the actual substance of Haight’s work in Christology, Thomas Rausch pointed out that: Haight’s book insists from the beginning that theology must be done in dialogue with the postmodern world. He argues that in a postmodern culture with its pluralistic consciousness one can no longer claim the superiority of Christianity to other religions, or Christ as the absolute center to which all other mediations of salvation are relative. This means that the dogmatic statements of faith, particularly in the area of Christology, need to be rethought and reinterpreted in a cultural and linguistic context different from the one in which they were first formulated’100

Despite his own misgivings about the text, Rausch seemed to concur with the view that ‘the CDF moved too quickly on the case and did not respect the debate already taking place in the theological community’.101 These sentiments were echoed and commended by Haight’s peers from the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA), in a statement issued in support of Haight and his work.102 It is something of an irony that the Catholic Press Association named the book which the CDF condemned as ‘Theological Book of the Year’ for 2000. The widely respected Catholic theologian, Sr Elizabeth Johnson, stated that she thought of Haight as ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’, adding that ‘he’s doing the work of a theologian, trying to articulate in new cultural idioms what the faith says . . . He’s a faithful man of the church, who ascribes to the Nicene Creed with full-heartedness. He’s not trying to oppose doctrine, but to make it come alive.’ She went on to remind people that the Vatican had, at times, ‘attempted to block pioneering ways of thinking that turned

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out to be really valuable’, such as those put forth in the work of Karl Rahner and John Courtney Murray.103 In its statement of support, the CTSA concluded that ‘we are concerned that the Congregation’s Notification elides the traditional distinction between theology and catechesis in a way that threatens the proper function of both in their service to the Church. We thus express our concern for the ramifications that this action may have for the future of the Catholic theological vocation.’104 This all demonstrates that Haight’s work had touched certain raw ecclesial nerves in these times and that the issues he raises and explores are ones which must be discussed in an open, frank and charitable fashion. Critical Assessments of Haight’s Ecclesiology Indeed, all of the issues that the fallout from the condemnation of Haight brought to the surface are also pertinent issues in relation to the intentionality and lasting value of Haight’s work, as a contribution to the church, in ecclesiology. Thus the first two volumes of Christian Community in History have also attracted a great deal of attention and numerous reviews. Yet such reviews are often as revealing, if not more revealing, of the ecclesiological and ecclesial background and preferences of their authors as they are of Haight and his work. It is clear that some reviewers have not sufficiently understood the methodological thinking and structure behind these two volumes and/or they have criticized Haight for omitting attention to aspects of their own preferred themes and/or for what has simply been his refusal to rush towards methodological closure by treating in these two volumes what can and should only be rightly articulated and explicated in the third volume. Even amongst those reviews that appeard of a more balance nature, one finds elements of criticism that are at best premature. For example, Haight’s fellow US ecclesiologist, Richard Gaillardetz, compliments Haight on the achievement of his study but also finds fault feeling that, in particular, there is an absence of enough ‘balance’. Gaillardetz thus suggests that the treatment of ecclesiology through the lens of a historical imagination could be fruitfully supplemented through the greater employment of an ‘iconic imagination’ (Haight’s treatment of Zizioulas’s attention to the latter in Volume II notwithstanding). Thus: This lack of iconic imagination becomes all the more striking if one compares [Haight’s] project with that of the late Jean-Marie Tillard, whose ecclesiological writings drew on the symbolic significance of Trinity and Eucharist for an understanding of the Church without ever abandoning careful historical contextualisation. The failure to give sufficient attention to the symbolic/iconic imagination has yielded, I fear, a project of prodigious scholarship, but one that is imaginatively thin and not likely to be pastorally compelling as a constructive ecclesiological work.105

I think, even though Gaillardetz’s criticism here is harsh, given the nature and purpose of the first two volumes, he will here be more pleasantly satisfied with the third volume and not simply with its attention to aspects of an iconic imagination, but also with the guiding ecclesiological principle of an analogical imagination that

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so informs Haight’s Ecclesial Existence throughout.106 Indeed, as with Tillard’s work, Haight turns to embrace the promise of communion ecclesiology, shaped by trinitarian considerations, in a most constructive way. Furthermore, Gaillardetz’s conclusion that he feels Haight has failed to succeed in producing a ‘constructive ecclesiology’ is obviously, once again, both premature and unfair given the historical and methodological prolegomena necessary in such a monumental undertaking. Again, he will be more satisfied with Volume III which completes the transition successfully from a primarily historical-comparative to a comparativeconstructive (and hence thoroughly ecumenical) ecclesiology. Indeed, Gaillardetz might almost have written the dust-jacket for Volume III, itself, when he concludes that ‘Perhaps what is required after such an exhaustive survey of so many ecclesiological trajectories is a third volume that would develop a genuinely constructive ecclesiology from below, built on the impressive foundations of these first two volumes.’107 Numerous reviewers pointed to further ‘gaps’ and demanded more of x, y, or z, but, given that two volumes alone sought to cover the 2000-year history of the church and its component churches, many such reviewers were here being a little churlish to say the least. An example of the more problematic elements of some reviews is provided by Robert Imbelli, who suggested that ‘Haight’s pioneering project will stand or fall on the cogency of the methodological options and commitments he so carefully delineates’ and Imbelli finds concerns here, particularly with Haight’s clear preference for the ecclesiological method ‘from below’.108 But Imbelli seems to misread the careful qualifications of Haight to ensure that neither christological nor pneumatological ecclesiological emphases becomes dominant to the detriment of the other – instead (as, again, Volume III makes abundantly clear), the two are complementary and are actually encompassed in a broader trinitarian analogical ecclesiological imagination. Imbelli ends his review by citing Cyprian of Carthage, as cited in Lumen gentium, as a potential corrective to what he perceives to be Haight’s failings here. Yet Haight’s treatment of Cyprian, in Volume I, (itself the sole focus of Imbelli’s review) and, indeed, his utilization of Cyprian again in the further articulation of the method towards a constructive ecclesiology in Volume III, again suggests Imbelli is amongst that number who have been harsh or misguided in such conclusions. It is telling that Imbelli was amongst those who supported the reductivist assessment of Haight’s work Jesus: Symbol of God and the revocation of his Catholic teaching licence.109 The account of Christian Community in History offered in this chapter and in Chapter 9, which discusses the third volume of Haight’s ecclesiology, contains, in the main, mostly implicit critique, given the necessity of providing a detailed descriptive account and elucidation of Haight’s method and of its fruits in themselves. My primary intention, then, has been to accentuate the promise of Haight’s meticulous work in ecclesiology. Like other reviewers, on first reading of volumes I and II, I also wondered whether the method offered in the first two volumes needed to be further developed or expanded in certain areas – but Volume III has answered most such concerns. An emphasis upon the positives as opposed to somewhat churlish attention to omissions is also more justified given the

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already-mentioned and obvious fact that 2000 years could never be comprehensively covered in a mere two volumes, although, of course, as Haight would no doubt admit, and some reviewers have observed (e.g., Richard Gaillardetz, again, and Brad Hinze), some idiosyncratic choices for focus were made. However, I do share the concerns in relation to certain ecclesiological trends and currents of thought that are not discussed in general and their prominent proponents who are not discussed at all. This is the case not simply in relation to, for example, the immensely influential ecclesiological thought of Joseph Ratzinger and other the neo-Augustinian approaches to ecclesiology from other traditions (e.g., John Milbank, Stanley Hauerwas et al.). But the reasons for some such omissions may be more political (e.g., the absence of a discussion of the thought of Joseph Ratzinger, given Haight’s clashes with the CDF and his status as a loyal Jesuit, may well, on many grounds, be understandable). Nonetheless, the absence of a detailed discussion of some more progressive voices, such as the ecclesiological thought, influence and promise of someone such as Karl Rahner, with whom one would imagine Haight would find more common ground (he is only mentioned once in Volume I and twice in Volume II), was certainly, to me, surprising. Thus, where perhaps readers might have been justified in expecting more would be in reference to particularly dominant ecclesiological voices in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Brad Hinze makes a very significant point in Chapter 2, below, in relation to the absence of a detailed discussion of the debates concerning clashes between ecclesiological ‘traditionalists’ and ‘progressives’110 and this holds, I believe, notwithstanding the implicit discussion of such in Haight’s lengthy consideration of ecclesiologies ‘from above’ and ‘from below’. But, again, ecclesial politics and ecclesial as well as academic etiquette may well play a significant part here. However, I do believe (somewhat in disagreement with Hinze) that, overall, the whole method of comparative ecclesiology, building on comparative theology, is an attempt to develop a non-polemical and dialogical ecclesiology which does not shirk the difficult debates and yet is strenuous in its attempts to facilitate ecclesial mutuality and living with difference. I believe the aim of a constructive comparative ecclesiology is neither idealism nor uniformity but to be comfortable within one’s tradition yet to dialogue with, learn from and be in partnership with other traditions while simultaneously being comfortable with real differences and even disagreement. Here the work of those such as Hinze, himself, in discerning and further developing practices of ecclesial dialogue and the notion of ‘communicative ecclesiology’, is evidently highly complementary to the comparative ecclesiological work of Haight. James Ginther has raised a more general point that often historical theologians are excellent theologians yet only ‘amateur historians’ in that, on occasion, historical theologians do not take the adjective ‘historical’ seriously enough. Perhaps all historical theologians will recognize some partial element of truth in this contention. Yet, insofar as ecclesiology is concerned, I believe the work of numerous scholars has demonstrated that delving back into the past is really the secondary issue – informing debate in the present and indeed helping to shape the future direction in the church (and warding off disastrous ecclesial developments)

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are the primary ends. For example, in the Roman Catholic tradition, such an ecclesiological approach emerged in the nineteenth century, owes more than many would perhaps acknowledge to the Catholic modernists, was developed further in the ecumenical movement and was perfected by those such as Congar, Rahner, Tillard et al. and also the progressives at Vatican II and since. There are times when Haight’s terminology might overlap or become a touch confusing or confused, as the same terms can be employed in differing ways with seemingly different meanings (even when subtly so). And it is never quite certain where, for Haight himself, historical ecclesiology ends and comparative ecclesiology begins, though such a blurred distinction might also have many merits. Nonetheless, I would suggest that the ‘Principles for a Historical Ecclesiology’ that Haight articulated following each chapter, might better have been termed ‘Principles for a Constructive Comparative Ecclesiology’, such is their nature and intention. Certainly and overall, Roger Haight is a scholar who listens attentively to criticisms and constructive suggestions in relation to his own work and I believe that, in the case of many critical responses to his ecclesiology, it is likely that he is guilty not of fault but simply of different priorities and choice of focus and emphasis. In other words, for example, many of the critical points in the form of the promising constructive suggestions laid out in the following chapter by Brad Hinze are ones that Haight would be in agreement with. In the ‘Preface’ to this volume he has further indicated his willingness to accept and take on board critical responses. Such a generous and responsive spirit is characteristic of both the person and his work. Indeed, in the case of many criticisms that have come his way since Christian Community in History was first published, it is evident that Haight would not actually find much to disagree with. And the enduring worth and significance of the scholarly and practical work and value of Haight’s ecclesiology, not least its ecumenical and constructive implications, will only emerge in due course. Nonetheless, we will further explore the promise of this new method throughout this volume, and particularly in its final part. One thing can be said with certainty at this stage already: the entire church owes Roger Haight an enormous debt of gratitude for his tireless work on behalf of its witness and mission alike. Notes 1. Here I draw upon a brief discussion first offered in Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in our Time (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007), p. xiii. 2. It complements Chapter 9, which explores the more constructive elements of Haight’s method and also Haight’s own reflections provided in Chapter 10. Haight’s most substantial ecclesiological work, which will predominate much of our discussion, is Christian Community in History, 3 vols: vol. I: Historical Ecclesiology (Continuum, 2004), vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology (Continuum, 2005), vol. III: Ecclesial Existence (Continuum, 2008). 3. Cf. for example, Keith Ward, Religion and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and A Vision to Pursue (London: SCM, 1991). The writings of Francis X. Clooney e.g. Theology after Vedanta: an Exercise in Comparative Theology, (New York: SUNY, 1993); ‘The Emerging Field of Comparative Theology: a Bibliographical Review (1989–95)’, Theological

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4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Gerard Mannion Studies 56 (3) (September 1995), 521–50, and Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason helps Break down the Boundaries between Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), provide a further example of pioneering work in this field. Roger Haight, ‘The Church as Locus of Theology’, Why Theology?, Concilium (1994/6): 13–22. Haight, ‘The Church as Locus of Theology’: 22 (my italics). David Tracy, ‘Beyond Foundationalism and Relativism: Hermeneutics and the New Relativism’, in his On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics and the Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 131–40. Ibid.: On the one hand, the ecumenism agrees with the heart of all the classic religious journeys: the universal is to be found by embracing the particular. Indeed, those who break through to a universal religious message are always highly particular in both origin and expression. Surely this route through the particular is a wiser way to find truth than seeking that ever-elusive goal, a common denominator among the religions. Some people can speak Esperanto. Most of us would rather learn Spanish or Chinese or Arabic or English. Ibid., p. 137. Haight, ‘Comparative Theology’, in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, ed. Gerard Mannion and Lewis Mudge (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 387–401. Roger Haight, ‘Preface’, p. xix above. For example, ‘Mission: The Symbol for Understanding the Church Today’, Theological Studies 37 (1976): 620–49; ‘The ‘‘Established’’ Church as Mission: The Relation of the Church to the Modern World’, The Jurist 39 (1979): 4–39; ‘Institutional Grace and Corporate Spirituality, I & II’, Spirituality Today 31 (September and December, 1979): 209–20, 324–34; ‘Historical Ecclesiology: An Essay on Method in the Study of the Church, I & II’, Science et Esprit 39 (1987): 27–46; 345–74; ‘The Mission of the Church in the Theology of the Social Gospel’, Theological Studies 49 (1988): 477–97; ‘The Structures of the Church’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 30/3–4 (1993): 403–14; ‘The Church as Locus of Theology’, Why Theology?, Concilium (1994/6): 13–22; ‘The Future of Ecumenism: The Need of Leadership in the Churches’, The Greek Orthodox The´ological Review 41 (1996): 255–8; ‘Towards an Ecclesiology from Below’, in Imaginer la Theologie Catholique (Roma: Studia Anselmiana, 2000), pp. 413–36; ‘The Church as Burden and Blessing’, in Light Burdens, Heavy Blessings: Essays in Honor of Margaret Brennan (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 2001), pp. 1–15; ‘Ecclesiology from Below: Genesis of the Church’, Theology Digest 48 (2001): 319–28. Among Haight’s articles that appeared following the publication of Christian Community in History, vols I and II, and therefore can be considered to be illustrative of the formation of Volume III, are the following: ‘Author’s Response’ in the ‘Review Symposium: Roger Haight, SJ, Christian Community in History’, Horizons 32 (Fall, 2005): 387–97; ‘Where We Dwell in Common’, Horizons 32 (Fall, 2005): 332–51; ‘Ecclesiology from Below: Principles from Ignacio Ellacurı´a’, in Love that Produces Hope: The Thought of Ignacio Ellacurı´a, ed. K. Burke and R. Lasalle-Kline (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), pp. 187–204. Haight, ‘Church as Locus of Theology’ pp. 16–17. Ibid., p. 18. Haight, ‘Comparative Theology’, in Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, pp. 391–2. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. I: Historical Ecclesiology, p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid, p. 19. Ibid.

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What is Comparative Ecclesiology and Why is it Important? 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

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Ibid. Ibid., p. 21. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, esp. chapters 3 (43–74) and 4 (75–101). Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. I, p. 21. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid. Ibid., 26–35. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II, pp. 6–7. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. I, p. 89. Ibid., p. 91. Ibid. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 116. Ibid., p. 119. Ibid., p. 125. Ibid., p. 133. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 136. Ibid., p. 137. Ibid., p. 196. Ibid., p. 197. Ibid., p. 257. Ibid., p. 339f. Ibid., p. 417. Ibid., p. 421. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II, p. 6. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 77. Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., p. 81. Ibid., p. 143. Ibid., p. 146. Ibid. Ibid., p. 211. Whom Haight takes as the key representative voice of Anglican ecclesiology from this era. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II, p. 214. Ibid., p. 215. Ibid., p. 278. Ibid., p. 279. Ibid., p. 281. Ibid., p. 282. Ibid., p. 283. Ibid., p. 284. Ibid., p. 285. Ibid., p. 288. Ibid., p. 356. Ibid., p. 358. Ibid., p. 365. Ibid., p. 357.

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76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

Ibid., p. 364. Ibid., p. 365. Ibid., p. 366. Ibid., p. 368. Ibid. Ibid., p. 421. Ibid., p. 420 and n. 97. Ibid., p. 422. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 423–4. Ibid., p. 425. Ibid. Ibid., p. 427. Ibid., p. 428. Ibid., p. 487. Ibid., p. 490. Ibid., p. 492. Ibid., p. 493. Ibid., p. 498. And is discussed at length below – see Chapter 9 (p. 169–90) of the present volume. John L. Allen Jr, ‘The Battle over ‘‘theology of pluralism’’ ’ in ‘The Word from Rome’ National Catholic Reporter Online 3 (2) (posted 5 September 2003) http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word090503.htm, (accessed 17 May 2006). On Haight’s own condemnation concerning his book Jesus: Symbol of God, see John L. Allen Jr, ‘Vatican Denounces Fr Roger Haight’s book, Bars Him from Teaching’, National Catholic Reporter 41 (6) (18 February 2005), 10; John L. Allen Jr., ‘Doctrinal Jousting’, National Catholic Reporter 41 (17) (25 February 2005), 5–6; Thomas P. Rausch, ‘The Vatican’s Quarrel with Roger Haight: Postmodern Jesus’, The Christian Century (3 May 2005), 28–31; Statement of the Board of Directors, Catholic Theological Society of America, ‘With Respect to the Notification Issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith concerning the book: Jesus: Symbol of God, by Rev. Roger Haight, S.J. and Prohibiting Fr Haight from Teaching Catholic Theology’, (June 2005), www.jcu.edu/ctsa/haight.html (accessed 17 May 2006). 97. Quoted in Allen, ‘The Battle over ‘‘theology of pluralism’’ ’. Hick responded to Ratzinger himself, in his Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion (Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave, 2001). 98. E.g. Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004). 99. Quoted in Allen, Jr, ‘Vatican Denounces Fr Roger Haight’s Book’, 10. 100. Rausch, ‘The Vatican’s Quarrel with Roger Haight’, 28. 101. Ibid. 102. Board of Directors, The Catholic Theological Society of America, ‘With Respect to the Notification’. 103. Allen, Jr, ‘Doctrinal Jousting’. 104. Board of Directors, The Catholic Theological Society of America, ‘With Respect to the Notification’. 105. Richard Gaillardetz, Review of ‘Christian Community in History, vols. 1 and 2’, Theological Studies (2006): 184–5. 106. And which is first articulated there in Ecclesial Existence, Chapter 2. 107. Gaillardetz, Review of ‘Christian Community in History’: 185. 108. Robert Imbelli, ‘Preserving the Church’s Identity: Christian Community in History, vol. 1, Historical Ecclesiology by Roger Haight’, America 192 (4) (2 February 2005), 35–7. A further example of a particularly critical review is that by Luke Timothy Johnson in Commonweal 132 (2) (28 January 2005), 34–6. 109. Cf. Allen, ‘Doctrinal Jousting’. 110. See Chapter 2 of the present volume.

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Chapter 2 CRITICAL ISSUES in ROGER HAIGHT’S HISTORICAL ECCLESIOLOGY Bradford E. Hinze

Context Roger Haight is a Jesuit priest widely recognized as an important and more recently a controversial theologian. With the publication of a treatise on fundamental theology (Dynamics of Theology 1990, 2001b) and a major work on Christology (Jesus: Symbol of God, 2000), he established the basic dimensions of a fully conceived theological stance. Christian Community in History is conceived of as the third part of this trilogy. This three-volume work is not intended to offer a systematic ecclesiological statement, but it sets the stage for such a constructive formulation. Haight’s theological position reflects the questions wrestled with by Catholic modernists about the historical character of Catholic identity and the more complex answers to those questions articulated by the twentieth-century Catholic theology associated with the neo-Thomists Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx, and North Americans Bernard Lonergan, David Tracy and Joseph Komonchak. Haight’s position is also self-consciously indebted to the work of numerous Protestant theologians, notably Paul Tillich, Schubert Ogden and James Gustafson, to the views of liberationist and inculturation theologians, and to more recent postmodern approaches to the plurality of global cultures. The immediate context for this new work in ecclesiology was provided by the reactions to his previous work, Jesus: Symbol of God. Haight’s Christology generated widespread discussion and debate in reviews and in scholarly forums.1 The public controversy escalated when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as prefect, initiated in 2000 a process of review and interrogation with Haight concerning certain claims made in this book. The CDF rendered a critical judgement and issued a formal notification on this work in February 2005. As a result Haight was prohibited from teaching Catholic theology ‘until his positions are rectified so as to be in full conformity with the doctrine of the Church’. Seven critical issues were raised, which provide the immediate milieu for his subsequent study in ecclesiology. The most relevant topic is the first and concerns method. Haight’s particular use of a critical correlation method was judged to ‘subordinat[e] . . . the contents of the faith to their plausibility and intelligibility in postmodern culture’. His theory of symbol was

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recognized for expressing and generating experiences of God but repudiated for not offering ‘objective information about God himself’. Based on these alleged methodological limitations, he was said to deviate from the Catholic church’s position in six areas: the preexistence of the Word, the divinity of Jesus, the doctrine of the Trinity, the salvific character of the death of Jesus, the unicity and universality of the salvific mediation of Jesus and the church, and the resurrection. Method Neither a history of dogma, nor a church history, Haight characterizes his approach in Christian Community in History as a historical ecclesiology and an ecclesiology from below. In the Introduction he sets forth his way of proceeding as ‘four logical movements’ aimed at featuring classic works in the history of ecclesiology. First, he portrays in broad strokes the historical situation of the church in which the works of his chosen theologians emerge. Second, he offers an analysis of the texts of specific theologians in terms of their context, their theological content, and their ecclesial and social significance. Third, he develops a comprehensive statement about the theology of the church as represented by these classic works. Fourth, he identifies particular ecclesiological principles, axioms, distinctions, constants that derive from these classic texts. Haight is guided in this effort in a special way by a social anthropology informed by the sociology of organizations. Five categories are taken from organizational theory as the basic elements of a social organism: (1) members; (2) goals (missions) that are multiple and changing; (3) activities (assemblies, rituals, ministries, ethics); (4) structures (Scripture and canon, creed, law, governance, and communication); and (5) environment pertaining to boundaries (Christianity and other religions; Christianity and empire or society). These categories surface in his analysis of individual ecclesiologies in the second movement, and they serve as a heuristic grid or framework in the third when he provides a holistic gestalt of the ecclesiology in a given period or of an individual reformer. In Volume II, there is a ‘change of strategy’, described in terms of comparative ecclesiology, to account for the emergence of a plurality of ecclesiologies during the Protestant Reformation. After beginning with a portrayal of the situation in the Western church in Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Haight revises his four-step approach: he describes the historical development of an individual theologian’s ecclesiology, followed by analysis, reflections on key factors at work, and articulation of derived principles. Later chapters in Volume II offer a further refinement combining analysis of two or three positions and the principles drawn from these positions. Haight characterizes this fourfold procedure as an ecclesiology from below. He says this appellation offers ‘an alternative way of saying the same thing’ (1:4), but when he describes it he actually delineates his governing assumptions. His contrast of two types of ecclesiology from above and from below, following his analogous approach to Christology, merits close scrutiny. Haight identifies six features that characterize an ecclesiology from above: (1) it offers an a-historical

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definition of the nature and structure of the church; (2) a specific confessional church is the object and principle for interpreting the universal church; (3) founded on the authority of certain doctrines, biblical and/or conciliar; (4) the origin of the church is construed doctrinally; (5) a high Christology is frequently operative; and (6) it adheres to a hierarchical approach to church structures and ministries, power and authority. Haight then identifies ‘historical and cultural forces which point toward and even demand a different way of thinking’ (2:26) that challenge the six features of the first type and yield alternative governing assumptions. These formulations build on methodological statements in Dynamics of Theology and Jesus: Symbol of God: (1) One must acknowledge the historical context of ecclesiology. This requires special awareness of the impact of the rise of historical consciousness, globalization and pluralism; a non-polemical, non-absolutist, nonexclusivist approach to other Christian churches, other religions, and other worldviews; attentiveness to collective human suffering and the fate of women in the church and world; a recognition of the ascendance of secularization and individualism, and the diminishing participation of people in the church. (2) The object of ecclesiology is an empirical, human and historical reality. Any effort to deduce the essence or idea of the church from biblical or doctrinal convictions without taking these into account is reductionistic. This object must be analysed in terms of both its historical and theological dimensions, in terms of the whole Christian movement, and with the awareness that any formulation of the universal church is done from the perspective of one part (which he calls part–whole dialectic) amidst a plurality of ecclesiologies. (3) The methods to be used are historical, sociological, theological and apologetic. Here he restates his previously formulated commitment to a hermeneutical method of correlation of church tradition and the contemporary situation and apologetic as ‘a critically conscious method that seeks to explain, or render intelligible, or make understandable and comprehensible the beliefs of a community’ (1:47). (4) The sources are a non-confessional approach to Scripture, church history, church doctrines, and historical experience both particular and common human experience. (5) The role of God as Spirit is featured as an alternative and corrective to the contrasting christocentric approach. (6) An approach to church structures based on their historicity is proposed. This requires naming and narrating continuities and changes, and normatively evaluating them in terms of three criteria, previously developed in his treatments of hermeneutics and theological method (2001b:188, 210; 1999: 47–51): ‘fidelity to the past, intelligibility and coherence today, and empowerment into the future’ joined by a fourth distinctively ecclesial criterion, ‘communion with the church as a whole’ (1:55).

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These six historical and cultural forces are said to result in the constitution of an ecclesiology from below composed of six traits: (1) the context is postmodernity understood in terms of historical consciousness, global pluralism, and the role of social imaginative construction; (2) the object is the whole Christian movement; (3) the foundation is experience and praxis; (4) the origin understood in historical terms; (5) pneumatocentrism; (6) a functional approach to structures and new ministries. Haight’s reading of history can be contrasted with apologetic and dogmatic approaches to doctrinal history, ecclesial identity, and confessional differences in the post-Reformation period in the work of Robert Bellarmine and Dionysius Petavius, and with the various kinds of organic and dialectical approaches that emerged during the nineteenth century, like those of Ferdinand Christian Baur and John Henry Newman. To this list could be added liberal Protestant and modernist Catholic approaches at the turn of the nineteenth century and the neoOrthodox and ressourcement efforts in the mid-twentieth century. Against this backdrop, three characteristics distinguish Haight’s historical approach to ecclesiology. First, he is intent on presenting a plurality of viewpoints, historically and globally. Second, he seeks to chronicle continuity and discontinuity in values, ideas and structures. Third, and decisively, he champions a non-polemical, nondenominational, non-confessional – in other words, what some will regard, and some will decidedly not regard, as an ecumenical – reading of the history of ecclesiology. When examined in terms of their underlying philosophies of history, nineteenth- and twentieth-century organic and dialectical models of historical theology were in diverse ways keen on construing concrete individual parts, such as historical events, persons or communities, on their own terms, but always also in relation to larger wholes either by means of organic or dialectical root metaphors and models. The dynamism of inner and outer sources of development and corruption, renewal and reform, were brought into focus within these larger structural logics and narrative frameworks. Haight, too, writes about parts and wholes, tension and development, but not in terms of organic or dialectic teleologies theologically determined or resolved. Instead, he focuses on the deep structures provided by the five organizational categories – members, goals, activities, structures, environment – that operate as a functional map, and by a set of polar tensions: charisma and office, communitas and structure, change and continuity, organization and environmental borders, mission and maintenance, ideals and actualities, unity and plurality, communal parts and wholes. These tensions are pragmatically addressed and resolved within given historical contexts, each with its own theological justification, but not in these volumes definitively assessed in terms of Haight’s own theological or confessional position. Although he does not describe his position as pragmatic, he does – when addressing the issue of institutional structures, ministerial forms and offices – speak of the principle of

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functionality. ‘The principle of functionality in ecclesiology refers to the way ministries were adopted in the church to meet the needs of the community’ (1:63). Haight detects this principle operative in nascent Christianity and in every period of the church’s life, but ‘function . . . became objectified and gave way to office’ with the theological legitimation of episcopacy (1:177). He finds further evidence of this principle in the rise of conciliar theory (1:417–18), in Luther’s views on offices and ministries (2:74, 79–80), and in liberation theologians’ formation of base communities (2:415). Edward Schillebeeckx’s category of negative contrast experience, which has been prominent in Haight’s previous works, also surfaces in the second volume to interpret what transpired with Martin Luther and in liberation theology. There appear to be no major theological tropes or theologies of history employed by Haight to interpret episodes or larger narrative patterns. One finds no hint of classical configurations, such as the role of Christianity in the education of the human race, the realization of the kingdom of God in history, the sacramental presence of God in the church as the continuation of the incarnation in the world, or the ever-expanding spiral of mutual influence and solidarity reflecting the trinitarian communion of persons in history and society. The possible exception is Haight’s recurring attention to the manifold presence of the work of God as Spirit. Concerning this method, one can ask: what is to be gained and what might be lost by claiming with Haight that such a historical ecclesiology should be characterized as an ecclesiology from below? Theologians trained during the period when form criticism became increasingly influential were sometimes taught that they had to choose between two approaches. One could advance a classical Christology from above associated with John’s Gospel and the Nicene and Chalcedonian faith, which could stand as the bulwark of the orthodox Christian tradition against historical relativism and the onslaughts of perceived rationalist forms of neo-Arianism and neo-Sabellianism. Or, one could pursue a Christology from below that forged from the fragmented forms and reconstructed Jesus figures a critical wedge and corrective to what was perceived as a Docetic Christology and a speculative form of Tritheism latent in worship that legitimated paternal, patriarchal, clerical and hierarchical practices of the church. Reflective of this kind of forced option, Haight urges his readers to choose an ecclesiology from below, implying that this provides a reasonable method to address the times in which we live and can serve as a critique and corrective to a high ecclesiology. There are, however, other alternatives. One could accept Haight’s fourfold procedure in keeping with the aims of a historical ecclesiology, without subscribing to all of the governing assumptions in his methodological formulation of an ecclesiology from below. Such a historical approach to ecclesiology approximates the work of theologians in the ecumenical movement. In fact, no ecclesiologies are excluded in principle from consideration by Haight’s approach and he himself includes treatments of what he would characterize as ecclesiologies from above within his own work – take, for example, the works of Augustine and PseudoDionysius. I see no reason why traditionalist and progressive theologians, Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, could not use the fourfold historical approach to classic

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ecclesiologies that Haight delineates. Haight’s and comparable efforts to find methods based on a procedure of a hermeneutics of authors, a hermeneutics of texts, and a hermeneutics of receivers can open up a common ground amidst diverse viewpoints for understanding the church, new formulations about the church’s identity and mission, and affirming common practices.2 However, among those who might be willing to accept such a procedure, there would certainly not be agreement, even among progressives, about all of Haight’s governing presuppositions, as I will try to pinpoint below. If this kind of forced option between an ecclesiology from below and from above reflects an earlier phase in twentieth-century biblical studies and theology, perhaps the subsequent development of various kinds of criticism – redaction, rhetorical, sociological, tradition, and canonical without denying the assets of form criticism used in combination – could offer multiple resources for advancing a pluriform historical ecclesiology. Haight never explicitly calls for readers to pit one strata of ecclesiological tradition against another, he only insists, in the interest of affirming plurality and functionality, that they recognize the social historical context and limited character of every ecclesiology, and that they hold out the possibility for doctrinal criticism and revision of ecclesiological doctrine and practice based on his fourfold critieriology – fidelity to the past, intelligibility and coherence today, empowerment for future, and communion with the church as a whole. But what he seems to require at the level of methodological conviction is that the claims to authority, confessions, and normative judgements and decisions made by particular churches associated with ecclesiologies from above do not play a determinative role in the construal of these works and their role in history. This raises a set of interrelated methodological issues. By pursuing an ecclesiology from below over against an ecclesiology from above, does Haight disallow or mitigate against the claims and conflicts of theologies, doctrines, confessions, and the exercise of office bearers and other forms of leadership relative to the full membership of communities of faith, playing their part in historical ecclesiology? If one is to advance a historical and comparative ecclesiology would one not also need to grant the full weight to the judgements and decisions of ecclesiologists who identify with the authoritative verdicts concerning the interpretations of the scriptures in matters of beliefs and practices offered by the synods, councils and confessions of particular ecclesial communities? In short, in order to advance a genuinely historical and comparative ecclesiology would one not be required to espouse its genuinely confessional character? By confessional I mean one that acknowledges the determinative, not derivative role of testimonies and confessions of faith in fundamental theology and ecclesiology – wherein the subjective act of faith (fides qua) and the content of faith (fides quae) are, existentially and hermeneutically, inextricably intertwined; wherein any sensus fidei is informed and conditioned by the sensus fidelium, which together serve as the necessary conditions for any advancement of an emerging consensus fidelium. Such a confessional ecclesiology recognizes, in the words of Francis Schu¨ssler Fiorenza, the reconstructive character of the hermeneutical enterprise that is theology – one in which experience of faith is always already informed by the discourse of beliefs

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and patterns of practices, without privileging faith over beliefs, experience over language, below over above. By acknowledging the central role of confessions in Christian faith and theological hermeneutics one can avoid the charges of experiential expressivism and foundationalism that were bandied about in the 1980s and 90s, following the work of George Lindbeck. The advantage of affirming the centrality of confessional witnesses in faith is that one can make explicit how they function in holistic forms of theological argumentation not only to promote the affirmations of received traditions, but also to fund prophetic critique and creative doctrinal developments, all in the name of fidelity. Here I believe the position of Fiorenza on the reconstructive character of theological hermeneutics, joined by the contributions of other Catholic theologians like Nicholas Lash, John Thiel, Elizabeth Johnson, Francis Clooney, and the later work of David Tracy, remain faithful to the theological impulses and accomplishments of Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx and Bernard Lonergan, but with fittingly richer and thicker hermeneutics of doctrines and practices. Roger Haight has acknowledged on at least two occasions that his position appears susceptible to the criticisms of experiential expressivism raised by George Lindbeck (see Dynamics of Theology, p. 262, n. 32 and The Future of Christology, p. 198). He has argued, rightly in my opinion, that Lindbeck’s position can be commended for affirming the importance of a cultural linguistic model of interpreting beliefs and doctrine, while fittingly criticizing it for polemically devaluing experiential expressivism as a necessarily distinct model, just as other theologians have criticized Lindbeck for separating a third propositionalist model of doctrine from the previous two. However, Haight’s formulation of the relation of faith and beliefs, experience and language, as these contribute to his theory of symbol and doctrine in his fundamental theology, and his subsequent advancement of a Christology and ecclesiology from below, have been judged vulnerable to the criticisms of experiential expressivism and foundationalism. This is regrettable, but understandable. It is regrettable since Haight always affirms the dynamic, mutually interactive character of faith and beliefs, experience and language, and that a theology from below is only from below and is ascending and ultimately should yield an appreciation of the plurality of theologies. Yet, it is understandable because certain formulations in Haight’s trilogy can be read to give precedence in principle to faith over beliefs, experience over language, and a theology of below over against a theology from above in order to identify a fulcrum on which to render doctrinal criticisms and revisions warranted. So he states, for example, that ‘beliefs may be considered expressions of faith that are distinct from faith itself’ and ‘beliefs [can be] given the status of faith and masquerade as faith itself. The phenomenon is . . . common and prevalent’ (Dynamics, pp. 26, 35). ‘It cannot . . . be maintained that [confessional] doctrines as they are stated and without remainder are normative for the particular church in question’ (Christian Community, 1:50). Haight’s approach to the relation of faith and belief, experience and language, and his correlative treatment of an ecclesiology from below and from above are, as I have already suggested, problematic for theological reasons because of the circular

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hermeneutical character of the fides qua and fides quae as these are involved in the social history of the sensus fidelium which is a conflictive history of a diversity of confessions and testimonies. I believe Haight’s positions on these issues are also problematic for the following philosophical reasons. When I commend the central role of confessions in historical ecclesiology in terms of testimony, I am relying on the philosophical contribution and legacy of Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur’s approach to phenomenology and hermeneutics is associated with the ‘linguistic turn’ that builds on the later work of Heidegger and aspects of Gadamer’s work (the ‘linguistic turn’ has also been advanced by Wittgenstein and others). Haight also appeals to Gadamer and Ricoeur (see Dynamics) and justifiably so. But in my assessment of Haight’s work, especially in terms of the formulation and framework provided by Dynamics of Theology, I judge his methodological position as more reflective of, and more closely identified with, the earlier approaches to phenomenology and hermeneutics as represented by Paul Tillich’s position and David Tracy’s formulation in Blessed Rage for Order. Accordingly, Haight’s formulation of the relation of faith and belief seems closer to Bernard Lonergan’s in Method in Theology, which I also view as reflective of an earlier phase in the historical development of phenomenology and hermeneutics, although there is no obvious influence of Lonergan’s position on Haight’s own. Am I trying to have it both ways, defend Haight against his post-liberal and ressourcement critics and criticize Haight’s position on the relation of faith and belief, language and experience? I suppose that is a fair assessment. I wish to describe appreciatively his position against certain critical assessments, while also identifying its limitations. Thus it may appear that I am pulling my punches when treating Haight’s position, but this is because I share many basic judgements and working assumptions with Haight, even though I seek to differentiate my position from his own. Our methodological positions are related since we are both representatives of a historical theological tradition or school that has been called mediating and correlationist, and is associated with the positions of Edward Schillebeeckx, Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, David Tracy and Hans Ku¨ng, as well as with Friedrich Schleiermacher, Paul Tillich, Langdon Gilkey, Schubert Ogden, Peter Hodgson and Edward Farley. As a result I defend Haight’s position since it represents this broad tradition of theology to which I am also deeply indebted. We are related as siblings or cousins in a theological family. (This is not to deny that Haight’s position, or mine for that matter, are not influenced by other theological schools – Latin American liberationist and feminist theologies, for example.) The reason why I am drawing attention to what I judge to be an important limitation in Haight’s position and how I wish to differentiate my own views is because I believe that there is a need to develop this correlationist approach to theology, much as David Tracy has done in his later work, in order to take into account the always already linguistic and confessional character of faith and ecclesiology, which entails affirming the cognitive and affective convictions associated with these testimonies. I believe there are many reasons why it is important to underscore the confessional character of faith and ecclesiology. It promotes honesty and at times repentance in facing confessional conflicts in

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internal church disputes about the mistreatment of individuals and groups, e.g., women, gay men and women, and certain racial, ethnic, or local ecclesial groups, as well as in ecumenical and interfaith dialogues. The only way to address conflicts and hopefully move beyond disputes is by digging ever more deeply into the myriad testimonies that inform faith, rather than by pitting faith against beliefs, the church from below against the church from above. Affirming the centrality of the confessional, convictional, linguistic character of faith is in no way reducible to a conservative form of traditionalism; rather it is acknowledging the social and linguistic, and consequently tradition-based, character of all faith. By admitting the diverse linguistic confessions that inform an individual’s or a local community’s faith one is better able to engage in honest dialogue and collaboration with a wide variety of theologians, including liberationists, theologians influenced by postmodern theories, and ressourcement theologians as well, without denying that it is only by wrestling with contrasting confessions and convictions about the constitution of the ecclesial character of faith that we as church will be able to promote the good of the church in its local and universal expression. Here I think Charles Taylor’s effort to explore the contrasting visions of the social good in a pluralistic society offers a helpful resource for such a confessional approach to faith and ecclesiology in a pluralistic church and world. This is why I find Haight’s proposed ecclesiology from below limited. Nevertheless, I agree with Haight that we need to attend to the everyday experiential and practical character of this faith and the church, but we cannot do that in a vacuum without language, testimonies or convictions, that is, without the confessional character of our faith. This means that theology is always informed by the scriptures and creedal and liturgical traditions. There can be no ecclesiology from below without an ecclesiology from above. There is always a circular character to the modes of argumentation that we make in theology; as I have previously indicated, in some passages Haight affirms this circular character of language and experience, faith and beliefs, but in others he gives precedence to experience and faith. I am not convinced that we can do this methodologically because we cannot escape the power and influence of language and convictions in our own approach to and interpretation of these experiences and practices. Accordingly, in my judgement, one seeking to advance a historical and comparative ecclesiology must recognize the centrality of confessions and testimonies as necessary in this endeavour, but still insufficient. A concentration on confession is insufficient because at the end of the day, or better, throughout the day, we need to maintain a critical approach in ecclesiology. Here I strongly agree with Haight’s position. This critical approach should be based on certain criteria and I am in agreement with the criteria as Haight has articulated them, rather than simply placing the experience of faith as the trump card or the gold standard because this experience is always articulated within a web of linguistic testimonies. In my view, there can be no comparative ecclesiology that is not confessional and critical. When one affirms the confessional dimensions of faith in a hermeneutical approach to theology the pitfalls of being charged with experiential expressivism and foundationalism can be avoided. Such an alternative is based on fundamental

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beliefs about the communicative character of God at work in the world and in the communicative action of the church in experiences of faith and in the receptions and interpretations of Scripture and tradition by the church community. Herein lies a divine gift with a surplus of meaning that holds out the prospect of disclosing real, though limited and obscure, knowledge about God, self and world. One can affirm such a viewpoint and concur, as I do, with Haight’s commitment to a historical approach to theology fully alert to the plurality of positions across historical epochs and globally. Moreover, this position can concede Haight’s fourfold criteria for judging theological and official doctrinal statements. One can advance this position by reformulating central issues in fundamental theology and ecclesiological method – all in the interest of advancing Haight’s overriding interest in affirming the truth and personally and socially transformative power of God’s work in diverse Christian communities and in other religions. Let me take this one step further. It is with deep conviction that I share Haight’s commitment to a dialogical approach to hermeneutics and theological method – which he enunciated in his fundamental theology – and his call for critical conversation in theology and the church, and in ecumenical and interreligious dialogues. But I believe the dialogical character of faith and the communicative action of the church is built on foundational acts of discernment and conversion. In these acts there are always conjoined faith and beliefs, experience and language that are reflected in the convictions and confessions of faith. In this manner, the language of beliefs discloses and is the bearer of brilliant fragments of truth, but only fragments. As decisive as they are, they always fall short of the fullness of transcendent mystery. Since these fragments of truth are revealed and embraced in conversion and confession as limited and sometimes one-sided, in preaching and teaching they can be joined in an amalgam with limited wisdom, human errors, and sinful distortions which can seriously harm individuals and communities. Accordingly, I have no disagreement with Haight about the role of prophetic critiques, creative developments of doctrines, and innovations in practices of the church when advanced for the sake of greater fidelity, intelligibility, empowerment and communion. Yes, these can and occasionally do combine discontinuity with continuity in the interest of larger truths and wider horizons of intelligibility for understanding the divine reality operative in the church and the world in doctrine and practice. But these critiques, developments and innovations draw from and are creatively generated out of the wellspring of testimonies of faith embedded in Scripture and tradition. Content Haight is to be commended for venturing to describe the whole Christian movement. Like his earlier work, The Experience and Language of Grace, there is a wealth of valuable information and a great deal of selectivity involved. Such texts can prove immensely helpful for faculty and students as they try to gain their bearings in a course on grace and the church, but they are never intended to take the place of working with the primary texts and wrestling with the contested

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history of interpretations. Nevertheless, systematic theologians’ forays into historical theology are perennially the targets of criticism by specialists in the field. No doubt, Haight’s historical ecclesiology will be evaluated by specialists in terms of what he has chosen to include and what has been left out, and how he judges and adjudicates classic sources and interpreters. In this vein what is particularly problematic for me in Haight’s selection of content is that he has given very little attention to the contours of the debate between the traditionalists and the progressives during the nineteenth and the twentieth century. This limitation is signalled in his treatment of Johann Adam Mo¨hler. While I concur with Haight’s decision to consider Johann Adam Mo¨hler’s contribution to modern Catholic ecclesiology, I disagree with his decision to concentrate only on the Spirit-focused work of the early Mo¨hler, without giving any attention to how and why Mo¨hler shifted to an incarnational approach to the church in his subsequent books. In Haight’s defence it could be said that this decision corresponds with one strategy employed by Yves Congar who on occasion drew attention to Mo¨hler’s early work as a resource and a corrective to what he identified as the problem of ecclesiological monophysitism. But Congar wrestled throughout his career with the legacy of the later Mo¨hler’s incarnational ecclesiology. An alternative approach to the one Haight offers would have been to contextualize Mo¨hler’s shift and show how his later work contributed to the developments in the Roman school, to which Haight alludes. The limitation begins with Mo¨hler, but it extends to his portrayal of twentiethcentury Catholic theology. Haight has clearly been influenced by the Thomistic wing of twentieth-century Catholic theology: Rahner, Schillebeeckx, Tracy and Komonchak. But he gives no attention to the Augustinian, and more broadly patristic, wing associated with Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar. These three twentieth-century theologians played an immensely significant role in the construction of the official curial theology during the pontificate of John Paul II. There are other kinds of Catholic Augustinian ecclesiologists worthy of attention, like the late George Tavard, lest we paint them all with one brush. This avenue of inquiry is important not only to comprehend the central dynamic of contemporary Roman Catholic ecclesiology, but also for shedding light on John Milbank’s so-called Radical Orthodox approach to the church that has been much discussed and debated by Anglican and other Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic theologians. Haight’s selectivity reflects his own convictions and confessional standpoint as a progressive correlationist theologian. He emphasizes the need to develop a non-polemical approach to the others outside of the Roman Catholic church. But he does not give comparable attention to the equally important challenge of developing a non-polemical approach to the debate between the traditionalist and the progressive theologians in particular churches around the world. The ongoing debates about the official roles of women in the church and escalating contention about homosexual unions and ministers offer dramatic examples of the need for civil discourse and honest debate within churches as much as between them.

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Bradford E. Hinze Principles and Prospects

Can one draw any conclusions from Haight’s historical ecclesiology, in particular from the principles derived from the range of ecclesiologies, about the prospects for his own constructive statement? Certain motifs will likely reappear: the categories drawn from the sociology of organizations, the various polar tensions, the principle of functionality, negative contrast experiences, and the classic notes of the church – oneness (amidst diversity), holiness (in relation to sinfulness), catholicity, and apostolicity.3 His views of God’s relationship to the church, call it pneumatocentric or theocentric, will also be featured and the source of ongoing debates. Hopefully, his attention to conciliar theories in these volumes, consistent with his dialogical approach to hermeneutics and theology, will play a central role in his constructive ecclesiology. This need not undermine forms of personal leadership, ordained or not, but could set up the conditions for the exercise of such leadership and a framework for holding them accountable. More importantly, such participatory structures of decision-making would offer a context for weighing and adjudicating ecclesiological claims according to the fourfold criteria (or comparable criteria) in order to clarify the identity and mission of the local and universal church at a given moment in history, rather than reserving these matters to the authority of a papal curia, to bishops and their analogues in other traditions, or to individual theologians. In the end, I believe the contribution of Haight’s ecclesiology, both his historical ecclesiology, and his forthcoming constructive ecclesiology, if it follows the same methodological orientation he has previously employed, would be strengthened and sharpened by developing his dialogical approach to hermeneutics and theological method and conciliar approach to the church leadership by giving greater attention to the confessional character of the church’s identity and mission beyond what he explicitly advances. By being more attentive to the confessional character of ecclesiologies, one would be acknowledging the linguistic character of experience and the role of concrete beliefs in every act of faith. Consequently, one would need to face head-on the difficulties involved in ecclesiological conflicts, and the need for dialectical adjudication between contemporary ecclesiologies, rather than sidestepping them by privileging an ecclesiology from below over one from above, or an ecclesiology based on historical experience over one based on testimonies of faith. Haight’s ecclesiology aims to advance an ecumenical approach to ecclesiology that honours difference and catholicity, while striving for formulations of consensus, communion, and collaboration in action. But any attempt to advance this agenda and promote doctrinal revisions in ecclesiology and practical ecclesial reforms, including those espoused by Haight, will entail getting into the details of the confessional dialectics among ressourcement, revisionist and liberationist ecclesiologies rather than evading them by means of an ecclesiology from below.

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Notes 1. A list of reviewers is included after Roger Haight, ‘Jesus Symbol of God: Criticism and Response’, in The Future of Christology (London and New York: Continuum, 2005), pp. 196–216; also see Robert Masson, ‘The Clash of Christological Symbols: The Case for Metaphoric Realism’, and Roger Haight, ‘Response to Robert Masson: The Clash of Christological Symbols’, in Christology: Memory, Inquiry, Practice, ed. Anne M. Clifford and Anthony J. Godzieba (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003), pp. 62–86, 87–91. 2. For such a threefold approach to hermeneutics, see Ormond Rush, Still Interpreting Vatican II: Some Hermeneutical Principles (New York: Paulist Press, 2004) and Bradford E. Hinze, ‘Dialogical Traditions and a Trinitarian Hermeneutic’, in Theology and Conversation: Towards a Relational Theology, ed. J. Haers and P. De Mey (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), pp. 311–22. 3. See Roger Haight, ‘Where We Dwell in Common’, Horizons 32 (2005): 332–51, along with reviews of Christian Community in History by Susan K. Wood, Francis A. Sullivan, SJ, Amy Plantiga Pauw, and Richard P. McBrien, with a response by Roger Haight: 374–97.

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Chapter 3 A LOVE OF LAW AND THE LAW OF LOVE: CONTEXTUALIZING THE MEDIEVAL ECCLESIOLOGY OF THE NORMAN ANONYMOUS James R. Ginther In his two-volume magisterial study, Roger Haight delineates two approaches to the study of ecclesiology. He calls the first an ecclesiology ‘from above’, and it is marked by a theology of church that is a-historical, non-pluralistic, grounded in a specific authority, formulated within a doctrinal framework, christocentric and focused on structure.1 In contrast, an ecclesiology ‘from below’ is formulated by the current postmodern context of theological discourse – where metanarratives yield more suspicion than approbation – a commitment to treat the whole empirical church and not just one confessional form, the experience and praxis of Christian community, a historical consciousness, a pneumatocentric perspective, and a more flexible understanding of the relationship between ministry and structure.2 The pivotal difference between the two points of departure appears to be the historical nature of Christian community. Students of ecclesiology ought to begin with the ‘in-church’ experience, rather than some ‘blueprint’ of what the church ought to be. The focus, in the words of Nicholas Healy, ought to be more on the drama of ecclesial experience than on the ‘epic’ narrative its exponents create.3 If theologians paid more attention to the historical narrative that informs ecclesiology then the result would be a more coherent account. In a recent essay, I analysed how Haight’s model could be applied to the study of medieval ecclesiology. I suggested that any study of the medieval theology of church ought to include a broader understanding of the sources, so that scholars not only consider sources that were generated in response to events but also ones that originated from reflections on specific authoritative texts. Even though most of the work on medieval ecclesiology has focused on the former, ‘event-centred’ ecclesiology, I further argued that even this strategy needed two additional methodological approaches. First, while modern theologians may be dubious of an essentialist ecclesiology, medieval theologians considered it absolutely vital to ground any theology of church in some larger metaphysics. The task then of the historical theologian is to connect those essentialist musings with ‘facts on the ground’ as it were. Second, an ecclesiology ‘from below’ requires a significant shift in historical method, namely to understand that the medieval ‘in-church’ experience can only be constructed through a conflation of established grand narratives and the research results of micro-history. Such an approach implies a

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more critical assessment of sources, so that they are presented more contextually as both documentary residues of ecclesiological thought and as artefacts of a certain social, intellectual and institutional mindset.4 In this essay, I want to provide a concrete example of how to implement such a method in the study of medieval ecclesiology. I will examine one specific text that has been part of the standard inventory of ecclesiological sources. I contend, however, that is has not received a fully contextualized reading demanded by the method I have outlined. The text in question has come to be known as the Norman Anonymous. It has survived in a single manuscript, now housed in the Matthew Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.5 Written sometime between 1096 and 1106 in the cathedral city of Rouen, it is a collection of tractates that examine various ecclesiological themes ranging from clerical marriage, to the theology of penance, to the relationship amongst various levels of ecclesial authority, to more controversial claims about Christian kingship.6 The last component has gained the most attention of scholars, and it has been the basis upon which the Norman Anonymous has gained its fame – or infamy as the case may be. This unknown author constructed an ingenuous argument that the Christian king is more an heir of Christ than a priest because the priest sacramentally represents only the humanity of Christ, whereas a king sacramentally represents the divinity of Christ the King.7 The argument, when taken in concert with how the texts also treat the role of papacy as an authority, appears to present a vociferous and radical rebuttal to the so-called ‘Gregorian’ reforms that had only begun to surface some fifty years earlier in Rome. The presentation of the sacrament of kingship as superior to ecclesiastical authority is indeed a fascinating theological argument. Moreover, the Norman Anonymous has helped scholars trace out the implications of the claims by the eleventh-century reformers: if the author of these treatises needed to spell out theological reasons for diminishing the power of the clergy over the laity, then it must have been to rebut opposing claims. While none of this is open to question, it is instructive to note that the discussions about the relationship between kingship (regnum) and priesthood (sacerdotium) account for a minority of the texts in the entire collection. Indeed, of the 35 individual tractates that comprise the Norman Anonymous, only five of them focus on this topic; that is, only 83 of the 302 pages of this manuscript.8 It is odd that a set of arguments that account for just over one quarter of the collection has come to represent the whole and has acted as a filter for reading the entire text. At the very least, it seems appropriate that if we are to understand the thinking of this unknown author, modern readers ought to consider the ideas found in the remaining three-quarters.9 In this essay, I will argue that the central issue of these texts is the role and force of law. Our Norman theologian makes continual reference to the proliferation of new ecclesiastical law and the growing role of judges. His treatment is cast within an ecclesiology that seeks to moderate the tension between this new love of law in ecclesiastical practice and the governing law of love that is at the core of Christian community. The Norman Anonymous, however, does not advocate some antinomian approach to the Christian life, as if it were an understanding of law in opposition to grace; rather, the author seeks to delineate how a Christian

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community ought to utilize law as an outcome of the law of love (lex caritatis). Moreover, this moderating position is hardly in the minority, but instead is responding to the tumultuous changes that were taking place in western Latin Christianity during his own lifetime. I will demonstrate this thesis by first discussing two contexts that will allow modern readers to understand the authorial intent here – as much as it is possible to do with an anonymous author.10 The first is the so-called ‘Gregorian reform’ that had begun in the mid-eleventh century. While I have questioned what is the real organizing principle of the Norman Anonymous, there is no reason to doubt that he saw the ‘reform’ programme as his foil. It is within this first context that we will encounter the reasons for the proliferation of canon law. The second is the Norman context, so as to understand as much as possible the ‘in-church’ experience of this theologian. This context comprises the political and ecclesiastical landscape as well as the intellectual resources available to him – all of which will provide the tools to understand the corpus. We shall then be at the place where we can begin to approach the texts themselves, where we can examine this attempt to moderate between law and love. I will then conclude by suggesting a different way to read the extravagant claims about kingship. The ‘Gregorian’ Context as the Grand Narrative The eleventh century was a period when a group of reformers successfully changed the nature of ecclesial leadership within a fifty-year period.11 In very general terms, the ‘Gregorian reform’ – named in honour of Gregory VII (r. 1075–89) – attempted to remove lay leaders from having any role in the selection of candidates for the papal throne and then subsequently any role in appointing bishops. They also, perhaps more successfully, reshaped the clergy by imposing universal celibacy on those in major orders and thereby eliminated any sense that an ecclesiastical position was a piece of property that a holder could bequeath to his heirs. The result was an ecclesiology of a bifurcated church, where laity and clergy were completely separated both in terms of social status and religious dignity.12 So successful were these reforms that they have shaped ecclesiological discourse from the twelfth century to the present. The reforms have moved from specific historical events to universal principles that are often treated as non-negotiables in Roman Catholic ecclesiology.13 It is significant how historians and theologians have constructed the grand narrative of this eleventh-century movement. Since the clarion call of these events was the investiture of bishops by lay leaders, the underlying conflict (and its resolution) has been cast within a church–state framework. The struggle has been telescoped into one phrase: libertas ecclesiae.14 The ‘Gregorians’ sought to liberate clergy from the oppressive yoke of imperial power, which had only sullied sacerdotal ministry. Being free of this influence thus allowed the priesthood to focus more on ministry than politics. It further separated the laity from the heretical dangers of simony15 and provided a much more focused form of church government. Conversely, political and constitutional historians have been

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delighted at the emergence of desacralized forms of royal power, where emperors and kings could now focus on the proper business of government and where law suddenly had greater influence than the personality of a magnate or pontiff. Law did indeed play an increasing role from the mid-eleventh century onwards. The consolidation of juridical sources in the late eleventh century was driven by two concerns. There was first the practical concern of defining concepts and procedures that would codify the changes that the ‘Gregorians’ wanted to instantiate. The success of reform was contingent upon ensuring that the engine of change was not an individual but rather institutional practice. A powerful personality, like Gregory VII, could make claims of universal authority and even gain victory over the Emperor in certain instances; but that might only last until the pontiff’s death, whereupon a more impotent pope could easily capitulate during a future conflict. Instead, true change had to take place with the texts and procedures that shaped and regulated the church as a corporate entity. The natural choice was canon law but in the eleventh century it had little coherence.16 While previous church leaders had attempted to develop canon law collections that were at least internally consistent, none had gained general use through Western Europe.17 Canon law was more locally focused and often intermixed with nonlegal issues. Moreover, there was no apparent rationale of how to regularize these collections and overcome their obvious discord. The ‘Gregorians’ found a way, at first by producing new collections that were tightly focused and then by developing some general principles (thanks in particular to Ivo of Chartres) on how to interpret the canons, principles that also led to a better framework for organizing the disparate material.18 This would not reach its full fruition until the Decretum of Gratian around 1140,19 but the collections of the late eleventh century began to make a significant impact on ecclesiastical practice. Soon local customs were challenged by these collections, and even the right of the king to be the final arbiter in ecclesial affairs was undermined. The second factor in the proliferation of law was penitential.20 Since the Carolingian period, law had been linked to penitential practice but in the eleventh century there was an increased demand for canon law that dealt more effectively with the complex world of human sin and its consequences.21 Eleventh-century canonists were only too happy to provide further details in the aid of uncovering sin and servicing the sacrament of penance. The result, however, was that adjudication of sinful behaviour also became a far more complex task. While the pastoral task of enquiring after sin was framed theologically, law interposed itself as the means of how to identify the crime and determine the punishment. The widely popular Pseudo-Augustinian text, De vera et falsa penitentia (most probably written in the late eleventh century), demonstrates the sophisticated interplay of law and theology in the regulation of the Christian community.22 If a bishop and his clergy were to take the pastoral care seriously, then they would have to engage the legal resources being made available.

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James R. Ginther The Norman Context

Like all grand narratives, the ‘Gregorian’ reform does not account for all the complexities of the eleventh century, even when we can ascertain that such a movement had a significant impact on a specific region. That interaction, in fact, must be understood in terms of the development of the ‘in-church’ experience of that locality. If the assignation of the Norman Anonymous to the cathedral city of Rouen is correct, it is therefore necessary to lay out the context within which its author operated. That Rouen was a thriving ecclesial centre at the end of the eleventh century is really a testimony to its leadership. The settlement of the Vikings more than one hundred and fifty years earlier in what we now call Normandy had resulted in a severe decline of local Christian communities. Cathedrals, monasteries and parish churches all had suffered materially from the invasion, since they tended to have the kind of convertible wealth that was attractive to roving warriors like the Vikings. Hence, when the Northmanni eventually settled and peace came to Normandy in the mid-tenth century, the Christian church was in a state of disarray and confusion. However, a century later Normandy had become a leading intellectual region, boasting monasteries such as Bec and Caen which could produce such thinkers as Lanfranc and Anselm. Its episcopal sees had recovered and were soon growing both in terms of organization and wealth.23 So positive was its reputation that William the Conqueror convinced Pope Alexander II that his imminent invasion of England would be religiously advantageous. He would replicate Norman church policies and structures following his military campaign and thereby rescue the decaying English church from itself.24 Rouen had played a pivotal role in this rebirth. Its own recovery, at least in the eleventh century, can be attributed to three bishops: Maurilius of Rouen (r. ca. 1054–67), John of Avranches (r. 1067–79) and William Bona Anima (r. 1079– 110).25 Rouen’s growing reputation was built upon the staples of medieval Christian community, namely building programmes, liturgy, relics and education. Under Maurilius, the cathedral was completed, although the chapter house was later built during William’s episcopate.26 His successor, John, wrote the De officiis ecclesiasticis which became the customary use for the whole province.27 However, it was under William Bona Anima that Rouen really began to flourish. He raised the cathedral’s profile by obtaining the complete remains of St Romanus of Rouen for translation into the cathedral’s crypt, established a new feast day (23 October) and developed a liturgical procession for when the saint’s body was paraded outside the city.28 This was a major coup on William’s behalf as it established Rouen as the liturgical centre of the entire province, and one of the major liturgical sites for the entire Anglo-Norman empire.29 The final coup de graˆce was the establishment of a cathedral school, which appears to have taken place during Bona Anima’s episcopate.30 The phoenix-like history of Rouen, if not all of Normandy, was a result of the intimate collaboration of its archbishops and the royal and ducal courts.31 It was more than a simple question of royal patronage, although the infusion of capital

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was certainly welcome. There was serious interest from the royal court to ensure that the ecclesial affairs in Normandy (and later England) moved forward in a coherent and orthodox manner. This was accomplished primarily by the appointment of competent individuals for key posts in the church hierarchy, but the king also pursued a plan of moral reform. That policy, at least for William the Conqueror, came to fruition in the Council of Lillebonne of 1080. Under the governance of Bona Anima, the Norman prelates met to promulgate a set of some 39 statutes that would regulate the affairs of church. For the most part, they focused on the administrative and legal relationship between episcopal and secular courts, which is indeed indicative of the complex interplay between spiritual and secular affairs within the Norman church. Perhaps the most controversial was the affirmation of a celibate clergy in major orders, a mandate that reflects the reforms that had been issuing from Rome in the previous years.32 However, the other pillar of the ‘Gregorian’ reform, excluding the laity from the appointment of church leaders, was almost entirely ignored. This not only reflected the attitude of the king but also the leading prelate of the Anglo-Norman world at the time, Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury.33 Rouen was therefore not some quiet ecclesial backwater where the Norman Anonymous was composed. Instead, these texts emerged from a highly productive and animated context. So attuned are the texts to the controversies of the day that George Williams considered Archbishop William Bona Anima himself to be their author.34 Williams’s suggestion is not without merit. After all, Bona Anima was the son of a bishop and so the critical issue of whether the sons of priests could be ordained was a personal one.35 It nearly cost him his episcopal chair as it was one of the reasons that he was suspended by 1093 and was not formally restored to the episcopal chair until 1106. Moreover, the defence of Rouen’s refusal to acknowledge the primacy of Lyons coheres quite nicely with Bona Anima’s own episcopal policy on this matter.36 In general, the author appears to have such intimate knowledge of episcopal liturgical duties and contemporary policies that Bona Anima is the most likely candidate. As compelling as this case is, there are some details that make such an attribution doubtful.37 A more careful look at the sources employed in the Norman Anonymous provides a portrait of an author with an impressive pedigree. The legal sources employed are the Panormia of Ivo of Chartres and the PseudoIsidorian Decretals. The appearance of either text is not surprising, as the former had gained notoriety in France for its coherent account of canon law and the latter had become a staple of the Norman church by the mid-eleventh century.38 Our author has more than just a passing acquaintance with canon law collections as he attempts in one tract to lay out a theory on whether all laws have parity and, if not, how are they to be read.39 This is not to say that the author came out of a ‘school of law’ or that he studied under the tutelage of Ivo of Chartres; but his treatment of law certainly demonstrates an affinity for the newly emerging legal science. More importantly our anonymous is a theologian. He demonstrates intimate knowledge of Scripture as well as a good knowledge of the biblical hermeneutics of early scholastic thought.40 He adopted in part some of the theological views of Anselm of Canterbury, including his understanding of free will, rectitude and

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justice.41 Another Anselm – the master at Laon – also casts a shadow over these texts, although it does not mean that our anonymous came out of that school. While there are certain affinities between the Norman Anonymous and some of the sententia collections from Laon, this may indicate a common source between them.42 What is more compelling is the rhetoric and style of argument employed in the texts. For the most part, they are nascent scholastic questions.43 For example, in tract 18, our author begins with a provocative statement: If the words, by which the body and blood of Jesus Christ are consecrated, have in themselves power and might of producing the body and blood of Jesus Christ, [then] they are offered through anyone, and those proffered words can produce this through a lay person just as well as if offered by a priest. No man has added or offered his own power and might to these words. For if these proffered words do not have the power and might of producing the body and blood of Christ through a lay person, then these words do have [power] through the priest, surely it is proven, because the priest gives this power and might to them.44

The text then proceeds to identify how a priest can empower the Words of Institution, and so what is the actual operational cause in the eucharistic consecration? He suggests three possible solutions: ordination of a priest by a bishop, which fails because the first person ordained to consecrate was not ordained by a bishop.45 Moreover, it cannot be the actual words of ordination because they have changed over the centuries. The only real true cause at work here is God himself. This short treatise betrays a highly logical and almost systematic approach to theological work, certainly within the bounds of the genre of early scholastic literature.46 None of these traits necessarily eliminates William Bona Anima as a possible candidate for authorship of the Norman Anonymous. There is, however, little evidence that he ever enjoyed such a scholastic formation. Oderic Vitalis is complimentary of Bona Anima’s pastoral heart and his love of liturgy and music, but the chronicler makes no comment about the archbishop’s intellectual capacity. That omission is striking when compared with Oderic’s description of William’s contemporary, Gilbert Maminot (Bishop of Lisieux, 1077/8–1101), as a man of great learning and eloquence (scientia litterarum et facundia pollebat).47 If the corpus is taken as a whole, and so strongly suggests a flourishing school at Rouen, one wonders how an archbishop of Bona Anima’s importance would have had the time to teach students and meet the demands of his episcopal position. That kind of work really belonged to a magister or a scholasticus. At the very least, we can say that Bona Anima’s ecclesiastical career casts a long shadow over the Norman Anonymous, where masters and students in the cathedral school mused about the ecclesiological, sacramental and political implications of current events. Despite our inability to decide the issue of authorship once and for all, there is no doubt that whatever ecclesiology lies buried in the words of the Norman Anonymous it can be identified as an event-centred ecclesiology. We now turn to the texts themselves to observe how this Norman theologian reflected ecclesiologically on the events of his day, namely the explosion of law that the ‘Gregorians’ had ignited.

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Plena Caritas: The Law of Love The last treatise of the Norman Anonymous can act as a good point of departure for the relationship between law and love in the Rouennais church. There is no way to date this text precisely as it makes no reference to specific events the way other treatises do. Moreover, while there are the rhetorical components of a scholastic quaestio, it reads more like a developed treatise and even has sermonic features (such as the use of the second person in his hortatory moments). Our theologian begins by noting that Christ is the one who has been granted the right by the Father to judge both the living and the dead, and no one is exempt from this. Thus, no one can assume this task unless he has been commissioned by Christ or his disciples.48 Since a judge has to be called, he cannot obtain this dignity by law but only through the grace of God.49 To make a claim otherwise is to take on this position through violence and pride. Our author then elides this presumption with the fall of the Devil, whose first sin was to consider himself greater than God.50 This assertion leads to two important observations about the nature of judges in the Christian community. First, while it is true that a judge has to be superior to the person he judges, that superiority cannot originate with pride or the power to dominate but rather from the Christ-like example of servanthood. At which point, the Anonymous launches into a broadside against ‘. . . you who desire supremacy in this world and who do not become a subordinate (junior) and a minister . . . Therefore when you dominate and judge, you judge not according to the law of God, but you create sinful laws so that you oppress the poor in judgement and you make lawsuits against the people of God.’51 Second, a true judge speaks all the judgments, laws and mandates of Christ – and the greatest of these is the precept of love. In other words, ‘he who has full love indeed had the fullness of the whole law’.52 The argument thus far is clearly biblical but sounds somewhat trite or at least it is a pastiche of ideals that anyone would want an ecclesiastical judge to observe. It is worth remembering that the medieval conception of love can differ at times from our contemporary understanding. To begin with, this text is composed just prior to the rise of romantic love. The twelfth century saw the emergence of a mindset that infused personal relationships with a greater sense of passion and emotional turmoil.53 The irrationality of love was celebrated in story and song, especially if it entailed the possibility of an illicit sexual liaison. In contrast, our Norman theologian is working with an Augustinian understanding of love, one that is above all rational. Augustine did not want anyone to confuse love with cupidity. Cupidity empowers the body and leads to a disordered and chaotic life. Love empowers the mind and creates an ordered life. Love then becomes the basis of any ecclesial unity, for it is by loving us – first as enemies and then as brothers – that Christ makes all Christians one in the spirit. If Christians are called to love their neighbours, then they are composed of those ‘who belong to our faith and have one heart and one soul with us in the Christian religion’.54 Moreover, Christ’s love demands that Christians love their enemies. This at first sounds contradictory to our theologian: if love actually unites people

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with one heart and soul, then how is it possible that this same love compels Christians to embrace people who work in opposition to that unity? The initial answer is that Christians are mandated to love their enemies (defined carefully as ‘not those we hate but those who hate us’), which means to pray for them so that they may become sons of God. The more compelling solution is that Christians are to love the nature in them, not their sins; for all that God does is good (including creating humanity) and worthy to be loved.55 The love that spawns ecclesial unity is hardly some abstract principle in the Norman Anonymous. It lies at the heart of his argument in two different treatises. The first was probably written either in 1079 or not long after in response to Gregory VII’s designation of the Archbishop of Lyons as the primate of Gaul. While there had been some tradition of Lyons as primate of Gaul prior to the eleventh century, it had never been enforced and during the tenth century the Archbishop of Sens actually claimed this position. By designating Lyons as the primate, the pope hoped to have a solid entry point into the French church and have a mechanism to impose his reforms there. Indeed, only nine months prior was the pope’s ‘man’, Gebuin of Lyons, proclaimed archbishop after his predecessor was deposed on a charge of simony.56 After that, Gebuin wasted no time in pursuing fellow bishops who had until then effectively resisted the reform programme. The Norman Anonymous begins his argument by reminding his readers that there is but one church, unified as one body, one bride of Christ, and one in spirit where are all bound together by the bond of peace. For one member to claim superiority over another produces division and ultimately breaks that bond of peace. In terms of our theologian’s theology of love, breaking the bond of peace is tantamount to eroding the ordered nature of the love that unites all Christians.57 The theological conclusion here is not some form of medieval egalitarianism, for he readily admits that there are superior and inferior members within the ecclesial community. However, the only real superior members are the saints, ‘those who are of greater sanctity and merit’.58 The other members can be figuratively identified as certain parts of the mystical body, save the head which is applicable to Christ alone. And even if Christians attach greater significance to certain parts of the body, that method may be useful in identifying individual Christians, but he denies it is possible to use the same nomenclature to compare the dignity of one ecclesial unit over the other.59 And even if one could, what would be the conditions on which one would establish superiority: geographic place, the practice of sacraments, how holy orders are ordained, how churches are listed in ancient registers?60 None of this would necessarily support Lyons’ claim to primacy, but equally important all these factors run contrary to the servant nature of leadership in the vestige of Christ. That principle is also applied to the argument that Lyons’ primacy is due solely to papal proclamation. The whole concept of a primate, for our Norman theologian, smacks more of ancient Roman practices than the Christian understanding of ministry. ‘Nonetheless, we do not wish to condemn the Roman pontiffs’, concludes the text on this point, ‘but we would prefer Christ and his apostles to them, and we do not want to divide the unity of order nor diminish episcopal dignity anywhere.’61

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What at first appears to be blatant anti-papalism is far more nuanced than that. To begin with, the Norman Anonymous does not deny the fact that there is a hierarchy within church leadership.62 He never denies that Rouen is an archbishopric and by nature is superior to six other bishops. Moreover, he later argues that Rouen is also the ‘mother church’ of the Fe´camp, and so it ought to be subject to Rouennais authority.63 This last assertion was probably as a result of a contested election of the abbot of Fe´camp abbey, an event that appears to have been the wedge Gebuin of Lyons used to suspend William Bona Anima in the first instance around 1093.64 Regardless of whether this is indeed the true context for these two treatises, it reveals our author as a supporter of some sort of hierocratic structure. It is not a claim to superiority that infuriates our theologian, but this particular claim. What was so disturbing about the claim? I would argue that the creation of the Lyons primacy failed to understand the vast political and social changes in what was once known as the Frankish Kingdom. In the ninth century both ecclesiastical and secular leaders considered the Francia to be a social and ethnic unit. Positing Lyons (or even Sens) as the Frankish primate cohered well with the political and social fabric of the province. Now, at the end of the eleventh century there were two social entities living within the former West Francia, and one of those was the Norman duchy. It was its own ecclesiastical province that had little to do with the leadership of the ‘French’ church. Normandy had developed its own ecclesial practices, ones that had been deemed successful. Hence, Lyons was considered an outsider, something imposed upon an independent ecclesial community. I make this argument for two reasons. First, it is interesting to note that in the Norman Anonymous, a church is defined as more than just a community of the faithful, but is demarcated geographically as a province. It is this rather localized view of the church that distinguishes the Norman Anonymous from all other antiGregorian polemic of the period, which often treated the conflict at the universal or global level.65 Unity amongst the Norman churches appears to be a fiercely guarded commodity, and probably became a feature of the Anglo-Norman church in general.66 Second, our theologian connects the fidelity of the archbishop to the health of the whole province in his apology written sometime around 1106. This text rebuts three accusations against the archbishop, namely that he is unfaithful, disobedient and in contempt of ecclesial order.67 The first accusation is dispatched quickly as he asserts that his ordinary is entirely catholic, orthodox in his faith, a true worshipper of God and true teacher in his preacher. The bulk of the apology is devoted to the second accusation. Many of the arguments echo other treatises which systematically attack the primacy of Rome and its assumed prerogative to intercede in provincial affairs. The concept of unity perhaps gains the greatest attention. Our Norman theologian argues that there is equality amongst the bishops because each is an heir of Peter, not just Rome. The upshot is that a bishop is judged by God alone and never by another bishop.68 Moreover, Rome’s claim to primacy ought to be rejected for two reasons: one, if it is a means to safeguard unity and prevent schism it has done the opposite; and two, if any church has a claim to supremacy it ought to be Jerusalem, the mother of all churches.69

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Again, the anti-papal attitudes here work for a larger agenda. In this apology, the Anonymous interleaves in his arguments about authority and obedience some telling statements about church leadership. He sees the divisive nature of the papacy desolating the church as a whole because its agenda is wholly at odds with the mandates of a prelate: [A prelate] ought to confirm his brothers, not weaken them; he ought to honour them, not find fault. He ought to provide every resource and expend himself – if it would be necessary – for them, not take their resources and their souls for sake of the temporal life. He ought to instruct sinners in the spirit of leniency, not destroy in the spirit of bitterness. He ought to admonish each and everyone according to the quality of his own good habits (morum ipsorum), not according to his own will or the quality of his own mind. He ought to come, not to slaughter and destroy, but to feed, save and nourish.70

These same mandates echo in the defence of the third charge. Our theologian clarifies how the archbishop valorizes ecclesial order. How can it be said that the archbishop is in contempt when he cherishes the monk, supports his clergy and prays for his people? While that would be enough to refute the accusation, the Anonymous adds that he faithfully maintains the metropolitan church of Rouen, both the building and all the materials necessary for good worship. And while that is an expensive task, he never forgets the poor.71 The implicit conclusion here is that the suspension from episcopal office was the real contempt of order because it was preventing the archbishop from performing his duties. Plenitudo Legis: Love, Law and Judges The pastoral mandate of bishops is a predominant theme in the Norman Anonymous.72 We have seen how the mechanisms instituted to implement the ‘Gregorian’ reforms were perceived as impediments to good pastoral care, and therefore as a threat to the ecclesial community as a whole. We now turn to the more specific issue of how law itself could also be an impediment. In the ninth tract,73 the Anonymous begins with a basic distinction about judicial review: it either concerns ecclesiastical or secular issues (negotiis secularibus). If the former, then the focus on the salvation of the interior person, and the three possible groups of judges are either God himself, angels or men ‘established in the hierarchy’ (in ierarchia constitutos). There are moments when secular business can intersect with ecclesiastical, but since the secular attends to the exterior man it is rare. He then elides secular business with the work of Belial (2 Cor. 6.14), noting how easily ecclesiastical and secular business have become intertwined.74 The observations here reflect the broader concerns of the eleventh century. If there was to be a more strategic approach to the sacrament of penance, then there had to be a greater focus on the internal and spiritual, thus excluding the external dimensions of Christian community. The distinction had been expressed as two metaphorical courts, or ‘fora’, the forum internum (confession) and the forum externum (ecclesiastical courts). Both were to be regulated by recourse to canon law

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and while they were to be distinct they remained intimately connected. This is one particular instance in sacramental theology that theory preceded practice. The distinction had been part of the theology of penance since the Carolingian period, but it was not until the late twelfth century at the earliest that theologians and prelates began to develop practical guidelines to enforce the separation of the two fora.75 For the eleventh century, the initial aim was to separate ‘temporalities’ from ‘spiritualities’ in the business of ecclesiastical courts. This reflected the principal aim of the ‘Gregorian’ reform of separating the putative secular (regnum) from the sacred (sacerodotium). The problem was that while such a strategy would eventually facilitate the distinctive operations of the two ecclesiastical fora, in the interim it actually collapsed them into one – which the Norman Anonymous does. The claim of spiritual prerogative actually led bishops and their ecclesiastical courts to consider the sacramental realities as paramount in many cases. Cases that involved property or power relationships, for example, easily transformed into hearings about simony. The twofold result was that the pastoral care became easily bogged down in secular business that was treated in spiritual terms, and the legal machinery meant to aid the ecclesiastical judge became complex and often an impediment to the care of souls. The latter result is uppermost in the mind of our Norman theologian. Most have read this text as yet another diatribe against the ‘Gregorians’.76 That is certainly understandable as it contains the same vitriolic rhetoric of those texts in which the preparators of the reform are named specifically.77 However, it seems more appropriate to consider the readership – or perhaps the immediate public audience if this was a sermon – as closer to home. There is no mention made of the papacy or its representatives, but perhaps more compelling is the complaint about the appeals process. The Anonymous aims his rhetoric not at the people or mechanisms that permitted appeals, but rather at those who take advantage of appeal for inappropriate or mendacious reasons.78 There is so much abuse that he suggests that the whole appeals process ought to be eliminated.79 This implies the possibility that the initial recipients of this text were the Norman bishops or perhaps the archbishop himself. In that context, this treatise rises above simple polemic to a much more serious level of discourse. The tenor of the whole text is an attempt to moderate the tension between the love of law and the foundational principle of the church, the law of love. That tension must first be moderated by the character of the judge himself. He cannot be a transgressor of the law himself and instead should have a perfect similitude with the law. The primary metaphors come from the Gospels where Christ describes the pure nature necessary in any accuser.80 He who does not meet these requirements is a pretender of the law, that is, someone who pretends to be zealous for the law but really seeks it for his own sinful needs. Judges must first cleanse themselves. More importantly, his judgments ought to bring about reconciliation, not simple condemnation: Let him judge, I say, but with mercy not without. Let him judge but against sin, not against nature. Let him judge so that the image of God can be cleansed from all impurity of guilt, instead of being infected by scandal of disrepute. Let him judge so

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James R. Ginther that the penitential son may return to former honour and to God the Father; that the beautiful ring and the foremost robe may be restored to him, that he not be daily ruined but that there would be in heaven the rejoicing of angels ‘over one doing penance’ [Lk. 15.7], than the sadness about one perishing.81

The whole point of judging Christians is reconciliation. If the application of law does not yield forgiveness then it has no use. A judge must also be attuned to proliferating accusations against fellow Christians that can cause damage to the community, especially if they have secular issues attached to them. In addition to the character of the judge, the intention of the judgment to effect reconciliation, the use of law must not function in opposition to the law of love. The judge is to use law to correct, not vindicate or defame. Correction ought to take place through the order appointed by Christ, namely to love, pray and aid the accused towards forgiveness and reconciliation.82 In typical scholastic style, the Anonymous then raises the question of the new law emerging from the papal court. What if it demands that a specific deed be condemned? The answer is to understand that the gospel remains the primary source for ecclesiastical law and the canons are secondary. This leads our author into a careful discussion about the different types of canon law, ranging from the universal to the particular to the singular.83 Once again, the value of any of these laws is judged in terms of love and unity: ‘The more perfect and better [canons] are those which encourage the disciples of Christ towards the love of God and neighbour, and the unity of peace; dissuade them from anger, hatred and hostility; and [are more perfect and better] than those [canons] which wound the body of love, divide the unity of peace [and] destroy concord.’84

Conclusion What has emerged here is an ecclesiology that was developed in response to specific historical events, but it is also grounded in a rather essentialist conception of ecclesial community. The Norman Anonymous presents an understanding of church that is established in the law of love, but its practices are regulated by the laws of the gospel and the canons. There is no wholesale rejection of canon law, but rather a plea that it be of service to building Christian community. Where law fails to do that, it must be curtailed or jettisoned entirely. It is also clear that for all the talk of community and love, our theologian focuses on the episcopacy and its pastoral responsibilities. His is an elitist ecclesiology, where leadership and ministry are the most important factors for building and maintaining community. This is well in keeping with the medieval ethos about community and in this the Anonymous shares a great deal with his ‘Gregorian’ opponents. Leadership, to put it in terms that Cyprian used, is the glue that holds an ecclesial community together. If anything is to be said about the wider community, it is that our author conceives of church as politically, socially and even ethnically demarcated by the modifier ‘Norman’. There is little concern for the universal church, save where the papacy claims supremacy over it; there is no

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expectation that churches from other social and political contexts can contribute to the development of the Norman church.85 There is no hint of any ecumenism for which modern theologians yearn. It is in this context that the treatise on kingship ought to be understood.86 My intention here is not to diminish the import of the theological argument. It is a novel reading of eleventh-century Christology and it can act as a marker to the changes taking place in this sub-field of medieval theology. In some ways, the Anonymous is attempting to apply the Christological implications from Anselm. Anselm built upon the traditional Christology the notion that the humanity of Christ was an operative feature within the overall relationship between God and creation. It was not just the means of allowing humanity to restore the honour they owed to God, but also that very act became the way for balance to be restored in creation.87 Hence, Christ’s humanity was understood in terms of God’s relation to all of creation – God as ruler of creation – than as the means by which Christ identified with humanity alone. The shift to that more precise understanding of Christ’s humanity was some decades away, and so it is not surprising that the kingship of Christ appeals theologically to our Norman theologian. Instead, I want to suggest why he pursues this question in the first place. It is a given that the general reason is that his treatment of kingship certainly undermines the claims of sacerdotal superiority that the ‘Gregorians’ were advocating. However, it must be said that the Norman Anonymous treats with great respect the priestly office and holy orders in general. He does not denigrate them, and in fact he demonstrates the dignity of sacred orders by connecting each grade to an event in the life of Christ.88 He speaks reverently of the central eucharistic task of the priest and how ordination is perhaps one of the clearest, identifiable moments when God’s power transforms an individual.89 And, as we have seen there is a strong commitment to the penitential functions of priests and bishops.90 Why then interpose a view of kingship that appears to diminish this sacerdotal power? The answer is that his kingship has nothing to do with sacerdotal ministry. While the Anonymous certainly proclaims the king as both rex et sacerdos, it is not that the king takes on any sacerdotal function in the same way a priest would. Rather, the king binds the ecclesial community together, providing a vicarious headship that speaks directly to the essential unity of the Norman church.91 Whereas the Imperial polemicists argued against the reformers by articulating a clear separation between regnum and sacerdotium, our Norman theologian wants to integrate them. It further reinforces the demarcation of Christian community along political, social and ethnic lines. It is a view that is a natural outgrowth of the ‘in-church’ experience of the author of the Norman Anonymous. The growth and even future of the church, which Rouen was called to oversee, was tied intimately to the Anglo-Norman king, who had been its facilitator and protector. Moreover, it was he who guaranteed against the external pressures of the new law, the intrusion of non-Norman ecclesiastical powers; otherwise all could be minimized if not obliterated altogether. For the twenty-first century, this is hardly an attractive model for ecclesiologists. Even if modern theologians seek alternative ecclesiologies within the Catholic tradition, the Norman Anonymous provides no appealing argument. His

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ecclesiology is elitist, ethnocentric and betrays no interest in ecumenical dialogue. It cannot be denied that it was driven by events and bears the marks of an ecclesiology ‘from below’. And, it was an ultimately unsuccessful ecclesiology. While some of its principles came to bear fruit in sacramental theology of the following two centuries, that was more historical coincidence than any proof of influence. The Norman Anonymous appears to have no serious readership until its rediscovery in the seventeenth century and so we cannot claim it as a robust alternative to the ‘Gregorian’ model. However, it is a piece of medieval scholarship that does allow us to understand better the complexity of ecclesiological thought in the Middle Ages. That understanding may not always lead to attractive narratives and exquisite theological arguments. It does allow us to see one clear example of how Christians struggled to understand church as an incarnational reality.

Notes 1. Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, 2 vols (New York: Continuum, 2004), vol. I, pp. 18–25. 2. Ibid., pp. 56–65. Both these typologies are further outlined in Chapter 1 of the present volume. 3. Nicholas Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 52–4. 4. James R. Ginther, ‘The Church in Medieval Theology’, in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, ed. G. Mannion and L. Mudge (London: Routledge, 2007), ch. 3. 5. M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), vol. 2, pp. 303– 8. A number of partial editions have appeared since the discovery of this manuscript in 1621, but a critical edition appeared in 1966: Die Texte des Normanischen Anonymus, ed. K. Pellens, Vero¨ffentlichungen des Instituts fu¨r Europa¨ische Geschichte Mainz, 42 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1966). Pellens also published a facsimile of the manuscript: Der Codex 415 des Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: Facsimile-Ausgabe der Text-U¨berlieferung des normanischen Anonymus, ed. K. Pellens and R. Nineham, Vero¨ffentlichungen des Instituts fu¨r Europa¨ische Geschichte Mainz, 82 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1977). For an assessment of Pellens’s edition, see Ruth Nineham, ‘K. Pellens’ Edition of the Tracts of the Norman Anonymous’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 4 (5) (1968): 302–9; Karl Morrison’s review in Speculum 43 (1968): 366–71; and the assessment of Pellens’s source criticism in Wilfried Hartmann, ‘Beziehungen des Normanischen Anonymus zu fru¨hscholatischen Bildungszentren’, Deutsches Archiv fu¨r Erforschung des Mittelalters 31 (1975): 108–43. The two most important previous editions are: Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis XI. et XII. conscripti, ed. H. Bo¨hmer, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 3 vols (Hanover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1891–97), vol. 3, pp. 642–87; and G. H Williams, The Norman Anonymous of 1100 A.D.: Toward the Identification and Evaluation of the So-called Anonymous of York, Harvard Theological Studies, 18 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 208–28, 233–6. While Pellens’s edition is the most complete, it must be used with some caution. 6. The principal studies are Harald Scherrinsky, Untersuchungen zum sogentannten Anonymus von York (Wu¨rzburg: Konrad Triltsch, 1940); Ernst H. Katorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 42– 61; K. Pellens, Die Kirchendenken des Normanischen Anonymus, Vero¨ffentlichungen des Instituts fu¨r Europa¨ische Geschichte Mainz, 69 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1973); and Williams, Norman Anonymous. More focused research has been published in Norman

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8. 9. 10.

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14. 15.

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Cantor, Church, Kingship and Lay Investiture in England, 1089–1135 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), pp. 185–9; Ruth Nineham, ‘The So-Called Anonymous of York’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 14 (1963): 31–45; Roger E. Reynolds, ‘The Unidentified Sources of the Norman Anonymous’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 5 (2) (1970): 122–6; Yves Congar, L’Eglise de Saint Augustin a` l’e´poque moderne (Paris: Cerf, 1970), pp. 112–18; Kennerly Woody, ‘Marginalia on the Norman Anonymous’, Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973): 273–88; Roger E. Reynolds, ‘Liturgical Scholarship at the Time of the Investiture Controversy: Past Research and Future Opportunities’, Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 109–24; Ann L. Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: the Eleventh-century Debates, Texts and Studies in Religion, 12 (New York: Mellon Press, 1982), pp. 157–73; Francis Oakley, Kingship: the Politics of Enchantment (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 101–7. Normanischen Anonymus, ed. Pellens, 24 (pp. 129–80). I will hereafter cite this edition as NA followed by the tract number and pagination. I have dispensed with the traditional citation that employed a ‘J’ to indicate the ennumeration from James’s description (see n. 5 above), as opposed to the numbering found in Bohmer’s earlier partial edition. Now that Pellens’s critical edition is the standard source to cite, the older enumeration seems redundant. Those texts are: NA, ed. Pellens, nn. 10, 20, 24, 24b and 28. I am taking a cue from both Reynolds, ‘Liturgical Scholarship’ and Barstow, Married Priests, both of whom have examined the non-royalist issues. Authorial intent has become the beˆte noir of most historical study, and I too hold some suspicion about how possible it is to recover the individual intentionality of an author so far removed from our current context. However, I maintain that it is possible to ascertain the general intentionality of a given text (what is called the implied author in literary criticism), if only in terms of how his or her own historical context shaped it in terms of rhetoric. That the author of this corpus remains unknown does not prohibit us from determining some general intent as he composed his texts according to the style and taste that would have gained the attention of any contemporary reader. For a good survey of the literature see, Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy, 1050–1250 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), esp. pp. 594–601, 603–5. See also, Gerd Tellenbach, The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century, trans. T. Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); I. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). For the theological context of this shift, see Yves Congar, ‘Les Laı¨cs et l’e´ccle´siologie des «ordines» chez les the´ologiens des XIe et XIIe sie`cles’, in I laici nella societas christiana dei secoli XI e XII. Atti della terza Settimana internazionale di studio. Mendola, 21–27 agosto 1965, Publicazioni dell’Universita` cattolica del Sacra Cuore, Contributi, serie III, 5 (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1968), pp. 83–117. So treated by Haight, Christian Community, vol. 1, pp. 267–344; but see his challenge to modern views of church structures in idem, ‘The Structures of the Church’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 30 (1993): 403–14. Congar, L’Eglise, pp. 98–9. On the rather broad use of simony in the Middle Ages, see Timothy Reuter, ‘Gifts and Simony’, in Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power and Gifts in Context, ed. E. Cohen and M. de Jong, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions: Medieval and Early Modern Peoples, 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 157–68. For an insightful example of the incoherence of canon law in the eleventh century, see R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 254–9. James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London: Longman, 1995), pp. 18–35. See also, Paul Fournier and Gabriel Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques en occident depuis le fausse de´cre´tales jusqu’au De´cret de Gratien, 2 vols. (Paris: Receuil Sirey, 1931–32). Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, pp. 38–9.

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19. Harold Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 120–64. The ecclesiological themes of Gratian’s Decretum have been explored by Stanley Chodorow, Christian Political Theory and Church Politics in the Mid-twelfth Century: The Ecclesiology of Gratian’s Decretum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). 20. Berman, Law and Revolution, pp. 166–73; Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London: Methuen, 1965), pp. 374–81. See also, Alexander Murray, ‘Confession Before 1215’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series, 3 (1993), pp. 51–81. 21. Sarah Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), pp. 25– 50. 22. Karen Wagner, ‘De vera et falsa penitentia: An Edition and Study’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1996. 23. Christopher Harper-Bill, ‘The Ango-Norman Church’, in A Companion to the AngloNorman World, ed. C. Harper-Bill and E. van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), pp. 165–90, at 169–70; David Douglas, ‘The Norman Episcopate before the Norman Conquest’, Cambridge Historical Journal 13 (1957): 101–15. On the monastic development, see C. Pott, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997). 24. David Spears, ‘The Norman Empire and the Secular Clergy, 1066–1204’, Journal of British Studies 21 (2) (1982): 1–10, explores how the Normans actually implemented this promise in terms of specfic personnel. 25. David Spears, The Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals during the Ducal Period, 911–1204 (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2006), pp. 196–7. Lanfranc of Bec was chosen to succeed Maurilius in 1067 but he refused it, only to be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury three years later. 26. Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–80), 5.9 (3.92); 11.39 (6.170–2). The cathedral was seriously damaged by fire in 1204 and nearly completely rebuilt by the middle of the thirteenth century: Lindy Grant, ‘Rouen Cathedral, 1200–1237’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Rouen, ed. J. Stratford, Transactions of the British Archaeological Association, 12 (Leeds: British Archaeological Association, 1993), pp. 60–8. 27. John of Avranches, Le Officiis Ecclesiasticis de Jean d’Avranches, Archeveˆque de Rouen (1067– 1079), ed. R. Delarme (Paris: Picard, 1923). 28. Oderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, 5.4 (3.22–4). St Romanus (d. 640) was a well-regarded former bishop of Rouen, whose hagiographic fame did not arise until the eighth century. Then he became a protector against the Viking raids, or so the tenth-century vita would have us believe. His relics resided at the monastery of St Ouen, Rouen before being transferred to the cathedral crypt. 29. For the hagiographical context, see Felice Lifshitz, ‘Eight Men In: Rouennais Traditions of Archiepiscopal Sanctity’, Haskins Society Journal 2 (1989): 63–74. See also, David Spears, ‘The Double Display of Saint Romanus of Rouen in 1124’, in Henry I and the Anglo-Norman World: Studies in Memory of C. Warren Hollister, ed. D. F. Fleming and J. M. Pope, The Haskins Society Journal Special Volume 17 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), pp. 117–32, whose interpretation on the Romanus cult differs somewhat from Lifshitz. 30. There is evidence of some teaching at the cathedral from the early eleventh century onwards, but during William’s episcopacy the documentary evidence speaks of a scholasticus rather than a grammaticus resident in the cathedral. The shift is important since the former term often implied more advanced education, rather than the rudimentary teaching of reading and writing. By 1140, the scholasticus had been superseded by a magister scolarum: J. M. Bouvris, ‘L’Ecole capitulaire de Rouen au XIe sie`cle’, Etudes normandes 3 (1986): 89–104; Spears, Personnel, p. 224. 31. The political history of Normandy during Bona Anima’s episcopate is complicated. William I (the Conquerer) was both King of England and Duke of Normandy. Upon his death in

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33.

34. 35. 36.

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1087, his lands were divided and his second son, William Rufus, became king and his eldest, Robert Curthose, took control of the duchy. That hardly remained a stable situation as Robert attempted to usurp William Rufus at one point, and failed. In 1096, Robert went on Crusade and William Rufus became the de facto Duke. When Rufus died in 1100, his younger brother, Henry, took advantage of Robert’s absence and claimed the throne. Robert attempted to take the crown back, but was soundly beaten in 1101 and renounced any claim to the English throne. By 1110, Henry I was both King of England and Duke of Normandy. Oderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, 5.2.316–23 (3.24–34), copied out the conciliar canons. The importance of this council’s canons is reflected in their reissue in England under Henry II: Pierre Chaplais, ‘Henry II’s Reissue of the Canons of Lillebonne of Whitsun 1080 (?25 February 1162)’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 4 (1973): 627–32. Harper-Bill, ‘The Anglo-Norman Church’, pp. 170–1, 176–7. It is also significant that Bona Anima convoked a council in Rouen in 1096 as the regional response to the very proGregorian Council of Clermont (1095). Nearly all of the legislation from Clermont is repeated in the Rouannais canons, save for those that concerned investiture: Williams, Norman Anonymous, pp. 114–15. Williams, Norman Anonymous, pp. 102–27. NA, ed. Pellens, n. 22 (pp. 116–25), a defence of ordaining priests’ sons. See also ibid., n. 26 (pp. 209–12). Ibid., nn. 2 (pp. 7–18), 4 (pp. 35–45). The first tract is a direct rebuttal of Lyons’s primacy over Rouen, which Gregory VII had announced in 1079 the same year Bona Anima was elected archbishop. See Peter McKeon, ‘Gregory VII and the Primacy of Archbishop Gebuin of Lyons’, Church History 38 (1969): 3–8. The second treatise appears to have been composed at a later date, since the antagonist is not the Archbishop of Lyons, but Vienne. In 1100/1, Archbishop Guy of Vienne was papal delegate in France, charged with dealing with Bona Anima’s suspension: Woody, ‘Marginalia on the Norman Anonymous’, p. 279, but it should be noted that Woody then goes to argue for a date of composition for this tract after 1110 (pp. 280–1). In addition to what follows, two minor points should be noted. First, Williams make much of the fact that many of the arguments are made in the first person plural, and that the author speaks of our church, etc. (Wiliams, Norman Anonymous, pp. 69–73). However, such rhetorical form is quite common in scholastic literature and does not necessarily point to the author as an archbishop. Secondly, in the fourth treatise, the author states that he is about to give an apology on behalf of the archbishop (pro ipso), leading to the suggestion that our Norman theologian and the archbishop are not the same person: NA, ed. Pellens, n. 4 (p. 35): ‘Nos autem pro ipso apolegeticum faciamus responsum.’ Reynolds, ‘The Unidentified Sources’, pp. 123–4; Wilfried Hartmann, ‘Beziehungen des Normannischen Anonymus’, pp. 114–29. See also, Schafer Williams, Codices PseudoIsidoriani: A Palaeographico-historical Study, Monumenta iuris canonici, Series C, Subsidia 3 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1971). NA, ed. Pellens, n. 11 (pp. 79–84). Compare this with the prologue to Ivo’s Panormia, PL 161.47–60. See also NA, ed. Pellens, n. 9 (pp. 64–8). See NA, ed. Pellens, n. 20 (pp. 108–10), where the author repudiates the allegorical reading of the two swords narrative in Luke 22. The critique of previous readings of this pericope places our author well within the context of early scholastic thought. His contemporaries had begun to reanalyse the conditions necessary for spiritual exegesis. See G. R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Barstow, Married Priests, pp. 159–60, 168. The Anselmian themes are most visible in NA, ed. Pellens, n. 21 (pp. 110–15). Wilfried Hartmann, ‘Beziehungen des Normannischen Anonymus’, pp. 135–40. The exceptions may be NA, ed. Pellens, nn. 3 (pp. 18–34), 9 (pp. 53–75) and 31 (pp. 180– 94), which seem to be more sermonic that disputational.

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44. Ibid., n.18 (p. 104): ‘Si verba, quibus consecratur corpus et sanguis Iesu Christi, habent per se et in se vim et potestatem efficiendi coprus et sanguinem Iesu Christi, per quemlibet proferantur, et prolata per laicum tam bene possunt efficere hoc, quam si per sacerdotem proferantur. Neque homo adivit [my emendation; Ms. and edition has adimmit (sic)] et tribuit verbis Dei vim suam et potestatem. Nam si per laicum prolata non habent vim et potentiam efficiendi corpus sanguinem Christi, prolata autem per sacerdotem habent, liquet prophecto, quia sacerdos dat eis hanc vim et potestatem.’ 45. The author plays here on the double meaning of consecration, namely confecting the Eucharist and the ordination of priests. In doing so, he ties together both the status and disposition of priests. 46. Artur M. Landgraf, Introduction a` l’histoire de la litte´rature the´ologique de la scolastique naissante, trans. A. M. Landry and L. B. Geiger, Publications de l’Institut d’Etudes Me´die´vales, 22 (Montreal: L’Institut d’Etudes Me´die´vales, 1973), pp. 35–41, 48–50, 55–6. 47. Oderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, 5.2.311 (3.20). 48. NA, ed. Pellens, n. 31 (p. 180). 49. Ibid., p. 181: ‘Similiter ergo si non eligitur aliquis a Christo vel vocautr, iudiciariam dignitatem nequaquam iure adipiscitur. Si quis autem a Christo eligitur et vocatur, hic est, qui eandem dignitatem iure sibi adsumit, qui non eam rapit per violentiam sed per Dei adipiscitur gratiam.’ 50. Ibid., p. 181. 51. Ibid., p. 182: ‘. . . qui in hoc mundo principatum desideras, non vis fieri sicut iunior et minister . . . Propterea et tu cum dominaris, et cum iudicas, non secundum legem Dei iudicas, sed condis leges iniquas, ut opprimas in iudicio pauperes, et vim facias cause populi Domini.’ 52. Ibid., pp. 183–4: ‘. . . qui plenam habit karitatem, immo totius legis plenitudinem’ (184). 53. See Georges Duby, Chivalrous Society, trans. C. Postan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); M. T. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 149– 72. 54. NA, ed. Pellens, n. 31 (p. 185):‘Proximum dico qui nostre fidei domesticus est et in christiana religione nobiscum habet cor unum et animam unam.’ See ibid., n. 15 (pp. 99– 100), where the author rejects the validity of inter-religious marriage based on this conception of Christian unity. See also, ibid., n. 24c (pp. 200–1), where he rejects the term laity (laicus) because it can be used to describe both Christians and non-Christians. 55. Ibid., p. 186. See n. 21 (pp. 110–15), where the author discusses the inherent goodness in all creation in terms of God as Creator and Sustainer. There are parallels with Anselm’s De casu diaboli, 9. 56. McKeon, ‘The Primacy of Archbishop Gebuin’, pp. 6–7. 57. NA, ed. Pellens, n. 2 (pp. 7–8). 58. Ibid., p. 9. 59. Ibid., p. 9: ‘Nam sicut dictum est: Alius est oculus, alius facies, alius manus, alius pectus aut aliquid huiusmodi. Quid atuem sict oculus, quid sit facies, quid manus, quid pectus in Canticis Canticorum plenius legitur, simulque rationes, quibus his membris fideles comparentur, in commentariis eorum continentur. Sed hoc facilie est in singulis quibusque fidelse reperiri. In ecclesiis autem singularium provinciarum inpossibile est inveniri.’ 60. Ibid., pp. 10–12. 61. Ibid., p. 14: ‘Non tamen Romanos pontifices dampnare volumus, sed Christum et apostolos ipsis praeferimus, et ordinis unitatem dividere et dignitatem episcopalem in aliquo minuere nolumus.’ 62. Ibid., n. 5 (p. 45): ‘Precipit apostolus, immo per apostolum Christus, ut omnis anima sullimioribus potestatibus subdita sit.’ 63. Ibid., n. 27 (p. 213). 64. Ibid., n. 5 (pp. 45–8). The context has been suggested by David Spear in an unpublished paper, ‘On Stormy Sees: William Bona Anima, Archbishop of Rouen (1079–1110)’,

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65.

66. 67.

68.

69.

70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80.

81.

82. 83. 84.

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delivered at the 101 annual meeting of the American Historical Association, 30 December 1986. I am grateful to Professor Spear for providing a printed copy of this paper. See Ullmann, Papal Government, pp. 382–412; and, I. S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), esp. pp. 151–85. Spear, ‘The Norman Empire’, pp. 1–10. NA, ed. Pellens, n. 4 (p. 35): ‘Interrogatur Romanus pontifex, quibus de causis reprehendit et condempnat Rothomagensem archiepiscopum. Si responderit: de infidelitate, de inobedintia, de contemptu ordinis sui, recte id an perperam faciat, ipse viderit.’ Ibid., pp. 38–9. This treatise has the archbishop of Vienne in its sights because in 1106, Guy of Vienne was papal legate for Normandy and was charged with resolving Bona Anima’s suspension. Ibid., pp. 41–3. The argument for Jerusalem’s primacy is further examined in ibid., n. 12 (pp. 84–90). The mention of Jerusalem is fitting in that this city had become the focus of much of medieval Europe through the first Crusade. The author of the Norman Anonymous may have also known clerics who had actually visited Jerusalem. Ibid., p. 43: ‘Debet confirmare fratres suos, non infirmare; debet honorare, non vituperare. Debet omnem substantiam suam et se ipsum, si necesse fuerit, pro eis inpendere, non eorum substantias et animas pro sua temporali vita tollere. Debet peccantes instruere in spiritu lenitatis, non destruere in spiritu austeritatis. Debet unumquenque admonere secundum qualitatem morum ipsorum, non secundum suam voluntatem vel proprii animi qualitatem. Debet venire, non ut mactet et perdat, sed ut pascat, salvet et nutriat.’ Ibid., p. 44. See for example, ibid., n. 8 (pp. 52–3), where the Anonymous describes mercenary pastors. He probably has bishops in mind more than priests. This tract appears at times to be more of a sermon than a treatise. The consistent use of the second person singular makes it sound like an address, and the fact that it ends with ‘amen’ may also indicate that we have a public address of some sort. Ibid., n. 9 (pp. 53–4). Murray, ‘Confession before 1215’; and Joseph Goering, ‘The Internal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession’, Tradition 59 (2004): 175–227. Williams, Norman Anonymous, p. 70. See for example, NA, ed. Pellens, n. 28 (pp. 214–25). This became a constant theme for the remainder of the Middle Ages and was the focus of some reform in England and Normandy in the late twelfth century: C. R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton: English Church Government, 1170–1213 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956), pp. 42–86. NA, ed. Pellens, n. 9 (p. 71). Jn. 8.3 (‘Whoever is without sin cast the first stone’) and Mt. 7.3 (‘And why do you see the stick in your brother’s eye and not the beam that is in your own eye?’): NA, ed. Pellens, n. 9 (p. 58). Ibid., p. 59: ‘Iudicet, imquam, sed cum misericordia [ms. et edd. misericordiam], non sine misericordia. Iudicet, sed contra peccatum, non contra naturam. Iudicet, ut imago Dei expeitur ab omni inquinamento culpe, non ut inficiatur not infamie. Iudicet, ut filiuis penitens ad antiquum honorem et ad Deum patrem revertatus, et anulus ei decoris et stola prima glorie reddatur, non ut diutius pereat, sed sit in celo gaudium angelis sanctis super eo penitentiam agente, quam tristicia de pereunte.’ The mention of returning to former honour (in appostion to returning to God) echoes the soteriology of Anselm Cur Deus homo, 1.13 Ibid., pp. 60–2. Ibid., pp. 64–8. Ibid., pp. 67–8: ‘Perfectoria enim et meliora sunt ea, que ad dilectionem Dei et proximi et ad unitatem pacis Christi discipulos adhortantur, et ab ira et odio et inimicitia dehortantur,

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85. 86.

87.

88.

89. 90. 91.

James R. Ginther quam ea, que et dilectionis corpus vulnerant, unitatem pacis separant, concordiam dissipant . . .’ Ibid., p. 66, where the canons emerging from the Byzantine church, or even the ancient church of North Africa, have little import for Norman ecclesiastical practices. Ibid., n. 24 (pp. 129–80). The length of this treatise is due in part to the insertion of the coronation rite, known as the Edgar Ordo, which refers to the sacramental nature of kingship (pp. 157–73). On this Ordo, see Williams, Norman Anonymous, pp. 36–46. It is often forgotten that when Anselm is asked why God did not simply punish humanity in toto for their sin, he responded that humanity was created as a means of taking the place of the fallen angels and so thereby restoring the balance and harmony of creation: Cur Deus homo, 1.16. NA, ed. Pellens, n. 19 (pp. 107–8). Such a description is now known as the ordinals of Christ. The sources have been carefully examined by Roger E. Reynolds, The Ordinals of Christ from their Origins to the Twelfth Century, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters, 7 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1978). NA, ed. Pellens, nn. 16–18 (pp. 102–7), 23 (pp. 196–200). See also ibid., n. 24d (pp. 202–4). Williams, Norman Anonymous, pp. 92–193.

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Chapter 4 THE

CHURCH AND SACRAMENTALITY: THEOLOGY OF SYMBOL IN ROGER HAIGHT’S COMPARATIVE ECCLESIOLOGY Gerard Jacobitz

Introduction Sacramental theology functions as an important dimension of the comparative ecclesiology developed by Roger Haight in his Christian Community in History, Volume II, where analytical accounts of a variety of particular ecclesiologies, ranging from the Reformation to the present day, yield principles for a historical ecclesiology that transcend denominational boundaries.1 Haight’s methodology, drawn from the sociology of organizations, focuses on church activity as one of five elements investigated in a comparative ecclesiology, with sacramental practice serving as the part that discloses the whole.2 I would like to present CCH in the context of the trilogy it completes (with Dynamics of Theology and Jesus: Symbol of God as Parts One and Two), particularly with respect to a theology of symbol that is central to the entire work.3 The twentieth-century revival of the notion of a ‘real symbol’, understood as a sign that mediates or reveals the reality to which it refers, is as important for Roger Haight as it was for Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner, who pioneered it.4 Modern hermeneutic philosophy contributed much to this revival, and it is my contention that the sort of phenomenology practised by Husserl or the later Wittgenstein still has much to offer in deepening our understanding of how things are disclosed by signs. Specifically, I would like to show how a phenomenology of the sign can demythologize the theological notion of symbol that has been so much the mainstay of modern and postmodern theology. Very much in line with Roger Haight’s overall project, I wish to outline a genetic phenomenology of the religious symbol, one that begins with and is founded upon our everyday activity in the world. My hope here is that an approach both to Christology and ecclesiology ‘from below’ can only be helped by a theology of symbol ‘from below’.5

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The Accepted Definition of Symbol Allow me briefly to review what has become, at least in theological circles, the universally accepted definition of symbol. Paul Tillich gives a concise statement in his Dynamics of Faith, which he prefaces with the following remark: Symbols have one characteristic in common with signs; they point beyond themselves to something else. The red sign at the street corner points to the order to stop the movement of cars at certain intervals. A red light and the stopping of cars have essentially no relation to each other, but conventionally they are united as long as the convention lasts. The same is true of letters and numbers and partly even words. They point beyond themselves to sounds and meanings. They are given this special function by convention within a nation or by international conventions, as the mathematical signs. Sometimes such signs are called symbols; but this is unfortunate because it makes the distinction between signs and symbols more difficult. Decisive is the fact that signs do not participate in the reality of that to which they point, while symbols do. Therefore, signs can be replaced for reasons of expediency or convention, while symbols cannot.6

Tillich then lists the following six characteristics of symbols, only the first of which is held in common with signs: (1) (2) (3) (4)

symbols point beyond themselves; they participate in the reality of whatever it is they point to; symbols open up levels of reality that are otherwise inaccessible; they unlock dimensions of the human soul which correspond to these deeper dimensions of reality; (5) they cannot be produced intentionally but grow out of the individual or collective unconscious, and consequently, (6) they cannot be invented but have a life of their own; over time they can even die.7 Note that this definition relies on there being a strange yet essential connection between the symbol and the reality,8 a connection which is left unspecified and is ambiguous: the symbol points beyond itself, yet participates in the reality to which it points. It is especially this unspecified and ambiguous aspect of the classic definition that I would like to move beyond.

A Demythologized Phenomenology of Signs 9 So let us begin with the world. Take, for example, a three-dimensional object, say, a chair. The chair’s identity is disclosed over a series of profiles. If you stand on one side of the chair and I on the other, the profiles presented to you are not the same as those presented to me; yet it is the same chair presented. It is neither possible nor necessary to get all the profiles in understanding the identity – the potential number, after all, would be infinite. That identities can be grasped at all depends on the uncanny phenomenon of parts disclosing wholes. If you understand the thing before us to be a chair, it is because the profiles presented to you create in

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you, as it were, a capacity for dealing with the profiles of the chair that are absent. Think of an identity as a rule that determines how a thing’s absent profiles might look should they appear. There is no presentation of identities except by their parts; identities are always constituted over their manifold profiles. This makes concrete sense of what Karl Rahner says in his essay on symbols: that there is unity in difference; ‘all beings (each of them, in fact) are multiple’.10 We would not want things to be given all at once to us even if we could imagine what that would be like. Participation in the disclosure of things by negotiating profiles appearing over time is one of the great joys of being human. Presentation of the diversity of a thing’s profiles is directly proportional to the presentation of the identity. Again, this illuminates Rahner: ‘Here unity and distinction are correlatives which increase in like proportions, not in inverse proportions which would reduce each to be contradictory and exclusive of the other.’11 To see what is mutually distinctive about a number of the chair’s profiles is to better understand the chair. To hear the Kreutzer Sonata in a variety of settings, played by a variety of artists, over the course of one’s lifetime, is to enjoy a greater grasp of its identity.12 With each performance comes greater knowledge of how the Kreutzer might be played, of how it should be played. The more the single performance is understood as distinct, the more distinct becomes the identity. Multiplication of profiles does not fragment the identity; it solidifies it. That there is more to an identity than what is immediately present in the part should not bother us. On the contrary, there being more to the Kreutzer Sonata than any one performance can capture is what makes the Kreutzer a classic. Still, it would be a strange thing for me to remark to you upon our leaving the concert hall that what we just heard ‘was and was not’ the Kreutzer Sonata.13 The remark is true in a sense: the part is, strictly speaking, not the whole; yet, the remark is strange in that it seems to suggest that identities are somehow available to us apart from their manifold profiles. They are not. Every profile of every thing refers to a surplus of meaning, not just profiles that disclose great identities. The surplus is the identity with its manifold profiles.14 Because it takes a skilful agent to articulate a thing’s significant profiles, there is an artistic dimension to the manifestation of identities in the world. This is true not only of things like sonatas, but of chairs and everything else. Things appear in the world because significant aspects of them have to do with life being lived here now. We learn from and among one another the skills necessary for bringing out the significant aspects of things. ‘Realistic’ profiles – the sort that might be captured by a tape recorder or camera – are not the only real profiles. When being is understood as ecstatic, as providing an opportunity for open-ended articulation, a landscape by Van Gogh, or a crucifixion by Rouault might prove more literally true than the photograph.15 I propose using the term sign to denote any part of a thing adverted to precisely in its capacity to disclose the whole identity. A sign is a profile of a thing taken as that which discloses the thing’s identity.16 The sign of a thing is a profile of the thing noticed as such. To consider signs as parts of the things themselves that, as parts, are nonetheless sufficient for the disclosure of the things in their entirety, is alternative to a view that would regard signs as belonging to concepts in our heads

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and only derivatively to things in the world.17 Signs, insofar as they disclose things, belong to the things themselves, not to the people who use them. (Even names belong first and foremost to the things they name, and only derivatively to the lexicon.) The rest of what I have to say about signs depends on this proposal. Now, a sign can operate in the presence of its object or in the absence of its object. Suppose I take the following as a sign of a chair:

And suppose I carry the sign into a room where there are no chairs. I could then use it to indicate an absent chair. Signs are particularly versatile in their capacity to refer to absent objects – so much so that the commonsense definition of a sign is (mistakenly) something that refers to something else, that is, an absent object. But it should never be lost on us that signs must first function in the presence of their objects before ever they could operate in their absence. The sign is first and foremost a profile of the thing itself. When I take the above sign into a room without chairs, I take it from the chair. When a sign operates in the presence of its object it can be said to have real presence; the part discloses the whole as present. There is nothing magical about a sign with real presence. It is not a matter of there being a mysterious, ‘inner’ connection between the thing and the sign; it is a public connection.18 Nor are we talking about the difference between a ‘symbol’ and a ‘mere sign.’ There are fundamentally two kinds of signs: signs with real presence, and signs that disclose the things they refer to as absent. The latter type of sign is parasitic on the former. A sign’s real presence is simply a matter of it operating where it originates, in the presence of the object it discloses. Real presence can be extended over a series of related signs. A voice on the telephone is a good example of this. A small piece of vibrating metal can be electromagnetically conformed to the sound of my voice – a sound with real presence – in a place far removed from the physical location of my body. Compare my telephone voice to a voice-mail recording of it for an example of the very same sign employed in the absence of its referent. (I am saying that the presence is not ‘real’ in the latter case.) If I speak in Philadelphia to someone in Arizona by telephone, all the material parts of my Arizona voice are taken from Arizona and assembled there.19 Nothing comes from Philadelphia except a blueprint. Our utter familiarity with telephone voices allows us to miss how truly remarkable it is that one reality can so thoroughly invade the very substance of another to the point of changing its identity. When George calls on the phone, I say, ‘It’s George’, not, ‘There’s a squawking piece of metal over here that sounds a lot like George.’20 A word is a sign that functions between persons. A word is any sign used by one person to present a thing to another person.21 Words must operate first in the presence of their objects before they can be understood to operate apart from them. If (standing before a chair) I say, ‘This chair here, this brown chair, this

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cloth-covered chair’, these words articulate the chair; they bring out its profiles. These signs have real presence – it is not just that they refer to a present chair; the words make the chair more present than it would be without them. These very same words can be used in the chair-less room to present the chair as absent. Whether or not a sign has real presence is not the fault of the sign. A name tag discloses my presence when it is affixed to my lapel; it indicates my absence when I leave it on the subway. It’s my fault. One might trace the genesis of onomatopoetic words, or the genesis of pictographs or glyphs (in the case of writing), to get a sense of how words originate as profiles of things. Words are the original and primary type of sign. Indications, signals and codes are derivative of our ability to use words, not vice versa. We would never understand an indication or signal as a sign without first being able to present things to others by proffering significant profiles.22 (In the beginning was the Word.) Augustine gets it right when he says in the Confessions that the meanings of words must be learned in the presence of their objects. He gets it wrong in suggesting that words function as more or less adequate expressions of concepts that reside first in our minds, only subsequently and rather inadequately to be expressed later in words.23 Words adhere to things as if they were labels stuck right on them.24 Neither a sign’s real presence nor its reference to a surplus of meaning is affected in the least by the sign’s being conventionally or even arbitrarily assigned to its object (pace Tillich). Such a sign over the course of its use becomes a real profile of the thing. It would make sense to call a sign that adequately discloses what is essential about a thing the logos of the thing. Think of a logos as any part of a thing, any profile, that makes the thing intelligible, that allows the point of the thing to be grasped.25 For example, a diagram that occasions an insight into the meaning of a thing would be functioning as the thing’s logos.26 Once we are free from the illusion that words are indication signs of concepts in our heads, we can understand a logos as belonging to the thing itself and not to the mind that perceives or expresses it. A sign is the medium of a thing’s appearance in the world, not in the mind.27 Finally, signs can be complex or dialectical. What I mean by this is that profiles not naturally occurring together can be intentionally brought together by inspired persons, for example, poets or theologians, in order to disclose heretofore unnoticed dimensions of known identities, or even whole new identities never before noticed. Complex signification is what Paul Ricoeur refers to by the terms metaphor or symbol, and it is a phenomenon that is true to the etymology of these words.28 The complex sign brings disparate profiles together. A metaphor can be understood as two or more profiles in search of an identity. When I say, for example, of a long-distance runner, ‘He is a gazelle,’ I mean to pick out some quality of the human body in motion, such that ‘gazelle’ and ‘athlete’ function as its profiles. The capacity for using metaphors and symbols is very close if not identical to the capacity for writing. Both rely on the complete abstraction of profiles from their identities, an ability to present things apart from the situations in which they were first encountered.29

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By far the most remarkable aspect of complex signs is their ability to open up new dimensions of meaning, worlds of meaning that transcend our own. For example, imagine living in a two-dimensional universe and coming upon the following two signs:

The typical two-dimensional person would take these to be profiles of two separate and distinct identities, because they are clearly opposites. But an inspired person in this universe, someone with a vague ‘feel’ for a third dimension, might hazard to put them together as profiles of the same object. Those of us who live in three dimensions need no inspiration to see these as the left- and right-hand profiles of the same chair. But by imagining life in two dimensions we can get a feel for the surplus of meaning achieved by good metaphors. Notice in this example what it would be wrong to say: that either profile is not the identity in question, or that either of the profiles both ‘is and is not’ the identity in question. No, the identity reached for but not entirely comprehended by this complex sign is 100 per cent ‘A’ and 100 per cent ‘B’, whether or not the inhabitants of our twodimensional universe can spell out how this might be the case. The profiles of a single identity may share nothing in common besides the identity they disclose. Think, for example, of the front and side views of a disk. Identities that are accessible only by complex signs are not entirely comprehensible; they are more or less vaguely known. In this case the ‘rule’ aspect of the complex sign moves into the foreground. The metaphoric or symbolic sign is a rule that says this profile is to be minded together with that profile, come hell or high water. Complex signs composed of word-signs can be said to be governed by a ‘grammar’, a rule for what can and cannot be said about the topic at hand. Since the Jewish, Christian, Muslim God, is not a part of the world but its Creator, the most effective theological statements are going to be of this type. They will bring profiles together that allow us to move into the object, without, however, comprehending it. When we speak of theology as grammar we do not mean to say that it is merely talk about talk or a self-contained set of statements and practices that cannot be translated out of context. We mean rather that theology’s referent is best disclosed by complex signs, that is, by symbols or metaphors.30 Thomas Aquinas tells us that analogous expressions used of God are of this composite type. Certain perfection terms, inherently analogous, such as ‘good’ or ‘wise’, can be literally applied to God precisely because they are complex signifiers: they bring together, on the one hand, an understanding of the term derived from everyday life, with, on the other hand, our knowledge that the term is capable of being applied in contexts beyond our ken, and in varying degrees of perfection. When we

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call God ‘wise’, we do so with the understanding that God is Wisdom itself. Likewise, a metaphorical rule governs the expression ‘God is good’ such that it must always be uttered together with the understanding that ‘God is Goodness’.31

The Logic of Parts and Wholes in an Ecclesiology from Below Any Roman Catholic over the age of fifty is familiar with the old Baltimore Catechism definition of a sacrament: A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace. But what kind of signs are sacraments? They definitely are complex signs; they bring together profiles of an incomprehensible object. The whole is known in the part, but not exhaustively. But are sacraments signs with real presence? It all depends on whether they are taken to be signs of that which is absent, or as articulations of that which is already essentially present. And this will be determined by a particular church polity’s theology of creation and grace. Everything would seem to depend on whether Emil Brunner was right about there being a ‘point of contact’ between God and creation, and how extensive that point is taken to be.32 Sacramental realism as it has developed in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and, to a great degree, all mainline Christian denominations, makes no sense without an analogy of being – or at least some theory of God’s immanence in creation. Perhaps we could say that the formal aspects of a particular church’s sacramental theology will be worked out with respect to which term of the complex-sign for God, ‘Trinity’, is considered as the referent of the sacramental sign. If (in terms of the economic Trinity) the Father is understood as God utterly transcendent, the Spirit as God utterly immanent, and the Son as God sufficiently public, sacramental realism of the Roman Catholic or Orthodox stripe could be understood in terms of an emphasis on Christ’s manifestation of the Spirit’s immanence in the created order (the principle of sacramentality). An alternative, generally speaking more Protestant approach would emphasize Christ’s presentation of the Father’s transcendence (‘God is in heaven and thou art on earth’). God is revealed as triune in both cases – the economic Trinity is the immanent (within the Godhead) Trinity – but it is only natural that different traditions emphasize one term of an essential dialectic over the other. Either way, I am envisioning a Christology where the paschal mystery functions as logos of both Father and Spirit.33 Roger Haight’s comparative ecclesiology develops organically from his historical ecclesiology, or ‘ecclesiology from below’, which, he says, in contrast to a christocentric ecclesiology ‘from above’, is centred rather on God as Spirit and the historically mediated experience of grace. The logic here follows the contours of a christological option suggested in Jesus: Symbol of God whereby Jesus Christ is no longer seen as the instrumental cause of salvation, but as the medium or symbol that effectively manifests the salvation already immanent in creation. Haight spells this out in greater detail in his essay ‘Notes for a Constructive Theology of the Cross’:

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Gerard Jacobitz What has been revealed to Christians in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus regards the very nature of God as savior. But this means that God has always been savior and that salvation has been going on since ‘the beginning.’ There never was a time when God was not savior, nor a period in human history when God’s salvation was ineffective.34

Here the Christ-event functions as a sign working in the presence of its referent; it reveals the salvation that is always already taking place. But a theology of symbol is not something relevant only to those churches that emphasize the sacramental dimension of church activity. It has everything to do with how church activities, of any type, express a certain relationship of that church to the world. Is the church understood as a light to the world, as an enclave within it, as a bulwark against it? Do its activities articulate that which is immanent in the world, or are they seen as instrumental causes of that which is otherwise transcendent? A comparative ecclesiology can show how ecclesiological pluralism reflects the unity in difference of the triune God. I would argue that Christ as sacrament, Christ as symbol, is paramount whether the emphasis be on transcendence or immanence. The theory of signs developed above would also support Haight’s most recent proposal for a transdenominational ecclesiology building on the work of Christian Community in History.35 The identity of the church viewed as a transdenominational identity, what we might call the essential church, is only disclosed by way of its profiles, that is, particular church communities in history. This identity, furthermore, is revealed by complex signification, the ‘symbolic’ or ‘metaphoric’ kind of sign, with particular church communities functioning as its terms. The identity is moved into but not fully and completely comprehended; it remains to some degree an algebraic ‘X’ if it really is the identity we are searching for. What can be said about the logic of parts and wholes with respect to this complex, transdenominational ecclesiological sign? First, differences, even ‘churchdividing’ differences, should not necessarily be looked on in a negative light. What makes each of these churches distinctive over against the other, far from obstructing unity, may in fact be expressive of it. The manifestation of the identity is given in direct, not inverse, proportion to the diversity of its profiles. In fact, two profiles might have nothing in common except the identity they disclose. Second, we should not expect to be able to provide any more than a provisional list of the essentials that remain constant over the diversity of the church’s concrete manifestations in time, and such a list of essentials should always be subject to revision. In other words, we can agree that there are non-negotiables, but we must never agree to stop negotiating about what they are, because we never have the identity completely in our grasp. Time is what helps us to see certain manifestations of the church as essential, and time is open ended. I take this to be one of the great insights of our present age: truth is a project that moves forward by way of conversation and practice.36 If we did not run up against differences that seem irreconcilable, we should question whether our inquiry really has as its object the God who made heaven and earth. At the same time we must remember that the parts, in light of the Holy Spirit, have real presence.

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Conclusion: The Ecclesiological Dynamic Roger Haight’s three-part systematic theology responds in an intellectually honest way to the current cultural situation, one defined by a set of experiences that fall under the rubric of ‘postmodernity’, which experiences, according to Haight, include ‘a consciousness of the social construction of the self that has completely undermined the transcendental ego of modernity’.37 This account of signs based on our common activity in the world is intended as a further step towards a nontranscendental-ego-centred anthropology, a view of the human person that does not regard consciousness as its centre. It prepares the way for and supports a Christian theology that no longer emphasizes substance, ontology and individual religious experience, but instead focuses on praxis, relationship, and the essentially communal and ethical dimensions of human life. My intention has been to provide a phenomenology of the religious symbol that is better suited to Roger Haight’s overall project than the standard Tillich/Rahner one. I have left intact the notion of ‘real symbol’, a sign that mediates the reality to which it refers, but have shown how such signs arise in the everyday life of language-using creatures. For Tillich, signs differed from symbols because the latter had the strange power to mediate the very presence of the thing signified. This power was described in terms of a hidden, metaphysical connection or participation of the symbol in the life of its referent. My alternative account is founded on the empirically verifiable phenomenon that identities are disclosed to us over manifold profiles. Parts disclose wholes. And once profiles prove effective in disclosing a present identity, they can be used apart from the identity in order to refer to it as absent. Thus, depending on the circumstances, the very same ‘profile’ or ‘sign’ might play either of the roles Tillich assigned to what he thought were categorically distinct entities, signs and symbols. So it is not the case that there are mundane ‘signs’ and mysterious ‘symbols’; rather, there are signs that operate in the presence of their objects and signs that operate in the absence of their objects, with the latter being founded on the former. We can discard a theology of symbol that depends on a mystery we cannot see in favour of one that depends on a mystery we can see: our life together, continuously punctuated by the gift of being and its disclosure. Haight’s method is inherently ecclesiological because it begins here below, in the world of human commerce. The world appears; it becomes intelligible within and for the sake of our forms of life. The natural connection between signs and their referents is established by communal activity, by smooth and successful living, wherever it occurs. (This is most evident in the case of language.) Haight’s order of inquiry moves from method (Dynamics of Theology), through primary religious symbol (Jesus: Symbol of God), and ends in ecclesiology (Christian Community in History). But the order of experience is just the opposite. Religious symbols are not interventions from another world aimed at those among us who have the requisite genius to notice them.38 Rather, they are articulations of the eternal life that is with us now, in which we live and move and have our being.

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The transdenominational church fleshed out by a comparative ecclesiology must in fact be the essential church, for the same reason that transcultural humanity is essential humanity. The transdenominational church is not invisible in the sense that Augustine or Calvin imagined it, a spiritual or eschatological reality waiting to come to light in some distant future. All identities, including the simplest, are invisible but for the signs that make them visible – again, the everyday miracle of parts disclosing wholes. We live at a time when even natural scientists tell us that we should never again be so bold as to think we understand anything fully. And this is especially true in the case of identities disclosed by complex signs, the metaphoric or dialectical kind. With the transdenominational church being of this latter type, more than anything else this phenomenology of the religious symbol should be taken as an argument for an appreciation of ecclesiological diversity.

Notes 1. Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II, Comparative Ecclesiology (New York, Continuum, 2005). Henceforth CCH in main text. 2. See Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. I, Historical Ecclesiology (New York, Continuum, 2004), pp. 93–110. 3. Christian Community in History is the third part of a systematic theology that includes Dynamics of Theology (New York: Orbis Books, 2001 – originally published by Paulist Press in 1990), and Jesus: Symbol of God (New York: Orbis Books, 1999). 4. Tillich’s account of the religious symbol can be found in Systematic Theology, vol. I, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 238–41, or, succinctly, in Dynamics of Faith (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 47–62; Rahner’s essay, ‘The Theology of the Symbol’, appears in Theological Investigations, vol. 4, trans. Kevin Smyth (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), pp. 221–52. Haight’s appropriation of Tillich and Rahner on symbol can be found in Dynamics of Theology, pp. 129–45. 5. Haight uses the term ‘genetic’ synonymously with ‘from below’ in developing his Christology and ecclesiology. See Jesus: Symbol of God, pp. 28–40 and Christian Community in History, vol. I, pp. 56–66. 6. Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, pp. 47–8. 7. Ibid., pp. 48–50. 8. Haight refers to this as an ‘internal connection’, Dynamics of Theology, p. 133, or an ‘inner connection’, Jesus: Symbol of God, pp. 197–8. 9. Much of what I present in this section draws on the phenomenology of Robert Sokolowski. See especially his Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); ‘Knowing Essentials’, Review of Metaphysics 47 (1994): 691–709; ‘Exorcising Concepts’, Review of Metaphysics 40 (1987): 451–63; Presence and Absence: A Philosophical Investigation of Language and Being (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981); Husserlian Meditations: How Words Present Things (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1980). 10. Rahner, ‘The Theology of the Symbol’, p. 225. The notion of ‘identities appearing over manifolds’ is taken from Robert Sokolowski and is a foundational doctrine of Husserlian phenomenology. 11. Rahner, ‘The Theology of the Symbol’, p. 228. 12. Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata is the example Edmund Husserl uses for an ideal object in his Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus-Nijhoff, 1969), p. 21.

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13. This is my major objection to Haight’s appropriation of the Rahner/Tillich theory of symbol: the symbol’s ambiguity precludes any real possibility of a symbolic presentation. Haight refers to this as the symbol’s ‘dialectical structure’ (Dynamics of Theology, pp. 136–8); the symbol ‘both is and is not’ that to which it points; it conceals as much as it reveals its referent (Dynamics, pp. 135, 143, 151, 243, and Jesus: Symbol of God, pp. 196, 201). This is true even in the case of Jesus, the ‘Symbol of God’, who is and is not divine (Dynamics, p. 220, Jesus: Symbol of God, pp. 202–7, 443; see also, Roger Haight, The Future of Christology, p. 47). At issue here is ‘real presence’ in the Roman Catholic sacramental sense. I am arguing for an unambiguous presence of the whole in the part, which I consider necessary for any adequate retrieval of Chalcedon. To say that ‘I am and am not my body’ (Dynamics, p. 137, which Haight takes from Rahner, ‘The Theology of the Symbol’, p. 247) would be like saying ‘This: ☺ is and is not a happy face.' It is true in a sense, but it seems to me to be among those sorts of statements that Wittgenstein imagined as belonging to a philosophy consisting entirely of jokes. 14. I am claiming here that the profiles of an identity function in the same way that the terms of a metaphor do in accordance with Paul Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor. See Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory, pp. 45–69. Rahner, in ‘The Theology of the Symbol’, p. 225, makes the same claim with reference to Fr Th. Vischer. 15. Stephen Schloesser, Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), explores the affinity of early twentieth-century avant-garde music, art, and literature with the concurrent Neo-Thomist revival in metaphysics. 16. Herbert McCabe says that signs are something other than appearances or profiles (see ‘Eucharistic Change’, in God Still Matters, New York: Continuum, 2005, p. 118), but he is actually making the distinction between signs that are merely indications, and signs that are expressions (see Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, pp. 84–5, and ‘Exorcising Concepts’: 456–7); both, however, are signs, i.e., parts that disclose wholes. 17. See Sokolowski, ‘Exorcising Concepts’, Review of Metaphysics 40 (1987): 451–63. 18. See Haight, Dynamics of Theology, p. 133, where Haight follows Tillich in contrasting signs with symbols: ‘The contrast lies in the definition of a mere sign as something that bears no internal connection with the thing that is signified by it.’ The same point is made in Jesus: Symbol of God, p. 197: ‘A sign is not mediational . . . it lacks an intrinsic connection with its referent.’ In the case of religious symbols, ‘there is an inner connection between the symbol and the symbolized that allows the symbol to reveal and make present’ (pp. 197–8). (Emphasis mine in all three examples.) 19. The example might be used to imagine how the Paschal Mystery can make the Word of God present in the world without anything literally having to come down from heaven. 20. The example might be used as a way to imagine the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. 21. See Robert Sokolowski, ‘Exorcising Concepts’: 455–7. 22. Animals make use of indication signs, but they do not understand them as signs. 23. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), I. viii, pp. 10–11. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, 3rd edn (New York: Macmillan, 1968), #1, p. 2. Wittgenstein uses this passage from Augustine as the point of departure for the entire Philosophical Investigations. It should be noted that Augustine advances more than one theory of language in Confessions. An alternative account is given (Book IV. x–xii, pp. 61–3) in terms of parts disclosing wholes: the whole of language is somehow contained in the part. Augustine’s two opposed accounts presage a fundamental modern debate between ‘designative’ versus ‘expressive’ theories of language. See Charles Taylor, ‘Language and Human Nature’, in Human Agency and Language, Philosophical Papers 1, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 215–47. 24. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, #15, p. 7. 25. See Robert Sokolowski, ‘Knowing Essentials’, where an ‘essential’ is presented as this aspect of a thing.

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26. I have in mind Bernard Lonergan’s ‘insight into image’, with the ‘image’ (perhaps a diagram) functioning as a sign of this sort. See Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992); or Understanding and Being: The Halifax Lectures on INSIGHT (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990). 27. In contrast to this notion of a sign’s essentially public function, Haight says that ‘a conceptual symbol is a concept, word, metaphor, parable, poem, gospel, or story that reveals something else and makes it present to the imagination and mind’ (Jesus: Symbol of God, p. 198). It has a psychological function. I don’t understand Haight’s distinction between a concrete and a conceptual symbol; at any rate, the theory of signs I present here obviates it. 28. Paul Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor presented in Interpretation Theory, pp. 45–69, is applicable to what I refer to as a complex sign. 29. It would be hard to imagine a non-literary community (or an illiterate person, for that matter) that could self-consciously make use of metaphors and symbols. 30. The idea of theology as grammar was introduced by the cryptic remark of Wittgenstein’s in Philosophical Investigations, #373, p. 116; it has been developed by George Lindbeck in The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984). See especially p. 69. 31. David Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 60–2, with reference to ST.I.3.3.1. 32. It was Brunner’s Nature and Grace that spurred the great confrontation with Barth over the possibility of a natural theology, occasioning Barth’s famous response, Nein! See Natural Theology: Comprising ‘‘Nature and Grace’’ by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply ‘‘No!’’ by Dr. Karl Barth, trans. Peter Fraenkel (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2002). 33. Perhaps the filioque would be more palatable to Eastern Orthodoxy if the Spirit were explained as proceeding from the Son by virtue of the incarnate Son’s functioning as the logos of the Spirit. 34. Haight, The Future of Christology, p. 91. 35. Haight, ‘Where We Dwell in Common’, Horizons, 32/2 (2005): 332–51. 36. See David B. Burrell, Friendship and Ways to Truth (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000). 37. Christian Community in History, vol. I, p. 57. 38. I have in mind Nicholas Lash’s conversation with William James in Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and Knowledge of God (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).

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Chapter 5 IS COMPARATIVE ECCLESIOLOGY ENOUGH FOR THE OIKOUMENE? REMARKS ON THE ADEQUACY OF HAIGHT’S COMPARATIVE ECCLESIOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT LUTHERAN–ROMAN CATHOLIC DIALOGUES Minna Hietama¨ki

Introduction From an ecumenical point of view a programme on ‘comparative ecclesiology’ raises two rather opposite reactions. The first immediate reaction is positive. A non-judgemental description of the various historical forms and contexts of the Christian community is an essential element of an ecumenical attitude. Ecumenical dialogues have, through laborious exercises, come to grasp the historicity of ecclesial structures and doctrine. We have come to realize that the truth and the unity of the church forms a pluriform reality in a dynamic relationship with differing times, places and cultures. This is something perennial to Haight’s proposed comparative ecclesiology. Similarly the understanding embedded in the proposed project that repeating past formulas in new situations does not preserve but in fact changes their meaning sounds familiar to the ecumenically oriented reader.1 Like hermeneutically conscious ecumenism so, also, ‘comparative ecclesiology’ seeks to trace continuity in the constant reinterpretation of meanings.2 But, at the same time, a proposal of a ‘comparative ecclesiology’ sounds like a method from the past. In terms of ecumenical methodology the comparative method was actually one of the first to be utilized. The aspirations to compare different doctrines while standing on a neutral ground were recorded in the report of the first Faith and Order meeting in Lausanne 1927.3 In the third meeting on Faith and Order, Edmund Schlink, in his introductory speech, proclaimed that ‘we have now arrived at a limit in the use of this method’. The comparative method is, according to Schlink, a statistical method, i.e. it presupposes static, comparable structures. Therefore the comparative method cannot handle changes, it ‘does not demand sacrifices from the Churches involved’.4 The comparative method had not been considered enough for the ecumenical endeavours to bear the desired fruit. It is between these two differing strains of thought, of appreciation towards the historical and non-judgemental approach by Roger Haight and of the doubts voiced by ecumenists of the sufficiency of a comparative method that I offer my

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tentative answer. The context of my answer will be two recent ecclesiological documents from the Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue, the German document Communio Sanctorum (2000) and the North-American Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Its Structures and Ministries (2004). These documents are taken as recent examples of ecumenical endeavours in the field of ecclesiology and are presented as two somewhat differing attempts to do ecumenical ecclesiology. A. Historical and Comparative Ecclesiology: Questions Arising from an Ecumenical Viewpoint The programme of historically conscious comparative ecclesiology has many ecumenically attractive features. Each of these ecumenically attractive features nevertheless raises questions. (1) Chief among the ecumenically plausible features is the desire both to observe different ecclesiologies from the viewpoint of their own self-understanding and to facilitate understanding between these different ecclesiologies. The strategy is to organize and present the thought of different theologians according to a common pattern or template.5 Haight suggests that the use of a ‘common pattern’ to facilitate comparison might be reductive but in the case of ‘comparative ecclesiology’ is not. Yet the danger to which Haight himself points is evident. It can be asked if setting ecclesiologies side by side for comparison is in the end as innocent a procedure as it seems. Even a mere comparison with the help of a common template assumes that, in the best-case scenario, the template is in a way applicable to the ecclesiology. In a less good case the ecclesiology starts to fit the template. In either case one might ask whether there can be a common, neutral template which brings out the essentials of different ecclesiologies as if they were viewed from their own viewpoint? Does this not assume that the differences are some kind of decorative surface covering a common form or structure? Can it not be that ecclesiologies are different beyond comparison? Is the unity of the church possible only if differences are merely a kind of superficial decoration? Does unity in the end mean uniformity? I will offer some remarks on these points. Any pursuit of a neutral common template for comparison is seriously challenged by the variety of intellectual developments which in a very general sense go under the headline of postmodernism.6 Both the existence of a template and the assumption that it does not violate the integrity of the traditions compared have implications which might not agree with Haight’s intentions. The assumption of a common template which suits every form of Christian community implies that the variety of traditions is a mere surface for a decontextualized common structure behind the diversity. The ability to work with such a template would furthermore imply that the person engaging in the reflection has direct, unmediated access to the template. A direct, unmediated access implies the existence of a universal decontextualized rationality. Both of these implications seem to contradict Haight’s attempt to build an ecclesiology ‘from below’.7 To the second question of whether it is possible that ecclesiologies are different beyond comparison the ecumenical context does not provide an unambiguous

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answer. Neither can it be taken for granted that agreeing to live with irreconcilable differences would immediately imply saying no to ecumenical ideals. This question has emerged especially in the discussions over whether there exists a fundamental consensus among various Christian communities or whether one should rather speak of a fundamental difference and be content with such.8 Although ‘fundamental difference’ is often perceived as a sign of a permanent obstacle to the unity of the church there are grounds to argue the exact opposite. For example, George Lindbeck has proposed that different Christian traditions are different to the extent that one tradition cannot be completely translated into the language of the other. Because the discursive and non-discursive symbols of a tradition are dependent on the context in which they are used, an attempt to decontextualize individual elements of the tradition is bound to distort it.9 (2) A historical-critical understanding of the development of doctrine has become one of the common assumptions of ecumenical methodology. Therefore an approach that situates ecclesiologies within their appropriate historical and theological context is ecumenically most welcomed. Still Haight’s assertion that ‘differences among the churches and their ecclesiologies are largely a product of history’10 is rather bold. Putting such strong emphasis on historical developments runs the risk of excluding the influence of those theological or intellectual frameworks through which the historical events are conceptualized.11 At the same time Haight’s emphasis on the concrete praxis of the church is something that echoes current ecumenical concerns. Many argue, like Haight, that what the church truly is can be seen in the concrete actions of individuals and communities. The concrete praxis of the churches is set up against ‘doctrine’, which in turn is perceived as something theoretical, abstract and appealing only to the cognitive faculties of the human mind. I would like to suggest that upholding the theory–praxis dichotomy no longer seems like an ecumenically viable option. It should be possible to agree with Haight in saying that ‘the praxis often reveals more about the nature of the church than what the church says about itself’ and that ‘[a]n actual pastoral practice may contradict or subvert an explicit doctrine’, without perceiving doctrine and practice as simple either–or options.12 (3) One of the prominent ideas of ecumenism has been that the unity of the church does not denote uniformity but ‘unity in difference’. The call for a rich, pluriform understanding of the church is essential for the ecumenical movement.13 This is again something held in common with the project of comparative ecclesiology. Haight proposes historical ecclesiology which ‘continually looks for the substantial unity of the church across its historical differentiations’. Pluralism in this view can be understood in a ‘non-toxic and positive way’; differences are appropriated and not raised up as obstacles to unity.14 However, once again, despite initial similarities, some of the critical methodological distinctions often made in ecumenical theology are absent. These are as follows: a.

One Church, many churches: One distinction frequently used in ecumenical theology distinguishes between the one Church and a variety of churches, the one Tradition and a variety of traditions and even within traditions between different ecclesial and theological traditions. From an

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Minna Hietama¨ki ecumenical point of view it is important to clarify on which level one is arguing. In Haight’s thought does ‘diversity of ecclesiologies’ equate to diversity of churches, ecclesial traditions or theological traditions?15 A view where ecclesial tradition is identified with one ecclesiology seems unnecessarily reductionist. Similarly puzzling is Haight’s claim that ‘it is simply no longer possible to think a single church could carry the full flow of Christian life in a single organizational form’.16 The question of how much unity and what kind the church needs on the organizational level is ecumenically difficult. Haight consciously does not make a distinction between the church as a believed reality and the churches which, in the current historical context, exist in the form of separate entities with differing confessional identities. Therefore it becomes difficult to assess both his remark on the ‘single church’ representing the ‘full flow of Christian life’ and the consequent assertion on the ‘single organizational form’. If a ‘single church’ is used in reference to a denomination with particular confessional identity, as Haight does, then we must wholeheartedly agree with Haight’s proposal. At the same time it is a fundamental ecumenical hope to strive for a single church that would embrace the full diversity of Christian life. The question of ecclesial structures is often dealt with in the framework of ‘visible unity’ as an ecumenical goal. Although this is in many ways an appropriate context for questions of church structure one should avoid equating these two questions.17 b. A related distinction is that between enriching and church-dividing differences. The church’s unity is a unity in diversity. Indiscriminate diversity is nevertheless not a value in itself. There are also differences which grow out of indifference and misunderstanding, even sin. Using Haight’s words one can say that the ‘multicoloured tapestry of ecclesiologies’ can become, and many times has become, a distorted one. An essential question in ecumenical endeavours is how to distinguish between enriching and church-dividing differences. A significant difference between Haight’s project of Christian community in history and much ecumenical literature is that ecumenical theology does clearly recognize both the possibility and the real existence of church-dividing differences. Therefore ecumenical theology operates constantly in a state of tension created on the one hand by the belief that oneness is a fundamental character of the church and on the other hand by the recognition that the Christian community is divided. The final pages of the second volume (Comparative Ecclesiology) makes an explicit reference to the question at the heart of all ecumenical work. Haight writes: Of course, what is important for some may be trivial for others in matters of authority, doctrine, ethical norms, and moral practices. But for the churches to remain in communion with each other, or even in touch with each other, attitudes, conceptual frameworks, and church law will have to be fashioned in a way that allows churches to find in others what they share in a common transcendent faith despite serious differences.18

Keeping in mind this imperative I now turn to two bilateral dialogue documents from the Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue for examples on how to cope with

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‘serious differences’ while reaching towards communion. My presentation will focus on two elements. I will firstly pay attention to how the documents perceive the historical character of Christian community and secondly what are the consequences of the church’s historicity on the perceived diversity in the churches. By focusing upon these two elements I hope to bring Roger Haight’s proposal for Christian community in history into dialogue with two recent examples of ecumenical theology.

B. Examples from Communio Sanctorum (2000) and The Church as Koinonia of Salvation (2004) The two examples of Communio Sanctorum19 and The Church as Koinonia of Salvation20 are chosen for two reasons. Firstly, both of them take the communio/ koinonia character of the church as their starting point. This means that both of them, as with Haight, deal with ecclesiology/ecclesiologies of a specific communion. Both documents emphasize the ecumenical conviction that unity belongs to the nature of the church in a way that justifies doing theology for the one church even at a time when this oneness has not yet been realized. Secondly, both of the documents attempt to work with a differentiated or nuanced form of consensus. This means that both documents aim at being sensitive through their speaking about the church in a way which would not suppress the existence of enriching diversity.

Communio Sanctorum Communio Sanctorum takes the notion of ‘the communion of saints’ as the point of orientation in discussing ecclesiology. This common point of orientation is used to bring statements from Lutheran and Catholic doctrinal tradition into a positive relationship with the positions of the other. This method of locating theological traditions in a common theological framework aims at revealing commonalities without assimilating differing approaches. The goal ‘is not a consensus in the sense of a complete identity of opinion but a ‘‘differentiated consensus’’ ’.21 Historical Developments in the Church Communio Sanctorum assumes that not all times in history are equal in how normative the developments are to the whole church. The church of early Christianity is a ‘faith witness for the world and an example for the church in its further path’.22 In constant interpretation and reinterpretation the church guards the ‘fundamental experience of the early church’ by ‘testing’ and ‘discernment of the spirits’ and in trust in the work of the Holy Spirit.23 The church is thus open for historical developments but not in an unlimited way; the ‘fundamental content of faith’ has also a ‘fundamental shape’, i.e. the testimony of the first witnesses within the communion of the church.24

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Differences within One Community The basic ecclesiological starting point and frame of reference is the communio of Christians. The unity of this communion is based on both beliefs and practices of different grades of commonality. The way towards ‘full communion’ is through ‘growth in consensus’. This goal is advanced through (1) clarification of standpoints, (2) relating theological statements of the other side to one’s own faith, and (3) continuous recognition that Jesus Christ is the common centre of faith.25 The one Christian community is by no means uniform. At the same time the legitimate diversity is not accidental. Divergent developments in theology and piety are discerned in the light of the scriptures. This evaluation does not result in uniform theology or piety. The document speaks of basic statements that are agreed upon in common and a variety of practices which do not need to be adopted but which, through their agreement with the scriptures, become accessible to both Catholics and Lutherans.26 It should be noted that the accessibility of the practices of the other is not made possible by comparing practices as such. The comparison is referential in the sense that it does not take place on the level of appearances but in reference to an authority which is in a sense external to the practice, i.e. the scriptures. At the same time the scriptures are not alien to the practices but are their very foundation. Therefore of the three above-mentioned methods to advance growth in consensus it is the third one, the recognition of Jesus Christ as the common centre of faith, that is primary. It is this recognition that makes it possible to relate the theological statements of the other to one’s own faith. Three short examples demonstrate how this accessibility is sought for, when it is judged to be accomplished, and what the consequences for the desired consensus are. The first example demonstrates the weakest form of agreement which is found to exist in relation to the sacraments. The second form of agreement is strong but conditional. Finally, the third form of agreement gives an example of a strong, fundamental agreement. (1) A very weak agreement on the sacraments: Far-reaching commonalities with differing uses of concepts The argument for an agreement on sacraments starts with a comparison between Roman Catholic and Lutheran use of theological language and sacramental/ liturgical practices. This comparison of theological language and sacramental and/ or liturgical practices concludes the following. . Roman Catholic theology recognizes seven sacraments which can be divided into major and minor sacraments.27 . Lutheran theology recognizes two sacraments. Lutheran ecclesial praxis includes liturgical practices which correspond with what Roman Catholic theology calls ‘minor sacraments’.28 . Baptism and Eucharist stand out in both Lutheran and Roman Catholic theology because of their fundamental significance for the reception of salvation. Additional sacraments/liturgical actions are oriented towards Baptism and Eucharist.29

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The Lutheran and Roman Catholic theological use of ‘sacrament’ is motivated by differing concerns. Roman Catholic theology is concerned with the fullness of the ways in which God’s grace reaches humans at existentially meaningful points in their lives. Lutheran perception of sacrament is motivated by the fundamental relevance associated with Baptism and Eucharist. Additional liturgical acts are understood as ‘blessings’. At this point, the two churches do not have a common ground for judging the differing practices. They can recognize the corresponding practical structures and trace their historical roots. Nevertheless they are unable to decide whether ‘sacraments’ and ‘acts of blessing’ can coincide in one ‘differentiated concept of sacrament’. Therefore, there is in fact no basic consensus on the sacraments but only some commonalities in practices and in the use of language. (2) A (strong but conditional) material agreement on the church The argument in favour of an agreement on the church starts with a common confession on the church.30 Unlike in the case of sacraments in general, in reference to the church the Lutherans and Catholics both can make a common confession on the essential nature of the church and can find similarities in the theological explications. Lutherans and Catholics nevertheless explicate what they in common confess with the help of differing theological concepts and approaches.31 These confessionally differing theologies on the church can be made intelligible to the other by explaining their particularities in reference to what both hold in common. The method here is comparative but the comparison does not take place with the help of an external template. Also, the comparison does not aim at producing objective information and does not concentrate on theological structures or practices. The comparison takes places between the confessionally differing theologies on the one hand and the commonly held beliefs fundamental to the theological understanding of the church on the other. The comparison is not strictly objective. It aims at being critical towards any onesidedness or distortions that might have developed in the confessionally differing theologies. It is important to note the difference between the comparative method as it is applied to the sacraments and to the church. The agreement on sacraments starts with a comparison of the variety of manifestations and through that comparison seeks to find commonalities in use and meaning. The agreement on the church starts with common confession and proceeds from this confession to the differing theological explications. The theological explications are then considered legitimate if they can be understood in the sense of what the churches in this document can together state. The agreement can therefore be described as a strong but conditional. (3) (Strong) fundamental agreement on justification The argument starts by describing the centrality of the doctrine of justification for Lutheran–Roman Catholic relations. Both the Lutheran and the Roman Catholic churches pronounced condemnations on the basis of how a Christian community relates to the doctrine of justification.32 Referring to the earlier agreements on justification the document can state that these condemnations do not any more

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divide Catholics from Lutherans. Therefore the document can recognize a basic consensus upon the doctrine of justification. This basic consensus is evident in the shared understanding of the biblical message of justification.33 This shared understanding recognizes differing interpretations in the theological understanding of how salvation is brought to humans within the scriptures. It also observes that differing Christian communions have had and still have theologies of salvation which are different but at the same time are both based on the scriptures. What differences remain are due to differing theological emphases or concerns which have shaped the Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologies of justification. The sixteenth-century reformers emphasized the comforting power of the gospel, making a clearer distinction between justification and sanctification. Roman Catholic theology of the time feared that this distinction would neglect sanctification and stressed the transforming character of justifying grace. Explicating the interrelations of these differing aspects allows the Lutherans and Roman Catholics to express a common understanding on the doctrine of justification.34 The interrelations of differing concerns are perceived from the viewpoint of commonly held beliefs. This is the context within which the comparison of differing manifestations can be brought into a non-conflicting and mutually enriching relation. The Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Its Structures and Ministries The Church as Koinonia of Salvation uses the notion of koinonia as the main interpretative focus or lens of ecclesiology. The document makes a clear distinction between the concepts of koinonia and communio. Of these two the document chooses koinonia both because of its neutrality and because it is part of the common theological heritage of the churches. Although the notion of koinonia occurs frequently in the Bible it was not prominent in sixteenth-century theology and has thus not been burdened with polemical connotations. At the same time koinonia is a theologically pregnant concept. It is immediately connected to how humans are made partakers of salvation, i.e. through sharing in the relations between the triune God, the individual Christian and the church. Thus the notion of koinonia unfolds in three theological propositions: the church shares in salvation; the church shares salvation with others; and the church is a community shaped by salvation.35 With the help of these theological propositions the document aims to support ‘an argument for a fresh vision of how structures and ministry can be understood’.36 This fresh vision is a call for a mutual learning process. Each of the churches with their particular ministerial and institutional structures challenges the other to consider the practical benefits and shortcomings, and the theological justification of their own respective ecclesiological understanding. Both churches are called ‘to repentance and greater fidelity to the gospel’.37 Historical Developments in the Church In viewing the historical developments of the church The Church as Koinonia of Salvation focuses on the role of various

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ecclesiological principles which have contributed to the shaping of the church(es). These theological principles are not static but vary, as do their practical consequences. The document is heavily focused upon the contemporary situation. It asks what structures and ministries might look like if Lutherans and Catholics take koinonia ecclesiology as their common starting point. How do they relate to each other and how could Lutherans and Catholics more fully recognize the church’s existence at various levels of the church’s life? It is important to note that the document quite consciously opts for the notion of koinonia and not, for example, communio. It is also a peculiarity of this document to make such a clear distinction between these two concepts. The distinction is made for two reasons. The document aims, firstly, to employ biblical concepts which were not used in the theological polemics of the sixteenth century. Secondly, the document appears to value the less definitive character of the notion of koinonia. The notion of koinonia is preferred because it embraces all those who share in justification; that is, all the faithful. It offers a way of entering into ecclesiology from the viewpoint of all those that share in salvation. Koinonia, then, is the starting point for describing the church, its ‘ministries’, structures and so forth proceeding from this.38 Differences within One Community The Church as Koinonia of Salvation aims at demonstrating a theologically legitimate plurality of ecclesial structures. The method of demonstrating theological legitimacy proceeds in two phases. In the first phase the document compares Lutheran and Catholic ecclesial structures. In the second phase these structures are viewed through the notion of koinonia. Both of these two phases work with a specific form of conceptual pairing. The first pairing concerns the choice of koinonia as the hermeneutical principle of ecclesiology. With this choice the document methodologically pairs koinonia with justification based on their theological substance. Koinonia is understood as a community of those justified and justification as a union of the individual with Christ and participation in the triune life. Understood as such, justification is deemed to be right at the heart of the church’s being a koinonia.39 The second pairing takes place at the level of visible structures. This pairing is supported by a historical investigation into the variety of ecclesiologies in the early church. Already the ecclesial self-understanding of the early church was ‘differentiated’ in the sense that it provides a fertile ground for differing conceptual and structural developments. As a historical fact these differing developments took place. Recognizing the early church as one of the original sources of the factual diversity allows the document to exclude the goal of ecclesial uniformity. Excluding uniformity as a goal is here not a question of mere tolerance. The existence of differences is understood as a necessity. This is because the differing aspects emphasized in Lutheran and Catholic ecclesiologies are perceived to represent two instances of a theologically normative pair. Taken together they represent a theologically inclusive understanding of the church. Although this second form of pairing considers ecclesial structures, it does not argue primarily on the correspondence of factual structures. Ecclesial structures are observed through the ‘lens’ of koinonia, i.e. how the church as a structured community shares in salvation, shares salvation and is being shaped by salvation.40

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The lens of koinonia is a critical lens; it observes ecclesial structures from the viewpoint of salvation. Through the pairing of koinonia and justification this hermeneutical use of koinonia implies the use of the doctrine of justification as a criterion. Relations within a ‘koinonia’, i.e. when observed through the lens of koinonia, appear in a particular light. They are not constructed by identity, similarity or equality but characterized more as a relation of ‘differentiated unity’.41 Accordingly, the comparison does not assume a strict similarity between what is compared. On the contrary, what is compared are two differing aspects of a particular element of koinonia. These two aspects are brought together in a normative relation where the existence of one assumes the existence of the other. This normative complementarity is a relation which neither discharges differences nor separates the differentiated aspects from each other. Differences in a relation of normative complementary have among other things a pedagogical purpose. They challenge the theology of the other communion to become stronger on those points which are currently weaker. The following two examples will demonstrate the application of ‘normative complementarity’ in the areas of ecclesial structures and ecclesial ministries. (1) Ecclesial structures The document proceeds to investigate the complementarity of Lutheran and Roman Catholic ecclesial structures from a common description of ‘local church’. Both of the churches agree on the description of local church but differ in its application and in the theological understanding of its realizations; while both of the churches agree that local church means a church which ‘has everything it needs to be church in its own situation’, the Lutherans would by this description mean a congregation and Catholics a diocese.42 Despite these differences both of the churches recognize the necessity of both the immediate face-to-face community where the word is preached and the sacraments administered and a larger regional community. Therefore The Church as Koinonia can conclude that both of the churches ‘have each grasped an essential dimension of the church’.43 Though the churches differ on defining the local church in the theological sense, the institutional reality of both churches comprises both of these elements and the differing theological explications serve as challenges to the other church to develop further their theological understanding of the elements that currently receive less emphasis.44 This is, according to The Church as Koinonia, enough to suggest that the pairing of these two levels could be normative and thus ‘the exclusive prioritizing of either the regional or the geographically local is a false alternative’. The realizations, to be complete, should include both the aspects of immediate physical gathering of people around the pulpit and the altar, and the expression of the catholicity and diversity of the koinonia of these gatherings.45 In terms of ecclesial structures, the local and regional levels of ecclesial life are perceived to exist in an interdependent relation. Interdependence here means that neither the immediate face-to-face community nor the regional communities can exist without the other. It is true to say that the basic unit of church, i.e. the place where church is ‘essentially realized’ is the face-to-face community where the

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gospel is proclaimed in word and sacrament. But it is at the same time true to say that the catholicity which is essential to the ecclesial nature of the church is realized only in koinonia with other communities. Therefore the Church as Koinonia concludes: ‘the complementarity of face-to-face eucharistic assembly and primary regional community is . . . theologically normative’.46 The ecclesial structures remain intrinsically interdependent despite differences in their theological explication. These differences which consider especially the relation and theological definitions of parish/congregation and synod/diocese remain challenging, especially because they are paralleled by differences in understanding ministry. (2) Ministerial structures The normative complementarity of ministries follows from the theologically normative pairing of the primary and regional communities.47 All the three theologically elaborated levels (local, regional, universal) of ecclesial structure are paralleled by a specific ministry to serve the koinonia of the church on this particular level. The discussion on ministry concentrates mainly on two themes, firstly on the question of the necessity of differing ministries and secondly on the differing theological understandings of the relationship between the presbyter/ priest and the bishop. Koinonia as mutual and reciprocal sharing gives a fresh outlook on considering the relationship between ministry and ecclesial community. Ministry is perceived to exist in service of the koinonia or community.48 Ministry is thus dependent on the ecclesial structures as its servant. At the same time any form of koinonia is founded in sharing the word and the sacrament which presumes the existence of ministry. Ministry is thus a central, even essential, element of koinonia.49 Through the lens of koinonia the ministerial and ecclesial structures are put into a position of mutual dependency in which neither can stand without the other and where the question of theological primacy is turned into theological mutuality. For example, the relationship between the presbyter/priest and bishop reflects the necessary but complementary difference between the two forms of face-to-face and regional community. The idea of mutual complementarity is used to overcome problems arising from the Lutherans and Catholics traditionally giving theological priority respectively to the presbyter/priest or to the bishop. The interdependence of these two kinds of ministries mirrors the interdependence of the face-to-face communities and the wider communion of these communities. Based on this relation of interdependence, both of the ecclesial structures and of ministries, the confessionally specific theological views are judged complementary. In the case of ministries this complementarity means that both the primacy of the presbyter and of the bishop can be theologically justified without the theological justifications being mutually exclusive. In other words episcopal ministry can be perceived as ‘fuller’ ministry because it expresses the unity of the communion of communities in a way not possible for any individual communion. At the same time the ministry of the presbyter/priest can be perceived as a more fundamental ministry since it serves the actual face-to-face community where the gospel is proclaimed in word and

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sacrament.50 Also the complementarity of bishop and presbyter/priest is constructed through the ministries being essentially service to the koinonia; the bishop as serving the unity of the communion and the presbyter/priest as serving the proclamation of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. Comparative Method in Communio Sanctorum and The Church As Koinonia of Salvation or What More does the Oikoumene Need? Both Communio Sanctorum and The Church as Koinonia of Salvation use comparative method(s) as part of their argumentation. Both documents facilitate the comparison by taking an ecclesiological concept as an interpretative focus. For Communio Sanctorum this is the communion of saints, for The Church as Koinonia of Salvation, koinonia. The documents do have a slightly different emphasis in their approach. Communio Sanctorum tends to emphasize more the normative character of beliefs, and notes a consensus if the differing practices or theological conceptualizations find a common reference point which can be used to judge the legitimacy of differences. The Church as Koinonia of Salvation speaks of the plurality of the essential dimensions of the church and the consequent normative complementarity of theological traditions. In both cases the introduction of a theological interpretative viewpoint changes the tone of the comparison. It ceases to be descriptive and becomes normative. It is not judgemental in the sense of judging one theology by means of the other. But it is critical in the sense of observing both theologies critically in the light of a commonly found principle. Although the first step of perceiving the other most certainly must be nonjudgemental, it is an ecumenical conviction held in common that none of the churches today are what they should be and thus the way forward is a way of conversion. This is a way of critical assessment and eventually change of hearts, minds and practices.51 Both Communio Sanctorum and The Church as Koinonia of Salvation show that the church’s interpretative enterprise is not only a reaction to the factual (historical, sociological, etc.) realities but it also actively reconstructs the perceived reality. This, in my opinion, has two kinds of consequences. It calls for a critical and self-critical approach to history and ecclesial traditions and makes possible a constructive theological endeavour. This constructive endeavour aims at theological approaches which do not cover but recognize differences and critically attempt to discern the legitimate and enriching differences from those that are illegitimate and destructive for the communion. Most importantly, it facilitates communication between differing theological thought forms, even if, and especially if they are different beyond comparison.52 Roger Haight’s proposal that ‘the churches have to consciously and formally accept pluralism as the characteristic of being in the world’ and that this plurality does not consider only peripheral but also the ‘substantial truths or practices’ echoes the concerns of contemporary ecumenical theology.53 From an ecumenical point of view comparative ecclesiology is more than adequate. It is a necessary, if not entirely sufficient, method in the churches’ striving towards ecclesial unity. In

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view of recent ecumenical ecclesiological documents it is evident that what is needed is nothing less than a critical and self-critical constructive ecclesiology.

Notes 1. This principle is manifested clearly in a hermeneutically conscious ecumenism. For an example of this see, e.g., A Treasure in Earthen Vessels: An Instrument for an Ecumenical Reflection on Hermeneutics, vol. 182, Faith and Order Paper (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1998). 2. Haight (Christian Community in History, vol. I: Historical Ecclesiology, New York: Continuum, 2004) writes: ‘To repeat formulas from the past in new situations changes their meaning; the exercise of old precepts in new situations can have revolutionary consequences. One cannot simply repeat the past to preserve it; one must constantly reinterpret it. The church in fact necessarily does this, whether consciously or not’ (p. 340). 3. Well exemplified by the speech of the Bishop of Bombay: ‘We must look at the whole Church from above, not from within our own section. Try to see the whole separated Church as it now is, through God’s eyes, not our own.’ Quoted in Edward S. Woods, Lausanne 1927, an Interpretation of the World Conference on Faith and Order Held at Lausanne August 3–21, 1927 (London: SCM, 1927), p. 63. 4. Edmund Schlink, ‘The Task of Faith and Order in a Pilgrim Church’, in The Third World Conference on Faith and Order, ed. O. S. Tomkins (London: SCM, 1953), pp. 157, 251. ‘Comparative ecclesiology consists in analyzing and portraying in an organized or systematic way two or more different ecclesiologies so that they can be compared’ (Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology (New York: Continuum, 2005), p. 4).

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

A (third) feature of comparative ecclesiology consists in the strategy of organizing and presenting the thought of different theologians according to a common pattern or template . . . This hermeneutical device is not reductive, however, but gives an explicit place to theological self-understanding and interpretation. This pattern serves as a bridge for comparison and contrast, even when that task is not undertaken formally and methodically. But this interpretive superstructure does risk distorting a particular author since it may block from view the genesis of thought or a perspective or approach that may be crucial for understanding the particular genius of a given ecclesiology. (Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology, p. 6) A definition of what ‘postmodernity’ actually is, is notoriously missing. For a recent introduction to the question from a theological point of view see Stanley J. Grenz and John J. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville, KY: Westminister/John Knox Press, 2001), pp. 18–27. For arguments against decontextual rationality and unmediated access from ecumenical discourse see, e.g., Ingolf Dalferth, ‘Representing God’s Presence’, International Journal of ¨ kumene. U ¨ ber das Systematic Theology 3 (3) (2001): 237–56; Christoph Schwo¨bel, ‘Gottes O Verha¨ltnis von Kirchengemeinschaft und Gottesversta¨ndnis’, in Befreiende Wahrheit, FS Eilert Herms, ed. Wilfried Ha¨rle et al. (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 2000), pp. 449–66. For an extensive study see Andre´ Birmele´ and Harding Meyer (eds), Grundkonsens¨ kumenische Forschung. Ergebnisse Grunddifferenz, Studie des Strassburger Instituts fu¨r O und Dokumente (Frankfurt am Main, Paderborn: Otto Lembeck, Bonifatius, 1992). George A. Lindbeck, ‘Justification and Atonement: An Ecumenical Trajectory’, in By Faith Alone: Essays in Honor of Gerhard O. Forde, ed. Mark Kolden and J. A. Burgess (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 183–219, see especially footnote 39. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology, p. 4.

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10. Cf. Bradford E. Hinze, ‘Roger Haight’s Historical Ecclesiology’, review of Christian Community in History, vols 1–2, Religious Studies Review 32 (2) (2006): 81–5, 83. See Chapter 2 of this present volume. 11. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology, p. 50. 12. See, e.g., Harding Meyer, That All May Be One: Perceptions and Models of Ecumenicity, trans. William G. Rusch (Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 47–54. 13. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. I: Historical Ecclesiology, p. 264, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology, p. 8. 14. The question arises, for example, from the following introduction to the project of comparative ecclesiology:

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

. . . not to stress differences among ecclesiologies but rather, after having displayed them in their difference, to see each one as part of the one tradition of the whole church . . . Differences are the first accent, but they cannot be the final word . . . the second volume which consists in laying down one after the other successive ecclesiologies, leaving implicit discussion of their differences, but building a large horizon for understanding the depth of a tradition that can sustain many different arrangements within the one church. The church has become a muticolored tapestry of ecclesiologies, or a large river that has branched out in the delta of the sixteenth century, so that it is simply no longer possible to think that a single church could carry the full flow of Christian life in a single organizational form. (Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology, p. 7) Ibid. Meyer provides a good introduction to these questions in Meyer, That All May Be One, pp. 10–15. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology, p. 497. Communio Sanctorum: Die Kirche als Gemeinschaft der Heiligen, (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2000), Communio Sanctorum: The Church as the Communion of Saints, trans. M. Root, M. W. Jeske and D. R. Smith (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004). The Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Lutherans and Roman Catholics in Dialogue, vol. 10 (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Bishops Conference, 2004). Communio Sanctorum, Foreword (viii–ix). Communio Sanctorum refers with ‘differentiated consensus’ to the model of consensus in difference proposed in the German study Lehrverurteilungen-Kirchentrenned?, vol. I: Rechtfertigung, Sakramente und Amt im Zeitalter der Reformation und Heute, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg and Karl Lehmann, (Freiburg im Breisgau, Go¨ttingen: Herder, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986). Although the Lehrverurteilungen study does outline a form of consensus in difference, the concept ‘differentiated consensus’ itself does not appear in this study but was introduced later in the Joint Declaration on the doctrine of Justification. Communio Sanctorum, p. 20. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., p. 270. Ibid., pp. 271–2. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., p. 83. Ibid., p. 84. Ibid., p. 86. Ibid., p. 87–8. Ibid., pp. 91–2. Ibid., pp. 93–109. Ibid., p. 110. The Church as Koinonia of Salvation, p. 10. Ibid., p. 8.

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37. Ibid., p. 9. 38. Ibid., pp. 14, 19. 39. ‘. . . our analysis moves from Christ and the gospel of salvation to koinonia, We understand this gospel particularly as the message justification by grace through faith, and treat koinonia as a lens through which to view ecclesiology and ministries of those ordained, within the whole people of God’ (ibid., p. 7). 40. Ibid., pp. 11–13. 41. Cf. George Hunsinger’s description of ‘koinonia-relations’ in George Hunsinger, ‘Baptism and the Soteriology of Forgiveness’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 2 (3) (2000): 249–69; George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 258–61. 42. The Church as Koinonia of Salvation, pp. 21–2, 34. At this point The Church as Koinonia of Salvation offers a wider interpretation of apostolicity where the ecclesial character of a Christian communion is handed over not only by the historical continuity of a particular ministry but also by the continuous proclamation of the Word of God. Ibid., pp. 23–31. 43. Ibid., p. 83. 44. Ibid., p. 87. 45. Ibid., pp. 28, 33. 46. Ibid., p. 91. 47. Ibid., p. 94. 48. Here The Church as Koinonia diverges from the more common way of approaching ministry as service to the Word of God. By defining the ministry as ministry to the koinonia of salvation, The Church as Koinonia manages to go around the question of ministry of all baptized and its relationship to ordained ministry. Ministry is not detached from the community of all believers but motivation for the ministry is different: ‘All structures and ministries, as instruments of koinonia, serve God’s people. Whatever is said, then, of ‘‘koinonia ecclesiology’’ and ‘‘ministry in service of community’’ is to be embedded in this context: the people of God, all Christian believers’ (ibid., p. 19). For example, the 1970s document Eucharist and Ministry approaches ministry from the viewpoint of the church’s mission to proclaim the gospel. Consequently ‘ministry’ is defined as a task or service of the whole church to the Word. The document distinguishes between ‘ministry’ as the general calling of all people and ‘Ministry’ as a particular function, calling or gift within the church’s general mission to the world. See Eucharist and Ministry, Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue 4 (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, 1970), p. 9. 49. The Church as Koinonia of Salvation, p. 82. 50. Ibid., p. 93. 51. This call is most clearly visible in the Groupe des Dombes publication For the Conversion of the Churches (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1993). 52. Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue has investigated structures of ‘compatibility’, ‘correspondence’ or ‘complementarity’ in various forms. Lack of correspondence due to an absence of theological category might be considered an obstacle of the ecumenical project. I am here referring to an ‘incommensurability’ of theological approaches of a more profane sense such as employed by George Lindbeck in Lindbeck, ‘Justification and Atonement: An Ecumenical Trajectory’, 201, footnote 39. 53. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology, p. 497.

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Minna Hietama¨ki Recommended Reading

Birmele´, Andre´ and Harding Meyer (eds), Grundkonsens-Grunddifferenz, Studie ¨ kumenische Forschung. Ergebnisse und des Strassburger Instituts fu¨r O Dokumente (Frankfurt am Main, Paderborn: Otto Lembeck, Bonifatius, 1992). The Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Lutherans and Roman Catholics in Dialogue, vol. 10 (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Bishops Conference, 2004). Communio Sanctorum: Die Kirche als Gemeinschaft der Heiligen (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2000). Communio Sanctorum: The Church as the Communion of Saints, trans. M. Root, M. W. Jeske and D. R. Smith (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004). Dalferth, Ingolf, ‘Representing God’s Presence’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 3 (3) (2001): 237–56. Eucharist and Ministry, Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue 4 (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, 1970). Grenz, Stanley J. and John J. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville, KY: Westminister/John Knox Press, 2001). Haight, Roger, Christian Community in History, 2 vols, vol. I: Historical Ecclesiology (New York: Continuum, 2004). —— , Christian Community in History, 2 vols, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology (New York: Continuum, 2005). Hinze, Bradford E., ‘Roger Haight’s Historical Ecclesiology’, review of Christian Community in History, vols 1–2, Religious Studies Review 32 (2) (2006): 81–5. Hunsinger, George, ‘Baptism and the Soteriology of Forgiveness’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 2 (3) (2000): 249–69. —— , Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000). Lehrverurteilungen-Kirchentrenned?, vol. I, Rechtfertigung, Sakramente und Amt im Zeitalter der Reformation und Heute, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg and Karl Lehmann (Go¨ttingen: Herder, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986). Lindbeck, George A., ‘Justification and Atonement: An Ecumenical Trajectory’, in By Faith Alone: Essays in Honor of Gerhard O. Forde, ed. Mark Kolden and J. A. Burgess (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 183–219. Mannion, Gerard, Christian Community in History. 2 vols, vol. 1: Historical Ecclesiology, vol. 2: Comparative Ecclesiology. By Roger Haight. Continuum, 2004’, (book review), Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2006): 517–21. Meyer, Harding, That All May Be One: Perceptions and Models of Ecumenicity, trans. William G. Rusch (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1999). Schlink, Edmund, ‘The Task of Faith and Order in a Pilgrim Church’, in The Third World Conference on Faith and Order held at Lund, August 15th to 28th, 1952, ed. Oliver S. Tomkins (London: SCM, 1953), pt 3, ch. 4, pp. 151–73.

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¨ kumene. U ¨ ber das Verha¨ltnis von Schwo¨bel, Christoph, ‘Gottes O Kirchengemeinschaft und Gottesversta¨ndnis’, in Befreiende Wahrheit, Fs Eilert Herms, ed. Wilfried Ha¨rle et al. (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 2000), pp. 449–66. A Treasure in Earthen Vessels: An Instrument for an Ecumenical Reflection on Hermeneutics, vol. 182, Faith and Order Paper (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1998). Woods, Edward S., Lausanne 1927, an Interpretation of the World Conference on Faith and Order Held at Lausanne August 3–21, 1927 (London: SCM, 1927).

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Chapter 6 TOWARDS AN INCLUSIVE COMMUNION ECCLESIOLOGY Ann Caron Central to the vision of reform and renewal of the Second Vatican Council, and on the front burner ever since, is a fundamental question: what is the church, what is it called to be and do, and how can it respond to that calling in a modern, today postmodern, global context?1 Our postmodern world is faced with competing ecclesiologies. Even as the bishops at Vatican II described the church as ‘a foundational sacrament’, the same conciliar documents ‘clearly intended different understandings of ‘‘church’’ ’.2 In fact, significant manifestations of many and various ecclesiologies have emerged in the course of the church’s history. Roger Haight demonstrates this in his three-volume work, Christian Community in History. In the first chapter of Volume I, Historical Ecclesiology, Haight immediately directs the reader’s attention to our postmodern context. Among the several factors that Haight identifies as determining the situation of theology/ecclesiology today, he explicitly mentions ‘the experience and situation of women’.3 His referent is to the late twentieth-century women’s movement and to women’s profound experiences of oppression. A root cause of oppression in the global community and in churches is the reality of patriarchy and patriarchal structures. I have tentatively titled this essay, ‘Towards an Inclusive Communion Ecclesiology’, bearing in mind the significant developments of communion ecclesiologies over the last decades and the continuing struggles of women and men for more participatory structures of church governance. I suggest that the iconic model of ‘trinitarian-communion ecclesiology’ holds a potential for the Roman Catholic church to release its hold on patriarchal structures. I locate that potential in the renewal of the post-Vatican II communion ecclesiology and in certain developments of Christian feminist spirituality and theology. I approach the topic as a Roman Catholic theologian with particular interest in the conversation of women, ministry and church structures. I will proceed in three steps. I begin with the Second Vatican Council and women as church. Second I overview the developments in ecclesial lay ministry in the last four decades and in particular the 2005 statement of the American Catholic Bishops, Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord. This statement offers a concrete example from which to consider an ecclesiology of trinitarian-communion and the issue of patriarchal

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structures. In the third and final section I offer theological ‘talking points’ for a continuing conversation in response to the question is participatory governance and ‘a church without patriarchal structures possible’ – towards an inclusive ecclesial communion?

1. The Second Vatican Council and the Women’s Movement The Issue in Context The Second Vatican Council both opened the way for a shift in the church’s understanding of itself and ministry, while at the same time maintaining a hierarchal character and lay–clergy distinctions. In her article, ‘Vatican II and the Role of Women’, Harriet A. Luckman contends that Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), which was concurrent with society’s growing need to address women’s issues and racial issues in forming a more just society, should have opened the door for the church to encounter the wisdom of the times with regard to women and the church. Further, the council’s commitment to ecumenical dialogue should have also opened the door for granting women positions of greater leadership, responsibility and authority within the Roman Catholic church. Indeed, many at that time even believed that the Vatican would permit women’s ordination in the Catholic church. Nevertheless, writes Luckman, ‘despite what seemed obvious to many in the conciliar teaching on the church, the ministry of the laity, on the critical relationship of the church with culture in the pursuit of justice, and on ecumenism, the Catholic hierarchy did not move church practice in the direction many thought was required by those new teachings’.4 More than forty years after the council and in the angst of the recent clergy sexual abuse cases, especially in the United States, Lisa Sowell Cahill, a Roman Catholic theologian, offers several pertinent insights on the concerns of US Catholic women and men observing, in particular, how both women and men today want a more participatory church.5 As Elisa Rinere explains, ‘Even though the council so significantly altered the concept of mission for the whole Church, it did not significantly alter the structures through which ministry would be carried out.’6 Patriarchal church structures remain a cause of pain, alienation and deep concern for many women (and also for a growing number of men) as women and men have become more attentive to leadership styles and to the oppression caused by the ideology of patriarchy. Mary E. Himes also captures the problem in her essay ‘Community for Liberation’, when she emphasizes that ‘church traditions and structures seem intractably patriarchal and hierarchical and church documents continue to legitimize the exclusion of women from important areas of church life, especially from leadership roles, simply because they are women’.7 Consequently, ecclesiology has been called ‘one of the most neuralgic areas of theological engagement for Christian feminists in general and theologians in particular’.8

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Even so, over several decades women like Joan Chittister, Denise Carmody, Mary Collins, Sandra Schneiders, Elisabeth Schu¨ssler Fiorenza, Letty Russell and Elizabeth A. Johnson – to name only a few of the countless women who could be named – have worked tirelessly to open the institutional church and its ministries to the vocations and gifts of women. Sandra Schneiders offers a very fitting image to symbolize their efforts. She proposes that they ‘are pushing a Sisyphean boulder of nearly eighteen hundred years’ weight up the great hill of a fiercely defended male power structure’.9 On one hand, any gains have been slight. On the other hand, remarks Schneiders ‘[t]he sheer intensity of male resistance to women’s claim to equality in the Church has precipitated a remarkable output of scholarship in the field of ecclesiology and related areas of theology’.10 Almost every question on the contemporary theological agenda has ramifications in the area of ecclesiology, and the social practice of being church influences every area of discussion.

The Christian Women’s Movement The second wave of the women’s movement in the United States and Europe was concurrent with the Second Vatican Council (1962–65).11 Women were becoming more aware of their identity and history as women and as church, and dreams of political and economic equality with men were revived. In the United States the movement also converged with the struggles of African Americans for civil rights. In the third wave, Christian women became even more attentive to ‘racial and cultural difference and to interactions between human behavior and the plight of the Earth’.12 Feminism itself can be described as ‘a search for justice’.13 In other words, feminist awareness is conscious of the ‘effects of sexism on women, but also of racism, ethnic prejudice, economic classes, and the exploitation of human nature’.14 All are effects of the ideology of patriarchy. What feminists call ‘patriarchy’ and think of pejoratively can be described as ‘rule by men’. In her well-known definition, Gerda Lerner offered this: Patriarchy . . . means the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general. It implies that men hold power in all important institutions of society and that women are deprived of access to such power.15

In one of her early writings, Rosemary Radford Ruether described the promise of the feminist religious revolution in this way: [I]t goes behind the symbolic universe that has been constructed by patriarchal civilization, both in its religious and in its secular forms. It reaches forward to an alternative that can heal the splits between ‘‘masculine and feminine,’’ between ‘‘mind and body,’’ between males and females as gender groups, between society and nature, [and] between races and classes.16

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Catholic feminist analysis began in ecclesial consciousness-raising. Women realized that they were excluded from significant dimensions of the Catholic experience. They further began to realize that their exclusion, marginalization and oppression were not incidental or accidental but structural and systemic. They identified the church as a deeply patriarchal structure, owned and operated by men for their own benefit, and firmly committed to the continued domination of women by men in general and male clerics in particular.17 This social analysis of patriarchy led Christian women to basic theological questions, among them the question at the centre of this essay: is the church patriarchal by merely human or by divine dispensation?18 In other words, is church without patriarchal structures possible?19 Patriarchy has prevailed in most of the Christian churches in most historical periods. It has worked to the neglect of women’s rights, freedoms and joys.20 If ‘twenty-five years ago feminism looked like the revolt of some . . . today in the context of an increasingly postmodern mentality . . . it is seen as a liberationist movement and [indeed] a ‘‘human issue’’ ’.21 Feminist and other scholars have also helped to unearth another picture of church. As Natalie Watson points out, while women have been excluded from some of its most meaningful moments, church has also been the space in which women have been able to develop their own discourses of faith, often against or in spite of patriarchy. In other words church has been ‘a space which has in the past – and continues in the present – to create meaning for women’. Watson recognizes that, ‘[t]he challenge for women at the onset of the third millennium of the existence of the Christian church is to find ways of living and working with this fundamental ambivalence’.22 In fact Watson proposes the reality of ambivalence as the starting point for a feminist reconsideration of ecclesiology ‘to somehow make sense of the reality of oppression and empowerment, of liberation and suffering, of silence and powerful speech at the same time’.23 Feminist theology is often grouped under three major headings: revolutionary feminist theology, reformist Christian feminist theology and revisionist or constructive Christian feminist theology.24 More broadly, however, Christian feminist theology is a liberation theology.

Christian Feminist Theology Feminist constructive theologies are attentive to lived experience inclusive of one’s social location and historical context, and so forth. Many Christian theologians, women and men, incorporate into their theological method both a hermeneutics of suspicion and a hermeneutics of remembrance that opens to new praxis.25 In other words, they are not simply concerned with postmodern methods of deconstruction, important as these are,26 or only with ‘faith seeking understanding’, important as that is too. Constructive theology is an enterprise of building. A constructive feminist theology is committed to the full equality of women with men in the possession of the human nature defined and addressed by God.

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Christian feminist theologians recognize that theology cannot be done without working to overcome those things that conflict with the core Christian message, which affirms the dignity of each person; nor can it be merely an exercise in speculation. Further, any theology inspired by Jesus Christ and his mission must have practical implications and applications.27 Elizabeth A. Johnson offers a guiding vision for feminist theology. This theology is expressed by ‘a new human community based on the values of mutuality and reciprocity’, a community structured neither by domination and subordination nor by sameness but by participation of all ‘according to their gifts, without preconceived stereotyping’.28 Schneiders also describes the Christian feminist vision today as ‘one of universal shalom in God’s reign of justice, peace and truth’. While there have been several significant developments in the church over the past two decades that have positively affected the feminist agenda, Schneiders highlights two: Gospel feminism and women in ministry. In her judgement, perhaps the most important is ‘Gospel feminism’,29 yet the two are not unrelated. Women today claim as their own the agenda of Jesus in the gospel. Schneiders explains that this is not ‘a baptized version of secular feminism’.30 Rather its source is the 1971 Synod of Bishops affirmation that action on behalf of justice is constitutive of preaching the gospel.31 If action on behalf of justice is integral to the preaching of the gospel, then action on behalf of all oppressed groups, including women, is a work of the whole church. As Schneiders notes, this development is the ‘mainstreaming of feminism in the church. . . acting in the heart of the church as Jesus the liberator’.32 From this perspective, argues Schneiders, ‘the feminist message itself is a contemporary incarnation of the gospel’ as well as ‘a primary source of resistance to the attempt of some ecclesiastical officials to delegitimate the feminist endeavor’.33 There is perhaps no clearer image to close my reflections on Christian feminism, theology and patriarchy than Schneiders’s powerful critique, ‘beyond patching’. She asserts: ‘The threadbare and faded cloak of patriarchy is no longer adequate clothing for the body of Christ. It is simply ‘‘beyond patching’’ and must be abandoned once and for all. It cannot be restored or transformed or recycled. Its time is past.’34 In light of the fittingness of this image I will look at the Catholic Church in the USA through the lens of lay ministry and the recent statement by the American bishops titled, Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord. 2. Ministries and the Post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church in the United States The term kairos denotes a time when we come to perceive everything in a new way. Paul J. Philibert maintains that the Catholic Church in the United States is presently in a moment of kairos.35 In the painful and never-ending saga of the sexual abuse scandal and the declining numbers of ordained male clergy, many concerned American Catholics feel that they can no longer go about business as usual. Groups like Voice of the Faithful have been formed in many cities by people

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who want to have a say in how the Catholic community presents itself to the world. Many active and dedicated Catholics are refusing to be passive any longer. In the midst of such pain and angst many also recognize that the US church today is faced with a moment of extraordinary opportunity. In fact a movement has been unfolding since the Second Vatican Council and in response to the vision and spirit of the Council. The US Catholic church is being transformed by the generous involvement of lay ecclesial ministers36 and other institutions sponsored by the Catholic or Religious Congregations.37 There are now approximately equal numbers of ecclesial lay ministers as there are ordained priests working in parishes. In graduate schools and formation programmes for professional ministry there is also approximately an equivalent number who are preparing for ministries. Since 1990 the number of paid lay parish ministers has increased by 53 per cent and the percentage of parishes with salaried lay ministers has increased from 54 per cent to 66 per cent. In the years ahead this ratio of lay ecclesial ministers to ordained ministers is only expected to increase. While women, like men, have always been involved in the apostolate of the church,38 in the last decades an increasing number of women have recognized and nurtured their baptismal gifts.39 Now more than 80 per cent of lay ministers are women; only a quarter of these women are religious sisters.40 This is a great change since the 1970s when most of the positions were held by religious sisters. Women are forming and working in grassroots communities across the country. They are lay leaders of parish churches and parish pastoral ministers, leaders of prayer and spiritual directors, hospital and prison chaplains, and so on. No ministry, with the exception of the formally sacramental ministries, is closed to prepared and qualified lay women and men today. About two-thirds of lay ministers (male and female) are married persons. Again Sandra Schneiders proposes helpful descriptions of women in relation to the church, ministry and Christian feminism. She suggests that the women involved in parish ministries, ‘feminist Catholics’, are ‘pouring immense energy into the reform of life in the grassroots communities of the church . . . they are changing the dominative procedures of the ecclesiastical workplace in the direction of feminist models of cooperation and participation; they are building alternative models of religious community’.41 Schneiders is not alone in noticing energy in their ministry for the transformation of the church. These women are likely among the lay ecclesial ministers mentioned above. She differentiates another group of women as ‘Catholic feminists’. For these women the primary social locale of feminism characterizes and determines ‘the extent and quality of their participation in the Catholic tradition’.42 They find their home in the movement called ‘Womenchurch’. Womenchurch is a movement that originated among Catholic women moving beyond the goal of ordination into a self-understanding as an exodus community, meaning ‘a community not in exile from the church in sectarianism or schism but the community of church ‘‘in exodus from patriarchy’’. Their goal is the full personhood of women, not the maintaining or improving of the religious institution, etc.43 Their spirituality is not the spirituality of mainline

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Christianity.44 Their primary self-location is in the church of women, that is, Womenchurch, ‘whatever other institutional religious affiliations they might maintain’.45 Catholic feminists create rituals which give them life and hope rather than enduring rituals that oppress them. As Schneiders testifies, ‘[t]hey are busy being church rather than trying to reform the male establishment which is usually regarded as church. Even so, they hope good men will join them in reshaping a church for all believers.’46 It is important to recognize that still many other Catholic women today do not identify themselves either as Catholic feminists or as feminist Catholics. Rather, depending on the situation, the issue, the occasion or the participants, they primarily identify with their Catholic tradition or with their feminist affiliation.47 Further ‘feminist Catholics’ and ‘Catholic feminists’ make a complementary contribution to the transformation of both Catholic spirituality and the institutional church. Both groups are respectful of each other.48 In this section I have highlighted a view of the ‘new face’ of ministry in the church, calling attention to the increasing number of women in active, full-time ministries as well as to the well-documented range of opinions on matters of church and of women. It is the grassroots development of lay ministry in response to pastoral needs in dialogue with ecclesial documents that motivated the recent statement Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord. This reality in the United States is multiplied around the globe in other local Christian churches and contexts. Roger Haight describes this phenomenon of the post-Vatican II laity as follows: In a movement parallel to the loss of professional ministers who were clerics or religious, Western Churches saw a remarkable rise of the laity, a virtual flood of lay ministers who have taken the places of priests and sisters in parishes and chaplaincies, as spiritual counselors, teachers, organizers and administrators. One can vaguely discern a pattern here that moves in a direction opposite to the one by which the original offices of ministry were developed in the early church. Then, ministers moved from being largely defined by charismatic inspiration and talent to becoming more routinized into offices and more professionalized as ministerial orders. Today, in the churches of the developed Western churches, ministry is moving away from being the exclusive task of the clergy or professional ministers and being diffused back into the community in the hands of multiple lay ministers with a variety of talents and expertise.49

In other words, the shift of direction, born of the Spirit, that has led the American church and other local churches around the globe to developments in ministry signals a pattern that is the historical reversal of the gradual development of a clerical ministry and the corresponding diminishment of ministries of all the baptized. This is more than just an important observation. I will return to it later. For now it is enough to note that many scholarly endeavours have addressed this historical phenomenon. As Haight’s timely three-volume work, Christian Community in History demonstrates, over the last two millennia the church has undergone considerable change as it adapted to new situations. ‘In the course of these changes the structure of ministry was altered in a more or less substantial way.’50 Today in the United States, but also globally in local churches around the

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world, the structure of ministry is changing in response to the challenge of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the mission of the church in the world and diverse local contexts with particular pastoral needs. Schneiders argues that the ‘threadbare and faded cloak of patriarchy is no longer adequate clothing for the body of Christ. It is simply ‘‘beyond patching’’ ’.51 What is the promise, hope and challenge in this phenomenon of lay ministry, now expressed in the brief statement Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord? Is this a really a kairos moment in history?

Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord In 1995 the Bishops of the United States pledged to ‘expand [their] study and dialogue concerning lay ministry in order to understand better the critical issues and find effective ways to address them’.52 In November 2005 the Bishops approved the statement, Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord.53 This brief statement is a resource to guide the further development of lay ecclesial ministry in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in the United States. The ‘Co-Workers’ Statement The ‘Co-Workers’ statement first sets the theological foundations for lay ministry in the post-Vatican II church in the United States. It situates ecclesial lay ministries in the vocation of all the baptized, the mission of the church and a trinitarian communion ecclesiology. The theological foundations as set out in Co-Workers need to be read in the broader context of conciliar and postconciliar documents.54 These ecclesial documents witness to unfolding emphases and tensions concerning common priesthood and ministerial priesthood, ministry and laity since Vatican II. The framing of the theological section of the statement was a collaborative work of theologians, though it seems there were few, if any, women theologians among them, even though women serve on the subcommittee of the Laity. Part two of the statement focuses on pastoral applications. It, too, demonstrates the rich collaborative work of the subcommittee members, the National Pastoral Life Center located in New York, along with the expertise of many other consultants. The Co-Workers statement illustrates both a method of theological reflection ‘from below’55 that aims to be a proactive response of the Catholic church to its contemporary American context.56 At the same time the theological stance of the document reflects a strong emphasis ‘from above’. The Co-Workers statement affirms that the ‘new face of lay leadership’ in the church in the United States is more than a social or cultural phenomenon, though it is that. It also believes that the Spirit has guided the church and that an ongoing spiritual practice of communal listening and discernment on many levels is necessary. Further, the broad scope of this endeavour involved collegiality and partnership among theologians, pastoral consultants and/or practitioners. Hopefully such practices will continue to promote a willingness to struggle with real tensions in an effort to give birth to a more participatory church in response to the signs of the times and the gospel message.57 In other words: to continue to

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build up the church, supporting a rich and diverse pluralism in theologies and models of church.58 In sum, as a resource for the formation of future lay leaders the Co-Workers statement can make a positive contribution to the people of God in their local faith communities in the United States. At the same time one needs to recognize that the statement also promotes what I will call ‘unfinished business’ and mixed signals that are carried over from its Vatican sources. I address such concerns after the next section. The model of a communion ecclesiology that holds potential to release a long practice of patriarchal structures and so encourage a more participatory church of women and men may allow for a diversity of leadership styles in the increasingly ethnically diverse American Catholic church.59

Trinitarian Communion Ecclesiology and the ‘Co-Workers’ Statement Communion ecclesiology can be found today in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant versions. Many recent studies address this model of ecclesiology.60 I call attention to the model because of its place in Vatican documents and in the CoWorkers statement. Further, Haight refers to communion ecclesiology as a ‘deliberately vague phrase [that] opens up a creative imagination for ecclesiology in our time’.61 The ecclesiology of Vatican II, reinforced by the extraordinary Synod of 1985, stressed church as a communion (LG 31.1) in which: ‘each individual part of the Church contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts of the whole Church’ (LG 13.3). An ecclesiology of communion is identified as ‘the central and fundamental idea of the council’s documents’.62 It finds both its source and culminating expression in the liturgy and must be manifested in a coresponsible and collaborative approach to the church.63 The model of church as an ecclesial communion is primarily spiritual, based on sharing the divine life, but it is also visibly expressed. This model is rooted in the rediscovery and reclaiming of the biblical concept of communion (koino¯nia). Its patristic interpretation provides the foundation for understanding the church as a communion of the faithful in the life of the triune God and with one another. In other words, one source of the image of communion or koino¯nia is from the New Testament, where koino¯nia is a symbol for church. Used by St Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians it has several meanings, one being that by their participation or communion in the body and blood of Christ, Christians too become one body (cf. 1 Cor. 10.16–17). The verses from this First Letter to the Corinthians are ‘heavy with ecclesiological meaning’. In the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist, Christians have communion in the body and blood of Christ.64 Co-Workers ideally seems to adopt this vision of communion ecclesiology as a theological basis for its discussion of ecclesial lay ministry in the Christian community. Yet there is no reference to Eucharist in the Co-Workers statement.65 Also the question of how to ‘read’ this rich symbol, a trinitarian-communion ecclesiology that Haight refers to as ‘deliberately vague’, ought to call attention to the symbolic language of theology. A few examples may help to illuminate the

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struggle. Rademacher, for instance, suggests: ‘If we retain the biblical meaning of this word [koino¯nia] and do not immediately impose a hierarchical construct upon it, then we have an ecclesial reality that is rooted in eucharistic communion: admission to the Lord’s table includes a measure and criterion of sharing in the social, ministerial and disciplinary life of the local church.’66 Rademacher seems to identify a challenge. Can structure and leadership be imagined without hierarchal and patriarchal structures? Roger Haight offers a working description of the terms ‘hierarchy’ and ‘hierarchical imagination’ that is basic and useful for our considerations: The term hierarchy in a non-technical and descriptive way point[s] to a layered or tiered organization of the church, perhaps in a pyramidal form. The levels of power and authority have their foundation in God, and they descend . . . Because it stems from the one God as source of all, however this is understood, it carries in this respect and to this degree a sacred character. A hierarchical structure such as this is concomitant with a hierarchical imagination. In other words, this generalized framework may vary in its details, but it is always present and at work structuring understanding.67

The important point here, I suggest, with Haight, is how the symbol, deeply rooted in our imaginations, continues to structure understanding and can be carried over into new situations; perhaps contemporary changes in ministry. I hope the Co-Workers statement does not intend to add another rung to a ladder that needs to be disassembled and reshaped. I take it that the real challenge is to continue to develop theology or theologies of ministry grounded in common priesthood and to foster relationships, collaborative styles of leadership and a spirituality of servant leadership. Yet any loss or change to this hierarchal symbol seems to be what Francis Cardinal George cautions against when he comments ‘[r]egrettably, an ecclesiology of communion is sometimes presented as an alternative to ecclesial hierarchy. No such opposition exists.’68 He explains that ‘within a proper appreciation of communion, ecclesial authority is seen as a center of relationships among members of the same body – as the head is such a center in a physical body. Authority is inherent to communion, because it makes visible the Church’s unity in Christ.’69 The communion that gives definition to the people of God is a sacramental communion of a hierarchical order.70 His comment evokes the mixed signals inherent in the statement. The question persists with regard to how to move beyond the impasse of patriarchy with its images and practices of domination and subordination. As Lisa Cahill observes ‘even for feminist ecclesiology, community and hierarchy are counterparts . . . and that hierarchical teaching needs to remain in a dialectical relation to communion and participation, much as different New Testament models of church interact deliberately within the New Testament canon’.71

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Trinitarian Theology and the Contributions of Women Theologians To think about redressing the balance in favour of ‘reciprocity and participation’ I turn to a discussion of a trinitarian theology implicit in communion ecclesiology. I have already alluded to the fact that trinitarian theology has been rediscovered as a practical doctrine, a doctrine that has to do with salvation. This doctrine has liberating implications for an understanding of the human person as a being-inrelationships, of creation as springing from divine communion, and of the church as a living sign of this divine communion.72 Among others, feminist theologians have made important scholarly contributions to a renewed insight into the Trinity as well as demonstrating a praxis of relationality and spirituality. For instance Anne Carr reflects: ‘The Mystery of God as Trinity, as final and perfect sociality, embodies those qualities of mutuality, reciprocity, cooperation, unity, peace in genuine diversity that are feminist ideals and goals derived from the exclusivity of the gospel message.’73 Elizabeth A. Johnson reminds us that awareness of Trinity as a communion in love provides a symbolic picture of totally shared life at the heart of the universe.74 She proposes: ‘If the image of God is the ultimate reference point for the values of a community, then the structure of the triune symbol stands as a profound critique, however, little noticed, of patriarchal domination in church and society . . . The mystery of Sophia-Trinity must be confessed as a critical prophecy in the midst of patriarchal rule.’75 Can we read the trinitarian theology of Co-Workers in light of such a ‘critical prophecy’? That is, as a theological image of an egalitarian communion and ecclesial communion as symbol of trinitarian mystery. If the answer is yes, then local communities will gradually move ‘beyond patching the threadbare cloak of patriarchy’. If yes, it will be through practices in our local church communities, in the many venues where the gospel is embodied in ministry, where Christians gather to listen, discern and act for justice and in charity: continuing and/or developing such practices we begin to loosen the hold of patriarchal domination as ideology and practice.76 The Co-Workers statement encourages such collaboration and mutual respect of all women and men as well as collaborative styles of leadership. Where such practices are already common, the truth of the reality described by Anne Clifford will not be contested. Clifford suggests that ‘Women and men imaging God as a triune community broadens the notion of women and men equally created and equally redeemed to women and men forming a community of equals, cooperating in loving mutuality as they work to live out the implications of their creation and redemption . . .’77 In other words, an ecclesiology in the model of trinitarian-communion as that which Co-Workers asserts theologically, in practice needs to make visible a Christian community of collaboration. Ideally this would be among all the faithful and with all other co-workers. The Co-Workers statement calls all, especially naming the bishops, to model and to oversee the development and fostering of collaborative styles of ministry. Carr, Johnson and Clifford each make the point that the doctrine of the Trinity invites mutuality in a community of equals.78 On one level this invites a shift away

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from patriarchal modes. Contemporary communion ecclesiology, reclaiming a patristic interpretation of the Pauline text, thus articulates the mysterious union of each human being with the Trinity through Jesus Christ and in the church, as a people called to live a style of life like that of the Trinity.79 Thus, in a communion ecclesiology all of the members, in their relationship to Christ and to one another, come to the foreground. And in the Pauline model of koino¯nia, the Constitution on the Liturgy, and the Final Report of the 1985 Synod: our spiritual equality comes from our common baptismal priesthood and is nurtured at the tables of our eucharistic sharing, this communion a source of koino¯nia. Over the decades following the council several different theologies of laity have come forward. During these years new roles and opportunities emerged for and among the laity as they responded to their baptismal and eucharistic call and the pastoral needs of the local churches. The women’s movement, theological education, opportunities for ecumenical sharing and other movements, such as small Christian communities and more recently the voice of the faithful all worked to foster a new consciousness among the laity. The term ‘ministry’ is now widely used to apply to the laity where once it was primarily used in relation to the ordained clergy and in Protestant churches. The same years were also witness to doubt, frustration and dissatisfaction among laity and clergy. If in the 1989 document, Christifideles Laici (Exhortation on the Laity), the late Pope John Paul II employed the concept of communion ecclesiology to contextualize the lay vocation, the same document also reflects a move to maintain clear distinctions of lay and ordained.80 In the last twenty years at least, there has been a strong and steady focus of attention to protect a clerical state of life and ministry while warning against confusion between the roles of laity and clergy. This highlights something of the ‘unfinished business’ that was incorporated in the Co-Workers statement. 3. Moving Forward: Beyond Impasse Recent studies such as Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood Theologies of Lay and Ordained Ministry, edited by Susan Wood, Paul Philibert’s work, The Priesthood of the Faithful: Key to a Living Church, and Kenan B. Osborne’s book, Orders and Ministry: Leadership in the World Church all contribute informed theological responses moving forward some of the questions that can be raised by the CoWorkers statement and related to the concern for a more participatory church. Here I simply want to call attention to these studies among others to highlight a few ‘talking points’. First, these authors agree that one of the most serious systemic issues for discussion, in theological terms, is the as yet unresolved relationship between the priesthood of all believers – that is the ‘baptismal ordination’ of the people of God – the common priesthood and the special (that is, ordained) priesthood. Kenan Osborne81 suggests that until this relationship is more clearly and profoundly investigated, statements on all forms of church ministry today cannot help but be

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ineffective. Michael Downey remarks that ‘ministerial identity cannot be nurtured and sustained when focused on what the priest does, or what makes his ministry different from the common call of the baptized. To meet the changing needs of the Church ordained and nonordained ministers need to focus on and appreciate the common foundations of their ministry.’82 Some of the pastoral responsibilities of ordained and lay may overlap while other responsibilities may differ. But the ministries of both are essential to the church. The ordained and lay need to collaborate ‘because both are incorporated into the life of Christ at baptism and called to mutual responsibility in the church’.83 Zeni Fox suggests that the laity by their ministry invite us ‘to move beyond the constructs that invite passivity among the laity and undue control by the clergy, and to embrace a vision of church as a community of disciples’.84 In his numerous and important studies on the history of ministry and ecclesiology Kenan Osborne shows that the legacy of the twentieth century on Christian ministry, both clerical and lay, has presented theologians and pastoral leaders with a serious number of as yet disunified problems. Among these, Osborne points out that contemporary historical research on episcopacy, priesthood and diaconate are not taken seriously. Not only do some in church leadership not accept the historical data which indicates that there have been serious changes in the theological and historical development of ordering, but, he points out (although this is now commonly known), some Catholics in key leadership positions continue to maintain that episcopal and presbyterial roles have not substantially changed since the time of Jesus. In fact, they claim this as an immutable and untouchable theological core. Historically – as Osborne, Haight, Wood and other theologians document and discuss – that historical claim cannot be demonstrated.85 Rather the story of the Christian community in history clearly indicates the changeability of both episcopal and presbyterial office.86 Osborne asserts that if for serious reasons major changes in the structure and order of ministry have taken place in the past they can occur again.87 The last four decades have moved us well beyond the divisions identified in the Vatican documents, namely, that the arena of the laity is mission and ministry in the world and the church is the arena of the clergy. Today permeable boundaries between lay and clerical ministries are evident.88 Susan Wood tells us that at the 2001 Collegeville Ministry Seminar it was suggested that the term ‘ordered ministries’ be used to refer to the ministry itself rather than the minister. The idea behind this was to recognize that ministry actually occurs on a continuum ‘marked by whether one enters it through ordination, installation, or commissioning, by how stable it is, how fundamentally vocational it is in orienting the whole life of the minister, and by the formation and preparation required’.89 Even in view of this suggestion, it seems that an impasse remains strongly embedded in the theological question and tensions surrounding the priestly identity.

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In Conclusion The concern over patriarchal structures of church governance, and the desire and efforts towards more participatory structures of governance and styles of collegial leadership, have only increased in recent years.90 Over the coming decades, will a church without patriarchal structures be more evident? The future is in what we do today both in pastoral praxis and pastoral care, and in our constructive theologies. The aim or purpose of the Co-Workers statement is to provide guidance for the formation of lay ecclesial ministers. While the statement highlights a communion ecclesiology, a positive move even with its mixed signals, this brief statement is not the final word. Communion ecclesiologies will continue to be shaped within local churches and in a dialogue among Christian churches. Hence, the second main part of the Co-Workers statement that suggests guidelines for a holistic (spiritual and academic) professional formation of future lay ecclesial ministers, many of whom will continue to be women, may hold a key to the statement’s most crucial contribution. For it seems that the Catholic Church in the United States would continue in the direction of lay leadership and partnership. Further, as many point out, the participatory church that most Catholic women want, which would expand the role and authority of women, also needs to allow for differences in theological and liturgical standpoints among all members of the laity.91 ‘At the heart of the feminist Christian vision is neither complaint nor criticism, but hope’, attests Margaret Farley, ‘hope that change is possible and that justice and love can be realized more completely in society and in the church.’92

Notes 1. Sandra Schneiders, With Oil in Their Lamps: Faith, Feminism, and the Future (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), p. 39. Hereafter With Oil. See also, Kenan B. Osborne, OFM, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World: A Theology for the Third Millennium (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1999), see the Introduction and Chapter 1, ‘The TwentiethCentury Legacy of Sacramental Revolution’, for Osborne’s discussion of the meaning and implications of globalization for order and ministry in the church; see also Chapter 5, ‘The Church as Foundational Sacrament’. 2. See Osborne, Christian Sacraments, Chapter 5, ‘The Church as Foundational Sacrament’. 3. Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. I: Historical Ecclesiology (New York and London: Continuum, 2004), p. ix. 4. Harriet A. Luckman, ‘Vatican II and the Role of Women’, Vatican II Forty Years Later, William Madges (ed.), College Theology Society, vol. 51 (2005), pp. 81–2. 5. Lisa Sowle Cahill, ‘Feminist Theology and a Participatory Church’, in Common Calling: The Laity and Governance of the Catholic Church, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), pp. 127–50, p. 133. See also Paul Lakeland, The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church (London and New York: Continuum, 2003). 6. Elisa Rinere, ‘Canon Law and Emerging Understandings of Ministry’, in Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood: Theologies of Lay and Ordained Priesthood, ed. Susan K. Wood (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2003), p. 72.

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7. Mary E. Hines, Community for Liberation’, in Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine M. LaCugna (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 161. Himes’s insight remains true today. 8. Schneiders, With Oil, p. 39. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. See also Anne E. Carr, Transforming Grace: Christian Tradition and Women’s Experience (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988); Anne M. Clifford, Introducing Feminist Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001); Catherine M. LaCugna (ed.), Freeing Theology; Ann Loades (ed.), Feminist Theology: A Reader (London: SPCK, 1990); Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983, and rev. edn). 11. See Anne M. Clifford, Introducing Feminist Theology, esp. Introduction and Chapter 1 for a brief overview of the four movements. 12. Ibid. 13. Denise L. Carmody, Christian Feminist Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p. 12. See also Elizabeth A. Johnson, Consider Jesus (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1990), Chapter 7: ‘Feminist Theology’, esp. pp. 83–8. 14. Carmody, Christian Feminist Theology, p. 27. 15. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 239. 16. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women-Church: Theology and Practice (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 3. For Ruether the critical principle of feminist theology is the promotion of the full humanity of women. Whatever denies, diminishes or distorts the full humanity of women is, therefore, appraised as not redemptive. Theologically speaking, whatever diminished or denies the full humanity of women must be presumed not to reflect the divine or an authentic relation to the divine, or to reflect the authentic nature of things, or to be the message of work of an authentic redeemer or a community of redemption. Kenan B. Osborne offers this reflection on Ruether’s articulation of the feminist critical principle:

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

The key words are those in which Ruether places the case on a theological plane. She goes beyond the sociological level where secular equal-rights theory demands giving women, in principle, any position men can occupy, for example, leading a nation or a corporation. She goes deeper. Having institutional policies that recognize the full humanity of women is, of course, profoundly important for her, but she grounds this full humanity of women in a theology of God, which must be credible if Christianity is to be credible. If women are not honored and respected, considered equal to men, and acknowledged to be fully human, then the Church’s doctrine of God (a) does not reflect the divine or an authentic relation to the divine, (b) does not reflect the authentic nature of things and persons in creation, and (c) does not reflect the message or work of Jesus as an authentic redeemer or a community of redemption. The focus of her argument is that when women are made secondary to men, God is not understood correctly. God as creator and redeemer of all is misunderstood. (Kenan B. Osborne, OFM, Orders and Ministry Leadership in the World Church (New York: Orbis Books, 2005), p. 147. Sandra Schneiders, Beyond Patching: Faith and Feminism in the Catholic Church (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1991), pp. 33–4. Ibid., p. 34. Recall that in the United States in the late 1980s collaborative efforts were begun for a pastoral letter on women in the church. After three drafts the letter was tabled. Carmody, Christian Feminist Theology, p. xi. Schneiders, Beyond Patching: Faith and Feminism in the Catholic Church (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004 rev. ed.), pp. x, xi. Natalie Watson, Introduction to Feminist Ecclesiology (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2002), p. 3. Ibid., pp. 3, 4.

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24. See Clifford, Introducing Feminist Theology, Chapter 1. See also Gloria L. Schaab, SSJ, ‘Feminist Theological Method: Toward a Kaleidoscopic Model’, Theological Studies 62 (2) (June 2001): 341–65. 25. See for instance Elisabeth Schu¨ssler Fiorenza’s work Bread Not Stone. 26. See for instance Serene Jones, ‘Bounded Openness: Postmodernism, Feminism and the Church Today’, Interpretation 55 (1) (January 2001): 49–59, esp. p. 54 and the discussion of Irigaray. See also Natalie Watson, Introducing Feminist Ecclesiology. 27. Clifford, Introducing Feminist Theology, p. 32. 28. Elizabeth A. Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), p. 99, as quoted by Lisa Sowle Cahill, ‘Feminist Theology and a Participatory Church’, p. 129. 29. Schneiders, Beyond Patching, 2nd edn, p. xv. She further remarks that this development was noted in the first edition of Beyond Patching but ‘came to resounding public expression in the Madeleva manifesto’. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. See Synod document. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., p. xvi. 34. Ibid., p. xvii. 35. See Paul J. Philibert, The Priesthood of the Faithful: Key to a Living Church (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2005). 36. See Co-Workers, p. 13, n. 19: ‘Lay ecclesial minister’ or ‘lay ecclesial ministries’ is a generic term that can encompass and describe several possible roles. It does not designate a specific position title. Nor does it establish a new rank or order among the laity. It is simply used as an adjective to describe ‘a new and growing reality’. 37. See Paul Philibert, The Priesthood of the Faithful, p. 88. 38. See Philip J. Murnion and David DeLambo, Parishes and Parish Ministers: A Study of Parish Lay Ministry (New York: National Pastoral Life Center, 1999). 39. Clifford, p. 168; see also Harriet A. Luckman, ‘Vatican II and the Role of Women’, Vatican II Forty Years Later, William Madges (ed.), College Theology Society, vol. 51, 2005, pp. 78– 99. 40. CARA/Catholicism, 154. See Co-Workers, ‘Reality of Lay Ecclesial Ministry’, pp. 13–15; and Philip J. Murnion and David DeLambo, Parishes and Parish Ministers. 41. Schneiders, Beyond Patching, (rev. ed), p. 102. 42. Ibid., p. 103. 43. Ibid. Also see Rosemary Radford Ruether, WomenChurch. The Women church paradigm is also supported in the writings of, for instance, Natalie Watson, Introducing Feminist Ecclesiology; M. T. Winters et al., Defecting in Place (New York, Crossroad, 1994); and Letty Russell, Church in the Round (London: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993). 44. See Schneiders, Beyond Patching (rev. ed), pp. 104–6. 45. Ibid., p. 105. 46. Ibid., p. 106. 47. Ibid., p. 106. 48. M. T. Winters et al., Defecting in Place and Natalie Watson, Introduction to Feminist Ecclesiology also highlight similar experiences. In the book The Church Women Want (edited by Elizabeth A. Johnson), Johnson demonstrates that Catholic women hold a range of informed opinions on many concerns and issues related to the church and to themselves as Christian women. Johnson models a forum in which an intergenerational group of women focused on series of topics presented from two viewpoints opening to conversation and dialogue among all present. Speaking and listening, ‘in the process’, Johnson believes, ‘hope will keep boiling up despite the present tensions. From this point on there can be no future for the church that women have not had a pivotal hand in shaping. Women are silent and invisible no longer’ (p. 8). 49. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II, p. 405.

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55.

56.

57. 58. 59.

61. 62.

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Ibid., p. 24. Schneiders, Beyond Patching, (rev. ed.) p. xvii. Called and Gifted for the Third Millennium, p. 18. Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord, A Resource for Guiding the Development of Lay Ecclesial Ministry (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), 2005). See in Zeni Fox, New Ecclesial Ministry: Lay Professionals Serving the Church (Kansas, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1997), esp. Part two, section two: ‘Recent Church Teaching; Eccclesia de Mysterio: The Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the NonOrdained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priests’ (1998); and the May 2004 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, prepared by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (approved by John Paul II). See also Francis Cardinal George, OMI, ‘Magisterial Teaching’, in Together in God’s Service, pp. 130–57. On pp. 136–52 he presents his Synopsis of Relevant Magisterial Documents. My point here is that the Co-Workers’ statement strongly reflects the previous documents. See Haight, vol. 1, Historical Ecclesiology, Chapter 1. In this chapter Haight explains and sketches the two methods: what may be called ‘an ecclesiology from above’ and ‘an ecclesiology from below’. Amy Hoey explains in ‘Who are these People Called ‘‘Lay Ecclesial Ministers’’?’, Touchstone 21 (2) (Winter 2006): ‘‘Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord . . . does not establish norms or have the force of particular law . . . it address the theological grounding for lay ecclesial ministry and gives guidance for the preparation, authorization, and integration of lay ecclesial ministers’. ‘Co-Workers’ explains that it is the responsibility of the bishop to identify those roles that most clearly exemplify lay ecclesial ministry and that the application of the term may vary from diocese to diocese. See Co-Workers, pp. 21–3 and 55. See the website for publications from the United States Catholic Conference for additional pastoral statements reflecting the cultural diversity of the American Catholic church. See for instance Thomas Rausch, SJ, Towards A Truly Catholic Church: An Ecclesiology for the Third Millennium, A Michael Glazier Book (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2005). Although the Co-Workers’ statement minimally mentions ethnic diversity, both an understanding of and financial support for the preparation of ministers from diverse cultures is a major need in the United States. See for instance Peter C. Phan and Diana Hayes, eds, Many Faces, One Church: Cultural Diversity and the American Catholic Experience, A Sheed and Ward Book (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005); also see Dennis M. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2000); Haight, Comparative Ecclesiology, see ch. 7, pp. 430–52: ‘Orthodox Christianity: The Iconic Ecclesiology of John Ziziolas’; Patricia A. Fox, God as Communion; John Zizioulas, Elizabeth Johnson and the Retrieval of the Symbol of the Triune God (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001); and Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2007), see especially chapters 2 and 3. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology, p. 423. Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, Final Report, (December 8, 1985) C1. See report in Origins (19 December 1985), pp. 444–50. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiologies, p. 2, points out that Catholic theologians cannot interpret either Vatican II or communion ecclesiology apart from each other. In Magisterial Teaching, Francis Cardinal George notes that the council fathers understood communion as ‘relationship with God through Jesus Christ realized in the power of the Holy Spirit and made visible sacramentally in the church’. The Synod report maintains that communion, initiated in baptism, draws most powerfully upon the Eucharist as ‘the source and culmination of the whole Christian life’. The communion of the eucharistic body of Christ signifies and produces, that is, builds up, the intimate communion of the faithful in the body of Christ which is the church. For this reason, maintains Cardinal George, communion ecclesiology cannot be reduced to purely organizational questions or problems which simply relate to ‘powers’. See Magisterial Teaching, p. 132. Final Report, C6.

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64. See Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. I: Historical Ecclesiology, p. 226; see Rausch, Towards a Truly Catholic Church, pp. 70–2, on the concept of communion. First Rausch explains how the concept of koino¯nia was present in the Faith and Order Commission long before the organization of the World Council of Churches; it moved to the centre of Roman Catholic ecclesiology at Vatican II. He explains how the New Testament employs koino¯nia in several senses. Its ecclesial sense is rooted in the Eucharist. 65. Recall the adage ‘the Eucharist makes the church, the church makes the Eucharist’. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy promotes the liturgy (above all the Eucharist) as the source and summit of all pastoral action. 66. William J. Rademacher, Lay Ministry: A Theological Spiritual & Pastoral Handbook (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996), p. 171. 67. Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. I, Historical Ecclesiology, pp. 23, 24. 68. Francis Cardinal George, Magisterial Teaching, p. 133. 69. Ibid., p. 133. 70. Ibid., p. 134 71. Cahill, p. 133. 72. Denis Edwards, Ecology at the Heart of Faith (New York: Orbis Books, 2006), p. 74. 73. Anne Carr, as quoted in Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is, p. 223. 74. See Elizabeth A. Johnson, Women, Earth, Creator Spirit, Madeleva Lecture (New York: Paulist Press, 1993). 75. Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is, pp. 222, 223. See also Patricia A. Fox, God as Communion, part two: ‘The Trinitarian Theology of Elizabeth Johnson’, pp. 101–79. 76. For ecumenical reflections see also, for instance, Mary Tanner, ‘On Being Church: Some Thoughts Inspired by the Ecumenical Community’, Ecumenical Review 65; Barbara Zigmund, Adair T. Lummis and Patricia M. Chang, Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling (London: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998); Letty Russell, ‘Hot-House Ecclesiology: A Feminist Interpretation of Church’, Ecumenical Review 53 (1) (January 2001): 48–56. 77. Clifford, Introduction to Feminist Theology, p. 126. 78. For the phrase community of equals see also, for instance, Elisabeth Schu¨ssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her. 79. In other words koino¯nia is more than fellowship; it is participation in the divine life which itself is a communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism describes the church as ‘the sacred mystery of the unity . . . in the Trinity of Persons, of one God, the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit’ (UR 2), as quoted in Rausch, Towards a Truly Catholic Church, p. 71. Also see Edward J. Kilmartin, SJ, ‘Lay Participation in the Apostolate of the Hierarchy’, The Jurist 41 (1981): 366–9; Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, see Chapter 3 for Mannion’s discussion of two competing versions of communion ecclesiology; and Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology, Chapter 1, esp. p. 9. 80. Ibid., p. 141. The word ‘communion’ is used 127 times in this document. This text develops the theology of the laity. 81. See Kenan B. Osborne, ‘Envisioning a Theology of Ordained and Lay Ministry – Current Issues of Ambiguity’, in Susan K. Wood (ed.), Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood: Theologies of Lay and Ordained Priesthood (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2003), pp. 195–227. See also Paul Philibert, The Priesthood of the Faithful, p. 144. In other words, what was ‘left to further investigation’ because no resolution was attained at Vatican II or in post-Vatican documents is nonetheless repeated without question. 82. Michael Downey, ‘Ministerial Identity’, in Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood, ed. Susan K. Wood, p. 23. 83. Wood (ed.), Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood, p. ix. 84. Zeni Fox, ‘Laity, Ministry and Secular Character’, in Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood, p. 144. 85. See Osborne, ‘Envisioning a Theology’, p. 224.

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86. Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World, p. 224. Also see Phyllis Zagano, ‘The Question of Governance and Ministry for Women’, Theological Studies 68 (2) (June 2007): 348–67. 87. Osborne, Order and Ministry, p. 151 88. See, for instance, essays by Ladislas Orsy and Michael Himes in Susan K. Wood (ed.), Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood. 89. Susan K. Wood, SCL, ‘The State of the Question: Forty Years after Vatican II’ (Marquette University). 90. See, as mentioned, the writings of Sandra Schneiders, Anne Carr, Elizabeth A. Johnson, Elisabeth Schu¨ssler Fiorenza, Letty Russell, Natalie Watson, Paul Lakeland, Roger Haight and Gerard Mannion, a few of the many contributors to the questions. 91. Cahill, ‘Feminist Theology’, p. 134. 92. Margaret A. Farley, ‘Feminist Theology and Ethics: The Contributions of Elizabeth A. Johnson’, in Phyllis Zagano and Terrence W. Tilley (eds), Things New and Old: Essays on the Theology of Elizabeth A. Johnson (New York: Crossroad, 1999), p. 18, as quoted in Cahill, p. 129.

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Chapter 7 A MORE COMPARATIVE ECCLESIOLOGY? BRINGING COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY TO THE ECCLESIOLOGICAL TABLE Reid B. Locklin Roger Haight’s Christian Community in History represents a truly monumental achievement, destined to be celebrated, criticized, referred to, and raided for bibliographic information for years to come. In the short time since its release, Christian Community has been widely reviewed, its methods debated, and Fr Haight praised or scolded for, among other things, the sheer ambition of what he has attempted in these two volumes. At least two such reviewers have suggested that his project is ‘potentially endless’ and thereby doomed to, at best, partial success.1 In this essay, I take a rather different tack, suggesting that Haight’s already ‘endless’ purview could and even should be widened to include the existential history of religious communities beyond the Christian fold. In making such a proposal, I am developing what I take to be an invitation offered by Haight himself. In the final pages of his nearly 1000-page account, Haight identifies three ‘obvious issues’ that will shape the church in the new millennium: inculturation, the encounter with other religions, and ‘pluralism’ as a persistent, defining feature of Christian identity.2 On the second of these three points, he writes: . . . the demands for inculturation carry with them the requirement that Christian consciousness and its theology revisit the attitudes of the church toward other religions. Cultures outside the West broadly construed are frequently shaped by religions that closely and deeply define the intertwined systems of value and meaning. Churches have to reflect and take theological stock of how they relate to these deep and newly vital traditions.3

‘This is not the place to deal at any length with this far-reaching Christological and ecclesiological issue’, he continues, ‘but neither can it be minimized in any projection of the agenda of the church for the future. It is so basic that it tacitly influences all other issues.’4 There is a mild irony in Haight’s description of this critical issue. On the one hand, the church’s relation to other religions is ‘so basic that it tacitly influences all other issues’. On the other, it lies firmly outside the purview of the actual historical

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and comparative ecclesiology Haight has worked at such great length to construct. This fundamental issue arises, it seems, only after the theologian has already articulated one or another vision of the essential reality of the church. But this begs an important question: if one judges the encounter of Christianity with the religions of the world to be ‘so basic’ that it touches everything, might it not also touch the very process of constructing a comparative ecclesiology in the first place? In other words, is it possible that comparative ecclesiology, as a theological discipline, might become more comparative by incorporating some level of engagement with other religious traditions into the project at the front end? It seems to me, as I have already indicated, that specific features of Haight’s project imply the possibility – even the desirability – of an affirmative response. My argument proceeds in three main steps. In the first, I touch on the place of religious others in Haight’s comparative ecclesiology. In the second, I draw out two brief examples from the existential history and self-understanding of particular communities in the non-dualist Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta, intended as a kind of test case. Finally, from this test case, I try to suggest a few ways that the Christian discipline of comparative ecclesiology might profit from a broader and deeper comparative engagement. Though Haight does not arrive at such a deeper engagement, I argue, his work nicely paves the way.

The Church in its Global Context: Beyond a Generic ‘Other’? The project of comparative ecclesiology is not a new one. Any list of precedents for Haight’s study, at least in the North American context, would surely include Avery Dulles’s Models of the Church.5 In this influential work, Dulles attempts to get behind the conflicting ecclesiological positions of various Christian denominations by focusing on first five, then six ‘models’ that may be shared across confessional boundaries. Though narrower in scope, a similar method and motive can be discerned in Dennis M. Doyle’s more recent Communion Ecclesiology: Visions and Versions.6 Like Dulles, Doyle takes up diverse and sometimes conflicting visions of the church and attempts to set them in positive relation, without collapsing their differences. Haight’s project bears some resemblance to those of Dulles and Doyle, especially in its second volume, subtitled Comparative Ecclesiology. Nevertheless, his approach also differs in several of its basic assumptions. Whereas Dulles establishes ecumenical dialogue as the relevant context for his inquiry, Haight turns readers’ attention to the related phenomena of ‘globalization’ and religious pluralism.7 In addition, while Dulles consistently approaches the question ‘from above’, distilling his models from the writings of ancient and modern Christian thinkers, Haight adopts a position that purports to work ‘from below’, focusing on the ‘concrete, existential and historical’ development of Christian communities in diverse places and times.8 Comparative ecclesiology in the proper sense occurs only with the rise of systematic ‘ecclesiologies’ in the late medieval and early modern periods, but it presumes, builds upon and thus includes comparative enquiry into

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those lived experiences of Christian community from which such ecclesiologies emerge and which they in turn purport to describe.9 The Christian encounter with other religions influences this project in at least two major respects. First of all, in a few places, it becomes an explicit feature of Haight’s survey. Aside from passing references to Greek philosophy and the rise of Islam, the most extended discussion of the church in relation to a particular religious other occurs, appropriately, in his account of the mutual selfdifferentiation of Judaism and Christianity in the first centuries of the Common Era.10 The properly theological question of ‘the religions’, on the other hand, arises further along in the narrative, in connection with Nicholas of Cusa in the fifteenth century, as well as with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the World Council of Churches in the twentieth.11 These preliminary and ‘somewhat underdeveloped’ glimmers of positive appreciation12 may, in turn, be interpreted as tracing a trajectory towards the decentring of the Christian church in its contemporary historical experience and theological self-understanding: that is, they trace a trajectory towards the very context in which Haight situates his own work.13 Borrowing a phrase from Edward Schillebeeckx, Haight asserts that ‘the world and not the church is the ordinary place of salvation and that ‘‘there is no salvation outside the world’’ ’.14 It is in specific reference to this transformed context of globalization and a positive appreciation for ‘the world’, including its religions, that Haight incorporates such religions into his project in a second, quite different manner: as a kind of foil, against which Christians can come to a new sense of shared identity. In the very first paragraph of his project, he writes that ‘the distance between Christianity and other world religions makes the quarrels among Christian churches appear parochial and relatively unimportant’.15 Later, he expands on this idea: . . . the appeal to experience and a critical, historical differentiation of the imagination invite an effort to transcend the particularity of one confession or denomination. When the outsider looks at the Christian church, he or she does not immediately see the divisions among Christians. And when Christians regard the differences among themselves and other religions, the differences among themselves are minimized.16

Finally, when defending the possibility and need for a ‘transdenominational ecclesiology’ – as embodied in the 1982 World Council of Churches document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (BEM) – he asserts that ‘a common Christian identity appears more distinctly or in sharper relief against the background of religious pluralism than when it is viewed as a self-contained ecumenical movement’.17 One basis for a more appreciative Christian approach to religious diversity stems, it seems, from the heuristic or instrumental role such pluralism can play in relation to the goals of Christian ecumenism. In making such broad pronouncements, Haight appeals primarily to common sense, and anyone involved in ecumenical or interreligious dialogues could likely produce anecdotal support for his claims. Yet the claims as such are made a priori, as self-evident truths, without much in the way of evidence. Indeed, such an

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a priori approach strongly characterizes Haight’s attitude towards other religions throughout these two volumes. In contrast to his consistently empirical focus on diverse realizations of Christian community across history, his appeals to other world religions risk reducing their followers to a kind of generic ‘other’ without much diversity of its own.18 Such religions may necessitate Christian theological judgements and facilitate an ongoing transformation of Christian self-understanding, but they are of no evident interest or value, in and of themselves. In the light of some post-modern critical theory, we might even be tempted to ask whether positing such a neat divide between ‘Christian’ and ‘other’ ultimately distorts far more than it clarifies. Following Kathryn Tanner, it is possible to see relations with both internal and external ‘others’ as a constitutive and defining dimension of Christian identity, rather than as something that merely makes this identity apparent.19 Ecclesial and religious boundaries are constantly shifting phenomena, not infrequently constructed in the very same moment that they are crossed. Obviously, one cannot do everything, even in 1000 pages. But Haight’s strong claims invite verification, clarification, even challenge. In a more recent article, in fact, Haight makes this invitation explicit. In the course of an argument for the ‘transdenominational ecclesiology’ implied by BEM and anticipated in Christian Community in History, Haight outlines a method for constructing such an ecclesiology. After describing ‘comparative’ and ‘normative’ phases of this method, he turns to its ‘self-explanatory’ and ‘apologetic’ phase: ‘The apologetic dimension of comparative ecclesiology will appear most clearly when the audience includes those of other religions. For example, when Christian ecclesiology is compared with accounts of the community life of other religions, its apologetic character becomes more sharply defined.’20 Here again, the question of other world religions arises rather late in the game, only after the comparative enquiry and normative evaluation that constitute the proper work of the ecclesiologist – presuming, it seems, that apologetic concerns were not already integral to the comparative enquiry and normative evaluation alike.21 Nevertheless, Haight has opened a door. And so, at the conclusion of this article, he asserts that the transdenominational ecclesiology he envisions necessarily ‘involves a consistent comparison between churches and perhaps religions, a quest for a normative theological understanding allowed by the Christian sources of revelation, and a critical correlation with the contemporary world of human experience’.22 A Christian ecclesiology of any kind, including a comparative or even ‘transdenominational’ one, will always stand or fall on its coherence with traditional Christian sources. Its method, however, may well require attention to the sources, historical experience and normative self-understandings of other religious communities.

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Advaita Vedanta as Sampradaya and Vijaya: Two Moments of SelfConstitution If we admit the possibility that the comparative ecclesiological project might, either earlier or later in its enquiry, include teachings and experiences of religious community from outside Christian traditions, we face a series of difficult questions. Where do we begin such an enquiry? Where can we look for evidence of normative self-understandings and existential realizations of these communities across their histories? And what do we hope to learn? A preliminary response can be found in a work to which Haight himself alludes in passing: Keith Ward’s Religion and Community, the final instalment of a fourvolume comparative theology constructed in dialogue with Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam.23 In this work, Ward compares the ethical and social content of these various religious views, attentive to points of continuity as well as to ‘distinctive characteristics of the church’.24 As one among a diverse set of comparable community ideals, Christian teachings on the church can grow and change in dialogue with them; as different from these ideals, its unique character can also emerge in a more credible light through comparative enquiry. Either way, Ward suggests, Christians stand to gain from the encounter. Ward’s study is carefully constructed, well articulated and impressive in scope. It is also, by design, quite generalized. In his discussion of Hinduism, for example, Ward singles out ‘sampradaya’ or ‘school’ as the basic ‘unit of religious allegiance’ in the tradition.25 He readily grants that such sampradayas are many, various and, at least in some cases, mutually opposed. But he also sees in their intricate relations a lively embrace of pluralism, at least insofar as individual sampradayas commonly accommodate alternative forms of worship and sometimes recognize the founders of rival schools or religious traditions as ‘realized souls’ on the model of their own founders. At its worst, such an approach can be imperialistic, claiming for one’s own tradition the wisdom of others. At its best, however, it contributes to a lively embrace of diversity in religious practice and personal fulfilment.26 This strategy of inclusion and accommodation is exemplified, according to Ward, in the sampradaya of Advaita Vedanta, closely associated with the eighthcentury teacher and commentator Adi Shankaracharya. Through his teaching on the ‘non-difference’ (advaita) of self, world, and the divine reality of Brahman, as well as the ultimate sublation of phenomenal experience in the light of this Brahman, Shankara was able to integrate and harmonize many different religious expressions at different levels of spiritual achievement. Ward offers the following summary: The great teacher Sankara, revered by virtually all Hindus, promoted the worship of Shiva, to whom he wrote hymns. But in his hands, Shiva becomes a symbol or personal form of Brahman, the supreme reality which is beyond all names and forms . . . Not all understandings of what is going on are on a level, as if many different understandings were equally good. Different sorts of religion may be right for different sorts of people, but that is because people are at different levels of spiritual attainment . . .27

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‘Thus,’ Ward concludes further along in his discussion, ‘Sankara can allow that devotion is suitable for simple, un-educated people. But the enlightened sage will see that devotion belongs to the realm of the unreal, and beyond it lies the unitive vision of truth . . .’28 Short of this unitive vision, a fair variety of devotional practices and traditions can be not merely tolerated, but even embraced as genuinely fruitful for those disposed to them. Ward’s brief treatment of Shankara and his tradition offers an accessible pre´cis of some fundamental Advaita claims.29 It also provides Ward with a set of basic principles about pluralism which, he suggests, ‘can converge closely with Christian hopes for the realisation of the kingdom of God’.30 Without detracting from the uniqueness of the church, this distinctively Hindu attitude can contribute to a deeper Christian understanding of the provisional character and revisability of its own theological language. The kingdom of God transcends and transforms even the most exalted claims on its behalf; hence, Christian tradition might, not merely tolerate, but even embrace diverse expressions of the reality towards which Christians – and even creation itself – yearn in faithful hope.31 So far, so good. The difficulty with this account, as Ward himself certainly recognizes, is that there is no such thing as a typical or shared Hindu ideal of community life, except at great remove and high levels of abstraction. Indeed, there is a lively academic debate about whether it is reasonable to speak about a single, coherent religious reality called ‘Hinduism’ at all.32 Each sampradaya, including Shankara’s tradition of Advaita Vedanta, is unique in its teachings and diverse in its realizations from one place and time to the next. Such diversity invites a more profound engagement with Hinduism in general and Advaita in particular, one which turns from broad description to particular historical examples . . . on the model of Roger Haight’s Christian Community in History itself. For Shankara and his followers did more than formulate general principles. They also contributed to the concrete ‘self-constitution’ of the Advaita tradition in their particular places and times, articulating visions of the teaching tradition that both corresponded to and helped to shape the social worlds from which they emerged.33 If, as Ward rightly suggests, one can fruitfully discern both points of continuity across different traditions and distinctive features of Christian community through comparative study, such insights may well profit from being related as closely as possible to the actual realizations of these community ideals across their histories. For the purposes of this essay, I confine myself to two brief examples of such a ‘concrete, existential, and historical’ approach to Advaita Vedanta, one drawn from the eighth-century CE and the other from a point some seven to nine centuries later. Each of these two examples picks up a theme common to Advaita teaching and to Christian ecclesiology and thus, in my judgement, invites comparison across the boundaries of these traditions. Though the comparisons cannot be fully developed in this essay, my hope is that they give some sense of the kind of interreligious engagement that might enrich not only Haight’s study, but the broader project of comparative ecclesiology.

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Teacher and Teaching Authority in Shankara’s Upadesasahasri One of the persistent issues that has shaped Christian understandings of the church from its origins to the present is the claim of ‘apostolicity’ as a characteristic of the Christian community as a whole and especially of its authorized teaching authorities. Who can speak authoritatively on behalf of Christ and the early apostles? The individual bishop, perhaps especially the Bishop of Rome? The world’s bishops, gathered in council? The local congregation? Charismatic prophets or visionary leaders? As Haight’s two-volume study amply demonstrates, these questions have been variously answered from one era to the next and, especially after the sixteenth century, from one Christian denomination to another.34 A comparable cluster of issues may be seen at play in an eighth-century Sanskrit treatise entitled A Thousand Teachings (Upadesasahasri), which both Advaita tradition and contemporary scholarship have confidently attributed to Adi Shankaracharya.35 The chapters of this manual were likely composed at various times during Shankara’s public career. Eventually, they were compiled by the great sage or his disciples into two distinct collections, one in prose and the other in verse. In the work’s final form, the three chapters of the prose portion (USG) offer a third-person narrative of the Advaita teaching process, roughly corresponding to the ‘triple method’ codified in later tradition as: (1) ‘hearing’ (sravana) the nondual unity of self, world and Brahman as attested by the Vedic scriptures (USG 1), (2) well-reasoned ‘thinking’ or ‘reflection’ (manana) on this truth (USG 2), and (3) ‘meditation’ or ‘concentration’ (nididhyasana) to make one’s conviction unshakable (USG 3).36 The verse portion (USP) offers further detail to this portrait by addressing various disputed questions. Together, the two portions offer a coherent if not exhaustive account of the teaching tradition in action, modelling the effective transmission of its liberating message from guru to disciple in a way that could be emulated by future generations. One cannot presume that the narrative and verses of A Thousand Teachings give an objective description of Advaita community life in the eighth century. They do, however, provide a glimpse into one influential teacher’s vision of how community members should ideally relate to one another in the central religious activity of the tradition: the communication and reception of the teaching. And so, at the very beginning of the prose portion of this text, Shankara supplies a series of scriptural warrants to set up this teaching situation, including the teacher, the disciple and the method of instruction (USG 1.3). The most important such passage, drawn from the Mundaka Upanishad, reads: ‘When he perceives the worlds as built with rites, a Brahmin should acquire a sense of disgust – ‘‘What’s made can’t make what is unmade!’’ To understand it he must go, firewood in hand, to a teacher well versed in the Vedas and focused on brahman.’37 This quotation is significant to Shankara because it mentions, among other things, the two most important qualifications for the authorized Advaitin teacher. Such a teacher is, according to the Upanishad, both srotriya, ‘well versed in the Vedic scriptures’ and brahma-nistha, ‘focused on’ or ‘steadfast in Brahman’.38 The latter term reappears as a required attribute of the

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teacher in the second prose chapter (USG 2.45), along with two others: brahmana, ‘a knower of Brahman’, and sukham asina, ‘sitting at ease’. Elsewhere, Shankara considerably expands on this list of qualifications (USG 1.6), and, if we place these various descriptions together, we can get a pretty complete picture of his ideal teacher. One important feature emerges most consistently: the teacher is a knower of Brahman, established in Brahman, thoroughly immersed in the divine reality about which he purports to teach. Since such knowledge comes only through the scriptures, as we shall see below, it stands to reason that the teacher is well versed in these scriptures and skilled in their proper interpretation. But it also follows that, having accomplished the highest possible goal of human life, he need accomplish nothing else for himself. He can sit at ease, without troubles, and acts only out of a desire to teach Brahman. Hence he is characterized as a person of virtue, healthy detachment and overflowing compassion.39 Thus far, Shankara has described a truly extraordinary individual – which is, on the face of it, rather different from any conception of fixed ministries or offices in the Christian community. When these accounts are placed within the broader ambit of the great sage’s teachings, however, it becomes clear that one cannot detach such personal virtue, scriptural facility and knowledge of Brahman from the integral social and religious context within which they are invariably presumed to function. On the one hand, consistent with other so-called ‘orthodox schools’ of Brahmanic Hinduism, Shankara maintains strong convictions about the Vedic scriptures as an ‘authorless’ revelation and as, indeed, the sole adequate and fruitful source in matters concerning liberation.40 On the other hand, he also emphasizes the need for a teacher and teaching tradition to interpret these same scriptures properly. Thus, on many occasions, Shankara will describe ‘scripture and the teacher’ (sastra-acarya) as, together, the exclusive and independent means (pramana) for knowing Brahman and attaining final release.41 The authorized teacher is, as we have seen, srotriya or ‘well versed in the scriptures’. But being well versed in these scriptures also implies prior formation by yet another teacher, who is himself srotriya, formed and shaped by ‘scripture and the teacher’. Shankara’s emphasis on the authorized teacher thus presumes, as its corollary, an uninterrupted succession of such teachers, by whom the authentic teaching has been concretely preserved and communicated from time immemorial.42 Nowhere in A Thousand Teachings does Shankara offer a definitive list of such authorized Advaita teachers, and his own teaching lineage is the subject of some dispute among historical scholars.43 Instead of such a list, we find reverent salutations, such as those that introduce the manual’s seventeenth verse chapter: The self is to be known. It is beyond everything knowable as there exists nothing else except it. I bow down to that pure, all-knowing and omniscient self which is to be known. (USP 17.1) I always bow down to those [teachers] who are conversant with words, sentences and means of knowledge and who, like lamps, have shown clearly [to us] Brahman, the secret of the Vedas. (17.2)

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I bow down to [my] teacher, whose words fell [into my ears] and destroyed ignorance [in me] like the sun’s rays falling on darkness and destroying it. (17.3)

Shankara pays respect first and foremost to the highest divine reality, that ‘Self’ (Atman) which is ultimately non-different from Brahman. The next two stanzas extend the scope of reverence beyond this divine Atman to the privileged means by which it becomes known. We might see the first as a salutation to the succession of teachers, stressing the connection of this lineage to the scriptures and to the divine Brahman as these same scriptures’ source and secret meaning.44 The second, while still addressing the lineage, places its emphasis upon these teachers’ immediate presence and efficacious instruction, presumably also including Shankara’s own teacher. If this interpretation is correct – and it finds some support in the Advaita commentarial tradition45 – we can view the verses in descending order, beginning with the highest divine reality and proceeding to one’s own teacher through the words of Scripture and the lineage that embodies these scriptures’ true meaning. This teacher is not merely an admirable or charismatic individual. As a knower of Brahman and a living embodiment of the sacred lineage, he speaks with the authority of the total community and the divine Self it purports to teach. We can readily see that Shankara does not isolate the individual Advaitin guru from the social reality of the sampradaya or teaching tradition, for it is this tradition that shapes the teacher and authorizes him to teach. It may therefore come as no surprise that, precisely as embodied by such teachers, the sampradaya itself also commands unswerving allegiance. Elsewhere in this teaching manual, for example, Shankara offers the following contrast and injunction to prospective disciples: The conceptions of [rival Hindu traditions and Buddhists] are not tenable according to reason . . . [A] wise person, having renounced the teachings of others’ scriptural traditions and having discarded all crookedness, should with faith and devotion acquire a firm understanding of the Vedanta accepted by Vyasa. False doctrines of dualism and those according to which there is no self have thus been refuted through reasoning, so that seekers after liberation may be steady in the path of knowledge and be free from doubts arising from others’ doctrines. (USP 16.64b–68)

Shankara’s idealized community is not reducible to one teacher and one student, as depicted in the prose portion of A Thousand Teachings. It consists instead of all such disciples and their teachers – past, present and future – who become ‘seekers on the path’, who reject the teachings of Buddhists and other Hindu teaching traditions, and who thus take refuge in the Advaita sampradaya as the sole means to final release. This account of teachers and teaching authority merely scratches the surface of A Thousand Teachings (as one might expect from the work’s title).46 Nevertheless, it does provide a few parameters for understanding Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta as a sampradaya. Ward, as we have seen, defines this term in a general sense as ‘a school’, which, he continues, ‘follows a particular teacher or guru, who normally claims to stand in a lineage from an ancient revered teacher’.47 This description is

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accurate, as far as it goes. But it does not nearly capture the rich texture and insistence of Shankara’s vision. From a point of view inside the Advaita tradition, the sampradaya is not one among many ‘schools of thought’. It is a divinely authorized means of liberation flowing from the divine Brahman, founded on the scriptures, sustained by an unbroken succession of realized sages, and made effective, here and now, in the person of a teacher like the one modelled in the prose portion of this teaching manual. Shankara’s guru is, we might say, a simultaneously ‘charismatic’ and ‘institutional’ figure, who speaks both from his immanent realization of Brahman and from his well-inscribed place in the tradition. It is precisely this blending of institutional and charismatic authority that may make the vision of the Advaita sampradaya in Shankara’s treatise a useful sounding board for developing a comparative ecclesiology and, more specifically, for testing and refining Christian discussions of apostolicity and authority. One can, for example, adduce parallels between Shankara’s essential vision and the development of what Haight calls ‘early Catholicism’ in First Clement, the Pastoral Epistles, the Didache and especially the letters of Ignatius of Antioch in the late first and early second centuries CE.48 In these writings, as in Shankara’s treatise, we find a relatively narrow focus upon the authority exercised in local, personal relationships – albeit always allied with equally strong emphases on continuity and tradition. The ‘community’, as such, is very different on the two sides of the comparison: for Shankara, the most basic unit of the sampradaya is the individual teacher in relation to one or more individual students, rather than any kind of worshipping assembly. But some claims made on behalf of the teacher at the centre of these respective visions are nevertheless amenable to comparative enquiry. We might, in particular, focus on the related developments of the monarchical bishop and apostolic succession in First Clement and Ignatius of Antioch. Clement always speaks of ‘bishops and deacons’ in the plural, but he traces their ministry and authority, through the apostles and their earliest converts, to God the divine self.49 ‘So then Christ is from God’, he claims, ‘and the apostles are from Christ. Both, therefore, came of the will of God in proper order.’50 Ignatius does not speak in terms of succession, but he does forcefully assert that members of the Christian movement should invest their bishops, as authorized teachers and rulers of the community, with the highest possible authority. ‘The bishop is appointed not by other persons but by God,’ Haight writes, paraphrasing Ignatius. ‘Look on the bishop as on God . . . what the bishop sanctions is the will of God; one who honors the bishop is accepted by God.’51 The weight one gives to these claims depends rather heavily, of course, upon historical assessments of the authenticity of Ignatius’s letters and their date, both of which have been the subject of some dispute.52 Nevertheless, deliberately reading Ignatius’s claims for the bishop in tandem with Clement’s description of succession – as, it should be noted, many Christian traditions have not hesitated to do53 – we might discern an idealized figure not unlike the ideal teacher described in A Thousand Teachings, one whose authority is immediate and intrinsic to his own person, even while carefully circumscribed within a context of broader institutional claims about succession and lineage in the tradition.

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It would go considerably too far to suggest that the bishop fulfils exactly the same role in Clement and Ignatius’s respective visions of Christian community as the authorized teacher fulfils for Shankara. Once a link is established between these three accounts, however, a richer conversation could ensue about religious structures of authority, legitimation and even ‘apostolicity’ itself. At one level, the Christian ecclesiologist might accommodate shared patterns by appealing to universal human experience, to sociological understandings of the ‘routinization of charisma’, or to parallel ‘historical and functional’ developments in both traditions.54 Such strategies, however, do not do justice to the specifically religious claims of an Ignatius of Antioch or an Adi Shankaracharya. Taken on his own terms, Shankara does not invoke the teacher’s authority to address a perceived social need in the community. He claims the well-established authority of a tradition that is prior to himself and even to his own teachers, a well-defined scriptural and social reality with its origins in the divine Source of all creation. He thereby also presents a challenge to the similarly specific claims of the Christian tradition. In adjudicating such a challenge, moreover, it may be the shared emphases, rather than the differences, that present the greatest difficulty for the Christian theologian and especially for the comparative ecclesiologist. In his important study Hindu God, Christian God, for example, Francis X. Clooney ably demonstrates how Hindu and Christian reasonings about God often overlap in unexpected ways, unsettling firm boundaries and illuminating the internal diversity of each tradition. In some cases, the strongest divisions – for example, the divide between those thinkers who accept inductive demonstrations of God’s existence and those who reject such proofs as invalid and even unfaithful – cut across both traditions, rather than separating them.55 In and out of this study, he suggests that theologians might adopt what he calls the ‘Comparativist’s Razor’: namely, that ‘theological ways of understanding faith, reading, conceptualizing and arguing are presumed not to be tradition-specific unless a case for this specificity is put forward and argued plausibly in the broader interreligious context’.56 Or, as he states more succinctly early in the study, ‘A religion may be unique, but its theology is not.’57 What holds for theology in general would, it seems, apply especially forcefully to ecclesiology, a discipline born out of controversy and, perhaps for that reason, especially susceptible to what Clooney calls ‘the rhetoric of uniqueness’.58 Surely distinctive emphases on faith in Christ and the gift of the Spirit will distinguish Christians from Advaitins as a rule, but what if Shankara’s account of the complex relation of teacher, Scripture and tradition rings true as a credible, persuasive approach to religious authority, even for the Christian theologian? What if some Christian arguments about teaching authority end up resonating more closely with the account in A Thousand Teachings than with those put forward by other Christians? This could be read variously as a sociological accident, as indirect validation, or even as proof positive of corruption. Either way, sustained comparative enquiry stands to enliven, to complicate and, at least potentially, to enrich the ecclesiological enterprise by destabilizing naı¨ve claims to uniqueness. To paraphrase Clooney’s dictum: Christian community may be unique, but

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arguments about divinely authorized teachers, in unbroken succession, certainly are not. Conquest and Mission in the Traditional Hagiographies Advaita tradition did not come to an end with the career of Adi Shankaracharya. A vibrant teaching and commentarial tradition flourished in his wake, from the eighth century to the present day.59 Shankara’s writings gave rise to various schools of interpretation, and the Advaita sampradaya took institutional shape in a ‘thousand-year-old Hindu monastic federation’ called the Dashanami Order.60 From one point of view, this Order exists as an organization of renunciants, built around the succession of the so-called ‘Shankaracharyas’, who preside over the tradition from four or five major centres (mathas) throughout India.61 From another point of view, the monastic Order merely serves as a skeleton for the much wider lay smarta movement, an internally coherent structure of religious life which has, historically, made a significant mark on Indian society and whose influence now reaches throughout the globe.62 It is in the context of this historical development that we witness a second moment of self-constitution in the Advaita tradition, one which takes its start less from Shankara’s own teachings than from a transformed vision of Adi Shankaracharya himself. In Western scholarship, precisely because it is his commentaries and other writings that constitute our best historical foundation, Shankara is usually treated as a ‘philosopher’, ‘theologian’, ‘commentator’ or simply ‘Vedantin’.63 In Advaita tradition, he would more typically be known as a powerful incarnation of the god Shiva, whose short mortal span of 32 years transformed the land, history and culture of the Indian subcontinent. This dramatic image of the great teacher emerges most strongly in the so-called vijayas, a body of hagiographical literature dating from about the fourteenth century onwards. One of these, entitled Shankara’s Conquest of the Quarters (Sankara-digvijaya; hereafter SDV), represents a compilation and synthesis of prior narratives, which seems to have been brought into its final form sometime between 1650 and 1740.64 The high status accorded to this work is attested by the fact that its author is often identified as Vidyaranya, among the greatest of the medieval Shankaracharyas in the southern Indian town of Shringeri. At least two other such holders of the Shankaracharya office in the modern period have upheld the work as a reliable source for historical details of their namesake’s life.65 Whatever weight one gives to such claims, Shankara’s Conquest of the Quarters offers a powerful remembered image of this teacher, one whose contemporary influence has been amplified by its translation into film, school texts, and even a comic book series.66 The main theme of this work is, as its title indicates, a dig-vijaya or ‘conquest of the quarters’, a triumphant tour by a veritable philosopher-king. In his magisterial survey of the vijaya literature, in fact, Jonathan Bader has argued that these narratives can be read as literary creations modelled on a well-known rite of royal consecration (raja-suya).67 Shankara’s Conquest of the Quarters thus initially follows

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its hero from his miraculous conception and birth through his initiation into ascetic life and the Vedanta tradition in the first half of the work (SDV 1.1–7.58). In the second half, Shankara initiates a dramatic pilgrimage and victory tour across every corner of India, reforming temple worship, forming a small group of disciples and engaging in a series of verbal contests with the exponents of rival Hindu traditions (7.59–15.174). Perhaps most importantly, it concludes in the mountains of Kashmir, where Shankara defeats an army of such rivals in reasoned debate and ascends a legendary ‘throne of omniscience’ as his reward (16.54– 99).68 Bader concludes: ‘The digvijaya is, strictly speaking, appropriate only for a king. But the hagiographers transpose this ritual method of legitimizing authority from the sphere of politics to the realm of metaphysics.’69 Shankara emerges in the narrative as a true conqueror of India, albeit one who conquers with no weapon except words.70 The texture of the traditional hagiographies is layered, and they are susceptible to various readings. On the one hand, they may represent a kind of hegemonic vision of an India whose unity is defined by Brahmin or upper-caste religious ideals.71 On the other, they also embody real tensions between Vaishnava and Shaiva devotionalism, as well as between the competing ideals of householder and ascetic life.72 Bader himself has suggested that they can be understood in terms of ‘sacred geography’, pilgrimage and ritual consecration, placing those who follow in Shankara’s steps (literally, in some cases) into direct contact with a timeless mythic realm above the vicissitudes of historical existence.73 The twentieth-century neoVedantin Swami Chinmayananda drew a more practical lesson from this literature: he designated Shankara a ‘missionary’ and, inspired by his example of spiritual conquest, founded the international Chinmaya Mission to disseminate the Advaita message throughout India and abroad.74 Undoubtedly, in specifying Shankara’s conquest as a missionary enterprise, Chinmayananda subtly remade the eighth-century teacher in his own image, even as he also drew inspiration from the traditional narrative.75 In so doing, however, he also stands firmly in the legacy of the vijaya literature itself, which revisions the Advaita sampradaya by recasting its most eminent teacher. In some contrast to the resolutely local relationship between teacher and student in Shankara’s A Thousand Teachings, the Shankara of the vijayas sets out to unify the entire subcontinent under the banner of Advaita. It is telling, for example, that Shankara’s alleged pluralism and acceptance of devotional worship, highlighted above by Keith Ward, owes more to the hagiographical portrait than to anything in Shankara’s own writings: in the vijayas, Shankara frequents and even establishes a number of temples, and it is through these legendary narratives that he gained credit for establishing the so-called ‘six devotional sects’ of smarta orthodoxy.76 Insofar as this Shankara can be called a missionary, his mandate included the purification of devotional worship and its thorough incorporation into the Advaita fold. On a more institutional level, Bader traces the origin of the vijaya literature to an important consolidation of political and religious authority in the fourteenth century. He writes:

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The emergence of the hagiographies seems to correspond directly to the rise of the Sankara institutions. The most prominent of these was the monastic centre (matha) at Sringeri, which was patronized by, and closely allied to the Vijayanagara kings. But not enough is known about the early history of Sringeri – and still less about the other Sankara mathas – to provide precise definitions of the relationship between the institutions and the texts. One thing is certain however. The stories which glorified Sankara would serve well the interests of the mathas. The institutions could only stand to benefit from the prestige accruing to the deified figure of the man who was perhaps the outstanding teacher and writer in the sacred lineage.77

Reading Bader’s analysis alongside the narrative of a work like Shankara’s Conquest of the Quarters, we can begin to get a sense of the distinctive self-realization of Advaita community embodied therein. The ideal teacher of A Thousand Teachings has become the ‘world-teacher’ (jagad-guru) of the hagiographies, and a story of conquest has been narrated, at least in part, to serve a developing Advaita mission of unification, consolidation and reform, with its centre of gravity in Sringeri and the other great mathas. For the scholar seeking the ‘real Shankara’, these hagiographies may seem to have little or nothing to offer. For the comparative ecclesiologist, however, the social vision of the vijayas reveals yet another, distinct community ideal in the Advaita tradition. And this ideal might, in turn bear comparison with the letters of Gregory VII and the eleventh-century Gregorian reforms in the Western church. One basis for such comparison would be the strong impulse towards religious and social unification embodied in these otherwise disparate religious movements. About the development of Christian community in the medieval period, Haight writes: The Gregorian reform provided a basis and a social historical impulse for the creation of Christendom, a unity of church and society throughout Europe. One may qualify the comprehensiveness of this unity in various respects. But even the ongoing rivalry and conflict between sacerdotium and regnum unfolded under or within a unified religious framework . . .78

The vijaya literature also seems to aspire to a ‘unified religious framework’ for the Advaita tradition and, at least in principle, for the whole of India. If Bader is correct in his analysis, moreover, this aspiration arose in tandem with a process of centralization and institutionalization, comparable if not identical to the centralizing of authority in the medieval papacy.79 It is perhaps no accident that contemporary Advaitins will sometimes use ‘Pontiff’ to designate one or another holder of the Shankacharya office.80 Such comparisons, should they only extend as far as institutional forms, again run the risk of neglecting the specifically religious character of both movements. Haight himself appreciatively characterizes the self-understanding of the church flowing from the Gregorian reforms with the label ‘sanctifier of society’.81 Though this mission of sanctification was always enacted at a local level, it also redefined the church and sharpened its self-understanding as a universal community. Similarly, the vijaya literature certainly did not displace the older tradition of

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individual teachers and individual students, as depicted in Shankara’s writings. By means of their creative re-presentation of Shankara as a world-conqueror, however, the hagiographers universalize this ideal in terms of conquest and mission. The ‘vijaya’ of this portrait may be mythic and stereotypical, but the leading themes of the legendary narratives are still distinctively Advaitin. And so they, no less than A Thousand Teachings, offer specific challenges to the comparative ecclesiologist. To develop these issues in any depth would take us far afield from our present purpose. Suffice it to say that the vijaya literature again has the potential to enrich any account of the relation between Christianity and Hinduism. At a very basic level, these narratives again complicate Christian claims to uniqueness. It is no longer possible to claim (or to vilify) a broad ideal of mission and even of the ongoing ‘sanctification of society’ as an exclusively Christian preserve. The church can thus be imagined as the object as well as the subject of missionary rhetoric. Even if one does not anticipate the wholesale absorption of Christianity into Advaita as a kind of ‘seventh devotional sect’ alongside worship of Vishnu and the Goddess, Christians may come to identify this ‘religious other’ as a serious rival, worthy of attention, appreciation and perhaps even a trace of healthy concern. At the same time, the particulars of each test case invariably give a distinctive shape to each comparative enquiry. Whereas in the previous case we identified what appeared to be a strong thread of continuity amidst otherwise disparate contexts and claims, in this case the identification of a common frame may ultimately lead us to a more profound engagement with religious difference. Indeed, building on the work of Francis Clooney and the literary critic Victor Shklovsky, Hugh Nicholson has argued that some element of ‘defamiliarization’ can be discerned at the heart of any serious comparison across religious boundaries. He writes: Comparison functions as a means of defamiliarization by having the strangeness of the religious other reflect back upon the home tradition. In forcing us to construe the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar, comparison . . . ‘makes the familiar seem strange in order to enhance our perception of the familiar’.82

The results of such ‘defamiliarization’ are far from predictable, and may not conform to an agenda or programme set out prior to the comparative experiment . . . including even those agendas intended to facilitate harmony in a religiously pluralistic world.83 In light of the hagiographical literature, for example, it would seem incongruous to suggest that Christian mission can or should be reduced to interreligious dialogue.84 Part of the ‘strangeness’ of this particular comparative example stems from its implied invitation to re-construe familiar Christian notions of mission precisely in terms of vijaya or conquest. The sanctification of society proceeds, according to this vision, not merely through religious reform and unification, but also through the concrete praxis of verbal contests, personal asceticism and robust incorporation of religious rivals under the umbrella of the home tradition. There is dialogue here, to be sure, but it is a dialogue resolutely in the service of persuasion and debate.

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Such a vision does not cohere seamlessly with Christian understandings and practices of missionary outreach, but neither is it irreducibly different. Once the two are set in constructive relation, the unique characteristics of each may emerge more clearly or even be sharpened by the exchange. Rather than a missionary church confronting or accommodating a passive ‘other’, in other words, a genuine encounter between these dynamic visions would ideally include the real possibility of mutual engagement and even what one scholar has labelled ‘mutual evangelisation’.85 Beyond merely pursuing or promoting a mission of interreligious dialogue, comparative ecclesiology might become a privileged locus for interreligious dialogue around the nature and function of mission itself.86 A More Comparative Ecclesiology: Comparative, Normative and Apologetic The two brief comparisons I have attempted in this essay raise far more questions than they answer, by design. To be sure, Ignatius of Antioch does not make exactly the same claims on behalf of Christian bishops as Shankara makes on behalf of his authorized teacher, and the author of Shankara’s Conquest of the Quarters should not be too closely associated with Gregory VII and the development of the medieval pontificate. Separated not only by religious tradition but also by vastly different intellectual contexts, the parallels between and among these diverse visions are bound to fall short. At the very least, to make such comparisons with anything approaching the integrity of Haight’s Christian Community in History, we would need to supplement these somewhat idealized readings of textual sources with thicker accounts of the social, political and religious worlds from which they arose.87 Yet, precisely by making particular, distinctively Advaitin claims about teaching authority and mission, these examples invite such a broader enquiry, one with the potential to complement and complicate the comparative ecclesiological project. But why would we want to? Why would we take a ‘potentially endless’ endeavour and make it, to coin a phrase, ‘even endlesser’? Isn’t the project already complicated enough? Indeed, it is – impossibly complicated, in fact. In his article on ‘transdenominational ecclesiology’, mentioned above, Haight describes his comparative purview as comprehending the totality of ‘historical instances of the church, in the past and in the present, so that every representation of a transdenominational ecclesiology must implicitly appeal to the whole range of historical data which it sifts and measures by comparison’.88 In a footnote to this bold assertion, he adds an important concession: I have stated this process in a literal way that makes it an impossible task. Obviously, there are many disciplined short cuts to the consideration of the whole range of the history of the church and its ecclesiologies. [The WCC document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry], for example, was constructed by a group of theologians, representing many traditions and churches, who entered into critical conversation.89

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To stem the tide of innumerable and irreducibly particular realizations of Christian community, one invariably makes choices. Even if the comparative ecclesiologist intends the entire scope of such realizations across Christian history, the limitations of time and resources, not to mention the historical evidence itself, necessitate careful and critical selection.90 A more comparative ecclesiology, as proposed in this essay, does not introduce such a principle of selection; it merely broadens the field from which selections can be made. In so doing, I suggest, it has the potential to sharpen the enquiry, as well as its intended results.91 First of all, on a strictly comparative level, it provides the necessary empirical data to test Haight’s oft-repeated claim that globalization ‘makes the quarrels among Christian churches appear parochial and relatively unimportant’.92 Comparisons between any Christian example and any Advaita example are likely to support his claim, at least superficially: as we have already noted, distinctively Christian beliefs about Christ and the Spirit certainly set Christian disciples apart from Shankara and his followers, no less than the liberative teaching praxis of A Thousand Teachings purports to set its disciples apart from Buddhists and other rivals. If we ask narrower ecclesiological questions, however, the various parties to the conversation may fall out rather differently. On the issue of the relative priority of universal and local realizations of the religious community, for example, we may discover that Ignatius of Antioch and Adi Shankaracharya have more in common with one another than either shares with Gregory VII or the authors of the vijayas. If the ecclesiology of the church is, as Haight argues, necessarily ‘multiple’,93 the same can be safely asserted of the church’s ‘global context’, in the present or in any age. With regard to forming normative theological judgements in and out of comparative enquiry, as well as constructing apologetic correlations to a broader realm of human experience, the inclusion of religious others may have an even more vital role to play. On the one hand, Shankara’s distinctively Advaita presentation of the teacher as a living embodiment of Scripture and tradition may provide a constructive alternative to any one-sided insistence upon Scripture, personal charisma or institutional succession in intra-Christian debates about teaching authority. On the other, the vijaya literature and its imagery of bloodless conquest can either inspire or unsettle Christian missionary rhetoric, perhaps facilitating a renewed appreciation for the power and limitations of reasoned debate. Either way, the comparative ecclesiologist may well emerge better able to formulate normative claims on behalf of the Christian tradition and to articulate these claims in a pluralistic context which includes, among countless voices, those of Advaitins shaped by Shankara’s own teaching and/or the remembered image of him in a work like Shankara’s Conquest of the Quarters. As the comparison gains in breadth and depth, moreover, artificially sharp distinctions between ‘Christians’ and ‘others’, and even between ‘normative evaluation’ and ‘apologetics’ in the ecclesiological enterprise, will likely become increasingly problematized against a richer field of social and theological possibilities. With this in mind, we can imagine yet a fourth dimension of such interreligious engagement, one not explicitly incorporated into Haight’s method: that is, the

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ongoing cultivation of humility and reverence. Reflecting on the greater openness of the church in the modern world, Haight writes: The outreach of the church to these cultures and religions cannot be imperial; it can only be made through dialogue in a conversation geared on a first level to mutual understanding. The churches are gradually shedding many aspects of a former absolutism and learning humility before a God active outside the Christian sphere.94

The Christian humility emphasized here would seem to require a willingness to speak, to listen, and to learn about and from God, wherever this God may be found. If this is the desired attitude in general, how much more should it govern the work of the comparative ecclesiologist, who directs her attention explicitly to the social constitution and relational dimensions of Christian faith? To engage this task properly may well require work, not only beyond the bounds of one’s own Christian confession, but even beyond the Christian tradition itself. If conducted with the appropriate humility and hopefulness, such interreligious enquiry and dialogue can come to represent an end in itself, beyond any of the instrumental uses to which its insights might eventually be put.95 At the end of the day, as indicated earlier in this essay, it is Christian sources that will determine the final shape of any comparative ecclesiological exercise, and comparison across religious boundaries will never replace those comparisons and conversations that aim for greater unity among diverse Christian communities. But Christians are not alone in raising serious questions about such topics as community life, authority, mission and ministry. Other religious traditions have also reflected deeply on these issues, and Christian ecclesiologists may well have something to learn from their reflections. For those who choose to do so, Haight’s Christian Community in History offers more than a wealth of data for comparison; it also provides the fundamental insight and key principles from which such learning could concretely proceed. Haight offers, in short, the blueprint for a comparative ecclesiology that may well reach beyond even his own most extravagant ambitions.96

Notes 1. See Luke Timothy Johnson, ‘Theology from Below?’, Commonweal 132/5 (28 January 2005): 34–6, and Richard P. McBrien, ‘Review Symposium: Roger Haight, SJ, Christian Community in History’, Horizons 32 (2005): 384–6. 2. Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II: Comparative Ecclesiology (New York and London: Continuum, 2005), pp. 496–8. 3. Ibid., p. 497. 4. Ibid. 5. Avery Dulles, SJ, Models of the Church, rev. edn (New York: Doubleday, 1974, 1987). In the ‘Review Symposium’, cited above, McBrien rightly notes the puzzling fact that references to this important precedent are conspicuously missing in Haight’s project. In keeping with his focus ‘from below’, Haight instead highlights the more sociological approaches of Joseph Komonchak, Ernst Troeltsch, Bernard Cooke, Eric G. Jay, Hans Ku¨ng and Edward Schillibeeckx. James Gustafson also represents a significant influence.

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6. Dennis M. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology: Visions and Versions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2000). See Haight, Christian Community, vol. 2, p. 4. 7. See Dulles, Models, pp. 9–10, and Roger Haight, SJ, Christian Community in History, vol. I: Historical Ecclesiology (New York and London: Continuum, 2004), pp. 1–2. 8. Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, pp. 4–6. 9. See Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, esp. pp. 58–60, and Christian Community, vol. II, pp. 2–4. 10. See especially Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, pp. 71–86, 123–4. 11. Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, pp. 389–90, and Christian Community, vol. II, pp. 380–2, 400, 406–8. 12. This is, specifically, how Haight characterizes the teaching of Nostra Aetate, the Council’s declaration on the relation of the church to non-Christian religions, in Christian Community, vol. II, p. 400. 13. See Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, pp. 30–2. 14. Ibid., 31. The quotation is taken from Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1990), pp. 5–15. Haight discusses the salvific value of other religions in greater depth in his Jesus: Symbol of God (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1999), pp. 395–423. 15. Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, p. 1. Cf. ibid., pp. 8–9. 16. Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, p. 58. 17. Haight, Christian Community, vol. II, p. 293. See also Roger Haight, SJ, ‘Where we Dwell in Common’, Horizons 32 (2005): 337–8. 18. In Jesus, Haight defends such an a priori approach: Some theologians insist that one cannot judge other religions except a posteriori, after studying them, or entering into dialogue with their representatives, or participating in them. On the contrary, Christian theology is obliged to interpret and judge other religions on the basis of its norm, Jesus Christ, in the same way that it is obliged to interpret all reality. This defines what Christian theology is: its task is to interpret all reality in the light of Christian symbols. (p. 411)

19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

Yet, forming a theological judgement about the salvific value of other religions is specifically different from forming a sociological judgement about changing perceptions of Christian identity in light of globalization and religious pluralism. The latter involves, paradoxically, an a priori generalization about an a posteriori response. See Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture, Guides to Theological Inquiry (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), esp. 110–19. Michael Barnes, SJ builds a similar case from the philosophies of Michel de Certeau, Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur in Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), esp. pp. 65–129. Haight, ‘Where We Dwell’, pp. 343–4. Cf. Tanner, Theories, pp. 115–17, and the further discussion in Hugh Nicholson, ‘Comparative Theology after Liberalism’, Modern Theology 23 (2007): 229–51. Haight, ‘Where We Dwell’, pp. 347–8. Keith Ward, Religion and Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). The other works in the series are: Keith Ward, Religion and Revelation: A Theology of Revelation in the World’s Religions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Keith Ward, Religion and Creation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Keith Ward, Religion and Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). The reference to Ward’s work occurs in Haight, ‘Where We Dwell’, p. 344, n. 13. Ward, Religion and Community, p. 5. Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., pp. 96–9. The important Catholic Indologist Paul Hacker labelled this interpretive strategy ‘inclusivism’ (inclusivismus), defined as ‘claiming for, and thus including in, one’s

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27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

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own religion what really belongs to an alien sect’. See Paul Hacker, ‘Aspects of NeoHinduism as Contrasting with Surviving Traditional Hinduism’, in Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta, ed. Wilhelm Halbfass (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 244. Though this description bears a certain genetic similarity to the Christian ‘inclusivism’ famously articulated by Karl Rahner, SJ, and attaining something close to authoritative status in Catholic tradition, Hacker himself considered inclusivismus as distinctively South Asian, necessarily imperialistic, and thus antithetical to authentic religious tolerance. See the excellent analysis of this claim in Wilhelm Halbfass, ‘ ‘‘Inclusivism’’ and ‘‘Tolerance’’ in the Encounter Between India and the West’, in India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 403–18, as well as treatment of specific cases in Bradley Malkovsky, ‘Swami Vivekananda and Bede Griffiths on Religious Pluralism: Hindu and Christian Approaches to Truth’, Horizons 25 (1998): 217–37, and Francis X. Clooney, SJ, ‘Hindu Views of Religious Others: Implications for Christian Theology’, Theological Studies 64 (2003): 306–33. Ward, Religion and Community, p. 88. Ibid., p. 89. Two excellent, though quite different, contemporary interpretations of the fundamental teaching of Advaita can be found in Eliot Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1968) and Anantanand Rambachan, The Advaita Worldview: God, World, and Humanity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). Ward, Religion and Community, pp. 335–6. Ibid., pp. 326–38. Such universalistic conceptions of the kingdom of God have become especially pronounced in the work of individual theologians and ecclesiastical bodies in India and throughout Asia – including especially the documents of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC). See Peter Phan, In Our Own Tongues: Perspectives from Asia on Mission and Inculturation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2003); Peter Phan, Christianity with an Asian Face: Asian American Theology in the Making (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2003), pp. 75–97 and passim; and Jacques Dupuis, SJ, Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue, trans. Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002), pp. 195–217. See, e.g., Gauri Viswanathan, ‘Colonialism and the Construction of Hinduism’, in The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, ed. Gavin Flood (Oxford and Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 23–44, and Brian K. Pennington, Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). In this particular way of formulating the issue, I am following Joseph Komonchak and, more remotely, Bernard Lonergan. See Joseph A. Komonchak, Foundations in Ecclesiology, Supplementary Issue of the Lonergan Workshop Journal, vol. 11, ed. Fred Lawrence (Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College, 1995), as well as the discussion in Haight, Christian Community, vol. 1, pp. 35–44. See Francis A. Sullivan, SJ, ‘Review Symposium: Roger Haight, SJ, Christian Community in History’, Horizons 32 (2005): 377–9, as well as Haight’s response in the same ‘Review Symposium’: 391–3. Hereafter cited in the body of the text, in its prose portion (USG) and verse portion (USP). For this essay, I have used the Sanskrit text and English translation available in Swami Jagadananda, trans., A Thousand Teachings, in Two Parts – Prose and Poetry, of Sri Sankaracharya (Madras: Sri Ramkrishna Math, [1941]). I have, in places, made some modifications in the English translation. There is also a critical edition of the text and an alternate translation, both prepared by Sengaku Mayeda. See Sengaku Mayeda, trans., A Thousand Teachings: The Upadesasahasri of Sankara (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) and Sengaku Mayeda (ed.), Sankara’s Upadesasahasri, Critically Edited with Introduction and Indices (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1973). Mayeda has persuasively

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37.

38.

39.

40.

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defended Shankara’s authorship of this text in ‘The Authenticity of the Upadesasahasri Ascribed to Sankara’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 85 (1965): 178–96. See Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings, p. xiii; William Cenkner, A Tradition of Teachers: Sankara and the Jagadgurus Today (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983, 1995 [reprint]), pp. 66–9, and Yoshitsugu Sawai, ‘The Nature of Faith in the Sankaran Vedanta Tradition’, Numen 34 (1987): 28–9. I am following the Sanskrit text and English translation in Patrick Olivelle, trans., The Early Upanisads: Annotated Text and Translation (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 441. See Cenkner, Tradition of Teachers, pp. 8–10. On the translation of nistha as ‘devotion to’, ‘dedication to’, or ‘steadfastness in’, see Roger Marcaurelle, Freedom through Inner Renunciation: Sankara’s Philosophy in a New Light (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 84–8. See J. G. Suthren Hirst, ‘The Place of Teaching Techniques in Samkara’s Theology’, Journal of Indian Philosophy 18 (1990): 130–1, and Cenkner, A Tradition of Teachers, pp. 41–3. It is important to keep in mind that the list of virtues is almost certainly not intended to have the force of injunction, i.e. ‘a teacher should strive for . . .’ If the teacher is a knower of Brahman, then she or he is theoretically exempt from all injunctions. Instead, the teacher possesses these qualities naturally, by virtue of being established in Brahman and well versed in Scripture. Cf. Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Theology after Vedanta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 147–9. This point has been underscored very forcefully by Anantanand Rambachan in a number of publications, including especially his monograph Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Sankara, Monographs of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, no. 10 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), esp. pp. 31– 54, and his essay ‘Where Words Can Set Free: The Liberating Potency of Vedic Words in the Hermeneutics of Sankara’, in Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, ed. Jeffrey R. Timm (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 35–42. See also the extensive treatments in K. Satchidananda Murty, Revelation and Reason in Advaita Vedanta (Waltair: Andhra University, 1959), and J. G. Suthren Hirst, Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta: A Way of Teaching, RoutledgeCurzon Hindu Studies Series (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), esp. 49–68. See Suthren Hirst, Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta, pp. 59–60. See Cenkner, A Tradition of Teachers, pp. 32–7, and Lance E. Nelson, ‘Living Liberation in Sankara and Classical Advaita: Sharing the Waiting of God’, in Living Liberation in Hindu Thought, ed. Andrew O. Fort and Patricia Y. Mumme (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 24–5. Such lists of succession are not, as such, foreign to the tradition: Shankara comments on the two ‘lineages’ (vamsa) of teachers listed in Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 4.6 and 6.5 in V. Panoli, trans., Upanishads in Sankara’s Own Words, vol. 4 (Calicut: Mathrubhumi Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd, 1994), pp. 1131–4, 1339–42, and Advaita tradition generally traces Shankara’s lineage through a sage named Govinda to Sankara’s important predecessor Gaudapada. See Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings, p. 4, as well as the discussion of chronology in Karl Potter, ‘Gaudapada’, in Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara and His Pupils, vol. 3 (Delhi, Varanasi and Patna: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981), pp. 103–4. In his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, Shankara supplies a different kind of divine warrant for this teaching lineage, speaking in devotional terms of Lord Vishnu as the ‘originator’ or ‘maker’ of the Advaita tradition (sampradaya-kartr). See the discussion in Suthren Hirst, Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta, pp. 57–9, as well as the creative developments of the parallel between teacher and Lord in Nelson, ‘Living Liberation’, esp. pp. 38–44, and J. G. Suthren Hirst, The Teacher and the Avatara: Mediators of Realisation in Samkara’s Advaitin Theology (PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1983).

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45. See V. Narasimhan, trans., Upadesa Sahasri: A Thousand Teachings of Adi Sankara (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1996), p. 137, which offers a brief synthesis of the commentaries of Anandagiri (thirteenth century CE) and Ramatirtha (seventeenth century) on USP 17.2–3. 46. For more extended comparative treatments of the social process and community ideals modelled in this text, see Reid B. Locklin, ‘Sankara, Augustine, and Rites de Passage: Comparative Theology with Victor Turner’, in Theology and the Social Sciences, ed. Michael Barnes, Annual Publication of the College Theology Society 46 (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), pp. 135–60, and Reid B. Locklin, Spiritual but Not Religious? An Oar Stroke Closer to the Farther Shore (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2005). 47. Ward, Religion and Community, p. 80. 48. See Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, pp. 83–6. 49. See, e.g., 1 Clement 42–4, in Michael W. Holmes (ed.), The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translation, rev. edn (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992, 1999), pp. 75–9. 50. 1 Clement 42, in ibid., p. 75. 51. Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, p. 153. 52. William R. Schoedel briefly surveys these controversies in his Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, ed. Helmut Koester, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), pp. 4–7. Schoedel argues for the authenticity of the ‘middle recension’ generally accepted by modern scholars, and settles on a date somewhere between 100 and 118 CE. 53. Francis A. Sullivan, SJ, offers a nuanced reconstruction of the continuities and discontinuities between these two texts in From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 2001), pp. 123–5. 54. Cf. Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, pp. 91–2, 126–7 and 193–4. 55. See especially Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps Break Down the Boundaries between Religions (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 29–61. 56. Ibid., p. 165. 57. Ibid., p. 8. 58. Ibid., p. 165. On the origins of ecclesiology as a theological discipline, Haight writes (Christian Community, vol. II, pp. 2–3):

59. 60.

61.

62.

63.

Of course the church had been the subject of serious reflection by organizers, administrators, bishops, theologians, and the equivalent of canonists from the beginning. But ecclesiology became more of a formal area of reflection and subdiscipline of Christian theology in the course of controversies between emperors and popes, and especially during the conciliarist crisis. See, for example, the discussion in Clooney, Theology after Vedanta, pp. 18–22. Wade H. Dazey, ‘Tradition and Modernization in the Organization of the Dasanami Samnyasins’, in Monastic Life in the Christian and Hindu Traditions, ed. Austin B. Creel and Vasudha Narayanan (Lewiston, Queenston, and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), p. 281. Ibid., pp. 291–2. Cf. Cenkner, Tradition of Teachers, pp. 112–21; and William Cenkner, ‘The Sankaracarya of Kanchi and the Kamaksi Temple as Ritual Center’, in A Sacred Thread: Modern Transmission of Hindu Traditions in India and Abroad, ed. Raymond Brady Williams (Chambersburg, PA: Anima Publications, 1992), pp. 52–67. See Dazey, pp. 295–8, 311–13; Yoshitsugu Sawai, The Faith of Ascetics and Lay Smartas: A Study of the Sankaran Tradition of Srngeri, Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, ed. Gerhard Oberhammer, vol. 19 (Vienna: Institut fu¨r Indologie der Universita¨t Wien, 1992); and N. Subrahmanian, ‘Sankara and the Vedantist Movement’, in Social Contents of Indian Religious Reform Movements, ed. S. Sen (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1978), pp. 36–40. For attempts to trace the distinctive characteristics and development of Shankara’s authentic thought across his writings, see especially Paul Hacker, ‘Sankara the Yogin and Sankara the

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65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70.

71. 72.

73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83.

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Advaitin: Some Observations’, in Philology and Confrontation, pp. 101–34; Madeleine Biardeau, ‘Quelques Re´flections sur L’Apophatisme de Sankara’, Indo-Iranian Journal 3 (1959): 81–101; and Tilmann Vetter, Studien zur Lehre und Entwicklung Sankaras (Wien: Institut fu¨r Indologie der Universita¨t Wien, 1979), as well as the valuable overview in Suthren Hirst, Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta, pp. 11–31. See Jonathan Bader, The Conquest of the Quarters: Traditional Accounts of the Life of Sankara (New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000), pp. 53–62. Madhava’s Sankara-dig-vijaya is available in two English translations: Swami Tapasyananda, trans., Sankara-Dig-Vijaya: the Traditional Life of Sri Sankaracarya, by Madhava Vidyaranya (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1978), and Padmanaban, K., trans., Srimad Sankara Digvijayam by Vidyaranya, 2 vols (Madras: K. Padmanaban, 1985–86), which includes both Sanskrit text and English translation. Bader, Conquest, p. 53. Ibid., pp. 68–70. See ibid., pp. 169–82. In an influential study of the traditional hagiographies of Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva, Phyllis Granoff has highlighted the role of supernatural intervention in these debates, arguing that such interventions reflect a popular distrust of philosophical debate. See Phyllis Granoff, ‘Scholars and Wonder-Workers: Some Remarks on the Role of the Supernatural in Philosophical Contests in Vedanta Hagiographies’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 105 (1985): 459–67. Bader, Conquest, p. 139. Such conquest is not, as such, unique to the legendary portrait of Shankara: hagiographies of saints and kings often built their narratives on a similar pattern, so as to divinize the founding hero and demonize potential opponents. See Phyllis Granoff, ‘Holy Warriors: A Preliminary Study of Some Biographies of Saints and Kings in the Classical Indian Tradition’, Journal of Indian Philosophy 12 (1984): 291–303. Cf. Subrahmanian, ‘Sankara and the Vedantist Movement’, pp. 30–42. See David N. Lorenzen, ‘The Life of Sankaracarya’, in F. Reynolds and D. Capps (eds), The Biographical Process, Religion and Reason 11 (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1976), pp. 96–100, and Bader, Conquest, pp. 104–6. Bader, Conquest, esp. pp. 102–4, 158–82. See Swami Chinmayananda, Sankara the Missionary, rev. edn (Mumbai: Central Chinmaya Mission Trust, 1998); Nancy Patchen, The Journey of a Master: Swami Chinmayananda: The Man, the Path, the Teaching (Bombay: Central Chinmaya Mission Trust, 1989, 1994), and Jagdhari Masih, The Role of Swami Chinmayananda in Revitalization of Hinduism and Reinterpretation of Christianity (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 2000). Bader, Conquest, pp. 327–8. See Mariasusai Dhavamony, ‘Sankara and Ramanuja as Hindu Reformers’, Studia Missionalia 34 (1985): 125–6, and the discussion in Bader, Conquest, pp. 253–72, 312–13. Bader, Conquest, p. 13. Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, p. 280. Cf. ibid., pp. 319–20, 329–37. See, for example, the glowing description in ‘Sri Bharati Tirtha Mahaswamigal’, Sringeri Sharada Peetham, , accessed 9 March 2007. Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, p. 330. Hugh Nicholson, ‘A Correlational Model of Comparative Theology’, The Journal of Religion 85 (2005): 204 (quoting Jonathan Z. Smith). The strict deferral of conclusions until some point after sustained engagement of particular comparative examples is a recurrent theme in Clooney’s work. See, e.g., Clooney, Hindu God, pp. 14–15; Francis X. Clooney, SJ, ‘Reading the World in Christ: From Comparison to Inclusivism’, in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, ed. Gavin D’Costa (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), pp. 75–9; and especially

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84. 85. 86.

87. 88. 89. 90.

91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

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Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Seeing through Texts: Doing Theology among the Srivaisnavas of South India (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 295–304. See, e.g., Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996), pp. 136–54. See Dupuis, Christianity and the Religions, pp. 232–5. Cf. M. Thomas Thangaraj, The Common Task: A Theology of Christian Mission (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), esp. pp. 92–9, as well as Phan, In Our Own Tongues, pp. 174–200, and Peter C. Phan, Being Religious Interreligiously: Asian Perspectives on Interfaith Dialogue (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004). For initial such treatments, see Suthren Hirst, Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta, esp. pp. 26–31, and Bader, Conquest, pp. 9–16, 308–26. Haight, ‘Where We Dwell’, p. 343. Ibid., n. 11. Amy Plantinga Pauw highlights how this principle of selection gives Christian Community in History a distinctively Catholic shape in ‘Review Symposium: Roger Haight, SJ, Christian Community in History’, Horizons 32 (2005): 380–2. The following two paragraphs follow the three phases of Haight’s method for constructing a ‘transdenominational ecclesiology’, as outlined in ‘Where We Dwell’, pp. 342–4. Haight, Christian Community, vol. I, p. 1. See ibid., pp. 6–10. Haight, Christian Community, vol. II, p. 428. James Fredericks has, similarly, called for recognition of ‘interreligious friendship’ as a new theological virtue for the present moment of church history, a virtue that encourages Christians to seek out relationships with religious others from a sense of self-interested love (philia). See James L. Fredericks, ‘Interreligious Friendship: A New Theological Virtue’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 35 (1998): 159–74, as well as James L. Fredericks, Faith among Faiths: Christian Theology and Non-Christian Religions (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1999), pp. 173–7. Very warm thanks for assistance in the preparation and revision of this manuscript are due to Jolie Chrisman, Paul M. Collins, Julia Lauwers, Gerard Mannion and Keith Ward. Roger Haight offered constructive feedback to these reflections when they were originally presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, for which I am also grateful. The work is, hopefully, much richer as a result.

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Chapter 8 NEWNESS AMID CONTINUITY IN THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH: GOD’S WILL AND HUMAN AGENCY GUIDED BY THE SPIRIT Bernard P. Prusak Having treated the genesis of the church, the pre- and post-Constantinian church, the Gregorian reform and the ‘new medieval church’, Roger Haight observes that ‘every historical period bears an unrepeatable identity . . . a particularity whose contours exemplify norms that are missed in their passing and operate as ideals or goals for the future’.1 Haight then offers a further, peremptory judgement: ‘the church of western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is not normative, it represents no universal ideal of church organization and existence, and is not closer to the will of God than another particular historical manifestation of the church’. I propose that one must further ask how God’s will has been operative in the development of the church over the course of two millennia. The way one answers that question will shape the way one understands God working in the development of the church in the present and the future. John O’Malley has noted that different styles of historical thinking have involved differing assessments of the church. One way of thinking ‘wanted to see the church as immune to process or to change in doctrine and discipline’. ‘What it is intent upon is celebrating the voyage through history of some enduring substance which is really untouched by history . . . [It] does not admit that change exists except in the form of certain external challenges to the existence of the substance.’ Another, but not unrelated, way of thinking came to see a providential guidance of the course of events in history. In the Middle Ages, such providentialism made God the principal agent in history. The result was a sacred metahistory: ‘what happened in the past was endowed with a superhuman and even sacral quality . . . True reform consisted in removing threats to the sacred . . . But the sacred patrimony was to be kept untouched.’ Yet another way viewed the record of the past as a ‘storehouse of exempla from which one drew prescriptive patterns of action which were directly transferable to the present situation’. One was called to imitate the example of the holy ones of the past. ‘What is common to [these] three styles of historical thinking . . . is their minimal awareness of change, especially of change in the sense of the ‘‘new’’.’ Those who held these views ‘did not have the perspectives to recognize [change] as having taken place’.2 Thus, since the Middle Ages, ‘antiquity’ connoted something tested by time and tradition; what was old was authoritative and valued. Something ‘modern’ or ‘new’

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was suspect; novel ideas and innovation were not welcomed.3 In the primitivism of this way of thinking, change was a form of decline; reform involved a return to the pure ideal of the earlier golden age.4 Heeding ‘the warnings of John O’Malley that different forms of historical consciousness lead to notably differing assessments of, in particular, the church and the need for and form of its reform and renewal’, Gerard Mannion has proposed a focus on ecclesiological paradigms, ‘which are as subject to flux and change as their historical counterparts’. He notes that ‘the selfunderstanding of the church in a particular era can often become so influential and authoritative, that the operational ‘‘model’’ of the church itself, also takes on the status of a paradigm’. In that regard, ‘the most influential paradigms will be, not surprisingly, those espoused by the ‘‘official’’ or the ‘‘institutional’’ church authorities’.5 They may thus come to be seen as providential, as God’s will. During the second to the fifth centuries, the key words applied to church were ‘service’ (diakonia or ministerium) and ‘communion’ (koino¯nia). The term ‘church’ denoted a participatory community of all the baptized. In that frame of reference, Cyprian, as Bishop of Carthage, claimed that he made no major decisions without consulting his elders and deacons, or without the approval of his people (Ep. 14.4; 34.4; 38.1; cf. 32). The entire community likewise participated in the election of a new bishop, who then exercised episcopal authority in a dialogue with the entire community. The ‘vicar of Peter’ in Rome functioned within a ‘communion of bishops’, for which his church and his ‘persona’ served as a centre of unity. The developments of a particular era become paradigmatic but they are not permanent. History shows that they have been open to change and transformation. The paradigm or ‘shared model’, which positioned the pope at the top of a pyramid of authority and jurisdiction, for ruling and teaching, had begun to take shape after 600. As I have shown elsewhere, certain Western ecclesial practices (including law, theory and application) became more and more prevalent.6 They solidified into a new coherent ‘paradigm’, whose presuppositions then became the ‘standard’ or ‘normal’ position.7 During the Middle Ages, the structural elements found in the church of the second to the fifth centuries were preserved, but rearranged: pope, bishops and baptized were placed into new relationships, organized vertically from above to below. Factors contributing to the shift were the monarchical worldview of that era and the emerging papal claim, articulated amid the struggle over lay investiture, that priesthood or sacerdotium was the source, not only of spiritual power over the church, but of the temporal rule or regnum exercised by emperors and kings. As a result of the debate about who wielded ultimate authority over ‘Christian society’ or Christendom, the new ‘shared model’ or ‘paradigm’ of church was focused on a ‘mystique of authority’. As Yves Congar has noted, the new key words were ‘power, jurisdiction, rule, and Vicar of Christ’.8 In the period after the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent, the very term ‘church’ began to be equated with its leaders. Again to cite Congar, the key words became ‘the Hierarchy’ and ‘the Magisterium’. The meaning of the terms ‘laity’ and ‘apostolic’ would be transformed by the way both were subordinated to the power and authority of ‘the Hierarchy’. As Avery Dulles observed, ‘It is almost a platitude to assert that the Catholic Church from the Middle Ages until Vatican II was pyramidal in structure. Truth and holiness were conceived as emanating

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from the pope as commander-in-chief at the top, and the bishops were depicted as subordinate officers carrying out the orders of the pope.’9 A ‘military analogy of the Church’ had become the prevailing model.

No Leaps, No Fractures, No Breaks in Continuity? The preceding paragraphs have focused on ecclesiological paradigms as ‘subject to flux and change’. But let us heed the warning ‘that different forms of historical consciousness lead to notably differing assessments of . . . the church and the need for and form of its reform and renewal’. ‘[D]ata is subject to many ‘‘interpretations’’.’10 Consider the assessment espoused by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in his assertion that the Second Vatican Council was to be interpreted only as being in full continuity with the past tradition: ‘there is but one, unique Church that walks the path toward the Lord, ever deepening and ever better understanding the treasure of faith that he himself has entrusted to her. There are no leaps in this history, there are no fractures, and there is no break in continuity.’11 That position was reiterated by the now Pope Benedict XVI in his Address to the Roman Curia on 22 December 2005. Asking whether the Second Vatican Council was ‘well received’, the pope attributed the tensions of post-conciliar implementation to the fact that ‘two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarreled with each other’. He identified the problematic trend as ‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’. In Benedict’s view: [t]he hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.

Having defined a hermeneutic of discontinuity in this manner, the pope proceeds to advocate a ‘ ‘‘hermeneutic of reform,’’ of renewal in the continuity of the onesubject Church which the Lord has given to us’. In that perspective, the church ‘is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying people of God’.12 Pope Benedict emphasizes the church’s essential stability. The same emphasis is found in the ‘Responses to Some Questions regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church’ issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 29 June 2007. Norm number five of the 1985 Synod of Bishops likewise echoes the emphasis on continuity. It says that the council must be interpreted in continuity with the great tradition of the church, including other councils.13 That norm and the 2005 publication and presentation of Archbishop Agostino Marchetto’s book, The Ecumenical Council Vatican II: A Counterpoint for Its History,14 indicate that ‘an interpretation of the council has emerged that is based on one fundamental

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assumption: the [Second Vatican] council was in all important regards continuous with the Catholic past’.15 As O’Malley notes, ‘that assumption seems to be already well along the road to achieving official and prescriptive status’. In his view, what is missing in the otherwise excellent norms produced by the 1985 Synod of Bishops is a statement such as the following that he proposes: ‘While always keeping in mind the fundamental continuity in the great tradition of the Church, interpreters must also take due account of how the council is discontinuous with previous practices, teachings, and traditions, indeed, discontinuous with previous councils.’ An exclusive emphasis on continuity ‘is to blind oneself to discontinuities, which is to blind oneself to change of any kind’. Such an approach ‘takes the Church out of history and puts it out of touch with reality as we know it’.16 Pope Benedict’s opposition to speaking of the council’s discontinuity with the past is related to his particular view of history. He admits that ‘[i]t was both necessary and good for the Council to put an end to the false forms of the Church’s glorification of self on earth and, by suppressing her compulsive tendency to defend her past history, to eliminate her false justification of self’. But he adds, [w]e must rediscover that luminous trail that is the history of the saints and of the beautiful – a history in which the joy of the gospel has been irrefutably expressed throughout the centuries. Anyone who remembers only the Inquisition when he thinks of the Middle Ages should be asked where his eyes are. Could such cathedrals, such images of the eternal, full of light and quiet dignity, have been created if faith had been just an affliction for mankind? In a word, it must become clear again that penance requires, not the destruction of one’s own identity, but the finding of it.17

While calling for an optimistic reading of the past, Benedict’s particular focus on ‘the turbulent years around 1968’ and his interpretation of the Kennedy era offer a negative characterization of contemporary initiatives for change as ‘utopian’: ‘Whenever a positive relationship to history once again becomes manifest, there that utopianism will come automatically to an end that believes that, hitherto, everything has been done badly and only now will begin to be done properly.’18 One must ask whether post-Vatican II initiatives for change really presuppose everything in the past to have been done badly and universally deserve to be labelled as utopian. By emphasizing the church’s essential stability and embracing a rather pessimistic view of the contemporary world, one privileges the past at the expense of the present and future. That reverses the perspective expressed in John XXIII’s opening address at the first session of the council: In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life.

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Looking to the future with hope, John declared: We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand. In the present order of things, Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations which, by [humans’] own efforts and even beyond their very expectations, are directed toward the fulfillment of God’s superior and inscrutable designs.19

The council would declare that the Spirit ‘by the power of the Gospel makes the Church become young again and perpetually renews her’.20 The present is no less redeemable than any other period in the history of the church.

A More Nuanced Approach Vatican II sought to retrieve the spirit of the earliest centuries of the church in order to re-form the focus on the authority of a centralized, pyramidal hierarchy that had developed during the second millennium. Articulating a more nuanced position regarding ‘continuity’, Walter Kasper maintains that the Second Vatican Council could not discard all the developments which had emerged during the centuries of the second millennium. In his view, the council’s creation of the compromise formula ‘hierarchical communion’, which juxtaposed a sacramental communion ecclesiology with a juristic unity ecclesiology, was not simply a tactic making it possible for an uneasy minority of bishops to vote for Lumen gentium. Rather, in his understanding, the formula recognizes that ‘the Catholic principle about living tradition makes it impossible simply to eliminate the tradition of the second millennium. The continuity of tradition demands a creative synthesis of the first millennium and the second.’ Kasper acknowledges that the synthesis attempted by Vatican II was ‘highly superficial and in no way satisfactory’, but he adds that theological synthesis is really not the task of the council, but a matter for theology that comes afterwards. The council provides ‘the indispensable ‘‘frame of reference’’ ’.21 Hermann Pottmeyer similarly maintains that Vatican II balanced two concerns, renewal of the church and preservation of continuity. To that end it employed the method of juxtaposition: ‘alongside a doctrine or thesis couched in preconciliar language is set a doctrine or thesis that formulates some complementary aspect’.22 That approach also satisfied the council’s concern for preserving unity among the bishops, that is, for seeking a middle ground or consensus between those more committed to the past and those more open to reform. But, as a result, the debates about Lumen gentium produced a compromise document wherein differing positions or understandings were accommodated, side by side, rather than made to come to terms with one another. The reintroduced paradigm of communion was presented alongside, and in tension with, the pyramidal hierarchical paradigm that had developed during the church’s second millennium. Nevertheless, Pottmeyer judges such juxtaposition to be progress, ‘because by being complemented the older

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thesis is relativized as one-sided and bearings are given for further development in understanding of the faith’.23 Working out a creative synthesis of the first and second millennia of the church is a delicate task. The structures and patterns of the earliest six centuries of the church cannot simply be restored, since contexts differ and new categories have emerged in the interim. A Catholic approach to reform, as reflected by Trent and by Vatican II, does not discard developments in leadership patterns during the second millennium of the church but seeks to reshape them. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recognition of the need to restate doctrines in differing historical contexts, found in Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), can analogously be applied to structural development.24 ‘The needed synthesis is a task of reception, which is far from being a merely passive process.’25 It involves a creative retrieval of the ecclesiological tradition through a process of interpretation, translating the structures that met the needs of a past horizon into a form that responds to the contemporary situation. Such efforts will likely meet some resistance precisely because ‘the most influential paradigms will be, not surprisingly, those espoused by the ‘‘official’’ or the ‘‘institutional’’ church authorities’.26 Elements of the most influential paradigms may even have come to be seen as providential, as God’s will or ius divinum. How does one determine what truly is or is not God’s will or ius divinum? What criteria have been or are to be applied? Reconsiderations of Ius Divinum Historical ecclesiology makes one aware that some dimensions of the church of our time have not always existed. Likewise, some dimensions of what the church has been in times past no longer exist. Such an understanding is reflected in Cardinal John Henry Newman’s observation: ‘[W]ere the Pope as indistinct a power as he was in the first centuries, and the bishops as practically independent, the Church would still be the Church.’ 27 Identifying something as ‘God’s will’ involves a retrospective judgement and interpretation. For example, Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, teaches ‘that by divine institution bishops have succeeded to the place of the apostles as shepherds of the Church’ (section 20), but it does not interpret the historical complexities of that statement or the meaning of ‘divine right’.28 There was an awareness of the historical issues, but the council did not engage in any full analysis or complete resolution. The manner of the ‘divine institution’ was left open to interpretation. In that regard, contemporary Catholic scholarship recognizes that the emergence of ecclesial leadership involved a complex historical development. Ekklesia or church existed for a number of decades before monoepiscopacy or the structure of bishop came into existence to serve the church. As Francis Sullivan has noted, ‘[t]he Catholic belief that bishops are successors of the apostles by divine institution is based on a combination of historical evidence and theological reflection’. 29 The theological reflection necessarily presupposes faith and can be said to involve three judgements: first, that the post-New Testament development is consistent with the development that took place during the New

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Testament period; second, that the episcopate provided the instrument needed to maintain unity and right belief; third, that the faithful recognized bishops as successors of the apostles whose teaching was normative for faith.30 As Raymond Brown observed, ‘Although development of church structure reflects sociological necessity, in the Christian self-understanding the Holy Spirit given by the risen Christ guides the church in such a way that allows basic structural development to be seen as embodying Jesus Christ’s will for his church.’31 He admits, however, that believing that the Spirit guided development of the episcopate involves a nuanced understanding: I am not so naı¨ve to think that every development within the Church is the work of the Spirit, but I would not know what guidance of the Church by the Spirit could mean if it did not include the fundamental shaping of the special ministry which is so intimately concerned with Christian communal and sacramental life.32

It should be noted, however, that the office of bishop, as we have it today, is a kind of hybrid, in the sense that ‘divine institution’ is alloyed with multiple human elements. The existence of bishops may be attributed to God’s will, but human initiatives shaped the office of bishop in its very origins and over the course of almost two millennia at times mis-shaped the office. During the fifth century, bishops, who managed the ever increasing landholdings and wealth of their churches, assumed a fuller responsibility for the needs of the poor and sick. Providing such social services brought a new civil leadership role. The rise of feudalism during the tenth and eleventh centuries brought further complications. With extensive properties under their control, bishops found themselves incorporated into the feudal nobility alongside the secular princes. Individual bishops were at once the vassals of the princes upon whom they depended for their patrimony, and the lords of those who depended on them as bishops. As bishops, they were supposed to lead their people to union with God; as lords within a feudal society, they ruled their domains and worked with the king in ruling the kingdom. As a consequence of wielding such power, the elections of new bishops were besieged by interference from the nobility. To overcome the scourges of lay investiture, nepotism and simony, popes such as Gregory VII (1073–85) began to oversee the elections of bishops and ensure their worthiness. It is telling that just before Gregory became pope, the older profession of faith made by a new bishop was replaced by an administrative oath of office and fealty to St Peter, the church, and the pope and his successors, in which the bishop swore to defend the Roman papacy and the regalia or prerogatives of St Peter.33 A number of medieval bishops were more interested in serving on political missions for the king or on papal delegations than in pastorally serving their churches. Episcopal absenteeism became rampant. To fill the gap caused by the prolonged absences of some bishops, the episcopal curia emerged. Modelled after the lay ruler’s court, it became a permanent group of professionals whom the bishop could preside over from afar. During such times, the bishop’s cathedra or teacher’s chair was transformed into a ‘throne’. After the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a coat of arms was emblazoned above that throne. Those whom the

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bishop ‘ruled’ eventually knelt to kiss his hand, or his ring, which had originally symbolized his marriage and fidelity to his church.34 During the twelfth century, bishops also adopted the mitre, which the popes at Rome had previously borrowed from the court of Constantine. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) asked why bishops needed gold on their horses’ bridles and so many changes of clothes, with ornamentation and furs.35 In the sixteenth century, bishops began to wear a regal shade of purple, copying the style of the prelates of the papal court, who had again earlier imitated the royal courts.36 In the early centuries of Christianity, the Eucharist, presided by the bishop or by the presbyter who represented him, was a celebration in which the entire assembly of faithful was actively involved. The very term ‘Ekkle¯sia’ concretely signified the assembly of faithful who became what they received, the Body of Christ. During the medieval period, however, the notion of a bishop presiding over his church assembled for the Eucharist was at times obscured. An extreme example was Rupert von Simmern, Bishop of Strasbourg from 1440 to 1478. He never celebrated the liturgy, and only received communion once a year on Holy Thursday.37 The bishop’s primary function had become administration, which could also be delegated to another. Some enjoyed the revenues of their benefices or endowments without ever personally ministering in them. Cardinal Ippolito d’Este never left Rome to visit the archdiocese of Milan during the entire time he was its bishop from 1520 to 1550.38 Some bishops held multiple dioceses. Still in his twenties, and already Archbishop of Halberstadt and the administrator Bishop of Magdeburg, Albert of Brandenburg also sought to become Archbishop of Mainz, which would automatically make him a Prince-Elector of the German emperor. The preaching of the indulgence that helped finance his dispensation occasioned Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, and the Protestant Reformation. The Council of Trent declared that bishops had the responsibility to preach and teach, and found it necessary to repeatedly stress, in Sessions 6, 7, 13, 14, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25, that bishops had to reside in their dioceses.39 Such developments can offer support to Haight’s judgement that ‘the church of western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is not normative, it represents no universal ideal of church organization and existence, and is not closer to the will of God than another particular historical manifestation of the church’.40 How could the above developments be God’s will, or ius divinum? There seems to be a need to distinguish them from God’s will. In that regard, one should ask which developments are not essential for, and even counterproductive to, the church. Might God’s will be best connected with the origin of the office of bishop and the impetus ever to reform it? Avery Dulles specifically confronted the complexities of interpreting ius divinum thirty years ago under the title ‘Ius Divinum as an Ecumenical Problem’.41 In a brief overview of the historical background, he noted how Thomas Aquinas placed ‘particular stress on the seven sacraments, all instituted by Christ as constitutive elements of the Church’.42 Aquinas also held that ‘the presbyterate and the episcopate, as grades of the priestly ministry, were instituted by Christ himself’,43 and likewise the papacy ‘in the sense that Christ willed the leadership he conferred upon Peter to be an enduring feature of the Church’.44 Turning to the Council of

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Trent, Dulles explained that, in the Reformation debates, Catholics ‘regarded tradition as being of equal authority with Scripture’. Thus, for Trent, ‘[w]hatever comes to be seen at any point in history as an irrevocable possession of the universal Church was judged as being of divine institution’. The Council’s position on Christ’s institution of the sacraments does, however, leave room for the later ‘development’ of the rituals. After a brief analysis of Vatican Council II’s application of ‘divine institution’ and some details of its sensitivity to the complexities of historical development, Dulles proposed a dynamic understanding: [p]erhaps ius divinum may be best understood as something given only inchoatively at the beginning – that is to say, as something that unfolds in the history of the Church. Such a dynamic understanding of divine law, while not explicitly taught by the Council, seems to be suggested by the nuanced approach to the hierarchical ministry in the Constitution on the Church.45

In an overview of ‘a striking variety of opinions’, Dulles gave particular attention to Karl Rahner’s position that the concept of ius divinum ‘may be extended, without great difficulty, to free decisions made by the Church in apostolic times, provided that these decisions were consonant with the basic nature of the Church and, having been made, were irreversible’.46 In Rahner’s view, a sacrament or office in the church may draw its iure divino character from being ‘an indispensable way of insuring the necessary continuity of the community of Jesus with its origin’.47 ‘[T]he episcopal office derives from the will of Jesus to found the Church . . . in a process which, while in the eyes of modern theologians it may seem to be conditioned by historical factors, is nevertheless in terms of its meaning perfectly reasonable and irreversible.’ Historical studies indicate that the office of mono-episcopacy ‘seems to have imposed itself’ and rendered obsolete other structures with which it originally coexisted. Acknowledging ‘the historical contingency of this episcopate’, to say that it is ius divinum means that it must be regarded ‘as an abiding element in the constitution of the Church’.48 In Rahner’s perspective, ‘it would be naı¨ve and ultimately less than human to suppose that we have to deny the true nature of human freedom by saying that it is impossible for the Church to recognize in her faith that a given decision can have an eternal validity’.49 Edward Schillebeeckx expressed a more flexible perspective on the permanency or eternal validity of past structural development in the church. He maintained that the episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate are ‘based on a ius divinum’: ‘they are, by virtue of the pneumatic nature of the apostolically ordered Church, themselves the fruit of the Spirit, and not simply the result of a sociological process of growth’. ‘Such a ‘divine dispensation’ can, however, be so understood that it includes and at the same time makes possible a historical growth of various forms and divisions. So long as the Church is able to distinguish the sign of the Holy Spirit in it, restructuration is therefore possible, not only in the past (this is quite clear from history) but also in the future.’50 In a later work, Schillebeeckx went a step further and declared that:

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it is also a sociological fact that in changed times there is a danger that the existing church order will become a fixed ideology, above all by reason of the inertia of an established system which is therefore often concerned for self-preservation. This is true of any system in society, but perhaps in a special way of the institutional church, which, rightly understanding itself as a ‘community of God’, often wrongly shows a tendency to identify even old and venerable traditions with unchangeable divine ordinances.51

In an earlier period, more open to change in the church, Dulles made a somewhat related observation, which he immediately qualified: With reference to the problem of permanence and mutability, the Church appears to be confronted with a dilemma. To the extent that it becomes tied to the specific circumstances of its own origins, its adaptability and consequently its mission are likely to suffer. There is always the danger that in new situations the inherited structures may become dysfunctional. But if, on the other hand, there are no limits to change, the Church runs the risk of sacrificing its identity. It could cease to be the same institution as that which existed in apostolic times and lose its formal continuity with the original community.52

Commenting on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Declaration of 5 October 1976, that the reservation of priestly ordination to men corresponds to ‘God’s plan for his Church’,53 Dulles stated: ‘It is important for the universal Church not to let itself become bound, even unconsciously, to the sociocultural conditions of a dying age.’54 Recognizing that ‘the concepts of continuity and mutability are commonly seen as incompatible’, he proposed that ‘the opposite should be said’: ‘The Church’s abiding essence actually requires adaptive change.’ He advocated ‘creative innovation as a form of authentic obedience’. One might thus say that what has always been need not forever be the same, and that what has never been might still come into being. Might something new be able to develop in the third millennium of the church?

The Positive Role of Human Agency Ecclesiological reflection must be grounded in a theology that reconsiders previous theological presuppositions about God’s will (ius divinum) in relation to the role of human agency within history. The conclusion that something is ‘God’s will’ does not exclude that human agency guided by the Spirit be involved in its shaping, or reshaping, in a constructive and creative manner. For example, Jesus never specified how the Gentiles were to be brought into his community of disciples. This accordingly became a matter of much dispute within the post-resurrection church. From Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians and from Acts, we know that the mix of Jewish and Gentile Christians in the church at Antioch caused tensions. Each source provides a different version of how the problems developed and were resolved.

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According to Galatians (2.1–10), Paul and Barnabas had gone to Jerusalem for a private conference with the acknowledged leaders or ‘pillars’, James, Cephas (Peter), and John. When Peter later came to Antioch (Gal. 2.11–14), he at first ate with the Gentiles until a group sent by James arrived. Peter then pulled back and avoided the Gentiles, out of fear of those who advocated circumcision. Other Jewish Christians, who had previously been persuaded not to be bound by the mosaic laws, now acted as if they were. Paul reacted by publicly confronting Peter. He asked how Peter, a Jew who was living like a Gentile, could compel Gentiles to live like Jews. According to Acts (10.1–48), Peter was the first to baptize a Gentile, Cornelius in Caesarea, after having a vision in which he was told to eat unclean or nonkosher animals. He then had to defend what he did, because the circumcised followers of Jesus at Jerusalem objected to his entering the house of uncircumcised persons and eating with them (Acts 11.1–18). The Hellenistic Jewish disciples, dispersed from Jerusalem by the persecution of Stephen, then began to announce the good news to the Gentiles in Antioch (11.19f.). A great number believed and were converted, but they did not observe kosher dietary regulations or the law of circumcision. After some men from Judea arrived and began to teach, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’ (15.1), the Antiochene church sent Paul, Barnabas and others to consult the apostles and presbyters in Jerusalem about this question (Acts 15.2–3). Since some believers who were Pharisees still demanded that Gentiles ‘be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses’, the apostles and elders convened a meeting of the whole assembly (Acts 15.4–29). Peter spoke about how God had selected him as the one from whom Gentiles would first hear the gospel message. Barnabas and Paul are said to have stated their case next. Finally, James, ‘the Lord’s brother’ (Gal. 1.19), announced his judgement, which intended to relieve the Gentile converts of any difficulties. They were to be instructed ‘to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever [meat of an animal that] has been strangled and from blood’ (Acts 15.20; cf. 15.29; 21.25). Two prophets from the Jerusalem community, Judas, known as Barsabbas, and Silas accompanied Paul and Barnabas back to Antioch. There they delivered a letter from the Jerusalem church and explained the decision not to lay any burden on Gentile converts beyond the stated necessary essentials (Acts 15.22–32). Without any details about meetings and debates, Matthew makes clear that the Gentile mission was a post-resurrection development by attributing two contrasting ‘sayings’ to Jesus. During his earthly ministry, Jesus instructs the Twelve not to go among Gentiles or into Samaritan towns, but rather to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Mt. 10.5). The risen Jesus instructs the Eleven to ‘Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey [te¯rein: heed] everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Mt. 28.19–20). In Luke, the risen Jesus tells the disciples that ‘repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem’ (24.47). In Acts (1.8), the risen Jesus instructs the apostles, ‘you will receive power when

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the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’. In the longer ending later added to Mark’s Gospel, Jesus instructs the Eleven, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation’ (16.15). Reducing a complex process to its conclusions, such texts reflect an already developed sense of universal mission on the part of the disciples assembled together as the ekkle¯sia. They omit any chronicle of the struggle, debate, and even conflict through which the disciples of the risen Jesus clarified their intuitive consciousness of a universal mission and their sense of how to implement it. The mandate or deputation to preach to the whole world and to baptize was grounded in the Easter event. But, in determining how the gospel was to be preached to all nations, the earliest disciples were not spared the need to struggle and to debate in order to reconcile different understandings of the means to achieve that goal.

The Need For A New Orientation – To The Future The Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes, repeatedly acknowledges that God has created humans with freedom, and emphasizes the dignity and the inviolable rights and duties of persons, declaring that discrimination in basic personal rights on the basis of sex, race, colour, social conditions, language or religion must be eradicated (sections 21, 26, 29 and 59). That theme is likewise central to Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis humanae, 2), which proclaims the dignity of all persons, and their right to be immune from coercion even if they are considered to be in error. Gaudium et spes (33) also teaches that a human ‘now produces by his [/her] own enterprise many things which in former times he [/she] looked for from heavenly powers’. It admits that God has given the world a certain autonomy: ‘By the very nature of creation, material being is endowed with its own stability, truth and excellence, its own order and laws’ (section 36). Human achievements, too, can be the fulfilment of God’s mysterious design (section 33). God as creator and saviour does not suppress the ‘autonomy of the creature’, but restores and consolidates a true human autonomy (section 41). Ascertaining the legitimate claims of autonomy, however, requires careful discernment, in order that one does not embrace a purely earthbound humanism (sections 56 and 59). Gaudium et spes likewise candidly declares that humanity’s growing mastery over nature, as well as its shaping of the world’s political, social and economic order, is overshadowed by injustice, unfair distribution and widespread hunger. Noble deeds are matched by villainous, progress contends with decline, and brotherhood and sisterhood coexist with hatred (sections 4 and 9). Total emancipation is clearly not to be expected through human effort alone, and a purely earthly paradise will not be established, since every individual human, and thus all humans together, bring a divided self to the struggle with good and evil, having a freedom weakened by sin. Nevertheless, humans have the freedom to turn themselves towards what is good (sections 10, 13 and 17).

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Vatican II did not ask whether and how the creative freedom with which God has endowed humanity for shaping the world may also be operative for shaping the future of the church. In his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II declared that it is impossible for women to be ordained.55 His argument that the church does not have the authority to do so appears to be grounded in the presupposition of a divinely ordained ecclesial fixity that the later church cannot change. Given the teaching of Gaudium et spes, one should ask whether it is tenable to maintain that God left room for human creativity in the world, but completely predetermined the shape of the church for all time. Can the church really only do what has been done? Does creative possibility exist only in the past of the church? Are no new possibilities possible – for women, or in the ecumenical enterprise, and so forth? We must ask whether God, acting through the Spirit in our midst, might not still be inviting and enabling creativity within the church of today and tomorrow. In that regard, Ormond Rush has called for a new pneumatology ‘from below’, that he terms a ‘reception pneumatology’.56 It links ‘the creative involvement of humans in the decisions of history’ with ‘the creative interpretation of ‘‘what God would want’’ ’.57 ‘[I]n response to the task given to us by our God, it is up to us to work it out as we go along – with the help of the Holy Spirit whispering through all the criteria for fidelity and continuity . . .’58 The task given to us involves new questions ‘that the past cannot answer for us, and the past may need us to help it answer them in fidelity to the past’.59 As O’Malley reminds us, ‘We realize, perhaps to our dismay, that we cannot simply repeat the answers of the past, for the whole situation is different.’60 The future of the church is still being shaped within a historical process in which God has chosen to partner with human agency. We cannot escape from the necessity of having to deal with the future. As Rahner has noted, the future is not simply the prolongation of our past, nor merely the actualization or implementation of our present plans. It is not simply a calculated human creation involving ‘plans plus time’. Rather, the open future which comes to meet us brings surprises.61 We are called to decide by the God whose Spirit/Breath moves ahead of us as absolute future,62 the receding horizon who grounds our freedom and persuasively seeks to draw us towards what might be, the love that makes possible our love. The way forward for ecclesiology therefore should include a renewed eschatology that is as focused on the future of this world as it is on eternity and life after death. The salvation-historicity of the church is still being formed by its connection with the development of concrete history, which allows both for continuity and the discontinuity of newness. Notes 1. Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. I: Historical Ecclesiology (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 338. 2. John O’Malley, ‘Reform, Historical Consciousness and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento’, Theological Studies 32 (1971): 573–601, here 590–2. 3. See A. J. Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G. L. Campbell (London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 123–5.

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4. O’Malley, ‘Reform, Historical Consciousness and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento’: 592–3. 5. Gerard Mannion, ‘Ecclesiology and Postmodernity – A New Paradigm for the Roman Catholic Church’, New Blackfriars 85 (2004): 304–28, here 305. 6. Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), pp. 176–254. 7. See Thomas S. Kuhn’s observations concerning the manner in which shifts in scientific paradigms are incorporated into textbooks: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, second edition, enlarged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 10, 17, 137. 8. Yves Congar, ‘The Historical Development of Authority in the Church: Points for Christian Reflection’, in Problems of Authority, ed. John M. Todd (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1962), pp. 137 and 148–9. 9. The Reshaping of Catholicism: Current Changes in the Theology of Church (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 24–5. 10. O’Malley, ‘Reform, Historical Consciousness and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento’: 599. 11. Joseph Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), p. 35. 12. Benedict XVI, ‘Discorso del Santo Padre alla Curia Romana in occasione della presentazione degli auguri Natalizi’, 22.12.2005, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 98 (2006), pp. 40–53. English text available online: www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia_en.html 13. Cited by John O’Malley, ‘Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?’, Theological Studies 67 (2006): 3–33, here 5. ‘The Final Report: Synod of Bishops’, Origins 15 (December 19, 1985): 444– 50, here 445–6. 14. Agostino Marchetto, Il concilio ecumenico Vaticano II: Contrapunto per la sua storia (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005). 15. O’Malley, ‘Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?’: 5. 16. Ibid.: 7. 17. Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Mary Francis McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 373. 18. Ibid. 19. English text in Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott and J. Gallagher (New York: Herder and Herder/Association Press, 1966), pp. 710–19, here pp. 712–13. 20. ‘Virtute Evangelii iuvenescere facit Ecclesiam eamque perpetuo renovat . . .’ Lumen gentium, section 4. Latin text in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2: Trent to Vatican II, ed. Norman P. Tanner (London: Sheed & Ward and Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), p. 851. Translation here is mine. 21. Walter Kasper, Theology and Church, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: Crossroad, 1989), p. 158. 22. Hermann J. Pottmeyer, ‘A New Phase in the Reception of Vatican II: Twenty Years of Interpretation of the Council’, in The Reception of Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo, JeanPierre Jossua and Joseph A. Komonchak, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), p. 37. 23. Ibid., p. 38. 24. Section 5, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 65 (1973), pp. 402–4; English translation in Catholic Mind 71 (1973): 58–60. 25. Pottmeyer, ‘A New Phase in the Reception of Vatican II’, p. 38. 26. Mannion, ‘Ecclesiology and Postmodernity’, p. 305. 27. John Henry Cardinal Newman, Essays, Critical and Historical, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891), p. 44, note. 28. See the commentary on section 20 by Karl Rahner in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 1, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Herder & Herder, 1967), pp. 190–2. 29. Francis A. Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 2001), p. 224. 30. Ibid., pp. 224–5.

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31. Raymond E. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 295. 32. Raymond E. Brown, Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections (New York/Paramus, NJ: Paulist Press, 1970), p. 4. 33. See Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 348–9. 34. See the episcopal consecration ritual in Ordo 35B.35, in M. Andrieu (ed.), Les Ordines romani du haut moyen-aˆge, 5 vols (Louvain, 1931–61); Pontificale Romanum saec. XII 10.28, in M. Andrieu (ed.), Le Pontifical romain au moyen-aˆge (Vatican City, 1938–41); Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis christianae fidei 2,4,15 (PL 176, 438). 35. De Moribus et Officio Episcoporum 2, 4–7 (PL 182, 812–16). 36. See John Abel Nainfa, Costume of Prelates of the Catholic Church, According to Roman Etiquette (New York: Blase Benziger & Co., 1925), pp. 204–6. Medieval bishops seem to have favoured green (which is still considered the episcopal colour), although other bright colours were also used, since clerical dress was not uniformly determined before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 37. See E. de Moreau, P. Jourda, and P. Janelle, La Crise religieuse du XVIe sie`cle, vol. 15 in Histoire de l’E´glise, founded by A. Fliche and V. Martin (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1956), pp. 7–9. 38. Hubert Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, vol. II: The First Sessions at Trent 1545–47, trans. Ernest Graf OSB (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1961), p. 321. 39. Regarding preaching, see Session 5, Decree on Preaching, c. 2 & 9; Decrees of Reformation, Session 23, c. 1; Session 24, c. 4; in Latin text in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2: Trent to Vatican II, ed. Norman P. Tanner (London: Sheed & Ward and Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), pp. 668, 669, 744, 763. Regarding the obligation of residence, see Decrees of Reformation, in Sessions 6, 7, 13, 14, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25; in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, pp. 681–3, 686–9, 698–701, 714–18, 728–32, 737–41, 744–53, 759–73, 784–96. 40. Op. cit., n. 1. 41. Avery Dulles, ‘Ius Divinum as an Ecumenical Problem’, in A Church to Believe in: Discipleship and the Dynamics of Freedom (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 80–102. (It was originally an address presented at the Seventh International Congress of Jesuit Ecumenists, Frankfurt, Germany, on 25 August 1977, subsequently published under the title ‘Ius Divinum as an Ecumenical Problem’, in Theological Studies 18 (4): 681–708.) 42. Ibid., p. 83, citing Summa theologiae 3.65.2. 43. Summa theologiae 2–2.184.6 ad 1. 44. Summa contra gentiles 4.76. 45. Dulles, ‘Ius Divinum as an Ecumenical Problem’, p. 87. 46. Ibid., p. 89. Dulles here summarizes points from Rahner’s ‘Reflections on the Concept of Ius Divinum in Catholic Thought’, Theological Investigations, vol. 5 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1960), pp. 219–43, here p. 241. 47. Karl Rahner, ‘Aspects of the Episcopal Office’, Theological Investigations, vol. 14 (New York: Seabury, 1976), p. 188. 48. Ibid., pp. 188–9. 49. Ibid., p. 190. 50. Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘The Catholic Understanding of Office in the Church’, Theological Studies 30 (1969): 567–87, here 569. 51. Edward Schillebeeckx, Ministry: Leadership in the Community of Jesus Christ, trans. John Bowden (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 76. 52. Dulles, ‘Ius Divinum as an Ecumenical Problem’, p. 94. 53. Declaratio circa quaestionem admissionis mulierum ad sacerdotium ministeriale (Inter insigniores), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 69 (1997), pp. 98–116. English translation in Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration, ed. Leonard Swidler and Arlene Swidler (New York/Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1977), pp. 37–49.

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54. Dulles, ‘Ius Divinum as an Ecumenical Problem’, p. 100. 55. Sections 2 and 4 of the Apostolic letter, Ordinatio sacerdotalis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 86 (1994), pp. 545–8, here pp. 546 and 548. 56. Ormond Rush, Still Interpreting Vatican II: Some Hermeneutical Principles (New York/ Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), p. 69. 57. Ibid., p. 75. 58. Ibid., p. 76. 59. Ibid. p. 79. 60. O’Malley, ‘Reform, Historical Consciousness and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento’, p. 597. 61. Karl Rahner, ‘A Fragmentary Aspect of a Theological Evaluation of the Concept of the Future’, in Theological Investigations, vol. 10: Writings of 1965–67 2, trans. David Bourke (New York: Herder & Herder, 1973), p. 237. 62. See Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Ideal of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Seabury-Crossroad Books, 1978), pp. 457–9.

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Chapter 9 PUTTING COMPARATIVE ECCLESIOLOGY INTO PRACTICE: HAIGHT’S JOURNEY FROM HISTORICAL TO CONSTRUCTIVE ECUMENICAL ECCLESIOLOGY Gerard Mannion

The Nature and Purpose of Comparative Ecclesiology Comparative ecclesiology as an exploratory, historical, sociological and phenomenological sub-discipline would be a worthwhile undertaking in its own right. But, particularly because it concerns the church – a living communion of communities that ascribe to a particular and shared set of beliefs values, ethics and aspirations – comparative ecclesiology offers more than such noble intentions and objectives. It can also facilitate conversation and dialogue, and serve heuristic and constructive ends linked with those ecclesial aspirations. In what specific ways can historical and comparative explorations in ecclesiology serve particular constructive ends? In a recent work, in which Roger Haight’s work, itself, was also discussed as a welcome resource, I offered some suggestions here, particularly seeking to work towards offering constructive suggestions with regard to how the church might bring about greater harmony between its self-understanding – its ecclesiological vision – and the day-to-day reality of life in the church (ecclesial practice). To this end, that volume commended the development of an ecclesiology inspired by virtue ethics so that any disjuncture between ecclesiological theory and practice might be increasingly healed. Such an approach could be pursued in the hope that the church might become ever more a truly sacramental sign and mediation of the triune God who is love: so that the church might demonstrate all the more vividly in its relations both ad intra and ad extra, that Deus caritas est. The essay throughout sought to explore questions concerning what sort of being–in-community, and hence what sort of ecclesial vision and practice, the contemporary church might aspire towards. In those efforts to be truly and fully sacramental, pointing towards and emulating the divine community of Trinity, I suggested that the church should aspire towards being a community where theory (or indeed, perhaps better termed, aspirations), teaching and practice are in greater harmony, a community that works to build the kingdom of love, justice and righteousness. It should live in and through the Spirit and allow the Eucharist, the breaking of bread, to be both the source and sign of the communion that reflects the divine community of love.1

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Indeed, that volume on the whole sought to utilize and commend the value of both historical and comparative explorations in ecclesiology. For any ecclesiology to be truly constructive, aspirational and so enhancing of ecclesial life, it needs, in contrast to some recent ecclesiological thinking, to explore, develop and promote how much ecclesiology can benefit from various particular aspects of a comparative methodology itself. I there asserted and reiterate here that the emergence of ‘comparative ecclesiology’ offers the most hope-filled method and approach to adopt in the present era. Indeed, that volume, itself, was but a modest attempt at shaping a work in that field of comparative ecclesiology, and one which might best be termed or characterized as an example of ‘critical’ or hermeneutical comparative ecclesiology. The world Christians find themselves in today is very, very different from that of past times and thus, as always in the story of the church, the church is obliged to discern the signs and challenges of the times and to accordingly to allow development and, indeed, change, that will enable it to fulfil its purpose, its mission, literally its raison d’eˆtre, in these times. In a globalized world, where the multitude of cultures and faiths is a daily reality for so many, where pressing moral and existential issues demand a Christian response on a daily basis, where the church, themselves, have been blighted by various internal malaises, and where the divine intention of Christian unity in the service of the unity of the wider human family seems ever distant on the existential horizon, the church must engage in ongoing critical selfexamination and reassessment of its nature, mission and purpose, as well as of the church structures, ministries, and ways of being church. Indeed perhaps the key issues today concern the mission and being of the church in a world that demands the church’s full and joyful participation in and service to it, as opposed to retreat from it. A world where pluralism – in its various intellectual, cultural and religious forms alike – is a given and where thus dialogue is an existential necessity. Of course, many, many scholars have sought to assess the contemporary situation of and challenges for the church in these times.2 A good number of these have tried to articulate a positive vision and ‘mission-statement’ for the church in such times. The work of Roger Haight, over many years, figures amongst their number in a pre-eminent fashion. Here, in this volume, we have seen the great achievements and future potential of Roger Haight’s work and of the wider implications of the comparative ecclesiological method itself discussed throughout. Haight, himself, has recently sought to articulate a comprehensive and thoroughgoing constructive ecclesiology that not only ‘puts to work’ the valuable insights gleaned from his painstaking scholarship in volumes I and II of Christian Community in History, but also marks the culmination of his ongoing constructive ecclesiological explorations over the course of many decades. Thus, the third volume of his trilogy is entitled Ecclesial Existence3 and in it he seeks to offer a detailed methodological outworking of the promise of comparative ecclesiology for our time and for the church of future times alike. Before proceeding to explore the rich vision and constructive insights outlined in Haight’s third volume of Christian Community in History, let us turn to consider in a little more detail the exact nature of the constructive and ecumenical ‘promise’ of the comparative ecclesiological method.

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Discerning the Ecumenical Promise of and Prospects for Comparative Ecclesiology In Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, I sought to highlight the particular ‘Promise of Comparative Ecclesiology’ with reference to its being a most helpful means towards the development of the ‘Ecumenical Intercultural Hermeneutic’ that these postmodern times demand.4 Thus comparative ecclesiology represents one of the most fruitful methods that helps construct a coherent case for the ongoing necessity of dialogue in the church and of an openness to the world and hence of pluralism (or polycentrism) which should not only be acknowledged as the reality in which we live but should also be celebrated as such. If we are right to perceive postmodern ecclesial polemics as a major obstacle that stands in the way of such dialogue and openness flourishing today, then it becomes necessary to explore methodological ways in which such polemics might be transcended. The task is towards the further development of a ‘wider’ or ‘macro’ecumenism that embraces the entire human family in its openness to dialogue and love. This all develops the whole debate in relation to ‘Tradition’ and ‘traditions’, in the plural. As we have seen throughout this volume, central to the understanding of comparative ecclesiology as developed by Haight, amongst others, is an embracing of historical consciousness and of pluralism itself, a positive and critical utilization of the social sciences, the need for an assessment of and formation anew of a positive understanding of the relationship between the church and the world. Equally central, then, become the notion of dialogue itself and the acknowledgement of, engagement in and celebration of otherness. All in all then, the methodological resources offered by comparative ecclesiology constitute the most promising starting point for churches wishing to embrace dialogue, openness and pluralism, as opposed to retreating inwards. It is perhaps here that the work of Roger Haight, and, in particular of his 2008 work on Ecclesial Existence, displays its greatest practical, aspirational and particularly ecumenical promise. Comparative ecclesiology in the postmodern context offers a pathway towards intra-ecclesial, inter-ecclesial and still wider ecumenical dialogue. This is confirmed in a particularly incisive way in both Haight’s third volume and, indeed, in Chapter 10 which follows, where Haight speaks of ‘new ecclesiological strategies to meet the times’.

From Historical to Constructive Ecumenical Ecclesiology: Roger Haight’s Intellectual Path Towards Ecclesial Existence More specifically, if volumes I and II of Haight’s ecclesiological trilogy constituted an extended examination of the diversity witnessed by the church throughout history and between the churches at any given point of history, the third volume seeks to focus more on what the churches, across time and space, genuinely share in common and, indeed, what coming to an enhanced understanding of such might

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offer efforts to actualize still greater shared existence in diversity, i.e., communion. This volume, then, is not only comparative, it is also synthetic. The title refers to the shared being of Christians in the midst of their specific ‘home’ forms of ecclesial existence. In exploring and explaining such, for Haight, the traditional ‘marks’ or ‘notes’ of the church (i.e., that it be one, holy, catholic and apostolic), albeit interpreted in a dynamic and life-giving manner, are of central importance. Although much of theology in the second half of the twentieth century became genuinely ecumenical in outlook and character – debates, for example, in Christology or soteriology cutting across the boundaries of various traditions and denominations – Haight believes that ecclesiology largely remained a ‘tribal’ discipline. In this study, he again takes further his work aimed at overcoming such tribalistic ecclesiological thinking.5 It is thus, in Volume III, that we see Haight make the transition from a historical towards a constructive ecclesiology. In effect, the sense in which this volume ‘sets to work’ the insights and methodological achievements of the first two volumes is towards the end of a constructive and ecumenical ecclesiological understanding for today and tomorrow. As Haight explains in Chapter 1, ‘Historical consciousness has explained diversity and made it acceptable.’ He wishes to identify, assess and to discuss at length, what churches hold in common and what has been constant, albeit in necessarily different and distinctive forms, in ecclesial existence throughout the lengthy ecclesiological (as opposed to ecclesiastical) history charted so well throughout volumes I and II. Haight expresses his hope that the construction of such a ‘transdenominational ecclesiology’ will serve three specific functions. First, that the understanding of what all Christians share in common will thus be deepened and that what is ‘essential’ or of core importance and what is not is better and more widely appreciated. Second, that such an understanding is broadened, i.e., horizons are pushed beyond denominational boundaries and the pluralistic reality of the entire church is better understood and affirmed. Finally, this form of ecclesiology offers an illustration of the fruits of mutual ecclesial recognition and may even lead to closer (formal) communion. As illustrated in Chapter 1 of the present volume, Haight’s intellectual and ecclesial journey towards Ecclesial Existence began long ago. As he acknowledges himself, his major studies into the dynamics of theology, Christology, liberation theology and the like, have all had a major formative bearing upon his later published volumes in ecclesiology. Indeed, Haight states that the three-volume ecclesiology, itself, forms the third part of a wider theological trilogy, alongside his volumes on theological method and on Christology. Ecclesial Existence in Common and Communion: The Construction of a Transdenominational Ecclesiology In Haight’s own words, the purpose of the final volume of what he defines as a three-volume comparative constructive ecclesiology from below, is intended ‘to

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explore and put in words the common apostolic dimensions of the church that are shared by all Christian churches’.6 Judgements concerning the apostolic identity of churches may often be ‘misled by phenomenal appearances’ and the common identity shared by all may often lie beneath the surface but Haight’s intention is to identify the ‘latent apostolic church that subsists in the church today across the denominations’.7 The continuity is not identical to the external forms, although it does lie within them and the common ecclesial existence shared by churches ‘exceeds and overflows’ particular ecclesial structures. The third volume falls into two main parts, the first of which constitutes a twochapter discussion of the methodological prolegomena of ‘The Notion of a Constructive Transdenominational Ecclesiology’. Haight then moves on to explore the various formative and aspirational aspects, implications and contemporary challenges of ‘Ecclesial Existence’ itself, mapping the contours of such through a further five chapters before culminating in an eighth concluding chapter. Haight explains how the previous two volumes sought to integrate a positive historical consciousness into ‘the method and content of systematic reflection on the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic church’ in a postmodern context8 and how, during the composition of those two volumes and since, he has come to appreciate the need for sustained reflection upon still further needs of the church today. Overall, this volume, itself, attempts that ambitious project of constructing a transdenominational ecclesiology. However, Haight is adamant that such in no way supplants or seeks to demean particular denominational ecclesiologies – rather transdenominational ecclesiology must learn from, and be in continuous dialogue and interaction with such particular ecclesial visions of self-understanding. Haight suggests that the antithesis between uniformity and relativism no longer functions as an accurate hypothesis to explain the contemporary Christian situation, nor to discern the character of particular forms of ecclesial selfunderstanding. This is such not least of all because uniformity was never really an ideal to be aspired towards in any case. Rather, in a methodological principle by now most familiar to us – and one that not simply influences this volume throughout but is groundbreaking in its potential for an empowering and truly constructive and ecumenical ecclesiological method for these times – Haight states that ‘[t]he realistic antithesis to relativism is better formulated as pluralism’.9 Haight unpacks this enticing and yet no doubt, to some, provocative and counterintuitive statement – which he admits ‘goes against the grain’ – as follows: By pluralism I mean difference within a common framework . . . a situation in which differences are held together within a unifying field; it points to unity amid differences. By contrast, it does not refer to pure diversity, or the existence of differences that, because they are unrelated, require no mediation or negotiation . . . It raises the question of whether and how human beings can find a common and shared truth. Pluralism affirms that human existence, and by extension Christian ecclesial existence, shares a common structure and truth across its many differences.10

In the very first chapter, he further articulates his understanding of pluralism as ‘difference that subsists in a larger common matrix of shared ideas, values and

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living space’ (pp. 7–8), in other words, ‘unity amid difference’ and, indeed, far from being an evil to be shunned (as we find many alternative ecclesiological mindsets suggesting today), it is a value to be cultivated, for ‘More and more the actual pluralistic character of humankind is forcing a recognition that this is the natural condition of human existence in history.’11 The method that he painstakingly constructs at length throughout this volume constitutes a ‘strategy’ that justifies such an understanding and affirmation of pluralism. This reverses the more traditional movement from ‘a monistic conception of the church’ (whether through privileging a Western or Eastern or particular denomination’s version of this) to specific instances of such. Haight rather progresses from a historical and phenomenological examination of the church’s story and forms of self-understanding, towards ‘a formulation of the common life that is shared by all the churches’.12 A further methodological principle, that of the ‘analogical imagination’13 allows similarity or, if one prefers a more terminological phrase, the defining ‘marks’ of the church, and hence true ‘communion’ to be discerned beneath the depths of difference. Thus, in the final chapter Haight affirms the necessity and unavoidability of pluralism when he declares that ‘The recognition of the commonality of ecclesial existence requires stepping beyond the sphere of one Christian church staring out at each other in a self-absorbed way.’14 The specific challenges that call for such a transdenominational understanding of the nature and mission of the community called church for the twenty-first century include topics we have already encountered above, namely, the new global, pluralistic situation in which the church is today situated, and hence the ‘presence’ of different cultures and traditions to one another. The implications of such can be especially witnessed by reference to the growing influence and expansion of those forms of Christianity inculturated in that majority of the world’s space found beyond the confines of the Euro–North American contexts (accompanied by an attendant ‘decline’ of Christianity in certain countries in these latter contexts). Third, Haight also notes the tension between inculturation and fragmentation of the churches in that wider world. Haight employs key ‘principles of theological epistemology’ and criteria of theology here, as in his earlier works. These include a distinction between faith (a more constant trust and commitment) and beliefs – which can change and express or articulate and put into practice the faith of an individual or entire community in very different ways across time and space alike. Such a distinction ‘allows the [very] constructive possibility of pluralism’.15 Not unrelated to this distinction is that between ‘essential elements constituting the church’ and things of lesser central and fundamental importance, or ‘adiaphora’.16 Furthermore, Haight offers four theological criteria to serve as a ‘heuristic framework’ for assessing particular elements of church history and ecclesiology up against the embryonic common understanding of ecclesial existence itself. None of these are to be understood in any fixed and restrictive sense. They are: the relationship to Scripture; historical continuity; ecclesiological coherence and intelligibility (as opposed to, for example, overt ecclesiological ‘mystification’); and, finally, ‘the viability of theological language to empower the Christian life’, and this empowerment understood in a

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positive and active ecumenical aspirational sense.17 As such it guards against exclusivity and yet illuminates and thus further enhances commonality. In the two chapters that discuss the notion of the constructive transdenominational ecclesiology, Haight begins (Chapter 1 ‘Where We Dwell in Common’) by charting the achievements of the ecumenical movement throughout the twentieth century and lauds, in particular, the ecclesiological culmination of such in the documents produced by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, namely Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (from 1982) and The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement (first published in 2005 and agreed by the WCC Assembly at Porto Alegre in 2006). Both represent examples of what Haight actually means by a ‘transdenominational ecclesiology’. His own understanding of what the latter entails is here further explained as a specific form of comparative ecclesiology itself. It is distinctive in the manner in which it engages with and draws upon sources from various different churches in order to reach a common understanding of the church itself. It thus acknowledges, utilizes and reflects ecclesial pluralism at one and the same time. Haight’s aim is essentially ambitious, but he acknowledges it is presently unattainable and will have limited results, namely, the formation of an ecclesiology, an understanding of church ‘that all churches could recognize and in some measure claim as their own’.18 Haight does not claim that his volume offers any definitive form of transdenominational ecclesiology; on the contrary, the volume as a whole is a plea for greater and more diverse participation in the construction of such a common ecclesiology than has hitherto been the case. Haight gives due consideration to the main objection to such a task, namely that no ‘transdenominational church’ actually exists and ‘nor can it’, because of the very historically, culturally and socially inculturated and contextualized nature of ecclesial existence. Thus a transdenominational church is merely an abstraction, a construct for heuristic purposes alone. Yet, whilst Haight acknowledges the general accuracy of such claims, he also stresses that such an abstraction does have a concrete referent, namely the shared ecclesial existence of all Christians and, as such, is no mere abstraction by any means. Hence the ‘transdenominational church’ constitutes not a particular church but the ‘foundational elements of every church or what all ecclesial existence shares in common’.19 Haight’s impeccable pluralistic and historical, not to mention ecumenical, credentials are evidenced throughout. For example, in his outline of the ‘Premises’ of such a transdenominational ecclesiology, one finds Haight employing to ingenious constructive ends the thought of those such as, for example, Bernard Lonergan, John Zizioulas, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Richard Hooker, Menno Symons, John Calvin and Augustine of Hippo. Indeed in making the case for this type of common ecclesiology, Haight time and again returns to historicity and pluralism, such constituting the core forms of consciousness that inform his work in general. Such mirror the contemporary situation of the church itself, he argues. Haight does not overlook or underplay tensions and differences but, true to his constructive aims, he seeks to find ways in which their impact can either be lessened through greater mutual learning and

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hence understanding, or that they can be lived with, mindful of greater ecclesiological and hence ecclesial aspirations to be yet pursued and actualized. Testimony to the commonality of shared ecclesial existence by all Christians is the perception of ‘the church’ by those of other faiths and likewise, the perception implicit in constructive Christian engagements with those faiths. That such a ‘transdenominational’ understanding of church mirrors some reality is further evidenced by what Haight calls the ‘spontaneous demand’ (p. 12) for such an ecclesiology that emerged from the ecumenical movement in the twentieth century. In all, though, such an ecclesiology must be understood dialectically – it neither seeks to replace particular ecclesiologies, as stated, nor does it offer a blueprint path towards a unified single church. Rather, it is an ecclesiology that is specific, yet transdenominational in each of its sources, audience, method, aim and characteristics alike (as evidenced by BEM and by NMC which Haight here discusses as exemplary of such). The sources for such are historical and theological alike, including revelation, specifically Scripture, and the entire story of the church itself, from its beginnings to the present day. Confessional, ecumenical and individual theological documents and writings are included here, also. Perhaps, Haight suggests, a more helpful dividing line is between historical and contemporaneous sources. Such an ecclesiology’s audience embraces all Christians, obviously, but also has a wider ‘public’ impact and hence function, given the prevalence of church–world questions in our times. The audience must also include the church’s dialogue partners in other faiths. Haight emphasizes how it must address ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ alike. In terms of method, Haight states that it must be not only comparative, but so, also, normative, perhaps here equating to what I have above termed ‘aspirational’ – Haight sharing with the latter understanding that ecclesiology should not simply be descriptive but should also point towards the ‘way things should be’.20 It must also be apologetic – here understood in correlational terms aimed towards promoting dialogue and identifying where elements of ecclesial understanding and existence tally (or otherwise) with common areas of contemporary human experience. This threefold method allows all sources to be utilized in the service of constructing the common understanding of the church that serves as the aim of the transdenominational ecclesiology. As for the characteristics of such, by necessity these must be the employment of referential language that is ‘broad, inclusive, and deliberately non-specific’ (p. 19) in how it describes church institutions. So, also, can a wealth of common and general theological symbols, (again) drawn from Christian resources from the New Testament onwards, be employed. The principle of functionality21 must be embraced – namely that insofar as specific ministries and institutions are discussed it is in relation to the service towards the ‘well-being of the community’ (p. 20) and of its continued faithfulness to its mission and the ministry of Christ. This enables differences to be better understood and indeed overcome when common ministerial and missiological objectives can be detected, even though diverse forms, understanding and

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explanations of how they are met are witnessed throughout differing communities. Haight calls the latter strategy, that of ‘finding analogies of function’.22 For specifically heuristic purposes, Haight finally draws upon the sociology of organizations, in order to outline the ‘structure’ of such a transdenominational ecclesiology in the service of primarily descriptive ends (albeit in the service of wider ecumenical goals). The elements of this structure are fivefold and address the following: (1) The nature and purpose of the church, including its general ontological self-understanding and its common theological, symbolic, hermeneutical and axiological characteristics. (2) The church’s institutional and organizational form and polity, structures of ministry and authority. (3) The membership of the church, including criteria for such, functions of those who ‘qualify’ and relations between the same. (4) The activities of the church, these standing in direct relation to its purpose: what activities work towards the fulfilment of the latter? This aspect thus embraces assembly, worship, prayer, liturgy, sacraments, ethics and spirituality. (5) The relationship between the church and the world, between ecclesial community and society, and the nature of any ‘boundaries’ dividing such, each of which must be explored. The eschatological dimensions of ecclesial vision, mission and self-understanding, Haight tells us, bring the exploration back to the fundamental ontological articulation of nature and purpose. Haight’s own specific account of the path from historical to constructive ecclesiology comes in Chapter 2, which, he tells us, acts as a bridge between the three volumes. It complements his outline of the method and character of a transdenominational ecclesiology by outlining the formal premises for this very task gleaned from the history of ecclesiology itself. Here Haight not only draws but expands upon aspects of volumes I and II, most notably, key principles of orientation and loci for the systematic ecclesiology he wishes to construct. By and large, he here develops further the fundamental nature and task of an ecclesiology ‘from below’. Thus the ecclesiology here is oriented through ‘two mutually influencing languages’ (pp. 31ff) . The one, theological, concerned with the church’s constitutive relationship to God, the latter historical and sociological concerning the constitutive relation of the church to the world. Second, Haight elucidates the sacramental principle (God deals with human beings through the church, albeit not exclusively), the mystagogical principle (human existence responds to God through the church), and the structural implications of the fact that the church is a social organization that displays characteristics similar to other social organizations. Mindful of the need to balance the theological and historical throughout, Haight goes on to explore what the history of ecclesiology might offer us today by way of some general or common principles that can at one and the same time affirm constant elements and yet equally affirm and be comfortable with changes and difference in the church.

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Thus, in Chapter 2, he settles on a ‘working definition’ of the church’s nature and mission that he expands upon in Chapter 3, namely as the ‘institutionalization of the community of people who, animated by the Sprit of God, live in the faith that Jesus is the Christ of God. The mission of the church is to continue and expand Jesus’s message in history.’23 Haight thus moves from the theological grounding of the church, illuminated by scriptural and patristic sources, to the insight brought about by historical and comparative ecclesiology that ‘the one church is made up of many churches whose ecclesiologies have different churches as their referents. Study of the one church therefore requires an analogical imagination.’24 Hence ecclesiological referents shift and differing experiences and contexts impact such shifts. The comparative and analogical immersion in such can bear much fruit. With typical understatement, Haight asks us to ‘Imagine John Smyth and Robert Bellarmine having a serious conversation about the meaning of ‘‘church’’.’25 In Chapter 3 itself Haight reminds us of the implications of the fact that the church is a religious organization and as such its nature and purpose must be described in religious language. The origins of the church make such self-evident. Haight suggests that there must be an ‘anthropological openness to the church’ (p. 73) and he first sketches a lucid existential account, informed by the philosophy of religion, of the church’s nature and purpose. He affirms the need for recognizing that different presuppositions will inform particular understandings of the nature and mission of the church. Different churches may accentuate theological or historical aspects of the nature and purpose of the church in differing ways at different times. Some may emphasize the internal aspects of the nature and purpose more than the external and vice versa. But the church’s nature and purpose, the continuing of the mission and ministry of Jesus, must nonetheless be seen in terms of its continuation both within the ecclesial community and in wider society, indeed throughout history, as well. Haight discusses the symbolic and theological language with which people both shape and explain the actualization of the church’s mission. He again observes the inescapably pluralistic nature of such, before turning to outline the historical and sociological development of the church vis-a`-vis its mission. Here he is evidently building upon the insights of his much earlier writings, most notable his influential article on mission as the fundamental focus for ecclesiology today.26 Once again pluralism looms large in this account. Divine initiative is never played down but, true to his method, is rather equally affirmed alongside the historical-sociological elements. On the contrary, Haight tells us that ‘it is primarily in the theological domain that the distinctive nature and the common possession of all the churches lie’.27 The church’s self-understanding primarily flows from the understanding of its relationship with God. This leads into the church–God, church–world relations tension and ‘is a constant that defines [the church’s] life’. Third, those characteristics of the church outlined in the ‘marks’ of ecclesiality follow on from this. All three comprise what Haight calls the ‘theological nature of the church’ (pp. 80–1). He expounds this with elucidation of classic theological – particularly trinitarian and ecclesial – language, images and iconography.

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Returning to the historical focus, importantly, and obviously with wide implications for much recent and contemporary debate, Haight shuns the notion that any particular ecclesiology should be measured against the ideality of any other single ecclesiology. Rather the ‘tension between ideals and actuality’ (p. 40f), between ecclesiological utopianism and realism, must be acknowledged, even if ecclesiology (again mindful of eschatology) more frequently tends towards the former rather than the latter. But transdenominational ecclesiology maintains the tension as more truly representative of the ecclesial realities of today and therefore more constructive in its potentiality. Eschatological language should, however, be distinguished from descriptive and legal language. Some churches will stress the nature of the church, and look more inwards, concerning themselves with what the church should become; others will stress its mission, looking outwards at what the church must do in the world; but, for Haight, the two must interact. The nature and purpose (or mission) of the church, as of any organization, Haight suggests, together ‘determine the ontology of its being and the character of its existence’.28 Such reflects the commandment that we must love God and neighbour alike and recalls the principles of sacramentality that affirm and articulate the notion of the church both as God’s sign and instrument. One should not juxtapose community and mission, Haight suggests, but rather understand community as mission. All of this also brings to mind, once again, Haight’s 1976 article on mission, particularly when he puts forth such arguments as that the church’s business is not so much the conversion of every human being as to be ‘The quality, in the sense of the clarity, of the sign of God’s presence and action in the world becomes far more important than that the church absorb the world into itself’.29 Whether sacramental language is employed or not, the signification of the church’s mission must have actual and hence practical consequences. Haight goes so far as to reverse more ‘traditional’ thinking here. We should not primarily think about the fact that the church has a mission, but rather embrace the more dynamic sense that God’s mission has a church. For God’s mission must be understood as prior to the church in both logical as well as chronological terms. There will be internal and external aspects to the mission of the church, but it must always be understood as being carried out in history and in the world. In the various discussions throughout the volume that are concerned with the implications of the fundamental ‘marks’ of the church, Haight suggests that they must all be ‘understood dialectically’30 and interpreted in a non-polemical fashion, for what they describe is not a template of the true church against which to measure contending ecclesial communities; rather they point towards the true church that can be found in all churches. What they actually call individual churches to is the task of actualizing the reality of each mark ‘across the boundaries of the churches’.31 Haight illustrates how the pluralism inherent in the unity of the church was present and acknowledged from the very earliest origins of the church, indeed, the plurality became the actual norm for the church’s unity, itself.32 Indeed for Haight, ‘inculturation entails pluralism’.33 In turning to the holiness of the church, Haight seeks to illustrate that it must apply not only to the ‘objective institution’ of the church (i.e. its divine

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foundation), but also to the quality of ongoing corporate life.34 In considering the holiness of the church, that tension between the historical and the eschatological is brought into sharp relief and such holiness must obviously be understood, with the aid first of theological language, then of historical and sociological, to understand the distinction between the church’s objective and subjective holiness. Haight believes in the need for correlation ‘between the words and actions of the church’ in order to discern the tension between the two and understand the ‘degrees’ of holiness (and conversely of sin) that the church displays.35 The church’s catholicity is discussed in its relation to the organization of the church. Catholicity is thus seen to point towards the historical and sociological developments that are ever-present in the church, further reminding us of the inculturated and human (i.e., in addition to divine) aspects of the nature of the church, with all the tensions entailed by such vis-a`-vis the institution and offices of the church. Whilst not rejecting all notions of institutional objectification in relation to the church, Haight reminds us that ‘Institutions do not exist for themselves, but in relationship to the energetic existential life of the community served by structuring it.’36 Catholicity, Haight suggests, illuminates the entire history of the church in general, but the early modern and subsequent increasingly more pluralistic story of the church in particular. Haight’s discussions here thus work towards a profound and incredibly constructive statement of principle, that again echoes sentiments consistently expressed in his earlier essays and volumes alike: In the twenty-first century theologians instinctively affirm that the only unity possible within the church is one that includes a dimension of plurality and allowance for differences. This applies to the question of unity among the churches. It also applies within individual churches, communions, and denominations, and even to ecclesial existence within the parish or congregation.37

Such a principle provides grounds for a ‘revised conciliarist principle’ (pp. 55–6), something that a reimagined communion ecclesiology might help to shape and fashion. Catholicity of communion and the various levels of communion are important organizational principles to be considered in order for barriers to be broken down.38 On the mark of apostolicity, discussing it in Chapter 3 and at great length in Chapter 4, Haight sees this as referring less to individuals and officeholders and more to the task of the church in every age to bear faithful witness to the original witness. ‘The subject of this task was therefore not another group of individuals but the whole church.’39 Yes, apostolicity constitutes ‘continuity with origins’ (p. 143f), and will require institutional forms. Different structures and offices in different churches and at different times will prove more or less appropriate to maintaining such faithful witness. Importantly, Haight argues that the office of bishop is not, in and of itself, any guarantee of apostolicity (even if it has proved its worth in aiding faithful apostolicity). Nor is it a condition of the possibility of apostolicity. One implication here being, of course, that, contra particular documents from, for example, the Roman Curia in recent years, other churches without a formal episcopacy can still bear the mark of apostolicity.

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The organization of the church is most specifically discussed in Chapter 4. Haight believes that, whereas an abstract theological discussion of the nature and mission of the church can yield much consensus, when one turns to the structures by which churches actualize their nature and mission in history, one enters into a consideration of a series of issues, distinctions, disagreements and disputes. Haight’s methodological means by which to transcend the divisions here entail focusing upon ‘proportionality and teleology’(pp. 115ff). This enables him to consider, first the fundamental relations between community and structure before turning to explore the differing and four specific forms of ministry (which can be traced to the New Testament) so important to the being of Christian communities – they are ministries to Christian life: ‘ministry creates the existential space in which ecclesial existence happens and lives’.40 The four types are: ‘animating faith by word and sacrament’ (p. 126) (constituting, for Haight, two forms), ‘ministry to those in material need inside and outside the church’, and, finally, ‘administration and governance’. He then explores ‘organizational units’ (p.127) of the church, including the emergence of ‘larger units’ of ecclesial organization across the Christian centuries and the thorny issues that were and continue to be resultant from the events surrounding the development and expansion of such. Office, authority and authorization are considered next before Haight sums up his organizational considerations and offers suggestions concerning particular attitudes that churches might adopt when they engage in reflection upon the organizational life of other churches. In turning to consider the ‘members of the church’, exploring, on the one hand, constitutive and, on the other hand, criteriological and hermeneutical aspects of such, i.e., respectively, who are the members and what does it mean to be a member? Haight believes the latter question essentially involves the purpose and character of his entire volume. For Haight, such marks out the pathway towards a contemporary Christian social anthropology and, in Chapter 5, he further articulates what such might look like. He explores the notion of membership in relation to four areas that have proved problematic for the churches. Again this chapter touches upon issues that have proved seriously divisive – the ever-present ‘tensions of sameness and difference’ (p. 161) – and yet, once again, Haight’s careful considerations and abstractions enable him to ask whether such was ever truly necessary and certainly to suggest that such need no longer continue to be the case, when considered against far more important and deeper elements wider of ecclesial existence that most Christians ‘share in common’.41 Thus Haight explores, in turn, the sacrament of initiation into church membership, i.e., Baptism, and explores differing understandings and interpretations of this. This fundamental criterion for and element of church membership has enjoyed multiple meanings, forms and practices throughout the story of the church. The relationship between clergy and laity here understood as a relationship between Christians who share a broader common ecclesial existence is considered next, in the context of conceptions of clergy vis-a`-vis ‘people of God’. Obviously ordination and gender are issues that arise here, as are notions of the ‘discipleship of equals’ and ‘priesthood of all believers’. Religious authority enters into all such considerations, also. And the latter debate opens out into a much broader discussion where pluralism is again seen as the facilitating epistemological horizon

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that here helps ‘relativize and deabsolutize’ (p. 184) the claims to authority of all individual churches and indeed the whole church vis-a`-vis other faiths, a point earlier made in a particularly incisive fashion in Haight’s 1994 article.42 There, Haight suggested that Christian theology has much to learn and gain from its dialogue with other faiths, which establishes new horizons for its sources and norms. Haight reminded us that Christians now live in a ‘dialogical situation’ that calls for unending conversing and learning from such encounters. Haight’s sentiments help provide further grounding for those suggestions offered elsewhere concerning the need for ecclesiologies that are both dialogical and prophetic and the inseparability of such from the task of evangelization itself.43 The following passage might serve as an admirable summary of core elements of the thesis of Haight’s Christian Community in History, Volume III itself: The development entails a new posture of the church vis a` vis other religions and consequently a new dimension for theological reflection within the church. In very broad terms one can define the new stance of the church in terms of the categories of witness and dialogue. The mission of the church in one respect remains the same: it is a mission of evangelization or giving witness to its faith in God mediated by Jesus Christ. Its intent is to be a sign of this faith and to establish and nurture a local church to continue the mission of Jesus. But at the same time the notion of dialogue has come to inform and qualify the method and immediate goals of the witness.44

This leads nicely and logically into the discussion that follows in Volume III, of the very concept, as well as the soteriological implications, of the notion of the ‘invisible church’. Here a ‘new problem in ecclesiology’ is encountered, namely the ‘relationship of the church and membership in the church to an encounter with God’s salvation, either in this world or eschatologically’ (p. 188). Here Haight acknowledges two fundamentally opposing views concerning church membership that appear present in most churches. Turning, penultimately, to ‘activities of the church’, Haight weaves a rich tapestry of social, anthropological, theological, sacramental, liturgical and moral themes together to illustrate the fundamental importance of activity and practice to the ongoing development and change in the history of Christian teaching and existence alike. In essence, what the church actually does is the concern of both chapters 6 and 7, and these represent collectively two of the most impressive and hope-filled constructive parts of this systematic ecclesiological tour de force. They concern, respectively, the ministerial activities of the church ad intra – or ecclesial maintenance – (the building up and continued nurturing of the community’s life) and ad extra – or ecclesial mission – (the outreach of the church into the wider ‘world’). Thus Chapter 6 addresses pastoral activity, forms of worship and liturgical questions in the main. Haight explores the teleological and functional relations between church orders, offices, organization and ministry, arguing that the goal of ministry is an orientation of the community to God in a way that gives rise to ‘an instinct for mutual care’, as well as offering a spiritual and social ‘safety net for life on the high wire’ (p. 202). Ordination is here further considered, before Haight

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moves on to worship, which he conceives to be ‘the center of gravity of the Christian church’ (p. 205), its very ground of being. Haight again tries to offer principles that will enhance a common understanding of worship, despite obvious differences across various churches. He discusses the church’s core forms of worship in gathering around the Word of God and in the Eucharist, both of which are manifested and interpreted by different communities in many different ways via the rich tapestries of theological and liturgical language of distinct and common traditions alike but which nonetheless share a great deal of commonality and hence normative character. Haight does not shirk difficult questions such as the real presence nor, indeed, the notion and nature of sacrament in general. His considerations lead him to draw some general conclusions concerning how and why the church nurtures all its members in a hermeneutical, ethical and social sense, as a community of meaning, a community of values and a community of mutual support. Finally, the church–world relation is discussed and returns us to the twofold constitutive relationships of the church. The church–world relationship has ontological and practical (including ethical) dimensions that Haight has identified and articulated in his earlier essays and volumes alike and which he here goes on to explore at length in various chapters, most comprehensively in Chapter 7. This is perhaps, for this reader, the chapter which most encapsulates the sophisticated systematic ecclesiological vision of Haight that has emerged over the years and which was witnessed along the way in his seminal articles and, albeit perhaps at times a touch more opaquely, in terms of formal ecclesiological discussion, in earlier volumes prior to Christian Community in History. It is also the chapter that perhaps offers the most hope-filled constructive proposals of all and stands in contrast to the numerous more restrictive, negative and, one has to say, even potentially ‘heretical’ ecclesiologies that have seized the headlines in recent years. Haight’s account here is thoroughly systematic and, once again, skilfully blends the theological with the historical and sociological analysis towards positive pluralistic and ecumenical ends. The relation of the church to the world (essentially, history, culture, government and society) ‘is the single main force of change and development of the church’45 and one cannot understand the church apart from that world. Of course, there are and have always been different Christian understandings of, explanations of and indeed models for and modes of relating to the world. No one form of the church–world relation can be normative or correct, for ‘the church properly relates to the world in different ways’, ways that are ‘intrinsically variable and pluralistic’ (p. 242). The church and world mutually affect one another and the theological implications of the tension this ‘dynamic reciprocity’ (p. 239) gives rise to are immense. The nature of the church–world relation cannot be understood apart from the church’s relation to God but so, also, Haight argues, is the ‘way the church relates to God conditioned by the world’.46 In discussing the church’s missionary activity, Haight observes how the understanding of this in recent centuries has been considerably narrowed so as, in some quarters, to almost be equated with the activities of ‘foreign missions’ and the business of conversion. Yet the facts of globalization, as well as historical and pluralistic consciousness, give rise to particular challenges for mission today and

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also suggest to us that wholesale conversion is not only unrealistic but unnecessary, unethical (‘tinged with imperialism’) and undesirable. Such a narrowing of missionary activity to the ‘eschatological goal of human existence’ (p. 247), Haight believes, ‘short circuits’ the ‘universal relevance of God’s message of salvation in Jesus Christ’. Haight believes much insight can be gained by exploring the practical meaning of missionary activity, including the profound and wide-ranging social activities of the church. The differences between the churches concerning missionary activity also run very deep, but a transformation of our understanding of mission does not need to undermine ‘the universal relevance of the Christian message’ (p. 247) in any shape or form. The task is to settle upon a hermeneutic of mission that all Christians can appropriate. For Haight, the key to understanding the church–world relation today and indeed the task of mission itself today is dialogue in tandem with an understanding of human freedom that together imply an ethic for contemporary ecclesial existence at the same time as providing that hermeneutic. Again, a key theme familiar from his earlier writings and volumes, Haight here argues that dialogue is an ecclesially empowering metaphor that embraces fundamental theological as well as anthropological insights, rooted in the very notion and form of God’s own relation to the world itself and is extended via the idea of conversation. In particular, he here echoes his call in 1994 for a ‘dialogical mission’ to complement the mission of witness, and his thoughts from the 1970s on the nature of mission for contemporary times. In the former, Haight had already articulated his particularly developed and empowering understanding of the concept of dialogue, itself Dialogue means entering into a respectful and attentive exchange with people, their cultures and their religions. The metaphor of a dialogue or conversation supplies the rules for how the church should encounter the people of other religions at all levels. In other words, a phenomenology of an authentic dialogue reveals the characteristics that should qualify the unfolding of the church’s mission.47

Dialogue, Haight tells us in 2008, is simply ‘being open to the world’, a ‘root metaphor that contains a generative outlook upon the world that in turn will respect the freedom of the world to be itself’.48 Haight concurs with those who argue that such an understanding of the church–world relation is grounded in the theology of creation. As with sin, so, also, does salvation have social as well as individual manifestations. Here the church’s social mission is profoundly rooted in Haight’s wider heuristic and practical-prophetic schema, as is the discussion of church–society, church–state and religious–secular relations and other elements of what, elsewhere, I have called ‘public ecclesiology’. The church necessarily reacts differently, Haight observes, to different societies and regimes, but it is always called to resist and actively confront dehumanizing structures wherever they are manifested. As a leaven in society, however, the church must also ‘announce the values and promises of the kingdom of God’ (p.246); in other words, not only

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must Christian Samaritans today bind the victim’s wounds, they must also, in partnership with others beyond the church, ‘participate in making the road to Jericho safe’.49 Haight considers the various and often competing ways and interpretations of the church–culture dynamic, including the prevalence of inculturation from the earliest Christian times and the related thorny issues surrounding the relationship of Jesus Christ to other religions. He believes that ‘the symbol of dialogue offers a resource for understanding both of these issues and opens up practical ways of moving forward’.50 The most difficult problems can be better understood via a ‘historical strategy’ and commitment to dialogue itself, ‘a large conversation across cultural and denominational lines’ (p. 262), for – and here we again see how Haight counters much alternative ecclesiological thinking in the ascendancy in recent years – history teaches us there is no ‘non-cultural’, nor ‘super-cultural’ standard against which various cultural expressions of the Christian faith can be measured. In particular, dialogue with other faiths can not only communicate to the other the riches concerning who Christ is according to our faith, but it can also enrich our faith and ecclesial existence through what we learn about the faith and culture of the partner in dialogue. Haight believes such a strategy can be embraced by conservative and progressive Christians alike – nothing essential is sacrificed. Haight goes so far as to conclude that ‘one can characterize ecclesial existence’, itself, ‘as a positive openness to the world’.51 All of this is grounded in the gospel itself: Overall, the fundamental message of Jesus Christ calls for a positive attitude towards the world despite the sin that affects all. Christians should be able to find god in all things, identify and reject sin in society, favour the victims of society, criticize public policy when it flouts the values of the kingdom of God, promote the inculturation of the church in society, and look for the Spirit of God at work in other religions.52

The common ecclesial existence is further demonstrated by a realization that this is a common mission all Christians are called to. The converse realization is that division between Christians hinders the work of that mission and ‘effectively neutralizes the mission of the church in crucial issues’ (p. 285). This, in itself, is an imperatival call to at least partial communion. Cumulatively, Haight believes that all of the principles explored in the individual chapters from 3 through 7 already offer an embryonic picture of what a transdenominational understanding of church will look like. Such will help root the understanding of the church more firmly in the pluralistic reality and challenges of the world we live in, and yet also make Christians more appreciative of the core and constant theological and ontological constitutive aspects of ecclesial existence. In effect, part two then, systematically and meticulously puts further lively flesh on the structural and methodological bones outlined in part one. Each subsequent chapter being concerned with those ‘loci of a systematic ecclesiology’ first outlined in Chapter 2, where he draws the volume’s first part to a close by articulating his intentions for part two: ‘A better strategy for understanding the church will be to

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allow the principles to fashion a framework that opens up the imagination to appreciate analogous commonalities across the many different churches that make up the whole church’ (p. 67). The final chapter, however, moves from an exploratory to a programmatic focus. Here he explores ecclesial existence in relation to the notion of ‘partial communion’. He believes that comparative ecclesiology and its value in helping lay the foundations for a transdenominational ecclesiology can actually help churches appreciate their common ecclesial existence to the extent that they can see the conditions for the possibility of a form of partial communion having already been met. This does not negate the ideal of full communion but the latter may not be possible or desirable for some churches, at least at present. Thus, Chapter 8 first recapitulates the general account of ecclesial existence as being synonymous with (common) ecclesial spirituality first set forth in CCH vol. I. This, in itself, provides further evidence of the commonality and yet at the same time pluralistic nature of ecclesial existence throughout the history of the church. Haight then explores the parameters of the concept of ‘partial communion’ itself, particularly its tensive character, and contrasts it with the notion of ‘full communion’. Even when referring to the latter, Haight believes many churches, in any case, actually mean something rather different and short of the ideal. The purpose of a transdenominational ecclesiology is to ‘create the conditions that may allow for partial communion among churches’, offering ‘positive reasons for entering into a relationship of communion with another church which may be seriously different from themselves’.53 Thus the constructive comparative ecclesiology first expresses the fact and nature of common ecclesial existence. It describes this in ‘abstract but existentially relevant language’ for our times, thereby offering a basis for communion that might transcend differences. Second, such an ecclesiology ‘demonstrates the complex hybridity of ecclesial identity’ (p. 278), both in theological and historical terms. It unmasks the fallacies of stereotypes and overt generalizations (such as ‘hierarchical’ versus ‘congregational’ churches). Third, it helps illustrate that the ‘subjective will’ of individual churches, itself something driven by ‘impulse of the Spirit’, is demonstrated as necessary for partial communion. An individual church ‘must strive to transcend its own selfunderstanding in order to grasp the apostolic ecclesial existence in the other despite its otherness’.54 No single and particular version of the apostolic tradition can represent and judge the whole. Thus partial communion formally and publicly recognizes common ecclesial and apostolic bonds between churches. In itself, it will necessarily take different forms. Finally, Haight explains in more detail why he believes the principles of a common ecclesial existence that Christians share and which he has outlined in this volume lay the foundations for ‘a general Christian ecclesiological policy of seeking partial communion amongst the churches’.55 The grounding for partial communion essentially comes from ‘ordinary Christians in the churches’ (p. 282) and is reflective of their experiences, as competitiveness yields to principles of mutual understanding and cooperation. ‘More and more Christians have become realistic

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about unity, holiness, apostolicity, catholicity: these marks admit of diversity, sin, plurality, and contextualization, but they still refer to a substance that the churches together share: one faith, one Lord, one baptism, and one Spirit.’56 Constructive comparative ecclesiology is not, in itself, any formula for communion, but is rather a theological discipline that facilitates the transcending of differences between churches without necessarily altering those differences: ‘this ecclesiology aims at generating insight into what they share in common despite the most fundamental differences’.57 Instead, it ‘refocuses the imagination’ upon the ‘size and depth of what binds churches together’, and hence ‘even major differences’ might ‘become more like subjects of an internal conversation between partners than a debate between aliens’.58 ‘Hard Questions’ and Innovative Methodological, Epistemological and Existential Answers In relation to the themes and concerns of each chapter, Haight seeks to identify and propose constructive approaches to the remaining issues of most difficulty that stand in the way of closer communion and of a more open and dialogical fulfilment of the church’s mission to the world. In doing so, Haight nuances the key ecumenical and ecclesiological challenges for today and yet relativizes all such differences, offering methodological and especially epistemological means by which such questions can be faced and frequently better understood and so perhaps eventually overcome in many cases. Thus, in Chapter 3, Haight identifies the ‘hard questions’ posed by an antithesis between ‘a gathered community and a hierarchical community’, as well as a second and subsequent antithesis between a congregational church and a ‘larger universal organization’. These follow from the fact that differing ‘fundamental imaginative frameworks’ (respectively, ‘from below’ and ‘from above’) can be in operation.59 Haight believes that the genuine and deeply held differences marked out by such approaches can nonetheless, via the existential-historical approach inherent to the method he is seeking to fashion, both be affirmed as ecclesial visions of consistency, integrity and theological validity. Haight states that the task is not to integrate or seek some convergence of both approaches. Attention to what they affirm, as opposed to deny, is the key for rapprochement and ‘mutual recognition’. Though, perhaps a little confusingly here, Haight appears to indicate that the method of approaching ecclesiology from below is itself a prerequisite for allowing both imaginative frameworks to be appreciated. Nonetheless, he finds such mutual recognition a ‘penultimate goal’ that the ‘ordinary faithful’ will often acknowledge more readily as their own experience as opposed to church leaders (p. 114). He revisits this topic and goal in Chapter 8, when discussing the notion of partial communion. The ‘hard questions’ concerning organization primarily relate to differing forms and conceptions of ministry and how and whether these divide churches. Such include an understanding of the nature, origin, authorization, actualization and authority of such ministries and are inseparable from those differing fundamental imaginative conceptions of church. Obviously, questions concerning episcopacy

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and gender remain particularly divisive here. Haight offers some sensible abstracting reflections that might ‘soften’ the tension such differences often give rise to. These differences should not and need not divide communions. He concludes Chapter 4 by reminding Christians that ‘Ecclesial existence is being a member of this huge communion of saints that far outstrips the often petty rivalry of churches’ (p. 159). Concerning church membership, here the hard questions are again related to those differing conceptions of the church, and that of its ministry. Haight believes that tensions concerning the status (sacerdotal or functional) and authority of ministers might be overcome by exploring differing conceptions through ‘language simultaneously social and ontological’ (p. 194), which can affirm religious authority whilst shunning authoritarianism. A further hard question here concerns the impact of doctrinal differences upon the possibility and actuality of communion. This can be so even within specific churches where a large degree of pluralism exists. But how can it be overcome where the differences are radical between churches? Haight, recalling Cyprian, reminds us again of the priority, because of the much greater value of unity. Sacramental questions also remain deeply divisive, some of which Haight acknowledges can constitute ‘a perhaps unnecessary obstacle to communion’.60 The problematic range of debates concerning the nature and effects of ordination returns to centre stage in Chapter 6, but this chapter ends with a consideration of the key hard question in relation to the activities (pastoral ministry) of the church ad intra. This is one which Haight believes is perhaps ‘the hardest question of all concerning ecclesial existence’, namely, ‘why Christians do not allow Jesus Christ to unite them around the Eucharistic table’. Haight flatly rejects the oft-supplied answer – that Eucharist is a presupposition of rather than a means to achieving unity – as ‘little more than implicit corporate Pelagianism’ (p. 232). Church leaders must follow the lead of their members and do much more to remove the sinful conditions that prevent intercommunion. The hard question that confronts our explorations of church–world relations today, and which is too often answered in negative terms by numerous ecclesiological voices in various traditions today, is ‘whether a particular adaptation to the world is compatible with ecclesial existence’ (p. 269). But Haight is adamant that the issues of dialogue, inculturation, public ecclesiology, as well as doctrinal and moral debates, however serious, should never be the grounds for the abandonment of communion. Overall, the call to partial communion, as articulated in Haight’s final chapter here, appears as something churches can only avoid at their own peril: Common life today unfolds in a pluralistic world of different human cultures and different vital religions. In this horizon the commonalities of the Christian churches appear more clearly; one can distinguish between centers and peripheries, essentials and incidentals; what really counts in this church also really counts in the others. The world is pluralistic and this means unities or sets of commonalities amid differences. Where the drift seems decidedly tilted toward fragmentation, churches should begin

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to stress what we share in common. The differences seem to be able to take care of themselves.61

The Value and Promise of this Method: Concluding Considerations At this stage, in such close proximity to its publication, this is not the place to engage in sustained critique of Ecclesial Existence. At times the volume becomes a little dense, at others repetitive, particularly for anyone familiar with the first two volumes, but none of this should detract from its truly groundbreaking significance and achievements. Haight’s work offers rich resources for all future ecumenical and interfaith endeavours, as well as for social alliances aimed at enhancing justice and peace in the world of the present and the future. He helps Christianity to rekindle and to re-vision the open church. The dynamic of the movement from historical through comparative to constructive ecumenical ecclesiology is perfectly summed up in Haight’s articulate understated conclusion that, ‘Looking back [over the course of church history] it becomes plain that positive constructive dialogue and comparison are a better way to forge communion than polemics or claims to juridical authority.’62 David Tracy anticipated the great potential offered to all branches of theology, including ecclesiology, by the emerging discipline of comparative theology, insightfully warning that, in the postmodern world, we can no longer live within a tradition in the way we once did. Roger Haight’s constructive ecclesiology helps Christians today steer a path between the stark alternative identified by Tracy of retrenchment (foundationalism) or taking flight (the path towards relativism). Tracy spoke of the need to traverse a third route.63 But we now know ecumenical matters deteriorated and became actually worse as opposed to better in the years following Tracy’s penning of these noble sentiments. Here is the key value of Roger Haight’s ecclesiology – for Haight delved deep into the root causes – existential, epistemological, historical, anthropological, cultural – of such divisions and has crafted a practical means of discerning and transcending divisions and differences without pretending they do not exist. And the immense promise of comparative ecclesial hermeneutics is demonstrated by the fact that comparative ecclesiology evidently proves fruitful across a variety of synchronic and diachronic forms. As outlined in Chapter 1 of the present volume, they can be across history, across communion and denomination or even within denomination, or even between differing ecclesiological methodologies or between the visions of the ecclesial authorities and local church realities. Historically, our explorations will always return us transformed to the present and impact upon our perceptions of horizons for the future. Synchronically, it is clear that truly community-enhancing and empowering insights can be the fruit of engagement with the ecclesiological visions of those from differing contexts – be they viewed in geographical, cultural, social, interest-group, or gender terms or a combination of several such ‘comparative ecclesiological explorations’.

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Whether one wishes to acknowledge and/or celebrate it or not, theological and hence ecclesiological pluralism both are and have always been a lived reality in the church, a point I have often sought to stress. Haight’s work here, as well as superbly illustrating and analysing that fact, chooses to celebrate it, just as so much of the Christian traditions through the centuries celebrate it. And, as Haight’s work clearly demonstrates, this is something which is positive for the church; indeed, it empowers the church in its missionary activity in the world. This work of immense scholarship yet wonderful accessibility in style and prose has generated much discussion, just as it will fast become the standard work in its field and is likely to remain such for many, many years to come. In Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, I identified the promise of comparative ecclesiology, as consisting in, above all else, its ability to offer the church in a postmodern world the hope and resources necessary both to meet the challenges of this new historical context and to transcend the competing ecclesiologies that have blighted inner and intra ecclesial relations in recent decades. Instead, comparative ecclesiology would allow genuine merits to be shared, differences to be openly acknowledged and less profitable ecclesial approaches to be discerned.64

There, I also drew brief parallels between Haight’s ecclesiological writings and the broader systematic focus of Tracy, in particular his expression of the need for, as an ‘appropriate response’ to the present situation, reflection upon the pluralism within the Christian tradition in order to reflect upon the pluralism among the religious traditions or the pluralisms among the analyses of the situation . . . The recognition that no classic tradition should abandon its particular genius in its entry into conversation with the others is a central key for enhancing a genuinely ecumenical theology.65

History, plurality, sociality/communion: these three dynamics of human existence point towards the analogical and sacramental being of God’s own very self. They are the three fundamental themes of Roger Haight’s work on the church, as indeed they must be of any truly positive and constructive comparative ecclesiology. The aim of such ecclesiological investigations will always be ultimately existential and practical – bringing about greater harmony between ecclesial vision and ecclesial practice, ecclesiology and ethics. Here let us commend the erudition, scholarship and immense ecclesial and ecumenical promise of Roger Haight’s work. Notes 1. Cf. Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007), p. xiii. 2. For an overview and discussion of a range and selection of such, cf. Gerard Mannion, ‘Postmodern Ecclesiologies’, Chapter 7 of The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, pp. 147–52. 3. London and New York: Continuum, 2008.

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4. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, esp. chapters 5–7, pp. 105–72. See also a shorter treatment in Mannion, ‘Receptive Ecumenism and the Promise of Comparative Ecclesiology’, in Paul D. Murray, (ed.), Catholic Learning: Explorations in Receptive Ecumenism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 5. Though I would add a note here to observe that, whilst the actual ecclesiological writings, conferences and discussions, particularly in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, have indeed retained an ongoing intra-ecclesial focus, the trends and actual ecclesiological mindsets and practices that emerged towards the ends of the twentieth century – whether understood in more ‘conservative’ or ‘progressive/revisionist/liberal’ terms alike, were ones which cut across denominational boundaries nonetheless. Thus, for example, one would find numerous similarities in the views concerning the church–world relationship offered by Joseph Ratzinger, Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank. So too might one find just as much common ground concerning the same in Peter Phan, Lewis Mudge and Keith Ward. 6. Chapter 8, p. 274. 7. Chapter 8 p. 275. 8. Haight, Ecclesial Existence, ‘Preface’ p. vii. 9. Ibid p. ix. 10. Ibid p. x. 11. Chapter 5 p. 184. 12. Cf. Haight, Ecclesial Existence, ‘Preface’ p. x. 13. Articulated at length, of course, in the works of David Tracy and evidently influential upon Haight’s own earlier work. Cf., also, Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, Chapter 8, p. 191. 14. Chapter 8, p. 286. 15. Haught Ecclesial Existence, ‘Preface’, p. xii. 16. Haight provides a further account of these principles himself in Chapter 10, below. 17. Haight Ecclesial Existence, ‘Preface’, p. xiv. 18. Chapter 1, p. 5. 19. Chapter 1, p. 11. 20. Ibid, p. 18. 21. Cf. Christian Community in History, vol I, pp. 20, 63–4. 22. Ibid. Cf. here, in particular, Chapter 5, p. 21, by Minna Hietama¨ki. 23. Chapter 2, p. 36. 24. Ibid, p. 38. 25. Ibid, p. 39. 26. ‘Mission: the Symbol for Understanding the Church Today’, Theological Studies 37 (1976): 620–49. 27. Haight, Ecclesial Existence, Chapter 3, p. 80. 28. Chapter 3, p. 98. 29. p. 104; cf., again, ‘Mission: the Symbol for Understanding the Church Today’, passim. 30. Chapter 3, p. 90. 31. Ibid, p. 91. 32. Ibid. Cf. Christian Community in History, vol. I, p. 133. 33. Chapter 3, p. 93. 34. Chapter 2, p. 42f. 35. Chapter 3, p. 96–7. 36. Ibid, p. 47. 37. Ibid, p. 55. 38. Chapter 5, p. 55–6, 141–3. 39. Chapter 3, p. 94, n. 18. 40. Chapter 4, p. 140. 41. Chapter 5, p. 160. See also p. 196. 42. Haight, ‘Church as the Locus of Theology’, esp. pp. 9, 16–22. 43. As discussed in Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, Chapter 6, p. 124–50.

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44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

Haight, ‘Church as the Locus of Theology’, p. 9. Chapter 7, p. 233. Ibid, p. 240. Haight, ‘Church as the Locus of Theology’, p. 19. Haight, Ecclesial Existence, Chapter 7, p. 251. Chapter 7, p. 256. Ibid, p. 260. Ibid, p. 266. Chapter 8, p. 285. Ibid, p. 277. Ibid, p. 279f. Ibid, p. 270–1. Ibid, p. 283. Ibid, p. 290–1. Ibid, p. 291–2. Here he draws on Christian Community in History, vol. II, pp. 113, 276–88. Chapter 5, p. 196. Chapter 8, p. 286. Roger Haight, ‘Comparative Theology’, Chapter 21 of Gerard Mannion and Lewis Mudge (eds), The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 388. 63. David Tracy, ‘Beyond Foundationalism and Relativism: Hermaneutics and the New Relativism’, in his On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics and Church (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1994), p. 138. 64. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, p. 228. 65. Ibid., 228–9, n. 13., citing Tracy, The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 447–8.

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Chapter 10 NEW CHALLENGES AND NEW INITIATIVES IN ECCLESIOLOGY Roger Haight, SJ Most would accept the following formal truism: one century’s developments in the church and its ecclesiology set up the issues and methods of the ecclesiology of the next century. On this premise, one could say that the nineteenth-century missionary movement set the stage for the ecumenical ecclesiology of the twentieth century. It would follow, too, that twentieth-century developments in the world and among the churches present new challenges for the discipline of ecclesiology. On the basis of this formula, I have structured this chapter as a four-part dialogue with the essays of this book. I will begin by simply recalling the missionary movement of the nineteenth century and the thematic dominance of ecumenism in twentieth-century ecclesiology. Second, twentieth-century history and the church’s momentous expansion during its course have raised several significant problems, three of which are related to inculturation, globalization and religious pluralism. These problems set the stage for a brief analysis of comparative ecclesiology. Third, comparative ecclesiology is a distinct strategy within the larger discipline that studies and analyses the church. As a strategy, comparative ecclesiology itself is differentiated: it includes a variety of methodological implementations. In section 3 of this essay, then, I define comparative ecclesiology as a generic or analogous term encompassing a variety of subdisciplines or at least distinct ecclesiological tasks. Essentially, I respond to a number of points raised by the essays in this collection by offering a more refined concept of comparative ecclesiology than appeared in the first two volumes of Christain Community in History (CCH). Fourth, the methodological differentiations of comparative ecclesiology may be correlated with several of the problems that the church faces as it begins the twenty-first century. In section 4, then, I will conclude by indicating how different facets of comparative ecclesiology broadly conceived might provide strategies for addressing the problems I raised in section 2.

1. The Positive Initiatives of the Twentieth Century All are familiar with the development of the church, the churches, and the world in the course of the twentieth century. Few centuries, apart from the fourth and the sixteenth, bear witness to such dramatic growth and changes for the church. I will

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highlight certain specific developments among countless others by simply pointing to large topics which contain a wealth of significant data and their ramifications. A huge area of development during the course of the past century is summed up with reference to the ecumenical movement. The extensive missionary movement of the nineteenth century generated concern about whether the Western sending nations were spreading division, more precisely Western divisions, in the mission lands of the developing world. This stimulated the Western churches to form the ecumenical movement which dominated ecclesiology during the course of the twentieth century. This wave of corporate enthusiasm led in turn to the gradual formulation of the idea and then the creation of the reality of the World Council of Churches. This was an enormous achievement. Since the beginning of the ecumenical movement interchurch dialogue has become an intrinsic part of ecclesial life. During the course of the century many union churches were formed and many churches have entered into full communion with others. The flow of the ecumenical stream was so powerful that it drew the Catholic church into its current at Vatican II. Before Vatican II the Catholic church stood back from the ecumenical movement and formally rejected invitations to participate in major conferences that marked the path towards the creation of the WCC. Officially entering into the ecumenical movement and affirming commitment to its success was an important part of the symbolism of the Second Vatican Council as well as the concrete effects of this major ecclesiological event of the century. Like other churches, the Catholic church began to engage in bilateral dialogues or multilateral conversations with other churches. Although the Catholic church is not an official member of the WCC, it presently plays a major role in the ecumenical movement. Another development of the twentieth century that has generated worldwide significance is the emergence and spread of Pentecostal churches. Pentecostalism of course has grounding in the New Testament and historical analogies across the history of the church; the revival and holiness movements in American church history proved to be its immediate ancestors. But the events of Azusa Street in Los Angeles in 1906 have taken on a symbolic significance that dramatizes the dynamic reawakening of this tradition.1 The statistics of the spread of Pentecostalism and the ecclesiological structures of its churches mark it as a major ecclesiological development of the twentieth century and its effects will be significant in the future. Still another development in the church in the course of the twentieth century which has ramifications for ecclesiology can cautiously be called the decline of the church in Western Europe and a certain polarization of the churches in North America. These trends are still developing and characterizations of them will probably be misleading. But these developments constitute some of the undercurrents of our situation today. Although the secularization is decidedly uneven, many do not hesitate to call Europe ‘dechristianized’. In North America the mainline churches are losing many of their traditional members while evangelical churches are growing. There seems to be a polarization between emotional and critical styles of belonging to the church. As the churches in the West face a certain crisis of membership, the young churches throughout the world

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have gradually gained their own voices. The majority of Christians now live in the developing world. At the very least, one has to say that at the end of the twentieth century the situation of the whole church across the world has shifted considerably. It would be difficult to avoid the sense that the church today stands at a new threshold. But the advances of one century set the problems for the next. Several developments in the course of the twentieth century have set major problems with which the churches now have to deal.

2. Problems Generated in the Twentieth Century An extensive analysis would reveal many such problem areas that have become critical in the course of the twentieth century. I will simply raise three issues that remain quite apparent and deeply problematic. The first arises out of the need for and impulse towards inculturation on the part of churches in cultures outside the West. The second stems from the phenomenon of globalization. The third accompanies the close interaction between peoples of the different world religions. I will say a word about each of these three problems. Inculturation The term ‘inculturation’ has a positive ring in most churches. Everyone recognizes that the Christian church is not culture specific but aims at becoming incarnated in each culture which embraces Christian faith. In principle inculturation subverts all attempts of a single culture to claim ownership or control over Christian faith and practice. Frequently enough, however, it becomes difficult to decide when certain formulas of belief, rituals and practices are authentic because they spring from the core of faith or are inappropriate cultural adaptations. This sets up tensions that can easily end up being divisive. The responses of some churches of the developing world to the Faith and Order Commission’s document, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, provide an example of what I am referring to.2 Recall that this document aims at designing language that the greatest possible number of churches might recognize as expressive of the apostolic faith, whether or not it corresponds exactly with the formulas and practices of an individual particular church. Moreover, this document evolved over a long period of time, beginning in 1927, and involved a great deal of careful work. Yet several churches of the developing world, that is, non-Western churches, could not identify with the document. A document for the ecumene will inevitably be general but come from a particular tradition and possess a certain style. To cultures in Asia and Africa, BEM has a Northern and Western bias in its language, imagery and concepts.3 Melanesian churches said this: ‘We must also confess that many of the theological problems addressed in BEM seem foreign to us, since they arise out of the history of Christianity in Europe and thus do not appear relevant to our Melanesian concerns.’4

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Thus the classic language of the Western and Orthodox churches is not readily intelligible to the new churches in developing nations and cultures that do not share Western history. The goal of the inculturation of the church in different cultures simultaneously makes communication between the churches, not to mention communion among the churches, a problem. Globalization and Ecclesial Fragmentation The phenomenon of globalization and all that the term connotes deserve attention. I use the term neutrally to refer to the compacting of our historical time and the shrinking of the space of our world to effect an increasing interdependence and interaction among peoples who in the past were distant from each other.5 This process has a double effect of both fusion and fission. By fusion I refer to the bringing together of cultural forces that previously were different but separated. These new interchanges force a certain standardization that enables intercourse in every sphere: technological, economic and cultural. With the term ‘fission’ I refer to a reaction against a threat of homogenization contained in this same movement. That reaction reasserts local identity in a strong, self-conscious way. Fission, therefore, symbolizes a movement against fusion. Analogous to nationalism as a reaction against imperialism, fission stands for a reassertion of local autonomy, of difference against a neutralized or standardized culture, and an appropriation of identity within various forms of a broader world-community. This global dynamic has a counterpart in the development of the world church. As the churches throughout the world interact, forces of communion seek a common pattern of things, frequently according to historic Western norms that may seem alien. This can make efforts at communion look like cultural domination. At the same time, terms such as contextualization and inculturation are positive in mission theology and represent the desire that the Christian church, wherever it exists, becomes part of and indigenous to culture so that it might really communicate with and become an organic part of the life of a given people. The success of the worldwide evangelical and Pentecostal movement, especially when compared with a relative decline of the mainline churches in the West, at least in terms of church attendance, indicates that these churches may be better at inculturation than the others. Yet this very inculturation poses the real possibility that the world church is in danger as never before of disintegrating into a million different churches. Interaction between Religions Globalization and migration in the course of the second half of the twentieth century have resulted in a new proximity and interchange between the world’s religions. This meeting is occurring on the ground in civic communities and neighbourhoods in large cities all over the world. This encounter between Christianity and other religions in the historical home countries of these other religions still appears imperialistic to other religious traditions. It usually occurs as

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a result of missionary activity, and the idea of mission bears negative values in the eyes of the religions whose members are being converted. Correspondingly, among many progressive Christians the very idea of missionary activity may be accompanied by serious reservations. This attitude frequently attends a new and expansive historical consciousness which concludes to the value of other religions for other cultures. Can the new openness to interreligious dialogue and other religions themselves be reconciled with the classical missionary goals, which in their turn seemed to reflect some basic and intrinsically important dimension of Christian faith? This question penetrates to the core of an ecclesiological self-understanding of the church, for it defines the mission of the church. As such it encompasses the very purpose of the church in human history. These are not the only ecclesial problems on the horizon, but they are quite deep and decisive of significantly new attitudes. With that thought in mind, let me pass now to a consideration of a strategy for addressing these issues. 3. New Ecclesiological Strategies to Meet the Times In these last two sections I want to suggest that comparative ecclesiology provides a vehicle for addressing these issues. But the plausibility of this suggestion rests on the premise that ‘comparative ecclesiology’ be understood analogously as including several different types of method. I thus begin with a differentiation of various kinds of comparative ecclesiology.6 Broadly speaking, comparative ecclesiology may be characterized as a method that explicitly engages pluralism by placing in conjunction two or more churches, or ecclesiologies, or traditional sources of data. Comparative ecclesiology includes several distinct sub-disciplines with more or less different goals. Speaking in the expansive terms of types, I find five different kinds of comparative ecclesiology going on today. The division is meant to be neither exclusive nor exhaustive. A first type of comparative ecclesiology is illustrated by the analysis contained in the first two volumes of Christian Community in History. It consists in laying ecclesiologies side by side so that they may be compared. It is a straightforward and common strategy.7 Lining up the ecclesiologies in different periods of time, or among different churches at any given time, allows one to understand each better by comparison and contrast with the others. The exercise inevitably instils a historical consciousness because the main sources of the differences between churches and their ecclesiologies are mediated by historical event and circumstance. The title and content of Bernard Prusak’s essay, ‘Newness amid Continuity in the Future of the Church: God’s Will and Human Agency Guided by the Spirit’, address squarely the problematic of sameness and difference raised by historicity and historical consciousness in ecclesiology. His analysis unfolds within the context of the Roman Catholic church where it has been a significant issue for two centuries, since Johann Sebastian Drey. I agree completely with his conclusions. But shifting to an ecumenical and interdenominational perspective releases further

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insight into the question. A sympathetic and fraternal reading of the history of the church along with other churches allows one to consider the possibility that inspiration of the Spirit of God, and thus ius divinum, need not be understood in exclusive terms. An inclusive imagination would allow one to think that different historical patterns of church organization might be inspired at the same time, or that an inspired institution might be so for a time and then die, or that an equally inspired and divinely ratified order might take its place. This suggestion need not imply that all the provisions of all the churches are equally salutary. It simply takes the diversity mediated by history seriously. It also calls for critical discernment through ecumenical conversation and not by unilateral judgement on matters that affect the whole church. A second type of comparative ecclesiology uses the data provided by the many churches to construct a fundamental ecclesial anthropology. An example of this is found in the work of Edward Farley. He describes this effort at characterizing ecclesial existence as analogous to the nineteenth-century quest for the essence of Christianity. This is not an abstract essence, however, but one defined in terms of history and theology.8 In line with the essay of Ann Caron, ‘Towards an Inclusive Communion Ecclesiology’, I would suggest that this level of comparative ecclesiology requires a strong contribution from feminist values and ecclesiological insight so that ecclesial anthropology can be egalitarian. A third type of comparative ecclesiology finds its specific nature defined by the goal of churches coming together to understand each other better or to create covenants that allow communion with each other. The bilateral dialogues between churches exemplify this type of comparative ecclesiology.9 Minna Hietama¨ki, in ‘Is Comparative Ecclesiology Enough for the Oikoumene?’ has proposed this type of comparative ecclesiology in her analysis of bilateral dialogues that aim at a consensus that allows for differences. Her description of what goes on in this process assigns a precise goal for close comparative work, namely, a differentiated communion. The Faith and Order Commission of the WCC in its Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry reflects a fourth type of comparative ecclesiology. This method has as its goal the construction of a convergence statement that the widest possible number of churches might accept as representative of the apostolic faith. This method balances the common sources of any ecclesiology with the ecclesiologies of the many churches in a constructive statement. I have attempted an extensive comparative ecclesiology in the third volume of CCH entitled Ecclesial Existence.10 Its goal in somewhat idealistic terms is to characterize a self-understanding of the Christian church that reflects in our time the ecclesial apostolicity that all Christians might recognize. In so doing, this kind of comparative ecclesiology implicitly appeals to a common vision of what constitutes the Christian church. Gerard Jacobitz’s essay, ‘Church and Sacramentality: The Theology of Symbol in Roger Haight’s Comparative Ecclesiology’, provides an open paradigm for such a construct: the church as a historical community is a sign that realizes in a visible way God’s saving presence and interchange with human beings that is going on in the whole world. Such a description represents quite closely the implicit understanding of what is going on in most churches.

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Gerard Jacobitz proposes as an alternative to my theory and theology of symbol, one that is constructed on the basis of phenomenology. I have noted that the concept of a symbol is widely shared, but actual descriptions of how symbols work epistemologically, not to mention their ontological premises or elaborations, may differ significantly. The differences have implications: they will release different insights and perhaps warrant different modes of speech. For example, while many theories of symbol differentiate ‘symbol’ and ‘sign’ to underline symbol as a category of density and depth, Jacobitz prefers the category of sign to symbol, and his analysis invests sign with all the seriousness of symbol in the other systems. If I were schooled in the theory of signs employed by Jacobitz, I might find it added the clarity and depth that he assigns it. At one point in his development, however, Jacobitz raises a point about my christological application of ‘symbol’ that needs clarification on my part. In his resolve that a theology of sign or symbol should affirm ‘an unambiguous presence of the whole in the part’, he at least suggests that my theology of symbol is less clear in this matter. He contrasts this to my insistence on the dialectical structure of a symbol that allows the following paradox: ‘the symbol ‘‘both is and is not’’ that to which it points; it conceals as much as it reveals its referent’.11 Since this has to do with the divinity of Jesus Christ, it requires an explanation. The paradox of something being and not being something other than itself is not a self-explanatory logical idea but needs parsing. A phenomenology of the self provides the clearest example of the symbol as I understand it; it appears in the observation that I both am and am not my body, where the body is taken as the symbol of the whole self. The phrase thus means ‘I am not my body without remainder,’ or ‘I am more than my body,’ or ‘I cannot be reduced to my body’. It nowhere implies an ambiguous presence of the human spirit to the self, or in a hylomorphic paradigm, of form’s unambiguous presence to matter, or in Christology of an ambiguous presence of God as Spirit or of God as Word to the human being Jesus of Nazareth. In the application of the paradox of ‘is’ and ‘is not’ to the doctrine of Chalcedon, my intention is to preserve the simultaneity of the duality of natures in the person of Jesus Christ. Those natures are different, distinct, and not confused: divinity is not humanity, and humanity is not divinity. Yet Jesus Christ is both human and divine. Thus I would parse the logical paradox in this way: Jesus is divine and is not divine insofar as he is truly human; Jesus Christ is a human being, but is not reducible to his humanity because divinity is unambiguously present within him or constitutive of him. The point of the dialectical structure and character of symbol is precisely to overcome any ambiguity on either side of the Chalcedonian formula. A fifth type of comparative ecclesiology is interreligious; it enters into conversation with one or more other religions in an attempt to provide a broader and richer set of sources for reflection on the self-understanding of Christian community in a pluralistic context. This method is illustrated by Keith Ward who placed the Christian community in dialogue with the conceptions of community found in other religions. This kind of comparative ecclesiology appears to be quite close to what is proposed by Reid Locklin in his essay ‘A More Comparative Ecclesiology? Bringing Comparative Theology to the Ecclesiological Table’.12

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There may be other ways of theologically analysing the church comparatively that are distinct from these five types of comparative ecclesiology or are distinct subdivisions within these five. They all represent fresh initiatives for examining the church that have become prominent in the postmodern period and should provide resources for addressing contemporary problems. Before moving to this correlation of method to problem, however, I want to clarify two points raised by Bradford Hinze’s extensive and acute analysis of especially the method of CCH, I–II. I am grateful for his attention to the complexity of the work and the penetrating character of the commentary; it comes from his wide background in theology and affinity at several junctures to the intent of the work. Bypassing the points shared in common, I will respond to two critiques that touch on important points: the one has to do with the confessional character of theology and ecclesiology, the other more generally with the priority of faith over beliefs in theology. The first reflection cautions against an ecclesiology from below that does not fully acknowledge the weight that authoritative statements have in the church: those of synods, creeds and councils for example. But this reflects a deeper issue of the relation of explicit statement in linguistic form to a broader category of religious experience. Hinze wants a more defined role in ecclesiology to be played by ‘testimonies’ and ‘confessions’ of faith as determinative of meaning along with the religious experience they give witness to. Affirmation does not merely derive from some vague experience, but assigns meaning. It is probably true that CCH softens the role of historical witness in favour of a more diffuse sense of religious experience. But my intention in this work is to use history to open up ecclesial imagination against more rigid conceptions of the church across the denominations. If the problematic were the opposite, if the problem were a dismissal of all normative thinking in ecclesiology, I would emphasize the other pole. All things being equal, equilibrium between these two poles of knowing is the desired ideal. The same critique is pursued in other terms where Hinze deliberately pulls his punch, does not intend a knockout, and thus awards me the split decision on the matter of faith and belief. He accurately expresses my view: no faith without belief; both are cognitive in their own way; the two are distinct and not identical; but they mutually inform each other. I do indeed affirm a certain priority of faith over belief, not in a way that diminishes belief, but in a way that reflects the relation between faith and belief in three respects. First, faith is deeper than belief; in the development of doctrines or beliefs, faith is the constant; in a pluralism of beliefs, faith is a common possession. Second, beliefs are generated out of faith and its attending form of religious experience. One of the missing components in Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic theory of doctrine is a genetic analysis of the origins of doctrine in the terms of a religious epistemology. If doctrines do not arise out of an elementary faith that is aligned with religious experience itself, where do they come from? Or, more accurately, where does revelation occur? Third, faith in my analysis has its most fundamental mode of expression in human action. This understanding corresponds with the gospel’s pragmatism: by their fruits you will know them (synoptics); ultimately people must do the truth (John); faith without action is dead (James). For these reasons I conceive faith as generating doctrines

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and doctrines as the principles of faith leading to action. This view corresponds with a long vitalistic-cum-existentialist view of intelligence and knowledge: knowledge is teleologically oriented towards a mode of living. In this sense I ‘give precedence in principle to faith over beliefs’. But this in no way diminishes the importance of beliefs: I would say it rather maximizes their importance in directing the Christian life.

4. Fitting a Comparative Method to a Problem With this differentiated conception of comparative ecclesiology in place, I move to the fourth part of my proposal, namely, how comparative ecclesiology relates to new ecclesiological challenges. This strategic statement should not be taken as some sort of messianic vision. No easy solution to these problems lies ready at hand. I simply want to say that these new problems call for some new attitudes and new strategies and projects. One way of being more definite about this is to propose a way of proceeding by addressing a particular form of comparative ecclesiology to each of the three problem areas I mentioned. Allow me briefly to indicate what this might look like. Inculturation and Being in Communion The first problem I considered has its foundation in the tension between the individual and the community, in this case the individual church and the community of churches. How can churches preserve their identity and autonomy and at the same time be open to and in communion with other churches across profoundly different cultures? There are of course many programmatic things the churches can do, not least of which is membership in the World Council of Churches, or international denominational communions of churches, or, more locally, national councils of churches. But on an intellectual level this situation also calls for a more self-conscious and broader effort at comparative ecclesiology of the first type that I described. This means, in addition to study of one’s own church, a placing of one’s own church in the larger context of the many churches as a part of the whole. Without this parallel study, denominational ecclesiology will become tribal ecclesiology, an ecclesiology that not only distinguishes a given church from others but in some measure helps divide them. I do not think of this kind of comparative ecclesiology as a rival to denominational ecclesiology but as complementary to it. As in an interchurch dialogue, the horizon of each church’s self-understanding expands and becomes deeper when it is explicitly set within a context of a wider conversation among different styles of being church. A study of comparative ecclesiology that situates a given church and ecclesiology within a broad range of churches and their polities helps to establish some fundamental principles and attitudes that open the ecclesial imagination and dispose it positively towards other churches. Comparative ecclesiology engenders a differentiated and dialogical imagination, one that seeks and finds commonalities

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within differences. More particularly, comparative ecclesiology rests on and teaches two principles that are essential for churches in the twenty-first century. The first principle is a distinction between the elementary or essential character of Christian faith and the way it is objectively organized and lived out in a specific church. Study of the variety of forms that the church has assumed instils a more refined and subtle appreciation of the historicity of all ecclesial forms and the pluralism that follows from their being embedded in history. The second principle, closely related to the first, involves an appreciation of the difference between elements of the church which are more or less essential and those which are not. In the Reformation period, things that were of less importance and not substantially church defining were called adiaphora; Vatican II taught the principle of a hierarchy of truths which enshrines the same logic. Both of these principles, when they are internalized, allow for churches to both possess their own identity with confidence and at the same time be open to other churches along with their distinctive differences.

Addressing Ecclesial Fragmentation Another distinct project of comparative ecclesiology responds to the fragmentation of churches occurring across the world today. Against the threat of standardization and homogenization in a Western mode, churches forcefully insist on their particular local identity. Reacting to this, acting not against it but in a manner accommodating local identity, comparative ecclesiology can be employed in an effort to express the ‘essence of the church’ in the sense of those elements of being a Christian ecclesial community which all the churches share and can affirm in common. The Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches has been working on this project for eighty years and has achieved considerable success in the BEM document and the recent study document called The Nature and Mission of the Church.13 The logic of this project is subtle, but in its goals and as a way of proceeding it is designed to keep open the lines of communication among all the churches. I do not propose this effort should replace denominational ecclesiology; transdenominational ecclesiology should not compete with the selfunderstanding of the particular traditions of being church. But this effort at trying to define what we share in common, in principle and in fact, is crucial at this time of global fragmentation of the churches. More specifically, constructive comparative ecclesiology addresses the question of fragmentation by communicating principles and attitudes which run counter to ecclesiological individualism. Documents such as the Faith and Order Commission’s Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry and The Nature and Mission of the Church communicate a historical and a lateral social identity and responsibility. Relative to its historical roots, the identity of all churches has to be measured and compared with the church as it appears in the normative witness of the New Testament. An adequate understanding of any church is inescapably tied to the history that accounts for its genesis in this time and place. And as for lateral social responsibility, an authentically Christian church cannot be sustained independ-

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ently of some relationship with other Christian churches of a given time and place. Constructive comparative ecclesiology thus engenders a social and dialogical selfunderstanding that locates a particular church within a broader common ecclesial existence. This form of ecclesiology, which strives to characterize apostolicity for our time, does not weaken the identity of a given church but precisely reinforces it by situating the particular church within the common apostolic movement. The responses generated by the study document BEM attest to the centripetal power of such ecclesiology;14 it helps to bring churches into constructive relationships and to bind up and heal a wounded world-church.

Christian Church in a Religiously Pluralistic World People in the Western churches increasingly ask themselves the question of the status of Jesus Christ in relation to other religions. The discussion of the relation of the Christian church to other religions does not receive as much attention outside of the sub-discipline of missiology. And yet this question goes to the heart of any consideration of the role of the church in human history. This problem is experienced much more existentially and realistically in churches in South Asia where Christianity seems dwarfed when compared with other ancient, established, and vital scriptural religions. African churches too must live together with Muslims and Hindus, and they compare themselves to traditional religions. East Asian Christians constantly enter into dialogue with Buddhism and Confucianism either directly or indirectly through their cultures. New lessons may be learned by the whole church through comparative ‘ecclesiology’ among religions and through the ecclesiologies that emerge out of this distinctive life situation. Thus I agree with Reid Locklin that comparative ecclesiology should include interfaith analyses, for these can complement and complicate our study of particular experiences of church throughout history. Comparative study that engages other religions can have a significant effect on ecclesiology in two distinct respects. On the one hand, an objective comparative religions approach helps Christians to understand the intrinsic logic of other religions. The simple knowledge of the other helps break down barriers that inhibit mutual life together. On the other hand, comparative theology enters into another religion sympathetically and seeks to learn and bring back understanding of transcendent reality that can broaden the self-appropriation through Christian theological reflection. Independently of solutions to the christological question, churches can learn more about transcendent reality and God from an explicit or implicit dialogue with other religions on the simple Christian supposition that God as Spirit is at work in the world and cannot be far distant from any serious and authentic religious body. Expansive appreciation of God’s work in the world and Christian identity do not compete with each other; they reinforce and strengthen each other. To conclude, this short statement has sought to reaffirm what we all know, namely, that as we begin the twenty-first century the Christian church is not in the same place as it was at the start of the twentieth century when the ecumenical

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movement got under way and then flourished. The demands of inculturation, reactions to globalization, and religious pluralism leave us with new problems. One way of dealing with these issues involves thinking pluralistically and comparatively. This imperative does not provide an alternative to the denominational thinking that all churches have to practise. But denominational selfconsciousness should be complemented with a more expansive vision of the world and the role of the church in it. Various comparative ecclesiological strategies can help here. Notes 1. See Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 84–106. 2. The document to which these responses are addressed is World Council of Churches, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper 111 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1982). 3. Methodist Church of New Zealand, in Max Thurian (ed.), Churches Respond to BEM, I, Faith and Order Paper 129 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1986), p. 78. 4. Melanesian Council of Churches, in Max Thurian (ed.), Churches Respond to BEM, V, Faith and Order Paper 143 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1986), p. 180. 5. An extremely important element of globalization consists in the geopolitical and economic effects it has on all nations. These effects are hardly neutral; they have a concrete impact on people’s lives. In fact, they tend to monopolize the public discussion of globalization. By prescinding from that aspect of globalization I do not intend to diminish its importance nor the values and disvalues latent in these developments. 6. These distinctions summarize my fuller account of ‘Comparative Ecclesiology’ found in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, ed. Gerard Mannion and Lewis S. Mudge (London: Routledge, 2007). 7. Paul Avis (ed.), The Christian Church: An Introduction to the Major Traditions (London: SPCK, 2002). Another essay of this type is Edward LeRoy Long’s Patterns of Polity: Varieties of Church Governance (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2001). 8. Edward Farley, Ecclesial Reflection: An Anatomy of Theological Method (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), pp. 198–205. This work was preceded by an earlier foundational reflection which is propaedeutic to this one and was entitled Ecclesial Man: A Social Phenomenology of Faith and Reality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975). 9. See G. R. Evans, Method in Ecumenical Theology: The Lessons So Far (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), for an analysis of the various techniques used in ecumenical theology to find common understanding and agreement within difference. Another example is found in many bilateral dialogues between churches. See, for example, Randall Lee and Jeffrey Gros (eds), The Church as Koinonia of Salvation – Its Structures and Ministries: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue, X (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2005). 10. And discussed at length in the preceding chapter of the present volume. 11. Jacobitz, ‘Church and Sacramentality’, n. 13. 12. See Keith Ward, ‘Comparative Theology: The Heritage of Schleiermacher’, in Theological Liberalism: Creative and Critical, ed. J’annine Jobling and Ian Markham (London: SPCK, 2000), pp. 60–74, and Religion and Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). 13. The World Council of Churches, The Nature and Mission of the Church, Faith and Order Paper 198 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2005). 14. See Max Thurian (ed.), Churches Respond to BEM, I–VI, Faith and Order Papers 129, 132, 135, 237, 143–4 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1986–88).

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INDEX

adiaphora 30, 172 Advaita 8, 126, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141 Allen John 32 Anabaptist 26, 27 analogical imagination 34, 172, 176, Anima, William Bona 58, 59, 60, 63 Anselm of Canterbury 59, 67 Anselm (the master at Laon) 60 anti-papalism 63 apologetics 141 apostolicity 28, 52, 131, 134, 135, 178, 184, 196, 201 Augustine (of Hippo) 61, 79, 84, 173 the works of 45 authoritarianism 4, 186 authority 7, 18, 20, 92, 107 appeal to 20 blending of institutional and charismatic 134 centralizing of 138 of certain doctrines 43 Christian debates about 141 claims to 46 ecclesial 55 ecclesiastical 55 episcopal 152 exercised in local, personal relationships 134 of the Hierarchy 152, 155 inherent to communion 115 juridical 187 levels of 20 mystique of 152 official episcopal 24 of a papal curia 52 religious 179, 186 to teach, govern, and rule 28 teaching authority Christian argument about 135 in Hindu text 8

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inter-ecclesial 15–17 universal 57 unofficial spiritual 24 of women in the Roman Catholic Church 107–19 Bader, Jonathan 136, 137, 138 Balasuriya, Tissa 32 Baptist 27 Baur, Ferdinand Christian, 44 Bellarmine, Robert 44, 176 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (BEM) 31 127, 128 Boff, Leonardo 32 Brahman 129, 131, 132, 133, 134 Brahmanic Hinduism 132 Brahmanistha 131 Brahmin 131, 137 Brunner Emil, 81 Cahill, Lisa Sowle 107, 115 Calvin, John 26, 27, 84, 173 canon law 22, 56, 57, 59, 64, 66 Carmody, Denise 108 Carolingian 57, 65 Caron, Ann 6, 7, 106 Carr, Anne 116, Catechism of the Council of Trent 28 cathedral school 58, 60 Catholic [Roman] modernists 14, 37, 41 Catholic Press Association 33 Catholic Theological Association (CTSA) 33 catholicism 22, 134 catholicity 52, 98, 99, 178, 184 CDF 33, 36, 41, 160 centralization 138 Chalcedon, doctrine of 197 Chalcedonian faith 45 formula 197

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Index

204

Chittister, Joan 108 Christian Community in History (Haight) 1, 2, 17, 18, 19, 21, 31, 34, 35, 37, 41, 42, 75, 82, 83, 106, 112, 125, 128, 130, 140, 142, 168, 180, 181, 195 Christifideles Laici (John Paul II) 117 Christian Women’s Movement 7, 108–9, see also women Christocentrism 20 Christology 1, 18, 32, 41, 67, 75, 81, 170, 197 Docetic 45 importance for ecclesiology 20 Vatican’s condemnation of Haight’s 32, 33, 41–2 Church Anglo-Norman 63 Free 27 inculturation of 172 invisible 180–1 local 30 monistic conception of 172 transdenominational 84, 173 relation to state and society 24 Tridentine 27 Universal Institutional 27, 28 Clement (First) 134–5 Clifford, Anne 116 Clooney, Francis X, 47, 135–6, 139 Collins, Mary 108 communion 152, 170, 172, see also koinonia the bishop as serving the unity of the 100 Catholicity of 178 churches in 23 differentiated 196 ecclesial 2, 7, 17, 24, 43, 92, 93 forces of 194 full 94, 184, 192 hierarchical 155 obstacle to 186 of bishops 152 of saints 93, 100, 186 partial 9, 183, 184, 185 Trinitarian 45 with the church as a whole 46 Communionis notio (CDF) 33 conciliarism 24, 25 conciliarist crisis/form of government/theory of the church 25 ecclesial vision 27 conciliar theories 52, see also conciliarism constructive theology 81, 109

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council of Jerusalem 14 of Lillebonne 59 Second Vatican 106, 107, 108, 111, 127, 153, 154, 155, 159, 162, 192 of Trent 152, 158, 159 coup de grace 58 Cyprian of Carthage 35 Dashanami Order 136 Decretum of Gratian 57 Didache 134 Dominus Iesus (CDF), 33 Donatist 24 Downey, Michael 118 Drey, John Sebastian 195 Dupuis, Jacques 32 Dulles, Avery 126 Dynamics of Theology (Haight) 43, 47, 48, 75, 83

5, 17, 41,

ecumenical ecclesiology 1, 4, 16, 30, 35, 90, 167, 169, 187, 191 Ecumenical Intercultural Hermeneutic 169 ecumenical methodology 89, 91 ecumenical movement 6, 14, 17, 30, 37, 45, 91, 127, 173, 174, 192 ecumenical theology 6, 17, 91, 92, 93, 100, 188 ecumenism 67, 169, 191 ecclesiocentrism 20 ecclesiology Calvin 27 Catholic [Roman] 19, 51, 56 comparative ecclesiology as developed by Roger Haight 75 elitist 66 essentialist 54 event-centred 60 historical 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 37, 91 from above 42–3, 86 from below 19, 44, 81, 86 iconic model of Trinitariancommunion 7 liberation 30 New Testament 31 Orthodox 31 Pentecostal 31 pluralistic 2 pneumatocentric 29 public 186 transdenominational 21, 31, 82, 128, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 184

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Index Ecclesiology and Postmodernity (Gerard Mannion) 188 England, Tudor 27 episcopacy 4, 45, 66, 118, 178, 185 episcopal ministry 99 sees 58 Eucharist 34, 94, 95, 114, 115, 158, 167, 181, 186 evangelization 180 exclusivism 19 experiential expressivism 47, 49 Faith and Order 5, 89 Farley, Margaret 119 Farley, Edward 48 Fe´camp abbey 63 feminism 108, 109, 110, 111 Gospel 110 as a search for justice 109 feminist theology 7, 109, 110 fides qua 46 fides quae 46 Fiorenza, Elizabeth Schu¨ssler 108 Fiorenza, Francis Schu¨ssler 46, 47 foundationalism 16, 47, 49, 187 Fox Zeni 118 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 48 Gaillardetz, Richard 34, 35, 36 Gebuin of Lyons 62, 63 George, Francis Cardinal 115 Gilkey, Langdon 48 Ginther, James 4, 36, 54 globalization 20, 21 grand narratives 54, 58, see also metanarratives Gregorian reforms 24, 26, 55, 56–65, 138 Gregory VII 56, 57, 62, 138, 140, 141 Guru 131, 133, 134, 138 Gustafson, James 41 hagiographers 137, 139 Haight, Roger on activities of the church 180 church-world relation 181–3, 186 community as mission 177 defining aspects of ecclesiology from above 19–20, from below 18–19, 20 foundational tasks of ecclesiology from below 175 four theses against sectarianism 17 ecclesiolgy as mainly tribal discipline 170

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‘Genesis of the Church’, Pre-Constantinian and Post-Constantinian Church 22–24 on Gregorian and Lutheran reforms as, respectively, from above and below 26 membership in church 179–80 nature and mission of church 177 partial and full communion 184 sociology of organizations 175 worship 180–1 Hauerwas, Stanley 36 Healy, Nicholas 54 Heidegger 48 heretical ecclesiologies 181 Hick, John 32 Hietama¨ki, Minna 5, 89 hierarchy 7, 30, 59, 63, 64, 107, 115 hierarchical imagination 20, 115 Himes, Mary 6, 107 Hindu attitude 130 traditions 133, 137 monastic federation 136 Hinduism 129, 130, 139 Hinze, Bradford 3, 36, 41 Hodgson, Peter 48 Hooker, Richard 27, 173 Husserl, Edmund 5, 75 hybridity (of ecclesial identity) 184 iconic imagination 31, 34 iconography 176 Ignatius of Antioch, letters of 134–5, 140–1 Imbelli, Robert 35 imperialism 182, 194 inculturation 24, 30, 31, 41, 125, 172, 177, 183, 186, 191, 193–4, 199, 202 entails pluralism, 177 India 136, 137–8 Indian society 136 subcontinent 136 individualization 21 institutionalization church 23, 28, 108, 138 Ius Divinum 8, 156–60 Ivo of Chartres 57, 59 Jesus, as the generative principle of the church 23 Jesus: Symbol of God (Haight) 5, 17, 35, 41, 43, 75, 81, 83 John of Avranches 58 John Paul II 51, 117

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206 Johnson, Elizabeth

33, 47, 108, 110, 116

Kashmir 137 Kasper, Walter 155 koinonia 6, 98, 99–100, see also communion Komonchak, Joseph 16, 51, Kreutzer Sonata 77 Ku¨ng, Hans 48 Lanfranc 58, 59 Lash, Nicholas 47 Lausanne 5, 89 Lerner, Gerda 108 Liberation theology 1, 45, 109, 170 libertas ecclesiae 56 Lindbeck, George 47, 91 Locklin, Reid 7, 8, 125, 197, 201 Lonergan, Bernard 41, 47, 48, 173 Lubac, Henri de 51 Luckman, Harriet 107 Luther, Martin 26, 45 Lutheran reform 26 Maminot, Gilbert 60 Mannion, Gerard 1, 13, 152, 167 Marchetto, Agostino 153 marks (notes) of the Church 170, 172, 177–8, 184–5 Mathas 136, 138 Matthew Park Library 55 Maurilius of Rouen 58 Mennonite 27 metanarratives 54 Milbank, John 36, 51 mono-episcopacy 156, 159, see also episcopacy monophysitism (ecclesiological) 51 Mo¨hler, Johan Adam 29, 51 Murray, John Courtney 34 neo-Augustinain 36 neo-Arianism 45 neo-Sabellianism 45 Newman, John Henry 44 Nicholson, Hugh 139 Norman Anonymous (Anon) 4, 54–68 ‘Note on the Expression ‘‘Sister Churches’’ ’ (CDF) 33 Ogden, Schubert 41, 48 O’Malley, John 151, 152, 154, 163 open church 187 ordination 28, 67, 118, 180 baptismal 117 of a priest by bishop 60

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the problematic of nature and effects of 186 reservation to men in Roman Catholic Church 160, 179 words of 60 Orsborne, Kenan B. 117, 118 Orthodoxy 31 papacy 65 as an authority 55 claims supremacy 66 divisive nature 64 jurisdictional power and authority of 24 medieval 138 Panormia 59 patriarchy 7, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, Petavius, Dionysius 44 Philibert, Paul 110, 117 pluralism 21, 168, 169, 174, 176, 177, 186, 188, 195 affirmation of 172 appreciation of 2 of beliefs 198, 200 Christian 26 ecclesial 173 ecclesiological 5, 82, 187 realistic antithesis to relativism 171 religious, ideological, and cultural 2, 20, 191, 202 unavoidability of 172 polycentrism 169, see also pluralism Pope Alexander II 58 Porto Alegre 173 principle of functionality 44–5, 52, 174 principles of sacramentality 177 principles of theological epistemology 172 providentialism 151 Prusak, Bernard 8, 9, 151, 195 Pseudo-Dionysius 45 Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals 59 public ecclesiology 182, 186 Rademacher, William 115 Rahner, Karl 34, 36, 41, 47, 48, 75, 77 Ratzinger, Joseph 32, 33, 36, 41, 51 Rausch, Thomas 33 relativism 16, 32, 45, 171, 187 ‘Responses to Some Questions Concerning Certain Aspects on the Doctrine of the Church’ (CDF) 33 Resourcement 29, 52 revised conciliarist principle 178, see also conciliarism

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Index Ricoeur, Paul 48, 79 Rinere, Elisa 107 Roman Catholic Church 7, 8, 51, 95, 106, 107, 110, 171, 195 Roman Curia 153, 178 Rouault 77 Rouen 4, 55, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67 Rouennais church 61 Rouennais authority 63 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 108 Rush, Ormond 163 Russell, Letty 108 sacerdotal ministry 56 Sampradaya 129, 130, 133, 134, 136, 137 secularization 21 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 29, 48, 173 Schillebeeckx, Edward 32, 41, 45, 47, 48, 51, 127, 159, 160 Schlink, Edmund 89 schism 25 Schneiders, Sandra 6, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113 Shankara 129, 130–5, 136–41 Shankaracharya, Adi 129, 131, 135, 136, 141 Shklovsky, Victor 139 sister churches 33 smarta movement 136 orthodoxy 137 Smyth, John 176 Sullivan, Francis 156 sukham asina 132 Symons, Menno 173 Tanner, Kathryn 128 Tavard, George 51 Taylor, Charles 49 Thomas Aquinas 80, 158 Thiel, John 47 Tillard, Jean-Marie 34, 35, 37 Tillich, Paul 5, 41, 48, 75, 76, 79, 83 Tracy, David 16, 41, 47, 48, 51, 187, 188

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Tritheism

207 45

utopianism 154, 177 uniformity 27, 30, 36, 90, 91, 97, 171 Van Gogh 77 Vedantin 136 Vedic scriptures 131, 132 vijayas 136, 137, 138, 141 Vijayanagara 138 Vitalis, Oderic 60 Voice of the Faithful 110, 117 Von Balthasar, Hans Urs 51 Watson, Natalie 6, 109 Ward, Keith 8, 15, 129, 137 women as ‘Catholic feminists’, 110, 111, see also Womenchurch conversation of 106 debates about official roles of 51 enormous ministerial commitments on the part of 7 equality of men and 31, 108, 109 exclusion from important areas of church life, especially leadership roles, simply because they are 107, 109 experience and situation of 7, 106 inclusion vis-a`-vis 2 in ministry 110–11 mistreatment of individuals and groups, e.g. 49 ordination in the Catholic Church 107 Second Vatican Council and 106 struggles of 106 want a more participatory Church 107 Womenchurch 111, 112 Wood, Susan 117, 118 World Council of Churches (WCC) 30, 127, 173, 192, 199, 200 Williams, George 59 William the Conqueror 58, 59 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 5, 48, 75 Zizioulas, John

31, 34, 173

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